First Gear: Upside of the Sedan Apocalypse, shopping mid sized sedans 2 months ago and there was 0% interest everywhere. Plus value wise, and this is just my opinion, but you can pick up a damn nice sedan for under 30 grand, which seems pretty good to me.

Sure people often have no idea what interest their paying on the loan, but they know that payment on the 4 square is high.  Also this drives me nuts, my parents are financially conservative and comfortable, but they did not know the interest rate on the loan.

It’s absolutely true that ease of getting in and out of CUV’s is part of their appeal. (This is why the Scion Xb had dedicated boomer fans.) On the flip side, finding a family with small children not sporting a CUV is about as rare as hens teeth, despite the fact it is noticeably harder to get toddlers in a CUV vs a…

I don’t think that charging time or range is really stoping EV’s from being practical for most people. One barrier I do see for many people, is just having access to a place to safely park and run a 220 line at home. If you have 2 EV’s do you need two 220 lines? Maybe its time to invest in self storage units as…

I forgot about the hoards of Tesla owners complaining about not being able to us SuperChargers when it rains. (Not sure I’d be brave enough to test it after a dip in salt water though)

I’m going to go one step further and say some sort of Chevy Volt style hybrid system being powered by the boat’s inboard motor. Then you would only need an electrical connection between the 2 halves. An electric only ultra low speed mode could be activated on the car half once the boats in the water in order to go…

My general rule of thumb for ‘beaters’ is a $1k a year. I think there is a good chance this will last 2 years, its relatively clean and in handy wagon form so NP.

That thing is a unicorn, I really wanted to drive and like an Accord Sport 2.0 MT, but I was not willing to drive all over god’s green earth to find one. I ended up with a completely different car also not offered with a MT.

As an uninformed internet rotary fan I have been ignorantly saying for years that they would make a perfect generator/range extender. Since I appear to be on a roll I will make another bold claim. Mazda would be perfect to make the first “Affordable” (non super car expensive) performance hybrid. With an electric…

Serious question, how are the Stinger’s rear seats?  I was going to look at a Stinger about 2 months ago, but there were no discounts around me and I moved on to a Mazda6.  I could not justify the Kia’s extra cost, it seems to me that this is what the 2.0T RWD should have been selling for to begin with but why do I…

My parent’s 2018 Crosstrek throttle tip in is bad, but its especially harsh when the drivetrain is cold.  On my wife 2018 Outback throttle tip in is aggressive but not harsh.  I thought my Dad was just being whiny until I experienced it on his.  

If my wife ever lets me I’m going to re-aquire a second gen NA Rx-7. If I had to do a rebuild I’d give it a mild street port, but keep it mostly stock. These third gens are legendary, but destroyed the rotary’s reputation. Not boosted to all hell they were reliable in a quirky old car kinda way. Sure it would be…

I had the 2014 Jetta version.  The newer golf version is supposed to be almost the exact same size.  My daughter’s car seat fit, it was just big enough back there.  for an adult up front and car seat in the back

This is tough, when my wife and I were making this exact same decision we went with a Jetta SportWagen with TDI (in 2014). Could not find one with manual, but they existed. It was a nice car but we had an awful time with a VW dealer, and it was of course bought back during diesel gate. With the bad taste of VW in…

I really think that stretching these cars out by foot would make them really desirable over their established nameplate competition. I needed to move up from my Mazda3 to something larger. I really wanted to be able to move into something with rear wheel drive and a stick shift, power was not super important to me…