Let's take the cynicism up a notch here. Seeing this man barefoot moved an NYC cop to reach in his wallet and buy a pair of expensive boots. NYC cops see things that nobody really should have to, but the image of this man barefoot was enough for one to give up a C-note. If barefoot panhandling can do that to a cop,…

While Giorgetto Giugiaro designed the M1, he was heavily influenced by Paul Bracq's BMW Turbo of 1972.

OTOH, VW is THE affordable diesel option in the US and they still only sell 85,000 diesel engines here in a year.

I must admit that I didn't know that dismissing a reply would delete it from the record, but I agree with you on this. I suppose it is a way of sparing the moderators from moderating. The funny thing is that now someone could post the most asinine, inflammatory post that they can conceive, and then dismiss all replies…

I think he rejected your reply and thereby made our conversation vanish. The people developing Gawker's Kinja...I guess we should be relieved that they aren't involved in anything more important.

Argh. I composed a multi-paragraph reply only to have it vanish into the comments system. I misread the article and though the recalls were all fire related. The high pressure fuel hose recall was certainly fire related, whether it went in the cause section or in the consequence one. Do whatever you want. Personally,…

You suggested that each of the other fires might have mitigating factors similar to the Sept. 7th fire, which you attributed to user stupidity. I had some fun with your faulty reasoning by pointing out that any users involved in two of the fires were people that customers can only avoid the influence of by buying cars…

Are retail customers actually buying 200s and Avengers? Sure, they're improved by most accounts. On the other hand, the competition for midsize buyers is intense. I can understand if people don't want to put their families in cars powered by the Ford Ecoboom engine and the new Malibu is a dog, but that still leaves…

There's no bigger gift than an ignorant customer base. How much do you want to bet that some of them rushed out to buy cars that still had the 40 mpg highway stickers on the windows, lest they be stuck with cars that were only rated at 36 mpg?

Two of the fires happened at the assembly plant. If you're correct that this is down to user stupidity, it is germane to the discussion that the stupid users are handling all of the cars before customers receive them.

I drove off a cliff once, but it was in a sedan. I wasn't wearing my seatbelt, which was closely related to how I wound up driving off the cliff. I was ejected through the windshield while the roof was crushed lower than the reat seat back, the driver side was pushed in past the center line of the car, and my…

944s didn't routinely suffer catastrophic engine failures the way early Caymans did, and more recent Caymans most likely will get around to.

I think this is a 1994 or 1995 Mustang, judging by the 4.9 under the hood and the surviving bodywork. You're probably right that he wants a car that handles now, and the Boss 302 Laguna Seca supply is drying up. No matter. The Mustang didn't save his life. The passenger compartment looks tweaked as hell and the car…

I'll go one further and say that the idea that reviews haven't been kind to it is a psycho-somatic BS. Car reviewers are almost universally in the tank for Porsche, or else they'd lose their year long loaner Carreras and regular invites to exotic product promos. The people who say that the Panamera is ugly are the…

I had the complete opposite experience with a 2011 Camry rental car. I don't know how many cars I've rented, but I know the Camry was my favorite. I have probably spent close to two years driving rental cars, if not significantly more. I hated most of them, including quite a few earlier Toyotas. The 2011 Camry…

It reminds me of the first SLK, except the stupid pedestrian regulations(double entendre intended) seem to have made them fit it with a Hyundai grill.

Ten years ago, there was a girl driving around here in a beater Lamborghini Jalpa. Sun faded paint, disheveled trim, interior trashed from being parked without the targa panel in place, but I saw it moving under its own power a few times. I can't say I've seen a Yugo in a while, but Festivas held on until the last…

You'd have liked living in Pacific Beach four or five years ago. I used to see Corvairs being driven almost every day. Oddly, they were all powerflite equipped first generation cars, but they were Corvairs being used by older folks for putting around town. I haven't seen one in a while, which is too bad. They're…

The race certainly wasn't down to driver differences. Valiants took the top 7 finishing positions on the road course and top three on the oval after the four leading Valiants crashed out. Why didn't Yenko modify Valiants? Maybe because he opened a Chevrolet tuning shop in 1957. Why doesn't Jack Roush modify Cruzes?…