Image courtesy TAG Heuer.

No, You Won't Use Your Expensive New Chronograph To Time Race Cars

June 14, 2014

We all buy things with functions that we intend to use but never do. For instance, numerous individuals upgraded from the iPhone 4 to the 4S purely because they wanted to talk back to something during the morning commute. BMW customers pay a hefty premium for the M Sport package on their cars for that one time they think they’ll take it to the track. Who knows how many people bought Samsung’s Smart Fridge so they could tweet about what craft beer they pulled out, only to promptly spill it on the LCD display?

Picture credit General Motors.

2000s Cars We Almost Forgot: Chevrolet Classic

June 12, 2014

Those of you reading this piece may see the car in the above picture as the Chevy Malibu, recipient of Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award back in 1997. The Malibu wasn’t a bad car according to reviews across the Internet (read: people complaining about their cars on Edmunds), but very much mediocre. It was something you’d buy new if you a) worked for GM and needed to park closer to the building or b) worked for a firm that needed to buy a fleet of cars for their business.

Image credit Porsche.

Driver Profile: Porsche 986 Boxster

June 10, 2014

Today’s topic is the Porsche 986 Boxster, commonly known as the Porsche with the 911 front end that you can get for four-figures, which constantly are in the “Manager’s Specials” sections in newspaper advertisements. However, this is the Porsche that is also known for something called and IMS and RMS failures, which has contributed to those four-figure prices on used 10+ year old Boxsters. So you’d think someone would have to be crazy to own one. But as this Driver Profile attests, Boxster drivers are actually fairly normal people.

Image credit Ball Watch Company.

Here's How Ball Can Make A Novel Watch From Its BMW Partnership

June 8, 2014

One afternoon, instead of writing a feature about the terribleness of the Land Rover Freelander SE3, I was surfing the web, wondering if every automaker with a six-figure vehicle in its line-up has a partnership with a watchmaker. After all, watchmakers need to sell their wares, and who better to cater to than someone who can point to a car on an auto show turnstile, says “I want that one,” and promptly be put on an 18-month waiting list?

Photo credit Infiniti.

Press Release Rewind: The G35 Had To Win Motor Trend's Car of the Year

June 7, 2014

Every November or so, Motor Trend releases its Car of the Year press release where it announces the best new (or heavily-revised) car for the following model year. Primarily, it entails rounding up numerous press vehicles, testing them around some willing automaker’s desert proving grounds, driving them on the worst California roads imaginable, and then spending hours lamenting that the Mercury Marauder isn’t available with a manual.

Photo credit Ford Motor Company.

Here's Why You Should Go To The Ford Ecoboost Challenge

June 5, 2014

As a car enthusiast, I love attending events that automakers put on to get the average consumer into their cars. That’s because there’s free food, plenty of freebies like headphones, beanies, and caps, as well as the occasional gift card. Manufacturers put on these events because a) if people are willing to sit through hours of timeshare presentations for a $20 radio, there’s people willing to spend an afternoon test driving their products and b) they understand dealerships aren’t exactly the best places for sampling numerous models of their brand’s vehicles. (“Let me get this straight. You want to test drive the A3, A4, A6, and A8?! And you don’t know if you’re buying on a Saturday!? Go bother the Infiniti dealership!”)

Image credit BMW.

The Next Great Automotive Investment? Manual BMWs.

June 3, 2014

As many people (and by many, I mean fifty) who’ve seen my Twitter profile know, I’ve been on the lookout for the perfect P38 Range Rover (the SUV that managed to reliably keep up with a BMW motorcycle in Tomorrow Never Dies) for a while. Over time, I’ve come to realize this is next to impossible because no P38 Range Rover was perfect when it left the factory, something proven by numerous Google searches on the subject.

Twitter Short Takes Round-Up

May 12, 2014

If you've been following me on Twitter and were wondering what on earth all those descriptions of cars were all about, they were supposed to be my impressions of a car after twenty to thirty minutes with it. I went into what I was attempting to do in a Saturday post on Clunkerture, but mercifully no one noticed. I didn't realize the sheer amount of cars I drove, and honestly, I think so many tweets about a lot of cars definitely came off a bit obnoxious, so I'm probably never undertaking that experiment again. But I promised to embed all the tweets in one post. So in this post are all my reactions to the cars I drove during the Western Automotive Journalists 2014 Media Days event.

A Clunkerture Experiment: The Twitter Short Takes

May 10, 2014

Back in April, the Western Automotive Journalists association had a Media Days event which involves getting manufacturers to send over all the cars that auto journalists love, allowing them to drive those cars on the Monterey backroads and then at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca for brief periods of time in each car. (Putting “Mazda Raceway” in front of Laguna Seca is a must if you want road test Mazdas.)