Word: windstar
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Behind the wheel of the family's beige Windstar minivan, Rowley is the first to admit, she is an aggressive driver, passing slower-moving cars on a two-lane highway at every chance. It's hard to tell her exact speed, since the speedometer is broken. The needle swings between 70 and 100 m.p.h., even when she's braking. Every now and then, Rowley pounds the dashboard above the gauges. "This is what Ross does," she says with a shrug...
George W. Bush knows the question is coming. He is sitting in the back of a silver Ford Windstar minivan, his compact frame unfurled across the bench seat, his left arm slung across the backrest. He appears completely relaxed, but when the question arrives--the one about whether he has the intellectual wherewithal to be President and whether it bothers him that this issue keeps being raised in the campaign--his body tenses. He turns his face forward, his eyes narrow, and he gazes out the windshield at the long road ahead. "You know," Bush says, his voice tinny...
...panels and a hybrid power train (a small diesel engine, batteries and electric motor) to get 70 m.p.g. Ford displayed a concept vehicle fabricated out of aluminum, titanium and carbon fiber that gets up to 63 m.p.g. and weighs 40% less than a Taurus. Ford promised to adapt its Windstar minivan, classified as a truck, to meet lower emissions by 1999. But while the Big Three talk about adding a salad bar to the auto buffet, they are busily cooking up the industry equivalent of pork sandwiches. "Look, we can make a car that runs on rubber bands and squirrels...
...brochures for the minivans are bogus at first glance. Here is a Windstar--or is it a Previa? a Caravan?--parked in the circular drive of an Alpine castle, glistening after a spring shower. The image is idiotic: American marketing at its most cynical. But Husband lingers over the sport-utility brochures. The pages are heavy and slick, almost sensuous, like the leaves of some edible exotic plant. And the pictures! They are familiar to him from the thousands of commercials he saw during the N.B.A. finals. The Jeep Cherokee roars up the perilous incline of a desert mountain. Fearlessly...
Over the next two years, the Big Three will bring out about 26 new models. Among them: Oldsmobile's four-door luxury sedan, the Aurora -- the industry's first direct aim at the Lexus -- and Ford's front-wheel-drive minivan, the Windstar. But each American automaker still has tough work to do. Chrysler must overcome a reputation for spotty quality; Ford must pump up its profit margins after years of cutting prices to increase volume; and GM, of course, must find ways to turn out new products and restore solid profitability at the same time...
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