Miles per Gallon

Thinking about getting a new car? And you want a more economical one right? It turns out that looking at the MPG (miles per gallon) is more complicated then you would guess.

Rick Larrick and Jack Soll of Duke University explain it all at The MPG Illusion

Which is more useful to know: How far you can drive on a gallon of gas? Or, how much gas you will use while owning a car?

MPG answers the first question. GPM answers the second question. We suspect that, when buying a car, most people want to know gas consumption. Gas consumption, as measured by GPM, can be directly translated to the cost of driving the car and to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. MPG cannot.

MPG can be a misleading measure of fuel economy when comparing two cars. 

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Planet Color Update

A couple of months a ago I complained that I was out of the loop with the Sherwin Williams Planet Color system. Well I'm happy to say that my local SW rep took care of us and we have the snazzy fold out color display. We can make all of the colors and some of them are fabulous.
I always thought that thinking up names for colors would be a great job and these guys have some good ones click on the products tab to see the Sinister colors like Black Magic and Golden Violet. Click on Classic Muscle to see Dick Balsley Blue, or Gene Winfield Red, or Jon Moss Yellow. Dick Balsley a GM engineer that is Manager of Special Fleet at The GM Heritage Center. Gene Winfield is a custom car builder from Mojave California. And hot rodder and GM designer Jon Moss. Other great names are fitynine caddy, fritz the cat green and Stan Betz yellow. honoring Stan Betz of Betz Speed and Color. As for fritz the cat you may have to find some one that remembers a the late 60's to understand that one.
Great idea honoring these giants with cool colors



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Sherwin Willams HP process

Sherwin Williams has posted a preview of their new web site design very clean very web2.o

The web 2.0 part? Well they are calling it the beta site and they are posting videos to Youtube
I've just finished watching an eight minute video on the new HP process.
This is quite remarkable stuff very very fast curing at 75 degrees Fahrenheit prime, sand, paint,clear and buff all in 15 minutes. No bake cycle no ultra violet lights all at room temrerature. If you run a production shop you should take a look at this







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Electic Cars in Americas Future

The news today revolves around a multibillion dollar bailout of the Big Three auto makers. I'm not sure where to come down on this on one hand we can't let millions of people to be thrown out of work, on the other is the management of these companies have resisted raising CAFE standards and suppressed new technologies. Are they going to embrace change and give us new highly efficient cars to break our dependence on Mideast oil. Or do they just give new gas guzzlers.

There are other car companies here in the United States that are making, well some are odd looking , but still innovative cars. If we are giving billions to the Big Three shouldn't the discussion include small innovative companies.

Here is a link to the Venture Beat Clean Tech blog post that has links to 30 companies making electric cars






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More on the return of Acme

A note on the return of the Acme Paint label. I heard a rumor that one of the reasons Sherwin Williams has resurrected the Acme is a mater of use it or loss it.
Sherwin folded Acme back into the product line back in 1996 and now 12 years later if they had not used the name they stood to lose the rights to the venerable old name. Back before Acme was associated with Willie E Coyote and his plans to get that pesky roadrunner Acme stood for the best of something, the name implied it was as good as it could be.
As a marketing tool Sherwin Williams used Acme to differentiate it's market along with other brands Rogers and Martin Senour. I always thought that Acme had the best numbering system


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Memo to SW we are not the competition

A customer came in the store the other day and with a very nice presentation book The Sherwin Williams Color Planet custom color book. It is a very nice book very cool colors much like PPG's Vibrance collection or Dupont's Hot Hues all interesting. All vying for that special niche market that House of Kolor has owned for years.
House of Kolor was started by Jon Kosmoski and made popular Kandy paint (Semi Transperent paint that is used over Metallics so the metallic sparkles through) HOK is owned by Valspar but they have recently brought Kosmoski back in to the company in a contributing capacity, they seemed to have been drifting for a long time.
The thing is about the Color Planet book, I had never seen one before and I sell Sherwin Williams automotive paint. We are and authorized jobber for SW and we buy form their company store here in town. But they treat us not so much as the competition but as the ugly step sister that "well we don't like to talk about don't-you-know."
It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. In trying to keep all of the sales to them selves they keep it from being viewed by a larger market.



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Acme Returns not with out problems

I got to work this morning to find a new product on the shelf. Sherwin Williams has brought back the Acme label. When I first started in the paint business the store that I worked for sold Acme and aside for some snickers about the name association with Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner it was a widely loved product.
Like a lot of big companies SW markets it's products under lots of trade names but in 1996 SW folded Acme into the Sherwin Williams, I remember the binder we received "Combining Our Mix in 96" Now it's back.
Down to practice maters I looked on the gallon cans of acrylic enamel to see the mix ratio you know so I could tell my customers how to use it. THERE ARE NO MIXING INSTRUCTIONS ON THE CAN! I hate this why, didn't the know when they made the label or is the information secret. But undeterred I went to the website that contained the PDS (product data sheets) www.acmefinishes.com sounds good I'm pretty handy with the keyboard and all. The web site does not exsist it redirets you to http://www.paintdocs.com/msds/ and there are noPDS on the site. Come on Sherwin Williams you can do better than this.


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The evolution of Car Logos

Thanks to Karen Taylor for the link to this story on Neatorama an exhaustive look at how car logos have changed over the years




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