honestly, you could have stopped at "it costs 50 grand".

wow, yeah, that is a nut scratcher for sure.

Well, it's an old body on frame design without the safety cage and crumple zones of a modern unitized body. It does pretty badly in the side impact test, for example. Newer cars have the airbags and crash structure working with each other, whereas the Merc is just retrofitted with seat mounted and frontal airbags.…

Well, it's an old body on frame design without the safety cage and crumple zones of a modern unitized body. It does pretty badly in the side impact test, for example. Newer cars have the airbags and crash structure working with each other, whereas the Merc is just retrofitted with seat mounted and frontal airbags.…

Ubiquity (e.g. Civic, Silverado) would not affect the death rate in these data. That's the whole point of reporting deaths as a rate. Rates allow us to compare high volume sellers with cars that are rare to see on the road. Further, those rates are age-adjusted to account demographic differences for drivers in…

If you read the report, they're clear that their data are age-adjusted to account for what they call "driver effects," for example, young men more likely to take risks drive sports cars, and old people drive big sedans, slowly. But some of those effects are so pronounced that they still show up, like the high death…

Patrick got it not quite right. It's not per million cars. The rate they use is X deaths per million registered vehicle years. It's a standardized unit that comes from epidemiology. It helps compare cars that sell by the millions to small volume sellers. Think about it as a" population" of cars out on the road,…

Gas guzzler. Reasonable MPG for what it is, but objectively not very good. Sure, if you can afford a Range Rover filling up the tank is the least of your worries. But if, as you state, you're more of a "arm out the window" driver then who cares if the thing goes 0-60 in whatever supercharged tiny amount of time; an…

Fun "fact"- Countach headlights are actuated independently, with a switch each for left and right. Chalk this up to authenticity.

Jesus. Even the Germans say "leverage synergies". Is no nation free from corporate double speak?

I dunno. I sure like going to monster truck rallies and cars and coffee with my sons.

I'm kind of with you: the word "drone" came along and seemingly arbitrarily took over. If I mount a camera on a remote control airplane or helicopter like they've been making for 30 years, does it become a drone? What's the distinction?

A modern corporate turboprop will zing the wings off a P-51 Mustang too, but try telling that to all the folks at the air show as a reason they shouldn't dig the 'Stang.

I dunno, if you're in the market for a large sedan with AWD, a V8, and manual transmission, this car doesn't have a hell of a lot of competition. Supply and demand, baby.

That's a great question. If I had to bet I'd say the autopilot disengages if fuel runs out. It makes me think of the both the "Gimli Glider" and also AF447 where the autopilot disengaged when the pitot tube froze over, I.e. something anomalous happened.

It has a third row. Not a very big one, but it's there.

5/10 seems generous for a car that handles as atrociously as this seems to. What merits a 2 or a 4? A 1969 Challenger?

Chaba Cheddar

How's that going? (Not buying Chinese made stuff?)

The R8 is an incredibly competent car, and offers more performance than most of us will come close to using. But it just doesn't stir my loins. It's handsome. It's striking. It's low and lean and slippery looking. Bad, even. But gorgeous? No. It's more like Michael Fassbinder than Heidi Klum.