EcoReport is your award-winning guide to green travel, green cars, and saving the green in your wallet on both.

EcoReport is written and edited by Evelyn Kanter, a professional journalist with a lifetime of experience a magazine and newspaper writer and photographer, radio and television news producer and reporter, and guidebook author and editor -- all focusing on travel, automotive, lifestyle, the environment, and your rights as a consumer.

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Subaru Named Best Brand for Resale Value

Subaru named best brand for resale value. Photo is 2011 Subaru Forrester

An important part of any  car buying decision should be how much that vehicle is worth when you trade it in.  So what’s the best overall brand for resale value?  Subaru.  That’s what the car experts at KBB.com say.

Subaru won [...]

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2011 Car of the Year Finalists Include Electric Cars, Hybrids and Sportscars

Which 2010 or 2011 model gets your vote of the most desirable vehicle of the year? The best green car?  There are three important awards being announced at the press preview days of the important 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show next week.

First, is the title of Automobile of the Year, awarded by Automobile Magazine. [...]

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Happy 125th Birthday to the Automobile, Born Aug. 26, 1885

Gottlieb Daimler 1885 patent design for 'riding car'

The automobile was born on August 26, 1885.  That is the day Gottlieb Daimler filed a patent for his ‘riding car’, the world’s first vehicle with an internal combustion engine.  The world would never be the same, and 125 years later, engineers and designers are still tinkering with the size, power and performance of the cars we drive and ride.  Daimler put a motor on a two-wheel vehicle, so purists might say this is the first motorized bicycle or the first motorcycle, not the first car.  Let’s not quibble.  This was the start of motorized personal mobility.

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Munich Oktoberfest Celebrates 200th Anniversary in 2010

Munich Oktoberfest celebrates 200 years in 2010

Germany is justifiably famous for its great beer and wine festivals, which start in late summer or early fall and focus on regional wines, beers, and culinary specialties.  The most famous is the Munich Oktoberfest, the world’s oldest and largest beer festival , which celebrates its 200th anniversary in 2010.  Festival dates this year are September 18 to October 4.

The Munich Oktoberfest turns the city into party central.  Dozens of huge tents serve food, beer and entertainment to thousands of people each night, and a sprawling midway lures visitors to Ferris wheels and other rides.  Each of Bavaria’s beer breweries has its own tent and serves only its own beer, and of the beer tents serve tons of wurst, roast pig and chicken nightly, and every tent features an oompah band.

World's largest Oktoberfest beer festivals are in Munich and Stuttgart

Every few minutes, the band plays a rendition of the “Prosit” drinking song, and everybody stops chatting or eating or drinking to stand up and sing while waving their beer mugs in unison.  It’s tough to resist.

I’ll admit — I’ve been there, and I’ve done that.  And, I never ceased to be amazed at the strength of the waiters and waitresses who thread their way through the crowds while  juggling up to eight one-liter mugs without spilling a drop.  You’ll have the most fun if you pick one tent and stay there for the evening, rather than tent-hopping.

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Chicago Car Show Celebrates Small, Mini and Micro Cars

Hollywood icon Cary Grant and a vintage BMW Isetta microcar

Small cars are back in style, thanks to gas prices that peaked at $4 per gallon last year, and the additional power, style and comfort manufacturers have been able to pack into new models like the Ford Fiesta and Audi A3 TDI clean diesel, named Green Car of the Year by the Detroit News.  Perhaps these will be tomorrow’s classics.  Yesterday’s icons are on display at a very small car show in Chicago, the Tres Petite Concours: An Exhibition of Micro & Minicars.

The car show takes over the 900 block of West Armitage Avenue, in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, the weekend of July 17 and 18, 2010.   The show features microcars and minicars from the 1950s and 1960s including the iconic BMW Isetta, a three-wheel vehicle with a single door that opened in the front, in front of the driver and passenger.  

Another car being featured is the Fiat Cinquecento, the inspiration for the Luigi character in the wonderful animated film Cars.  And the Citroen Deux Chevaux, also known as the 2CV.

Fiat Cinquecento, inspiration for Luigi in "Cars" Movie

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April Car Sales Climb 20%, Indicating the Economy is Stronger

2010 Audi A3 TDI

Car sales are a great indicator of the state of the economy.  when car sales are down, so is the economy.  In April 2010, car sales were up 20% over April 2009.  That’s a good sign that the economy is turning around.

Of course, some brands did better than [...]

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