“You know what our customers can’t get enough of? Beeping. All the fucking time, about everything. Ideally paired with cluttered-ass UIs that obfuscate the cause of the beeping. Fuck yeah, beeping.” - Every automaker on the planet, apparently. 

I didn’t think a 4,000-word essay on obscure vans would make me nostalgic for Germany, and then you just HAD to sneak döner kebab in there. Now I’m sitting here lusting for food that’s an ocean and a pandemic away. 

This. I just want to know if this is worth $32k, compared to some other car I could spend the same amount of money on. I’m done grading EVs on a curve; compared to everything else I could possibly get on the market in the same budget, how does the Bolt EUV stack up?

I’m sure everyone who worries about wearing out wiper blade springs is therefore getting their shocks replaced every oil change, too. 

Hyundai grille, Mazda front, VW middle, Mazda C-pillar, VW rear. 

The Energi felt like the disappointing younger sibling of the Volt. Worse looks, worse performance, worse degradation.

That Ampera grille hasn’t aged as well as the Volt’s. A Gen 1 Volt is still a looker after a decade: still futuristic-looking and interesting without becoming garish (*stares daggers at the Prius*). My nerdy heart flutters when I see them out and about, especially in Jalop-Spec Brown.

They’re keeping up...on the coasts. I can’t wait to justify getting an EV, but man, try owning an EV between the Rockies and the Mississippi and tell me there aren’t still sacrifices inherent to ownership. 

I hear ya. When the transmission on my daily finally decides to grenade, my first choice to replace it is an off-lease Bolt.

I was going to complain about winter driving in the Rockies, but minefields and any country you can describe as “prerevolutionary” kinda puts my problems in context. Have a star and a “congrats on surviving!” 

Toyota was clearly on the leading edge of this stuff, which makes the company’s reluctance to embrace EVs today all the more perplexing.

Nissan, 3 years ago: Carlos Ghosn is so critical to this company that we need to find illicit means of paying him even more than his already-exorbitant compensation package.

“Just works” is a severely underrated trait.

Oh man, come to snow country. The SX4 is the Subaru of Central PA.

Hey, look at the bright side: that car-sized box is a more interesting color than 90% of the actual cars currently on dealer lots, Mitsubishi and otherwise.

That’s a fair argument. It’s technically a bad test, since there are dozens of variables at play. And yeah, you’re not swerving out of the way of much of anything like that in real life.

It’s a good test. If anything, it’s better to use an unfamiliar driver; the average Joe is just going to yank the wheel and hope for the best too.

As a recent RWD convert, I’ll admit to getting a sick sense of satisfaction from inducing fishtailing and intentional oversteer. I’m sure the first time I plant myself in a snowbank will turn me back into a mature adult, but until then...

The winter special: you turn the steering wheel and absolutely fucking nothing happens.

And then there’s the feeling right after it turns out you didn’t have enough ground clearance. Is my oil pan punctured? Is the transmission punctured? Is my frame about to buckle in half? Is the temperature gauge about to spike?