I started with a used 2013 Fiat 500e. We paid $7,300 out the door and slapped on 44K miles in less than 2 years. My wife took advantage of the white solo-HOV access decal and the car’s range was just enough to get her to her office garage 55 miles away. With the white decals expiring, she asked me to find a practical…

Yep, glowplugs are nice but not necessary for my 12 cylinders of turbodiesel in coastal California. Maybe 5 days a year, I’ll see frost on the lawn but it’s rare to be under 40 degrees overnight.

So what happened here?  Overworked the engine, transmission, or do you really think a fuel line was punctured by debris?  10 minutes is an awful long time to go without traction.

I’ve long thought about buying a collectible exotic car as an alternative investment, but came to the realization that the maintenance and upkeep costs were beyond practical for me. Engine out-service, multiple-drain plugs, complex lubrication systems, etc would have me spending $2K-$6K a year. My evolution of…

Buy some plungers and put them in all the bathrooms. Yes, even the guest bathroom.

Didn’t the air bag do its job? What are the parameters in which they are designed to deploy? As far as I can tell, the car was in “track mode,” driver lost control, car went into a spin hitting over 1.25gs right before deployment, car ran over impacted cones, and the driver survived the spinout/impact.

My 68 year old mom drives the manual version. When I test drove the car I also felt the shifter seemed more like a toy than a piece of machinery, the clutch pedal was very light, and the friction point was higher than I would like. You get use to it after a few hours; however, I think the gear ratio between 5th and…

1st gear: Seems rather abrupt to cancel the 75kW pack just like that, but I get it. Higher margins, product differentiation, and more efficient Supercharging as a consequence. Not only does one get more range out of a larger battery pack, but that means faster Supercharging all things being equal because there will…

Ha! We love our 500e, but we paid $7,300 out the door for an off-lease model. We drove the hell out of it adding 40K miles in just 20 months.  Just last week we added a used 2013 Tesla Model S 85, but we’re keep the 500e.  The size and fun factor makes this car quite unique; it really is a great car.

Damn, I just bought a used 2013 Tesla Model S 85 for about that price. My wife loves the size of our Fiat 500e, but the 83mi range was a little short (60mi at freeway speeds) and she’d come home with 5mi left some days.  The Fiat parks so much easier...hell we can almost park it in the bed or our Duramax!

My advice would be to switch your lowest fixed-interest rate loan to “interest-only” and/or “extended repayment.”  This will lower your monthly obligation.  Then use the money that you’re not paying on the the lower fixed-interest rate loan and apply an extra payment to your highest interest rate loan and tell them to…

1) I hope no one thinks a car dealer is a fiduciary.

My first car was a 1989 Mazda 323 DX weighing in at 2,065 lbs. Yesterday I just bought a used 2013 Tesla Model S 85 weighing 4,700 lbs. Apples to oranges. The Tesla has a 1,200 lb battery and 900 lb motor/transmision. I guess the 323 saved a lot of weight without a 5th gear, no tachometer, no passenger side mirror, nor…

The amount awarded is basically a middle-finger to the dealership saying get your $hit together and don’t sell deathtraps as “cleared inspection.” Leaky fuel pump and cracked manifold (“danger to manifold”)...we’ve all come to believe that supercars self-immolate. Here the culprit is in plain sight. The dealership has…

My rule is unless you’re in a restaurant where tables of 10 are common (Chinese banquet style), I prefer to split the group up into parties of 6 or fewer. It’s easier on the wait-staff, skips the confusion of double-tipping when it’s automatically applied to groups of 8 more, you get seated a lot faster, and most of…

I was a “manual-only” motorist for 18 years until I crossed over into electrified vehicles. I bought my wife a used 2007 Lexus Rx400h, a 2013 Fiat 500e, and a 2013 Tesla Model S 85 (picking it up this Thursday). I’m a control-freak and love the sensation of feeling more in-tune with the car and road. The biggest gap…

If I had to street park in a city where your bumper cover is going to be trashed, I I’d just go “Mad-Max” by removing the bumper cover and just going bare steel.  It’ll give you about an extra 1.5" of parking too.  

I committed to an out-of-state CPO 2013 Tesla Model S 85 so my wife can have solo HOV access and knock out 8 hours of her monthly commute to and from work.  We’re keeping the Fiat 500e because there are many aspects of it that we prefer over the Tesla.

Musk is a pretty smart guy. I hope the next thing he invents is a quick fire suppression system that stop of mitigate these fires...not just EVs but I see a lot of ICE fires lately.  

I really couldn’t care any less.  I like to watch the game and the play by play.  Besides, anything other than the Hank Williams Jr stuff is fine by me.