While the C6 is my favorite modern Corvette design, I'm still a big fan of the C7 design. It is identifiably a Corvette but it isn't chained to the past like the modern Camaro. The base car is good-looking, and the widebody looks even better, doubling down on the aggressive nature of the design. Unfortunately the success of the C7 influenced the design language of the C8, and man, does the C8 not work visually. ... View more

While putting as much HP as a Bugatti Veyron in a vehicle that big and tall with EV power delivery might not end well for the first owner, it'll be a boon to hot rodders looking for a donor.  ... View more

I was hoping that the chrome unibrow would get deleted in the Accord’s mid-cycle refresh like with the Civic and CR-V but that’s not the case. Bummer. ... View more

Unlike BMW restricting manual transmissions to M cars, this is not a loss. Even in Europe today you can't get a manual in a Mercedes that you'd actually want to drive. I am curious to see if the EQS can finally be the car to topple the Tesla Model S, which is nearly a decade old. ... View more

You see glimpses of the future today in how easily you can unlock extra power from modern turbocharged engines. Plug a handheld computer into your car to reflash the ECU, and bam, the 70 HP difference between your GTI and a Golf R has disappeared. ... View more

Removing the controversial grille makes you realize the rest of the car is as overstyled as a Civic Type R.  ... View more

I'd go SUV + trailer too if I had space for a trailer. You have more enclosed, lockable storage space, and you aren't confined by the limited bed capacity and high load floor of your average crew cab, short-bed pickup. You also avoid becoming "the friend with the truck." ... View more

If your son has a gaming PC for Fortnite, get him a racing wheel and a few games. Your son already has aptitude and interest in driving, so perhaps his time behind the virtual wheel would lead to him falling in love with cars through video games. Video games are a big reason behind my love for Corvettes, and more broadly, video games are why JDM Skyline values are through the roof. ... View more

Good on Nissan for doing what Toyota should have done but did not with the Supra: offer a manual transmission. The car looks pretty good, and ready for production except for the grille. I am aware that the grille is supposed to be a reference to Zs of the past. But here it just looks like it was slapped on in the last minute after the designers realized they were working on a traditional car, not an EV. ... View more

And as with everything else in American life, these rules won't apply to you if you've got the cash to splash. People putting their skin in the game is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for cars with personality to survive. Take the Ford Fiesta and Focus ST for example. Ford made a bet that there would be enough Americans to buy European hot hatches, and their bet paid off. Reddit and Jalopnik posters that are typically too cheap or too broke - depending on how charitable you feel - to buy new cars actually bought these cars new! But they died because there was a change of the guard at Ford, and the ST badge now just makes me wonder why that person didn’t just buy a Lincoln if they were gonna spend that much money. ... View more

Genesis have tried to get around the unpleasant fact of their dealer network with corporate initiatives, e.g. Genesis Concierge, Service Valet. But ultimately the dealer sells and services the car. It's a bit like claiming your website is mobile-optimized because you redesigned the front page but the rest of the site still doesn't have a mobile-optimized layout. ... View more

My first thought when I sat in a Genesis G90 was "oh, this is the car Cadillac and Lincoln should've built." That being said, I haven't reached the birthday where a copy of Steely Dan's Aja on vinyl is automatically mailed to your address, so the G90 is not the car for me.   The Genesis G70 is thus much more my style. I test-drove one recently and loved it. More than enough power on the street with the V6, good handling, and great ride quality considering the wheel and tire package it was on. Sure, the trunk space and rear seat is poor, which is a bummer if you have to haul around the gargantuan accoutrements of modern children. But those areas are very similar in size to the E46 3-Series.   I hope Genesis gets the time and space to succeed. It's very much an uphill battle for them despite their great product. They have to battle the mindshare that Tesla has in this part of the market, while also being saddled with Hyundai dealers to sell and service said product.  ... View more

I always enjoy a good rental review. Because the Frontier is so old, Nissan can throw cash money on the hood like a domestic full-sized truck. The Frontier thus sidesteps the problem that this segment has. You end up paying nine-tenths the price of a full-sized truck, but end up getting something that is half as capable and refined. Emphasis on the latter, as the American full-sized trucks have seen serious investment in the last decade that the global midsizers haven't. The Ford Ranger and Chevrolet Colorado are a decade old, the Honda Ridgeline looks like a minivan plus it's really only for Honda loyalists, and the Toyota Tacoma is quietly just as old as this Frontier but with zero slack in the out-the-door price. ... View more

