Everybody loves YouTube personality, gentleman racer, and autojourno-of-the-moment Chris Harris, and I mean everyone. I can still vividly recall a party I attended in New York earlier this year where a lady friend of mine saw Chris and exclaimed in a kind of hysteria that was no doubt aided by the Hendrix-esque combination of painkillers and alcohol she’d managed to swallow, “He’s just adorable!” She then proceeded to totter in his general direction. Since she was (is) six feet tall in her heels and Mr. Harris is about five foot five, this was quite terrifying to Mr. Harris and he promptly hid behind Matt Farah, which is always a solid place to hide.

Luckily for Chris, Travis Okulski happened to wander in at about that time and divert my companion’s high-volume attention. “IT’S TRAVIS! THE GUY WHO CRIED DURING THE PEPSI COMMMERCIAL!” What a night that was, dear readers. Did you know that the last time I started dating someone under five foot nine or so, the Deepwater Horizon was still functioning properly? We’re talking about an entire volleyball team’s worth of tall girls here. Anyway, back to Mr. Harris. He’s written something rather interesting on Jalopnik today, and I’m only feeling slightly smug about it.

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Anybody notice I’ve been gone for a while? No? Thought as much. Well, the truth is that I’ve been circling the world drain racetrack putting together a comparison test of late-model supercars for you, the discerning TTAC reader. As fate would have it, however, there were too many cars involved. So I need your help.

Uber’s bid to be The Company, The Actions Of Which Most Closely Resemble The Actions Of Companies In William Gibson Novels continues. This time, Uber’s doing the equivalent of putting a pistol on a table during a negotiation, Cookie Brown style. The metaphorical pistol is aimed right at a journalist who has been critical of the company’s operations — but not to worry, Uber would never think of using it.

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So, how’d these three cars — a 944 Turbo, a Pontiac Trans Sport, and a ’75 Civic — finish?

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It’s a little-known fact that I was the first person to coach famous LeMons Judge Phil, also known as Murilee Martin to TTAC readers, around a racetrack. It’s a semi-known fact that I was his boss for about a year recently.

That didn’t stop him from hammering the Busted Racing 944 Turbo with twenty penalty laps for its maiden LeMons race at MSR Houston this weekend — nor did it stop the team from getting three black flags while I made my usual leisurely way to the racetrack for Saturday’s nine-hour session.

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This was the sight that greeted me when I left work this afternoon: one of the least popular cars on the American market and the Camry-on-stilts that drives the most successful brand to debut in America since the Vietnam War. The Mazda2 is often used by automotive journalists as an example of The Car That Real People Don’t Buy despite the fact that it possesses the cardinal virtues of small size, light weight, and a responsive chassis.

The Lexus RX, on the other hand, is the most cynical effort in additional manufacturer profit since the Cadillac Cimmarron and is the upscale vehicle most often purchased by the people who don’t know a God-damned thing about cars.

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According to the New York Times, a group of former Takata workers has come forward with materials that indicate that Takata performed secret tests in 2004 on junkyard airbags. Those tests demonstrated a clear risk of driver injury and preparations were made for a recall. Then the management stepped in.

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If you’ve seen the trailers or even the promotional poster for “Nightcrawler”, you know that Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, late-night independent crime videographer Lou Bloom, trades in his 1985 Tercel for a red Challenger SRT8 pretty early in the film. So that’s not a spoiler, is it? But everything below the jump will be, so click carefully.

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Volvo might have been one of the beneficiaries of the headlong rush towards European non-luxury in the Seventies but it, like Porsche, was permanently crippled by the American public’s confusion of “unhurried model cycle” with “should only make one specific car, forever”. For the boys from Stuttgart, it was the Yankee preference for the 911 […]

Did Takata effectively bribe their way out of an NHTSA investgation? That appears to be the allegation made in the New York Times by auto-safety careerists Clarence Ditlow and Ralph Nader.

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It’s another underwater lease question! Never learned to swim! But I think this one will be even easier to answer.

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Don’t you just hate it when you plan to screw your constituents out of nearly a hundred million bucks and you only get, like, half of that?

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This was supposed to be a rental racetrack review. The plan was to to challenge Watkins Glen with Daewoo GM Korea Chevrolet’s well-received not-so-compact sedan, letting the 1.4L turbo engine drag us from Turn One to the Bus Stop under full throttle before putting the brakes up on a pinball table and giving them the […]

Welcome to our new feature, Ask Jack! I’ll be answering your questions on pretty much any topic that has a vague relationship to cars. Send me your questions and make sure you let us know if you want to be identified!

Our very first question comes from a fellow who wants to know what he should do about lease mileage on his Camry. As fate would have it, I was a Red Carpet Leasing Professional(tm) in another life and I am ready to help!

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“Well, I’m glad we got off-track without anything terrible happening,” I sighed, with no small amount of relief. “You did a good job of controlling the situation. A lot of people really panic when their brakes go away at ninety-five miles per hour or so. If the pedal comes back up you can probably nurse it home, as long as you’re careful. How far do you have to go?”

“Well, I live in New York,” he replied, “but if you’re okay with trying another session, I sure am.”

Oh.

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