The fact that even car news sites are writing about the issues surrounding the Trump presidency shows how much fear there is about it. Sites like Jalopnik tend to be a pressure valve where many of us escape to from the stress of our daily lives. When the fear and stress about an issue becomes so strong that it becomes…

The difference (at least in Canada) is that government will staff a position if there is a chance that it will save a single life over x period of time. The private sector looks at the odds of a life being lost and what the penalty is if that life is lost. If the numbers make the odds of a life being lost and the…

Do you pay to access Jalopnik? If not and you’re just here like the rest of us, drive on if you encounter an article that you don’t like. Why should it be all about what you want? If that is the case, and you need a safe place where your political decisions aren’t called into question, go off an build an alternative…

COTD!

For many of us around the world, that is our attitude about the US after Trump got elected. Be it civil war, nukes from N. Korea/Iran/Pakistan/Russia, supervirus escaping the underfunded CDC, climate change, some other disaster, or a combination of all of the above, this is the direction that the US is heading in.

Without infrastructure, there is little reason to have cars.

I have worked as a negotiator and service manager on government outsourcing, and it has taught me one thing. No matter how much work you do to make sure that you get an equivalent service from the private sector provider, it ends up failing. You then end up chasing the service to try and get it back to what government…

Watch out for used cars from Texas in the coming months. I live in British Columbia, Canada and flood damaged cars get resold here by unscrupulous dealers. I was recently at a dealership where almost all of the cars were from the southern US (~2500 miles away). One that I looked at had mildew stains on every seat belt…

That was what gave me the utmost faith in Hans’s assessment of the car. A mechanic that knows whether or not the cigarette lighter is working to spec is exactly what you want for your PPI.

A cheap Rolls Royce is even worse. A buddy bought one and was devastated to find out what it cost to fix his dream car that he picked up for a song.

I had a late 60s Land Rover with a hand crank. While it left me stranded in places for a variety of reasons, it was great to be able to crank it over if needed.

1991 I am in northern Washington state in a MG Midget. It started running badly in the wee hours of the morning as I was cruising down the I5. I manage to limp it into a hotel just off the freeway, and then crashed for a few hours. I got up the next morning, popped the hood and discovered that the bolts that hold the…

It’s just a matter of time until they come out with a self-driving Ferrari.

#COTD

COTD

If you want to take the slowness to a whole new level, you have to try one of the TDI Syncro Westfalias. The addition of 4WD and an engine that self destructs if it is over revved, gives you a van that you need a very long run up before even thinking of entering the merge lane of a highway. The engine noise made…

If the dealership had been willing to sell me one, I would have bought one. I just got too many run arounds about how they don’t stock the base model as no one wants one, and that it would take months for one to arrive. I am sure that they had one on a storage lot, but the BS made me not want to deal with either the…

They end things quickly. Airbags and soft, rounded corners just leave you maimed and making bigger insurance claims.

They are ‘available’, but both the Honda and Toyota dealerships told me it would take months to get a base model van. They may have one squirreled away on one of their storage lots, but they were doing everything they could to convince me that I would be the worst person on earth to buy one. “You don’t want the…

I am sure that the first executive order signed by Trump made car-punching and feces-smearing legal.