While you weren't impressed with how the interior worked, how did it feel? The Silverado High Country I sampled last year at the auto show had an interior that felt much more Chevy Malibu than Malibu, California. The switchgear and leather was cheaper than the Honda Accord Touring that cost half the price. I am well-aware that these SUVs are the default in this segment, and that interior design has never been a strength of modern GM. Yet the interior was so mediocre in that $70K Silverado it made me think that GM could throw away their empire if it carried over to the SUVs. And damn, the Tahoe has gotten expensive. The top-trim GMT900 Tahoe, which is still newer than the powertrain in a new 4Runner, was $58K new when adjusted for inflation. Chevrolet has noticed the same thing your wife noticed judging by how they've priced this new Tahoe. To some, this smells like class warfare. I think it's the type of class warfare everyone here can support because I don't think the mid-engined Corvette would have been produced without it. ... View more

If the current pattern of Ford CEOs holds, i.e. guys named Jim, I expect Jim Harbaugh to be the next CEO of Ford. Harbaugh can't do any worse than this chair salesman did. Maximizing Shareholder Value Was Job #1 for Jim Hackett, and he couldn't even do that. ... View more

BMW's singular focus on SUVs has paid off in my part of the country. The X7 has been more successful here than the 7 Series ever has been. It feels like the starters at BMW work on SUVs now, and the backups work on cars. The SUVs feel like a much more cohesive, thoughtful product than the cars. The big grill on the X7 is funny but it works in context. The big grill on the new 4 Series would work only if BMW could charge for all the hateclicks it has gotten. ... View more

Thank you for scaring me straight with the number your friend has spent on maintenance and repairs in the last 3 years. I'd rather spend time and money in Rome and Pompeii, or our National Parks, instead of the dinky waiting room of an independent Porsche mechanic.   The only requirement I have so far for my next car is that it has to be a good dance partner on track. I'd like to make the jump from being fast online to being fast in real life. An NC2 Miata will likely be a finalist, as it'll be inexpensive to purchase and run on track, and I can also get some topless action. The C5 was historic as it was the first American performance car that could compete on the world stage since Nixon left office, but C5 buyers think they're capital-H Historic, and thus have set delusional values for them. C6 and C7 sellers are more grounded than C5 sellers. Perhaps I could trade my daily in for a new sport compact, like a Civic Si or GTI, or a lightly used compact luxury car, like a Lexus IS350 F-Sport, or a Cadillac ATS. I may send in another email in a few months once I've done some driving to narrow down the list. ... View more

Europeans are being seduced by our invention too. Auto News EU reported that SUVs made up 39% of all vehicles sold in the EU last year, up from 29% marketshare in 2017. I believe that the coming push by European governments to promote EVs and ban traditional cars will only sell more SUVs, as the primary regulatory incentive that pushes people into cars over SUVs - CO2 taxes - won't exist in the Electric New World.   https://europe.autonews.com/sales-segment/suvs-crossovers-continue-grow-market-share-europe-anes-segment-segment-analysis-shows ... View more

While FCA generally gives the people what they want, it feels like the V8 Wrangler has been locked behind a pane of glass that says "In Case Of Emergency Drive Through Glass." FCA can do cheap and fast, but I would not expect a V8 Wrangler to be cheap. The Wrangler configurator today takes inspiration from the Porsche one in how easy it is to make the Net Price number go up. ... View more

I agree that the business case for the Bronco wasn't an easy one like the one for the new Chevy Blazer. But it's a bit tighter than you'd think. Ford got a taste of how good modern off-road money can be when they saw their dealers charge over MSRP for every new Raptor for the entire first generation, and the first few years of the second generation. Then they looked at the money the Wrangler prints for FCA, and then at Toyota, who has sold more 4Runners over the past few years than they did during the first SUV boom of the 1990s. The development costs can be better amortized since the Bronco is sharing a platform with the next-gen Ranger instead of having a bespoke platform like the Wrangler, or Mazda Miata does. Finally, the Bronco was a truck, not a car, so Jim Hackett didn't cancel it on sight because he needs trucks to fund a golden parachute electric mobility solutions powered by AI and blockchain. ... View more

I am very curious how the Bronco Sport will be priced in the real world. I thought Ford was coming for that Subaru Crosstrek money, but Crosstrek pricing stops where the Bronco Sport starts. Will Ford make up the gap with generous incentives after the launch rush?   Hopefully the Bronco's independent front suspension translates to on-road manners that can give the 4Runner some competition, because Toyota needs it. All of the 4Runner's natural competitors from 20 years ago have disappeared, or become soft-roaders except for the Jeep Grand Cherokee. And the GC relies on air suspension to do what comes naturally to the 4Runner. ... View more

