Welcome back, all you journalism fans. It’s time for the lightning round in America’s hot new game show, “How to Review a Mercury.”
For the first question, pick how you’d describe the 2006 Mercury Milan.
Choice A: “It’s the best car Mercury’s made in years.”
Choice B: “It’s an overpriced Ford Fusion.”
Choice C: “Is Mercury still around?” Read more…
For a long time, there was nothing grand about Suzuki’s Grand Vitara.
This small, ugly vehicle was the red-headed stepchild of SUVs, constantly getting one-upped by the Ford Escape, Honda CRV, Nissan Xterra, Jeep Liberty and other great competitors. The only good reason to buy it was the price, and even that was coming under attack as competition among mini-SUVs reached a white-hot frenzy, translating into dirt-cheap prices for vehicles that were much better than this one. Read more…
Isuzu is bound to be leaving America soon.
How else could you explain the company’s totally unimaginative, unoriginal lineup of trucks and SUVs? It’s as if everyone at Isuzu threw up their arms and said, “Enough already! We give up! Let’s just forget about this ‘create new cars’ thing and let General Motors do all our work.” Read more…
Ivory Soap used to advertise that its product was 99 and 44/100ths-percent pure.
Mazda could have said the same thing about the Miata when it was introduced in 1989. The first Miata was about as pure as sports cars could get, offering only the bare necessities of transportation so that it could focus on its core mission: fun for the driver. Read more…
No, you don’t have to plug it in.
That’s the answer to the question lots of people asked about the 2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid. They simply couldn’t figure how a big, muscular SUV with great power and acceleration could get the same gas mileage as some four-cylinder compact cars.
But, thanks to the miracle of gas-electric hybrid technology, that’s exactly what this SUV does. Read more…
TALIHINA, Okla. — It’s sunset on the Talimena Scenic Drive, a two-lane stretch of asphalt that winds through one of the most gorgeous landscapes in middle America: the ancient Ouachita mountains in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas.
I’m hours away from the constant craziness of big-city life, having traded pollution and traffic gridlock for miles of wide-open roads and pure, 75-degree mountaintop air, if only for a weekend. There’s virtually no civilization out here aside from a few towns that could make the cover of the Saturday Evening Post if they were a bit less scruffy, and the views from around each bend take my breath away for their Ansel Adams-style serenity. Read more…
POTEAU, Okla. — It looked like Christmas shopping season in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Evidently there’s not much to do on a Friday night in Poteau — other than huntin’ and fishin’ in the nearby mountains — so it seemed everybody in town had shown up at Wal-Mart to meet their buddies and share a little gossip on this cool April night. I had to hike from my faraway parking spot to get inside, where the locals were talking a lot more than they were shopping. Read more…
I usually detest driving big cars.
It’s not because they’re ugly or slow — which many of them are — but because they remind me of my grandma’s car, an old Chrysler Fifth Avenue that wallowed through corners like its suspension was made of oatmeal and rubber bands. It felt more like piloting a boat than driving an automobile. Read more…
Not Much Truck But Still A Lot Of Fun
After spending a few days in a very nice H2 SUT we know one thing for sure: Buyers aren’t purchasing these things for their utility. The “midsize” member of the Hummer lineup has never been particularly useful for moving stuff from point A to B (not counting those rare instances when point B is in uncharted territory) because there really isn’t much interior cargo space. In the SUT that minimal interior cargo space has been replaced with minimal exterior cargo space in the form of a pickup bed with a four-hay bale capacity—maybe less! But we’re not dumb (Actually, test results are still pending—Ed). People buy Hummers because they look cool. The fact that they are comfortable, ride well, can drive through almost anything, and make you feel invincible are simply nice bonuses. Read more…
