If you lose the exhaust manifold on one of these, or even crack the tailpipe, the car to which this hateful thing is attached becomes intolerable to drive.

I had an ‘86 Celebrity Eurosport with one and what was even more infuriating was trying to get it to stop knocking. The throttle-body injection system was total crap. But it started and ran, hatefully, in the coldest weather.

I wholeheartedly agree that most of these are basically the same old American junk, the only exception being the 547 GNX models engineered by ASC/McLaren for the ‘87 model year. The rest of them, aside from the turbocharged engine, were about as sophisticated as a Mustang GT.

As this was a 308GTBi it likely already had the U.S. bumpers removed (they are very heavy). And he did his best, it looks like, to pick the very worst model year for the 308. The only good thing about the ‘81 was looks and relative rarity because they weren’t in production for very long before getting significant…

Good point, Ford’s SN95 cars weren’t terribly quick. I thought ‘89 was the year the VE started, but perhaps it’s later.

I’m with you on Porsche’s choice to use a largely unmodified EA888 from Audi to serve as everyone’s introduction to Porsche performance, but fitting a flat-four to an MLB car is probably a no-go. The EA839 did get a special short-stroke version to be suitably sporty for the Macan.

It’s probably not the width (think Subaru) but the MLB platform simply not being designed for that type of drivetrain.

It is fitting. The Type 1 lasted about 65 years in the global market. I’m not sure if the ICE Golf will last to 2039 but it might in some market.

How were you disappointed? The thing wasn’t EPA rated for anything much more than 28 mpg city / 34 highway. The transmission(s) hold it back. The main benefit is in getting 85% of the capability of an Element in something that does get much better gas mileage.

The Maxima killing started in the ‘90s when Infiniti launched. The car had to be cheaper and simpler than Infiniti’s closely related I30/I35. They went from a true 4DSC in 1989 to a twist-axle car by 1995. The 3.5-liter engine resurrected its fortunes briefly, but when Nissan embarked on its CVT future the fun was…

TBH, there are only a few proper 4DSC Maximas, the top two candidates being the ‘89 SE and the last two years of the gen 5 cars (2002-2003) where you could get a limited-slip diff and Mustang GT-matching quarter-mile performance.

Agreed. One data point that makes the whole article a bit ridiculous is X5 sales in the U.S., which have increased by about 6,000 over last year. That represents more than double the total BEV deliveries in the U.S. so far this year. Another is the increase in X7 sales—about the same number as total BEV deliveries.

Maybe, but she’s got other problems, like getting called out by the state’s governor while facing a potential felony charge... who’s the bigger idiot here?

Oh sorry, I thought you were just talking about Jeep engines. Yeah, sure the GM’s ohv 3.8 was pretty good, briefly ruined when they went to plastic intake manifolds.

New Jersey is, I believe, a comparative negligence state, which means that juries can assign certain percentages of fault to each party. That means if he can prove negligence on the part of the driver (texting, not slowing down, not stopping at the scene), he can potentially recover a large portion of his damages.…

The last prototype appeared in another M-body, an ‘81 Mirada. Three Aspens were built, too, as well as the ‘77 Lebaron concept car.

I’m not sure there was a Buick option in ‘86. There was definitely the 2.8L GM V6 which a friend of mine drove to a very high mileage.

Ouch, maybe we have a winner. It lacks the in-your-face mediocrity of hideous penalty crates like the Trax or Kicks, the goofy pointlessness of the Ecosport, and the insistently dour malaise of the Taos and Rogue Sport. The Corolla Cross makes zero attempts to excite or repel you. It, like its namesake Corolla sedan,…

Oh, and the pointless tailgate-mounted spare. And the dumb drivetrain options.

Yeah, I was thinking this or the Trax. At least with the Korean cute utes you could tell they really tried on styling. This thing got mailed in.