My Miata RF had a great interior.  I get that maybe “luxury” isn’t the right word for it because it was still very small.  My wife’s Mazda3 did have a much nicer interior than alternatives in that class which is a big reason why we went with it.  

I’m not even a VW fan and I immediately though “VW hatchback.”

I really don’t know. We took a Limited (the “city slicker” trim) 4Runner all over the Utah desert and around the Alpine Loop in Colorado. We’ve tackled some dicey shit around Moab with it and it is mostly just stock. I see people rag on stuff like the Rav4 and Outback, but I also see those things miles out on the…

Our 4Runner came with OEM rubber mats.  They’re better than carpet ones at least, but I do wish they could “hold” more if that makes sense.  They get full of sand, mud, salt, or water pretty easily.

I’ve always had one and appreciate the piece of mind.

The outliers are all that make the news.  Just watch cars.com like a hawk and when a dealer within X miles gets what you want in stock call them up.  If you catch it within a day or two, they probably haven’t even realized it is there.

And Maseratis are so trashy.

This is why I wasn’t disappointed to find that the gas door on our car is just a “dumb” one that has a bump you grab with your finger.  My last car’s gas door would freeze shut all the time.

It doesn’t even take any real abuse. The dash in our car is all scuffed up just from some guidebooks being placed there occasionally during a cross country trip.  When cars get used, they end up looking used.

The best parts of Top Gear (at least of the actual parts about cars) are often showing just how bad some things about some cars were/are. The American version (at least the ones I’ve seen) seem unwilling to point out what is bad. I assume this is because they’re funded/connected/whatever such that they’re basically…

We have a really nice air mattress. It is bigger when packed and cost more than our tent, but it is actually pretty great to sleep on. I always think things like this look neat, but I can’t see the nearly 100x value vs a tent, air mattress, camp stove, etc.

They’ll just ignore it... like it appears they mostly already have.

I had a 2007 too!

They stopped serious engine development 20+ years ago?

I could drive my Miata RF as obnoxiously as I wanted and still get 30ish.  We took it on a long road trip in the summer.  Tons of top down time and tons of AC blasting.  We got high 30s for MPG.  It was nuts.

Our 4Runner gets mileage about as good as my 2007 WRX.

I have doubts that you regularly see high teens in an STI. I had a 2007 WRX which was the last year the WRX got the 2.5 liter before the dropped to the 2.0. Even at WRX outputs it was rarely even out of the mid teens. Admittedly that was all in in Boston area traffic, but it really didn’t seem to matter. The thing…

Stalling a modern manual (or really even an old one) isn’t something that happens much after the first twenty minutes of learning to drive them. The ones I’ve owned you could shift into the wrong gear or forget to clutch coming to a stop and they’d keep on trying to turn.

Wait until you need the clutch replaced entirely too early and the carbon build-up cleaned out because modern small engines actually hate stop and go.

Those are both MUCH less common than their four door counterparts.