We received an interesting email the other day here in the TTAC underwater battle station. As is frequently the case, this one was about a used car. But not just any used car.
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Category: Question of the Day
Once upon a time, there was the Accord. It had sixty-eight horsepower from 1.6 liters of four-cylinder power. And the consumer saw that it was good, and the Additional Dealer Profit stickers spread far and wide across the land. The Eye Of Toyota, concealed within the fortress of Toyota City, saw the Accord and commanded the Camry to be built. It was bigger and more powerful, but it was also powered by four cylinders.
The General Motors X-Body and A-Body, to say nothing of the Ford Tempo and Mercury Topaz, could be had with a V-6, but it mattered not, for not a single Accord buyer in history ever decided upon a Cutlass Ciera as an alternative. But then, one day, Toyota raised the stakes.
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Recently, while searching through some, ah, Japanese-market literature left in a bathroom stall by a former TTAC E-I-C, we found out something so shocking that it cannot possibly be true. Did you know that the Toyota RAV4 was initially designed from the ground up to “destroy” the Jeep Wrangler?
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As of 12:01 AM Mountain Time on Wednesday, the first legal, open-to-the-general public cannabis shops in the United States may start selling their wares. In my Denver neighborhood, the dispensary next door to the first Chipotle restaurant opens for business at 10:00 AM, and I’m trying to guess what kind of car, truck, or other vehicle will be the first to screech to a smoky halt at this establishment’s front door. Actually, the loadiest stoners aren’t exactly conscious of, like, the clock, man, so this vehicle will probably show up on Friday at about 11:38 PM, and then the occupants will forget why they were there in the first place and go find a 7-11 to buy some Twin Bings… but for the purposes of discussion we’re going to say 10:00 AM on the dot, stoniest motor vehicle. What is it? Read More >
In a world where Cadillac makes a “V-sport” knockoff version of its own CTS-V that still has over 400 horsepower and can actually out-accelerate its own depreciation, to say nothing of the new BMW 328i, which will have that name because it will have 3 cylinders and 28psi of boost, it seems impossible to even consider the idea that there used to be cars that looked fast but went slow. With super-exciting sport packages or fun fender flares or even giant spoilers but absolutely positively no ability to accelerate supplied as standard. But it’s true. We called it “more bark than bite”. The English used to say “all mouth no trousers”, a fun term that could also describe a great white shark, or Lena Dunham.
Some of the names that will forever ring with honor in the Hall Of Test-Drive Disappointment include: Eurosport. Cobalt SS Sedan Naturally Aspirated. Camaro Sport Coupe. Camaro Berlinetta. Camaro Type LT. And those are just the Chevrolets. Mostly just the Camaros, really. But when the underachievers (and the Achievas) of the sporting-car world meet in the a parking garage to fight to the death for the Prize, there can be only one. The Prize, by the way, is a K&N “Filtercharger”.
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Speaking at a preview event for the next-generation Hyundai Genesis, Hyundai CEO John Krafcik defended his company’s decision to forgo establishing a seperate luxury channel for cars like the Genesis and Equus. While the rationale put forth usually revolves around the exorbitantly expensive pricetag for launching a new brand and an all-new sales network, Krafcik put it from another angle.
Last week, Subaru shipped me directly from the Chubba Cheddar Enduro 24 Hours of LeMons at Road America to Iceland, so that I could follow hallowed LeMons tradition and destroy a press car in dramatic fashion. I failed to kill any XV Crosstrek Hybrids, but I did get the opportunity to break away from the Subaru minders and get to do what I really love about traveling: visit exotic foreign wrecking yards! Iceland has a bizarre and unpredictable mix of vehicles on its roads, with the types of car and truck imports varying from month to month based on some inscrutable combination of momentary cheapness and currency-rate numbers, and you’ll see a wide selection of Asian, European, and Detroit machinery in the chilly junkyards of Reykjavik. Ladas next to Ssangyongs next to Dodges! Jason Kavanaugh of Edmunds (more importantly, of the legendary LeMons team, Eyesore Racing) spotted this much-sliced car and suggested that it would make a good Mystery Car for a future Junkyard Find, and he’s right! Read More >
(Let’s all welcome Zombie McQuestionbot back to TTAC. He’s a well-known and well-loved writer who is now writing for “bigger” and “better” and “more easily recognized” and “less thoroughly despised” outlets than this one, but we managed to convince him to write a few questions for us — JB)
Mustangs. I know, right? I almost bought a Mustang once. Actually, I did buy a Mustang. I was in the American South on my way to see an actual underground bullfight, with a bull and everything. But it turned out that the two-year-old “Mustang” that I agreed to pay five thousand dollars for in a back room of a Mexican restaurant was actually a Mustang.
