January 20, 2009
The catalogue copy for the Ferrari children's bicycles is maybe more revealing than intended about exactly who they're for:This licensed Ferrari bike is simply beautiful in every detail. The perfect first bike when your child has to have the...
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Posted by greg at
5:18 PM
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Comments (0)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Miniature Bugatti "52"- 294A - one owner since 1930., originally uploaded by grahamlittle10. Graham Little...
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Posted by greg at
3:57 PM
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Comments (0)
January 14, 2009
Oops, sorry. Big girls. Howie Long becomes an arrogant ass in new Chevy campaign brandfreak, see all the ads here, via gawker]...
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Posted by greg at
1:33 PM
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Comments (1)
January 7, 2009
The NY Times has a quick review of the Toyota's not-a-station-wagon, the Venza, which adds a telling layer of genealogy to the car's [sic] design. Yes, it was derived from the 2005 FT-SX [bottom] but did you know that...
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Posted by greg at
9:09 AM
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Comments (5)
December 29, 2008
Which is to say, the top-of-the-line Porsche sled is an over-engineered, high-performance, aluminum-and-steel category killer of almost obnoxious simplicity. The cheaper one is plastic, and it tries to make you to forget that it's basically a Volkswagen. Also, it...
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Posted by greg at
9:16 PM
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Comments (1)
December 17, 2008
I lost the pictures, but when we went to the Pioneer Day parade in Ivins, Utah last summer, there was, in the parking lot next to the inflatable slide that got so hot in the desert sun, kids would come...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 AM
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Comments (2)
December 11, 2008
Can't wait to see where the car seat goes... What The Hell Is This? [cardomain via jalopnik, who's having a caption contest, thanks dt station wagon correspondent jj daddy-o]...
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Posted by greg at
4:34 PM
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Comments (1)
DT reader Moni flagged this in the September 1951 issue of Popular Mechanics. It's a do-it-yourself "traveling playpen" made from a couple of pieces of hinged plywood, custom fitted to the dimensions of your car's rear seat. The article...
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Posted by greg at
4:20 PM
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Comments (7)
December 9, 2008
Having a kid has contributed great depth and relevance to Dave Thomas's reviews for Cars.com. And by that I mean, of course, his regular investigations of his subjects' car seat performance. The latest: the new Audi A4 Avant, which...
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Posted by greg at
6:05 PM
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Comments (15)
December 8, 2008
Who says Americans don't want to drive station wagons? They just don't want to pay for them. At No. 7, with an incident rate of 9.9/1,000 vehicles, the Dodge Magnum was the 2nd most popular car on the IIHS's...
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Posted by greg at
2:31 PM
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Comments (4)
December 6, 2008
Personally, I still love the stately, unhurried power of our OG Mercedes turbodiesel. That blinding black cloud of smoke it emits when I downshift makes me feel like a giant squid making an escape. And I'm sure it's mellow sluggishness...
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Posted by greg at
9:44 PM
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Comments (2)
December 4, 2008
Call me naive, but wasn't the Big Dig supposed to elminate Boston's traffic woes and turn the entire region into a garden-filled, driving utopia? Apparently not, because suburban guys driving their wives 25 miles into town so they can give...
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Posted by greg at
8:32 AM
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Comments (4)
December 2, 2008
Despite the fact that they don't exist, Pete from Jalopnik just bought a Ford Taurus SHO Wagon on eBay for three thousand measly bucks. At least I can console myself that it was a 1992, and not the awesomer-looking,...
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Posted by greg at
1:07 PM
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Comments (3)
December 1, 2008
At the peak of his Home Improvement fame, when he also had a best-selling book and was the voice of Buzz Lightyear, Tim Allen was consumed by one all-important question: ""If a man was to drive a minivan, what...
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Posted by greg at
4:49 PM
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Comments (4)
November 30, 2008
In answer to my question from August, "Is this the Nissan Cube I've been waiting for?" the answer is, "Yes, and they even flipped the rear asymmetry to accommodate LHD and Right Side of Road driving." Nissan finally unveiled...
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Posted by greg at
10:02 PM
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Comments (4)
November 25, 2008
You'd never know it from their US lineup, but Honda has been making awesome Accord Tourer wagons for years. YEARS. Including some with ultra-quiet, ultra-low emission diesel engines that get like 10,000 miles/gallon. And for most of those years, Honda...
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Posted by greg at
3:29 PM
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Comments (8)
November 18, 2008
Google just opened a high-res archive of all the photos from Life magazine, and it's pure surfing gold. But the first awesome thing I found was silver. Harolds Club in Reno was the first themed casino in the world,...
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Posted by greg at
7:19 PM
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Comments (2)
November 17, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Spotted at Target, originally uploaded by daddytypes.Alright, suburbs, you win this round. This pristine Buick...
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Posted by greg at
1:42 PM
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Comments (2)
November 14, 2008
Between the advent of the car and the formal legislation of the car seat, thousands of inventors spent decades laying the innovative groundwork for the modern products we depend on to protect our children. And though patents expire, these...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 PM
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Comments (5)
The wife's representing at the official opening of some gigantic observatory in Argentina, so I've been a little overbooked the last few days. Otherwise, I'm sure I totally would have been celebrating the 25th anniversary of Chrysler's Dodge Caravan as...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 PM
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Comments (2)
October 29, 2008
Uh, wow. I can understand how tough it must be to sell a rebranded Chrysler Town & Country minivan as an actual, German car. " But if I were in Volkswagen's marketing department, I probably would have gone the, "Technically,...
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Posted by greg at
1:41 PM
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Comments (7)
Hell yeah, you're a guido, and f-in' proud of it, bitch. An' your kid's gonna grow up just like his old man, summers on the Shore and what not, you gotta problem withat, go back to the f-in' city....
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Posted by greg at
12:28 PM
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Comments (3)
October 28, 2008
View Larger Map Meanwhile, in Foreigners & Their SUVs News:A 21-year-old woman tried to smuggle nearly five and a half pounds of chorizo concealed in several baby diapers inside her SUV at the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge just before midnight Friday,...
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Posted by greg at
4:23 PM
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Comments (0)
In order to issue someone a speed camera ticket in Germany, it's necessary to have an identifiable photo of the driver, not just the car's license plate. Which, because of the sensitive camera calibrations, means all you need to...
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Posted by greg at
1:41 PM
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Comments (1)
October 26, 2008
Though it's a few years old now, and Zestline, the Moscow tuning shop which created it has disappeared from the web, this heavily modded VW Transporter--dubbed the Zestline Bomber--is worth a shoutout anyway. Partly because it reminds me of...
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Posted by greg at
10:57 PM
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Comments (0)
October 18, 2008
If it were a Camry wagon, could it do...THIS? Or...THIS? I rest my case. Live Shots Of Toyota Venza AS V By Five Axis Coming To SEMA [jalopnik] Live Images Of SEMA-Bound Toyota Venza Sportlux By Street Image...
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Posted by greg at
9:13 PM
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Comments (0)
October 16, 2008
David is a new dad and one of the car guys [little c, little g, Magliozzis, relax.] at Cars.com. Well, the kid's six months old now, and Dave's care-free days of swapping the bases for his son's infant car seat...
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Posted by greg at
11:03 AM
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Comments (22)
October 10, 2008
We're traveling this weekend, landed in Las Vegas late last night, drive-thru In 'n Out, and on to St George, Utah for a little volcano hiking and grandparent time. Posting will be a little light, or at least a little...
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Posted by greg at
3:19 PM
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Comments (3)
October 6, 2008
No, the other one. Let's face facts: France is a nation in love with crazy bassinets, so it's no wonder that French "families who demand design" would choose a shagadelic, egg-shaped bassinet that matches their Seat Altea XL over...