I think Top Gear in its current form just barely works. The current showrunners have stripped Top Gear to its basic premise: three blokes with chemistry just dicking around and having a good time with cars. Indeed Clarkson, Hammond, and May openly joked that they weren't really doing a car show near the end of their Top Gear run, and now they have abandoned the studio show to just do travel specials with Amazon in their old age. The car reviews on today's Top Gear suffer for two of the lads not having had the professional background that Clarkson, Hammond, and May had, though I suspect TG makes up for this by having Chris Harris and the magazine staff write most of the review. My evidence is a segment where a TG magazine editor interviews Harris for a YouTube clip about the BMW M8, which tacks suspiciously close to Paddy's M8 review for the show. Top Gear, its spin-offs, and the legions of car TV shows inspired by Top Gear won't ditch the formula of "three dudes talking about cars" until someone else finds something that works. Humans in all fields tend to follow the leader, because that seems like the surest path to success. See all the NFL teams that have hired Bill Belichick assistants over the last two decades. The formula took Top Gear from British MotorWeek to a global BFD. Of course the formula itself wasn't the reason for success, as the BBC themselves have learned. The reason was chemistry, which is much harder to manufacture. I think a future for car TV in America will have to come from YouTube, or a streaming service not run by Motor Trend. In media, there's no scared money quite like TV money, and you aren't getting any of those scripted garbage shows about building up some muscle car that no one under 40 cares about off TV for anything. Hell, Motor Trend won't even displace those garbage shows on their TV network for RoadKill re-runs, which has been very successful by anyone's standards. NBC may have come the closest to figuring it out, but I won't think they're serious until they put their car programming on Netflix like they did with The Good Place. Seriously, it is impossible to watch old episodes of //DRIVE on NBCSN, and your show too, Sam.  ... View more

One big thing to watch out for is brake clearance. You should be able to clear the brakes on a minus-one sizing, but maybe not a minus-two sizing. For example, minus-two from the stock 18s on a 2.0T Kia Optima will not clear the stock 320mm brakes and calipers. In the U.S., Tire Rack will usually always have this info, and a suggested tire size for any wheel modifications you wanna make.   Going smaller may also limit your tire selection. My Optima comes with a 205/65R16 tire. This means that I'm locked out from many performance all-season tires, all of the high-performance all-season tires, and all summer tires. Modern performance tires do require a certain structural integrity to the sidewall. The Michelin Pilot Sport 4S, the current king of summer tires, does not come in anything thicker than a 50-series.   Finally, wheel sizes have increased proportionally as car proportions have changed in response to European and Asian pedestrian safety regulations. Today's 18-inch wheel is yesterday's 17-inch wheel. An E46 328i with the sport package from 20 years ago came wrapped in 225/45R17 rubber. The 235/45R18 rubber on a modern Camry will have a touch more sidewall than that E46 (105mm vs 101mm.)   This isn't to say that oversized factory wheels aren't the worst trend about modern cars - they are. The infrastructure in large parts of the U.S. cannot support low-profile tires, such as the 19s that leave minimal sidewall on the new Honda Accord. I could feel Albert Biermann's disdain for the 22s he was forced to work with on the new Genesis GV80. But there's more nuance to the situation than the "smaller = better" thought that's commonplace in enthusiast spaces. ... View more

I wanted to like the new Continental, but the large FWD proportions just never stuck with me. The Volvo S90 looks similarly awkward to me FWIW. And then I got into a Genesis G90, which instantly struck me as the car that should've been the new Continental.   Speaking of luxury car bargains, you can get a lightly used MKZ with the 400 HP 3.0TT V6 for under $25K now. The knock on the MKZ when new was that it was "a Fusion with leather" but to the used buyer, that's a feature, not a bug. ... View more

Was the traffic and environment then also conducive to producing driving enthusiasts? While a teenager with a car can always make their own fun, it certainly helps to live near good roads with little traffic instead of driving up and down I-95 in South Florida.   I'd argue that the current environment is perfect if you wanted to create a population that was indifferent at best to driving. As you mention, teenagers today are getting handed down Highlanders and CR-Vs, not Accords and Focuses. That is, if they get their license at all because technology has relieved teenagers of the need to get their license until they get to college, or even their first real job. Then they drive because they have to. They have to drive in commutes from hell if they want any chance to own property in the major metro area where their career is. No one loves that sort of driving. ... View more

