I'm struggling with this COTW—since I do virtually all of my own repairs and maintenance, and I generally don't spend too much on cars, that rules out most really exotic cars, leaving very few that I can realistically say that I would buy but for the maintenance costs. Hell, I bought a Range Rover Classic even though…

If you're looking at a six, check for play in the front end—overhauling the kingpins, etc. is probably the most expensive fix on the car. Beyond that, everything is pretty stout and most regular maintenance parts are readily available and not that expensive. The mechanical fuel injection is pretty simple and…

I've owned two of these, a 4.5 and a six-cylinder. The six is not too expensive to maintain, but the 4.5 is a little dear.

Right, and if the driver is in anything more than a minor shunt, you can't win anyway—the damage to the car will simply be too serious. But it's not like Chapman was designing cars to *try* to kill the driver. He just wasn't willing to do more than was required by the rules to reduce the risk if it also meant…

Bravo, and well said! Too many people these days fail to value expertise and therefore feel they shouldn't have to pay for it.

You beat me to it.

And I see what you're saying—it's just that I think that the article was purposely sensationalistic and the comments are generally responsive to that sensationalism. People are imputing malice on Chapman's part where there was none. I don't see any ill will; at most, there is a conscious disregard of a risk of…

No Dashers in that photo, but the car in the foreground is a Quantum wagon (unsure what it was called in Brazil).

But the balance you point to is not really applicable to a cost-is-no-object race car, and certainly not to F1 in Chapman's lifetime. The object is to win within the set of rules that are provided. Chapman was willing to design in safety if the rules required it, and even if the rules didn't require it—but only so…

"He's saying, quite precisely - a car that wins races but kills people is preferable to one that does not kill people. "

I think you're missing the point (and I think the tone of the article was misleading). Chapman was not advocating building an *unsafe* car; instead, he was recognizing that a car that is so safe (or so robustly overbuilt that it could complete multiple races without needing to be overhauled) that it is not…

I don't find Chapman's notes to be callous at all, but rather direct and honest. You would never get such a clarity from Ron Dennis, that's for sure.

Do you work for free? Should your mechanic work for free just because you can buy an OBD-II cable on eBay? You may not like that your mechanic charges "35-80 bucks" to read the codes on your car, but guess what—he could be doing some other (paying) work rather than hooking your car up to the reader. And understand…

MFW Alfa officially returns to the U.S.

It's a "Triumph Acclaim," precursor to other "British" cars like the Rover 200 and Sterling 825.

Whatevs. I was pretending to be British before pretending to be British was mainstream.

Glad I'm not the only one who immediately zeroed in on this. The lack of editing on this site is usually annoying, but this time it was kind of funny.

"WOLVERINES!!!!"

The Chevy pickup in the original Red Dawn. I mean, what would be a better car for a group of all-American kids fighting the Commie scourge than the quintessential America-Baseball-and-Apple-Pie truck?

You know, I always thought the Bus was at odds with Kinnear's character, unless it is a leftover of the life he used to have before he became a mediocre motivational speaker. You see that part of him come out toward the end, but the first time I saw it, I spent most of the movie wondering why they weren't in a Toyota…