Maybe we should start by defining “American”. Is a Toyota Tundra built in Texas American? How about a Ford Fiesta built in Mexico?

When I were a wee Rosinling growing up in semi-rural Texas, the spiffy way to dress was to take your finest pair of Wrangler jeans to the dry cleaner’s and have them starched and pressed until rigid and shiny. The resulting composite material was uncomfortable, to say the least, but would probably hold up pretty well…

Well, that was way more about blinkers than I had planned to learn today.

I’m not surprised, but this still makes me sad. I’m not yet in a financial position to buy a new Buick, but the TourX wagon is kind of an attainable dream car for me. Most of my childhood, including the first car ride of my life, was in a Buick station wagon. As I think about starting a family of my own, I find myself…

There seems to be a kind of arms race that has been going on for as long as there have been airlines: a silent war between makers of instrument cases, trying to protect valuable and sometimes historic instruments from damage; and baggage handling personnel, trying their very best to defeat the sturdy-looking cases and…

I understand your frustration, but have you seen what happens to checked instruments? I would rather drive, or take a bus, or sail, or get a pilot license and buy my own plane, or just buy new instruments when I get there, or risk pissing off some other passengers. I'll even play you a song mid-flight if it makes you…

I got to sit in one at the State Fair of Texas, and decided that my 6'2" self would prefer something with more headroom. Maybe I could have made it work if I had adjusted the seat a certain way. But in addition to ergonomic reasons, there are approximately 50,000 economic reasons for me not to buy one.

I have given you a sadness star.

There aren’t a whole lot of questions to which the best answer is “Raptor,” but this might actually be one of them.

My approach was to buy an older vehicle that was already painted gloss black. Now the clear coat has been sun-damaged in some places, which are now more of a matte black. It's like black-on-black camo!

As an owner of a small pickup, I’m now seriously considering the possibility that a minivan might do most "truck things" better than my truck. The obvious exceptions would be towing and off-roading, but I never do either of those things, and my truck wouldn't be very good at them anyway.

I’m also childless for now, but if there end up being more than one or two children in my future, they and their associated accessories will most likely ride in a minivan. Minivans are very good at what they are designed to do, and there is absolutely nothing uncool about that. Even with zero kids, I can think of…

Good day, Buick. It has come to my attention that your range if automobile models is now in need of a convertible, and also severely deficient in glamor, character, chrome, presence, and VentiPorts. Look to your past, and see your future:

Neutral: My car has no active safety features, but since I drive in Dallas every day, and most of the other drivers are on their phones, I rely on other people's active safety features quite a lot.

Cars used to have DC generators, which charged the battery directly. Now they use alternators, which generate alternating current, as their name implies. The alternating current has to be rectified (converted to direct current) to charge the battery, but I guess the system as a whole is more efficient that way.

I’m not sure this really counts as a vehicle, or as driving, but one time I sort of drove a house.

There were three times I can remember when I dreamed about strangely specific cars. One of them was a black third-generation Pathfinder V8. I woke up, and I thought, "Did they even make a Pathfinder with a V8?" Sure enough, they did, and only for the third generation. Now I kinda want one.

$30,000? Wow, that’s almost enough to cover an ambulance ride and a brief hospital stay.

I want the noise John Finnemore makes when he’s trying to be “the man who makes the noise of the TARDIS”. Either that, or palm-muted tremolo picking on a distorted electric guitar, where the pitch and speed change proportionally with vehicle speed.

I'm not here to make dirty jokes about lubricating drive shafts. I'm just pointing out the potential for such jokes to be made.