As with the prior one, the new Passport is clearly a sawn-off Pilot, body-wise. I think that’s a bit lazy—if not as much as the Mazda CX-70, which is entirely the CX-90 with no third row and light changes—and would have liked to see it have unique side stampings.

I agree with those who suspect money laundering.

Saturn never made a dime.

Considering that Ford’s own Fusion—assembled in Hermosillo, Mexico—frequently came with drugs smuggled somewhere in the factory-to-retail pipeline...this doesn’t surprise me.

I think the FWD Cougar was what they needed at the time...but it probably should have been a Ford.

The founder of Buick himself had a similar trajectory. David Dunbar Buick, who was Scotch, not French, was ousted from the Buick Motor Company in 1906, receiving a single share worth $100,000 at the time (equivalent to roughly $3.4MM today), by William C. Durant himself. Contemporary sources paint him as every bit the…

It definitely seems like Honda has swapped with Volkswagen for “most elegant, easy-to-use interiors in the industry.”

My neighbor behind me seems to be doing reasonably well. She’s had a late-model “Mary Kay” Equinox for all the time I’ve lived here, in black. Come to think of it, she’s due a new one.

Then those customers are SOL, unless they can collect some other way. It’s kind of the same as having someone hit you who has state-minimum liability insurance coverage, which where I live is $25K /$50K.

In most states, a dealership has to maintain a surety bond in order to get their license. I’ve never seen it be less than $25,000. It’s meant to pay out in the event that they do something that violates state dealer regulations. Assuming they did, perhaps she can find out who held their surety bond (it should be on…

True, although a lot of gap policies have a cap on what they’ll cover, as a percentage of the vehicle’s value. It might be something like 150% LTV, which would still leave him about $40K in the hole.

Right you are. My mistake. That’s even worse.

Plus, if the point of getting into the car is to rescue your baby, you’re probably not trying to get glass all over the backseat.

Because fully-electric vehicles are quite expensive and put additional burden on USPS for making sure they’re charged adequately. Those are the reasons the entire fleet isn’t electric.

Why aren’t these gas-electric hybrids? They’re leveraging Ford running gear; surely they had access to the same hybrid system in use on the current Escape Hybrid.

I agree. I like Lincoln’s new implementation on the Nautilus and refreshed-for-2025 Navigator, wherein you have a big band of a screen that’s toward the bottom of the windshield, right in your line-of-sight.

This needs to be a full NHTSA investigation. I am 99.9 percent certain that his wasn’t the only truck so afflicted, which means other people are driving trucks with a similar defect.

I understand risk and opportunity cost just fine, and how it has to be reasonably enticing for a bank to loan money to deep-subprime customers.

Yeah, I’d rather have my car repossessed than get my kneecaps busted.

Hmm, I don’t know about this one. The sad thing is that the alternative to deep-subprime lenders like Exeter or Santander, or BHPHs, is the person being unable to get transportation at all when they desperately need it. They’ll simply be unable to secure any loan or any transportation at all. And that’s exactly what…