Earlier today, one of the commenters on Bark’s article reiterated the oft-discredited claim that the Tesla P-whatever-D in “Ludicrous Mode” is the quickest production vehicle. Listen — I think the Tesla is a great car, and I accept that there is probably some highly-specific situation in which it’s the quickest production sedan.

But quickest production vehicle? No fuggin’ way. It would be the fifth-quickest vehicle in my garage, if I owned one…. and I don’t have a particularly quick set of vehicles.

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This Monday, I sat among a herd of journalists and executives waiting for the Honda Odyssey press reveal to begin. While nominally I was there to cover the event on behalf of this fine publication, I was also considering my next family car purchase.

Jack wrote at length yesterday about the relatively recent phenomenon of at once coddling and ignoring the spawn relegated to the stern of the family vehicle. While I don’t intend to completely answer the questions raised, I’d like to consider what might affect our choice of family conveyance.

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On Monday at NAIAS, something interesting happened at the corner of Predator Maw and Sporty Junction: Lexus revealed a new 2018 LS500.

As a fan of the LS model since inception, I was interested. And as far as I can tell, this is the first LS that breaks with a few traditions dating back to its introduction for model year 1990. In no particular order, I’m going to come up with a list, and I’m going to create this list without any judgment, contrary to normal lists around here or created by anyone with real opinions. (Hey, I could end up on the front page of a major search engine’s automotive page!)

With calm, collected thought, I’ll run through them quickly before I get to our Question Of The Day. Come along.

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Ask anyone who was there, and attendees of this year’s North American International Auto Show will likely describe an event lacking luster. Depleted of energy. Devoid of the excitement that normally comes from splashy, much-anticipated launches.

Could it be that the Consumer Electronics Show held a week earlier in sunny Las Vegas sapped some of the life out of Detroit? Consider this: the top-selling midsize car in the U.S. — the Toyota Camry — suffered through an underwhelming unveiling that should have had people talking. At least, more than the number who did.

What were radio news segments talking about on the way to this year’s show? Highlights of the just-wrapped-up CES. Oh, that Chrysler Portal. My, what a car that Faraday Future FF 91 is. A taste of the future, the tech geeks gushed. So, where does this leave traditional auto shows? What becomes of Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago? What about Geneva? Paris? Read More >

TTAC has an intrepid team on the ground at this year’s North American International Auto Show who’ll be bringing you reports from the buffet lines OEM press conferences throughout Media Preview Day. We’ve seen a few debuts already: the grille-of-your-dreams Ford F-150, the not-a-four-door-coupe Kia Stinger, and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-its-changes Mercedes GLA.

Even in this day and age of instant communication and information leaks, the manufacturers still sometimes manage to keep a surprise or two in their back pockets. The Ford GT and Buick Avista spring immediately to mind. This year, I’m hoping for a surprise announcement on a decades-old rumour.

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Faraday Future, the Chinese-answer-to-Tesla car company whose travails have been worthy of three concurrently running soap operas even though they have yet to put a single car anywhere near a showroom, debuted a sorta-concepty-production thing this week. And boy oh boy did the knives come out. But why?

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Brace yourself. Detroit is coming. Car blogs will be bursting with news and hot takes from frosty southeast Michigan as the North American International Auto Show opens on Monday. Every utterance from any executive will be tweeted, every statement will be parsed, and every press release will be copied and pasted.

Naturally, TTAC will be there in force. And while the numerous reveals of production-ready cars will be the highlight for most, I’m personally looking forward to the concepts. The weird, the funky, or even the batshit crazy — those far-from-production ideas are what make the major auto shows great.

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A new year dawns and a lot of people are making resolutions about what they’d like to do or not do, depending on whether you’re talking about going to the gym or smoking. So, while most of those resolutions will come to naught — like they have for the past All Of The Years — I was thinking about something else that will never happen.

