The Pinto had less egregious reliability problems than the Vega, but was probably just as susceptible to rust. The absolute worst on the market at the time was probably the Plymouth Cricket, but Chrysler sold so few of those, its hardly worth mentioning. 

Chevy didn’t even want the Vega in the first place, their engineers had been working on ideas for their own subcompact, when GM’s corporate engineering staff forced the unfinished Vega project on them and told them to finish that instead.

If past history is any indication, the Kia version will be prettier and slightly cheaper. 

That was one of the smartest things Hank Hill ever said. Right up there with “I can’t enjoy a party until I know where the bathroom is”

This won’t share its name with the Mustang, just some styling cues. Its going to be sold as the Ford Mach E, not as a Ford Mustang Mach E. 

Well, I can honestly say I care about this at least as much as any other crossover on the market today. 

The general public cared about styling back then, they really don’t now.

I doubt they'll lose sales. The cars still have the blue and white roundel emblem on them, which is all most leasees care about. And most of the competition is also taking a trip down ugly street anyway. 

The interior is great, and I like that they found a way to do the trendy floating roof effect without resorting to a piece of shiny black plastic. That polished metal strip on the C-pillar is an attractive touch. 

You know, if the United States would dump the FMVSS and sign on to UNECE WP29 like half of the world has, this sort of thing wouldn’t be an issue. Automaker doesn’t want to sell a certain model here? BFD, just buy it overseas and put it on a ship yourself. 

I’m inclined to buy the argument that the same thing would happen with any car with locked doors, and also question why they couldn’t break the window.

Yes, this, exactly. Cars today are disproportionately tall as it is, to meet EU pedestrian impact regulations, and tall grills only highlight and accentuate that. The horizontal grille on that mockup helps to downplay/conceal the excessive height to the front end, making the car look lower and sleeker than it really…

Trump wasn't even President 3 years ago, or even president-elect, for that matter. 

Its thinner to save weight for fuel economy and to allow controlled crumpling in collisions, but it is NOT more dent resistant. Believe me, I know. I could carefully climb onto the hood to change the wiper arms on my ‘84 Town Car without the hood flexing in the slightest under me, but pushing a bit hard with a sponge…

Of course, most public places were done in quarry tile, asbestos composition, or terrazzo back then, so the floors could probably handle the abuse.

It sounds like this law just wasn’t designed to address this sort of thing.

And local news has a pretty low bar for professionalism to begin with, so that’s saying something. 

At least it was in the sink. I remember my grandmother’s neighbor snuffing out a cigarette on her new kitchen floor to test how good the tile was, or so she claimed. 

Given how thin modern sheet metal is vs 60 years ago, the new Explorer is probably more at risk of denting from climbing onto it than the Thunderbird, but I would not be surprised if that door strike left a mark, and you know paint jobs aren’t cheap.

An important point was that Cadillac was still the top selling luxury brand in America until 1998, when Lincoln bumped them down to number 2. Their products were not competitive, their sales and market share were declining, and their customer base was aging out and shrinking, but their sales volumes were still huge…