Well, it is a handsome car: Its lines are straight, penned without a single purposeless dishonest swoop. That the late eighties 318 Mopar engine was only good for 140 horses is sad. My 1969 Dart was said to have provided 30 more than that on the smaller displacement version of of that engine.

That should be on a bumper sticker above the tag line: ‘Thank a Teacher.’

So, was anyone found to have been murdered?

Strikes me that my VW Golf’s 220 horsepower is more than I’ll ever need. I’ve had more, but only in pickups, and only in situations where torque seemed to have been the more appropriate standard.

Still trying to work out what particular set of creases underlay BMW buyers’ demand for adherence to “ridged tradition.” That said, this thing was a flawed crack-pot special from the get go. Too slow and short legged to a GT, without enough space to be a useful around town hybrid-electric utility runabout, and a…

A few of these Isuzu/Chevy diesel pickups were used as utility transports in a coal mine where I worked in the early ‘80s. They were faster and rather more flexible than narrow-gauge rail electric man-trips, and were generally well regarded.

Remember when ‘naturally aspirated’ described engines which were carburetted rather than fuel injected? Nowdays ‘naturally aspirated’ suggests that the engine is not turbocharged. An inline V6 may well be one which is oriented fore and aft to drive the rear wheels rather than being set athwart as in most front-wheel…

First thought upon looking at the photos of the Merkur was: ‘It is not nearly so odd-looking as I had remembered.’ Then the sad, demeaning faux-gated PRND lever rose up across the screen. That’s like finding that the toothsome lass with whom one has been chatting in a Soi Cowboy bar is actually a kathoey.

You’re right: The Aztek was only a prophetic forerunner of the myriad of gawping ugly lamprey-faced bottom-sucking cars penned (or CADed) by the explosion-in-a-protractor drawer design movement for the first two decades of the 21st Century. Though it is probably true that we are privileged to drive the most reliable…

Designing the fronts of cars has been a challenge ever since the front axle was moved back under the engine (late thirties). Some fronts penned in the sixties, seventies, even early eighties were not too bad, other than the efforts to comply with federal bumper-standards. The demise of front bumpers seems to have…

Loved your take on the vanishingly bland generations of the all-but-invisible Avalon. It reminded me of the late 1960s experience of driving my parents ‘65 Buick Electra (comfortable for six, cozy for eight high school sized people, auto-magic transmission, creamy white, fast and floaty). My cousin described it as the…

Agree. It looks as though the design committee for the back and the design committee for the front failed to meet somewhere aft of the B-pillar and just ahead of the C-pillar.

A manual transmission (6-speed) and a return to normal vehicle height - basically an upgrade of my 1991 F-150.

VW’s punishment is based on confession to improper acts which add up to the sin of willful heresy. VW’s necessary indulgences must come at a much higher price.

After 130 years of car design it would be difficult to draw any combination of two lines which might not be seen as derivative. That Bentley looks rather like a Chrysler 300 wanna-be. The shapes of all three of those cars, the Chrysler, the Bentley and the proposed Lincoln, ought to be preferred over the squashed…