And it would have been even more modern if Andre had managed to make the automatic transmission idea work. It’s also worth pointing out the stressed steel roof—highly modern for the 1930s. Most roofs were soft, either with solid frames or convertible.

Yeah, that detail *always* bothered me. The styling was wretched, too, with the weirdly blocky red taillights, the pinched-looking front end, and a variety of fairly ugly alloys. The Accord was on a downward trend, too, but at least it was okay to drive.

It gets worse: I’ve seen a Camry with a vinyl top adorned with gold “Grand Floridian” script.

An extra 20 meters near the summit is probably quite tough. The limiting factor is the terrain, not the altitude and the Unimog likely had just a bit extra clearance/articulation/power to push further.

Done by the same guy, too. The limiting factor on Ojos del Salado is primarily the terrain, which becomes almost impassible near the summit.

I hadn’t heard about them lying about a record. Matthias Jeschke is the guy behind three of the records: Jeep in 2007, Zetros in 2014?, and now the Unimogs. The Zetros record didn’t beat the 2013 Samurai climb, but it did set a separate record for “trucks” and for diesel-powered vehicles.

You are right about the design differences...North American 505s had a different unibody to accommodate regulations. Worse, however, was the fact Peugeot had to detune many of its engine offerings to meet U.S. emissions. Performance was often bad or inconsistent as a result and reliability took a hit. By the end of…

All doable, but Mahindra wouldn’t bother certifying the Roxor’s old MDICR for the road, though. They would probably use the mHawk engine, which generates far more power and is intended primarily for non-commercial vehicles.

The version of the engine used in the Roxor is not used in tractors. Some of the MDI engine family is used in farm applications, but this is a much different tune. The engine itself is cribbed from a Peugeot design, but this is an old design and probably could not be used for any street-legal vehicle in the U.S.

Thanks for the history. An interesting factoid for this particular white car is that the turbochargers are no longer on the car. The original owner blew the heads so often that Wallace installed a heavily-built LM002 V-12, naturally aspirated.

Yet Tesla is getting the best customers: average transaction price of a Model 3 is $59,300 despite a starting price under $35K. The rest of the industry is at around $37K.

I agree that it’s too easy to criticize, and if you live AND work in NYC it’s not hard to have a car that seems used up by 70K miles. Erik made a perfectly defensible decision—pay the dealership instead of potentially paying even more to the City of New York and the tow yard.

It’s a joke of a brand for sure, but I’m not sure there’s a whole lot shared with Chryslers except buttons, switches, maybe some trim, definitely some electronics. Mechanically they are pretty distinct, and that V6 is very far away from a Pentastar by the time it gets installed in a Maserati.

I agree, and you can see this more recently a Cadillac, which almost missed the crossovers boat while pursuing BMW’s performance legacy, and at Chevy with the Volt and Bolt.

For GM it was probably less about engineering than about money and pride. I’ve read that Porsche’s decision to use Mitsubishi’s Silent Shaft system was mostly out of convenience—Porsche had developed its own patent on a balancing system, but for just $8 per car it could use a less expensive system that worked even…

Porsche licensed the Mitsubishi system out of convenience. When Porsche discovered the Mitsubishi system worked better than the more complicated one they were developing on their own, they simply paid the licensing fees. Mitsu developed its own system based on Frederick Lanchester’s early 20th century designs and…

115 hp/L was pretty good in 2012. The power figures map pretty much evenly or above every other high-performance naturally-aspirated OHC engine of the time. There’s nothing weak about the 1LR-GUE. In fact, aside from a few special Ferrari and Porsche engines it’s one that is most likely to hold up a long time under…

I would only include the Gen V LT1 and LT4. The LS7 and LSA should be considered pre-2010s.

The twin-scroll version from 2015 onward is not a bad choice. It’s a great engine. But Ford was not the only company to be killing off sixes with fours and certainly was not the first.

That makes perfect sense. Full damage control mode. It does make me want to look at i3 lease deals now.