Ford will sell you a new, regular cab F-150 because they still sell tons of them to fleets. You'll have to be fine with a long bed and spartan accomodations to buy one on a lot. I miss the classic proportions of the regular cab short bed pickup truck, but I only have two parking slots for myself. Therefore a truck in my driveway has to have 4 seats. Other people only have the money for one vehicle, and it's gotta haul the family around so that forces their hand into a crew cab.  ... View more

As I've done a lot of car camping and tailgating at Gator football games in my life, I'd go hybrid over the sound and the fury of the 5.0 for that bigger power inverter. I would also appreciate any extra bonuses to fuel economy since I'm a city slicker. I'll wait for real-world fuel economy numbers because the EPA ratings on the F-150s today are total baloney.   I appreciate the evolution, not revolution of this new F-150's interior design. I was concerned when I heard Ford felt like they had to have a 12-inch screen to match the new Ram. The monstrosity in the new Mach E only upped my concern. But Ford got to 12 inches by shrinking the bezels around the screen, and they have retained good old-fashioned knobs and buttons for media and climate controls. It also looks like Ford transferred some of the Lincoln interior designers to work on the high-trim F-150s to stop defections to Ram. Looks nice but I wonder if the materials quality holds up in person. Ram nailed the details on those high-end trucks, from the quality of the leather to the feel of the rear door cards. ... View more

The Solstice and Sky have big British Leyland energy. By this, I mean that they were cleverly engineered to pass through a sclerotic bureaucracy. Yet ultimately that clever engineering couldn't overcome the parts bin they had to work with, and the bureaucracy they had to fight to survive. For example, see Bozi's article here about how GM was too cheap to remove the shipping spacers on the performance package for these cars.   I'd go C5 Corvette or S197 Mustang for an American convertible at this price point. There is a very healthy aftermarket for those two cars. For the Solstice and Sky, you will have to have Bozi on speed dial for any mods, or even repairs.  ... View more

I was about to blame Chinese displacement taxes for the 4-cylinder truck motor at the heart of this car, but the CT4-V won't be sold in China. And that $1500 number to the consumer would be quite a bit less for GM considering that they make hundreds of thousands of 5.3L V8s per year.   I agree with you about taking this over the S3/M245i/CLA35. The CT4-V targets that niche with precision. For the same real-world price, I'd grin and bear the Hyundai dealer for a Genesis G70 with the 3.3TT V6. At least there is an app for someone to whisk away my G70 for service to make up for not getting my butt pampered at the Cadillac dealer.   A spectre is haunting this segment: the spectre of the Tesla Model 3. A young person who's had their first hit of real money and is thinking of upgrading from their 2004 Corolla because of the coronavirus - this car's target consumer - will ignore this for a Model 3. The whole point of a modern luxury car is to flex and signal. Cadillacs still have cachet in Detroit and Oklahoma City, but not Brooklyn or Seattle. A Tesla does, even if Elon is increasingly Problematic. Yes, a Model 3's build quality is disconcertingly similar to a 1995 Chevrolet Lumina, and you're screwed if you get in a wreck because Tesla refuses to hand over an inch of control to third-party repair shops and suppliers. (Not even Apple is that dictatorial.) That being said, Teslas are very well-suited to the great suck that is commuting in the 5-10 largest metro areas in this country. You get pushed back into your seat with EV torque for a moment before popping on Autopilot to sit on the 405 or I-95. That leaves your mind free to listen to This American Life, or jam out to "Hip to Be Square" by Huey Lewis and the News. Finally, Tesla has the best BEV solution in the world, with all its competitors either a generation behind or vaporware. Tesla represents excellence in American engineering in a way that this microwaved ATS doesn't. ... View more

Now if we want to walk about failures in GM marketing, the sixth-gen Camaro is a perfect example. The Camaro today is a world-class sports car, with the range of being able to beat Miatas at SCCA Nationals in 4-cylinder form, to beating McLarens and the new Ford GT in ZL1 1LE form. Chevy marketing failed to communicate this fact where even Cadillac was able to communicate that they had built a better 3-Series than BMW. The Corvette still stole the spotlight, and Chevy didn't follow Ford and Dodge by releasing special editions every year or two that referenced the car's history. Heck, Chevy marketing would've had to work twice as hard to communicate that fact because design failed the sixth-gen Camaro in so many ways. Instead they just gave up. P.S. Hagerty I need line breaks for replies so I don't have to double-post. ... View more