Follow me on a little flight of fantasy, and let’s see where we end up. Read More >

So, Ford’s press conference earlier today took a cluster bomb approach to the act of doling out news. Are you ready for a hybrid F-150? Will Chevrolet film a commercial showing how easy it is to pierce the battery pack with a toolbox?

Never mind that for now — it’s the looming hybrid Mustang that’s the real shocker, though perhaps it shouldn’t be. We’re all pretty certain that the V6 ‘Stang is a dead pony walking (trotting?), and that 2017 will be the 3.7-liter’s last go-around. That leaves a big gap between the 2.3-liter EcoBoost and the 5.0-liter Coyote, which Ford will soon swap for a 4.8-liter unit with gobs of refinement.

Mark Fields wasn’t dishing too many details this morning, but he did make it pretty clear that the mid-range power choice in future Mustangs will be a hybrid setup with “V8 levels of power,” starting in 2020. Undoubtedly, you’ll find a four-cylinder engine married to that battery pack and electric motor. Read More >

You’ve heard a lot in the media about how 2016 has been Literally Hitler Terrible. Princess Leia died. Donald Trump was elected. The McRib only returned in selected markets.

I can’t sympathize with those people. 2016 worked out fine for me, and it was the first year since 2012 that I wasn’t hospitalized for some injury. That doesn’t mean that I’m not resolved to make 2017 even better. Have you made your resolutions yet? If not, I have a few suggestions:

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It’s the last week of the year, which means it’s time for end-of-year or new-year listicles. Time  to recount all the celebrities who’ve passed, or to predict what will happen in the coming year. It’s a convenient time, certainly, as the turning of the calendar page allows one to mentally erase the past in favor of a potentially brighter future.

For guys like me, though, the lists of legally importable 25-year-old cars are the ones I’ll read the most. Heck, I wrote one last year.

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Let’s face it — the manual transmission is on life support, and its relatives have flown in from Atlanta and Houston to crowd around the hospital bed.

Stick shift aficionados can dream all they like about an 11th hour renaissance of the three-pedal setup, but transmissions aren’t vinyl LPs. One day in the near future — no doubt a dystopian landscape where dessert speakeasies doll out sucrose to sugar-taxed denizens of a Bark M.-imagined superstate — we’ll talk of the manual in the same manner as the front bench seat. Hell, rumble seats, for that matter.

Drivers of manual transmission vehicles already find themselves in a shockingly small minority, castaways on an island of technological obsolescence. Edmunds estimates the stick shift take rate at less than 3 percent of new vehicles sold in the U.S. It’s no wonder, either. Dual-clutch transmissions offer lightning-quick shifting, while continuously variable transmissions boast smoothness and enviable fuel economy gains. Eight, nine and ten-speed automatics fill in the gaps.

For the holdouts, what keeps the row-your-own fires burning? Read More >

I have a few years, certainly, but time seems to move exponentially quicker in relation to the appearance of grey hairs in my beard. So naturally, I’m thinking about my daughters, now 10 and 8, and what they will be driving.

It’s a legitimate concern, as we start to manage the end-of-life on our current fleet, and consider what our next new car will be. I see many parents will hand down an existing family car to their spawn upon reaching driving age, which seems like a great way to ensure you know the maintenance and accident history of what will be protecting your precious spawn.

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Unassuming. Conservative. Mild in appearance. All of these terms — and more — perfectly fit the Subaru Forester XT I picked up yesterday morning, bitching and moaning all the while about the miserable cold weather.

Boxy. Tall. Big greenhouse. Yes, the slab-sided Forester’s proportions haven’t changed much since arriving on these shores in the late ’90s. Even the Burnished Bronze Metallic paint is reminiscent of the ubiquitous early-2000s metallic gold of my friend’s long-gone ’02. No aggressive fender bulges, diagonal character lines, coupe-like roofline or ground effects package for this little rig. That simply wouldn’t suit the Forester’s staid-but-capable persona.

Cranking the seat warmer to 11, I drove off. Man, I thought, this thing goes like stink. Read More >