If you’re living at low altitudes in the Southeastern U.S. or a partial day’s drive from the Gulf Coast, this Question of the Day is not for you. Barring exceptionally wacko weather, denizens of these temperate climes needn’t worry about traction loss caused by the solidification of moisture below 32F. In other words, snow, slush, and ice of both the regular and insurance-hiking black variety.

For those of who who do live in regions where Mother Nature delivers an annual cold shoulder, we’re getting close to decision time. What’s your style: turn your beautiful, meticulously upkept  vehicle into a cheap-looking rig for the duration of winter with a set of bare steelies and meaty donuts, or keep style and handling alive with a snazzy set of low-profile winter tires wrapped around sporty aluminum hoops? (Read More…)

A tweet inspired me to write this. Hey, stop running away! This has nothing to do with Elon Musk or Tesla or #mobility. Well, mobility in the nerdy, Jim-Hackett-on-a-Bird-scooter sense, anyway.

Yesterday, Corey Lewis took to social media to drip saliva all over a large, dignified, rear-drive, V8-powered sedan (or at least one that can be configured as such). This vehicle brought together enough pleasing elements, enough ingrained appeal, to cause our picky resident perfectionist to cast a sultry online gaze at this seldom-seen contemporary sedan.

No doubt about it, I shared Corey’s feelings towards this car. It looks good, it’s a comparative bargain in its class, and it will make a great used vehicle one day thanks to depreciation that’s surely greater than that of its German and Japanese competitors. And yet it’s one of those available vehicles that never turns up in real life. To me, it may as well be a ghost that exists on the internet and in the pages of magazines. It is a vehicle I only laid eyes on once, 26 months ago, at a first (and perhaps last) drive event. (Read More…)

Ah yes, boring cars. They’re everywhere. And really they’ve been everywhere in the past. It’s just the nature of the Internet Car Enthusiast to paint a rosier picture than that of reality. His or her tinted spectacles are very cheap, by the way. Just like they’re supposed to be.

But enough about designer frames from Walmart. Tell us about the most boring car you’ve ever encountered.

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A certain Lincoln owner I know was forced back to the dealership yesterday. The problem? A worrying diagnostic message on his crossover’s gauge cluster. Don’t worry, he’s covered, and the trip offered him a chance to roll outta there with all the swagger of John Shaft — surrounded by all the opulence a Ford Fusion platform can carry.

Naturally, this man, who we’ll call Adam T. (or A. Tonge, whatever he prefers) jumped at the chance to pilot a Continental loaner for a couple of days. Who can blame him? It remains an intriguing, plush sedan that unfortunately garners fewer buyers with each passing month. As he triumphantly posted images in our Slack chatroom, a conversation sprung up around a feature common to all present-day Lincolns, something for which no one can muster much enthusiasm: the push-button shifter.

In the Continental, the placement of the buttons just to the left of the center touchscreen calls to mind a bank of radio presents and generally seems out of place. Lincoln’s not giving up on this, however. So, if buttons there must be, where and how would you like to press them? (Read More…)

Sure, let’s start with week with a political question. Why not? It’s not like we’ve never had an opinion or two around here (that goes for both the writers and readers).

Last week, noise was being made and digital ink was being spilled concerning the issue of ethanol. What do you want to see in your tank?

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Yesterday’s story on the lopsided growth, such as it is, of the new vehicle market clearly shows that sub-$20,000 vehicles are an endangered animal. Big shocker. That space is taken up mostly with cars, and, for a number of reasons, people just aren’t buying cars like they used to. As such, many automakers are having second thoughts about building them.

You’re already well aware that red hot, high-riding alternatives are not as easy on the pocketbook.

Nevertheless, here and now, there’s a decision to be made. You’re being asked to choose a new vehicle that costs less than $20,000 without the help of incentives. Which entrée from this meager menu would you add to your plate? (Read More…)

This week is the third and final installment of our QOTD series about cornering the used car market and finding the most bang for the buck.

We’re going all out for this finale, and giving you plenty of money to shop.

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Like faces in the community, the passing of each year bring the appearances of new car models and the disappearance of old, familiar ones. Product changeover is constant. Picking up a just-released model ensures you’ll be seen driving a “new” car until refresh time rolls around, or, if you’re something of an oddball, until the unpopular vehicle that tickled your automotive fancy gets prematurely chopped from the lineup.

