IIRC they came with a mix of both. The bed definitely had wood, it may have also had carpet. The lifting mechanism for the bed cover was also so finicky and problematic that it completely killed Ford’s decades-long relationship with the parts supplier who made it.

ND, you can get a more desirable spec for the same money. They made a LOT of these cars and there are far more of them imported than you may realize. I would have no qualms about paying $13.5k for one, even with a 4 cylinder, but it would need to be in better shape with a more interesting interior and lower miles.…

Counterpoint: This is more desirable than power upgrades, which IMO are not needed at all in this car. You can get an accessport and buy an E85 tune with a power bump for way less than the cost of a good set of shocks, much less adaptive ones.

IIRC the recovery rate for man overboard situations is depressingly low. Turns out it is really hard to spot an individual person treading water in the ocean.

My first thought as well. Chassis flex is generally a non-issue in roadsters that were designed to be a convertible first (ex: Miata, S2000), but is really an issue when you take a coupe and chop half the structure off. OEMs have largely figured out how to make it work at this point, but an aftermarket company doing…

Yeah this seems like the miss of the century. The squared-off lines of this really lend themselves to bein a drop top, even moreso than the Mustang or Camaro.

NP because this is a nice alternative to a pickup truck and presents well

This channel has quickly become one of my favorites. Love seeing all the wild stuff people send around that track.

This one might go for a lot because it is quite literally the first one to be auctioned off on a major site, but I predict this will die down quickly and these will start trading for MSRP or less. The market is not what it was a few years ago, and Toyota will be making an absolute ton of these. There’s no shortage of…

In 20 years, this is going to be seen the way we see the Electrek Uncar and other bizarre earlier EVs. I assume the value will be the same, i.e. basically nothing as no one will know what it is or how to service it.

This is a running, reasonably reliable car for under $4k. These are just odd enough that they have a following and some level of enthusiast cred, so you could argue this is an entry into that world too. NP all day, not too many options checking all those boxes.

The current Outlander actually looks really good by the standards of modern crossovers. If they can keep the design language strong, this will probably be appealing too.

It’s a little unfair to compare those since the Tesla has 8 years of reservations built up that they are finally starting to deliver on. The number of new reservations is literally just the number of them they were actually able to build in that time. I would imagine these level out a bit more over time.

I haven’t yet, but I would like to. The styling on those looks great and I think they are one of the better looking pickup trucks of the past couple decades.

This kind of anecdote is my favorite response to the malaise-era boomerisms about how Japanese cars were all crap that was trying to undercut red-blooded US automakers. In reality, basically everything coming out of Japan during that era was so far and ahead of the US automakers that it’s unfair to call them…

The Jeep compass is only useful as a way to sell high-interest auto loans to trashy women who work as receptionists at U-haul and immediately ruin the car further with bedazzled steering wheel covers and headlight eyelashes. It seems to be very, very good at that.

Mercedes G500, the W463 generation. I looked into getting one when I wanted to go from my beloved BMW wagon to an SUV that could tow my track car. Found out the old G wagens could tow 7000# and were actually pretty reliable, so it seemed like a neat candidate for a car that wouldn’t ever lose value. Then I drove a few…

It doesn’t help that they don’t seem to have a name for it yet. The article only ever refers to it as “Brad Pitt’s F1 movie” which is not exactly memorable. It also doesn’t speak highly of it, because the only thing we know is that there is an actor tied to it who is way too old to be an F1 driver and is not really…

I had the same thought. $750m to break even is insane - that is probably in the neighborhood of what Fast and the Furious movies need to break even, and those have 24 years of following and are arguably the most iconic car movies in history.

These kind of tariffs have historically either not worked at all, or they’ve backfired horribly. The chicken tax was a similar move against the VW T2, put in place by demand of the UAW because they knew American light trucks couldn’t compete. Flash forward several decades and now every pickup truck is enormous because…