Bloomberg published an interview with hacker-slash-inventor George Hotz earlier this week where it showcased his efforts in building autonomous car technology. While many readers might be quick to jump on his ideas as the first coming of affordable autonomous vehicles, we need take a step back and look at the details.
Three years ago, around this time, I begged the nice people at Ford to build a proper Lincoln. This was shortly after I begged Cadillac to put a V-8 in the ATS. If you put the two articles together, you might get the sense that I have the completely antediluvian mindset that an American luxury car needs a V-8 and rear-wheel drive and main-battle-tank proportions to be completely legitimate. And you would be correct, because that is how I feel and, last time I checked, the nice people at Lexus and BMW and Mercedes-Benz felt the same way because most of the cars that they put on the cover of the Robb Report and the like seem to at least meet those basic criteria.
Well, the spy photos of the new Lincoln Continental are making the rounds. I can see that they have deliberately failed to honor my requests, the same way Cadillac stuck two fingers in my eye by afflicting the ATS-V with the asthmatic blown six when the same-platform Camaro SS has the mighty LT1 from the sublime Stingray. This is a retro Continental alright, but the retro-rockets are only firing back to 1988 instead of 1963.
You remember that 1988 Continental?
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“V” writes:
Hello Sajeev,
Conventional wisdom says wait until the second model year of a new vehicle since that’s when the automaker will have fixed the glaring flaws decried by the “beta testers” who bought the first model year. Is this always true?
Do automakers fix problems “on the sly” so that, say, a 2016 model year car manufactured in August 2015 could already incorporate some/all fixes slated for 2017 model year?
The 1980s were confusing times for figuring out badges on U.S.-market Japanese cars.
You had the Toyota Corolla Tercel (which wasn’t related to the Corolla). You had the ever-shifting miasma of various Mitsubishi-based Chryslers. You had the Nissan Stanza Wagon (which was a non-Stanza Prairie at home). And you had all the brand bewilderment of the Datsun-to-Nissan changeover of the early part of the decade (to be fair, Detroit was doing the same sort of badging sleight-of-hand, e.g., front- and rear-wheel-drive Cutlasses in the same showroom).
The Datsun 810 became the Nissan Maxima during the 1981-1984 period, but it didn’t happen like flipping a switch; here’s a Datsun 810 with “by Nissan” and Maxima badging that I spotted in a Northern California wrecking yard a few months ago. Read More >
The next-generation Nissan Z (which may or may not be: 1. A crossover; 2. Real; 3. Inspired by a bicycle; 4. FWD; 5. All of the above) may be less expensive than the current car, Nissan design chief Mamori Aoki told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
A lower price would appeal to a younger generation who can’t afford the Z’s current $30,000 price tag, Aoki said. Well, yeah.
Interestingly, the report notes that a less-expensive Z could make room for a more powerful Nissan sports car that isn’t called a GT-R. Aoki told the newspaper that the GT-R would remain a flagship performance car that wouldn’t compromise speed for something as silly as price. Wonderful.
My cruise was set at 68 mph. For my very last drive in my Boss 302, not only was I driving on a relatively straight and flatter-than-Taylor-Swift interstate, I wasn’t even doing the posted speed limit. It was a stark contrast to the way I had spent the previous forty-two months in the Recaro driver’s seat of what was likely the best pony car that had ever been built on the day it rolled off of the assembly line in Flat Rock.
For forty-two months, every time that I made the 90-degree left turn out of my failed, half-empty subdivision onto the curvaceous country road that intersected the neighborhood’s exit, I did it in a full drift, burning up the excessively overpriced tires with banshee-like screams that acted as a rubber alarm clock for the entire street’s residents.
For forty-two months, I revved the Boss’ motor all the way to its previously unheard of 7,500 rpm redline with every launch, creating a soundtrack that was equal parts Beethoven and Stravinsky in its cacophonous composition.
For forty-two months, the speedometer’s needle rarely saw the left side of 85, and set up a near permanent residence to the right of a hundred any time that the Boss’ retro-inspired nose had an open road in front of it.
But not on its last day.
Who would have known that one of the largest parts supply recalls in U.S. history could poison the well for the rest of your business?
That, and Jeep needs you to keep it dry for a minute, Porsche pulls another player from Volkswagen’s bench and how big does Magna International’s yacht need to be anyway, after the jump.
When Ethan Couch killed four people in an alcohol-related crash, his attorney argued that he suffered from “affluenza” — an inability to understand consequences brought on by a life of pampering and kid-glove treatment from his wealthy parents. To nearly everyone’s surprise, it worked, and Couch received nothing more than probation for his actions.
