The Helpful Critics

The Buick Enclave is a pretty uncommon device, both in terms of street presence and I’d suggest value as well. It’s a bigger-than-average CUV, and it’s one that meets a pretty broad array of market needs, despite a conspicuous lack of mainstream marketing. It looks good from the curb, drives well from the cockpit, and sits six or more as comfy as two, and with better than accepted gas mileage.
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I’ve known for a couple of months that I need to have my front brake pads replaced in my Nissan Altima, but I didn’t have time to get it done until recently. Since it seemed like a fairly simple thing, I called around to places like Firestone and Midas to see who would give me the best deal, rather than going with my trusted mechanic. Big mistake.
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I’m not a snob when it comes to food, so when I was asked by my editor to review everything authentic I could find in Puerto Rico, I had no problem saying yes. I was there for almost three months, and I found some really interesting finds in the mix. What I found most interesting was how much I missed American levels of service and the really unique finds like the Red and Green Steakhouse in Atlanta.
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On a recent cold winter night, I went in search of some cheap, tasty food to fill me up. I wasn’t being too picky, and I wasn’t looking for anything spectacular, but that’s exactly what I found. If you think that you need to spend $50 to have a wonderfully mouth-watering meal, think again. My boyfriend and I spent no more than $15 at a hole-in-the-wall gyro restaurant in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle, and we left the restaurant delighted and stuffed.
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There has been an awful lot of media buzz lately about a particular Brazilian Steakhouse in Atlanta, so I went to go check it out. I called in advance to tell them I was coming and that I was a member of the media, but they didn’t seem to care, and I wondered why. Were they crazy, stupid, incompetent, or so busy with lines around the corner they just didn’t understand me? I soon found out the answer, and it almost knocked me out of my seat.
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I first became a fan of Volvo in 1998 when my sister bought an all-new S70, and loved it to bits. I’d had rich, suburban milf-moms who drove Volvos throughout the 80s because their cash-laden hubbies (who could never give them the wealth of my “auto” experience) wanted to give them luxurious cars that topped the charts in safety features. My sister’s rich as Rockefeller, and today she’s still driving the same car, and she still loves it. Folks of means don’t usually cling to a brand, let alone a single car, so I automatically gave Volvo an extra ounce or pound of credence.
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Is it just me, or has the market gotten sick of crossover SUVs yet? They’re too small to be SUVs and too big to be cars, so how do you build them? You can’t go with a truck chassis, but using a car chassis makes them underpowered, overweight and patently incapable of functioning as any sort of viable option in between. The BMW X3 does a better job than most, so if you’re bent on a CUV, though I can’t imagine why you would be, this is about as good of a choice as any.
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This year Lincoln came out with its own crossover SUV for the American market. It’s a good car that is exactly what it purports to be, but it’s faced some pretty harsh attention from the critics. Not because it pretends to be something it isn’t, or because it isn’t a good car, but I think it’s because they just don’t like Lincoln. Car critics drive everything, but they don’t buy much, and they certainly don’t take the town car to the airport. What I’ll do, rather than review it straight up or heap on the nitpicking, is address the gripes raised and give you my take on it.
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I’ve had more than a few friends who were runaway Jeep advocates over the years, and though I’ve only had a handful of opportunities to ride in them, I’ve never much been impressed. Historically these off-road throwbacks have been fun, with curb-appeal on tap, but it isn’t the sort of benefit that could make up for the high price, lack of economy and efficiency, or the terrible track record of unreliability. If you’re thinking about a Jeep Compass, you can forget what you might have known about Jeep, because this ain’t your creepy uncle’s mud-wrangler, it’s a whole different ride of a whole different breed.
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I don’t like minivans, I should say that right off the bat, just to give you an idea where I’m coming from. When station wagons went the way of the dodo in lieu of them, I wasn’t excited. They’re more versatile, sure, but they’re hideous, hog the road, and invariably cost more than many are able to pay, not to mention the fact that any self-respecting motor-head wouldn’t be caught dead in one. Well that’s the take I have from twenty-years ago, so let’s talk about what they are today, and how I became a minivan believer.
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