Because couch.

Unless you need the weight capacity of a truck or you’re doing super-agricultural stuff like hauling dirt, mulch, or worse, vans do make a lot more sense than trucks. Your cargo stays dry and secure. However, this:

I hope the chemistry problem with the other shows is cultural (both the culture of the nation represented and the culture of the TV network broadcasting it). That would give both New Top Gear and New ClarksonHammondMay a fighting chance at being good shows.

Kinda. It’s a gyroscope that maintains a constant RPM and then is rotated against its axis to produce a torque. They’re called Control Moment Gyroscopes, and they’re in use today, so the technology is hardly out of reach for the Galactic Empire.

How do people feel about FWD vs AWD in this class of vehicles? Aside from Subaru and their exceptional AWD system, I’m conflicted.

Even if the driverless car stopped suddenly, the guy behind is at fault. He ALSO should have left sufficient following distance and used that space to slow his car. “The guy in front of me was tailgating” is a pretty crappy excuse for rear-ending them.

I doubt we’ll see the 6-cylinder go anywhere. We’re losing the V8 because forced induction has trounced the idea that “there’s no replacement for displacement”. If power is all you need, the V6 turbo can easily match the old V8. And the future looks bright (and small) since Mercedes and Volvo have been doing insane,…

The Miller Cycle might have died out somewhat, but the concept is still around, frequently called or crossed with the Atkinson Cycle. Both have the same intention - designing an engine to allow the expansion stroke to be longer than the compression stroke. You get better efficiency but less power for the same weight…

A warranty isn't magical, but it IS based in statistics. Manufacturers won't offer 100,000-mile warranties if most of their cars won't last that long, because they'd be losing money. Granted, most warranties aren't quite that long, and 100,000 isn't really all that many miles. But it's still worth remembering.

I did watch that episode of Top Gear. I recall two key things from the review:

Well, downforce happens. Plus the electric AWD system probably happens. The whole thing sounds crazy, but it's not like Nissan paid a bunch of high school students to design this thing; they've probably got a pretty good grasp of what the power will be doing.

You realize we get a lot of the same engines here as you guys do, right? Sure, we don't have many of your tiny <120 hp engines - We still buy more power on average than Europeans, in large part because gas is cheap and our roads are big, fast, and straight, but not everyone over here is driving around in a Hellcat or…

What on earth are you talking about? Diesels in heavy-duty pickups are close to 800 ft-lb of torque. Sure, the axles are a little heavier than a 1/4-ton axle, but we're still talking about a single axle with, in many cases, one tire per side. I occasionally drive a diesel F-250 for work, and it's no more difficult…

It's a painful thought, but I reached this same conclusion recently. Like someone said earlier, I believe I may be driving my last ever manual transmission car, and I'm currently shopping for its replacement. Every brand new manual I've driven has been terrible. Sure, it might feel like a direct mechanical…

On a 2-stroke engine, yes. On a 4-stroke engine, no. The valves will open in the wrong order unless you've installed a fuel feed into your exhaust header.

Older cars use a goofy relay which flicks on and off based on heat. Two theoretically similar cars running at very slightly different voltages, being different temperatures, or having slightly different bulbs will blink at different rates.

This has been a great series!

I once said the same thing.

Because automatics are relaxing. In a toy, yes, I want a manual. But most of my driving is in the city with unpredictable drivers. Traffic around here is nothing awful and never stop-and-go, but there's a lot of variation in speeds, and plenty of times I need to pull out into a small gap or change lanes rapidly and…

To be fair, if the show was 100% quality science, it would be a lot less entertaining. Compare with Bill Nye - a good show with better science, but far less popular. It's the difference between an entertainment show which occasionally educates, and an educational show which sometimes entertains. Mythbusters is…