Because of my RA (Range Anxiety), I drove Zippy Zappy gently on day 1, plugged the EV in immediately upon arriving at home and nixed my impromptu drive to the beach. (I haven’t named a car since I was 12 but the garish orange hue and pill-box proportions have made the name stick.) Thanks to my prudence (or was it fear?) I awoke to a 90% charge. According to Fiat’s computer, that was good for an 87 mile journey, plenty for my 52 mile one-way commute. Of course, it was after I started climbing up the mountain pass that separates my home from civilization that I asked “how am I going to charge today?”

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“Have you driven the new Jetta Hybrid?” popped up in my Faceache message box. It came from Captain Leslie, an E-3 Sentry driver, consummate professional, a current Jetta TDI pilot (with a manual), and friend from a tour in the Middle East and Oklahoma City. Unable to resist her profile smile, I went in search […]

Before the 993 Targa came along with its fancy sliding glass roof, Porsche 911 Targas had real lift-out tops, just like the best 1990’s Japanese sports cars did (no doubt emulating what was perceived to be a suave alternative to a real ragtop). It looks like the 991 Targa will be returning to those roots.

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Para-site 2.0

Web 2.0 brought with it somewhat novel interpretations of the copyright. We are used to the fact that our stories show up in all kinds of places. As long as they are within the bounds of fair use, and as long as they link back to us, we don’t mind. We often pick up inspiration for stories elsewhere, but we try to always say where we found them, and we give ample links, the new currency of Web 2.0. Some people are less polite. Recently, matters took a turn to the weird.

(Note: Before you complain about headline or picture, read to the end.) (Read More…)

The wraps have finally been taken off from the refreshed 2014 Chevrolet Malibu, and it…looks pretty much the same as the last one, though GM assures us that there have been real changes made.

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The most famous Holden product to ever wear a Buick badge is the Chinese-market Park Avenue, a car that Buick dealers inexplicably rejected. But back in the mid-1990s, GM apparently planned to use the VT Commodore architecture as the basis for a new Buick sedan, previewed in the XP2000 concept above.

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Doug writes:

Ah, the 3000GT: possibly the car that’s most commonly believed not to be front-wheel drive, even though it is.  That’s an accolade it shares with the 1997-2003 Audi A8, by the way.  And while both cars offered all-wheel drive versions, you’d never know the 3000GT did by looking at Atlanta Craigslist.

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She done me wrong. I was beside myself with grief, anger and stress. Things had been going so well when, suddenly, a former lover waltzed back into her life and caused her to leave me in the lurch. Part of me wanted to win her back, to show her I was better than him. The other, darker part of me wanted to find that guy and kick his ass. It was a terrible time, and to make matters even worse, by faithful Dodge Shadow wasn’t running right.

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Fiat’s top men promised that they will not cut jobs in Italy, despite Italian sales levels at 40 year lows. Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne and Chairman John Elkann met Italy’s newly-appointed minister Flavio Zanonato, and delivered “assurances that Fiat intends to maintain employment,” Reuters says. (Read More…)

I’m driven

Everybody seems to be on the bandwagon for self-driving cars, everybody except the NHTSA. In  new guidelines,  the NHTSA urges states to allow use of self-driving cars “only for testing and requiring safeguards to ensure they can be taken over by a driver in the case of malfunction,” the Detroit News writes. (Read More…)

The RDX may have supplanted the MDX as Acura’s best-selling model, but Acura hopes to put the their mid-sized crossover back on top with the all-new 2014 MDX. To show us how they plan to do that, Acura invited us to Oregon to sample the new MDX for a day around Newberg. Even without the […]

Toyota has a “good chance” of selling a record number of luxury Lexus vehicles this year, Mark Templin, executive vice president of Lexus International, told Reuters.  With a weaker yen, those mostly made-in-Japan cars might actually turn a profit. (Read More…)

Since we’re on a Country Squire Junkyard Find roll, with a ’76 Squire on Wednesday and a ’77 Squire yesterday, let’s take a look at a Panther Squire today. Yes, Panther Love even extends to Reagan-era woodie wagons! (Read More…)

Export, ho!

Can’t blame them for having a lack of ambitions: Great Wall’s Chairman and Chinese billionaire Wei Jianjun “has set a target for Great Wall’s Haval marque to surpass Chrysler Group LLC’s Jeep and become the world’s best selling SUV-dedicated brand in three to four years,” Bloomberg writes. (Read More…)

Carlos Ghosn and Osamu Masuko CEO of Mitsubishi

Renault chief Carlos Ghosn is reaching out, forging foreign alliances with a heavy emphasis on emerging markets. “Faced with the slump in the European markets,” writes the French Figaro, Renault is “edging closer to Mitsubishi.” Nothing is official, and if you ask on the record, you get firm denials, such as the “this is not true,”  told to Reuters by a Mitsubishi Motors spokesman. Behind the scenes, there are traces of heavy petting. Let’s look into them. (Read More…)