The Buzz

How about a new car and a vacation all in one deal? It’s something for U.S. auto makers to consider.
Several European car makers allow buyers to go to the factory, pick up their car, drive it for a few days or weeks and return it so it can be shipped to the U.S.
Volvo, for example, [...]

AAA and Best Western International are calling it the “Ultimate Road Trip,” but the “Ultimate Kentucky Road Trip” might be more accurate.
Five of the nine destinations are in Kentucky or Cincinnati.
You can go to bestwestern.com/aaaroadtrip or aaa.com/motorsports and register to drive a “street-legal version” of No. 99 Best Western Toyota Camry from Michigan International Speedway [...]

Lexington might as well declare the Keeneland Race Course to be a separate city.
East Coast sportswriters do it whenever an important horse, like Big Brown, comes out of a Keeneland thoroughbred auction.
Newhouse News Service, for example, says one of Big Brown’s owners, Paul Pompa Jr., spotted the colt “at a Keeneland, Ky., auction last spring [...]

Lexington might as well declare the Keeneland Race Course to be a separate city.
East Coast sportswriters do it whenever an important horse, like Big Brown, comes out of a Keeneland thoroughbred auction.
Newhouse News Service, for example, says one of Big Brown’s owners, Paul Pompa Jr., spotted the colt “at a Keeneland, Ky., auction last spring [...]

Our Business Monday cover story on May 19 is about the potential use of Kentucky farm products like sweet sorghum to make ethanol, a gasoline additive that can reduce the demand for oil.
As we have mentioned before, there are three guys from Lexington — brothers Josh and Tomas Endicott and their business partner Ian Hill — who [...]

The president of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association was between Vice Mayor Jim Gray and developer Dudley Webb on the agenda for Tuesday’s Bluegrass Hospitality Association meeting.
When his turn to speak came, Eric Gregory began by placing seven small bottles of bourbon on the lectern to represent the distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.
 “If I knew [...]

“Lexington’s Bluegrass Region” is the featured destination in the June issue of Delta Air Lines’ Sky Magazine.
Caleb Miles, president & CEO of the Convention & Visitors Bureau in Pinehurst, N.C., says it’s a terrific honor that probably will spur local tourism, but any gains may be hard to measure.
Miles knows, because Pinehurst — known as [...]

Portabella’s is no more.
All that’s left of the North Locust Hill Drive restaurant is used equipment, dishes and glassware.
Patrick Kelly is selling those items as fast as he can.
The former owner of the restaurant, Kelly had offered to sell it for $65,000 in listings on eBay and Craig’s List.
At one point, he thought he had [...]

We know Affiliated Computer Services for its data processing and call centers that employ more than 3,000 in Central and Eastern Kentucky.
In Chicago, ACS will soon be known to motorists for something else: Law enforcement.
The Texas company just signed a $7 million contract to install cameras on Chicago street sweepers to record the license numbers [...]

Those who have been reading Nicholas Kristof’s recent columns in The New York Times know he has been writing about a former Lexington businessman, Douglas McMeekin, who has been in Ecuador since the early 1980s.
McMeekin, 65, grew up in a house off Tates Creek Road where the McMeekin Place subdivision is today. He had several [...]