Its like the suspiciously nice website room photos from low budget hotels vs the disgusting reality when you actually check in.

Yeah, because all that describes the sort of person who would buy a Subaru, visit a Subaru dealership, or even pay attention to Subaru advertising.

With an interior like that, I might not even care so much if the car actually runs. Just pull it into the garage and use it as a living room. A place to sit and read on a cold night while sipping a nice brandy.

With 4 in 10 US adults obese, I somehow doubt that a vehicle ideally suited to active outdoor lifestyles is high on the priority list for most car buyers.

They did not get turned down “by every lender on the planet”, they got a $23 billion financing package from a consortium of private lenders, with no government involvement or guarantee, in 2006, well before the recession started. The clever part was recognizing that they needed a lot of money fast to turn themselves…

Yeah, one of the saddest auto industry“what might have beens” to think about is what would have happened if Kirk Kerkorian had been successful in his hostile takeover attempt and reinstalled Lee Iacocca, as per the plan. Daimler and Cerberus would have never happened, probably not Fiat or Peugeot either. Who knows,…

HUMMER was also a stand-alone brand with mostly single make dealers, which made it fairly cheap to close down. Add in the fact they the only had two models, both selling like shit, one of which had to be cancelled, because all of its platform mates were being dropped and it wouldn't be profitable to build alone; while…

How about the myth that it’s illegal to drive without a license plate if your car is being used as a private mode of transportation?

Heh. Japan assimilating immigrants - funny joke.

Isn’t Japan’s population in pretty much terminal decline? Do they really need a new city? Is the plan for the whole place to be populated entirely with robots like in that Yul Brynner movie?

Look, the point is that the late 60s was an extremely challenging and precarious time for Volkswagen. How to replace an archaic, yet highly profitable model with a loyal following that was still selling extremely well and setting new sales records despite its age. And Volkswagen failed completely and expensively -…

Only after several expensive and embarrassing false starts and failures over the course of nearly a decade. And the Beetle still wound up remaining on sale for some 29 years after the introduction of its eventual successful replacement.

Surprisingly, a certain segment of the population seems to buy based on price and utility, vs. style and modernity. It's the same attitude that kept things like the Nissan Tsuru and Hindustan Ambassador going for so long, it just hasn't been seen in the US for like 30 years.

Also, the V6 gets a genuine 30mpg highway in the real world, not just the laboratory. Which is actually not far off the real user reported economy numbers for the 4-cylinder Mustang, a smaller, lighter car with less seating and trunk space. For what it is, a big, plush, highway cruiser, the Challenger is actually…

This actually has to kind of scare the crap out of product planning executives at Fiat Chrysler Peugeot. They have the oldest product in the segment, a generation older than its competitors, that somehow keeps performing better and better as it ages. They need to replace it with a more modern design, but customers are…

The Beetle stopped production in 2003, the nostalgic tribute to the Beetle is what’s stopped now.

Elio has been such a frustrating exercise in overcomplication and waste from the very beginning.

Like most problems in life, Ronco has the solution.

So, like New Jersey when it's raining?

I have it on good authority from several family members in law enforcement that you can get reasonable suspicion if you follow just about ANY car for long enough, because few drivers are truly perfect. Maybe you crossed the shoulder line briefly, maybe you signaled a turn too late, maybe you seem to be weaving a…