Last year, news stations and police in Milwaukee, Wisconsin reported on an alarming problem. In 2021, some 10,479 vehicles were stolen in the city. That number is up from 2020’s statistic of 4,500 thefts. What happened to make car thefts more than double in a single year? People–reportedly sometimes as young as 12–have found out that Hyundais and Kias are apparently easy to steal. Two-thirds of the vehicles stolen in the city in 2021 were Kias and Hyundais....

I’ll get us started. Here’s what I imagine is being said: or perhaps or even You know, like that, but better. Would it help if you had a better idea of what a 1964 Singer Vogue was engineered? Here you go: There, I bet that helps!

Last week, we kicked off the series with the 2023 Newmar Essex, a luxury Class A motorhome with a beefy Cummins and decorated with real wood. We asked you to guess its headlights and taillights. Those of you who guessed eleventh-generation Toyota Corolla for the headlights and Nissan Titan for the taillights are correct! Today’s Parts Bin Puzzle is the creation of Ronald Heijnsdijk. In 2006, the mechanical engineer embarked on a quest to build his own sports car....

Well, not just Volkswagen Beetles, but they do make up an extremely significant part of the mix. In fact, I’d say the two most common Christmas-tree-on-roof cars shown are Beetles and old pickup trucks, often F100s or ’50s-era Chevy 3100 trucks, or the sorta genericized versions of them. Trucks are almost always the bulbous, fat-fendered ’50s sort, and the Beetle category includes a lot of cars I think people mistake for Beetles, especially in profile (in America at least), like Fiat 600s or Citroën 2CVs....

In fact, the rest of the ISS partners are in a better place than ever before, because unlike Russia’s threat to leave back in 2014, this time NASA and ESA and Japan and the other ISS partner countries have a way to get to the orbital lab without relying on Russian Soyuz capsules, thanks to the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules that have been ferrying crews to the ISS and back since 2020....

True, yes. But as I said before, I’m not including that glorious yellow Corvair that David found in this weekly finals competition. We here at Shitbox Showdown, Inc. have a strict $2,500 price cutoff, and I’m sorry, but the Corvair is over the line. This ain’t the wild west; this is Shitbox Showdown. There are rules. But before the final vote, we need find out who our last finalist is, between that sweet V8 Chevy pickup and the straight six Ford:...

Yes, this bonkers creation is a Miata – I think an NB? – that’s wearing the dead skin of a Dauphine, sort of an automotive version of the Mesoamerican god Xipe Totec, who was always portrayed wearing someone else’s flayed skin. Like Xipe Totec, this combination is likely to conjure up feelings of alarm, maybe terror, but in this case the fun variety instead of the scary-god variety. It’s incredible how well the Dauphine’s wheelbase aligns with a Miata, especially when you consider the Dauphine was a four-door family car....

According to the press release for the Windstar Solutions, this one-off vehicle was borne from Ford and Maytag research that delved into the lifestyle demands of busy parents. Record numbers of working mothers were a myopic fixation for project coordinators and as a result, the coolest Windstar of all time came with a similarly focused series of press shots. I’m not sure whether this photo set was meant to depict the freedom and responsibilities that come with single parenthood or the hectic schedule of a business dad that sees him working long hours away from the family, but hey....

[Full disclosure: Volvo Cars Canada let me borrow this XC60 for a week so long as I returned it with a full tank of premium fuel and wrote a review of it.] [Editor’s Note: Welcome to Sensible Car Reviews! This is where we review “boring” cars. Why? Because Thomas really, really likes sensible cars, and we all like that he likes them, because they’re what most people are buying. So, between the exciting stuff, you’ll see these: Sensible Car Reviews....

First, a note about fashion. Barbiecore has been taking off recently, partly thanks to the upcoming Barbie film and partly thanks to trends generally working in 20-year cycles. Once the economy rebounded from the dotcom bubble crash of the new millennium, conspicuous consumption was in. Headrests with built-in televisions, Juicy Couture sweatsuits, a level of almost overwhelming maximalism that just so happens to play fairly well with Barbie’s image. In addition, the aggressively pink aesthetic serves as one rejection of the nauseating minimalism that dominated the latter half of the 2010s....

