Hammond takes this up a notch with in-car exercise equipment.

The Toronado was the first car to make many design elements ugly.

Nope, you haven’t, it’s just the Focus Active is so un-memorable that I totally forgot it had become a victim of tiny-handed pettiness. 

That car isn’t coming here either thanks to President Cheeto/Trump. Unless I’ve been living under a rock since August.

Sadly, it got cancelled because of the Trump tariffs... 

Knowing how the sausage is made is right on the money. Even with validation testing and pre-production drive fleets it seems like something goes wrong in the first year without fail. Sometimes it’s a design issue that somehow eluded the DFMEA process and sometimes it’s a supplier quality issue. The product is only so…

As a fellow Engineer, this was my comment as well. You really have to work in the industry to understand all the crap with suppliers etc that leads to constant changes. In some cases, I’ve seen monthly changes for a new product in production, because of how rushed the project was in the first place.

For once I have to disagree with a McParland column.

I worked in current model interior quality for 3 only months during a rotation, but during that time, I built enough excel sheets to show that yes, 1st model year DOES have more issues than other years. Running changes on the line are pretty common in any plant, so they do get better. Also, many changes in a mid-cycle…

If you buy an all-new model in the first year of production, you are a beta tester. Definitely better to let others help them work the kinks out.

A good friend of mine’s mother had a 2002 Windstar while I was in middle and high school. We’ll call the friend “V”. We actually did call V’s mother “Bob” because someone once said “Mom” with a head cold, and it came out as “Bob”. And the name stuck. Anyway, Bob and her husband—V’s father—bought the 2002 Windstar new…

No she isn’t.

Sub’s CVT is the reason I passed on them when I went to buy a new car.  I was honestly convinced I’d end up with a Forester or an Outback, but I couldn’t stand the CVT.

The corporate music machine has selected an “artist” for your consumption. Consume! She has characteristics!

Seriously. I’ve gotten used to not knowing who the musical guest is but I almost always know who the host is.

Generally speaking when the music guest is also the host it’s someone pretty well known.   Who the fuck is Halsey and why did she get the rare double gig on SNL?!

Methinks the problem is largely due to a fulfilling prophecy.

Well, can they at least make it not look so fucking boring? Same for the rest of their tired ass lineup. Remember when Subarus were quirky? They were cool because they represented a rugged, capable alternative to the mainstream.

Bringing back the manual transmission would really boost the coolness factor.

It hasn’t really been cool since the second generation bowed out. The following generations lost the rugged looks afforded by the lower-body cladding and became some ill-defined crossover thingy that is neither a Legacy station Wagon nor a Forester. Given the SUV/Crossover craze that took over the world, it won’t…