Gone are the days here at TTAC where simply typing a phrase like, “You, Sir, are a usefully idiotic pawn of the Chinese government and a despicable fetishist of rubber pleasure devices” could get you banned from this site in two shakes of a Shanghai working girl’s tail. No longer. People say the meanest things about me and Derek, and we don’t care. Actually, Derek gets a little teary-eyed about it, so we rewrote his contract to specify that “PART IV. COMPENSATION FOR RIDICULE. Every time the phrase “game-changer”, complete with hyphen, appears on the site in obvious and plain reference to Derek Kreindler, he shall be compensated with one thousand dollars ($1,000) or two nights with a Lamborghini Aventador.”

But that’s not what we want to talk about right now. Actually, “we” means “I”; Derek’s out somewhere making it rain at a club while they tow his double-parked Aventador from the entrance.
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The last time we talked about a Camry SE on these less-than distinguished pages, the resulting article upset one of our contributors (a certain “Nurburgring race instructor”) so much that he quit the site in protest. That certainly wasn’t my intention. But I know that our hearts will go on.

Of all the comments that particular test attracted, both on and off this website, I don’t recall any of them having anything to do with a desire for hybrid power. Presumably, however, there is someone out there who wants the sportier appearance of the Camry SE and the now-legendary economy and durability of the Hybrid Synergy Drive, because now it’s possible to combine the two.
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I was shivering, I think, because I was low on blood. Ten days of internal bleeding, of cauterization, of six vials a day donated to the unworthy cause of redundant testing, of the dark brown surge through the catheter, of the bright red bloom in the water of the toilet bowl. Your blood keeps you […]

No, this isn’t my new car. That’s still two weeks away, at least, as the wheels of the insurance machine grind exceedingly fine. It’s the next closest thing to my new car — my father’s new car. Insofar as he bought it at my direct suggestion, and insofar as no manufacturer has ever given us […]

On the twenty-fourth day after they pulled my Town Car from the ditch and dropped it off at a distant rural junkyard, the insurance adjuster finally made his way across the snow-covered gravel to take a look. My people had beaten the trillion-dollar corporation there by nineteen days, mostly to empty the bent Lincoln out and to take photos to support a potential difference of opinion regarding its suitability for repair, so I knew what the adjuster would see.

Beyond the missing B-pillar, casualty of the so-called “Jaws Of Life”, the bench seat was buckled and folded up, twisted with a violence and speed capable of fracturing nine of my favorite bones and adding my spleen to the list of the dearly departed. The folding center seat was bent beyond operation. The bones of the dashboard had exploded from behind it, shoving the aftermarket Pioneer nav system out like a rudely extended tongue. The whole front cabin had a funhouse character to it, not a single line left unbent or unbroken, wavy and warped as if viewed in a particularly devious mirror. The cream-color seats alternately speckled and splashed with browned blood.

“It’s a banana,” was the adjuster’s dilatory report to me, delivered over the phone. “Dead and gone, no question.”
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A lot of Toyota dealers are going to find it difficult to grind out their end-of-month goals, thanks to a stop-sale directive from the company that covers eight different models. Approximately 36,000 vehicles in dealer stock and an unknown number of additional vehicles inbound to dealers will have to be held.
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Aren’t you sick of reading everywhere about how fast modern cars are? Sure you are. Aren’t you sick of seeing electric sedans run heads-up against the newest Corvette? No? Well then, this is the video for you.
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Well, this is certainly an interesting situation. When an Audi A7 decided to snag some of the empty space in a “bike box” at a central London intersection, a couple of cyclists decided to give the driver of that Audi some forthright feedback. Naturally, the situation escalated.
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It’s not secret that General Motors is depending on China to ensure a rosy future for its Cadillac brand. However, the imported ATS, complete with pinched-off rear seating and thirsty turbocharged engine, isn’t cutting the mustard. No surprise, then, that GM will be building the ATS locally in the future, with one very important change.
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Let’s say you have $83,425 sitting around and you want to make the most economical choice possible besides, say, a Tesla, or a brace of Prius Plug-Ins augmented by suitcases of cash. Let’s also say that you’re the type of literal-minded decent human being who never once looked at the back of the mighty 750il and said, “Heh. Seventy-five oil. Heh.”

Well then, my good man, BMW has your car.
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Infiniti’s decision to name all of their products Q-something befuddled the industry and launched a thousand online forum flame wars. Their next decision was even stranger — when the Q50 replacement for the existing G37 sedan bowed, the current car was kept on as an entry-level option for buyers who couldn’t quite stretch to the more sophisticated and feature-laden Q50. (As an aside, this is the kind of thing that just murders resale value directly in the face… but if you want resale value, you need to keep rolling past your Infiniti dealer all the way to the Lexus shop.)

For 2015, Nissan’s luxury division has either simplified the Q-issue or complicated it, depending on your perspective.
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In what looks like a reasonably solid victory against the automated-traffic-ticket-profit industry, the 8th Circuit Court has deemed Cleveland, Ohio’s red-light and speed-enforcement camera system unconstitutional.
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It’s kind of frightening to think about what shape amateur road racing would in be in nowadays if the 24 Hours of Lemons hadn’t happened. Luckily, cheap racing arrived right in time for an America facing a decidedly lowered set of expectations and opportunities. I, for one, welcome our five thousand hundred dollar racing overlords.
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It helps to set goals. The other day I agreed to do some coaching and maybe a little driving in a very fast car at a reasonably fast track, fifty-five days from now. In-between now and then I have a lot of rehab and maybe two additional surgeries to knock out, but I’m confident I can do it. Better to agree to something and then work hard to get there than it would be to rehab without a goal and then agree to do something when I’m completely ready, whatever that means. Right now I’m in the kind of pain that makes me swear randomly during phone conversations:

“Well, I don’t think that the Milgauss will always commmand this kind of pricing MOTHERF*&% GOD DAMN IT TO HELL AARRRGH MY LEG forever, it’s the watch of the moment but in the long run it can’t be worth any more than an LV, it doesn’t cost as much to make.”

Regardless of that, however, I’m improving. Ten days ago I couldn’t lift my right foot off the ground; today I can lightly kick my son’s toy airplanes out of my way when I’m walker-clomping to the bathroom. It can only get better.

Michael, on the other hand, isn’t getting better.
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This has been in process for a while, but we’re finally ready to spring it on you: There’s such a thing as a TTAC forum.

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