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Posted by greg at
9:08 AM
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Comments (4)
October 5, 2008
[via daring fireball] "Where the hell are the singin' cats?" is burned into my brain, but hearing David Letterman story about Paul Newman and their matching Volvo 960 station wagons which Newman's racing goons outfitted with Ford 302 V8 racing...
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Posted by greg at
8:48 AM
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Comments (6)
October 2, 2008
Oh my. A classic Mercedes aficionado blogging at Tamerlane posted this sighting of a 450SEL 6.9 wagon, supposedly the "only one commissioned by Mercedes" itself for "the head of MBUSA." That raised roofline was causing me much pain, until...
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Posted by greg at
10:42 AM
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Comments (3)
September 30, 2008
Now I know what Beano Comic Magazine is, and I know that it was all a crazy coincidence, the appearance of two Dennises the Menaces within days of each other in 1951. But the first Dennis the Menace, or...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 AM
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Comments (2)
September 28, 2008
Because the Cars.com team has at least one dad-minded member, you can car shop easy knowing that the redesigned Honda Fit handles a big old car seat with surprising comfort and ease, even in the middle seat. Great news, unless...
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Posted by greg at
10:29 PM
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Comments (0)
September 24, 2008
Hell of a guy:Tom Wolfe: Did I mention to you I'm pimping out my cars? NY Observer: Don't think so. This is my third childhood. I had my second childhood when rock 'n' roll came along--Martha and the Vandellas. Now...
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Posted by greg at
11:13 AM
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Comments (6)
September 17, 2008
Pininfarina: And how big shall we make Your Majesty's Ferrari station wagons, then? HM SoB: Big enough to bring a pickled shark home from Sotheby's, at least. Pininfarina: We'll see what we can do, Your Majesty. SPOTTED: THE INCREDIBLY...
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Posted by greg at
5:41 PM
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Comments (1)
September 15, 2008
So I popped into a Honda dealer yesterday afternoon to see how the new 2009 Honda Fit looked in person: $2,000 in mandatory dealer options, plus $2,085 "additional markup" is how it looks, on a $16,000 car. If I'm...
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Posted by greg at
2:04 PM
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Comments (9)
September 9, 2008
Now this is odd: apparently, some people gather in person, in a single place and on a fixed date, and even require the purchase of tickets in advance, all to auction off items of some rarity and value. No...
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Posted by greg at
5:43 PM
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Comments (4)
September 4, 2008
After 150 years of British lorrymaking, Foden ceased production in 2006. Which, coincidentally? is when a truck driving dad in Herefordshire named Paul started making a kid-sized replica of his own Foden rig. Now it's done, and it looks...
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Posted by greg at
10:08 AM
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Comments (0)
September 2, 2008
Add the Nissan Stagea to the long list of awesome-looking wagons that never leave the Japanese domestic market. The Stagea began as the wagon variant of the Skyline GT-R, or in its later incarnation, the Infiniti G35. This example...
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Posted by greg at
1:01 AM
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Comments (1)
August 28, 2008
OK, so there's De Parma, a slightly cheeky antiques dealer in London, who's selling this vintage Ferrari Tipo 500 F2 racer pedal car--dated to the 50's and sourced to Italy, but otherwise no manufacturer is mentioned--in very nice original-looking...
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Posted by greg at
3:31 PM
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Comments (4)
August 25, 2008
In his post at the Washington Post's On Parenting blog, Brian told of crossing the parenting rubicon: they got a minivan. Well, not exactly They got a miniminivan, the Mazda 5, which was the only car that met his criteria...
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Posted by greg at
8:50 AM
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Comments (7)
August 22, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Super short wheelbase Plymouth Voyager Minivan, originally uploaded by dave_7. Whether it's complaining about the...
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Posted by greg at
11:48 AM
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Comments (0)
Hemmings Motor News, the bible of the classic car world, just launched a new title: Hemmings Fifties-Era Midget Race Car Into 21st Century Hot Rod Stroller News. There's only one issue so far, but I'm hereby signing up for...
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Posted by greg at
10:32 AM
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Comments (0)
August 21, 2008
Good Lord, I like the Flex from afar, but is Ford trying so hard to avoid calling the car a station wagon that they don't even offer a factory woodgrain decal option? And what's this nonsense about applying it...
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Posted by greg at
12:59 AM
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Comments (1)
August 17, 2008
I guess it is a small island, so how far could they go? DT's family car man in London Wesley first crossed paths with this 1976 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow wagon on the street, in front of the V&A....
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Posted by greg at
5:49 PM
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Comments (3)
August 12, 2008
Besides the remarkable, unrestored condition and the sheer awesomeness of growing up with sirens and flashing lights on top of your family ride--you'd be the star of every school dropoff line and carpool, and the kid'd totally be a...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 PM
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Comments (2)
I have no idea what a Woodward Dream Cruise is; I avoid cruises on principle. But I do know that no amount of smutty mayoral text-message publishing can make up for the station wagon-bashing nonsense of the Detroit News's Susan...
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Posted by greg at
8:01 PM
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Comments (4)
August 9, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Safeway Valiant, originally uploaded by Telstar Logistics. Todd spotted this clean 1964 Plymouth Valiant wagon...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 AM
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Comments (1)
August 8, 2008
Matt Haughey and Paul Bausch recently launched Fuelly.com, a site which allows you to compare gas mileage with your friends, and to share fuel saving tips and such. So far, over 500 cars over 1,100 cars have been signed up....
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Posted by greg at
11:53 AM
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Comments (2)
August 4, 2008
Ever since Nissan announced they were bringing the next generation of their awesome little Scion spanker, the Cube, to the US, I've been periodically scanning the Japanese car web for spy shots. Japan's auto spy photographers must be a...
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Posted by greg at
5:10 PM
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Comments (4)
July 30, 2008
So last night, after an offhand reference to an offhand reference by the AMG Hammer Wagon guy of an Audi S8 Avant prototype, I thought I'd go look it up. Which is like a recovering alcoholic just popping into...
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Posted by greg at
10:58 AM
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Comments (2)
July 29, 2008
Station wagons weren't always considered hopelessly lame and unmarketable. They're certainly cool enough for Car & Driver's legendary Boss Wagon project series, for example. Seems that the magazine's editors would pick an otherwise sedate station wagon or van and...
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Posted by greg at
11:32 PM
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Comments (4)
A 1988 Mercedes 300TE 6.0, aka, the AMG Hammer Wagon, is on the eBay right now. If you're not up to speed on your AMG history, this is from the tuner's independent heyday, when the AMG Hammer, a W124...
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Posted by greg at
6:11 PM
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Comments (2)
July 17, 2008
PickupTrucks.com just named the 2000 Dodge MAXXcab concept one of the "5 Ugliest Concept Trucks" ever. The minivan-derived design, they said, was what was left over after the Dodge Power Wagon "had used up its designers' testosterone." Funny, that...
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Posted by greg at
4:43 PM
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Comments (2)
July 14, 2008
"Nothing about the outside of Ricardo Gonzalez's deep blue Land Rover tells there's a homemade jail inside, where his two young daughters were completely immobilized in tight seats covered with straps, just like an electric chair." Can you ever imagine...
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Posted by greg at
10:20 AM
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Comments (17)
July 7, 2008
In what might be the kickoff of Implausible Scandinavian Jets Week, the 300 Saab 9-3 Turbo X's are clearly generating their desired Halo Effect. Over at Hemmings, Mark calls the 286-hp AWD Audi S4-chaser "wicked-looking and seriously fun-to-drive." and...
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Posted by greg at
11:10 PM
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Comments (1)
By now, I'm sure you've seen the crazed, 4-axle GM van conversion on eBay, the one with the sauna and shower in the trailer, "so that your wife can take a shower while you are driving"? [jalopnik is preserving...
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Posted by greg at
11:05 PM
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Comments (0)
note: this post began as a link roundup, but the topics were so far-flung, I broke them all out into separate posts. The glass-half-empty crowd at Consumerist is treating the shrinking Pampers count as a sneaky, 5% price increase [from...
