Earlier this year, I was planning on showcasing on TTAC my 2008 Saturn Astra as a testbed of Millennial ingenuity.

Us Millennials want the latest technology in our rides, but we don’t necessarily have the funds to buy brand-new cars. We’re a debt-laden demographic, thanks to a combination of rising education and living costs, but we want all that fancy connectivity. I figured I could probably get away with adding all the technology I wanted to a car that’s eight years old, thus saving on the outlay demanded by a new vehicle purchase and the corresponding increase in my insurance premium.

Then the Fiesta happened.

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by Richard A. Ratay

In 1974, Congress passed legislation establishing the national highway speed limit of 55 mph. The original goal of the law was to conserve gas during the first OPEC Oil Crisis. Later, proponents of the lower limit argued it reduced highway fatalities. (Remember “55 Saves Lives”?) In time, studies showed the lower limit accomplished neither objective. It did, however, irk just about every driver across America.

Truckers were already equipped with their own means of skirting the new limit. Using their CB radios, long haul truck drivers kept each other informed about the whereabouts of “bear traps” and “Smokeys” lurking along the highways.

But drivers of automobiles sought their own weapon for combatting enforcement of the new lower speed limit. They found it in a device called “The Fuzzbuster.” Released a year before passage of the 55 mph National Maximum Speed Limit, the Fuzzbuster was the creation of Dale Smith, an Ohio driver who had earlier found himself seething at the side of the road after being nabbed in a police speed trap.

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I would’ve reminded you all week to vote for TTAC’s 2016 Ten Best and Worst Automobiles Today, but I was driving around San Antonio in Honda’s newest Ridgeline (full review on May 9th).

Instead, consider this your last call without any foreplay: this morning is your last chance to let your picks be known.

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During the late 20th century, General Motors managed to get at least a couple of decades out of most of their platforms, but GM sold the Chevrolet Celebrity for just the 1982 through 1990 model years. Its A-body platform held on just through the 1996 model year. Celebrities sold very well, but broke often, depreciated in fall-off-a-cliff fashion, and few made it into the current century.

Here’s a rare Celebrity wagon I found yesterday in a Denver self-service yard. Read More >

Jonathan writes:

Hi Bark,
In the past, I’ve always bought used in the “golden zone”, i.e. two to three years old with less than 45k on the clock. This has always served me well. I’m pretty good at getting a good deal on this end of the process.

What’s brand new for me is dealing with an existing vehicle I still owe on. Due to a family addition coming along, we’re moving up from this late-model SUV (I don’t want to get too specific, but it’s a GM product) that has about 55k racked up, but is in good shape overall. Tires have tons of tread life, it’s mechanically sound, that sort of thing. We’re moving on to a Kia Sedona; my wife really dug one we kicked tires on. The minivan would be a late-model, purchased used — likely a 2015. Where my kung fu is not strong is in dealing with trading in or selling the existing vehicle.

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The Lexus RX isn’t a sales success; it’s a sales phenomenon. It’s a magical cash generating unicorn that can seemingly do no wrong. The RX outsells every other luxury vehicle in America. Despite sales being down 6.5 percent in 2015, the RX crossover nearly outsold the entire Lincoln brand. When the numbers were tallied, Lincoln brand as a whole beat the single Lexus model by just 617 units.

Why do I bring up the Lexus RX so early in a review ostensibly about a Lincoln crossover? Two reasons. We might as well talk about the elephant in the room and I genuinely don’t understand why the RX outsells the MKX by nearly 5:1. As I discovered during a week with the latest incarnation of Lincoln’s MKX, the Lincoln is quite simply a better Lexus than the RX.

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Darrick writes:

Hey Sajeev,

First of all, I want to say that I enjoy your articles and your love of Panther and Fox body Fords. (Woot! —SM)

I’m writing to you about my 2005 Ford Focus SE ZX4 in the hope that you may give me some guidance.

I moved to the east coast (southeastern Virginia) from the Midwest in 2008. A year later, I received a brutal lesson in what coastal flooding can do to a neighborhood and when said flooding finds its way into a vehicle. My Focus sustained $3,500 in damages, and nearly all that amount was due to airbag and seatbelt system damage. I had insurance, so I was only out of my $100 deductible, but the damage cost was such that I now have a branded title due to flood damage.

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If I had to think of a single car that would be least likely to demonstrate “road-rage” behavior with a man behind the wheel, I’d have to pick the Tesla Model S, at least until the Model X becomes widely available. Read More >

The Ford Mustang is currently the best-selling sports car in Germany and in many other European countries. Sales are so strong that allotments for official importers are usually sold out for the rest of the year and customers are flocking to gray importers, who offer cars at higher prices and without factory warranty.

