Seeing the video of young shitbags dooring bicyclists on purpose makes me wonder when some other kids will start messing with Teslas in Autopilot mode. What does happen if a Tesla in Autopilot mode gets gently bumped by another car?

The roads, some of them arteries, were designed for a variety of speed limits and thus promote driving at those speeds. They also did not think to resynchronize the lights, so there is a whole slew of reasons to speed. Going up 3rd Avenue, you have to stop at every second light if you go the speed limit. If you go…

We could also have a rule where a person waving a red flag has to walk in front of any moving vehicle at all times.

$237.71 in 1994 money is like $4,000 today...

I absolutely adore the 400/412, and I like the Mondial as well. The worst Ferrari (second worst, I just saw the Abbott-bodied abomination) is the F50. Those blobby headlamps on a confused and aimless shape in the vein of a Mitsuoka Orochi. Atrocious. Made even uglier by the fact that it succeeded the stunning and…

Aggghhhh! They were seriously running out of ideas, although it seems that they somehow hung on until 1972.

Nah, that was the GL5 model - early Quantums (‘82 and ‘83) had the 1.7-liter four with 74hp. That seems to have been a bit on the slow side even then, so the optional five-cylinder version was added for 1983.

Absolutely. If politicians and planners actually cared one iota about the environment, synchronizing traffic lights is low hanging fruit and win-win all around. But they don’t so they won’t.

Forty years ago, a Volkswagen Quantum was referred to as a sports sedan and a “Tasty Tourer for Middle-Class Sybarites”. It had 74hp and that was enough. No one needs 6.3 seconds 0-60 to join on a highway, unless it’s a faulty onramp design.

A V6 and auto transmission? Such an obscure combination of needs is definitely going to be hard to meet. ;)

It’s depressing how many of our vehicle decisions is steered by faulty highway/road design and absence of maintenance.

Never assign to malice what can be better explained by stupidity...

...and also the freedom not to have a monthly car payment, insurance, repairs etc. You can spend the extra money on an Austin-Healey Sprite or something.

I do hope they figure it out, because allowing the human population to gradually shrink a bit is really the best hope of saving our species. If we can figure out/discover an economic system which allows us to contract without suffering, then humanity will avoid some genuinely cataclysmic events in the future.

Mother Earth will take care of that for us, once all the insects have been killed. When I was a kid, an evening drive meant that the front of the car would be absolutely covered in bugs. That has gradually dropped off to near zero, to where I would immediately notice if there is a single bug corpse on the front of the…

5th Gear: Does this particular semiconductor shortage stem from Nissan using older semiconductors for their cheaper cars? I have been told over and over again that the these kinds are the hardest to get, as manufacturers are unwilling to restart production of outdated tech.

100 percent Toyotas - when everything in your life is chaos, a well worn 90's Toyota must be a genuine haven.

Whoa, you can literally see the Great Leap Forward and the resulting famine (notice the missing people who weren’t born in 1960 and adjacent years). Fascinating.

Not me, but a great uncle of mine had a 1949 VW Beetle. My grandfather had recently taken delivery of a 1950 Volvo PV 444 (this was in Sweden), and they had spent an entire winter evening arguing about the merits of their cars. The words “Hitler Sled” may have been thrown around. The next morning it was around -15C (5F…

Cobée is saying that while Europe and the world outside of the US are SUV crazy right now, this will change due to the factors enumerated. I say I sure hope he is right, and that the US perspective is irrelevant since we have such low energy prices and massive government subsidies for large, inefficient vehicles.