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Posted by greg at
3:20 PM
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Comments (1)
July 2, 2008
That's my wife, patiently waiting for me to get a handle on the unexpected pleasure that was afforded us on a boat in Nassau by Fatima Blush. No wait, that was the Renault R5T2. I meant the unexpected pleasure...
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Posted by greg at
2:03 PM
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Comments (5)
July 1, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Je Me Souviens: Mercedes B200 Turbo visiting from up north, originally uploaded by daddytypes. It's...
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Posted by greg at
1:25 AM
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Comments (5)
June 26, 2008
Next time I get a Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe, I'll remember to have Bespoke re-cover my kids' car seats covered in matching Bavarian bull hide, too. image detail via pacific coast news online [celebuzz via my wife, who...
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Posted by greg at
11:16 PM
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Comments (8)
June 21, 2008
Last weekend we took K2 for her first visit to Florent. Also her last, because Florent's closing in less than two weeks. I'd planned on many years of boring brunches where I'd explain to the kids how daddy and...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 AM
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Comments (5)
June 20, 2008
In her new book, ARE WE THERE YET?: The Golden Age of American Family Vacations Susan Sessions Rugh says Ford had an ad campaign selling their cars as "America's schoolhouse on wheels." Which reminds me that I have to finish...
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Posted by greg at
12:29 PM
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Comments (1)
June 18, 2008
Jalopnik has the press release, which doesn't mention what those dealer adjustments'll be for the first few months. Jalopnik also has this insane Sprocketsian tribute film, The SportWagen of Sorrow. The only thing it's missing is a cameo by Nick...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 PM
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Comments (2)
June 11, 2008
Holy crap, Honda. Diesel wagon with a standard 6-speed manual transmission? Forget Europe, this description of the 2008 Honda Accord sounds like it's from freakin' Bizzaro World:standard? :Honda unveils the new Accord for Europe, with a sportier design, a...
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Posted by greg at
9:50 AM
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Comments (5)
June 10, 2008
Monaco has its own internal logic when it comes to cars. When my Citroen 2CV still had Marseilles-area tags on it, I would get pulled over every fifteen minutes. But after I installed my bamboo sunscreen on the roof,...
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Posted by greg at
8:59 AM
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Comments (0)
June 6, 2008
Sheesh, after sitting on some of these alarming findings all week, I am freaked out: Childhood cancer rates are highest in Northeast, study finds. higher by like 7%, too: 179/million vs 166/million average. Must be all that liberal health care...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 AM
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Comments (3)
June 3, 2008
Poor VW. If only the Phaeton had a place for the bichon--and if only gas were still $1.25/gallon--they'd be a premium luxury brand now, too. If my Google translation is to be believed, the brain trust at Volvo feels...
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Posted by greg at
8:00 AM
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Comments (2)
I guess if I keep kicking the family car decision down the field long enough, I could get my beloved Mercedes A-Class--in the form of the new Honda Fit. which'll go on sale as a 2009 model later this...
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Posted by greg at
6:50 AM
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Comments (2)
May 28, 2008
Cool station wagons are being spotted somewhere else! The new Mercedes C-Class estate in Italy! [via moseleyworld] The new Citroen C5 Tourer in either Africa or the UK, I can't quite make out. [above, via iafrica.com thanks dt reader dt]...
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Posted by greg at
2:12 PM
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Comments (2)
May 27, 2008
Mario Bellini created the Kar-a-Sutra as a collaboration for Citroen and Pirelli in 1972. It was first exhibited at a groundbreaking show at MoMA that introduced Italian modern design to the US, Italy. The New Domestic Landscape. Not just...
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Posted by greg at
12:02 AM
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Comments (2)
May 23, 2008
I know some Dodge Caravan's got a hemi, but I had NO idea Ford ever contemplated an SHO version of the dreariest minivan they ever produced. Oh wait, that was the Aerostar. The Windstar was what it was. But...
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Posted by greg at
1:29 AM
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Comments (2)
May 20, 2008
Jalopnik overwrites the first installment of their trademark 3-part review of the VW Jetta SportWagen. The verdict so far: they look better from the inside [as someone who's only ever seen the potato-shaped Wunderwagen in photos, I would certainly hope...
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Posted by greg at
4:16 PM
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Comments (2)
May 16, 2008
Sheesh, the last thing in the world I need right now is another 1980's project car. So why do I have a saved eBay search for the weirdo-classic Toyota Tercel 4WD wagon? It looks so tame now, but I...
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Posted by greg at
10:26 PM
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Comments (6)
May 15, 2008
In case you haven't guessed, all these years of station wagon smacktalk are really just about me trying to alternately psych myself into or talk myself out of getting an actual family car. Or maybe it's a friend car?...
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Posted by greg at
2:29 PM
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Comments (13)
May 13, 2008
Tough call. The Tummy Shield was designed by an Australian dad, who spent years coming up with a way to prevent injuries to a fetus in the event a pregnant woman is in a car crash. An injury like the...
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Posted by greg at
11:26 PM
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Comments (6)
Wow. After Enzo did that chin flicking thing when he asked for a 4x4 Ferrari, casino pioneer and car junkie Bill Harrah made one his own damn self. Or rather, he had his people do it. "It" being the...
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Posted by greg at
1:56 PM
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Comments (2)
May 8, 2008
"No sir, officer. I'm not drunk. I was just laughing at the tag on the car in front of me, and she got away from me..." [photobasement via jalopnik]...
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Posted by greg at
6:22 PM
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Comments (3)
May 6, 2008
Wow, just wow. From the era of $0.55/gal. gas, by way of Burlington, VT's craigslist:1973 Pontiac Catalina Safari station wagon with 47k original miles. Rare 455 cu. in. engine with 4bbl carb. Great for towing that vintage trailer. Very...
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Posted by greg at
11:39 PM
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Comments (0)
May 2, 2008
Since I'm not an orthodontist, a middle market hip-hopper, or my parents, I haven't paid much attention to Lexus. So I had no idea Lexus ever made a wagon--or a 5-door hatchback, or a sportback sedan, or whatever phony...
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Posted by greg at
7:57 AM
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Comments (21)
April 30, 2008
I noticed that a neighbor in DC recently bought a VW Phaeton, and since every other house in our DC neighborhood has either a Volvo wagon, a Mercedes wagon, or a Passat wagon in front of it, the walks...
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Posted by greg at
11:04 AM
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Comments (3)
April 28, 2008
Was Der F? This puts the Un in unglaublich. The CEO of Porsche is demanding an investigation after finding a baby monitor "behind the sofa" of his hotel room. The monitor was discovered a day before a shareholders meeting last...
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Posted by greg at
12:25 PM
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Comments (1)
April 22, 2008
Suhweet. Carrozzeria Touring has put the Touring back into their Carrozzeria with this station wagon conversion for the Maserati Quattroporte. Dubbed the Bellagio Fastback, this uomo di famiglia-mobile will debut in a few days alongside CT's new Superleggera sports...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 AM
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Comments (4)
April 17, 2008
If this is what was holding you back, head down to the dealer right now. Cars.com reports you can indeed fit a Peg Perego car seat in the rear of a 2009 BMW M3. [Note: reminds me of a...
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Posted by greg at
4:55 PM
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Comments (7)
April 15, 2008
Sheesh, the Sultan of Brunei's Wikipedia entry sounds like it's been edited by Robin Leach. Suffice it to say, that when you spend upwards of $4 billion on 3-5,000 cars, your garage is going to contain quite a few...
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Posted by greg at
11:41 PM
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Comments (2)
April 10, 2008
Well, now, that's a saved search I don't get notified about very often. There's a 1995 BMW M5 Touring on eBay right now, one of the last dozen or so E34 wagons handbuilt by the Motorsport division, and one...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 PM
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Comments (4)
April 5, 2008
Do not adjust your screen. You are not dreaming. NAFTA is real, and it is working hard for Canadian children every. single. minute. That IS a photo of an American minivan [the Chevrolet Uplander, made in Doraville, Georgia! Until...
