Some auto makers even added bracing to just the side that is used in testing, so that only that side would be capable of passing the test. Randomly selecting which side to test would help there.

+1 expensive and +1 (if I could) fugly front grille. You’d think there’d be some aftermarket fascia to fix it. But from any angle that doesn’t feature the grille prominently, it’s a good looking car. IMO.

It’s a beautiful car, but it’s not going to sell well in the current market because it only has 2 doors and it is not an SUV.

Maybe TheWay is talking about the fuel pump cutoffs that are activated by the g-forces by a crash? There might be something similar to isolate the battery pack on EVs.

I wish I could give you more stars. While the overall average for reliability may have gone up from decades ago, I still question what other poor life choices people have made when I see someone driving a Mitsu, and to a lesser degree Nissan and VW. Also every Fiat 500 I see, which is probably just a fraction of the…

Really a lot of it is just the type of coffee you drink. If you use Folgers, you’ll absolutely need sugar and/or creamer. Lots of it. The quality of the coffee used to brew it makes a big difference, and a lot of people use cream and sugar to mask cheap coffee, not understanding that quality makes a huge difference in…

Bob can drive the living crap out of that thing, and it will just keep on delivering.

Okay, boomer.

If it’s really bad, they won’t bother with telling the passengers anything. Not until they have the problem sorted out.

Well, they were Bose. Not surprising.

3rd Gear: Toyota Holds The Line

Kristen Lee: Get off my lawn!

AV tech has gotten maybe 90% of the way there. The only problem with that is that the curve is approaching an asymptote.

With all the nannies enabled the GT500 is probably safer than the Viper, which as I recall had none. Of course I think there is also a detector circuit in the GT500 that automatically disables all of the nanny functions whenever the car gets near a C&C.

The only rule I stick to personally is to never ever trade something in unless I have positive equity.

Sometimes you don’t need maintenance records. A coworker is looking at buying a used car. He found a possible candidate on CL and went to look at the car. When he pulled the dipstick, it was dry.

R-1234yf is expensive all by itself. It might be cheaper to fill your car’s AC system with printer ink.

As I said: “Generally...” It can easily be argued that both the states and the feds have an interest in controlling pollution. But in this case, the feds are arguing that the states shouldn’t have any control over pollution that happens locally, simply because the source of that pollution was the result of interstate…

States generally speaking can go above and beyond Federal regulations. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have both Federal and State consumer protection agencies, for one example. Just because commerce has crossed states lines does not mean that the states have no say in the regulation of that commerce within that state.

In reality we’ve had two different regulations for decades: Federal and Cali+13 other states. From a practical standpoint, you’d never see a lot of different regulations because auto makers would refuse to build and sell to those markets. You are arguing to an extreme that would never happen. And California standards…