Things didn’t sound quite right at the Pelly Crossing filling station in the middle of the Yukon Territory. The gurgle of the fuel I was pumping down the filler neck had a frothy note, reminiscent of the sound of filling up one of the diesel pick-ups I’ve owned over the years.

I smelled the nozzle before I hung it up and, at precisely the instant my nose processed the “Diesel-you-idiot” warning, my eyes focused on the word DIESEL on the side of the fuel pump.

To say I felt stupid was an understatement. The gasoline-powered Chevy Blazer I’d rented from National Car Rental in Whitehorse obviously would have to have its tank drained and the delay would cut the heart out of the six hours of daylight that mid-December offered at this latitude. It might even disrupt overnight plans at Bombay Peggy’s, a renovated former brothel in Dawson City, where Lisa had reserved the Lipstick Room.

“There’s a silver lining though,” I tried to be upbeat, as I confessed the fueling blunder to Lisa. “It’s Friday the 13th and this should be enough of a screw-up for clear sailing at Bombay Peggy’s along with my quest to be ordained into Captain Dick’s Sourtoe Cocktail Club.”

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Editor’s note: With SEMA just wrapped up, there seems to be some renewed interest in Jack’s take on RWB. Here it is for the rest of you who didn’t find it plastered all over Facebook the last couple of days. This article originally ran on November 8, 2011. 

When Porsche “tuner” Uwe Gemballa was found dead and wrapped in cellophane late last year, everyone in the Porsche community expressed sympathy for his wife and friends. Nobody deserves to be killed the way Gemballa was.

On the other hand, however, at least the guy wasn’t going to ruin any more Porsches. His “Mirage” 911-slant-nose-arossa-droptops were perhaps the most hideous custom supercars ever built, and Gemballa himself never really appeared to develop anything even remotely resembling an aesthetic sense. His goal in life appeared to be to simply create terrible cars, and he was reasonably successful at this. Porsche purists hated the guy. There was only one thing he could have done for us to have hated him more: he could have turned his attentions towards the irreplaceable aircooled cars once again and ruined more of them.

Which is precisely what “RWB” does.

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Hyundai revealed Tuesday renderings of the first brand-new model to wear the Genesis nameplate as a marque. The new top-of-the-range Genesis will replace the Equus in the North American market next year, dropping its equine name for something more palatable to our tastes: alphanumerics.

On the other side of the Pacific, horse meat is a delicacy, so it should come as no surprise that the new Genesis G90 keeps its Equus lineage with the EQ900 model designation.

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“WE GOT A CALL A FEW MINUTES AGO… SOMEBODY PUT A CHILD IN THE TRUNK.”

Uh-oh, Spaghetti-O’s!

When I first heard about this video a couple of days ago, I had what I’ll call the Typical Car Guy’s Reaction: Those stupid pigs. Why are they harassing a family with a Tesla? What percentage of criminal behavior in the country is perpetrated by people who own Teslas? Is it because the people in the video aren’t lily-white? Is it because the cops were bored? Because they wanted to exercise their authority on yet another hapless family of meek motorists?

Every anti-police cliche ran through my head. It didn’t help to actually watch the video and see the cop order the little kid back into the car like he was El Chapo or something.

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Mike writes:

Sajeev,

I have a 2009 Nissan Xterra 4WD with 69,000 miles on the clock. It has been very well maintained and caused me no problems whatsoever. Hell, I’m still running on the original brakes and my service people tell me there’s no need for a brake job yet! I’ve been very happy with this truck. But, Nissan discontinued the Xterra in August 2015 and I’m wondering if I should sell mine now (because factory-only parts will become harder and harder to get) or keep it.

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Mr. Mehta, lover of all things Ford (except, apparently, the Lincoln Mark VI), was quite put out by my failure to include the “Sajeev’s Bitter Tears” tag in the 1980 Mercury Capri Junkyard Find post last week.

Not wanting to put him in a bad mood for the upcoming Houston 24 Hours of LeMons race, I have since retrofitted that post with the appropriate weepiness, and as an added bonus I photographed this amazingly Sajeevian Town Car in a Denver self-service yard. Read More >

UPDATE: Another TTAC reader is seeing different prompts without the Goodwill Package offer.

The Volkswagen Diesel Information website is now listing the “2.0L TDI Customer Goodwill Package” and requesting vehicle identification numbers (VINs) for registration in the program. However, it does not seem to be working for all website visitors.

The signup form asks owners for a physical address, email address and vehicle mileage before asking for permission to use the information to contact the owner regarding future diesel emissions related updates.

TTAC was able to obtain a VIN for one of the affected vehicles with an owner’s permission to complete the sign up process.

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I was driving along the other day and I realized something: the Toyota Highlander Hybrid is currently the most popular vehicle in North America.