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Posted by greg at
10:40 AM
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Comments (0)
March 31, 2008
Yesterday afternoon, on the way back to our hotel, we got stuck in a photoshoot for the new Lamborghini LP560-4, and I whipped out the phonecam. Meanwhile, from DT's correspondent from the Small World Department, Darren, was apparently staying...
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Posted by greg at
11:13 AM
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Comments (2)
March 21, 2008
A California state legislator from Orange County has introduced a bill that would grant all pregnant women "temporarily disabled" status for the last trimester, plus the first couple of months after giving birth. This would enable them to join the...
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Posted by greg at
1:51 PM
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Comments (14)
March 14, 2008
Uh-oh, it's put up or shut up time. That 1979 Cadillac station wagon Jalopnik spotted back in December is now online. On sale. on eBay. Back then, I said I'd suddenly felt desperate to buy one, and now one--the...
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Posted by greg at
6:22 PM
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Comments (1)
March 10, 2008
"On the hood, you will see the brown extends down the front. It follows the outline of the 'CROSLEY' badge that goes there. I'm as happy as a new daddy!!!!" That's Barry "Bearman" Dennis talking about the new paint job...
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Posted by greg at
10:47 PM
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Comments (0)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Amelia Concours_20080309 261, originally uploaded by JJ Daddy-O. DT's minivan industry analyst JJ Daddy-o has...
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Posted by greg at
5:37 PM
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Comments (1)
March 5, 2008
Beat your head against the wall lately? If not, check out Jalopnik's Geneva Auto Show gallery of the 2009 Honda Accord Tourer with an optional i-DTEC diesel engine and--oh, who cares what else it has? We've been down this...
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Posted by greg at
5:12 PM
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Comments (5)
February 28, 2008
Here's something that was mentioned but not discussed in the CPSC's new, bed&bath-centric, staff analysis report, "Nursery Product-Related Injuries and Deaths Among Children under Age Five": Car seats and infant carriers were the #1 cause of emergency department-treated infant...
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Posted by greg at
10:31 AM
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Comments (0)
February 24, 2008
Alright, for some inexplicable reason, it's Rolls Royce Station Wagon season around here. No sooner do I post a random photo from the streets of London, than DT reader JJ Daddy-o turns up a 1986 Silver Spirit, custom converted...
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Posted by greg at
9:20 PM
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Comments (2)
February 23, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } I was slow to pick up on its minimalistic charms, but I miss the Bugaboo...
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Posted by greg at
11:42 PM
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Comments (3)
February 20, 2008
In high school, I would have sold my family--or at least my siblings--for an Aston Martin Lagonda. [Yeah, I was screwed up; fortunately, I never had the chance to make such a dumb deal. Not only did my siblings...
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Posted by greg at
5:04 PM
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Comments (4)
February 13, 2008
GM's vice-chairman and chief car design guy Bob Lutz recently told a roomful of lunch-mooching Texas journalists that global warming is "total crock of shit." [sorry, mom, it's a quote!]. And if that's not crazy enough for you, he also...
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Posted by greg at
3:21 PM
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Comments (6)
February 11, 2008
Some interesting things that, given nannies enough and time, might have been full-blown posts [Also things which reveal that I'm probably in a rut, source-wise, extra reading feels like an unaffordable luxury at the moment]: Famous Industrial Designer Tucker Viemeister...
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Posted by greg at
2:32 PM
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Comments (1)
I'm so stoked that DT regular GFR took a break from preparing his presentation for the College Art Association, to do some investigative blogging at the Chicago Auto Show. As you will see from his first dispatch, which he titled,...
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Posted by greg at
1:24 PM
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Comments (2)
February 9, 2008
Wow. The Mercedes 300 SEL 6.3 was the stealth supercar predecessor to the better known muscle car from the late seventies, the 450SE 6.9. From a single prototype in 1967, about 6,500 cars were sold over the four year...
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Posted by greg at
3:25 PM
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Comments (3)
Publicists from a couple of auto makers had been eager to get the daddy types to come to the Chicago Auto Show for some reason. But I don't get the kid out of bed for less than a payola-mazing Audi...
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Posted by greg at
10:21 AM
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Comments (7)
February 6, 2008
Or, what's in my browswer tabs: If You Give A Baby A Protein Shake... Thirty years ago, researchers in Guatemala wanted to test the impact of high nutrition and protein intake on preschool growth and development, so they gave fortified...
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Posted by greg at
11:53 AM
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Comments (2)
February 5, 2008
You know what's been lost in the whole minivan era? A suitable appreciation of the maxivan. Back in the day, when the customized Dodge van was a-rockin', you knew not to come knockin'. Ahh, good times. Now it turns...
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Posted by greg at
12:36 PM
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Comments (11)
February 3, 2008
Just came across these commercials for the great-looking, full-sized Peugeot 407 SW [Station Wagon?], which I've never driven, but I'm predisposed to like because it looks sort of like one of my favorite cars, the Mercedes A-Class, all growed up....
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Posted by greg at
11:00 AM
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Comments (0)
February 1, 2008
Despite the impossibly desperate spinning of the Toyota marketing people, this is not one of those times. Seriously, does Toyota's credibility take any kind of hit for pretending that the Venza wagon is not, in fact, a wagon? Or...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 AM
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Comments (4)
January 28, 2008
Sorry, MSNBC, the LA Times has spoken! Station wagons aren't dead after all. They're fine; they're just not called station wagons anymore."It is believed that 'wagon' is a death sentence for a vehicle," said Alexander Edwards, automotive division president...
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Posted by greg at
12:16 AM
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Comments (2)
January 22, 2008
While trying to find out details of the new 50-state VW TDi Jetta launch, I stumbled across this bit of news about the new VW Routan, the highly unpromising joint venture minivan which is basically a rebadged Chrysler T&C. Until...
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Posted by greg at
2:45 PM
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Comments (3)
Last summer, it seems like all anyone could talk about was the coming of the greatest little young family truckster in the world. But now it actually IS 2008, and instead, all we get is wall-to-wall coverage of The...
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Posted by greg at
1:59 PM
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Comments (4)
January 21, 2008
Seriously, the should call this thing The Radyssey....
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Posted by greg at
10:04 PM
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Comments (3)
January 18, 2008
Holy Guacamole, Batman! While VW sent their engineers to Malibu to study American driving culture, Nissan sent theirs to the Woodfield Mall. The result [seen here entering the wormhole at the Detroit Auto Show] was the Nissan Forum Concept....
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Posted by greg at
10:10 PM
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Comments (2)
January 8, 2008
I don't quite know how to explain... But lately I've been having these strange feelings welling up whenever I see... I mean, I totally mocked my I-banker friend who bought one in 1999 to keep in the city [they'd...
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Posted by greg at
3:10 PM
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Comments (9)
Last summer, the Ford people offered to loan us a Ford Taurus X to take a family road trip in; we'd just gotten back from a too-long family road trip to the Outer Banks, and wanted desperately to avoid any...
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Posted by greg at
2:14 PM
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Comments (7)
January 2, 2008
And somewhere in The San Fernando Valley, a high school float committee chairman weeps, knowing that he will never again win The Crown Seal For Best Use Of Imagination And Innovation To Advance The Art Of Float Design. This...
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Posted by greg at
1:46 PM
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Comments (0)
December 31, 2007
You know, when it was the Jackson 5ive's 1971 Cadillac station wagon that I didn't buy, I was fine. But now that it's this suh-weet 1979 or so Fleetwood Brougham wagon which the Jalopnik guys spotted at Thunderhill, some...
