Memories Made
Over the course of nearly 30 years test-driving new cars, I have driven thousands of cars. Many of them - especially lately - forgotten as soon as I get done with...
Cars You Used to See a Lot . . .
A very sound rule of thumb way to determine the goodness of a given make/model of car is to look around for them. If you see a lot of them around...
Elevators and EeeeeVeeeeeees
EeeeeeVeeees - especially Teslas - are very quick. But the experience is detached and anodyne. It quickly gets old. Or rather, nothing particularly exciting.
The best parallel example I can summon is...
They Don’t Just Look the Same . . .
It's often said - correctly - that modern cars (mostly crossovers now) all look pretty much the same. But it goes deeper than that.
Modern cars are mostly the same. Literally.
Beneath their...
The Nexus of Sominex
The main reason people were more interested in cars, once, was because cars were more interesting, once.
This does not mean they were better - in the dispassionate sense. They were often...
Once, We Were Interested
Why is interest in cars waning - among the young, especially? The ones who used to be the most interested in cars?
There are many reasons. I have one memory that may...
Doomed: Pontiac Fiero (1984-1988)
John Z. DeLorean, the eccentric but indisputably brilliant father of the 1964 GTO, also had a vision for a sexy, low-slung Pontiac two-seater. He even had a prototype built - the...
We Name Things We Love
When someone says they once owned a Corvair - or a Corvette - a story almost invariably ensues, prompted by fond or at least some memories about the car. These often...
Modularity
It's easy enough to make fun of the performance-plucked cars of the mid-late '70s, some of which - including this writer's '76 Pontiac Trans-Am - came with huge V8 engines that,...
The Compliance Song . . .
Volare!
Back in ’76, it wasn’t just a cruise ship lounge song. It was Plymouth’s new “compact” car - which by today’s standards would have been considered a very large car, as...