In my Nissan Frontier Capsule Review, I briefly mentioned the fact that I’d had a Saab 9-3 prior to said Frontier. Well, as it turned out, I ended up having the Saab after the Frontier, as well. Before I could take possession of said little turbocharged hatchback for the second time and send it back to the lease company where it belonged, however, I had to beg, threaten, and — depending on your definition of the word — perhaps steal.
There’s a new show on cable called “Shameless”. Supposedly it has Emily Rossum in a topless kitchen sex scene. Actually, I’m going to go watch it right now, come to think of it.
…And we’re back. Hmm. That was shameless, alright, but you know what’s even more shameless? Writing a story that exposes you as a hack, a dupe, and what the Communists used to call a “useful idiot”. Yesterday’s opinion piece on Autoblog, entitled How Bob Lutz Made Four Journalists His Secret Weapons, is just such a story. Let’s dig in.
I came home tonight to see that Consumer Reports is trying to scare me out of buying a Honda Insight. The joke’s on them! I was going to buy a 2003 Crown Vic LX Sport!
Really, though… Did you ever think you’d see the day when CR wouldn’t recommend a Honda? Even in the darkest moments of the Acura transmission fiasco, the lab-coated crew could barely bring themselves to diss the brand. After all, they were too busy using robots to roll Troopers.
Beep.
Whooosh. I couldn’t take it any more. “Why, why, WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT? STOP TOUCHING THE SCREEN!”
This came to me tonight from my old pal “The Berg”, noted serial purchaser of old Bentley Turbos, bon vivant, and Jewish playboy extraordinaire.
I’m sure it was on a closed course, although I know Berg doesn’t hold a professional license. There’s a photo of the actual car after the jump, but for now, I just want to ask: Is there anything better in life than to pilot an authentic, made-in-England-by-an-English-company-owned-by-actual-English-people-from-England Bentley?
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On the road, behind the wheel, there is no such thing as an accident. There is only a swelling potential of mistakes, building towards an event that happens or does not. You are drunk but the road is empty and you know the way; not enough potential. You are tired, the phone is ringing, and your left front tire is underinflated; now we’re talking. Then you swerve to avoid a pothole and the oscillation chain begins. Potential fulfilled. You are about to have an “accident”.
I say this because I do not remember the “accident” that put me on my back for nearly a month in a disinfectant-stinking hospital room, my eyes taped from the airbag burn, my arms broken, pumped-up on a cocktail of things I cannot even pronounce. They say my Town Car hit the edge of a line of Jersey barriers and flipped forward, landing on the top edge in a ballet of megaton kinetic energy that shattered the windshield and creased the roof down into the bench seats. Single car. I don’t remember. But I remember what happened afterwards.
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Are you interested in owning your own 7.5-mile high-speed oval and five-mile road course? What about an off-road racing course for motorcycles and Baja trucks? It looks like Honda’s finally come up with a product that appeals to enthusiasts… but they only have one of them, and the pricing is likely to be even more outrageous than the window sticker on the ZDX. Check out the listing here.
Poor Professor Higgins! On he plods/Against all odds! Well, he had a tough job: changing a girl from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks into a prim and proper member of society. I had a simpler task in mind. I wanted to make sure that my hairdresser/girlfriend/bodyguard, the infamous Vodka McBigbra, could legitimately attend all this year’s auto shows with me. She actually works pretty hard at the events, lugging the Steadicam and obtaining everything from AA batteries to front-row seats so I can keep my Kiton jackets free of wrinkles, but a few of the shows don’t permit “assistants”. Publish or perish is their motto. Not a problem. I decided to make an authentic automotive journalist out of her. How tough could it be?
Meanwhile, our friends at General Motors were working on a not entirely dissimilar project. They’d identified some “bloggers”, given them all-expenses-paid trips to Detroit, and led them on a two-day adventure where they would be fed plenty of talking points to uncritically reTweet along the way. It isn’t cheap to fly people from the coasts to the Midwest, put them up in a top-notch hotel, feed them, and keep them entertained, so naturally GM would want to make sure they got their money’s worth.
The stage was set for a titanic contest. Sure, the playing field wasn’t level. After all, I’ve never gone bankrupt, the UAW doesn’t control my labor supply or my finances, and I didn’t design the 1984 Eldorado. Still, the plucky underdogs from the RenCen had a few tricks up their sleeves to even the odds…
Our friends on the wrong side of the pond were talking all night about the new Caterham release today… but when it arrived, it turned out to be a race car, not a road car. The SP300R was co-developed with Lola and offers 305 horsepower to move about 1200 pounds, courtesy of a supercharged Ford Duratec.
If you’re a fan of cars you can’t buy here and wouldn’t want to race here (the pretty LED nose and tail lamps probably wouldn’t survive a single club race weekend here in the US), check it out. Or for another UK-built alternative that you can buy here, try Radical USA.
Hurrah! BMW has finally taken a step back from the abyss of bloat, feature creep, and investment-banker-centric dynamics with the introduction of the bargain-priced 1M. The men from Munich have already provided the Bimmer-blogs pictures of the little coupe running down a road with the beloved E30 M3, and for the Roundel-tramp-stamp crowd, the line to place a deposit forms to the left, at your local X3/X5/X6 dealer.
The rest of us needn’t get so excited. Here’s why.
The phrase “super-citizen” has entered the lexicon in the past few years, and it’s typically used to refer to police who simply believe themselves to be well above the law. I’ve had the chance to meet dozens of police officers over the years in situations from downright friendly to frankly adversarial, and I think it’s fair to say that many officers of the law plainly reject the notion that they can do as they please.
The Ohio Highway Patrol officer passing me in this video is not one of them.
Imaginary acceleration or measurable inattention to quality aside, Toyota’s delightfully arrogant march to world domination continues with the expected introduction of a “wagon-like” Prius at next week’s Detroit Auto Show and a bold statement from the company’s VP of sales.
We will end the decade with Prius being the number one nameplate in the industry… [Camry] will be a close second, and that’s not because there will be a drop in Camry sales.
Not to inflame the passions brought on by our CAFE regulations and pickup trucks article, but take a look at this still from a movie called “The Dentist 2”. Keep in mind, this is the very old second-gen Explorer that is busy dwarfing a GMC C-20 full-sized pickup; the modern, D3 unibody 2011 Explorer is a foot longer and three inches taller.
I was struck with an odd feeling of deja ecrit while cranking out the Capsule Review of my old 2001 Nissan Frontier, but since I literally had thirty-two minutes to write the whole thing and click “Publish” before heading out the door, I didn’t pause to think about it. Earlier today, however, I realized that […]
According to Wards Auto, the Ford Fusion is sitting at over 196,000 sales as November 30. A 200,000-unit year seems imminent. Why is this a big deal, and what does it say about Ford’s position in the marketplace when a facelift car has its best-ever year in a collapsing economy?
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