While it’s really fun to drive expensive supercars and luxury sedans, I have a spot in my heart for entry level and budget vehicles too. Perhaps unusually for car writers, actually, as I feel like most just complain that lower cost vehicles don’t have all the fancy bells and whistles of a $50K alternative. Not everyone can afford those swanky vehicles, of course, and not everyone wants to have the responsibility of an expensive car…Read More

As a Mazda CX-5 owner, it’s always fun to get behind the wheel of a different model Mazda vehicle. A chance to see what’s the same and what’s changed. The car in question this time was the 2018 Mazda6 Signature, Mazda’s higher end sedan with a base MSRP of almost $35K. Introduced back in 2003 it replaced the 626 and Millenia sedans and has been slowly evolving ever since. It’s a peppy drive and there’s…Read More

I get a chance to drive a lot of cars in a given year. On average, I’m in 15-20 vehicles in a given 12mo period and sometimes it’s quite a bit more than that, like when I attend the journalist-only Rocky Mountain Drive Experience. In 2017 I logged about a dozen cars at the event (“A Million Dollars Worth of Cars“) and in 2018 figured I drove at least as many cars in my two…Read More

Did you know that the very first pickup truck hit the market back in 1927? Yup, it was the “Model T Runabout with Pickup Body” and it cost a cool $278.00. From that very first year, the combination of a cab for driver and passengers, combined with a flat bed – or flatbed with sidewalls – has proven a useful and popular configuration. According to Statista, there were 3.7 million pickup trucks sold worldwide in…Read More

I can still remember as a teen the common belief that pickup trucks were for people who couldn’t afford cars. Perhaps they really were more utilitarian back then, lower priced and without any frills, but in reality, I spent almost no time in pickups as a kid, so it’s entirely possible I was completely wrong even back then in 19<cough>. In any case, just as all cars have advanced in their technology and creature comforts,…Read More

It was back in 1941 during the tensions leading up to the US entry into World War II that a small car company was formed to deliver “General Purpose” vehicles. GP was easily pronounced as “jeep” and that’s the most common explanation for how Jeep got its name. And they’ve been making solid off road vehicles since 1941. It’s even emblazoned on their steering wheel to remind you of the colorful history of the brand….Read More

Driving a completely electric vehicle is a different experience if you’ve spent your whole life with the internal combustion engine. No gas stations, no quick top up to get you that last 20 miles, and no 500+ mile road trips in a day. Instead, there’s a constant drumbeat that keeps reminding you that you need to find a charging plug or even a power plug and allocate the time for the vehicle to charge up….Read More

I have to start out by admitting I haven’t been much of a fan of Subaru for the last few years. Every Subaru vehicle I’ve driven has been woefully underpowered and had rough edges on the finish and drive experience. One of my most recent drives almost got me into an accident when I misjudged its ability to merge into traffic due to its sluggish acceleration from a stop. When I had a chance to…Read More

I wasn’t the greatest driver when I was young. I don’t think my parents ever knew about all my poor driving habits, including a few incidents of being a bit too tipsy to see the lines properly, backing up with the back windshield so fogged that I actually bumped into a parked car, and general vehicular mayhem, including racing other kids and similar. It could have been the car: My hand-me-down car for high school…Read More

Driving the 2018 Chevrolet Equinox FWD Premier made me really ask myself why I’ve been playing it so safe with my vehicle color choices. If I think back across every car I’ve owned, I started with light blue, then faded yellow (hand-me-down Chevy Malibu. Thanks Dad!), then grey, gold, light blue, grey, blue, white, white. Yawwnnn. This Equinox cleary didn’t fit the mold in its bright and cheery Orange Burst Metallic which I renamed “burnt…Read More

Car reviews are usually based on a few days of driving around the neighborhood and perhaps a weekend jaunt up into the mountains, down to the beach or over to a favorite destination a few dozen miles away. Not 2000 miles of highway. My son was heading off to college, however, and Pitzer is just under 1000 miles from our home in Boulder, Colorado. A dorm room’s worth of clothes, bedding and various other college…Read More

A few weeks ago the Toyota team reached out and asked my family if we wanted to head to a Rockies vs. Mets game at Denver’s Coors Field Stadium. Better yet, we’d be enjoying the game from their luxe stadium box seats. You can read about it: Let’s Go Places with Toyota: A Baseball Game! Short summary: It was fantastic! 🙂 What I didn’t talk about in that post, however, was that Team Toyota also said…Read More

Ah, minivans. Is there any category of vehicle that has such a love-hate relationship with drivers? My story begins many years ago when my oldest was a newborn. I was driving a light blue targa-top 1992 Toyota Supra (similar to the photo on the right) and loved it. Hitting the beach, driving through the Northern California redwoods, even just cruising downtown San Francisco, it was terrific. 1992 was also the last year that the Supra…Read More

Sport Utility Vehicles are one of the hottest categories in the automotive industry. There’s something about the combination of roominess and rugged drive capabilities that resonates with quite a lot of drivers nowadays. I should know, I’ve driven SUVs for the last decade and most recently downsized to a compact SUV, the Mazda CX-5. More so than most vehicle styles, there are also SUVs that range from the relatively tiny up to behemoths that almost…Read More