I’ve been getting personal in my time here at The Autopian. I probably have a whole library of stories that I either haven’t been able to tell before or have been lost into the abyss of the internet. I’m happy to have great friends and editors here who let me pour my heart out. One of the most influential moments in my life was in 2018 when I took a little Smart Fortwo off-road....

First, let’s look at how yesterday’s toys did: Close one, but the Baja Bug wins. I’m sure neither one will have trouble finding a new home, though; they’re both way cool projects. Now, today, we’re upping our standards (like Pat Paulsen!) and looking at a pair of cars in much better condition than our usual fare. These two are from a category near and dear to my heart: little British cars, or LBCs, for those in the know....

[Full disclosure: Toyota flew me out to their headquarters in the glistening, sun-baked sprawl of Plano, Texas, fed me good food and didn’t say anything when I stole several bags of expensive beef jerky from the hospitality table, even though I’m pretty sure they saw me. I had access to several 2023 Sequoias of various trim levels throughout a day, and it was on these drives this review is based....

Before I do that, though, I have to just take a moment and geek out about how happy I am to have this car back and how much I’ve missed it. I’ve wanted a Pao ever since I saw one in some car magazine in the late 1980s, when it was just a show car. It felt like absolute, impossible unobtainium to me at the time, not even a forbidden fruit, because if something is forbidden, then that means there’s at least a chance you might encounter it, and be told, hey, let go of that....

Akio Toyoda–who will step down on March 32st–will be known to many as the gearhead CEO. For reader, engineer, pro racer, and today’s COTD winner Anthony, Toyoda turned around his impressions of Toyota: I mean, Toyoda once brought a one-off Century GRMN to Fuji Speedway! Admittedly, there are some names that brighten my day when I see them in our comments. A lot of you make me smile, including Anthony!...

But imagine an alternate version of the 1939-1980 period, not one in which the war ended differently but one in which the war never happened. A world in which Germany and Britain remained unbombed and prosperous, freeing their car freaks to do what they do best: stupid engine swaps into cheap 1930s cars! In such a world, the knacker’s yards and schrottplätze would have been packed with affordable project cars, each awaiting an ill-advised engine swap....

Looks like S.W.’s reputation puts his Jag in front! I’m inclined to agree: when it comes to cheap cars, how it has been treated in the past however many years matters a lot more than how it was built. Now then, today’s cars both appear to have the same history. I can’t be sure, of course, but both of these cars feel like something taken away from an elderly owner after they could no longer safely drive....

There’s something about the little Floride’s face that feels so eager and plucky and ready that I just want to spit lug nuts. The look is clean and sleek but that yellow wide-eyed stare prevents it from ever becoming too self-important. It could likely look great with a grille, too, but that crisp, unbroken expanse of creased sheetmetal just feels so right. Also, the brochure this came from also features what may be one of the strangest look-what-you-can-cram-in-the-trunk images ever:...

And what’s going on with this dude? What’s that thing in his hands?Is it another rifle? A shotgun? some kind of camera, or maybe an ultrasonic mic? And what’s on that guy’s vest? It looks like burnt cheese. Should I be able to identify that? Did these people just randomly drive into what I think may be a hunting area? Are they lost? Was this a big plan? I’m so confused....

Sitting at 103 inches long on a 72-inch wheelbase, the Lean Machine was longer than you’d expect. It’s almost the same length as two Peel P50s, although its length is somewhat mitigated by its short 47-inch height. Despite looking a bit like a marital aid, the Lean Machine had a drag coefficient of 0.35. Not great, but at least the frontal area was small. Plus, the whole thing was so light that according to Road & Track, GM claimed 40 mph cruising fuel economy of 120 mpg from the Lean Machine’s 185cc Honda engine....

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. Ford Switches Packs The inevitable EV ramp-up will be a colossal battle of costs and capabilities. Consumers want more production and lower costs, automakers want more profits. As of now, Ford is using nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) batteries in their electric vehicles which, while energy dense, are quite expensive on a per-cell basis....

Load an $850 Ford Performance tune onto your 2.3-liter Bronco and horsepower jumps from 300 to 330, matching the output of the optional 2.7-liter turbocharged V6. What’s more, torque gets a 60 lb.-ft. bump to 385 lb.-ft. While that’s 30 lb.-ft. shy of the stock 2.7-liter V6’s torque output, 385 isn’t a shabby number by any means. Plus, the 2.3-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine is the only way to get a manual gearbox in a Bronco....

The notion has so far rung true. It’s 4:30 in the morning right now, and I’m basically a grease-and-RTV-covered zombie trying to write some kind of coherent article because I owe you all an update, and also our video team made gold out of my crappy cellphone clips and I need to show you all (see above). But damn am I tired, so hopefully this article doesn’t suck too badly....

This news comes to us from Cycle World. Normally, I gloss right by patent filings because a lot of them are ideas we’ll probably never see. But this seems doable. While motorcycle tech generally lags behind automotive tech, the motorcycle world has been seeing leaps and bounds. If you ride something built in the last decade, you’re probably enjoying ABS, linked brakes, and maybe even traction control. Last year, I got to ride a BMW R 18 Transcontinental down the highways of Colorado....

[Editor’s Note: Oh boy. – JT] I’ll be honest and say I knew the Chevy Tracker wasn’t a smart buy when I pulled the trigger on it earlier this summer. I’m trying to reduce my fleet so I can move to LA, and facts are facts: “Plus one” is not the same thing as “minus three” — it’s simple math. But this was a manual transmission Suzuki Grand Vitara AKA Geo Tracker AKA Chevy Tracker — a vehicle known for its off-road toughness, and fairly highly regarded in terms of reliability; for $700 bones, I figured I couldn’t lose....

Our podcast will come out every Wednesday morning and include David, Beau, Jason and special guests talking about the car news of the week as well as whatever questionable choices they’ve made in their lives. You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts (eventually), Spotify, or wherever you like to get your podcasts. We’ll also be adding video versions of the podcast for those who are so inclined to our YouTube page (which you should also subscribe to)....

Yep. I say again: Tiny. Rally. Car. The 360 is best left as a museum piece at this point, or hacked up into something even weirder. Either of yesterday’s choices could nearly fit into the trunks of today’s. These cars are the reason the little Subaru 360 felt so tiny and fragile on American roads. I bet the engine and transmission of either of these alone weigh about as much as that little Subaru....

Yep, that’s what I think, too.If I were shopping for an old diesel Mercedes, I think I’d favor a 4-speed manual 240D over either of these, but those are getting really hard to find. So an S-Class will have to do. [Editor’s note: I have always had incredible respect for the “SDL” Mercedes Benz. The S-Class Diesel Long wheelbase. It’s everything I could ever want in a luxury car: It’s cheap, comfortable, and reliable....

Commenter Fuzzyweis wanted to see a return to a car-based mini truck. We are all agreed, are we not, that the trucks are too damn high? The Maverick and Santa Cruz have kinda sorta gotten back down to a more reasonable size, but only the Ford is really car based as it shares its platform with the Focus. But could we go smaller? A mini mini truck? And what if that trucklet was built by MINI?...

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. South Australia Plans Special License For Performance Cars The Australian state of South Australia is zeroing in on performance car owners with new road safety regulations. ABC News Australia reports that South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas and his government are planning several reforms that include implementing a dedicated license for powerful cars in the aim of preventing further pedestrian deaths....