How can you call it a "world series" if it only covers part of one continent? That's like having a baseball "world series" which is almost completely USA, or a Dakar rally which doesn't even visit Africa... oh.

Why does nobody understand this? The first phase of any traffic stop is a personality test.

Bear in mind that "recall" process varies very widely between countries. Cars are consumer goods, but they're in a really unusual position compared to other goods, due to the combination of (a) high retail sales volumes, (b) durable, (c) lots of churn and resales, (d) there are lots of things that could go wrong which…

Which would be worse?

Enthusiast forums can be a good way to go, but then you have to deal with a much larger proportion of sellers convinced that their heap of rust has been lovingly curated for the last decade, and who expect you to pay accordingly. And the sellers for whom ownership (or, at least, talking on the internet about…

Not sure about stalling, but shifting down into 1st for engine braking is a good way to surprise vehicles approaching you from behind, because you slow down rapidly without any brake lights...

The fastest car is a rental car.

My daily driver has a 5 litre V8; but I treat it like a baby compared to the 1.0 Chevrolet Spark that Avis provided on my last holiday. That thing sounded like an angry wasp, and I held it on the redline for hours.

Managing a global auto brand isn't something that China has been able to achieve yet.

German manufacturers don't have to deal with politics while they try to get a slice of Iran's 77-million-strong market.

Coolest roadtrip pic ever.

One of these days - inspired by Ed Bolian - I'd love to take my Mercedes CL on a much slower transcontinental journey, across Africa.

After all, a challenge is only as difficult as you make it; those folk who cross Africa on upgraded Landcruisers with a ton of equipment are just making it too easy for themselves - it's…

The D22 was (and is) pretty cool, but can they really make it competitive in a demanding market full of much more modern competition? Why can't Nissan do the same for the D44?

Just because a country has low GDP per capita doesn't mean it has no rich people; low per capita GDP often goes hand in hand with high economic inequality (corruption, undemocratic government, economic mismanagement &c).

Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

PowerPoint was even implicated in the Columbia disaster. I think that Edward Tufte overdramatises the problem a little, though.

The fashion for bloated misshapen SUVs is almost universal, but this shows the difference between markets:

Have none of you guys tried a bit of arbitrage? In some parts of the world, vehicles are much more expensive than others. If you're starting in one of the cheaper places (and pretty much everyone reading Jalopnik is), you can make a long overland trip self-financing by buying a vehicle and selling it for a lot more…

The Dacia looks pretty good - somebody put more thought into the conversion.

But here's a classic Mercedes bakkie:

Lower capital costs.

Airliner operations are dominated by operating costs such as fuel. The more time your planes spend in the air, the stronger the pressure to run click modern efficient airliners. Older ones cost more per hour / per seat-mile, so they're not popular with conventional airlines, pushing down the…

Glovebox, not gearbox. I make stupid typos, sorry.