What made Europeans go crazy for a pony car all of a sudden? Is something changing in European tastes, or is the new Mustang just that good? And why can’t other American cars make it in Europe? Read More >

Well, Ford, I’ve gotta hand it to you. You did it, something that TTAC readers probably thought unlikely, improbable, maybe even downright impossible. I’m about to type some words that most of you never expected me to say.

I found a Ford that I don’t like. Its name? Taurus Limited. And we had a wretched week together.

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The Geo Metro, a Suzuki Cultus imported by GM, came after the Chevrolet Sprint version of the Cultus but before GM axed the Geo brand and started selling Chevrolet Metros, which sold in respectable numbers during its 1989-1997 run.

There was a convertible version of the Metro, which allowed thin-walleted drivers to enjoy open-air driving without having to take a Sawzall to a 20-year-old Corolla, and I’ve found one of the few remaining ones at a San Francisco Bay Area self-service yard. Read More >

It’s a plotline straight out of a Nicholas Sparks novel, albeit one with some help from Garth “The Art Of Racing In The Rain” Stein: A single mother in her early 30s meets a dashing, selfish, adrenaline-junkie on a blind date. A few months later, they’re in a terrible car crash that NEARLY KILLS HER, but she tirelessly rehabilitates for two long years so they can GET MARRIED IN THE DESERT right before running off to her debut in SCCA Solo II Autocross. Her husband agrees to return to autocross with her even though he was BANNED FROM ANNOUNCING IN A TRAGIC FEELINGS INJURY and hasn’t competed in FIVE YEARS. So he TAKES THE CAR COVER OFF HIS OLD PORSCHE JUST LIKE SWAYZE IN ROADHOUSE and follows her to the event.

But then there is RAIN. But she WINS HER CLASS anyway! And her husband SNEAKS INTO THE ANNOUNCER’S CHAIR! And then he WINS A THIRTY-CAR CLASS DESPITE HAVING NOT AUTOCROSSED IN A LONG, LONG TIME. And then they go home so they can OPEN THE GARAGE DOOR, HAND IN HAND, and GAZE TOGETHER at his SON’S NEW 50CC RACING KART and you JUST KNOW that EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE.

That was the plan, anyway. And it was going very well, up to the moment when my OLD PORSCHE decided to EJECT ITS HEADLIGHT FOR NO REASON.

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If you’ve read it once on the Internet, you’ve read it a thousand times: Conventional wisdom says the longer a used car sits on a dealer lot, the more likely it is you’ll get a good deal when you go buy it. People who’ve never spent a day in a dealership like to armchair dealer manager behind their computers and write about things like “floorplan” and “holding cost” like they actually know something about how a dealer principal calculates them, and how they affect pricing.

If this conventional wisdom were actually wise, then I wouldn’t be writing this column. Unfortunately, it isn’t, and adhering to it can cause you to waste a good deal of your time and money. Luckily, your friend Bark is here to give you the real scoop on how, why, and when you should buy at a dealership.

Go ahead, click the jizzump.

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Walt writes:

Sajeev,

I wrote to you five years ago about a frozen Ranger parking brake, and later on about the incredibly dumb idea of purchasing a vintage Mustang with a loan. Thankfully, the former resolved itself, and the latter remained a pipe dream. What I did do, however, was buy a ’14 Mustang GT with a 5.0-liter Coyote V8 and six-speed manual. It now has around 9,800 miles.

At around 3,000 miles it developed a clicking noise at idle, audible with the driver side window rolled down and a curb or jersey barrier to bounce the sound back at me. The frequency of this click increases with engine revs. Existence of this issue with the 5.0-liter Coyote is well documented on F-150 and Mustang forums alike.

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In Part One, we looked at Adolf Rosenberger’s success as a businessman and racer, his seminal role in the creation of Auto Union, and his vital role in the founding of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche’s design agency in 1931. We also reviewed how increased persecution of Jews in Germany after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933 led to Rosenberger’s 1935 arrest by the Gestapo, his subsequent release (no thanks to the Porsches), and his leaving Germany for good in 1935.

In Part Two, we’ll look at Rosenberger’s life after Porsche.

In 1936, Rosenberger first visited the United States and eventually emigrated there, changing his name to Alan Arthur Robert. He tried his luck looking for work in the auto industry in Detroit, but moved to California after failing to find opportunity in the Motor City.

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