Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Digest

Talk of the day

By TIMES WIRES
Published July 14, 2006

GMC gets into the crossover game

GMC, the General Motors brand known for rugged work trucks, introduced a crossover to its lineup, adding to a fast-growing market segment that aims to mix passenger capacity with a sleeker look and better gas mileage. The 2007 GMC Acadia, which was introduced Wednesday, is the brand's first front-wheel-drive vehicle. It and the similar Saturn Outlook are General Motors Corp.'s newest mainstream car-based vehicles with three rows of seats. Both can hold up to eight people and get 17 miles per gallon of gasoline in the city and 25 on the highway, according to GM's estimates. They are equipped with a new six-speed automatic transmission. The Acadia will hit showrooms in late August or early September, but the Outlook, introduced in April, won't arrive until later this year, company officials said. A Buick version likely will be in showrooms by May 2007. Pricing was not released.

Ben and Jerry are back in the ice cream biz, sort of

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. is returning to its social activism roots, attracting its aging-hippie founders back to the company for the first time in years, as it lobbies to shift federal spending from nuclear missiles to children's programs. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are leading the company's "American Pie" campaign, designed to persuade consumers to demand a change in spending priorities. Their goal is to shift $13-billion that pays to maintain thousands of nuclear bombs into pediatric health insurance, schools or other programs for kids. Greenfield and Cohen gained fame as they parlayed their business, founded after they took correspondence courses on making ice cream, into a multimillion-dollar public company that became the subject of a bidding war.

Other chatter

COMPUTER FOR ONE EURO A DAY: Low-income French families will be equipped with a computer and an Internet connection for 1 euro ($1.27) a day under a new government proposal. Families who sign up will receive a computer, a high-speed connection, software and a class on how to use the equipment, said officials, who will announce this year income guidelines for qualifying. The program is expected to start early next year.

[Last modified July 14, 2006, 01:39:38]