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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

I’ve reviewed a lot of cars in my career, and there’s always something to like about each of them, some more than others. I went in to the review of the Nissan Altima expecting a hum-drum, mid-sized, mid-range car, but it has more going for it than I expected. It’s as comfortable as any Altima […]

[Read more →]

Even in the days when petrol-swigging SUVs where the very staple by which the Big-3 kept their quarterly dividends within investor expectations, Chrysler made the criticized decision to start scaling back the super-size equation. They began work on the Chrysler Pacifica (under various test names) long before gas became priced alike liquid saffron, so when […]

[Read more →]

A couple weeks ago I ran a review of my 1987 Nissan Pathfinder, and somebody at Nissan must have suffered a case of the burning ears, because this week I was asked to review the all-new 2007 Nissan Pathfinder. It’s a very different car, and a good car, but in very different ways. It’s bigger, […]

[Read more →]