The “B5” Passat, which signaled the beginning of Volkswagen’s brief but luminous arc of twenty-first-century success in the United States, was priced at $20,750 including destination charge. For that kind of money, the buyers, of which your humble author was one, received a 1.8T engine, full-sized interior room, German assembly, and a fabulous set of luxurious appointments which usually did not completely self-destruct until the car reached its fourth or fifth birthday. It was a gorgeous game-changer of a car and for many people the juice of the driving experience was worth the painful squeeze of frequent dealings with VW’s “service” departments.

Fourteen years later, the price is the same — $20,765 including destination — but the game has definitely changed.

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TTAC reader Turtletop writes:

Sajeev:

I have a good friend who’s looking for his next chariot. I’ve wrenched on his cars for years now and am the one he calls when he has auto-related questions. He’s a tall and solid man, looking for a nice, comfortable and reliable ride that he fits into without bumping his head.  After a long chit-chat, I suggested a Grand Marquis as a possible choice.  Though my friend is averse to American iron after some bad previous experiences, I think Panthers are on his radar now.  Problem is, I haven’t enough direct experience with them to offer confident recommendations on what to look for, and I don’t want to steer him wrong.

Fortunately, I know just the man to talk to!  Thus, my inquiry to you.

What are the variables to consider when searching for a used Panther? Are there any particular engines, transmissions or model years that you would recommend over others, or avoid completely? Thanks for your consideration!

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Those of you who are not stupid well-connected enough to have a bunch of autojournos in your Twitter and Facebook friend lists are missing out on all the, er, coverage coming from the “Midwestern NAMBLA pump n’ dump for morbidly obese auto journalists” track event going on today. Let me give you the precis. It turns out all these cars are ZOMG AEWSUM and track records are falling left and right as America’s finest drivers deliver Vic Elfordian levels of all-weather punishment upon them. No word on whether the Midwestern journo who cracked up a MINI at Autobahn and followed it up by driving off the first corner at MAMA’s event a few years back has caused his usual mayhem.

Expect this event to provide many tales of “pushing it to the limit” in the soul-crushing months to come. In the meantime, however, we’ve found an activity which is well-suited to the banzai buffet beasts out there: manned crash testing.

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Bertel’s provocative piece on SaabUnited’s complex relationship with Saab and Vladimir Antonov has drawn a predictable response from the Saab faithful, who have rushed to defend their beloved but troubled  brand as well as its mysterious Russian “savior.” The outburst of anger at TTAC, though harsh to the point of almost blaming TTAC for Saab’s sorry state, is nothing new around these parts: TTAC has long angered the die-hard fans of many auto brands by calling for (or simply covering) the demise of brands that have outlived their usefulness to the market. Even the most basic understanding of TTAC’s history explains away the now-popular (in certain corners) theory that this site has a personal vendetta for Saab. On the other hand, perhaps we’ve been too focused on day-to-day developments to properly make the case for why Saab, sadly, needs to die. Luckily the reasons for Saab’s inevitable demise are not difficult to understand…

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Frank A. writes:

It’s been a while since you advised me on Town Car engine cleaning.  I’ve still got the TC, but I’ve got an itch to add something less practical to the fleet–a retractable hardtop.  Probably anybody who is old enough to have been frightened by a Ford Skyliner as a child has had this impulse now and then.

I’m interested in the Pontiac G6.  They were made ’06-’09 and are percolating down into a practical price range.  I can’t spend the bucks on a high dollar retractable, so the VW Eos and Chrysler Sebring would be my only other choices.

Gee whiz: Pontiac quality, Volkswagen quality, or Chrysler quality: what are you gonna choose?

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In the last time we heard from Better Place – a little less than two months ago – we’ve witnessed the unfolding of the company’s first functional battery swap station. And yet we were left with one big question mark hovering over the entire project: the price for the end customer.

This question is particularly crucial for the Israeli market, where the vast majority of people owns a car and uses it for their daily commutes and where gas prices are amongst the highest in the world – about $8.3 per gallon. And while the company has already unveiled its prices for the Danish market, it hasn’t revealed the price of the car and monthly subscription for the Israeli market – until now.

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GM cars start any 24 Hours of LeMons race with a big Index of Effluency advantage, and when you throw a big couch and handtruck in the bed of your Chevy S10 and spend the weekend hurling the thing around a twisty road course full of much faster vehicles… well, for the Greene County Moving Company, the end result was LeMons racing’s top trophy. Read More >

The temperature soared well into the 90s today, causing fearful mechanical carnage among the cars that had survived the first session of the 2011 ‘Shine Country Classic in South Carolina. Through all the busted engine blocks and vaporized head gaskets, one Screamin’ Chicken-bedecked Mazda just kept blasting out fast lap after fast lap, padding its lead and avoiding even a hint of a black flag. In the end, the Hong Norrth 1994 Mazda MX-3 took the checkered flag with a dominating 12-lap cushion separating it from the second-place car (the Team SOB VW Golf, a perennial South Region contender that’s way overdue for a LeMons win on laps). Read More >

I guess I became a blocker after my brother killed himself in his Challenger, back in the summer of 2041. No, I don’t mean he crashed. I know that’s why people hate us, because they say we kill people when we take action, and I guess that’s happened once or twice.

