rebadging dealerships

Passed by Saturn of White Plains (NY) today. The familiar Saturn logo was
replaced by a temporary 'Buick GMC' sign.

Last year, on the other side of town, Sholz Buick, a long time presence
here, went belly-up.

On another note, in a nearby town, Harrison NY...
The Prius that crashed into a stone wall as it came out the driveway was
supposedly another case of unintended acceleration. Toyota engineer examined
the 'black box' data recorder and pronounced that the throttle was wide open
and brake never pressed. This would imply a driver error.
Speaking as a design engineer, I have some serious concerns about the
honesty of black box data when the company who made the vehicle is the only
one that can read it out. I think it much better for the public to have a
third party black box recorder which can be read out (but not erased) by
standard diagnostic tools.
As vehicles incorporate more and more embedded computer devices, better
software validation is needed. I see it quite often in my own work where
software that works just fine in some conditions will be totally
unacceptable with other conditions. Part of the problem is that software
rarely runs in a linear fashion. Interrupts of differing priorities cause
the programs to take different paths. In a real world, this sometimes causes
unintended results. In the case of the 'alleged driver error' who is to say
that the black box data actually recorded everything as it actually
happened?

Oppie (Robert Oppenheimer)

 

Saturn of St. Paul turned into a VW dealership, which is handy because
my wife drives an SL2 and I drive a Passat.

 

In Indy, they closed the flagship Saturn of Indianapolis, but Saturn of
Fishers and Saturn of Greenwood continue with the names unchanged.

They're clearly used car dealerships now, no new cars of any sort, but
retaining the Saturn name....

--pig