A familiar German visage greets the casual onlooker. “Ah yes, this is a Vanagon,” the American viewer thinks to himself. But once the eyes have scanned beyond the upright frontage and to the side of this white rectangle, a problem comes to light. Those eyes dart to and fro in disbelief. What should be there — the rest of the Vanagon — isn’t.
That’s because this is a Doka, and it’s the verboten manual diesel van-truck of your dreams.
Did you hear the one about the autonomous shuttle in Las Vegas? It ran for two hours before it was in a crash.
Did you hear the clarifying detail? The crash was not the shuttle’s fault and the other driver was cited.
Did you get the underlying message of all this? The hybrid model of autonomous vehicles sharing the road with human drivers is doomed to failure.
The only question is this: How much damage will have to be caused, and how many lives will be lost, before we accept that?
Acura has a tough job ahead of it. As the brand tries to grow volume and retain some of the clout it lost in past years, it finds itself with too many cars and two few SUVs in a market that demands more of the latter, not the former. Meanwhile, the impressive reborn NSX, now a hybrid, hasn’t captured the imagination of sports car fans in the same way as its long-lived predecessor.
Keeping up with — and in some cases, getting in front of — technological trends is part of Acura’s comeback plan. Naturally, in the interest of technological advancement and environmental appeasement, it was necessary to bring a multi-cog automatic transmission on board. However, a series of manufacturer service bulletin point to two potential weak points in the company’s nine-speed. Read More >
Open the wood paneled glove box lid to find familiar fine-grain Italian leather driving gloves. Fingers twist a small, delicate key to ignite 4.7 liters of displacement sitting under the long, gleaming hood. Eyes are met with a proud golden trident, embedded in navy inside the three-spoke wheel.
Select “drive” with the polished wooden gearshift; it’s time for a grand tour.
Our last Rare Ride was a little blue Lancia Scorpion. Suffering from an identity crisis and a recently regulated America, the Scorpion was inherently compromised from the showroom floor. The Scorpion’s tale was a bit depressing, so today we take a look at a different sort of Italian coupe. This one’s a Spanish market import, from a time before the sort of regulation that ruined the Scorpion.
It’s the Maserati Mexico.
About a month ago, departed Sales Tim (not newly-arrived Boss Tim) wrote about Kia’s littlest car and found it to be an inoffensive hatch that could stand to make a bit more power. His, and the B&B’s, main gripe was price, given the tester was a check-every-box example with all the toys.
Kia entered our market with a value play and, 20 years later, the new base Rio shows it still knows how to play the game. The level of standard equipment on this $13,900 sedanlet far outstrips the miserable econoboxes of yesteryear.
Despite the addition of a corporate split grill a few years ago, there’s no denying Lincoln’s outgoing Navigator is one old piece of kit. As such, the glitzy premiere of the new-for-2018 Navigator heralded greater full-size Lincoln SUV sales not just from new buyers, but returning ones.
Having seen what Dearborn was up to, it seems some inhabitants of the Renaissance Center decided to try and spoil Lincoln’s fun. If you’re the owner of a 1999 or newer Lincoln vehicle who’s thinking of maybe getting into a new Navigator, Cadillac would like you to know there’s 5,000 smackeroos waiting for you on the hood of your nearest Escalade. Read More >
On Friday’s “Real Time With Bill Maher,” the titular host said something pretty dumb about cars, driving, and the stunt driving seen in car chase movies that have graced movie screens for ages.
It’s not the most galactically stupid thing he’s said this year – that award goes to use his use of a racial slur while interviewing a sitting U.S. senator – but it was so off the mark that I felt compelled to rant.
In the interest of disclosure, I generally like Bill Maher. I don’t watch every week, but I catch the show when I can. Politically I agree with him on some things and not others (we’ll leave it at that), but as a TV host I find him to be relatively funny and smart, and I applaud his willingness to invite folks from all political stripes onto his show.
However, he can be smarmy, and occasionally I wonder if his staff has fact-checked something he’s prattling on about. And sometimes he just goes off the rails.
I have a profound allergy to corporate-speak, which is one of the reasons I’ll always be poor. With that said, there is one thing I’ve heard out of various room-temperature-IQ managers that seems both reasonable and useful: Some things are important, some things are urgent, some are both, and some are neither. Many of the mistakes we make in both business and personal matters occur because we fail to appreciate the distinction.
Here’s an unpleasant and unfortunate example. Between 2008 and 2013, I had all of my tire mounting done by a friend of the family. In October of 2013 he told me that one of the snow tires for my Town Car shouldn’t be used another year and that he would order a replacement for me. On December 11, 2013, I got tired of not getting replies to my texts, so I texted his wife instead. She told me that he had been injured at work and that he would return in a few weeks. She also informed me that if I went in and asked to have my snow tires mounted by someone else, it would cause him some problems with the shop’s owner (as he’d made some sort of mistake while ordering the replacement tire). He would need a day or two back in the office to fix that mistake so he wouldn’t lose his job. I told her that I understood and that I’d wait until he returned to get my snow tires mounted.
