@bygeorge: Audis 4000, Audi 5000, Lancia Beta, Lancia Zagato, Mazda GLC.

@bygeorge: Honda Accord, Honda Civic, Datsun 310, Toyota Tercel, Fiat Strada, Plymouth Reliant, Dodge Aries, Cadillac Eldorado, Cadillac Seville, Oldsmobile Toronado, Buck Riviera, Dodge 400, Chrysler Lebaron. Probably forgetting a bunch. I'll think about it.

@vavon205: Maybe they'd had trouble with not offering cargo covers on the previous Chevy Monza hatchbacks.

At my parents house, 3,000 miles away, I have a few car magazines that covered the model introductions for the X-cars. They were effusive in their praise. There were only the slightest of hints of issues, coupled with reassurances that they'd be fixed on the cars delivered to buyers. There were a few hints that the…

I'm surprised that the Charger can't go around turns. Joe Varde and Kal Showket used to clean up in IMSA's Champions Sparkplug Challenge with Chargers. My first car was a Horizon that understeered much less than a bunch of other cars I've driven through the years too.

@Alfisted: I had a 1985 5000S 5-speed. The climate control was flaky, and the dealer recommended door replacement when the power windows acted up. None of that would matter on a racer though. I don't think it deserves IOE consideration as much as a newer VAG product would. Mine put up with lots of abuse, some…

@ourtimedownhere: Hondas have never been particularly cheap. When I was shopping for a new inexpensive car in 1987, a Civic would have carried a 40% premium over a bottom of the line Ford or VW. A decade before that, you had to bribe the dealer so much that the average transaction price on an Accord was well out of…

@87CapriceEstate: I see the transmission issue being kept alive on the internet 7 years after it stopped being an issue for new Honda customers. One might be tempted to conclude that Hondas are pretty soundly engineered and tested if people looking to impugn them need to use a 7 year old example. Had you said to watch…

@gman1023: I haven't been back in ages myself. San Diego doesn't have much in the way of interesting cabs though. Ex-CHP Crown Vics and the occasional ratty minivan is about it.

@gman1023: The odd thing about the cab story is that I lived in NYC from 1999-2002. I took a cab to work almost every day. I don't recall ever riding in a 2nd generation Odyssey. The cabbies generally liked the little 1st gen hinged-door vans, and I was told they were more durable than the Caprices they'd replaced.…

@Tossed Accord Taco Salad all over Malibu's face: I worked for a Honda dealer in 1989, when they offered a practically exotic little Civic wagon with a 6-speed manual, AWD, and the top-spec CRX Si engine. The dealer didn't even stock them in summer and said the key to making money on them was only having a couple…

@gman1023: People who don't care for Honda often trot out the automatic transmission issue, but keep in mind that something like 90% of Hondas bigger cars sold here in the last decade have that transmission. If the issue was widespread, you'd see Hondas getting towed every day. There were real problems form…

@jalopnikfan: Did the rest of the oval collapse?

@jp182: Perhaps only because Ducati currently markets a replica of it, having found that their customers care more about a bike looking like a 916 than they do about how it performs.

@Tvaan: What progressive governments inevitably lead to is pretty important to keep in mind at the moment.

@jp182: The Honda RC30 was built 7 years earlier. That has a dating effect.

@nataku8_e30: I thought it was pretty revealing when Honda built a bike that took advantage of the V-twin rule breaks and beat Ducati at their own game in their first try with Colin Edwards in WSB.

Was there anything that made the 916 more advanced or sophisticated than the 1987 Honda RC30?

Personally, I'll give this award to anything from the Bentley Continental family by a mile. VW couldn't sell these imbalanced pigs as Phaetons for $63K, but they found plenty of know-nothings who'll pay three times that if you put a badge that used to signify a discounted Rolls Royce on it.

Considering he was in the process of starting the car in a closed garage, I'd say he is ignorant of more than just clutch function. Buy life insurance on the kid, is what I'm really saying.