This is a guest article by our reader levaris. We wanted to see what the Best & Brightest think.

According to an Associated Press article today, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is recommending that States “should ban all driver use of cell phones and other portable electronic devices, except in emergencies”. How using a phone during an emergency is safer for the driver than when they aren’t calling about an emergency isn’t made clear, but that is not the biggest problem with this latest public safety cry.

The article mentions that this recommendation is made because of a crash in Missouri involving a semi cab (no trailer), a pickup truck, and two school buses. The driver of the pickup was killed, as was a student on one of the buses; a further thirty-eight people were injured. Read More >

Ah, the Malaise Era. Some cars are just poster children for the 1973-1983 period of diminished expectations, sclerotic automaker bureaucracy, tape stripes, and the ascendancy of focus-group marketers. Take, for example, the 1977-1979 Ranchero, during which Ford decided to use the massive Thunderbird platform as the basis for their popular cartruck. It should have been a commercial disaster, but in fact it sold quite well. Read More >

On paper, a super-lightweight Lotus with a genuine ’68 Corvette 350 and Muncie 4-speed ought to eat up a road course; just go onto any online forum full of self-proclaimed car experts and they’ll tell you exactly that. Reality, on the other hand… well, reality doesn’t always live up to the expectations of internet car experts. Read More >

Ford makes great full size trucks, but repeat after me: not everyone cares about the F-150. There’s more to being a Ford truck than what Toby Keith and Mike Rowe said. Listen up peeps: this is a story of having a growth and retention strategy for one product line, and an exit strategy for another.

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Back in the late 90’s, the VW Bug was the queen of cute and the dominant purveyor of ‘retro’ car design.

You couldn’t get away from the painfully hip commercials. The fake yellow flower with the vase. The adorable exterior that seemed to attract women better than a Prada purse giveway.

Then something happened. The designers and engineers of ‘Das Bug’ met a penny pinching force of nature called José Ignacio (“Inaki”) López de Arriortúa. A former head of purchasing for GM. Inaki decided to drive down costs at VW using the same strategies (and sources) he used at GM.

13 years and $1915 later… I get to invest in what can only be called a ‘VW money pit’.

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You didn’t start seeing Subarus in large numbers in North America until the third-gen Leone showed up. Even so, most of these quarter-century-old veterans are gone now, even in regions they once dominated (e.g. New England, Colorado). I found this more-80s-than-Wang Chung example in a Denver self-service yard a few weeks back, and I had no choice but to document this soon-to-be-rare piece of Subaru history. Read More >

Continuing our whirlwind trip around the globe, we have last stopped in Sweden, Canada, Romania and South Africa. This week I’ve decided I would be creative and take you to the last country on the alphabetical list: Zimbabwe!

If like last week in South Africa, lions, rhinos and zebras are still not your thing, well you’ve got an issue on your hands because there are still a lot of these in Zimbabwe… But hey, that’s ok, because I have prepared 159 additional countries for you to visit in my blog, so don’t be shy and click away!

Now Zimbabwe is in a very particular situation as far as its new car market is concerned… Read More >

Eric writes:

I have a 2000 Maxima with about 155k on the clock.  I purchased this car in Los Angeles and since 2005, it’s lived in Ohio and Pennsylvania.  The main issue is that I can tell the transmission is starting to get a bit soft on the 1-2 upshift, specifically once it starts getting cold out.  I presume the primary reason for this is the abuse it’s suffered at my hands.  As it was a California car, it has no traction control and though I love it nine months of the year, it is utterly helpless in the snow—snow tires didn’t seem to help tremendously.  I’ve had to rock myself out a number of times and I presume the trans has gotten overheated at least once.  I’ve been good about changing the fluid (drain and fill 3x, filter too) about once a year but I think I’m near the end on this trans.

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Some cars that show up in junkyards were moving under their own power just days before their final tow-truck ride… and others spent decades in a field somewhere, waiting for the price of scrap steel to make hauling-away worthwhile. This Colt, which I found close to the ’83 Cordia in a California self-serve yard, is the latter type. Read More >

Two weeks ago, the TTAC Black Friday Special was all about Corvette crashes. Not just any Corvette crashes, however. We’re talking about the very special kind of Vette crash that happens when you’re just driving along and… something happens to make you jam that accelerator down and lose control.

What’s that something? Experienced Corvette-ologists know that common provocations to throttle-based havoc include:

• the presence of your daughter’s sexy-ass friends, particularly if one of them is named “Sharona”;
• hearing the chorus of the famous Golden Earring song, “Radar Love”
• but worst of all, when somebody has the son-of-a-bitching nerve to drive up next to you at the stop sign in another Corvette!

From there it all goes downhill… but TTAC is here to help. When Corvettes attack, just click the jump to find out what to do.

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(This is part of the “Drama McHourglass” story cycle and is a sequel to Nights Of Wine And Ponies. This is a work of, um, fiction. Any trademarks which appear in this story are used in a fictional context. Close cover before striking — JB)

Some time ago, I convinced Vodka McBigbra to watch one of my favorite movies — “The Mack”, starring Max Julien and Richard Pryor. As I watched “Goldie” drive his “hog” (another way to say “pimped-out Eldorado” down the streets, resplendent in fur coat, matching hat, and with his sword cane by his side, I said to V. McB, “I could totally be an awesome pimp.” Vodka, veteran of the Las Vegas stage and a woman who was fully aware of how modern pimps operate (Warning: the link WILL GET YOU FIRED FROM YOUR JOB) responded with a combination of anger and disdain.

“Pimps aren’t funny, dressed-up guys in Cadillacs,” she snarled. “They are terrible, terrible people. You could never be a pimp. You… well, you…”

“I get the point,” I responded, “I’m no pimp. But Pretty Tony is about to pull out his sword cane so I need to focus on the movie.” Little did I know that one day I would have a chance to test the truth of her assertion.

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There’s a nice comfortable cushion of years between the present and the 1970 and 1976 Motor Trend Cars of the Year, which gave our discussions about What Might Have Been a certain detachment. Today’s Car of the Year Revisionism discussion, however, takes as its subject a car that’s still with us in large numbers. Read More >

This whole craze with the leather-trimmed luxury trucks, I’m against it. In my opinion, a real passenger truck is a big steel box with rear-wheel-drive, a floor-shift three-speed manual transmission, an AM radio, and a metal dash. Oh yeah, and it has to be built by a farm-equipment manufacturer. Read More >

We went all 20/20 hindsight on the 1970 Motor Trend COTY choice yesterday, and today we’ll be jumping right into the depths of the Malaise Era for the MT gurus’ 1976 choice: the Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volaré Read More >

Is there any vehicle more emblematic of the Malaise Era than the first-gen Dodge Magnum? Other than the Plymouth Fire Arrow, that is… or the black-bumper MGB… or the Mustang II. Terrible as it is, however, this junked Magnum I found mouldering in a San Jose self-service junkyard still has a certain undeniable presence. Read More >