Alright so let’s keep these ‘round the world’ updates as relevant to world news as possible: After Libya, I decided to go to troubled Yemen to give you an idea of what cars the Yemeni consumer prefers. Read More >

You’ve seen the timelapse video of the Sears Pointless 24 Hours of LeMons BS Inspections, but the timelapse camera didn’t capture the twisted cars and car themes we saw Friday. Read More >

Supposedly we had 185 teams signed up for the Sears Pointless 24 Hours of LeMons, which may be a record for road racing, but only 150 or so managed to get their heaps running well enough to make it through the pre-race inspections Friday. “Only” is a relative term, though; scrutinizing 150 terrible clunkers for safety and adherence to the LeMons $500 budget limit makes for a long, long day. Read More >

The San Francisco Bay Area once had one of the world’s highest Volvo 240 concentrations, but a number of factors are conspiring to send vast numbers of Swedish bricks to The Crusher in recent years. How many? Let’s take a look at the 240 inventory I spotted yesterday at a high-turnover East Bay wrecking yard. Read More >

Back in my Jalopnik days, I started the whole interesting-street-parked-car-photos thing with the original Down On The Street series. At that time, all the cars I shot were located in my old hometown on Alameda, California, and I got up to 600 or so before moving to Denver last summer. Now I’m back in Alameda, in preparation for my role working the 185-car Sears Pointless 24 Hours of LeMons race, and it wasn’t long before I spotted this fine machine parked near downtown. Read More >

Today, the automotive world rocked to the news that ethical hero journalist Scott Burgess had finally deigned to return to his old job, telling his colleagues “the reason for me to come back has everything to do with all of you. The Detroit News is filled with world caliber reporters in every department. And the strength of your character and commitment to journalism has shined—” Oh, who gives a shit. Click the jump and we’ll talk about a time I successfully evaded the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
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Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed was published in 1965. For the 1967 model year, cars and light trucks sold in the United States were required to have a dual-circuit brake system, so that a single hydraulic leak anywhere in the system would not result in total brake failure. Real drivers knew that they could come to a complete, safe stop using the emergency brake— that’s right, for emergencies— but that wasn’t enough for the feds. They rammed dual-circuit brakes down the throats of the American public, adding at least several dozen dollars to the cost of a new car. My Dodge van is a ’66 model, which means it was the last year for the single-circuit brakes that gave our forefathers their moral strength (though not as much strength as their forefathers, who relied on mechanical brake actuation instead of hydraulics), and a lifetime steeped in Naderite propaganda has convinced me that I’m better off with some margin of hydraulic safety. Upgrade time! Read More >

Louis writes:

Sajeev,

I recently got involved with helping a female friend who is going through a divorce get a car (in Phoenix, AZ), and it seemed to me that the basic economics of used cars have shifted (“Cash for Clunkers”?) Old used cars with high miles and no warranties appeared to be so expensive that a new car would yield a lower cost per mile driven (as well as a much lower level of risk for a single woman with no mechanical skills). I ended up lending her the money to buy a new 2010 Hyundai Elantra SE.

Still, I’m wondering if it is still possible to achieve a significantly lower cost per mile with a used car than you can get by buying a new one and driving it into the ground. Or, is there now a “poverty penalty”, where people without the cash or credit to buy a new car end up paying more per mile driven?

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Those of you who follow 24 Hours of LeMons racing know the tale of the One Lap Integra, an Integra GS-R that got knocked down to LeMons price range because it had been rolled into a ball by a leadfooted previous owner. The car was hopeless, but the 170-horse B18C1 engine and transmission are in good shape… and now I’ve bought them for my beater ’92 Civic DX. Read More >

Now that my ’66 Dodge A100 is back on the street, I find it pleasing that a Ford pickup of similar vintage lives in my Denver neighborhood. Read More >

And you thought the dealer wanted a lot for a key fob

Today, to celebrate their new 918 supercar, Porsche announced a new special edition of the venerable 911, the new Porsche 911 Turbo S Edition 918 Spyder. Boy, isn’t that a mouthful? Actually, since it’s available as a drop top, it could even be the Porsche 911 Turbo S Edition 918 Spyder Cabriolet. I admit that the nomenclature is a little confusing, now that Porsche is making a coupe with the word Spyder in its name, and putting two model numbers on one car, so just that you know what we’re talking about it’s not Porsche’s new hybrid supercar, the 918 Spyder. No, this car is indeed based on the more pedestrian (yeah, I know, it’s a car, but work with me) 911. To be sure, it’s a special 911, what with its Turbo and S suffixes, and it’s got some unique-for-a-911 carbon fiber trim and “acid-green” stitching on the leather, to effect some of the look of the 918. I just checked on TrueDelta and a regular 2011 911 Turbo S is $160,700. So how much do you think it will cost you to get behind the wheel of a 911 Turbo S Edition 918 Spyder?

How about a million dollars?

And Porsche will sell every single one that they build.

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TTAC’s twitter friend, Ethan, writes:

Hi Sajeev,

You probably remember my original query but this indecision is compounded by my second problem: I love the aforementioned Volvo, but with 185K ticking past on the odometer, the steering rack and other things are letting go.

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As Detroit was skipping a decade or two of car R&D by concentrating on packing increasing numbers of 128-ouncer-ready cup holders and faux-wood trim into big trucks, it became necessary to make it clear to the targeted buyer demographics that these trucks really weren’t, you know, trucks. In fact, they were more about protection from street crime and potholes than anything else, which is where slapping Mercury badges on the Explorer and Oldsmobile badges on the Blazer came in. Read More >

It was a shame how the Cadillac name had all the blood drained out of it by Malaise Era faux-classy models, and Chrysler wasn’t far behind; by 1982, you could buy what was essentially a Dodge Diplomat with New Yorker badging. A New Yorker with a Slant Six? Read More >

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) — Walt Whitman, “Song Of Myself”

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds… With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

“Overall, the Sebring is a very comfortable vehicle… On the road, the Sebring convertible is fun to drive… Even with the hardtop closed, the Sebring remains sharp… the Sebring convertible is definitely worth a spin… This stylish convertible offers an excellent combination of amenities, solid performance and that gorgeous disappearing top.” — Scott Burgess, on the Chrysler Sebring

“It’s vastly improved, but that’s only because it was so horrendous before.” — Scott Burgess, on the Chrysler 200

When Scott Burgess resigned from the Detroit News over that paper’s ex post facto editing of his Chrysler 200 review, Jalopnik and many other sites couldn’t wait to hail the man as a veritable hero of journalism, a lone wolf defiantly standing alone against a shadowy coalition of evil manufacturers, greedy dealers, and weak-willed publications. I wasn’t so sure about the whole thing. Surely the amiable junketeer who wrote “The Volt may be Mr. Right for the future, but the Cruze is Mr. Right Now” hadn’t really been that horrified by the 200, which is a perfectly reasonable mid-sized car and not in any way the apocalyptic, symptomatic, prophylactic hell-hound described in the original DetNews draft.

So, I did what nobody else was willing to do: I found Scott’s review of the Chrysler Sebring. Sit down, crank up Rebecca Black’s horrifying, Sebring-centric song “Friday”, and let’s ride our drop-top time machine back to April 4, 2007…
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