This isn’t a starter car this is a finisher car.

This is true, I also worked as a tech at a Ford dealer and we did a little thing called PDI-post delivery inspection.  After the cars were dropped off we had to go through a PDI checklist before they ended up on the lot.    The things you mentioned would get caught in the PDI before the ended up going out to the…

Camaro IROC-Z.  If you are rocking the ROC I know you have at least 2 DUI’s under your belt, which also has a gun tucked in it.  I can smell the malboro reds and budweiser as soon as the door opens.  See Wheetus “Teenage Dirtbag”

There aren’t many supercharged, manual, BOF SUV’s out there.  If I recall the 3rd gen 4Runner had a TRD kit to supercharge the 3.4 V6 but that was about it.  NP.

I worked for Ford when they were phasing out the 6.8 V10. What I was most surprised about it was how smooth it is as an engine. One of my favorite work trucks to take out was an F350 we had with that engine in it. It just seems like it never has to try. The 6.8's are super low stress and are pretty reliable very…

Thanks actually a huge problem with how JD Power does their reliability rankings.  Complaints about anything to do with UI (software, audio, controls) tank the ratings.  A car can be perfectly reliable but have a shitty reliability ranking because the touch screen sucks.

The Ford C-Max, Taurus, and Flex went out of production in 2019, Fusion in 2020, Focus in 2018. So their reliability ranking is based out of cars that are 4-6 years out of production. Meaning a significant increase in reliability by a company wouldn’t be seen by CR until years later.  One thing I found interesting is…

My concern would also be parts availability for what are pretty limited models.  I’m not sure how much part sharing there is with Volvo since Polestar is a stand alone company but if they have model specific parts like brake rotors, control arms, ball joints, etc. they may be very expensive or hard to find down the…

I love it. It makes me think of what someone could do with an offroad machine utilizing Lucid’s motor/battery combo.

Either way, in my mind the Subaru should be in the mix and the Nissan should not be. Although I guess people are more likely to cross shop a Nissan with a Chevy.  IMO the Mazda CX-5 is the best in the segment but I’m biased because I own one.

Driver-computer request manual override to avoid hitting school bus full of orphan’s

I read the article about the first person to be killed by an AV. The programmers had backed down some of the sensitivities because the car kept slamming on the brakes when steam came up from vents. It caused the vehicle to not properly recognize a woman pushing a bike across the street and she was hit and killed. …

Maybe by sales the Nissan Rogue is in the trio but in my mind the Subaru Outback has to be in the mix with the RAV-4 and CR-V. The Subaru is just a much better car in every way than the Rogue- which is absolute garbage. This Equinox seems fine I guess.  There wasn’t much mention of NVH which would be my primary…

“Lohscheller who joins the Swedish company after stints with Vietnamese company Vinfast, where he worked as CEO, and Nikola Motor, at which he was president of the company.”

I don’t do a lot of math, but I’ve bent a lot of metal. Like I used to have a job title of “bender” when I worked at a factory bending electrical conduit. Steel bends unless it is hardened steel like tool steel (a drill bit or something) where it will snap before it bends, aluminum has a couple of bends in it before…

The PT Cruiser was absolutely a piece of junk. It was based on a stretched Neon chasis and was basically built as a compliance vehicle to improve fleet fuel economy- it was classified as a “light truck”. I did a power window motor on one and the gear mechanism was made up of a plastic gear set. The plastic was so thin…

The easiest way to show this is to get a piece of flat bar steel and flat bar aluminum and bend both back and forth.  The steel will do it for quite a while before snapping.  The aluminum will snap on about the 2nd try.

“EPA-estimated 16 mpg city and 24 mpg highway” Those are full on SUV MPG numbers. I’m pretty sure the other cars in this segment get significantly better fuel economy. The BMW 540i is rated for 26 mpg city and 33 mpg

Tries to merge, car slams on brakes, “I’m sorry Dave I can’t let you do that”.

You always hear the the M22 Muncie 4-speed “rock crusher” whines because it has straight cut gears. They most certainly are not. They are cut at an angle and the sound is due to less helical overlap and being cut at a different angle than other gearboxes (less steep angle/approaching a straight cut).