TTAC Commentator dastanley writes:
Hi Sajeev,
I have a Piston Slap question: Most of the gasoline sold here in New Mexico is high altitude gas, meaning that Regular is 86 octane, Midgrade is 88, and Premium is 91. The owner’s manuals for my ’06 Corolla and my wife’s ’08 Hyundai Tucson (try not to be jealous :-) ), calls for 87 octane fuel. Am I OK to use Regular or should I take the manuals at face value and pay a dime more per gallon for Plus? Read More >
One of the main criticisms of Generation Why is the lack of hard data to support this column’s ongoing thesis: that the lack of interest in car ownership among millenials is related to economics, rather than any sort of anti-car/pro-environment/pro-urban ideological shift among young people. Now, a key study from Deloitte confirms our initial hunch: young people want cars, but cannot afford them, and the notion of a car-free future, with walking, cycling and transit replacing the automobile (whether privately owned or shared via a service like Zipcar) is an unrealistic fantasy that somehow continues to have currency.
Those were the days, B&B; the days when cash flowed like rain upon me every morning and I had not a single responsibility in this world and if I thought it would be fun to have an extra Phaeton, I just got one. Alas, 2014 is a year of unvarnished reality on the hoof, coming my way. I’ll have medical expenses from my accident that would probably be sufficient to buy a new Siebener. Thrift and responsibility are the watchwords here, dear readers. So let’s set the “Expectations” knob on our car-choosing app to “Minimal”, and let’s de-select all those tempting silhouettes of 1988 BMW M6es and whatnot, and let’s begin.
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Yesterday, we saw a junked Jensen Interceptor that I photographed during a trip to Los Angeles. Today, I’ll follow that up with another rare import from the same yard: a Maserati Biturbo Spyder! This is only the second Biturbo in this series, after this ’84. Read More >
Rivaling Jack’s tales of his harem in the “Most Unpopular Subject Matter on TTAC” Sweepstakes is my constant references to rap music. What I perceived to be a wink-and-a-nod to younger readers who enjoy hip-hop was succinctly summed up by one commenter who wrote “It wouldn’t be a Kreindler piece without a [deleted perjorative for white wannabe rappers] reference”. Although I resolved to tone down the “shout-outs”, an recent piece by Bloomberg demonstrates that there is a time and a place for a knowledge of hip-hop music.
As many of you know from having read my 1965 Impala Hell Project series, I spent many of my formative junkyard-prowling years in Southern California. San Francisco Bay Area junkyards, 400 miles to the north, are pretty good— you’ll find many mostly-rust-free examples of old British sports cars, interesting edge-case Italian machines, and ancient American steel up there— but the self-serve wrecking yards of Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties are so numerous and so vast that you’re guaranteed to find some great stuff. I spent a couple of days in Los Angeles last week, and here’s what I found at the very first junkyard I visited. Read More >
TTAC Commentator Sjalabais writes:
Dear Sajeev,
I am and have always been a car guy. Since I am an academic with two left hands and sausage fingers, my flavour have been indestructible 70s Volvos, of which I have owned a couple.
Now I am a father and a bit cash-strapped, with the need for an occasional 7 seater. A Volvo V70 with rear facing extra seats has been voted down in the household assembly, I am thus looking for a blob-shaped car. My location is Norway, but my issue is recognisable for any car guy in this situation, I fear. Read More >
Photo courtesy of media.ford.com
Last week, Ford’s Global VP of Marketing and Sales, Jim Farley, told a panel discussion at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that Ford has access to data on its customers’ driving habits via the GPS system installed in their cars. “We know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing. By the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone,” he said. The next day Mr. Farley adjusted his statement to avoid giving the wrong impression saying that the statement was hypothetical and that Ford does not routinely collect information on, or otherwise track, drivers through their GPS systems without those drivers’ consent and approval. That approval comes from turning on and opting into specific services like 911 Assist and something called Sync Services Directions, a system that links the GPS system to users’ cellular phones. So that’s that, right? Read More >
Oh, GM. You really did it. You gave in to the perfectly understandable desire to create what’s best described as a C7-V, or maybe a ZR0.9. Don’t blame you, Mr. Reuss likes these kinds of battlewagons and you guys are so good at supercharging that small-block I’m surprised there isn’t some sort of weird Silverado variant out there for the hat-without-cattle crowd. The car’s going to be great, it will be fast, it will be the winner of Motor Trend tests for sure and maybe even some of the others.
