You do realize that the Texas electricity problem is because they decided to not be in the E or W electric grids and go it alone so they couldn’t import power, plus not paying extra to winterize anything. For some reason that square part of Texas at the top is tied in with the national grids and it was fine. 

A spring loaded flat thing is probably easier to make work than a 3d leaping cat.

The XJ was the most beautiful and distinctive high end sedan right up to the end. Its replacement should not look like a bigger XF like the original proposal but should strike out in a new direction like the XJ did ten years ago. Electric cars do not need a big grille. I suggest a sort of vertical oval, wider toward…

It’s silly season at Jalopnik again. There is one answer that is in the obvious ballpark, the Accord. Or something similar. The rest may be sort of amusing, but really what’s the point?

I was in Greece including a few islands a few months before the current not going anywhere period. The general car size was more like northern Europe of twenty years ago. Lots of Pandas and Puntos. 

A lot of fashion involved with cars in the US and EU too. One-box MPV’s (minivans and miniminivans) were selling great in the EU until recently and now those supposedly practical and high mpg oriented buyers are turning to similar sized SUV’s. A lot of MPV models have disappeared or morphed into SUV’s.

I think the Qashqai was the top selling car in the UK, at least a couple years ago. It’s the Rogue Sport here. They don’t sell many but I do see them. I don’t know what is happening in EU/UK or here with the next gen models. 

Both were widely reported to have transmission issues when they first came out, mainly it seemed with programming. They both ended up with reputations for questionable reliability.

Actually low reliability is the Achilles Heel of Chrysler. And Fiat in the US. And Alfa. Since Japanese cars arrived the baseline for anything is reliability, or the image of being reliable and not breaking. Which is earned by being reliable and not breaking.

OK, Saratoga then. Or Windsor, as in that family in The Crown?

1) Cute

That’s part of the Deming production management theory that American companies weren’t interested in but he became a god in Japan. But only a part. A lot of the rest is the we’re all in this together teamwork stuff that fit in with Japanese culture, as opposed to American individualism and white collar management vs…

Note: Foresters are made in Japan. 

The topic is replacing real leather with fake leather. 

Other than possibly polluting chemicals (tanning leather certainly used to use bad stuff in the old days) it does seem like the raw material of leather - outsides of cows - is pretty much zero impact as long as a lot of hamburgers and all the rest are consumed. In fact it justifies a bit of the environmental impact of…

Great stuff David. While not a gearhead or engineer or from a mechanical type family I understood spark plug wires and firing order at a younger age than you for some reason. That was pretty surprising. I did participate in some wrenching for a while but didn’t get to the welding rust heap stage. I was just thinking…

I think about how stupid I was rather often and am glad I don’t know anyone from my younger days who were there any more.

Once was way more than enough. 

Calling a gear inside a transmission “overdrive” is kinda bullshit. Is it really a .75 ratio? Why not just use a lower rear axle and change the lower transmission gear ratios? The idea of “overdrive” goes back to three or four speed manual transmissions being normal and then adding the external overdrive unit.

If your hair loss is in a typical male pattern it IS genetic. Anything else would be overall thinning or patchy alopecia areata. There can be some recessive genes floating about that didn’t get any relatives you know about and you lost the lottery. In my case, when I was about seven I noticed my very balding father…