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Posted by greg at
10:59 AM
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Comments (3)
December 29, 2007
Are you thinking what I'm thinking when you read NY Times car guy Lawrence Ulrich's intro to his year-end top ten list?My year in cars was colored — or juice-splattered, more accurately — by my becoming a father. While I’ve...
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Posted by greg at
8:38 AM
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Comments (0)
December 27, 2007
How weird am I? I'll give you a hint. After getting stuck with two family cars in succession at 16--a 1977 powderblue & woodgrain decal Chevy Caprice Classic wagon and a 1983 Honda Civic, I swore off both wagons...
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Posted by greg at
6:01 PM
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Comments (3)
December 24, 2007
Christmas Eve, and all the Playmobil world is asleep under the tree. Meanwhile, minivans are on the rampage. And flying reindeer, too: A Mazda MPV crashed through the wall of the studio just as Chicago's ABC7 10 o'clock news began....
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Posted by greg at
9:16 PM
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Comments (1)
December 21, 2007
Holy. Moley. Henk Vos asked fellow Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek to make some pedal cars for his grandkids to race. After a year, they came up with the Skelter: three speeds plus reverse, aluminum and leather and rubber...
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Posted by greg at
12:26 AM
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Comments (0)
December 17, 2007
Jalopnik has some clean spyshots of the new Mercedes GLK CUV, the mid-sized CUV based on the C-Class platform. The shots are from the set of the Sex and the City movie; the prop car is white, in Beverly...
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Posted by greg at
9:03 AM
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Comments (1)
New Yorkers know that a new trend is officially over as soon as it's mentioned in the NY Times. Clearly, I've forgotten this, because I actually believed they were new when the car reviewer said Volvo's integrated booster seats were...
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Posted by greg at
7:15 AM
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Comments (3)
December 16, 2007
A car seat built right into the car? It's an idea that makes almost as much sense as airlines providing your ticket-holding kid with a planeseat. Which is obviously why it hasn't happened before--until now. Volvo's new stations wagons,...
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Posted by greg at
10:16 PM
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Comments (7)
December 13, 2007
And this is the Audi TT Roadster that Eric drove from Miami to extensively remodel the house that The Hungry Caterpillar built. And these are the abstract acrylic collages which replaced the white paper on the Ingo Maurer chandelier...
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Posted by greg at
7:32 AM
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Comments (1)
December 4, 2007
With the discontinuation of the family pimp's whip of choice, the Dodge Magnum, MSNBC has declared the death of the station wagon:Car makers rushed to meet the anticipated demand with a flood of new models like the Dodge Magnum, the...
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Posted by greg at
8:53 AM
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Comments (4)
November 27, 2007
"Maybe you work it so you could walk to the back to change a diaper, or squash a rebellion." Yeah, maybe. Previous DT coverage of great VW ideas squashed flat like a shoebox...
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Posted by greg at
2:48 PM
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Comments (2)
November 21, 2007
So I cut through the parking garage to get from the hardware store to the Container Store, and this unusually narrow, high, rear profile catches my eye. It seems out of place. Sure enough, it's a brand new Mercedes...
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Posted by greg at
10:03 AM
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Comments (0)
November 20, 2007
A Quebec company is developing a facility for converting 30,000 diapers/year into 11,000 tonnes of diesel fuel using a process called pyrolysis:David Bressler of the University of Alberta says pyrolysis is a "very hot area of research right now".Pyrolysis is...
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Posted by greg at
8:14 PM
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Comments (1)
November 15, 2007
How classic is this Saturday Night Live circumcision sketch? I get a little verklempt just thinking about it. Royal Deluxe II TV commercial [youtube]...
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Posted by greg at
7:39 AM
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Comments (0)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Because then your kid could put the car through its paces at this test course...
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Posted by greg at
7:11 AM
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Comments (0)
November 14, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Driving already, originally uploaded by plasticrevolver [and in no way related to the story below]....
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Posted by greg at
2:39 PM
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Comments (20)
November 12, 2007
Fagus is Italian for beech, let's get that out of the way right now. These are two of a whole series by Fagus of sweet-looking toy vehicles made of solid beech and rubber. They're at Natural Pod, a British...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 PM
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Comments (3)
GM, which leads the world market for flying cow-catching minivans is finally set to start making smaller, nimbler, [and thus, one assumes, cow-dodging] MPV's in the US. The company's Hamtramck, Michigan plant will begin producing--Opel Zefiras. For export to...
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Posted by greg at
9:15 PM
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Comments (2)
November 9, 2007
A Utah policeman pulled over a speeding car, found a guy driving his wife to the hospital, snapped on the rubber gloves, and delivered the kid himself. Fine. But this makes no sense at all: Young Jeon and his wife,...
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Posted by greg at
12:06 AM
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Comments (7)
November 7, 2007
200 feet, 600 pounds, no injuries except the cow, of course. And the minivan. I think someone deserves a model & make mention. Here we go, from the Detroit News: a 2006 Buick Terraza. They even have a photo: Cow...
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Posted by greg at
10:42 AM
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Comments (6)
November 3, 2007
Alright, so all the headlines are from the New York Times. I'm like that guy on NY1 who reads the paper for you in the morning, only I pull out the dad-related stories: Inside The Box: I admit, I fell--hard--for...
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Posted by greg at
10:20 PM
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Comments (0)
October 28, 2007
Not since last Spring, when Colin Powell tinkered amiably under the hood of his 122S for the New York Times, has Volvo challenged the world to ask, "Uh, and you don't make cars this awesome anymore because...why, exactly?" Jalopnik...
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Posted by greg at
7:56 PM
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Comments (1)
October 23, 2007
So Balazs is blazing along the "Hungarian autobahn" in his BMW E61 M5 Touring--though to be honest, 180kmh is only 80mph 112mph, not very fast for an M5 or an autobahn--when he has a rear tire blowout, which starts...
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Posted by greg at
1:13 PM
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Comments (12)
October 22, 2007
One of the highlights of the Iconosphere event last week was meeting one of the big new marketing brains at Volkswagen. The first thing I did--after high-fiving him on the company's awesome 40-Germans-in-a-Malibu-beach-house research stunt, Project Moonraker, was to tell...
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Posted by greg at
2:17 PM
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Comments (9)
October 19, 2007
The 2nd generation Honda Fit went on sale in Japan this week; it comes to the US as a 2009 model. And though LA Times car critic, new father of twins and--let's face it: size queen--Dan Neil says the...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 PM
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Comments (3)
October 17, 2007
Dan Neil in the LA Times: Out on the savanna, the reproductively desirable male was older (Ã la Connery), of higher rank and status within the tribe and commanding more of its wealth. A female's innate programming tends to favor...
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Posted by greg at
9:51 AM
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Comments (3)
October 12, 2007
"You wake up on Sunday morning -- you don't expect to see a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old hooting down the street in a car." Unfortunately, dad was not the one who was awake. On the bright side, they stopped...
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Posted by greg at
1:41 PM
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Comments (1)
October 7, 2007
Alright, finally. The 1972 Samsonite Toys catalogue is up and running on flickr, though a couple of pages are out of order. Check out all the plasticky goodness. With The Machine here, Samsonite ends its toy section with a...
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Posted by greg at
8:18 PM
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Comments (2)
October 5, 2007
Yeah, basically, I'd go to Japan to buy a Swedish kid's t-shirt with a French car embroidered on it. You gotta problem with that? Rufus shirt - Citroen by tuss, 9,450 yen ($81US, ouch) [chigo.co.jp] Previously: tuss. Citroen. Chigo....
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Posted by greg at
8:26 PM
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Comments (1)
Venice Speciale. Seven 1995-6 stock Ferrari 456 GTA's leave the factory for Pininfarina and Italtecnica, who transform them into four-door station wagons. Sure, they're called shooting brakes, but please. Do I have to get the Sultan of Brunei himself...