Okay, this might be a slight exaggeration. For instance, I am told that the bicycle is quite popular. But on a list of today’s most popular vehicles, the Highlander Hybrid is right up there with the bicycle, and the wheelchair, and that Ford pickup that sells more units in an afternoon than Ferrari sells globally in an entire calendar year.

It is very obvious to see why the Highlander Hybrid is so popular. For one thing, it’s a normal family SUV with three-row seating, which is incredibly hot right now; so hot that I am quite certain it is not actually possible to rear children in today’s society without a three-row SUV. If you showed up at a child’s birthday party in a Toyota Camry, and you had forgotten to dress your child, and you had brought the wrong child, and your child was vomiting all over everything in sight, people would not call attention to your child-related issues. They would ask: Why don’t you have a three-row SUV?

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Since the last installment in this series, my attempt to get the family Town & Country officially licensed here in Japan has slogged relentlessly forward.

After a week of such little progress that I saw no need to report upon it (action was limited to the receipt of my official approval from the recycle bureau), I can begin this by saying that over the past week important things are once again happening. Notice that I didn’t write: “Important progress has been made…” Read More >

Note: Yesterday, Mark Stevenson, using “news” about the revised Mercedes-Benz GLS as an object lesson, points out how wasteful car manufacturers’ and suppliers’ press releases can be. They waste pixels, paper, our time and ultimately get in the way of providing worthwhile content for you, our readers.

Not all press releases are a waste of time, though. I coincidentally happened to be buttoning up this post when Mark’s editorial went live and realized that my particular piece was 100 percent the result of getting a much shorter press release, albeit from a much smaller car maker (in both senses of the word) than Daimler. 

It’s always nice to get paid, but one of the better parts about this gig can be the interaction we have with readers. We’ve written about TTAC reader John Kit and the enthusiasm John and his teenaged daughter Emma have for making realistic slot cars based on historic sporting automobiles. I was particularly touched by the custom Jim Clark Lotus Cortina they made that was inspired by a post of mine. They don’t just make one-off slot cars; John set up Studio 65 to market 1:32 Jaguar X120s that Emma makes, scratch building the chassis and casting the resin bodies herself. The Jaguar was followed by a Ferrari 340 America. Recently, Emma wanted to build something “fun and cute”, so now they’ve introduced their latest slot car: the Austin Healey “Frogeye” Sprite. Read More >

Update: Added background.

Volkswagen of America, in a bid to regain the trust of current diesel owners, will announce a prepaid card campaign on November 9, TTAC has learned.

The program, detailed to dealers Thursday in preparation of its public announcement, is aimed at current owners of affected TDI models regardless of whether they bought their car new or used.

Two prepaid cards will be offered to those TDI owners. The first one will be for $500 and has no restrictions on where it can be used. The second, which may be valued between $500 and $750, will be limited to use at Volkswagen dealerships.

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Lexus won’t be building cars in China anytime soon due the automaker’s concerns regarding production quality, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

“There’s too much quality risk in China to produce there,” said Takashi Yamamoto, executive vice president of Lexus International.

Did you hear that mic drop? Hello? Anyone there?

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One thousand, six hundred and fifty-three words.

That may not sound like a lot. The reviews and features we publish at TTAC routinely go beyond that. Alex Dykes, when he really sweats the details, can easily reach 3,000 words in his reviews. Jack, when he isn’t even trying, will end up writing 1,600 words on a Matrix — just because. My reviews will easily eclipse the 2,000 word mark, even as I sit here complaining about not knowing what to say.

But 1,653 words equals approximately 8 minutes and 12 seconds of reading time, according to Read-o-Meter. That also may not seem like much, but the latest press release for the “all-new 2017 Mercedes-Benz GLS” is a massive time waster, even at its sub-10 minute read time.

Why? Because the only two things I learned from it were: Mercedes-Benz has renamed and slightly updated the GLS, and Mercedes-Benz writes press releases that are at least five times longer than they need to be.

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Welcome back for another installment of “Ask Jack”, the place for you, the man on the street, to ask me, the man on the Internet, any question you like on any topic that makes its way into your mind.

Today’s question seems like a simple one: do you stay in the Matrix or not? In this case, the Matrix is a Toyota Matrix, with the all-too-common manual-transmission failure. But to properly answer the question, we’ll need to consider everything from solo ocean journeys to bad seeds in a magic bus.

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Seth writes:

Sajeev,

I’ve admired your columns from afar for years, as a non-commenting TTAC reader. I especially appreciate your tenacious appreciation, possession and maintenance of cars you love. My automotive life is not nearly as exciting or robust.

While I love my cars, with two small children, a wife and a full-time job, I only have time and money for two at a time (his and hers). I aim to keep them for at least 10 years each. So, I obsess over the scratches and dents knowing I’ll be stuck with them for that long. Ridiculously, I even worry about scratches from washing them.

Which brings me to my question: What’s the best automatic car wash to use to minimize paint damage?

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