I am always happy to criticize the NYPD and have attended many a protest in my lifetime, but facts matter in a story like this and it does a disservice not to include more information. There is record of the person involved vandalizing public safety cameras around the city. Now, we might try out the rhetoric that…

This comment makes me happy. A world of Broncos rather than Explorers on the road is a hell of a lot cooler. 

These things can be true at once. If we had cars that required you to pay attention *and* all of the safety improvements in frame construction, brake distance, airbags, etc., I’d wager we’d have even safer roads than we do.

A real point! No matter how many airbags, automatic braking, blind spot awareness, whatever gadgetry, people still find a way to undo just about everything with their own commitment to stupidity. Part of my national mandate for standard transmissions is that you can’t steer, shift, and hold the phone at the same…

Cheers for this post. Eloquent and a story at that! 

Just a joke. A certain Jalopnik writer went around with brights on for a few weeks because he didn’t want to replace his Fit’s headlight.

Is nobody considering how prohibitively expensive the headlights are on these cars? 

For what it’s worth, this is par for the course with the lion’s share of vehicular accidents in NYC. I don’t know if it should make anybody feel better or worse, but I don’t think it was a politically-motivated decision to let the driver go. The NYPD does this with almost every crash involving a pedestrian or biker,…

My eyes could not roll back far enough in my head when I saw the crowd congratulating that one. How do people so banal and stupid manage to form sentences together?

For filmlopnik, some context to the Lelouch bit: for reasons inscrutable to me, Lelouch is a total convert to iPhone filmmaking in recent years. He’s been dining on out on remakes of great films lately, most recently with his second sequel (or third in the trilogy? it’s complicated) to A Man and a Woman, which he…

A decent number of cars – particularly German, in my experience – actually have push starts in the manual. Push-starting in first could probably put some wear on a few components depending how quickly you’re going and how much you spin the tires on the slowdown, so I’d stick to 2nd, but generally you can get away with…

All the other mentions are wise, but adding on the legendary Detroit Diesel 6v92 if nobody’s gotten to it yet. Thanks those workshorses for moving about half of America around through truck, transit, emergency service, and even farm use for a few decades.

Not for nothing, shut your eyes or look away and you’d be sure that was a V10 in that video. Smarter minds than mine can probably explain why V10s tend to have such a distinctive pitch, and it would only make sense that an I-5 would share the sound...

I know, I jumped when I saw this price. Comically low cost. My only wonder is whether or not this is a CA car and might be a SULEV car? It’s over 150k miles aka out of warranty, which means if the fuel pump goes the entire thing is done. 

As noted, cooling system (any car that has come remotely near overheating is shot), oil filter housing gasket, small things like window regulators, handbrakes are weak, like most BMW/Minis they burn oil, generally things you can live with. Biggest nightmare is owning a CA/MA/NY-based 325i SULEV spec car with the…

I could have sworn I remember at least a couple positive experiences but I could be dating myself. I’ll plead ignorance on that one.

In my incredibly limited sample size of cheap-cars-rented-on-vacation, part of me feels like some of the best steering feel to be had is from cheap European cars. The Euros are alright without the creature comforts we expect here, at least on their budget cars, so along with roll-up windows you get steering that’s…

Thanks for engaging with us cranks down here in the commentariat. Seriously. I didn’t have that article in mind, so I too was a little curious to read more, but I appreciate the note and your attention here.

Jesus, that’s a nightmare. Though my award winner always goes to the unlucky owners of SULEV-spec E46s (mostly California cars), where for reasons never clear to me, either a fuel filter or a fuel pump failure requires the entire gas tank being removed from the car for replacement. It’s a single unit sealed together…

But is it really a BMW if the oil filter housing gasket hasn’t failed?