NorCalCars.com has given its private party classifieds section a facelift! Over the years thousands have added cars to our classifieds section making it one of the more popular areas of our site. As you likely know the old classifieds was a little slow and hard to navigate so we have developed a new cleaner format. Stop by our new NorCal Classifieds section and let us know what you think!

Some of the new features include better photo uploading and display, easier visitor navigation and better navigation for the search engines so that more people will be able to view your ad which will help you sell your vehicle quicker. (more…)

NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) will be implementing this years Click it of Ticket safety campaign starting May 21, 2012 and going through June 3, 2012. This is billed as a “High Visibility Seat Belt enforcement” campaign.

Summary from Traffic Safety Facts 2009: A Compilation of Motor Vehicle Crash Data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and the General Estimates System

Here are some of the facts in the latest Traffic Safety Facts Report (2009) compiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation. (more…)

The World’s Coolest Cars, Historic Warbirds, Demolition Derby, Quirky Contraptions

Pacific Coast Dream Machines Show Expands to Two Days, April 28-29, 2012 at Half Moon Bay Airport

Stop by our calendar for more pictures of the Pacific Coast Dream Machines car show

HALF MOON BAY, CALIFORNIA — For a remarkable and singular experience, there’s nothing that matches up to the Pacific Coast Dream Machines Show — Half Moon Bay’s massive celebration of mechanical ingenuity, power and style known as the “Coolest Show on Earth”. It’s a whimsical, fascinating, amusing, curious and
absolutely unique show and tell spectacle featuring 2,000 magnificent driving, flying and working machines from the 20th and 21st centuries. The world’s coolest cars of every era and style, model-T fire engines, vintage busses, custom motorcycles, tricked out trucks, sleek streamliners, one-of-a-kind antique engines and tractors and historic military aircraft will be among the mesmerizing displays.

This year’s 22nd annual show is expanding to two days (more…)

Toyota and Lexus announced a couple of their planned debuts for the 2012 New York International Auto Show. The new Lexus is the sixth-generation of the Lexus-ES, while the new Toyota sedan that will be debuted has only been identified as “all-new U.S.-designed sedan”.

A press conference will be held for the Lexus ES on Wednesday April 4th and the car will be displayed April 6-15th at the Lexus exhibit at the NY Auto Show. Toyota is planning the debut of its new sedan in the Jacob Javits Center at the Auto Show in the Galleria room. The first look will happen at 10am on April 5th. (more…)

It’s about time for Redding’s Top Automotive event. Redding Kool April Nites (cool april nights). Once again there is a 2000 car cap so if you are planning on entering a car you probably want to get things started, registration ends on April 11 and the show is from April 17-22. You can find more information in our car show calendar on 2012 Kool April Nites.

Show ands Shines will be held through out the week with the main events happening on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The cuise starts at 6:30 on Friday and is followed by the first of the two dances at the Redding Convention Center in the Mega Tent. (more…)

Toyota Financial Services (TFS) as well as Lexus Financial Services (LFS) are offering their lease customers yet another car insurance that can be added to the list while leasing a car, the “Excess Wear & Use Protection Plan” the EWU. This one is set to cover all the little dings, scratches and other imperfections incurred of the course of driving a car for several years (but of course not without limits).

This new insurance will cover certain “beyond” normal wear and tear items like: (more…)

Powered by a 200 hp, 2.0 liter 4-cylinder engine the new Scion FR-S is sure to thrill! Holding to the traditional Front-Engine, Rear-Wheel drive design of most of the better sports cars the Scion delivers exceptional performance.

D-4S fuel injection

The Scion FR-S is a joint effort of Toyota and Subaru, using Subaru’s horizontally opposed engine and the D-4S fuel injection developed by Toyota. The D-4S fuel injection system combines both port fuel injection (PFI) and GDI injectors that utilize a dual fan spray.

This interesting combination of the two fuel injection technologies take advantage of each methods best characteristics to produce a high power, low emission engine while also decreasing fuel consumption. In short the port injectors receive the highest demand on startup to decrease the emissions of the cold engine with only minimal use of the direct ejectors. (more…)

Chevrolet’s latest offering to the war of the mini-cars, the Chevy Spark will be unveiled at the 2012 Los Angeles International Auto Show on Nov 16th. This mini-car is designed to attract a younger audience with its electronics and entertainment features as well as fuel economy and sporty design.

Competing with other mini-cars like the Fiat 500, Smartfortwo and the Scion iQ, the Spark boasts of a more roomy passenger area as well as more cargo room. The 1.2L 4-cyl engine and standard manual transmission promises good fuel economy while still offering an impressive integrated safety system which includes 10 airbags and OnStar.
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While the majority of the people visiting NorCalCars.com are looking to buy a new car or research a car before they buy one, many are car dealers looking to find ways to promote their dealership website. This post is devoted to those used car dealers looking to promote their website.

If you build it, they will come

One major misconception of new website owners is that all they need to do to have a successful website is to create one. Unfortunately this can be likened to building a new car lot in the middle of the desert with no roads leading to your business. You might have the best selection of cars at the best price but likely you are going to be the one person that knows it.

While Google and the other search engines will likely find your site and index it, at this point it will likely not show up in the search engine results. To get Google to start showing your website in the result pages of the search results requires that you promote your car dealers website.

Promoting your Dealership web site

To get your dealership website to show in the search engine results requires that you promote your site. There are three ways to promote your site, advertisement (payper click and others), SEO (search engine optimization), and Social networking. For this article I will be talking about promoting your site with social networking and how to do it. If you would like to know more about why social networking is one of the major ways to promote your dealership website read this article on “Why More Businesses Are Getting Into Social Media Marketing To Improve Web Traffic“.

Social Networks

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TORRANCE, Calif., March 7, 2012 – Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. (TMS), today announced that it will conduct a safety recall involving certain 2009 Camry and 2009 to certain 2011 Venza vehicles to replace the stop lamp switch. Approximately 70,500 Camry and 116,000 Venza vehicles are covered by this recall.

During installation of the contact-type stop lamp switch on one of the North American assembly lines, silicon grease may have reached the inside of the switch and caused an increase in electrical resistance. If this occurs, warning lamps on the instrument panel may be illuminated, the vehicle may not start, or the shift lever may not shift from the “Park” position. In some cases, the vehicle stop lamps may become inoperative. (more…)