It’s nice getting into a model that’s destined to look relatively fresh for three or four years, but it’s also nice getting a deal and saving yourself some coin when dealers want that old (and possibly executed) model gone. Would it bother you to find yourself in the second camp? (Read More…)

If you haven’t noticed, disillusionment is spreading rapidly through the population, and it’s afflicting young people the most. It’s based around a particular inequality in America that people in overseas countries can’t quite fathom. To them, it’s hard to believe Far Western governments would deny their citizens such a freedom.

We’re talking about the Suzuki Jimny, of course — a wee little Japanese body-on-frame, live-axle, two-door utility vehicle that’s just now entering its fourth generation. It debuted in 1970. A week’s perusal of social media posts tells me a subset of youngins don’t want glitzy show cars and promises of autonomous driving and touchscreens as wide as a sumo wrestler’s midriff. They want a small, basic, considerably inexpensive utility vehicle with respectable ruggedness and capability, but they can’t have it.

No. Fair. (Read More…)

In last week’s Part 1 of this three-part QOTD series, we asked you to scan through the old brain box and offer up good examples of used cars for the budget-minded motorist, keeping your purchase within a stringent $8,000 budget. Today you’ll get a more generous sum of money, but you’ll also find yourself subject to heightened buyer expectations.

Let’s pick out some really tremendous used cars.

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“Peace is not absence of conflict,” Ronald Reagan once said, “it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.”

And so it goes on the world’s roadways, highways, and, depending on your relationship with the neighbors, driveways. After the engineers are done gauging line of sight, measuring stopping distances, and calculating the necessary roadway width and angle for safe passage of a vehicle travelling the speed limit, we’re left to battle it out on the infrastructure laid out for us by city planners.

It’s a lot of responsibility. Maybe one day, perhaps sooner than we think, we’ll look back on such times and wonder how our betters at city hall or the legislature allowed us the ability to fend for ourselves on the road. Men and women, children and youth. Each depending on the closest person in their vicinity to not kill them.

Inevitably, conflict arises. And, increasingly (or so it seems) we’re facing conflict between motorists and a new breed of traveller: the disruptor. (Read More…)

As you read yesterday, Cadillac’s had its fun in New York City and is returning home to the Detroit metro area. Warren, specifically. It probably wouldn’t be fair to say it was chewed up and spit out like a naive bumpkin who travels to the big city, only to suffer the horrifying aftermath of decadence and experimentation. This isn’t Midnight Cowboy.

Nor can we say, without access to some internal info, that is was raging success. The brand remains a work in progress. There’s vehicles on the way that likely still would have been on the way had former brand president Johan de Nysschen, et al, stayed in Detroit. Does the name “Cadillac” ring with a more appealing timbre among the tony enclaves of coastal America? Doubtful.

Let’s assume for a minute that the Greyhound bus carrying Cadillac just pulled into the station, a cold rain falling over the terminal. How does the brand let its friends know it’s back in town? (Read More…)

This week marks the first of a three-part QOTD series where we’ll discuss everyone’s favorite topic here at TTAC: used cars. And for this first installment, we’re on a tight budget.

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There’s no debating the fact that I draw far more inspiration from older, classic designs than futuristic ones. Hardly progressive of me, I know. While some want nothing more than to gaze upon an autonomous egg and envision a life where the act of driving gives way to the act of commuting, face buried in smartphone, to me that sounds like a vision of Hell.

That’s why last week’s Peugeot e-Legend concept — an unabashed nod to an attainable French coupe of the 1970s — grabbed my attention. It absolutely looked the part, yet incorporated all of the things we’re supposed to lust after in 2018: autonomy, electric propulsion, etc. Compare the e-Legend to Mercedes-Benz’s Vision URBANETIC. Two takes on the future; one desireable, the other terrifying.

What Peugeot and its “Unboring the future” tagline attempted to do was show we needn’t abandon our emotional connection to a car just because it doesn’t burn gas. Just because it drives itself some of the time. But can anyone trust this rosy vision? (Read More…)

This weekend, Matt brought us news that Porsche is dumping diesel power in wake of the debacle at Volkswagen. Once widely used in Europe (and sometimes widely coveted in the States), diesel fell on hard times after the emissions fiasco.

“Porsche is not demonizing diesel. It is, and will remain, an important propulsion technology,” said Porsche Chief Executive Oliver Blume.

Think he’s accurate? Or do you think other manufacturers will ditch diesel?

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