Teh Car Blogz

One thing I’ve noticed about car magazines in the US (besides the boring ones like Consumer Reports) is that above anything, they like to emphasize acceleration as a defining characteristic of a car’s worth. It’s not hard to notice. On the front cover of the latest Car and Driver, they have a few headlines. The big one proclaims “The Fast Lane!: BMW 135i, 0-60 4.7s.” Further down there’s “Nissan GT-R 0-60 3.3.” At the bottom, in small font is “The Slow Lane: Smart ForTwo, 0-60 14.4s.”

Let me be the first one to say: Who gives a shit how fast a Smart Car gets to sixty miles an hour? No one’s going to be drag-racing from light to light in their Smart. A Smart is an economical fashion accessory, like a Swatch (imagine that!) It’s a conversation piece. It’s the new Prius. The only people racing smarts are the ones with Smartuki conversions, so all three of them. The 0-60 time on a Smart is about as relevant as the fuel efficiency of a dump truck.
But this is America, where we have (comparatively) cheap gas, the roads are wide and straight, and if you’re not going 80 on the highway, you’re getting run over. So magazines shout about how fast a car can reach 60 - which is a pretty arbitrary number.

There are a lot of fast cars out there. But let me let you in on a secret: some of them really, truly suck.

(more…)

Mazda is known for, if anything, doing things differently. They single-handedly brought about the resurrection of the 2-seat small convertible, a previously dead market, in 1989 with the MX-5 Miata. Which has been a resounding success. They made a production road car with a Miller Cycle supercharged engine, pretty much just because they could. (Remember the Millenia S? Yeah, 2.3L V6, Miller Cycle, supercharged. Why? I have no idea.) But the biggest gamble that Mazda ever took was the rotary engine. And when they came out with it, they needed some unique advertising to get the word out. This is what they came up with.

“Piston engine goes BOING BOING BOING
But the Mazda goes Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm”
The ad was for the RX-3 wagon.  Although it’s cute, I’m not sure that a country song and the message “Buy this car and a pretty girl will steal it from you” was what they were aiming for.

One persistent rumor that has been floating around automotive circles for years and years is that the triumphant return to the United State of Alfa Romeo is just around the corner. I think perhaps we should pause and look back to when Alfa last sold cars in the US for a bit of perspective.

(more…)