Does she not realize she lives in the worst traffic area in the 48, along with the most vigilant highway patrol? There’s no car on earth that’ll make it fun to drive around NoVA. Get a go-cart and zip around the neighborhood for a little bit.

Your hamstringing is what a sensible administration viewed as mitigating blowback.

I’m not sure why they would. It’s just retail - they’re as likely to know a lot about European history or fly fishing or ceramics. If I was into cars and mechanically knowledgeable, I wouldn’t hitch my wagon to a low-paying retail job just because it had to do with cars. In the past when a job like that could pay a…

I’ve had two TDIs, and sold back the 2012 TDI SportWagen a few months ago. It was a superb highway car. Congrats on getting a new-old one. That mega-extended warranty evens out some of penalty you’ll eventually pay for the very expensive repairs on it. Very tempting to get one.

Volvo has the advantage of being based in a small, rich, progressive nation that has the ability to pivot pretty quickly and act as a giant experimental group for this. Sweden switched from driving on the left to driving on the right in one day, so maybe they can get infrastructure up and running quickly and serve as…

Sorry, the rationale stings a bit at first. But seriously, in the areas around the big city where I live, there’s just no room for it. Where I grew up, I could actually put the pedal to the metal. Just in my grownup age, efficiency of movement and space is far more interesting than power. Power’s the easy part.

Put your car in some sort of propellant device. Trebuchet? Slingshot? On the deck of an aircraft carrier using the launcher? Now aim it, statistically speaking, at someone you don’t mean to hit, shoot, and start yourself a lobbying group.

I don’t need you to have a quick or interesting trip. I need you to have a safe one. There are more cars on the road every day, and fun factors in less and less the more crowded and crumbled infrastructure gets.

Neutral: Don’t trust diesels anymore.

Late lunch is for cretins. Join the military and eat at 11 like I do.

Probably. But a vanishingly small percentage will ever know. And those are almost all accounted for by the R&D crew. The truth is they’re going to be spending a lot for crappy visibility to sit in the same traffic the rest of us do.

At my command in the Navy, the Command Master Chief (the highest-ranking enlisted person) once proudly told an auditorium full of junior enlisted about how he kicked a car while he was riding his motorcycle. It was before Christmas standdown, during which there is always a safety briefing reminding people not to do…

Buying a Subaru with EyeSight might be the best automotive decision I’ve ever made. It’s a transformative option.

Can’t find info on this yet - does the third row fold down flat-ish? And does it use premium fuel like the outgoing Tiguan?

The Subaru Crosstrek is literally just a lifted Impreza. I’m all in favor of that methadone getting us back to more reasonable cars. I guess I’m over the DTs because I just went straight to the Impreza.

Amen. I paid out the nose for one of those conversions that runs on Betamax instead of gas - still feeling it in the ol’ pocketwatch decades later!

I think this is a good step in the right direction, even if you have the chance to opt out. I hope there’ll be an elegant solution to this problem some day. I see a really disheartening number of people texting while driving.

I feel bad for people who buy too much car for their needs. I talked my mom out of buying an Outback, but just barely. And that’s not even an extravagant car.

If you’re into racing, isn’t part of the appeal doing some of the work yourself? Why buy this, if that’s the case? Or is it just for showing off like any other super-expensive car that never sees a track day?

This is another run-of-the-mill reason why I didn’t put an Ole Miss sticker on my new car out here in California. I’m from Mississippi, went there to Ole Miss for college and grad school. The Navy took me out to CA, and it’s where I’ve made my civilian life. It’s just...there’s never good news coming out of…