What I mean is this. My brother. My older brother. He joined the Army when I was still in grade school. He bought an old Challenger with his bonus pay. Drove it all around that fall, putting his whole check into gasoline and old retread tires, and then they sent him to Israel for the Suppression. Well, he killed those Jewish terrorists for three years I guess, and right when that was winding up, you know, we had the terrorists in Taiwan and we had to help China get rid of them before we had a fourth nine-eleven or something. For a long time he was just a face in my specs, bugging me about school, asking about news at home because our Internet was still “free” compared to the military one. Five years he spent in Taiwan, and he got sick, you know, like a lot of them did, with the bugs and the nightmares and the skin, but finally the good Chinese kinda won that thing and he came home.

He came home on a modbus. Late at night. Didn’t even come in and wake us up. He had gasoline. Don’t know where he got it. He took the Challenger out. And the cops stopped him outside the city limits. Told him he couldn’t drive himself. That he wasn’t in Taiwan, goin’ crazy with a MRAP and all. Told him about Modules and said they wouldn’t take him to jail because he was a hero and he’d served the country, and all that.

But they told him they would have to recycle the Challenger, so would he mind waiting in the back seat of the copmod until the crusher came, and he said, well Officer, I have to retrieve my personal effects, and they said yes, and he got in that old black Challenger, took a pistol out of the glove compartment, and shot himself in the head. I never saw him come home. Never met him for real, not as an adult, you know? I didn’t know what to do. I ran to my friend’s house, and he got me a beer, and he said, Brian, your brother didn’t kill himself, the system killed your brother, and you should do something back, and I know people.

Every blocker has a story, and that’s mine.
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It was a hot, muggy, rod-throwin’ day here at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, South Carolina; when the checkered flag waved to end the session, only 36 of 68 starters were still moving under their own power. Read More >

Great Britain two weeks ago. Albania last week, enough of Europe. Pakistan has been in the center of world news for a little while now, so it is time to explore what are the best selling cars in that country.

Now if you don’t want to hear one more word about the (spoiler alert!) Toyota Corolla and would like to know about the best selling models in 154 other countries, you’ve come to the right place: you can explore these countries in my blog. Very enjoyable! Yes, I promise!

The Pakistan Automobile Manufacturers Association has been compiling sales of models produced locally since 1998. Not that long ago, I grant you, but it’s better than nothing! And given the tough restrictions imposed on all imported car, really, the locally produced models are the only ones that count so we’ll be staying pretty close to the truth…

If I only had 30 seconds to summarize the Pakistani car market structure it would still be ok because I’d only have to say Toyota Corolla and Suzuki Mehran…

But I have a bit more time so I can dwell on the details. Read More >

Once again, the 24 Hours of LeMons has taken over downtown Camden, South Carolina, with a parade down the main drag to baffle the locals and a BS inspection scene complete with live band and draft beer. Why don’t we do this for every race? Read More >

While the political battle lines over increasing CAFE standards are being drawn in Washington, with the industry taking on both environmentalists and itself, a line of analysis that’s been around since 2009 is exacerbating the industry’s internal divisions over the impact of CAFE increases. A two-year-old University of Michigan study has been exhumed and expanded upon in a new CitiGroup report which makes a bold claim: CAFE will actually improve both sales and profits for the industry. And with Detroit taking the lead in resisting CAFE increases, one might think that the industry’s “turncoats” like Toyota and Hyundai, who have made marketing-led decisions to support CAFE increases, would be the main beneficiaries of these reports. Not so. According to this battle-line-confounding analysis, the biggest beneficiary of CAFE increases will be… Detroit. Madness you say? You may well be right…

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When I rolled into Camden, South Carolina, in preparation for judging at the third annual 24 Hours of LeMons South Spring race, my friend Walker Canada handed me the keys to his rough-but-functional ’87 BMW E28. “Go ahead and use it as your Judgemobile!” he offered. The dash lights and most of the gauges didn’t work, but I only had to drive 20 miles to the track. The engine sounded great, the suspension was still tight, and Foghat’s “Slow Ride” was on the radio. What could possibly go wrong? Read More >

When you’ve driven your $500 Citroën ID19 race car from San Diego to Miami and raced a Mini Moke-based Apollo Lunar Rover, where do you go from there? Why, you buy a furiously underpowered, 40-year-old Chrysler of Europe product and race it for 24 straight hours at a high-altitude road course packed with BMW E30s and V8 Detroit bombs. What else could you do? Read More >