Gas Guzzling . . . Then and Now
I took my '76 Trans Am out yesterday; I needed a reboot - and it needed exercise. Drove the orange-painted, screaming chickened "gas guzzler" around for about an hour, taking my...
The Yugo and its Merits
The joke goes: How do you double the value of a Yugo?
Fill up the gas tank!
True enough.
And yet, nearly 800,000 of them were made - all the way through 2008, a...
Doomed: Li’l Red Express, 1978-1979
High-performance trucks are back - but they aren't new.
One of the first of the breed dates back to the height of the Disco era, 1978 - when high-performance cars had all-but-ceased-to-exist,...
Closing the Antique Vehicle “Loophole”
One way to save a lot of money - and avoid a lot of hassle - is to opt out of paying the annual "registration" fees the governments of most states...
Badge Funging
You used to be able to easily tell a Ford from a Chevy from a BMW from a Subaru. Now it's becoming hard to know whether what you're talking about has...
The Old Car Experience
If you’ve never driven an old car - as opposed to a used car - you have probably never experienced certain things that were once part of the experience of driving...
What We’ve Gained . . and Lost Along the Way
When every new car comes standard with air conditioning - and an LCD touchscreen - such things become given things.
It becomes harder to make a case for more expensive things.
Why buy...
The TRX vs. The TA
The '21 Ram TRX I am test-driving this week has more than three times as much horsepower (702) as the 455 V8 in my '76 Trans-Am made when it was new...
The Americano Cubano
America may soon look a lot like Cuba - with lots of ancient cars on the road, kept on the road by determined owners who want nothing to do with the...
A Tale of Two Idles
Before there were computers in cars, all it took to adjust the engine idle speed was a screwdriver and five minutes or so.
You turned in - or out - a screw...