As you might suspect, this is a sequel to Luke’s Camaro, Part One. Full disclosure, there’s no Camaro content this time, which is part of the fun — JB

We had just crossed a set of long-forgotten railroad tracks when it happened. The engine died, the dash lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree, and the big gray Audi rolled slowly to the side of the narrow country road.

“Son of a bitch.” Not an exclamation…more of a declaration.

I cranked the engine, hoping against hope that a wire had come loose or that a ghost had reached in and flipped the key off. I checked under the hood, looked underneath the car, and saw nothing. No loose wires, blown fuses, or leaking fuel. The engine cranked but wouldn’t fire. No joy.

“Son of a bitch.” I was stuck.
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There isn’t many weirder and more wonderful car in the world than a classic Citroën. Beginning with the “Goddess”, the famous and unique Citroën DS, they combine out-of-the-box technical solutions with quaint but gorgeous design. When the “déesse” arrived in 1955, it looked like something from another galaxy – and drove like that, too. The magnificent SM grand tourer, conceived in cooperation with Maserati added speed and glamour to the formula. And when the big CX replaced the venerable DS, it was still an aerodynamic fastback in a world full of boxy sedans, it still glided over the road like some eerie hovercraft, and with the DIRAVI steering and mushroom brake pedal, it provided a driving experience like nothing else. .

But for now, let’s focus on the redheaded step-child of the Citroën family, the XM. Introduced in 1989, it’s currently in the lowest part of the depreciation curve, loved only by hardcore Citroën enthusiasts. Because of the Citroën’s terrible reputation for reliability, especially when it comes to the unique hydropneumatic suspension, the average examples can be had for €1,000-1,500. And with the proliferation of large hatchbacks in 1980s and 1990s, it doesn’t even look that strange. It’s still unconventional, and it’s the kind of design you love more the more you look at it, but for average person, it’s just an old car.

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Oh, Cayenne owners, you so crazy! And I should know — the $96,000 GTS 6MT above was briefly my company car way back in the day. I also had a plain “S” in 2004, although that proved to be so popular with a business partner of mine I wound up trading him for a Cadillac STS. Neither of the Touaregs-in-drag ever managed to spend more than a few months away from the loving embrace of our local Porsche dealer, so there was no third Cayenne in the plan. You know what they say: fool me twice, I won’t get fooled again.

But there are people out there who have found the Cayenne even more painful than I did.
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A business trip sent me to Tampa last week. I had decided that I would rent a car for my own use while I was there. The plan was to visit family in Fort Myers and then drive back to Tampa for the meeting. After a particularly bad day at work prior to leaving for […]

Checking out GoFurtherLive.com, the site Ford has set up to livestream video from their upcoming reveal of the all-new 2015 Mustang, it appears that the teaser video may include exterior and interior views of the new car, along with the possibility that the 50th anniversary version of Ford’s pony car will actually monitor the driver’s health. (Read More…)

I’ve never quite understood the appeal of burnouts, well, unless you’re warming up your tires in preparation for a 1/4 mile run on a dragstrip. Sure, it’s nice to spin your tires once and a while, just to reassure yourself that the car has enough power to break the driving wheels loose if you need to do it, but just spinning your wheels to make big plumes of smokes seems to me to be, well, just spinning your wheels. I’m no fan of drifting, but at least all the wheelslip in drifting competitions has a point. It’s one thing if the smoky burnouts are in celebration of a race win, though to be honest, those got old a long time ago, about as spontaneous as Vettel or Schumacher spraying champagne after a F1 win from pole to pole, but turning your tires into rubber smoke while going nowhere just strikes me as pointless and wasteful.

Burnouts are also not without risk. (Read More…)

Wiesmann, the German maker of BMW powered retro sports cars, looked like it was going to join other European specialist automakers that have declared bankruptcy like Cosworth, Gumpert, Artega, Lola and the London Taxi Company, but the small company has apparently cleaned up its balance sheet and has applied to have its insolvency proceedings dismissed. Wiesmann has been operating since 1993 in Dülmen, Germany. No further explanation was given in the company’s announcement beyond stating that the application to dismiss the bankruptcy was “due to abolition of the insolvency reasons”. A meeting with Wiesmann’s creditors is scheduled for mid-December.

