Do we have the "Black Box"

[Randy]

This article indicates the the Hombre has one and GM is married to Isuzu these days. Check this:

http://www.seniormag.com/headlines/blackboxcars.htm


Randy :supercool

[paultvx]

GM has been married to Isuzu for a long time. Actually less so now than before. With Isuzu's poor health... it really doesn't make a good "mate". For lack of bliss... GM has done just about everthing sort of filing for divorce.

Go to autoweek.com and do a search for "isuzu". There are at least 3 articles on the subject.

The Hombre is a rebadge S-10 pick up. The two are virtually identical except for a few minor cosmetic differences. Unfortunate for Isuzu... the S-10 is a real piece of junk. A friend bought one (S-10) new right after college. 30k miles later the head cracked. Not exactly what Isuzu needs to help generate profit.

All OBD2 compliant vehicles (1996 to present production vehicles) have some form of datalogging. It's nothing to be alarmed about. It can help dealers diagnose problems by allowing the tech to see what the conditions were when certain failures took place. I guess that could be a bad thing if the operator was doing something he shouldn't have been doing. You can buy Windows based programs that allows you to access your vehicle's data via the OBD2 port. I don't know if there is a specific one made for Isuzu... guessing that a GM version would probably work. If not, there are generic versions that reads all OBD2 common codes. Many emmissions testing sites across the country use a set up like that to see if your O2 readings are within spec.

Prior to OBD2 being mandatory, just about everyone friendly to automobiles saw it as the evil of all evil. It's really harmless now compared to some of the things being proposed right now. Things like: sattellite tracking, smart cards that take the place of keys (and also store vehicle information... including your sins behind the wheel) on and on. Imagine a cop pulling you over, asks for your card and sticks it into his own onboard card reader which is connected to a centralized data center downtown. Instantly your sins are registered and broadcasted to your insurance provider.

Far fetched? Not really. It's already possible with current technology.

Land of the free? We'll see...