Earlier this month, a video of Couch attending a beer-pong party and sitting at a chair with a can of beer went viral, leading members of the community to demand that the court take action. But now Couch, and his mother, have gone missing, and local authorities think it might be an attempt to flee the country.
So I’m driving along the other day, and I get up behind this Toyota Sienna that looks like it has a body kit. And not just a body kit, but powder coated wheels, too. This thing looked like your standard airport rental Sienna had been turned over to the people in charge of making Hyundais appealing in their last model year before a redesign.
It turns out that this vehicle is available for order from your local Toyota dealer. It’s called the SE Premium, and Toyota pitches it as a minivan that offers “extra swagger” for your whole family, as if your whole minivan-owning family already has enough swagger to go around, but some extra couldn’t hurt.
As soon as I finished my time with the 2015 Nissan Murano, my mind immediately wandered to the new Ford Edge.
You see, the Murano is fantastic. It’s effortlessly comfortable. The ride is sublime. When you’re driving the Murano, everything is damn-near perfect. But the Murano could only be considered pretty by someone subjected to the “Ludovico Technique” and thousands of flashing images of the Infiniti QX56 QX80.
The Murano is the violently green neon dress and pink knee-high boots to the Edge’s fitted black number and Saks Fifth Avenue pumps. At a black-tie affair, one of those is going to stick out, and for all the wrong reasons.
Yet, looks can be deceiving. It was underneath that retina-burning attire I found an incredibly comfortable, competent crossover in the Murano. It’s hard to fault it with your eyes closed.
Now it’s the Edge’s turn. Would I find the same characteristics in it that made me fall in love with Nissan’s lifestyle-mobile?
The email had all the stopping power of a fart at an office Christmas party.
“TEAM JAPSPEED DRIFT TEAM TO RETURN TO AUTOSPORT INTERNATIONAL”
“Were they returning from 1943?” I wondered. How could any team be named “Jap” anything in 2015?
As it turns out, there are a lot of automotive-related companies and events with the prefix Jap. JapFest, JapAuto, JapSpeed. JustJap. Uh, huh.
I mean, “Jap” is still a bad word, right?
Forty-nine cars worth more than $2.2 million dollars arrived for one-week stays in my driveway during the 2015 calendar year. Seventeen of them were traditional four-door sedans, including an XSE V6 version of America’s most popular car — the Toyota Camry. Another 15 were utility vehicles of one kind or another: the tiny Jeep Renegade and Mazda CX-3 to the full-size GMC Yukon Denali and Cadillac Escalade.
There were five pickup trucks, six hatchbacks, one wagon, and two vans. Three V8s. Many turbochargers. Five diesels. And two manual transmissions. Read More >
James writes:
Hi Sajeev,
I’ve got a 2003 Impreza WRX (blob-eye) that’s covered 96,000 km now. I bought it two years ago from the original owner, who seemed to take very good care of the car (every receipt since new). The car has been almost faultless.
About 4,000 km ago, at 92,000 km, the original clutch was clearly on its last legs. Under wide open throttle in 3rd gear, the clutch would slip and struggle to get power down. So off it went to a local WRX specialist to have the clutch replaced with a new kit: new pressure plate, machined flywheel and new Exedy OEM (standard, not heavy duty) replacement clutch.
However, when I got the car back, it felt completely wrong.
It’s been a while since I’ve written about a Volkswagen product in a positive light. They certainly haven’t made it easy. That said, new cars aren’t my thing, and Wolfsburg did make the occasional interesting car back in the day.
I’ve been on a binge lately of looking at hot hatches that are becoming eligible for historic plates. That seems appropriate as I’ve passed the halfway point to my theoretical retirement. The Volkswagen Corrado has always fascinated me, so I fired up my usual searches.
Ugh. Finding an older Volkswagen that isn’t either thrashed or stanced is a challenge.
It’s hard to keep track of all the twists and turns of the drama involving Chrysler, Mitsubishi, and American Motors vehicles and branding during the last quarter of the 20th century — and that’s without even bringing Rootes Group stuff into the cast of characters.
The Eagle Summit Wagon, which was a left-hand-drive Mitsubishi RVR slapped with the badges of a marque named for a long-defunct AMC vehicle and not much related to the Mirage-based Eagle Summit car, is a good example of an obscure Mitsu-Chrysler sold just a few years before a bunch of Daimler DNA got added to the Chrysler genome.
We saw this ’93 Eagle Summit FWD Wagon a couple of years back, and now here’s an AWD example that I spotted in Denver last month. Read More >
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