Because the older, rich, conservative clientele of Imperial still wasn’t sold on the whole seat belt thing and probably weren’t going to use them.

had a bit of history to it, too. Was previously owned by the State of Illinois for use as the governor's official transportation. 

This particular one was also almost 30 years old. Not that that's inherently a problem, but machines do need more careful and frequent maintenance and more repair as they age.

This was the era when simply owning a bag phone marked you out as a baller, the Soarer was just extra.

The 25% tariff was in exchange for removing the volume cap on exports that had been in place since 1980, both of which had the unintended consequence of pushing Japanese manufacturers into building more expensive, higher margin models and pushing upward into the luxury segment

I have no idea how, but Car and Driver somehow recorded a faster 0-60 time with the Automatic than the 4 speed standard. They were both very slow, but, shockingly, not the absolute slowest subcompacts on the market at the time, which is something, I guess.

Its called unintended consequences, the law politicians rarely fully consider when making ones of their own.

This is similar to what CAFE did to station wagons and full-size cars vs. light trucks in the US.

Or you could work at my company, where there are literally a few thousand VPs, and the title is pretty much meaningless, since everyone in middle management and quite a few in lower/junior management is one.

Right - a surprise meeting with no topic or agenda, and then have a picture of your car slid across the table to you when you sit down. That feels like the way this would actually be handled

I don’t doubt that there are companies like that out there. I once turned down a field sales job at a big CPG company because it didn’t include a company car AND required that my personal car be no older than 5 years (earlier in the interview process, I had assumed I could just buy a cheap old Camry or Crown Vic and…

I’ve moved a 21" mulching mower in the trunk of a Mustang with the seat folded down twice, and once in a Camaro. Also, once in a Town Car trunk, but that wasn’t a big deal - the lid closed neatly with just the top half of the handle folded down.

Which is ridiculous, because it looks nothing like any Ferrari and wasn't trying to. There were a bunch of Ferrari kits for the Fiero, but Zimmer was explicitly trying to do their own thing. He'd have been better off with a stock Pontiac, the regular Fiero looks more Ferrari-like than this.

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…