Well, I was still waiting, and he was still sitting at home milking his workers’ comp, while I had my very favorite spleen removed on January 5, 2014, after an icy-road crash.
At the time, I judged that the importance of supporting my friend outweighed the urgency of getting my snow tires fitted. That was a mistake, to put it mildly, one that wandered into the realm of mild irony/tragedy when he ended up quitting the tire business, abandoning his wife, and departing for parts unknown just about eight months after the incident in question.
Needless to say, ever since then I’ve been a bit of an evangelist when it comes to having snow tires fitted. I think it is both important and urgent to get your tires put on before the first big storm of each winter. Except, of course, when it isn’t— which brings me to today’s “Ask Jack.”
A pleasantly desinged Pininfarina body carves its way up the Amalfi coast in Italy. The sun shines down through the targa roof, highlighting your gold-rimmed aviators. Dropping a gear, you put all 120 mid-engine horsepower to use. The back of your car says MONTECARLO, and you’re winning.
But things in reality are a bit different, because this is America and we have regulations. I give you the Scorpion, by Lancia.
Don’t worry, they aren’t suffering. As shown by the rise of pickup trucks as daily drivers and family haulers in North America, Europe’s burgeoning love affair with versatile light trucks isn’t hurting the owners. It’s traditional passengers car makers who must worry.
Sales stats arriving from the Continent show a marketplace that’s increasingly different from years gone by. The increasing popularity of SUVs and crossovers in the land of diesels, manual transmissions, and small displacements is nothing new, but the exploding popularity of honest-to-God pickups is. Read More >
Back in 2011 we admired a discarded example of the last of the true Buick Electra land yachts: a 1976 Electra Park Avenue Limited four-door hardtop found in a Northern California wrecking yard. What happened in 1977? General Motors, suffering from plummeting sales of thirsty big Buicks in the wake of events beyond its control, shrank the Electra, ditching the pillarless hardtop in the process.
Here’s one of those downsized Electras — a Limited, spotted in a Denver self-service yard. Read More >
Established German automakers, partnered with Ford Motor Co., are beginning construction on their pan-European fast-charging network this year. The plan is to expand charging points along highways — thus making cross-continent easier for EV owners and, more importantly, future electric-car buyers.
While none of that affects us in the West, the plot does provide some insight as to how quickly we might be able to expect something similar to take hold. Now called “Ionity,” VW announced it is roping in Porsche and Audi to help construct 400 high-power charging (HPC) stations by 2020. The first 20 charging stations are scheduled to open by the end of this year in Germany, Norway, and Austria. Read More >
The heart of a K-Car, the styling of a LeBaron, the build quality of an Italian, and the price of a Corvette. Just one car in the history of the world managed to combine all these virtues together into a gelatinous, custard-like vehicle.
And our Rare Ride today just happens to have a similar color, too. Come have a look at the majestic Chrysler TC, by Maserati (not really).
“Why can’t we have coolant in the car when we’re racing?” It was getting close to midnight and I was still trying to get the undertray off our MX-5 Cup car so I could drain the distilled water and get coolant into the radiator. There was a bit of a time factor involved; the temperature was scheduled to dip below freezing in the hours to come, and if the water froze in the engine block we would have serious problems. Danger Girl understood perfectly well why we couldn’t let our little Mazda make it through the night without coolant in the engine, but she didn’t quite understand why we didn’t have coolant in there to begin with.
In her honor, and for the enlightenment of every would-be track rat who has been afraid to ask why such-and-such a rule exists, I’ve picked seven slightly opaque trackday or racing rules and explained them below. Even if you never plan to set foot or tire on a road course, this might still of be of interest… or not. What can I say? I tried to get you to click the jump. Click the jump already!
Emanuel writes:
Hi Sajeev,
I’ve noticed that most of the mainstream sedans like the Accord, Mazda 6, Fusion and Sonata have abandoned the upper and lower control arm suspension, or what is normally referred to as double wishbones, in favor of the simpler strut based front end. Honda, which never failed to mention the Accord’s advanced double wishbone setup in their ads, claims the change was due to NVH and crash compliance issues. It also says that, because of how it tunes the strut setup, the current car handles and rides better than the double wishbone design.
I think this is a cop out and the change has been done mainly as a cost-cutting measure. As manufacturers add more content to cars that’s more readily visible (infotainment systems, push button start, blind spot monitoring, etc), things that are mostly hidden to the consumer — such more advanced suspension — are sacrificed.
My perception is that, all things being equal, a double wishbone suspension will ride and handle better than a strut setup. What say you? Read More >
Recent Comments