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

I grew up in Southern California, I like cars. It’s somewhat of an inevitability when you live in such a car-oriented culture, a sprawling city where public transport just doesn’t really work very well. That’s okay, I had a license and my own car from the day I could manage to drive within the law, as did my buddies. From a Chevy Nova to a Chevy Malibu to a Mazda RX-4, the first few years…Read More

If you’re a regular reader of my site, you already know that I get to drive a lot of different cars and write about them. Most recently, it was a silver 2018 Jeep Compass 4×4 that graced my driveway for a week as we took it through its paces in Colorado suburban life. This time, however, I didn’t get behind the wheel of yet another SUV but rather a surprisingly luxurious 2018 Toyota Camry. A…Read More

Few automobile brands are as fabled as Jeep. If you don’t know, Autoweek has a nice recap: “Jeep’s early history is legendary. Its role in helping defeat the Axis powers during World War II is undeniable. On the battlefield, the Jeep was fast, nimble and tough. It could handle nearly any terrain, and when it did get stuck, it was light enough for soldiers to lift free. It towed anti-tank weapons that could be deployed…Read More

Most cars are pretty dull colors. White, black, grey, dark blue, those encompass most of what you see on the road, and I’m just as susceptible as the next car buyer too: My last few cars have been white and blue and my current vehicle is, yes, white. Boring, I know. That’s why when I was loaned a bright yellow 2017 Jeep Renegade my first reaction was “Wow!” and, well, my 13yo daughter immediately requested…Read More

Sometimes the stars are in alignment or something and things happen in an eerie but oddly appropriate way. Like getting a bright orange vehicle to test drive on Halloween weekend, as I did when the startlingly orange 2017 Jeep Compass Trailhawk showed up in my driveway. Jeep calls this color “Spitfire Orange” for reasons that escape me, but whatever its official name, it’s hard not to grin at the cheery vehicle: It’s one of those…Read More

After a wave of luxury SUVs with $50,000 price tags, it was a breath of fresh air to have a week behind the wheel of a more modest budget crossover, the 2018 Toyota C-HR. It’s a little car – perhaps a bit too little for some families – and while it’s not powered by a big engine offering a performance drive, it’s still reasonably responsive and typically well designed and engineered by Toyota. There are…Read More

Subaru is one of the car companies that I think has come the longest way in the last 20-30 years, transitioning from a low cost vehicle manufacturer that eschewed all comforts into a brand with vehicles ranging from entry level up to fancy sedans and sports cars. Living in Boulder, Colorado, it’s also impossible not to see Subaru vehicles on the road and in every parking lot: It sure seems like the Subaru Outback and…Read More

My oldest has her own car, and I’m always interested in watching how she manages one of the least obvious, but most important parts of car ownership: all those darn ancillary expenses. Whether it’s gasoline, oil changes, new tires or general maintenance, I’m convinced that she hasn’t yet realized cars cost more than just the initial sticker price to drive it off the lot. Thing of it is, in our culture car ownership and driving…Read More