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2017 Volkswagen GTI DSG & 6MT Test DrivesA Tale of Two Transmissions
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Comfortable, reserved, and still dynamically enjoyable, the 7th-gen GTI is a dual-natured car that’s properly satisfying…so long as you pick the right gearbox Having spent the majority of my automotive life around rear and all-wheel-drive platforms, my bias has always been somewhat inherently against front-drive even in spite of how well-developed the layout has become…
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2017 Subaru WRX Limited 6MT Long-Term Update: Year Gone By
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A riot when driven hard, but nearly unpolished for it’s own good…or simply for mine? Evaluating my Subaru WRX after one year of ownership A quick Google search, the pinnacle of in-depth and fact-backed research, reveals that the average American drives around 13,500 miles per year, or about fifteen-thousand if one considers Geico to be…
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Leap of Faith: The Stormtrooper 4Runner Canadian Retrieval Mission
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Sometimes you do crazy things when the juice looks like it will be worth the squeeze. Six months ago my best friend and I drove to the Great White North to buy a twelve-year-old Toyota. It was one of our best adventures yet. This is the story. Off-roading has been a constant in my life.…
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S197 vs S550: How well does the prior-gen Mustang GT hold up, and how much better is the current model?
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Driving subsequent generations of any particular vehicle is always an interesting experience. You get to experience and feel for yourself the work an automaker did to improve upon the prior model, and at the same time you have a chance to evaluate the more modern example to see if their efforts were successful. I’ve had…
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War, revisited: Camaro SS vs Mustang GT test-drive comparo
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It’s been referred to as war, a heated half-century long battle with roots deeper than those of just about any automotive fight out there. It’s Mustang vs Camaro once again and here it’s not about numbers, but rather a non-professional opinion, the impressions and take-aways of a normal enthusiast after driving the prominent pony-turned-sports cars…
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Friday Fun: Four-by-four, by four
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In last week’s Friday Fun we explored the Forbidden Fruits that taunt our wildest automotive dreams, exploring the parts of our imagination where the cars unavailable to us become accessible at the touch of our fingertips. And since all of my choices were street-oriented, this week we’re going to look at the exact opposite end of…
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Quick Spin: 2014 Nissan 370Z – long in the tooth but surprisingly great
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People talk a lot of shit about the Nissan 370Z. It relies on an antiquated powertrain, doesn’t boast any of the tech that do the current crop of offerings, and it sits on a platform that’s going on a decade old. Not that it ever lit the world on fire when it was new, the…
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Friday Fun: Forbidden Fruit edition
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It’s been a while since we’ve done a Friday Fun. Let’s make it a good one, shall we? Ah, the forbidden fruit. It lingers and teases the mind of every car enthusiast who knows well enough that not all of the best cars in the world make it to their own homeland. But that’s not the…
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Dear automakers: bring back the sports trucks!
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SVT Lightning. Syclone. 454SS. Ram SRT-10. X-Runner. Xtreme. The street-oriented “sports truck,” a factory-modified pickup that could simultaneously pull off practicality and pleasure, is a sorely missed niche vehicle that would be a fun territory for automakers to explore today. Sports trucks were the antithesis to the supercar: they could put a big ‘ol smile…
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Sampling 2004 Pontiac GTO: Is my Australian dream car any good?
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The Pontiac GTO was the unloved bastard child of the muscle car resurgence of the 2000s. You don’t have to be an automotive designer to know the styling pushed the wrong buttons, leaving the LS1 engine to write checks the Holden-derived body couldn’t cash. That didn’t stop me from wanting one though. For reasons I’ll…