But you shouldn’t have called a Z06, and I’m surprised you don’t know why.
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Josh writes:
Sajeev –
Great news! After research, waiting, and a little bit of compromise, I have finally bought my first ‘real’ car. Last month, I bought a ’05 BMW 645i convertible with very low mileage and a clean bill of health. It is wonderful and brings me a little joy every time I start it.
Bad news! The country is currently gripped in a cold snap the likes of which we haven’t seen in 2 decades, and also, by the way, I live in Denver. Read More >
Trent was a poser. He was the kind of guy who wore a fake Rolex, an imitation Italian suit and “alligator” shoes that were actually made out of vinyl. His $100 hair style cost $8 at Supercuts and his midwinter suntan, the one made him look like he had just returned from a lengthy South American stay, came from a spray can. Determined to climb from the bottom rung of society, he was forever trying to get over on people by manipulating his image and the truth is I really could have cared less. What really tore it for me, however, was the day he decided to put SS emblems on his tatty old Malibu. Read More >
“There aren’t many bad cars on the market,” is the trope trotted out by auto reviewers when justifying their enthusiastic response to whatever is trotted out in front of them at the Lowes Santa Monica on Wave 2 of the latest press launch. The post-recession era is one where the quality of the average car has never been higher, at the expense of idiosyncratic flaws that give cars character. Sure, there are always the whipping boys of the market, namely cars people actually buy like unibody crossovers and some that people don’t, like big, front-drive sedans.
Sometimes I just have to choose a Junkyard Find car based on its potential for a good Crab Spirits Story™, and that’s what’s happening today. The Cadillac Cimarron— well, there’s not much we need to say here about the image-tarnishing disaster that finished the brand-devaluing job GM started a few years earlier with the Seville (other than the fact that it took many years to undo the damage and convince car buyers that Cadillacs weren’t just badge-engineered bait-and-switches. The Cimarron never sold very well, and the J-body cars weren’t known for longevity, so Cimarron sightings are extremely rare today; we’ve seen this ’82 and this ’83 Cimarron d’Oro, plus the very first Down On The Street car. Here’s an ’82 that I found during a recent trip to California. Read More >
Clark writes:
Hello Sajeev,
I currently drive a 2007 G35S that works great and has been dead nuts reliable since I bought it lightly used a couple of years ago. It also works just fine for my duties of pickup/drop off of my toddler at daycare. Despite being plenty quick, it’s kind of dull. I really miss having a daily driver that doubles as an autocross/occasional track-day car.
A few weeks back I attended a ford ecoboost event and got to hustle a Fiesta ST around an autocross course. I was pretty impressed and now I’m strongly considering switching over. I also like that it gets ~50% better fuel economy and the 17″ wheels mean cheaper replacement tires than the staggered 18″ setup on the G35 (plus, I think I may be harder on tires than most). Lower running costs wouldn’t hurt my feelings one bit. Read More >
“So my daddy was like going on the same middle of the same two lines as a black car and then they both crashed. I heard a boom sound and I said “did we crash?”
So that’s the only crash report delivered by someone who didn’t get his bell rung at the scene.
I’ve been speaking to the trooper who is in charge of the accident scene to get a set of precise road conditions for that corner. We’d been driving on unplowed snow on that road for maybe thirty miles; something was different about that turn. In the space of maybe one and a half seconds, I was given a problem that I wasn’t capable of solving.
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