Don’t quite follow. Most cars in 1985 had no airbags, except for the S-class and maybe a few other German luxobarges, so safety ratings ignored airbags then, but now it would be unthinkable for a car to be sold new without an airbag. Standards evolve, the Zoe falls short of the present EuroNCAP safety standards and…

Indeed, back in the late 90s I tried to get my father interested in a Mazda Xedos 9, as I really loved the futuristic interior, but he was too much in love with his 1993 Rover 820 ti, which is another very decent large car from the 90s (solved almost all the problems the 1st gen had, and that new 2.oL T16 engine was…

Because it’s not required... The vehicle does have to comply with minimal federally-mandated safety laws before it can be sold:

Not quite, it used the same platform as the Mazda 626/Capella, which Ford then also used for the Ford Probe 2nd Gen. The Mazda Millenia was the platform above, and was called Xedos 9 in Europe and Eunos 800 in Japan and Australia. The front design is indeed similar, but the Millennia was a larger car (and a very nice…

Congratulations on still having your very well-preserved beauty. Mine was a 1996 gunmetal grey one, which I reluctantly sold in 2009. Literally went across half the world with it...  

1991-1997 Mazda MX-6, especially the 2.5 V6 LS version. Buttery smooth naturally aspirated engine and 5-spd manual transmission. Probably the best handling FWD car I drove except for the Acura Integra Type R (never had the pleasure of driving the Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9 or the Renault Clio Williams). The interior was a…

Not sure it is the worst, but it is certainly the stupidest. The Citroën Pluriel is one the daftest ideas to ever be put into production. A convertible where some specialized assembly is necessary to convert it. Good luck putting the roof up if it starts to rain in your open-air promenade, because you left all the…

I think the Peugeot 307 CC Clarkson drove in this hilarious Peugeot parody is a major contender. Completely awful design proportions, way too heavy, terrible performance, terrible handling, terrible construction quality,... 

The space argument I get, but the resources?... Those things are going for peanuts these days. The challenge is finding one that hasn’t been crushed or rusted into oblivion. 

May I present to you the wonderfully craptastic 1981-88 Renault 9, aka the ill-fated Renault Alliance in the US.

Codemasters Colin McRae rallying simulation series. The excellent graphics and unparalleled physics realism at the time just burnt way too many enjoyable hours of my time and punished with wear and tear my poor Thrustmaster GT Force Feedback wheel. It all got a bit more arcady with the Dirt successors, but they’re…

Yep, morituri te salutant...

The only saving grace here is that besides being on a hair-trigger, Deputy Jesse Hernandez had the same aiming accuracy of the Star Wars stormtroopers, so the handcuffed suspect Marquis Jackson was physically unharmed, though mentally it’s another story... That’s what happens when the police knows there are 400…

Thanks, I have ESPN+ for F! and somehow never noticed F2 was there too (ESPN+ does not carry F1 qualifying, so I usually have to find alternatives for that, so I assumed F2 was the same). 🤦‍♂️ In my small defense, ESPN+ is far more interested in promoting F1 and betting than F2... 

Great point, the survey is not about brand satisfaction, it’s about staying loyal to a specific vehicle, which is a proxy for brand satisfaction, but full of the caveats you mentioned. These results are completely misleading without controlling for those factors.

I think this is a factor, but then why doesn't BMW suffer from the same issues? 

I would expect Nissan and Infiniti to rank pretty low, but to see Mercedes and Audi at 24th and 25th below the Stellantis brands? My jaw has half-dropped.

This Veritasium video does a pretty good job of explaining how a bicycle turns.

This is a non-starter for me, as I like to see weirdly-shaped objects going around corners at seemingly impossible speeds and accelerating and braking at rates much higher than any car this side of $1M (a Formula McMurtry could be fun if their batteries could last 20 laps of a medium-sized F1 circuit).

There are many unresolved issues with conventional battery recycling, chief among which the toxicity and complexity of recovering the lithium used in these batteries, so I would argue a revolution in battery technology or in battery recycling is needed to enable EVs to fully replace ICEs at the US and global level.