I remember the then-CEO of Saturn countering criticism of the styling by saying the Saturn customers didn’t care about style. My reaction at the time was that maybe it would have been smart to make the car somewhat stylish in order to attract some people who weren’t already customers. I think what she meant was that…

They were given a choice of assets to sell, Turner Broadcasting (parent of CNN among other channels) was one of them, but the others seem even less appealing and one of the likely and possibly favored buyers is Murdoch’s News Corp., parent of Fox News, which gives him the chance to either run CNN into the ground or…

Chevy Cruzes built in Mexico have more US content than Subaru Imprezas built in Indiana or Hyundai Elantras built in Alabama, but you know what else? Mexicans who have decent jobs don’t cross the border to the US.

Sponges were usually small enough, but my mother who grew up poor during the 1930s did cut the 3M scrub pads in half for use. Plastic bread bags, e. g., could be hand washed and reused for storage. Aluminum foil could be reused multiple times if you washed cooking residue off after each use. About the only practice…

But what, besides badging, distinguishes this from a Grand Familia/808/818/Mizer? Like most Toyo Kogyo non-sportcar rotaries, this is a classy, stylish piston-engined car given a factory engine swap.

Years ago at a literary event I had a conversation with author Michael Chabon, a self-confessed comic enthusiast who won his Pulitzer Prize for a novel involving the early pulp industry, and he commented that Big Barda had a significant influence on his adolescent sexual development. “Warped” may have been the term he…

Statistically speaking, that appears not to be the case. In addition to much of Chevy management hating the car because it was developed elsewhere and forced on them, Chevy dealers hated it because it didn’t produce warranty service revenue, which in turn led to them putting little effort into selling it vs. the…

Unfortunately, the tea drinkers in an office will also end up tasting coffee unless a second Keurig machine is dedicated to tea only. At which point using bags and the microwave goes back to the front of the line for me.

The ultimate step-saving single-serve convenience: GSI Outdoors makes a French press that is its own travel mug, the Commuter Javapress. Available in choice of five colors of insulating sleeve. Pro tip: dump the grounds and rinse it out at your earliest convenience because it can be finicky to clean if you don’t, but…

I must have missed where they were declared official policy, but if so it makes the argument that his deletions and edits are a violation of the Presidential Records Act more compelling.

Mazda 626 (GD) 5-door. Loved the proportions and Audi-like styling (down to using pins through the side windows running in channels underneath to achieve sliding flush glass; Ford wouldn’t let Mazda use the Taurus’ innovation that didn’t require such structure). In 1990 I wasn’t able to find a 5-door with then-rare…

I barely see silhouetted fingers on a hand, unless he’s supposed to be wearing a french tickler on his dong.

Don’t gas tanks from this era have drain plugs? I recall my ‘83 Mazda 626 maintenance schedule recommending draining the gas tank every xx000 miles so sediment didn’t accumulate. I never bothered, but I remember the plug on the bottom of the tank.

The only BMWs I ever even idly considered buying were a 525i/530i Touring or a 318i Kompact.

Autonomous cars regardless, it would be a big help for all drivers if municipalities, urban and rural, would keep up with routine painting of white lines at road edges first, with multilane markings second and yellow center dividers third. Now that it’s dark early in the evening, it’s a reminder of the difficulties of…

Self-discipline is a real issue, but for the last decade or so using a rewards card for your ordinary monthly spending and paying the bill in full every month generally earned a better return than the cash you deposited in a bank. The merchant premium is already built into the price of most goods, so unless you…

Long ago and far away, people lived on farms and in small towns and couldn’t buy mayonnaise in jars and didn’t care to make fancy French sauces by hand. They had plenty of fresh butter, however, to put on freshly baked bread and make sandwiches. Surprisingly, many such people, and their children and grandchildren to…

I have an old yahoo.com email address I still use for certain purposes. Some years ago I started receiving emails apparently intended for someone with the same user name, but should have been addressed with Yahoo!’s domain for a West African country. It was bad enough when I was just getting homophobic diatribes from…

Since most of the approvals needed come from the state and local government, the President/federal government can’t guarantee how quickly those come, although in some states it would be relatively fast.

There are several Mazda dealers who sell factory accessories on eBay at substantial discounts, even factoring in shipping. Many of them require only rudimentary skills to install. For my 2014 Mazda3 5-door I eventually got the fender splash guards, winter floor mats, cargo tray, cargo shelf, door sill trim plates, and…