Category: Cars

  • GM: May the Most Misleading Car Company Lose

    OK, so we’ve all been reading about how the “new” GM is going to put customers first. And how the “new” GM isn’t building drek like my 1973 Chevy Vega (which came with a free case of oil in the hatch) and my 1986 NUMMI-built Chevy No-Go…er…Nova…which was designed to stall whenever the accelerator was…

  • You drive, you text…you die. Just try not to kill me, too

    Every day for nearly 17 years I’ve commuted on the Mass Pike between my home and workplaces in Cambridge, Boston, Burlington and, now, Waltham. Drivers on the Pike have long been deserving of the appellation “Masshole” — you can’t believe what I’ve seen people doing. They eat, they sing, they use bedpans, they trim their…

  • Gymkhana, or I ain’t your target market

    OK, I don’t know what DC Shoes are…and whoever these people are, they certainly didn’t create this video to try to get me to buy their stuff. I am just not their target market. But I gotta say, this video has four minutes of the most spectacular drifting I have ever seen. “Oooo!,” you’ll say…

  • Consumer Reports is the Church Lady

    I’ve been reading Consumer Reports since I was a teenager.  Without a doubt, they the most authoritative consumer product testers. And they know it. I’ve always been amused by their combination of geeky testing regimens and their 1930’s-derived Socalist practices (purchasing a subscritption to the magazine makes you a “member” of Consumer’s Union and eligble…

  • Don’t worry, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. That BMW you see in your rear-view mirror isn’t coming after your maintenance business

    When I first bought my 330i with the notorious iDrive (which, by the way, is very, very cool), I was stuck by the fact that the car seemed to be less a mechanical device than a digital one with wheels. That impression has only been confirmed over the last three years as the car has…

  • The death watch for GM is over: the ’08 Cadillac CTS is a used Buick

    There’s a very entertaining series on one of my favorites blogs, TTAC, entitled “General Motors death watch“. I am sure they are much hated at GM, but, frankly, I think the bloggers there have been evenhanded. GM has been a mess so long, I can now officially be excused for buying a new, manual three-speed…