Subaru has a lot of newcomers to the brand, and as this very website chronicled a few weeks ago, Subaru’s also been having some significant quality problems that coincide with their increasing sales. So, if you have a cohort that bought in due to the Scooby-crowd hype and realized their boring-ass Forester isn’t all…

An actual soul and eyeballs that still work. Subaru’s having quality problems (as recently publicized on this very site) and their stuff has gotten boring and fat and CUV-like. The most recent Toyota Camry I drove felt like a bad copy of a 2012 Fusion and I don’t like the look of the Supra. The only Honda I’d consider…

Re: Nissan-Just had an Altima SR as a rental. What abominable junk! Thing felt like driving a golf cart. I’d hit the gas, then wait for it to spool up before it started to actually move. Putting it into “Sport” seemed to make no difference aside from letting me use the flappy paddles to pretend the CVT was a real…

I would have a Chrysler 300 before I’d have anything from the brands you mentioned.  

X-Type gang represent!

Idiosyncrasies with an old Volvo are just that.  They’re kinda like 2000s Jags in that regard.  Random stuff breaks, and most of it’s barely minor annoyance and not worth going on about.  

So I have a dear friend in Wisconsin that’s a Volvo aficionado. Like, he has 8 of them squirreled away in barns and garages across the state (and he’s already let go of 5!). Volvos definitely have their idiosyncrasies, but they’re pretty much all easily resolvable. In the case of older Volvos, they’re sort of like…

What a massive inconvenience to have to mess around with straps and a safety flag, then worry about it all the way back to the house! In my current truck, a ‘95 F-150 long-bed, I load the stuff, put up the tailgate, and drive away. Done.

I renovate houses as a side venture.  I don’t own any ATVs, but I do haul plywood and drywall and 2x4s and lawn equipment.  

Not nostalgia. Usefulness. Quad-cab pickups are worthless as actual pickups. I can’t fit drywall or plywood or standard 8' 2x4s

Long bed or no bed. Crew cab pickups are worthless as actual pickups. If you want room for kids, buy a sedan or minivan.  I want to haul drywall and plywood in my pickup, thank you. 

The exact wording:

Not true. The upmarket features are there for profit profit profit. Alan Mulally said as much during his tenure at Ford, when he pushed for Fords to span a larger market segment and have lots of available goodies. Those goodies were pure profit.

I think this is a great take. It’d also get a lot of Joe-Six-Pack types into an EV and familiar with their workings long before the market would convince them to do it on their own. And, if the pricing for the vehicles was on point, many a fleet manager could be convinced by the lower maintenance costs and lack of…

The Hyundai Kona and upcoming Soul EV both look appealing, but then Hyundai/Kia do this obnoxious thing where they only sell their EVs in 10 states.  Mine, AFAIK, ain’t one of the 10. 

Neutral: Rebates are great.

And yet if the Civic driver were to pull his gun and kill the cop because he was scared (and who wouldn’t be after being hit like that?), HE’d go to prison.

Ford “Slip-to-Reverse” transmissions (1970s, largest recall in U.S. history until the GM ignitions)

Like a bloody mary, two tone paint is really tricky to do right.  But, it’s magic if it is.  

That’s what I ended up doing, too. I tried to get Ford to look at it several times, but they always wanted to charge me even though the car was under warranty.