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Two days ago I blogged about a mysteriously broken bow on our FJ's roof rack. The entry led some readers to speculate that maybe we were to blame for the bow's failure since we've used the FJ as a camera platform. But it's not the case. The FJ's roof rack has two tiers, and the bows ride on the bottom level, well below our makeshift platform...
As a young mom, often on the go with kids paraphernalia I've always been a fan of the Compact SUV; it gets me where I want to go, provides me a feeling of power on the road and doesn't prohibit me from safe parallel parking like its larger SUV siblings. 
You're going to hear plenty about how fast our RAV4 is, so I don't need to belabor that point (but man this thing is quick -- oh, sorry). I also like the general layout of the interior, but I'm disappointed in the HVAC controls. Just like window controls belong on the door and radio controls should always include knobs for volume and station tuning (the RAV gets both of these right), a car's climate controls should be made up of, primarly, dials. Three is perfect, as it covers temp, fan speed and airflow...
Beyond the many fine traits exhibited by our Sonata (relatively quick, refined ride quality, solid ergonomics, attractive interior materials, etc.) I personally like the color. It's a maroon/brown shade (official name is "Dark Cinnamon") and it looks quite upscale, particularly for a $23,000 car. I took possession of the car just after it had been washed, but limited garage space meant it had to sit out at curbside. It struck me at one point that the car, in all it's freshly-washed, Dark Cinnamon glory, looked quite attractive parked out there...
Yesterday I noticed that the FJ's rear cup holders are not cup holders, but bottle holders. And in two languages. We think the bottle part is because the bins are on the FJ's rear doors, which would make spillage a problem if the door is opened and there's an uncapped container in the holder. The French label befuddles, however, because no other instruction or warning labels on the truck are in anything but English...
I'm channelling Etta James. "At last the skies above are blue" I finally got to drive the Miata. I mean really drive. Whenever I get to take it home, I get stuck in unfair traffic...
Two days ago Road Test Editor Josh Jacquot blogged about a clunk in the FJ's rear suspension. Well, I've fixed it.
Turns out it wasn't the rear suspension after all. Instead it was a loose section roof rack making the racket...
Unless you're 8 1/2 years old, your passion for minivans is probably more utilitarian than lusty. I'm 48 and single, which lands me pretty firmly in the groups that regards minvans as a practicality, a conveyance, with little emotional attachment to speak of. So I found it pretty shocking after a night's commute that I found myself beginning to bond with our long-term ruby-red box, the 2006 Kia Sedona EX.
Not that the Kia's driving dynamics are all that dynamic (let's face it: If you buy a minivan with the dream of autocrossing it on weekends, then you really need to consider upping your meds), but I did find things that surprised me...
I've just spent the better part of a week driving an '07 Camry LE with a V6, then I hop into our Long Term Sonata and expect to be unimpressed. WRONG! The Sonata still feels tight, solid and has a very refined ride - the cabin also remains acceptably quiet on the freeway. Also, I think the car is very attractive esp from the rear...
Monday evenings I usually dine at the Hamburger Hamlet, not for the beefy burgers, but because Mondays are chicken noodle soup night. While most patrons gather round the TV monitors for Monday night football chomping on All-American Burgers, I tuck into a quiet corner and have soup.
I've struck up a relationship with the valet. He knows I work at Edmunds and since he gets exposure to a lot of vehicles in his line of work too, we usually chat about cars...
This was an unseasonably warm weekend here in L.A. with temps near 90 and the sun shining brightly most of the time. Not really something to complain about, eh? However, while driving the Civic Si I noticed that the cabin seemed to heat up pretty quickly when the car was parked. The chief culprit is most likely the massive windshield, which, like that of a minivan or Lamborghini Murcielago (never thought those two would be mentioned in the same sentence!) is so steeply raked that it continues quite a ways over the cabin.
The big windscreen is great for outward visibility, but the result is a "greenhouse effect" that admits a lot of sunlight, and hence passive solar heating, into the cabin. Great in the winter time, not so much on a hot day.
John DiPietro, Automotive Editor @ 15,830 miles.
While the inevitable comparison between the Ford GT, the Dodge Viper and the Chevrolet Corvette is unavoidable (heck, we even did our own), there are several areas where the former vastly breaks from the latter two. One of the most obvious differences is in the area of shift quality. The Ford GT uses a Ricardo six-speed transmission, and to put it succintly -- this transmission rocks! It offers extremely smooth and precise shifting between gears, and despite the 550 horsepower coursing through it the tranny doesn't have an "industrial" feel...
We got a letter to the editor the other day asking, "Why don't automakers just make the perfect car?" After much tut-tutting around the office about the reasons the perfect car hasn't emerged, I drove the RAV4 for a weekend and thought maybe...just maybe Toyota had come close.
Toyota sees things just as the letter writer. "Let's do this thing perfectly." Whereas others seem pleased with their styling job, engine performance, DVD players or whatever...Toyota wants everything to be perfect. And as such, they have removed anything resembling style or substance to get their vehicles down to the simplest assemblage of parts possible...
Big news Beamer fans (or is it Bimmer?) the outside bolster of the 330's driver's seat is beginning to show wear. If the seat were black I don't think it would be visible, but the tan leather in our long-term doesn't hide anything. And anyone that has driven the sedan knows it's impossible to get in the car without scraping his or her backside across the bolster. Like I said, big news...
No huge news to report this week with the FJ except that it is beginning to show signs of wear. It's windshield recently took a rock on the freeway and will likely need replacement and it's making an awful gronking sound from the rear suspension.
The sound, which began over the weekend, is going to be difficult to diagnose because it doesn't seem to correlate with any particular body motion or suspension movement. It occurs often, but not with any regular pattern related to speed or driving input...
No, I'm not talking about see-through swimwear, but rather the apparent invisibility of that big digital speedo when driving with headlights on during daylight hours.
Last week, six of us were driving six sport compact cars up to Monterey as part of a comparison test. It was a bright sunny day, and I was driving the Civic Si as we passed through one of California's "Daytime Headlight Use Required" sections. When I dutifully turned on the headlights, the speedo disappeared. Even after I stripped off my sunglasses, I couldn't make it out.
Since Daytime Headlight Use sections are located on historically dangerous roads, I figure the ability to see how fast I'm going would be a good thing. And since California now has a law on the books requiring headlights to be on whenever the windshield wipers are, the need for daytime headlight use increases.
As I shot these pictures, it was quite overcast -- as it might be on a drizzly day. The effect you see above is even worse in bright sun, as it was last week when the display totally vanished. But today, I found that Honda thought of this, and provided a way for drivers to deal with the situation.
Talk about a freak-out. I'm driving the GT and I look over and see the gas gauge past empty. A few minutes earlier I'd had just under a quarter of a tank, but now I'm in heavy Friday afternoon traffic and no fuel stations are in sight. I couldn't believe the car gulped nearly a quarter tank in the 10 minutes since I'd last looked at the gauge (sure, it will go that fast during top speed testing at the Nardo track in Italy, but not in stop-n-go on PCH)...
I've spent the last couple days in the Solstice and a couple more annoyances have cropped up. For one thing, I dislike the seatbelts. Now, I've driven many convertibles (and even owned one) so I know you can't expect the seatbelt fit to be perfect in a car where they're not height-adjustable...
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