The responses to this article pretty much confirm the dictum that if you provide people with a leading question, they will pretty much go along with it. Also if the proposition is negative, they will easily slide into ad hominem statements, as the first commenter in the string below readily demonstrates.

And forget about getting in and out of it in a garage.

I had a brown Peugeot 504 wagon with diesel engine. Unfortunately, it had an automatic transmission. Well built car. “Number One car in Africa” as they used to advertise on shortwave radio. I’d like to see them bring over the Bipper, which is the Peugeot version of the Fiat Qubo, a real microvan (versatile 5-seat inter…

I drove past the Toyota dealer lot in Duluth, MN recently, and every single vehicle in sight was a truck or SUV. The cars were parked out of sight in the back.

Because children grow up and car seats take up the seat room of an adult. We’re much more concerned with safety today than in those Renault 5 crush-mobile days.

Today's car mags are pretty worthless. They can't hold a candle to a mid-60s Road and Track or Sports Car Graphic, let alone Tom Cahill's thorough car tests in Popular Mechanics.

Distances between metro areas in the U.S. are very similar to Europe or China. There are the Northeast Corridor, the Midwest Corridor, West Coast, Texas, Florida. The individual metros within each corridor are less than 600 miles of each other, and that’s the magic number where HSR makes more sense than air travel.…

When our children were young, the easiest way to travel, by far, was by train. The kids can move around and there are huge picture windows to watch America go by. And it’s a different America than the view by car. I hate driving through Chicago, but I love taking the train through it. You see the backs of buildings,…

But why the modern day de rigeur oversize rims and rubber band tires that take up a lot of space but don’t provide added ground clearance? However, a lot of the look of this car seems to go back to the Fiat Ecobasic, which I thought was a very good idea.

W don't know which officer actually has the conn. There should have been a Korean pilot on board giving direction. We don't know the state of tides or currents. The ship is obviously operating under full reverse thrust. We don't know if their rudder mechanism failed. I'm sure it was panic time on board.

It can't be done. Lake Superior is full of pressure ridges and pushed up ice, like the Arctic Ocean. I was on it Monday. It's a hard walk, let alone trying to get a wheeled vehicle on it.

In much of the country snow melts. In Minnesota it doesn't and accumulates. The point of this exercise is to move the snow from the median over to the right side of the road so that in the next storm there's room to push snow there.

That is the ugliest van I’ve ever seen. It looks like they started with a Freightliner grill and forgot the rest of the truck. The windows are too small, and the space seems to be all used up by plush seats.

And I can tell it’s quite warm during this test. Warmer is worse, colder is better for traction. As the temperature drops, friction increases. Worst is around 32 degrees or a little above. At 40 below (real temp not wind chill) traction is generally not a problem.

I live in far north minnesota. Other people’s polar vortex is our normal. We regularly start vehicles in sub 40 below air temperatures and drive them, and the engines last as long as anywhere else. Just take it easy at first. These days, most cars don't have block heaters any more. And forget about windchill. That’s…

Windchill is a measure of how quickly heat is stripped from exposed skin. For metal objects, air temperature is what counts. A car creates its own windchill as it travels, so don’t worry about windchill. Also, good well insulated windproof clothing negates windchill, which gets hyped way too much. Here in northern…

Minneapolis-St. Paul is the coldest major metro in U.S., but Winnipeg and Edmonton in Canada are much colder, and that’s nothing compared to Yakutsk, Siberia.

Yes, it’s quite normal for the ice to crack and boom. It’s when it doesn’t do it that you have to worry. Just don’t drive over any area where there is flowing water underneath.

A wagon is a two-box sedan, low seat height and low roof, and that’s not what American consumers are asking for. BWM has probably polled the market for sports wagons and found it doesn’t exist in high enough numbers to justify getting into it. My short PT Cruiser “crossover” could hold more stuff than my sons much…

Sounds like you’re describing my Dodge Caravans. With the 3.3 liter engine, they easily go 250,000 miles with no major repairs, just tires and brakes, and that’s while being driven on some of the worst roads and severe climate in the U.S.