Steve Lang just asked the question, Which Car Companies Do You Not Like… But Respect?. That brings to mind a related question, sort of an inverse on Christianity’s love the sinner, not the sin, attitude. What car companies that you don’t like make cars that you do like? I’m pretty sure that I can guess how our friend Mr. Baruth feels about Porsche the company, but the guy owns three of Zuffenhausen’s best.
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Tag: Question of the Day
At some point between now and Christmas, you will have a chance to see an old movie.
If you have toddlers, it will likely be Grinch related. Adolescents and tweens will get A Christmas Story. Teenagers? You probably don’t want to know.
But as for those of us who are single, or older, or just pain sentimental, this holiday movie classic will likely feature two towns that symbolize American community.
Attention B&B; TTAC recieved an email from Ford, announcing a new “people mover”. Anyone care to venture a guess as to what it is?
TTAC’s inbox was inundated this morning with reports of Hyundai’s revised mileage claims, which remove a number of its vehicles from the 40 MPG club.
According to Hyundai
Procedural errors at the automakers’ joint testing operations in Korea led to incorrect fuel economy ratings for select vehicle lines.
Maybe it’s time for a new way to measure fuel economy standards?
“Take BMW. In the near term, they will have nine entries in the compact segment. This is basically our heartland,” he told me on the sidelines of the Paris auto show. “With the brand reputation they have, you start to have a massive problem.”
-Gunnar Herrmann, Ford of Europe’s Vice President of Quality
The Opel/Vauxhall Cascada got a surprisingly warm reception on TTAC, considering that it’s a ragtop with humble origins based on the Delta II platform (thank you, readers, for correcting my mistake).
Every day seems to bring new tales of doom and gloom for Europe. Is it time for a Continental Deathwatch?
This essay, which likens supporting a sports team supporting a sports team to being in an abusive relationship, struck a chord with me even though I care little about pro sports. But what about you?
I don’t have any particular bias against American cars, but it’s fair to say that I’ve always preferred imports over American muscle, save for one major exception; the GMC Typhoon.
In the ’72 Dodge Tradesman Junkyard Find earlier this week, I referred to the iconic custom-van airbrush mural with “jousting knights battling Aztec kings in a zebra herd at the Mars Base.” All of those elements were seen on the flanks of plenty of Chevy Vans and Econolines back in the 1970s (though you didn’t often see more than one per mural), and— now that we’ve got the benefit of nearly 40 years of hindsight— we can think about what could be done today with the art form of the custom van. (Read More…)
The good old days of late summer 2009.
It was a great time to buy a new car. Monthly new car sales in North America had plummeted to under 10 million units. Access to financing seemed to be near impossible for a lot of consumers. Brands were orphaned. Leasing collapsed. Banks were picky. The future was uncertain and… raw materials were cheap.
It was a good time to buy new at a deep, deep discount. Has that time passed?
The SUV arms race has been over for a few years now, with four-ton, leather-lined, full-framed trucks no longer appearing to be viable as the middle-class commuter machines they were during the SUV-crazed 1990s and 2000s. Oh, sure, you can still buy the things, but Times Have Changed. If we are to draw a parallel between the Golden Age of the Muscle Car (during which Detroit slapped off-the-shelf luxury-car engines and $27 worth of scoops and graphics on midsize commuter cars and made crazy money) and the Golden Age of the Big-Ass SUV (during which Detroit slapped off-the-shelf pleather and Simu-Wood™ trim and $27 worth of badging on full-sized work-truck chassis and made crazy money), then we are now in the SUV equivalent of about 1976. If so, this means that, in another decade or two, nostalgia for Navigators and Escalades will kick in, just as it did for GTOs and Super Bees in about 1985, and— just as with muscle cars— the love of these absurd luxo-trucks will take on symbolic connotations of past glory, an era before nanny-state killjoys, and so on. (Read More…)
Reader Claude Dickson asks
I was watching Road Testament on YouTube and they were purported talking about the best fast cars to drive slow. Most of their suggestions were ridiculous, but the question they asked is becoming increasingly relevant if the question is refined to what are the best high performance cars to drive at sane speeds on public roads. The point increasingly made by many of your reviews is that fast track times or better performance stats do not dictate a better road car. A good example is your review of the new 911-superior in just about any performance metric you might select,- just not that much fun. So B & B, which performance cars put a smile on your face while driving around town and which just don’t???
Whether you drive a $30,000 or a $1,500 a car, one variable in life stays constant.
You want to minimize your costs.
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