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Posted by greg at
12:06 AM
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Comments (6)
October 4, 2007
This was on BabyGadget a little while ago, the FYS Finish Your Self Junior chair made of recycled cardboard--oh wait, no, it's "100% recyclable"--by David Graas, an Amsterdam designer interested in environmentally sound products, or as he puts it...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 PM
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Comments (0)
September 30, 2007
From Winding Road comes news that the Toyota FSC Concept car from 2005 has hit the road in Japan as the Mark X ZiO::Toyota’s clearly trying something different with the ZiO which is some five inches shorter than a...
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Posted by greg at
8:05 AM
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Comments (5)
September 21, 2007
That settles it. If the 2008 Honda Fit really does look like this, when it hits these shores, I can finally stop trying to figure out how to bring a Mercedes A-Class over on the grey market. My current...
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Posted by greg at
9:29 AM
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Comments (2)
September 14, 2007
No sign of a town, though. Stephin Merritt singing in a Volvo XC70 Commercial [visit4info.com via gawker] Previously: Photos d'Espion! La Nouvelle Volvo XC70 If This Volvo's A Rockin'...[and chances are that it is]...
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Posted by greg at
2:51 PM
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Comments (4)
September 12, 2007
Several guys emailed the sneak preview of the 2008 Mazda6 last week, but I lost it in the queue. Now that the redesigned mid-size wagon's launched at Frankfurt, I'm trying to catch up, even though there are very few...
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Posted by greg at
4:33 PM
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Comments (4)
The torture that is the Frankfurt Auto Show is upon us, and Jalopnik's got a whole slew of sweet station wagon-shaped bamboo skewers to jam under our American fingernails. Here's a Honda Accord Touring Concept named to remind Americans...
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Posted by greg at
12:14 PM
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Comments (1)
September 10, 2007
I owe the producers of CBS News an apology. I thought that only lazy, cynical reporters pre-chewing content-free pablum for a aging audience of out-of-touch Boomers made annoyingly obtuse references to the twenty-five-year-old Michael Keaton movie, Mr. Mom. I was...
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Posted by greg at
2:59 PM
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Comments (3)
September 6, 2007
So the new Audi RS6 Avant is not coming to the US. But then, neither are the giggly station wagon racing dorks and their little video cameras. The sound you just heard is a thousand BMW M5 drivers sighing...
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Posted by greg at
5:11 PM
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Comments (1)
September 5, 2007
Hello, American Foxes! May we impress you with our bulges? If you mean your bulges "derived from the 'Ur-quattro'" I wanted so bad in high school, then, yes. Sorry, Mercedes. But we can still be friends. pics and press...
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Posted by greg at
9:35 AM
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Comments (6)
August 31, 2007
When the gaffer's tape came off the new Mercedes C-Class Estate in advance of the Frankfurt Auto Show, the fellas over at Jalopnik just about had a wagongasm. I remain unconvinced. Though it does look better than I expected,...
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Posted by greg at
7:35 PM
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Comments (2)
August 30, 2007
Well I'll be darned. The small, 7-seat people mover, the Honda Stream, was one of the many great-looking, extremely efficient, and all-around awesome, Japan-only family cars that taunted me with their unavailability. Meanwhile, the US had the Mazda5, the,...
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Posted by greg at
9:31 AM
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Comments (11)
How is this possible? Until last night, the only Holden I'd ever heard of was the Caulfield, a temperamental, unreliable model which was entertaining but ill-suited for the city, and which ended up getting trucked out to Camarillo for...
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Posted by greg at
7:12 AM
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Comments (7)
August 29, 2007
Recently, the fine folks at Ford Motor Company sent me an invitation to participate in a kind-of-tasty-sounding promotional event, which, for various reasons, I was unable to accept. Should such an invitation ever involve a sneak preview in advance...
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Posted by greg at
2:40 PM
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Comments (0)
August 28, 2007
flickr user illtakeyourphoto! scanned in this sweet ad from a 1970 issue of Ford Times. And now that Andy's gone freelance, he's got all day to surf stuff up and pass it around! Stay at home, dads! The Wagonmaster...
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Posted by greg at
9:28 PM
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Comments (0)
Giant corporations exploiting adorable, emotionally manipulative fictional characters to suck every last dollar out of our wallets, while making outlandish PR claims that are totally at odds with accepted science and the dismal reality on the ground got you...
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Posted by greg at
9:41 AM
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Comments (6)
August 24, 2007
It's kind of wild to think that the first generation of adults to grow up in minivans are walking the streets right now. Actually, the first generation of Americans conceived in minivans just graduated from college. Let's do the math:...
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Posted by greg at
11:14 PM
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Comments (3)
August 20, 2007
By camouflaging all the test mules with hideously boring body panels from a fifth generation Camry, Mercedes-Benz has done a spectacular job of keeping the ground-breaking design of the new, mid-range C-Class a mystery, right up to the launch...
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Posted by greg at
2:08 PM
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Comments (2)
August 13, 2007
I knew that the Jetta SportWagen Clean Diesel waitlist wouldn't start moving until next year, but how come I didn't hear that even the gas-engine variants are delayed? Something about a factory fire destroying a bunch of cylinder heads....
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Posted by greg at
5:17 PM
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Comments (1)
August 10, 2007
Flickr user Hive carried a baby bakfiets home in a bakfiets. Then the baby put the baby holding the baby in the baby bakfiets. [note: it makes plenty of sense in Dutch.] Bakfiets op Bakfiets; Kinderbakfiets [hive's flickr stream,...
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Posted by greg at
10:59 AM
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Comments (3)
An Ohio man put a lifesized cardboard cutout of a kid out by the road to slow down speeders. And it works! At least until Friday night, when the shootin'-mailboxes-for-fun crowd gets off work at Cracker Barrel. It still...
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Posted by greg at
9:49 AM
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Comments (2)
August 9, 2007
When he sent along the link to Alibaba.com, the Thomas Register of globalized wholesaling, DT reader T tees up the issue beautifully:I, at least, assumed that the companies that slap their brand on car seats actually substantially design them,...
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Posted by greg at
7:17 AM
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Comments (2)
August 3, 2007
A was for Aston Martin. Holy moley. Audi Heritage has produced the world's most beautiful factory pedal car since...since forever. [Like the Junior Volante, the Type 52 Baby Bugatti was electric-powered.] Handbuilt alloy body, Audi-engineered seven-speed gears and hydraulic...
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Posted by greg at
2:01 PM
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Comments (5)
August 1, 2007
Proper use of a car seat is a vital and effective way to protect kids while driving. The lobbying and trade group for the Baby Industrial Complex, the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, says that car seat safety tests are "more...
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Posted by greg at
6:16 PM
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Comments (5)
July 31, 2007
Jalopnik's already got the perfect headline for this sweet collection of vintage images of Soviet-era pedal cars, so I'll just add, "You had'em on the run, Comrades!" From this angle, the Moskovich looks a bit like The People's MB...
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Posted by greg at
2:53 PM
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Comments (1)
July 30, 2007
Holy smokes, it's like Take-G, only with plush instead of wood, and your car and its engine instead of fantastical anime robots. Rocket Craft is an outfit in Sapporo who will create a plush replica of your car, precise...
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Posted by greg at
2:43 PM
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Comments (0)
July 27, 2007
Mercedes Benz USA CEO Ernst Lieb tells Bloomberg that the company "is designing a version of its Mercedes-Benz B-Class car for sale in North America for the first time." Great news! Unless you're Canadian, in which case you've been...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 AM
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Comments (2)
July 22, 2007
By now everyone probably knows about the insanity that is the BMW M5 Wagon, or as it's known around the Bayerische, the M5 Touring. [Jeremy Clarkson reviewed the 5-liter V-10 with its 507hp, 10mpg, and not-quite-flat-folding seats, in May...
