I wasn’t sure if I’d see the Cadillac XT6 in person, even though I assigned myself the story when us editor types divvied up our coverage of this year’s Detroit Auto Show.

You see, I asked to be added to the media list a little late, and was told the event would be at capacity. But a journalist doesn’t let little things like “fire codes” stand in the way of his story. So I showed up a little late and used my Midwestern charm to get in the door. In a very polite way, I crashed the party.

Which is what Cadillac is doing, in a way.

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During my wayward youth in the Aughts/early this decade, a friend of mine decided it would be funny if he got me involved in a weird little bar game called “icing.” The idea of this game was to order your friend a Smirnoff Ice surreptitiously and/or hide it somewhere, and when he received the drink he must drop to one knee and chug it. There may be other variations to the game, but that’s all I recall.

Like many things that happened culturally during that decade, icing was quite stupid. Stupid as it was, it was also relatively harmless. The “iced” got a free drink out of it, even if it was a terrible vodka drink, and everyone else got a laugh. The late Aughts were such innocent times.

Fast-forward a decade and now there’s a new type of “icing” afoot, though it’s now called “ICE-ing.” It has nothing to do with booze, but it still involves bros.

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A little over a month ago, we ran the results of our best/worst cars of 2018 poll. At the end of each post, I reflected a bit on the results, but I wanted to dig a bit deeper.

While I had hoped to do this a bit sooner, other work got in the way. So Steph and I decided it would be a good way to close out the year.

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Commuting sucks. It’s especially bad at speeds below “parking lot.” Foot off brake, crawl, foot on brake, repeat. It’s even worse when you’re piloting a stick – shift to first, release clutch pedal, roll, brake, clutch in, shift to neutral. And repeat. Not all commuting is that slow, of course. There’s also the block-to-block drag […]

Christmas and New Year’s are upon us, and that means we’re gonna be off Monday and Tuesday each of the next two weeks, and with light posting in between.

What does that mean? Here’s how it’s gonna go… (Read More…)

At one point during my time with the 2018 Dodge Challenger GT, I fired it up and shook my head. “That can’t be right,” I thought. “It sounds like a V8, but the GT is a V6.” Which it is – all-wheel drive GT models are powered by a 3.6-liter V6 making 305 horsepower and […]

Nissan’s strategy for both the 2019 Maxima large sedan and the 2019 Murano crossover is the same – make minor tweaks as part of a mild refresh. My thoughts on the Maxima are stated here. As for the Murano, well, read on.

As you may or may not know, invitations for press junkets often arrive quite some time in advance. So when Nissan sent the invite to drive the 2019 Maxima more than a month before the wraps came off the real thing in Los Angeles, I was excited. See, I’ve always liked the idea of Maxima […]

Has the crossover craze taken another victim? Or is it just simply a case of a rare body style not drawing sales?

It’s not like wagons (with some exceptions — ahem, Subaru) were selling like gangbusters before the current crossover trend took off.

Still, the BMW 3 Series wagon has garnered attention from enthusiasts in search of utility. But, alas, it appears that the next-generation 3 Series won’t be sold with a wagon variant, at least not in these United States.

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If you want a Porsche Taycan EV, you may end up waiting even longer than planned.

Unless you’ve already raised your hand, that is.

Production is a year or more away, but Porsche USA’s top boss is already saying that if all preorders are turned into sales, the car is already sold out for year one. This, despite the company’s CEO saying that production will increase to account for the number of preorders.

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There are many things I don’t like about Los Angeles. The traffic, the cost of doing just about anything, the traffic, the sprawl, the traffic, the oversaturation of chain fast-food restaurants and billboards, the traffic.

However, there is one thing that makes me rethink my living situation. One thing that tempts me to move to the West Coast.

It’s not the weather, or the beach, or the chance at Hollywood stardom. It’s the roads.

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How much would you pay for a midsize truck that was just as capable off-road as Ford’s full-size Raptor? I am not asking about a Ranger Raptor, since that seems unlikely to be sold here for the moment. So if you want to boulder-bash in size medium, it’s either the Toyota store or the Chevy […]

A New York Times report published on Friday features claims by African-American workers at Tesla’s Fremont, California plant that they were racially harassed.

The Times pieces together a combination of interviews, internal communications, and sworn legal statements from over two dozen current or former Tesla workers. Alleged incidents listed in the reporting include a crude, racist drawing; the use of racial slurs; the drawing of swastikas; and African-American employees being assigned to menial tasks due to their race.

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Outside of a Nissan-hosted panel preceding the first media day, the typically mobility discussion was muted at the 2018 Los Angeles Auto Show (and even that panel wasn’t nearly as eye-roll inducing as the usual Ford pronouncements — at least this panel included actual experts making reasonable points, even if I disagree with some of them.)

L.A. was all about the cars – cars you’ll soon be able to buy, should you have the means.

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LOS ANGELES – If you weren’t specifically told the Nissan Maxima sedan and Nissan Murano crossover received a redesign for 2019, you’d likely not notice.

I’m not being mean – Nissan just didn’t change much with either vehicle.

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