It Seemed Like A Nice Car That Would Help Two People Out. So I Bought It A number of months ago, a friend of a friend who’d recently flown to the U.S. from France to work for Stellantis needed a car. He’d been renting during a hot renting market, spending loads of cash each week for some sad econobox, and I just couldn’t bear it. I set out to find him a reliable, cheap, and economical car....
Here in America, we never got the Grandeur under that name, which is pretty much restricted to Korean markets. Most of the world knows it as an Azera, which I thought was a flowering plant until that person at Lowe’s spit on me. In fin-de-siecle 20th century America, we had it as the Hyundai XG, for those late ’90s Hyundai fans. For most of its life, the Grandeur/Azera/XG was a pretty anonymous-looking full-sized sedan....
Hi, my name is Adrian Clarke, and I am a professional car designer. I have a degree in automotive design from Coventry University, and a masters in vehicle design from the world famous Royal College of Art in London, where I was tutored by J Mays. I was hired straight from there into a major European OEM, where I worked for a number of years until the world went sideways....
title: “It S Wrenching Wednesday Autopian Members Let S Talk About Your Car Projects And Problems” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-27” author: “Wayne Haynes” title: “It S Wrenching Wednesday Autopian Members Let S Talk About Your Car Projects And Problems” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-05” author: “George Jorgensen” title: “It S Wrenching Wednesday Autopian Members Let S Talk About Your Car Projects And Problems” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-09” author: “Jerry Reyes”
I just got back from SEMA, where I briefly hung out with the folks at Quatratec, where I often buy Jeep parts when I can’t find them at the junkyard, on Facebook marketplace, or buried in my backyard somewhere. The company has on display a “JTe,” which was built by custom-Jeep shop Unofficial Use Only. I don’t know much about it or its founder Greg Henderson, but I am familiar with some of his SEMA builds, including the YJL: And the XJ-nosed Jeep JK called “Project Pathkiller“: And actually, I saw Henderson at an off-road event at Rocks & Valleys in Michigan around eight years ago....
You may be asking, does the Lexus LS still matter? After all, it’s changed a lot in the past three decades or so. There’s no more silky V8, no more Celsior-branded JDM counterpart, no more giving the S-Class a bloody nose by offering more for less. Still, the LS holds a certain appeal as it has morphed from inoffensive luxury sedan to extremely Japanese flagship. More importantly, full-size luxury sedans like this are vestiges of a world most of us were raised in....
I’ve been writing about all sorts of RVs for over two years. In that time, I’ve covered everything from amphibious milk tankers to double-decker coaches turned into family homes. Hell, I even found a rare fiberglass camper and dragged it home! But I haven’t talked much about how people fund these adventures. Remote work made it possible for many vanlifers and RVers to do office work from anywhere they could find an internet connection....
Looks like the Plymouth Neon is the winner. That’s “Plymouth,” with a P. And an R and an N and a D and so on, which I guess was the problem. Now first, let me say that I am in absolute agreement with David (and half the commenters). Small cars especially should have manual transmissions. But while David is still young enough to crawl around under cars in junkyards and then hop in a manual truck and drive home without feeling like he’s been worked over by a Vegas bouncer, I’m old enough to be his… um… cool uncle, and I have the arthritis and stiff knees to prove it....
No other details about this possible truck are currently available. But let’s face it: this is an intriguing proposition, one that’s on the opposite end of the truck spectrum from the chapter Nissan is looking to close. Let me explain. All signs point to Nissan sending the larger Titan truck off into the sunset for good, possibly as early as this year. One of Carlos Ghosn’s big dreams, Nissan’s half-ton pickup truck ended up being an expensive albatross that never came close to sales expectations....
(Editor’s Note: This is a somewhat different post than normal from our Secret Car Designer, who is taking the time to talk about an important vehicular concept designer instead of a design breakdown or insider’s story. Cantwell is legendary, so I’m glad we have this perspective. – JT) Building The Star Wars Team Shortly after the box-office success of nostalgic hot rod culture film, American Graffiti, George Lucas pitched his concept for a grand scale space opera, receiving a fiscally conservative investment of $15,000 from 20th Century Fox for initial development of the project....
Back in the summer of 2021, the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles kicked off an alarming trend. Owners of Mitsubishi Delicas received letters from the state stating that owners’ beloved vans were “mini-trucks” that did not meet federal emissions and safety requirements and thus could not be driven on the state’s roads. Initially, this caused a lot of confusion because the Mitsubishi Delica is far larger than the vehicles that fall under Japan’s adorable Kei class, and they certainly weren’t mini-trucks....
The DBR22 is an amalgamation of two of Aston’s historical racers. Aston says that the concept’s coachbuilt design evokes the DBR1 and DB3S. The Frank Feely-designed DB3S was introduced in 1953 and while it didn’t win Le Mans, it did take first and second at the Tourist Trophy in the World Sports Car Championship. Another designer, Ted Cutting, then took Feely’s work and refined it into the DBR1. This racer proved to be more successful and Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori piloted one to a win at the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans....
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 Average New Car Price Cracks $48,000 It’s no secret that new cars are more expensive than ever, but that doesn’t stop the numbers from being shocking. According to Kelley Blue Book, the average new vehicle in June cost a whopping $48,043....
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. How Insightful For over twenty years, the Honda Insight hybrid has led cycle after cycle of live, die, get reborn in a more normcore form. It’s a bit like Kenny from South Park, now that I think about it....
Today, though, we’re going to reload a little bit and enjoy the new year. We may have a couple of posts up, but it’ll be lighter-than-usual. In the interim, here are a couple more production shots of Nissan from their NSIMA plant in Barcelona and the old Shatai Hiratsuka plant in Japan. Photos: Nissan Did you know that Nissan was one of the first union shops in Japan? And that they owe their very survival to the union?...
I recently returned from an utterly absurd trip to Australia (which I’ll be writing about soon), only to find that my cars have been broken into by this little bugger: A post shared by David Tracy (@davidntracy) Don’t let that cute face fool you; this groundhog is a menace. We first met a few days ago when I went to pop the hood of my $700 Chevy Tracker. Something was amiss with my windshield wipers and one of my parking lights....
(Welcome to another article by Rex Bennett from The Lane Motor Museum — arguably the quirkiest car museum in the U.S., and a place filled with fascinating automotive history). As Europe dug out of the rubble following World War II, the idea of car-sharing emerged as a solution to the growing problem of getting a car in an economy that was rebooting. The concept was simple: If you can’t afford to buy a car, share one....
Before I get into the details of the car, let me just politely seize you by the upper arm with a demented grip, as tight and desperate as a jumper cable clamp, and demand that you hear me out when it comes to why I think – no, believe – that amphibious cars make sense. You see, I live in a place where there are lakes around, and I see plenty of boats of various sizes in people’s yards and driveways....
First, though, watch the video: It’s amazing that Ford decided to start with Egyptian chariots to begin their wheeled-vehicle stylistic journey, which shows a real commitment to telling the whole story. The video then transitions to Ford’s specific designs and concepts, focusing on three main concept vehicles: the 1963 Allegro Fastback Coupé (which was part of the early Mustang design story) , the Cougar II GT car that feels like Ford’s answer to the Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray, and the one I want to focus on here, the Aurora station wagon concept....
Really, this is just a video about the power of water to deceive us, visually, and it’s absolutely worth watching, so, here, do so: While this was posted on Reddit and Twitter and probably Friendster and everywhere else, the original source seems to have been this Instagram account, now made private, likely because this video has been blowing up so much. We’re not necessarily in the business of jumping on every driving-related video that goes viral, but there really is something deeply and strangely satisfying about this one....
