Good lord. My least powerful car was my 2nd gen Honda Fit and I think I’d win the drag race bracket against the rest of the commenters.

I’ve been having unsettling thoughts about lowering a compact crossover and turning it back into a hatchback. Right now I’m torn between tuning and lowering a Hyundai Kona and tuning and lowering a Jeep Renegade. Out of the two the Jeep Renegade would probably be stupidest, but at least I can find one with a manual.

What I did in your situation was bought the Surly. Was an early Christmas present for myself at the beginning of December, the exact salmon pink Straggler that you showed in the picture. It is a lovely bike in every sense of the word, and I still felt that after using it to commute through Boston in the months of…

I agree, but the twins don’t have a cable throttle, they’re just as drive by wire as most modern cars. Between that and the torque curve, it doesn’t translate as a noticeable benefit. The chassis of the twins is way better, but throttle response is a bit of a canard... Hell, stock throttle response is one of the…

I mean, the FiST hits peak torque in the neighborhood of 2000-2200 rpm and holds it to at least 5k... You'll need a whole lot of "low end throttle response" to compete with that.

Just drive a Toyobaru and a Fiesta ST back to back. Nearly the same weight, nearly the same power. But because of the torque, only one of them feels quick.

Not that I regret the switch, but when I moved from my Fit to my Fiesta I immediately noticed that the Fit was simply better packaged, at least on the inside (the engine bay is a Lovecraftian nightmare). I gave up a fair amount of practicality and refinement for 80 horsepower. Hopefully the new one comes over in some…

To be that guy: the base engine in the current Honda Civic is the K20C2.

Yeah, the comment is specifically for the subset of Subarus. I’d personally just recommend a Hyundai Santa Fe or whatever their small crossover is, or a Kia Soul.

The newest H6 Outback he can afford. Avoids the head gasket and turbo issues, only downside is fairly atrocious fuel economy.

Nope.

My old Celica of all things had fold-out cupholders. The problem was that they were right in front of the shifter in the center console. This was illustrated to me my senior year of high school when I took a cute girl to Starbucks before class and then proceeded to explode two coffees all over my car, myself, and her…

You aren’t wrong about Bloomberg, especially BNEF, with their overall bullish outlook. That said, other research outlets (and full disclosure I used to work for one) are all roughly in agreement on the trajectory, if not the magnitude.

The report is predicated on output, if you read it. Their projections are generation, not capacity, so your argument isn’t valid for the data being presented.

I owned a 128i for about a year. I enjoyed the car, though as it was my first German car I was almost waiting for something to break. I had a few issues, one arguably major (the hood latch broke, requiring the mechanic to peel back a wheel well liner and force the hood open from below) and one minor (the belts wore a…

I think this point needs to be emphasized. Not the ‘nice open stretch’ part, the ‘in front of a speed trap’ part. If you don’t have the situational awareness to react to the cop ahead of you, you’re going too fast to be safe.

The very night I got my learner’s permit, my Dad took me over to the parking lot of the local middle school in the family minivan. We switched seats, he showed me the controls, and asked me to drive around the lot. Unfortunately, I had been playing a lot of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 at the time, with a wheel and…

I remember when my Dad took away my keys for trying to max out my (hand-me-down) car when I was 17. He also did something very smart when he lectured me. His version went, in essence: “That is a thirteen year old car. I never drove it like that, your mother never drove it like that. You haven’t looked at the control…

What you want to do is modify a fairly light car. Turbo Civic, rotated turbo WRX, Monster Miata, the particulars don’t really matter. A car tuned for output and not for driveability or livability will always have that hairiness that you don’t really get stock.

Rhymes with Celica.