You know, a horse.
The good news is that “Trigger” and I had plenty of good years together before I let him retire to a farm in Oregon. For “plenty of good years” subtitute “one drunken night”. And for “a farm in Oregon” substitute “the glue factory”. Oh, how I cried when they led Trigger away. Mostly because he’d stepped on my foot. But that isn’t the kind of Mustang we’re talking about here. The retro Mustang’s been around since 2005. What’s your favorite one?
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Over on Jalopnik’s Opposite Lock section, Juan Barnett raised the idea of having a “Jalopnik” series of Hot Wheels cars that would best represent the site. Everything from a Miata to an RS6 Avant to a Merkur XR4Ti was thrown around for the hypothetical 5-car collection. How about one for our august publication?
As I gather parts for my 1941 Plymouth sedan road-racer project, I’ve also been slogging my way through the bureaucratic obstacle course that is registering a title-less car that spent 45 years sitting in a Colorado high desert field. I’ve lived in three states during my car-owning years: California, Georgia, and Colorado. Each is what I call a Front License Plate State (FLPS), meaning car-registration procedures are less informal than what you get in states that issue only rear license plates, and so my car-registering experience features many episodes that might have been scripted by this guy. In a FLPS, you will find yourself shunted down numerous tail-chasing infinite loops when attempting to, say, get license plates for a ’58 DKW on a ’70 Ford Courier frame that you bought from a mysterious out-of-state guy who then became the Antarctic Consul for Lesotho. My search for a ’41 Plymouth title has (so far) involved a title search, a lien search, a certified VIN verification (not to be confused with a regular VIN verification; the certified type may be performed only at the office of one of four authorized police departments in Colorado), an appraisal by a registered Colorado car dealer, a surety bond for twice the appraised value, and a dozen lengthy trips to my local DMV… and, compared to some of my California experiences, this is easy. How about you? Read More >
In my role as Chief Justice of the 24 Hours of LeMons Supreme Court, prospective racers often ask me questions that go something like: “I have a (car type known to be fast and/or expensive) that I got for (credulity-strainingly cheap price) and I would like to race it in LeMons without getting hit with penalty laps. How can I do this?” In most cases, the car will turn out to be a BMW M3, Acura Integra GS-R, or C4 Corvette, and I tell the questioner to seek another type of car. Still, you can get genuinely horrible C4 Corvettes for LeMons-grade money, provided you sell off some trim parts and so on, and that’s just what happened with this bunch. No problem, I said, just drop in an engine that will anger the Corvette Jihad and all will be well (it helps that the Chief Perpetrator of LeMons racing was the owner and editor-in-chief of Corvette Magazine for years, and he can’t stand the Corvette Jihad). I suggested the Toyota 1UZ V8, as found in Lexus LS400s and SC400s, but perhaps there’s an engine that would raise the blood pressure of Corvette fanatics even higher. What engine would that be? Read More >
Back when I was looking for a cheap suspension-donor Lexus SC400, I had a couple of friends tell me to be careful when I went to go look at clapped-out Americanized Soarers with three-digit price tags: “All worn-out SC400s, in fact all worn-out Lexuses, are owned by murderers! You’ll see!” As it turned out, none of the cars I looked at had trunks full of quicklime, shovels, and duct tape… but that got me to thinking about the “murderer car” thing. Which car available today has the image of being owned by the scariest, manslaughteringest individuals? My answer, which I know to be the correct one, may be seen after the jump. Read More >
Today’s topic is: details. Or, as Anthony Weiner eloquently puts it while sexting: “deets.”
Details are highly important in the creation of any modern automobile. I wish someone had told this to the people who built my Cadillac. They were less focused on details and more on the big picture, which I believe was something along the lines of: We have to get out of the Renaissance Center by 6 pm or else we’ll have to drive through downtown Detroit in the dark.
It’s no secret that over here at TTAC, we like to pay for it – at least when it comes to test cars. Sure, we do go to the press fleet frequently, but when time and budget allow, abusing our Hertz #1 Club Gold membership is a great way to get behind the wheel of select automobiles.
An increasing trend I’ve been noticing is the increasing discomfort that older buyers are experiencing with luxury cars. Even the more tech savvy of the lot are getting frustrated with the rapid influx of technology in their cars of choice.
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