They already came for your cell phone, but a new study on distracted driving could be the spark legislators are looking for to take away your hands-free calling.

Keeping your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road means nothing if your brain is busy visualizing something else, say researchers at Britain’s University of Sussex. Their study, published in the journal Transportation Research, showed that hands-free motorists can miss seeing objects right in front of them, especially when they’re not just pretending to listen to the other person.

Having a conversation while driving creates an epic battle inside the brain, with reality and imagination duking it out for dominance, the study found. (Read More…)

We were in our Honda Odyssey last Saturday, transporting our dog to a special canine event 20 miles from our home, when the gorgeous 2016 Mazda6 was taken from our house and a Chevrolet Malibu was backed into the driveway. Not the ninth-generation Malibu, a car which drew my ire in a TTAC review last […]

Is this big rig the real life? Or is it just fantasy?

Nikola Motors, the company that recently sprouted out of the proverbial ether to announce a $350,000+ turbine-electric-powered Class 8 truck, claims it’s taken in $2.3 billion in pre-orders. Say what now?

That, the air in Mexico is thick with pollution, Nissan is bridging the gap to hydrogen with a corny solution, and BMW has solved the leasing bubble …  after the break!

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Famous for being a failed savior, a financial hound of Hades has come to the aid of Gawker Media and its many online publications.

Cerberus Capital Management L.P., the infamous private equity firm that produced headline gold — and not much else — after its ill-fated 2007 purchase of Chrysler, is now offering cash to another bankrupt company. The firm announced it will hand Gawker $22 million to keep the lights on while the media giant completes its bankruptcy proceedings and sell-off. (Read More…)

In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is — as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art. —Josef Albers, Interaction of Color

This is my favorite quote from the most intriguing textbook during my year at the College for Creative Studies. As an administrator of the Brown Car Appreciation Society, I’ve embraced this quote at every poorly chosen “brown” car that’s too close to yellow, red, gray, and green for most eyeballs.

So, when an Australian market research firm’s anti-smoking initiative found Pantone 448 C — a “drab dark brown” called Opaque Couché — the most off-putting color to cigarette smokers, it was no surprise the news eventually trickled down to my corner of the Interweb. (Read More…)

Where is a parked car not a parked car? The answer is California, where your vehicle will magically transform into an empty spot with a scattering of window glass on the pavement.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) just released its 2015 vehicle theft Hot Spots report, and the Golden State gets top billing, with eight of its cities listed in the top 10. (Read More…)

Facing an onslaught of four-door ‘coupe-style’ SUVs from its German competitors, Jaguar Land Rover is firing a return shot across the Channel.

A new model photographed while testing shows an addition to the Range Rover lineup, expected to bow in 2018. The model, which shares a lightweight aluminum alloy frame with the Jaguar F-Pace, could be called the Sport Coupe, though company insiders still refer to it as the Evoque Plus or Evoque XL. (Read More…)

It’s been a long wait since Henrik Fisker’s brainchild floated — bloated and belly-first — to the surface of the automotive pool, but we’re told a new plug-in hybrid statusmobile is on the way. That means new jobs coming to the Detroit area for as long as Henrik can keep the money rolling.

Last week, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation pledged $450,000 in funding so that Karma Automotive LLC — formerly Fisker Automotive — can build an engineering and purchasing building in Troy. The city plans to offer additional funds to see the $3.6 million project get off the ground, where the reborn company plans to employ up to 150 people. (Read More…)

“Three to five 727-horsepower Mustangs leave the lot daily,” TTAC’s associate editor, Steph Willems, wrote this past weekend.

Naturally, that got me thinking.

After Ohio’s Lebanon Ford dealer began marketing its 727-horsepower Lebanon Ford Performance Mustang GT as a $39,995 performance bargain, Chris Tonn’s story blew up on TTAC a month ago. Now, Lebanon Ford answers 1,000 Performance Mustang-related inquiries per day and says it sells three to five per day.

So let’s do some math. It’ll be fun. (Read More…)

When a police cruiser lights up behind you, a driver usually fears two things: a costly speeding ticket, or a roadside breathalyzer test.

The driver probably isn’t worrying about having the contents of his or her bank account seized, followed by a long and possibly fruitless journey to recoup their lost cash, but that’s the power local law enforcement has over its citizens.

And technology is now making it easier to use that power more and more often. (Read More…)

“Please hold,” the woman with the handheld Hertz computer said, as if she and I were on opposite sides of a WATS call instead of standing twenty-four inches apart, “for a manager.” I didn’t have to hold long. The manager was a short Hispanic man with an all-business disposition. “You have fun?” he inquired, kneeling […]

Ford Motor Company says it will get to the bottom of a report that purports to show 2.3-liter EcoBoost Mustangs getting slower in acceleration tests over time.

The 0–60 mile per hour times, recorded by Motor Trend during four separate vehicle tests, show a widening acceleration gap that left reviewers puzzled as to the cause. (Read More…)

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Dan Neil fairly torched the 2016 Toyota Tundra CrewMax in a recent review for The Wall Street Journal’s Rumble Seat.

“It is not the strongest, the swiftest and definitely not the most fuel efficient,” Neil wrote in a particularly stinging paragraph which began by Neil calling the Tundra, “not the most technically advanced truck on the market.”

The Tundra faithful, not particularly numerous at the best of times relative to rival Detroit nameplates, is an ever more compact group of individuals. With each passing month, America’s truck buyers make increasingly clear that they heartily agree with Dan Neil. (Read More…)

The Storm was the Geo-ized American-market version of the 1990-1993 Isuzu Gemini Coupe, and the GSi version was cheaper and more powerful than most of its sport-compact competition of the era. Most of them seemed to come in bright yellow paint, and most of them were crushed before they hit their tenth birthday. Still, some of them survived as long as any Civic Si or Sentra SE-R.

Here’s one that I found in a Denver-area self-service yard last year. (Read More…)

Let’s have some fun with this video featuring two narcissists whining at each other about the use of a cell phone in a stopped vehicle. It’s extra fun, because one of them is a cop!

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