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Posted by greg at
2:15 PM
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Comments (7)
July 20, 2007
So here's the dilemma: just when I think we oughta crunch out and get a 4-door Rabbit, like half the families in Europe, who seem to do just fine, thank you very much, an Audi A3 drives by. Seriously, every...
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Posted by greg at
11:13 PM
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Comments (12)
July 17, 2007
A DT reader--we'll call him Joel--has a problem. It's not his wife Lana who, by insisting he get that low-mileage, late model Porsche 928 GT, sounds like what every white boy off the Lake wants. No, Joel's problem is...
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Posted by greg at
4:11 PM
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Comments (4)
July 11, 2007
I don't know why I torment myself like this. I really want to live a life where a 45-year-old French station wagon with hydropneumatic suspension and no rear seat belts is the most natural car in the world to...
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Posted by greg at
1:08 AM
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Comments (2)
July 9, 2007
Jalopnik reader Hernan snapped some photos of a 2009 Ford Flex maxi minivan test car prowling the empty streets of San Anton. From these pics, though, I can't tell if the xB slides in the back or nests underneath,...
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Posted by greg at
10:00 AM
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Comments (2)
July 3, 2007
David from Hemming's sent me this link to Sniff Patrol's latest spy shots of the BMW 1-Series, which got me thinking about sweet, small coupes. Totally unrelated to that sight gag, I remember seeing a momblogger who'd repainted her kid's...
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Posted by greg at
11:42 AM
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Comments (9)
July 2, 2007
And here I thought the Gucci baby carrier was the label's tackiest foray into the family market. No one told me about the AMC Gucci Sportabout, a souped up, "fashion-oriented Hornet" wagon featuring "boldly striped green, red, and buff...
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Posted by greg at
1:26 PM
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Comments (3)
June 29, 2007
When GM announced that the mid-sized Cadillac BLS wagon and sedan will be unveiled at the Frankfurt Auto Show, they made the sweeping claim that the car "marks a new milestone for the brand" as "the first station wagon...
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Posted by greg at
4:38 PM
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Comments (3)
June 28, 2007
Just like the Edison/Lumiere debate about who invented movies, Americans and the French each think they invented minivans. The Renault Espace came to market in 1984, a year after the Dodge Caravan, but the design predates the US Chrysler...
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Posted by greg at
4:44 PM
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Comments (2)
June 27, 2007
On the way to dinner last night, the kid and I saw a VW Touareg coming out of a parking garage that was so deep-dark green it was almost black. I decided we had to wait and ask the...
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Posted by greg at
5:22 PM
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Comments (6)
It appears Seal's efforts to shore up sales of high-performance Mercedes not-a-minivans have failed. The company announced they are discontinuing the most ridiculous car they've ever offered, the AMG-tuned, twin turbo 503hp V8 version of the R-Class, the R63,...
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Posted by greg at
1:24 AM
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Comments (1)
June 26, 2007
Subaru: new Impreza or a slightly used Forrester? VW: Rabbit or Jetta? Mazda: M3 or slightly used M6? Volvo: used V50? V70? '02 Saab 9-2, Scion xB, '02-04 Audi A4, '98-00 Mercedes E-Class wagon, an Impala, and a smattering of...
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Posted by greg at
2:05 AM
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Comments (3)
June 20, 2007
All's I'm saying is, someone besides Sean Preston better damn well have gotten a free car out of this shameless product placement stunt. Your Turn To Judge: Whose kid is driving a Cadillac Escalade? [x17/jezebel via metrodad] Previously: Metrodad...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 PM
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Comments (0)
June 17, 2007
They sure don't make them like they used to. Some customizer outfit in Wisconsin named VGD is offering to transform a Bentley Arnage into a Shooting Break for an extra $170,000 over sticker. What a travesty. You know you're...
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Posted by greg at
10:50 PM
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Comments (0)
June 14, 2007
This seems to be either a Romanian product, or strictly a DIY project. Have at it, send pictures. [pcnet.ro via core77]...
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Posted by greg at
7:38 PM
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Comments (3)
June 11, 2007
Since he got it at age 14, Ryan Bell's has shared some of the most important milestones of his life with his 1967 Camaro. It was with him as he dragraced his way through high school. He dropped the...
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Posted by greg at
9:31 PM
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Comments (6)
And then let me live vicariously through you. And then when I can convince the wife of the wisdom of buying yet another Citroen, you should sell it to me. 1971 Citroen Safari wagon - $15000 [losangeles.craigslist.org via jalopnik,...
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Posted by greg at
9:01 PM
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Comments (1)
June 10, 2007
image: philseed When I lived in Monaco [long story, remind me not to tell you], I would sometimes luck out, and the Hotel de Paris would park my 2CV with the bamboo sunroof right in front, next to the...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 PM
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Comments (0)
June 8, 2007
Sheesh, it's been a rough week for Volvo, PR-wise. First, a crackmom in a 740 station wagon mows down 40 people at a Washington DC streetfair, then someone leaks a full ten seconds of Sven & Whitey McMagnusson's Volvo...
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Posted by greg at
10:37 PM
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Comments (1)
And the answer is, "What The Bandit and Snowman would drive if they ever came out, settled down, and adopted an adorable, little Guatemalan baby." I'll take Alternate Endings To Burt Reynolds Movies for $600. Gromit was right, the ultimate...
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Posted by greg at
8:09 AM
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Comments (2)
June 7, 2007
On Sunday, RM Auctions is selling the car collection of longtime Detroit Pontiac dealer John McMullen. There are over 80 vintage cars, most of which hold little appeal to me; or I guess I just need to learn to...
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Posted by greg at
11:12 PM
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Comments (3)
What the hell is going on in this Israeli Honda Civic commercial? I mean seriously, who's a guy gotta pick up on a decrepit waterfront to get a 5-door Civic in this country?...
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Posted by greg at
4:33 PM
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Comments (3)
June 4, 2007
YOW. A cracked up mom, with a 7-yo kid in the back, plowed a Volvo 740 station wagon through a giant Washington DC street fair Saturday night, injuring up to 40 people, including at least seven kids. The rampage...
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Posted by greg at
10:33 AM
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Comments (1)
June 3, 2007
Charlotte, NC dad Rodney Huss needed to tune a new daily driver, something “'Euro' with the 'Bad Boy' attitude with a mix of the old school and racecar technology...and the clean, simple styling that makes the German cars stand,...
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Posted by greg at
2:23 PM
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Comments (3)
June 1, 2007
Are people finally catching on/up? Jalopnik posts a link to VistaCruiser.com, and suddenly it's like the annual meeting of the North American Man-Station Wagon Love Association. There are so many wagonfans popping out of the faux woodwork, you wonder...
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Posted by greg at
2:24 PM
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Comments (0)
May 30, 2007
So yesterday, while setting up for the kid's pre-school year-end pajama picnic [where the kid ate sushi and edamame with chopsticks, btw, a bit show offy, I admit], I moved a fellow parent's Volvo XC70. Smooth. And such a tiny...
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Posted by greg at
9:16 AM
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Comments (2)
May 24, 2007
September in Frankfurt, anyone?Mercedes’ new-generation C-Class will be available in C 63 AMG guise with the firm’s sophisticated 6.3-litre V8, capable of pumping a massive 520 bhp but likely to be tamed to around 400 to 420 bhp for...
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Posted by greg at
2:17 PM
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Comments (3)
May 10, 2007
Allan Stone Gallery is an old school, but low key institution on Upper East Side, which began showing works by such emerging New York artists as Willem deKooning, Andy Warhol, and Eva Hesse. One of the gallery program's unifying...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 AM
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Comments (1)
May 9, 2007
A new Clemson University study finds that the five-second rule only applies when you can be sure the floor you dropped the food onto is free of salmonella or E. Coli contamination. The New York Times reports that 5-second rule-ology...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 PM
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Comments (3)
Now normally, I got no truck with Errol Morris. Just the opposite, I'm one of his more ardent admirers. Thin Blue Line made me want to become a filmmaker. I've interviewed him and learned at his knee. And when his...