These speed-reduction devices seem to be popping up in more and more places these days, and if you live in India, they are absolutely everywhere — even in the middle of highways. In the U.S. and pretty much everywhere, residential areas seem to be the favorite places for them to breed; their rate of multiplication tends to match that of local residents. In my years of driving I’ve noticed different ways people cross these dreaded things and I’ve boiled those methods down to three strategies:...

Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. Hyundai Gazes The Stars Aw hell yeah, it’s van time. Hyundai’s been absolutely killing it with some dope vans lately, from the Blade Runner-esque Staria to the incredibly handsome Custo....

Let’s start with the powertrain. Renault has essentially taken the Renault 5 concept and widened the rear track by a lot to stuff two electric motors where your shopping would normally go. The zero-to-62 mph (0-100 km/h) dash is dispatched within just 3.5 seconds, seriously impressive stuff for a rear-wheel-drive EV. However, sheer acceleration isn’t the Renault 5 Turbo 3E concept’s main party piece. That would be drifting. See, Renault thinks drifting is cool and is absolutely right in that assumption....

This need was alerted to me via Twitter, when I was tagged in a post discussing a recent Jalopnik article about all the wagons currently for sale in the 2023 model year: — Michael Sobczak (@thatsMrSOB) August 31, 2022 The subsequent thread of twitter-fighting about what is or isn’t a wagon was my wake up call that my people need me, and that this madness must be stopped. We all need to agree on just what makes a wagon, which is why I implore you to pay attention....

And it falls squarely into “The kind of shit we’d do here at The Autopian if we ever got some actual money.” Luckily, the cheerful and perhaps slightly deranged Brits at CarWow are on the same page as us. Check out their latest drag race for something really new and different. Forget the supercars. This is a contest of speed—and I use that word in the loosest sense possible here—between five vintage microcars meant for city transportation, deliveries or pleasure....

Wow. Not a lot of love for the Mustang II in the room. The Angels will be so disappointed. Anyway, let’s talk about buttons. It may be hard to imagine, when faced with the featureless monolith of a Tesla interior, but there was a time when buttons on a car’s dashboard (or even better, steering wheel) were a status symbol. The more buttons, the higher the level of trim. But it wasn’t just confined to luxury cars: My Government-spec 1989 Chevy truck has buttons to control the radio and HVAC systems, with nary a knob or slider in sight....

Two Air France pilots are reportedly under suspension after physically fighting each other in the cockpit after takeoff. French newspaper La Tribune reported that one pilot struck the other before the pilots grabbed each other by the collars and an object was thrown. Cabin crew reportedly intervened and one crew member is said to have acted as a sort of peacemaker for the duration of the flight. The altercation is said to have taken place in June on a flight from Geneva to Paris and is giving shades of Beavis and Butthead Do America, only the people who are supposed to be flying the damn plane are the ones out of pocket....

Between the Los Angeles Auto Show, the holidays, and now having contracted COVID-19, I missed another week of Triple M car finds. So this week, we’re making up for lost time by cranking things up to 11. Did you want to buy a Peugeot camper? Maybe a BMW Z1? Well, I have that and more for you! I search the entire country for a good balance of price and vehicle condition....

The first video is this one, posted by Seattle-area Tesla-focused YouTuber Gali on his channel HyperChange, shows his Model 3 (using FSD version 10.11.2) getting quite confused at an intersection and making the decision to turn the wrong way down a one-way street: — Taylor Ogan (@TaylorOgan) June 30, 2022 By the way, the author of the video has received blowback from other Tesla enthusiasts: — Gali (@Gfilche) July 3, 2022 Ugh, these people....

Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. West Virginia V South Korea In The EV Tax Credit Cup Now that France v. Argentina is behind us, it’s now time to focus on the next great battle: West Virginia versus South Korea (and Germany and Japan)....