What happened?! I remember you being stoked about scoring a new car out the door for less than $10k. 

When this is not engineered to its full potential, you get what’s commonly referred to as “torque steer,” understeer, where the power twisting the front wheels breaks the traction of the tire on the road surface, which then causes the momentum of the car forward instead of where you’re trying to turn.

So you love the Ford Ka for its interesting use of unpainted plastic wheel arches and good, creative integration of lighting? *ahem*

It’s really the cost that irks me for everything you mentioned. Option-for-option, the Impreza comes in $3k under the Crosstrek, and perhaps more with incentives since it’s less in-demand, and the mileage delta is 3mpg. And at that point, you’re within spitting distance of a Forester in cost, which is substantially…

My rides are a midsize sedan and a Miata, so I just take “not being able to see around traffic” as a given. Yours is a fair point; I just wish our roads weren’t full of lumbering Escalades, Yukons, and Expeditions.

Can anyone here explain to me why the hell everyone is enamored with the Crosstrek? Honest question.

Still from tickets, mate. Except now, the fellow handing them out won’t be kitted like they’re about to storm Osama Bin Laden’s bunker. 

Whoah whoah whoah hold up, is this the same Alec Moody of 3D Printed Miata Intake fame?

Now taking bets on “percentage of Tom’s day spent somberly shaking his head at bloviating morons on the internet trying to give poorly-informed financial advice to car buyers.”

Daw thanks! My neighborhood happens to fall squarely in the outdooorsy/eco-conscious demographic, so a walking tour of the driveways around here yields virtually every possible answer to this WCSYB—and someone had an Outlander PHEV charging in their driveway!

That just makes it even more a Jalop choice, on equal footing with getting a Packard or a Stutz.

Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV.

The fact that you used a highly-pragmatic Fit, rather than a $70k 3-row lifted SUV with the full I Can’t See Shit Out of This Thing Safety Package and a 15MPG combined rating, deeply offends my American sensibilities.

Jealous. I spent four hours first replacing my Miata’s slave cylinder, then replacing the replacement. Love spending a Saturday evening getting air out of hydraulic lines. 

If you want the main point, here’s your cheat sheet, comprising excerpts of the article. Doing this genuinely to be helpful, not to be patronizing.

I really wish we’d give up on comparing horsepower and use power-to-weight ratio instead. Today, we have higher standards for horsepower, but every vehicle is also lugging an extra 500lbs of airbags, electronics, crash structure, and grille trim. 

We’re looking to talk to anybody who ...has seen a car beyond fixing or any atrocious mistreatment of a car

Most indeed do suck right now. But give the Audi digital cockpit a shot and get back to me. It's a revelation.

Get a midsize truck. Why none of the authors recommended one boggles my mind.

Apart from the horsepower, that seems like the perfect M5 to me.