Neutral: I bet 50% (or more) of all car buyers have no idea how many cylinders their engine has. Price and looks are what sells to the masses.

3rd Gear:

Great movie to watch during a winter storm with surround sound. Helps establish the mood. Also, one of the best opening themes to a movie ever.

I’d argue that’s even more than most people realistically need. Most cars would get by just fine on around 100hp.

New cars don’t need any more than 115 hp, at least not if it’s a diesel with a good gearbox. An example is the Volvo V70 D2, which fully loaded with people and luggage can perfectly keep up in the middle/outer lane on the Autobahn.

200 for a FWD midsize sedan is plenty...provided it’s a turbo 4 or proper 6 with early, flat torque and a halfway competent tranny. 250 for RWD or AWD.

If we’re going off the baseline of 2600 lbs I’m going to say 90 horsepower minimum and 180 horsepower would be a good sweetspot. I’ve got a 3800 in my ‘96 regal and it weighs at least 600 lbs more than that and has fwd and I can still spin the tires with it’s 200 horsepower. Give me a lighter car, rwd, and a manual…

If 276hp is the professionally acknowledged practical limit for a land mass like Japan’s, then we could reasonably bump that up a bit for land lumps with prairies in ‘em. That being the case, 330ish horsepower should be good enough for anybody from mother Russia to Michigan’s unreasonably short highway onramps.

My friends in high school teased me mercilessly about the low quarter-mile times of my car, but they were the types that thought that performance was only experienced when going in a straight line. Having been a frequent reader of R&T since I was 10 years old I knew that vehicular performance was defined by more than…

Keep your Miatas, the answer for me is always Fulvia. Its a small, FWD sports coupe with just 90 hp, takes over 13 seconds to go from 0-60, but not only is it a total hoot to drive, it also sounds much more sexy than any 1.3 litre V4 has any right to sound. And some say it is as pretty as the sun setting over Charlize…

There’s an old joke about the W123: “These cars are so well built they will last forever! Which is a good thing since it takes them that long to get anywhere.”

Anybody who grew up with or owned a Volvo 240 wagon. Sure the Turbos were fast in their day, but most of us never got to own one. This car was all about being smart on the inside and handsome in their own way. They were bulletproof and could haul anything. More importantly, how many of us had this as a first car? How…

The Morgan 3wheeler. Horsepower was...oh, who cares. It doesn’t matter. Top speed? Yeah, it probably goes pretty quickly. Numbers do not matter with this car. From everything I’ve read, just sitting in the damn thing will induce a grin that will last for hours after you’ve walked away; driving it would make the…

Alfa Romeo Montreal

Citroen 2CV, which by now everybody should know is a slow car. But in this case slow =/= boring.

Slow? Yes. Terrible gas mileage? Yep. Comfortable? Nope. Handling? Ha!

W123 Benz. Glacially slow, timelessly marvelous and reliable as sunrise.

DeLorean DMC-12

I find it funny how many people jump on the “Ken is just some rich guy that bought himself a seat and doesn’t deserve to be held in the same light as “real” drivers in the WRC” bandwagon. Find me one piece of footage, one quote in printed media where Ken calls himself the next Colin McRae, Tommi Makinen, or Sebastien…

He did race in the WRC and he was at the lower end of the average. But the important thing is that he never had any pretensions or illusions about his performance and capability; he was pretty realistic and down to earth. So yeah, he is a stunt driver and he is damn good at it.