No matter where in the world David goes, it always seems like he’s found the least exciting corner of it to podcast from. Watch as he realizes that he’s left one of the nice weeks in Detroit to go to Australia, where it’s cold! What’s breakfast down under? An ANZAC biscuit and some tea. What’s Australia like? It’s a great line, but it’s basically true: Australia is like if England had a Texas....
So what sorts of bushings are available, how do they work, and what impact do they have on vehicle enjoyment? After all, enjoyment and connectedness are hard things to quantify. A bit like trying to explain how good your grandmother’s orange cake is using just the ingredient quantities on the recipe, using numbers to quantify improvements from aftermarket bushings is a bit tricky and often fails to succinctly communicate actual effect from behind the wheel....
Some of you have sent me emails or even told me at our car show that since starting here I haven’t written much about skoolies and wacky camper conversions. Looking at my history, you’d be right. So, let’s change that! And I think that I found a decent one. A number of the school bus conversions that I have written about for a while were built out of large buses....
Okay, so the car I drove and will be writing about has fewer than three cylinders, is not currently available for sale in the U.S., is kind of tall and narrow, and sports two-tone paint. Does that help? Alright, alright, fine. No, there are no owners of 40 year-old Citroën 2CVs flying me out anywhere. The car I drove is the new Volkswagen ID.Buzz, the electric re-birth of the classic Type 2 bus....
What’s at the bottom of that pit? Or, if we may be so bold, who? Why is she out there with a rifle? Is she hunting? But what would she be hunting that needs a rifle out there in what looks like a patch of land just cleared for some kind of major construction? There’s a lot of tire tracks there and almost no vegetation, so I don’t think she’s hunting deer or elk or foxes or, you know, pretty much any big mammal that people hunt....
I guess nobody wanted to deal with the mold in the 380SEC, as the 924 has shuffled its way to victory. It’s a bit of a shame as those AMG parts are worth a mint, but that’s just the way the game is played. Anyway, large swaths of America are about to get their shit rocked by Jack Frost, so let’s bolt on some snow tires and see which practical AWD car can pull us out of this mess....
Man, Jews have been counting years a long-ass time. How come we don’t have faster-than-light spaceships or food replicators or anything like that yet? It’s the 5780s, man! Jeez. Just think about that: according to the Jewish calendar, we’re right in the middle of the 5700’s Radwood era! Anyway, to all fellow Members of the Tribe, happy new year, שנה טובה and all that. For everyone else, I hope your year continues to be fantastic, too....
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. Used Car Wholesale Values Continue Slow Decline It’s early in a new month, which means it’s time to check the Manheim used car wholesale value index to see if used car values are dropping....
Yesterday, most of your Autopian writers took the day off to enjoy the start of the New Year. Somewhere along the way, our newsman Thomas discovered the depressing news about Ken Block and fired off a heartbreaking report on the situation. At first, I, like other enthusiasts, couldn’t believe what I read. I even checked the calendar to make sure I didn’t teleport to April Fools’ Day. But this is real, and it’s still a shock....
Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If you’re morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. Stop, Drop, Shut ‘Em Down, Open Up Shop To say that Ford’s Mustang Mach-E electric crossover has been a success is a bit like saying Pompeii was a bit of a natural event....
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. New IIHS Side Impact Test Proves Tough For Midsize Cars Let’s face it, if I were to write a headline of Cars Get Clobbered In New IIHS Side Impact Test, the resounding response would be something along the lines of “No shit, Sherlock....
Here’s a few other examples of these sorts of convertibles, raging from Morris Minors to the fairly recent Fiat 500c, Crosleys, and interestingly, the Citroën Pluriel, which has removable side arches that can be removed, making it perhaps the only convertible that can transition from the “normal” type to the type I’m talking about, almost like a Genoa salami that can transform, via dark magik, into pepperoni. The difference in this type of convertible is the existence of either window frames on the doors or roof rails at each side....
Last time, we looked at the Th!nk City EV, one of just a few highway-legal EVs that you were able to buy in 2011. The little Th!nk had great ideas like molded-in-color panels that don’t easily scratch or dent, about 100 miles of range, and parts sourced locally. Unfortunately, Th!nk just never had enough money, and found itself frequently in the throes of bankruptcy. I asked you to guess its lighting and interior....
I could quite easily convince you, and myself, that this Jeep Cherokee XJ in the picture is the greatest one ever built. It’s a two-door, which most people think looks nicer than the four-door (it’s technically a shooting brake), it’s green like all Jeeps since WWII should be, it has a tan interior which matches best with the green paint, it has the wonderful AX-15 five-speed manual, it’s got four-wheel drive, and under the hood is the beloved 4....
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. Who Can Afford The Average New Car Payment? It’s no secret that the average new car transaction price has crept up during the pandemic, and as prices rise, so do loan payments....
As I suspected. Lewd jokes aside, the Beaver really was the better bet. Today, in honor of the Indepenence Day holiday yesterday, I thought we’d revisit the classic Ford versus Chevy confrontation, in the form of two plain white sedans. These cars were once the default family-car option in America, before the Age of SUVs and the coming of the great Crossover. But outdated as they may be, these basic four door sedans still have a lot to offer, especially at the bottom end of the price range....
Probably one of the coolest things the Jeep brand does is create a bunch of cool concept cars just before each year’s Easter Jeep Safari annual off-road-fest in Moab, Utah. It’s something I’ve always appreciated, because this seems like an easy budget item to slash; I imagine it’s sometimes tough to justify the expense of this bit of design/fabrication fun, even though I realize there’s some marketing benefit. Anyway, Jeep says this year’s concepts represent the “most impressive lineup of Easter Jeep Safari concepts ever,” and while that’s just hyperbole (previous years’ concepts have been much cooler) I do have to give props to whoever is behind the ’41 Concept, because it’s a damn masterpiece....
I mean, maybe they could. Anything’s possible. But Mazda’s executives are adamant that the beloved little roadster isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. This latest bit of anxiety relief comes to us from the UK’s Autocar, which spoke to Mazda’s CEO in Europe, Martijn ten Brink, at the recent Brussels Motor Show. Here’s what he had to say about the Miata’s future, emphasis mine: It will never die! We love to hear it, folks....
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. The Human Cost Of The Failed Renault Nissan Alliance Continues To Rise It’s well-trodden territory, but in case you’ve missed it here’s a rough rehash of what happened to former Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi CEO Carlos Ghosn:...
First, a little disclosure: I’ve been watching this RV build almost since the beginning and have been pleading with the people I know at Ai Design to let me check it out when it was finally finished. When my daughter was born, we moved up to Westchester, NY and ended up renting a house around the corner from Ai, a shop I was well aware of from all of the company’s other projects (including Alex Roy’s Cannonball Run M5)....
