Still one of my favorite stories ever published here. Ah the good old days.

This is a friendly reminder from your local office of the Save The Manuals Public Outreach Division that parking brakes exist and are generally good practice to employ regardless of transmission type.

My first thought regarding the MGU-K: “oh, that’s an integrated motor assist (IMA), like you’d find on a clapped out 2003 Honda Insight. Neat!”

The first two model years have what’s called a short nosed crank. It’s a design issue, not a manufacturing issue. Essentially if you’re doing any work on the crank pulleys, you damn better get your torque correct. It’s a relatively minor issue, alll things considered.

Time to test drive one and find out ;)

As someone rapidly approaching 29 and dailying a Miata, this comment terrifies me.

It’s for idling emissions at stoplights, not strictly mpgs. Which is why every European car has it.

Three people in a Suburban are using about the same amount of gas, per person, as a solo driver in a Prius. Carpooling: it ain't sexy, but it works!

The peanut gallery demands to know if you’re one of those “I say the AC needs a recharge but I have no actual clue what’s wrong and haven’t touched the AC button since the Bush administration” sellers.

I had this same epiphany a few months ago and grateful for it. For the price of turning my stock Miata into a safe track car, I could just buy a non-convertible track car. I can enjoy track days and still have a stock Miata for the days when the sun shines and canyon roads beckon.

I rented a newer Yaris last month and the shifter was actually decent! Long-ish throw, but precise and notchy. Unfortunately, the throttle pedal felt like it was connected to the engine by a mile of cooked linguine, so after two weeks I still couldn’t rev match consistently.

All good points. Not needing to carry oxygen is a big reason for gasoline's energy density, so it's not surprising that everyone is getting frothy over lithium-air batteries.

OK but just how Rich is that energy?

I bought a post-2007 generation Altima before I really ever knew anything about cars, and it’s...not bad? The catalytic converter issues with the 2.5L engines were seemingly sorted out by this point, and thankfully it doesn’t make enough power to prematurely grenade the CVT (unlike the V6).

I’m just thrilled that, for once, a Jalopnik wrenching article ends with “some rusty shitboxes just aren’t worth fixing.”

Fuck it, let’s get even weirder with it: Lucid Air. Give our man Bernd Mayländer 1,111 HP of pure BDE and let’s watch F1 drivers struggle to keep up with a big boaty sedan.

Assuming they were stock seats, did you fit OK after a foamectomy?

I have no useful suggestions, since there are no Communist bloc cars that fit the OP’s criteria of being, well, not a car.

“Hydropneumatic suspension” is always the best answer for a comfortable ride. She wants something smaller, so how about a Citroen SM coupe? It’s brown! Manual! Comfortable! Probably not terrible on gas!

Those perforated sun visors were definitely planted there in the design phase by Mazda’s engineering team.