My Dad bought a 1986 Escort new for a commuter car. It was incredibly underpowered from new as you noted, I’d tried to convince him to get a Mustang 4-cylinder but the Escort somehow won, I think it was the supposed gas mileage. It did its duty for about a decade I think, and I drove it on a couple of longish trips.…

“Gleefully ugly” is a great description of that year Polara. I’ve long thought that was one of the ugliest cars ever mass produced. They do look appropriately terrifying in Super Stock form with the hood scoops and drag slicks, you would not want to mess with the driver of a car that ugly. The second-hood effect…

Well I take back my $1970.00 bid then.

The fact that one person survived (at least so far) the crash leads me to believe that it wasn’t going quite that fast. Maybe 80 or so? I’ve seen video of cars hitting roundabouts and getting serious air at probably 50 mph, it depends on what you hit to get a good launch. If it had been going 150 I think it would…

Well my favorite aero engined car is Leno’s Hispano Suiza, but if this thing hits the Ring they should bring The Beast out of its lair to challenge it. Probably both of them will need to refill 3 or 4 times per lap.

Re the trade in scenario: I wish I could recall the month and year and find an article (or letter to the editor)  that was in I think Car & Driver magazine many years ago, where a used car salesman wrote about dealing with a guy who had come in with a nice sporty / muscle car, such as a Camaro, which he traded in on a…

You would NOT believe what dealers are getting above MSRP for a Miura. I’m sure prices will come down once everyone can buy the crossover of their choice, so I can have my pick of 50 year old supercars for the price of a lightly used Corolla. Whole car market thing’s an inverted pyramid and once people realize that…

What’s amazing is that the regulations are such that the 1,000 or so cars Bugatti will produce in the course of a couple of years which collectively will acquire probably 20,000 miles in those years, matter so much as to require this sort of shell game. Of course, I’m all for shell games if they allow for cool cars to…

The first-gen Sebring convertible was a very good looking car, especially for its time, it just got progressively uglier and the last gen had none of the original car’s flowing lines and was basically rectangular. The author James Morgan, in “The Distance to the Moon” about his road trip in one of the first Porsche…

The main drawback of having the 3-Series or 4-Series hardtop as one’s daily or weekend getaway car did always strike me as being the laughable amount of space left in the trunk if you have the top down. Surprised to hear it’s better than the Cascada. The Mercedes SL is even worse in that regard, it basically is the…

Could be paired today with a proprietary dating app that would ensure that your date has a pulse and is not eligible for being declared legally dead (*in your jurisdiction, not available in some states). Or a little bit further in the future, that he/she/they has passed the Voight-Kampff test.

Their black outfits (from about 1932 on) were designed and made by Hugo Boss. Probably not on the company’s current press releases.

A middle-aged to older woman died a few years ago rolling her MGB not far from where I live. Alcohol or wet roads may or may not have contributed, but just not driving something like that as a daily would probably have saved her life. Also, and I haven’t been able to find the article again, a guy who literally wrote…

OK I’ll bite, you’re talking about it in the past tense, so what happened to it? You clearly put a lot of work into it apart from the money.  

Right? If I were in the position of buying my kid a first car, it would be the safest thing I could find. At minimum it would have to have an airbag, and not be susceptible to being taken out by a collision with a bicycle. I recall Torch told a story where he had his son in his oddball Nissan  Pao (which I do like)  an…

I think you mean “ceding” influence to China.

Please tell the powers that be to put Nice Price or No Dice back up on the masthead, it’s hard to find now.  I thought it was gone at first, and it deserves to be at least findable without rolling down through menus. 

Or—he just saw a cartoon with trees—though I do get the Sirens of Titan / self-handicapped angle. I’m not sure where the Ayn Rand references come in though, but I’m not that versed in Rush’s song lyrics. Can’t really make them out over all the guitar and in Geddy’s stratospheric vocals and intonation much of the time.…

White has long been the go-to for work trucks, but I find it doesn’t work well aesthetically on a lot of cars. Certainly not sports cars (unless it’s a Porsche and has the Martini stripes). People think having a white or silver / grey car will help them in resale, although there was a piece on Jalopnik not long ago…