“I don’t buy cars from people who have, or had, children working on a factory floor” - Then you can’t buy a car from any established/traditional automaker; Korean, Japanese, European, or American. The American Big Three each pre-date the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and significant easing on child labor laws…

If there’s anyone out there with a strong sense of martyrdom and is named “Mario” you could do the funniest thing ever right now.

I guess my controversial opinion would be putting the 458 in the “ugly” category, then. Hood looks like it doesn’t fit. Headlights are waaaaay over designed. Windshield looks like its bending under its own weight. Mirror stalks are hilariously long and look like snail eyestalks. Double logos up front makes the bumper…

The truth is that the pendulum will swing back towards compromise a bit in the next 20 years.
By 2050, all ordinary cars on sale will have a BEV version with 200ish miles of range and a range-extending-hybrid version with a 100 mile all electric range and 400ish miles of range with the gas generator.
There will be…

CVT’s would suck a lot less if they were applied properly, eg, holding a static engine RPM thats optimal for power or for efficiency depending on the user’s demands.
Half of the reliability and clunk of CVT’s are created out of thin air by automakers trying to simulate shifts with the damn things.

You can’t fit anything taller or longer than a Tacoma in the garages in my neighborhood...
So the garages fill literally to the gills with junk and the lifted F250's get parked on the street and create blind corners on straight roads.

I love the sensory experience of driving an electric car and I don’t think comparing electric to ICE is apples to apples in terms of driving experience- they offer completely different things and both are good.

The reliability of modern cars is more competitive across brands than it has ever been. Reliability Engineering is no longer a burgeoning field like it was in the 80's and 90's. It’s a science that is well studied and well understood by all- differences in reliability come down to feature and BOM cost prioritization…

My buddy in college drove a chevy truck from the late 70's or early 80's. Not in a cool way- in a “your grandfathers truck with 350,000 miles has been sitting in our back yard since he died and it’s what you’ll take to college, and the family of rats under the seat are gratis” way.

Anyways, we all came back from summer…

Think about the lateral g’s and braking g’s F1 tires have to handle- not just more than NASCAR overall, but probably an order of magnitude higher Jerk. The side walls of F1 tires probably aren’t armored but they’ve gotta be damn strong. I think relative to the weight of a little Kei truck, the sidewall impacts are…

People accepted a lot more ugly when it cost half as much. Did you know the ZDX was the most expensive Acura you could buy in 2013? Insane.

Also, despite the similarities, the Crosstour is on the Accord platform. The ZDX was a unique all-new platform. Probably one of the biggest investment losses of a major automaker…

I have a disease that causes me to like weird pseudo-SUV hatchovers, and I hate that I like this one. If the disease isn’t terminal, it probably should be.

Hey! Respect the OG! The Acura ZDX beat the X4 by 5 years AND proved that no one would buy them!

Skynet-1A having some alternative purpose designed in by Americans, with the explicit plan of it “failing” early and then secretly co-opting it is a great foundation for some sort of conspiracy thriller.

I predict by Q2 we’ll have an expose on how “lost bag” sometimes means “your bag was destroyed so we’re going to pretend we can’t find it”. A friend of mine who works at an airport I will not name in a distant state I will not name told me about a situation years ago where a plumbing issue resulted in a sewage backup…

Agreed. I figure if the number means anything it is most likely the total length of duct tape in feet. 25,000 feet would be around 150 rolls, which is much much more feasible.

If I resigned myself to just buying ICE for my next car, I think it would be this or the Land Cruiser. Glad to see a return-to-form for Honda, their latest round of refreshes have killed it.

Came here to say basically this. One of the first vehicles in this style was the Acura ZDX, which flopped hard, but I absolutely love mine. It’s the perfect way to have a higher seating position while retaining some hot-hatch vibes.

If you judge a fish on it’s ability to climb a tree, it will go its whole life thinking…

True, ESPECIALLY if I can still put the range extender on the base-trim model. Then they’ve got a formula that’ll be hard to beat by anyone, EV or ICE.

I mean, it’s only half if you don’t compare apples to apples. With incentives you might be able to get a base trim Scout in base color with the smallest battery for <$60k. An equivalent base-trim-everything Rivian is $70k, and we don’t have any idea what the specs of a base trim Scout are. 350mi range is certainly the…