Remember when Lincoln had cars with names such as Mark, Continental, Zephyr, Town Car and Versailles? Alas, unless you want to own a body-on-frame SUV from the newly renamed Lincoln Motor Company, your choices begin with MK, and end with a letter that somehow corresponds to the model in question.

Should Ford’s VP of Global Marketing Jim Farley have his way, however — and you happen to also be a resident of China — the next Lincoln to be sold may have a real name upon its backside once more.

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Buying a new car is exciting and if you are like me, you spend weeks comparing the possible candidates. You start out by looking at photos and reading road tests. You gather sales brochures, pour over the spec sheets and examine the option packages. You compare prices, build fleets of similarly optioned virtual vehicles at […]

If there ever was a combination of good and bad offers for the DIY auto enthusiast, it’s the so-called Black Friday deals.

5 Quarts of Valvoline with a Purolator Classic for $9.99 plus a $5 Valvoline coupon is pretty much the best oil deal I have seen since the G-Oil giveaways.

Impact wrenches that are made of low quality materials and old-school heavy batteries, utter garbage. Some of the manufacturers of these models should be shot on principle alone.

You can also throw in cheap wrench sets into the mix. I know they work in a pinch. But I just hate em’. Too many bad memories.

So what’s worth buying?

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Buried in an article about the East-West schism between wagons and BMW’s ungainly Gran Turismo series of pseudo-crossovers was a bit of news destined to horrify the BMW diehards that represent a slim but vocal minority of its customer base. Despite indications that it would not be appearing on our shores, BMW will in fact be launching a front-drive car in North America, as per Automotive News Europe

Next year, BMW will add a minivan-styled compact model targeted at young families, sports enthusiasts who need space for their equipment and older buyers who like cars that are easy to get in and out of and have a high seating position. The minivan will be based on the Active Tourer concept and is set to debut in production guise at the Geneva auto show in March. Most likely it will be called the 2-series Active Tourer. It will be underpinned by BMW’s new UKL front-wheel-drive architecture that debuted this week on the third-generation Mini.

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According to Moody’s Investors Service, increased competition for issuing auto loans will result in lenders taking greater risks and lowering underwriting standards. “Auto lenders will continue their return to higher levels of risk-taking, a trend that emerged in 2013 and will gain momentum in the coming year,” Moody’s analysts Jeffrey Hibbs, Mack Caldwell and William Black wrote in a report published Monday. Greater competition between lenders will result in “ever-more generous loan terms,” they said.

As the economy has slowly improved, losses on vehicle debt are down across the board, regardless of creditworthiness, compared to historic norms. That fact and continued low interest rates are attracting lenders into the car loan market. (Read More…)

TUV Nord, a safety testing and certification agency, has issued a report commissioned by an environmental group that says that modern engines that use gasoline direct injection (GDI) of fuel emit more small particles in their exhausts than modern diesel engines. Particulates raise concerns over possibly causing cancer. GDI has proliferated as a means of increasing power, improving fuel efficiency and lowering CO2 emmissions but TUV Nord says that GDI engines put out 1,000 times more harmful particles than traditional gasoline engines and 10 times more than the latest diesels. The study is based on a sample size of three cars, a Ford Focus with a 1 liter EcoBoost engine, a Renault Megane with a 1.2 liter Energy TCe, and a Hyundai i40 with a 1.6 liter GDI engine.

“The cost of a filter to eliminate particle emissions from GDI cars is low (around EUR50 [~$68 US]), with no loss in fuel efficiency and a big societal benefit. Despite this, carmakers are delaying fitting filters on GDI cars,”  the Transport & Environment advocacy group based in Brussels said in a summary of the report. (Read More…)

The results are in and a winner has been selected. As you can see by the photo, I really did write down everyone’s name and throw it into an actual hat to make the selection. Although I appreciated the kind and thoughtful comments so many of you took the time to write, in the end there could be no favoritism. Thanks to everyone who entered. (Read More…)

On the off chance that someday you might walk into your local Ford dealership in Kalamazoo and buy a Brazilian-built Ford EcoSport, at least you now get the ease of mind that it got five stars from Latin NCAP, the institution that tests cars sold in Latin America, in Germany, using pretty much Euro NCAP standards. So it would seem that, as TTAC has previously reported, Brazilian cars may not all be deathtraps.

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