Key information, including bin pickups, waste collections and recycling information, is readily available, as well as map locations of local libraries, parks and council events, road closures, rates information and payment details, dog registration and fire bans.
Everyone has been affected, but the Big Three, with their model line-ups skewed towards the pickups and SUVs that are now out of favour, have been hurt most.
Recently, however, GM's C/K pickups, based on an 11-year-old model, have come into their own.
Dissatisfied with the sound of amplified guitars, he used a piece of railway sleeper to make a solid base for the strings and pickups, producing in this way a unique tone.
THE number was small: just 500 of General Motors's latest full-size pickups (pictured) were being recalled on May 23rd because of a minor problem with airbags.
At the Ford plant down the road, the Kas, Fiestas and Courrier pickups on the assembly lines were swaddled in rolls of plastic, as the factory lay idle.In this section For the child who has everything Monkey business Prince of diamonds Dear Daddy Double entries Behind America's small-business success story Trouble in Eldorado Web site ReprintsThis is desperate news for the world's big car makers.
Meanwhile the capital is run by groups of volunteers and policed in random fashion by cheerful bands of bearded fighters who cruise around in pickups mounted with heavy guns and lounge at checkpoints.
Politicians flaunt pickups as proof that they are regular folk.
Even in America there are eccentric spots such as Washington, DC, where big pickups are rare, beyond a few used by builders or jobbing gardeners.
Yet at the peak of sales in their home market, during the presidency of George W. Bush (a truck fan), nearly a million F-series pickups were sold each year, many to suburban wannabes the industry calls "never-nevers", meaning they never take trucks off-road or use them for towing.
Rather than invest in low-margin cars, GM and the two other Detroit firms concentrated on building profitable pickups and SUVs.