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Posted by greg at
1:54 PM
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Comments (3)
May 8, 2007
I've had this open on my desktop for days now, not posting it, but I guess I'd better put it up here, just in case you're the knucklehead who's going to buy it. "It" is a 1989 Aston Martin...
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Posted by greg at
1:05 PM
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Comments (3)
May 2, 2007
How insignificant can an occurrence be and still qualify for commemmoration-worthy "event" status in the car industry? They've already turned every conceivable holiday and weekend into "sales events." A local AM radio announcer sets up a table at a...
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Posted by greg at
8:35 AM
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Comments (3)
April 26, 2007
There are a few stealth-goodlooking cars that make me stare whenever one goes by: older Aston Martins, the VW Phaeton, its more common [in every sense of the word] variant, the Audi S8, the Honda Civic 4-door sedan... Seriously....
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Posted by greg at
8:59 PM
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Comments (1)
And get a case 'a them American Apparel bodysuits, because this summer, the kid's gonna be wearing nothing but Weird Wheels Wunzies, with pictures of vintage 80's grossout hot rods ironed onto them. Frankly, I'd like the source images...
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Posted by greg at
6:51 AM
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Comments (0)
April 20, 2007
Audi unveiled a new five-door SUV concept car, the Cross Coupe, at the Shanghai Auto Show this week. According to Jalopnik, it's slated to be slotted into Audi's seeming infinite avant/quattro/suv lineup as the Q5. Someday. It has a...
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Posted by greg at
1:04 PM
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Comments (1)
April 11, 2007
Clearly, I've been too hypnotized for too long by Jalopnik's whatever-amino! series, which features evermore random cars turned into El Camino-style pickup trucks. While I was distracted by those shiny objects dangling over there, I completely missed the blog...
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Posted by greg at
5:39 PM
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Comments (3)
...if I should die before I wake, it's cuz Dad hit the gas and not the brake. Frankly, it's a miracle any of us is alive to have kids at all. I just posted a scan of some plans...
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Posted by greg at
3:03 PM
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Comments (3)
March 30, 2007
Can America's best-known taxicab bring happiness to a suburban family while masquerading as a station wagon? The question is not nearly as facetious as it sounds. - Jim Whipple, Popular Mechanics, Sept. 1962Oh, I wouldn't be so sure, Jim. First...
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Posted by greg at
3:28 PM
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Comments (1)
March 29, 2007
You want to throw down over TV in the backseat, Chrysler? Time and place, baby, time and place. What, you think I'm not Sirius? How about right now on eBay. When it comes to backseat entertainment, the Scion xB is...
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Posted by greg at
4:22 PM
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Comments (1)
So this is how it's gonna be? Well, bring it on. Sirius and Chrysler will offer live Backseat TV programming from Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network for $20/month. Non-stop corporate merchotainment in a minivan. Holy crap, people, it's...
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Posted by greg at
11:52 AM
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Comments (11)
March 28, 2007
Said Lisa Tauer, 28, a manager at Fashion Bug in Ashland, WI, who was talking about the front seat of their Dodge Neon, where she was perched as her husband Jereme, 29, was driving to the hospital. Jereme Tauer said...
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Posted by greg at
5:22 PM
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Comments (2)
March 9, 2007
Holy smokes, these are exactly the cars I would have built if I'd determined to head to the Sierra Nevadas with my wife and three-year-old daughter after 9/11. And needed something to navigate all those snowy mountain roads and...
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Posted by greg at
12:26 AM
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Comments (4)
March 8, 2007
Tom Van Baak decided to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Einstein's theory of general relativity and the 50th anniversary of Essen's first cesium clock by taking his family on a trip up Mount Rainier, thereby demonstrating the time-dilating effects of...
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Posted by greg at
2:36 PM
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Comments (0)
March 5, 2007
So over the weekend, DT reader Eric sends me a link to the just-revealed stats of the 2008 Volvo V70/XC70. Nice proportions and curves. Then this morning on Jalopnik, a whole gallery of XC70 photos was released in advance...
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Posted by greg at
2:54 PM
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Comments (2)
March 4, 2007
Last fall, Arnold Worldwide made some dumb ads for Fidelity about dumb dads, and so "male activists" have launched a campaign to protest negative portrayals of dads. Except I only count one "male activist" behind this, syndicated columnist Glenn Sacks....
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Posted by greg at
10:19 PM
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Comments (5)
March 2, 2007
You take an ad from an idiot, you suggest live on the air of your cable news program that your female guest come to your office to pose for nude photos. Everyone makes choices that, in retrospect, look a less...
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Posted by greg at
1:22 PM
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Comments (2)
I don't need anything! All I need is this modded Scion. And this art blimp parade. This Scion, and this art blimip parade. And this Bugaboo. This Scion, this art blimp parade, this Bugaboo, And a week at the...
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Posted by greg at
8:27 AM
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Comments (1)
February 26, 2007
The VW Jetta Wagon, or as it'll be known in Europe, the Golf Estate, will be unveiled at the Geneva Auto Show, and supposedly at NY in April. Which will give you enough time to identify the VW engineers'...
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Posted by greg at
9:05 PM
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Comments (4)
February 24, 2007
Honda launched a new cross-over [and over] in Japan yesterday: the Crossroad. It's a block-shaped SUV/compact/minivan that comes in 2WD and 4WD models, and which reconfigures to hold up to seven passengers [i.e., 5-friends/2-enemies or 7 monks who've sworn...
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Posted by greg at
1:43 PM
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Comments (13)
They say 10% of Europeans were conceived in Ikea beds. If this giant collection of vintage magazine ads is any indication, at least 10% of Americans born before the Dodge Caravan was introduced were conceived in customized vans. I'll double-check...
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Posted by greg at
12:07 AM
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Comments (2)
February 20, 2007
Terry just figured out what Good Morning America's Car Mom figured out two years ago, and she wonders if it's a conscious attempt to get men interested, maybe break the association with "suburban women, specifically mothers":I've driven plenty of...
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Posted by greg at
8:09 PM
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Comments (3)
February 19, 2007
Gotta hand it to the test drivers at Mercedes Benz, they sure know what color of car photographs best against the snow drifts of their Swedish proving grounds. The Car Connection has some new spyshots of the largely undisguised...
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Posted by greg at
4:23 PM
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Comments (1)
February 15, 2007
If there ever was a reason to get a good night's sleep, it's to avoid watching all eight minutes of this commercial for a Florida used car dealer who calls himself The Family Man. Of course, you with the...
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Posted by greg at
3:05 PM
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Comments (2)
February 8, 2007
Grr. Last week I finally went to a Toyota dealer to give the Scion xB a lookover you just can't do when it's someone else's car parked on the street. [Quick take: The interior is plenty big, but super...
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Posted by greg at
11:43 PM
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Comments (4)
February 4, 2007
The first car I ever bought was a Citroen 2CV. It's sitting with a restorer in Holland right now [I think... note to self: check on car], waiting for the opportune moment to ship it over to the US....
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Posted by greg at
2:45 PM
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Comments (4)
February 3, 2007
Set aside for a moment the glaringly obvious suggestion that Pampers should've sponsored a Porsche Boxster, not a Carrera, to promote their new diaper caddy, the Porsche Box. No one in the fast-paced worlds of diaper marketing and motorsports...
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Posted by greg at
5:39 PM
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Comments (2)
February 1, 2007
There's a Ferrari F430 in the garage down the street in NYC. It has the sexiest damn car cover I've ever seen. I mean, it was the Ferrari of car covers. Which means it's not impossible for Ferrari to make...
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Posted by greg at
9:38 AM
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Comments (1)
January 26, 2007
Consumer Reports President Jim Guest apologized--again--for the testing errors that led to their alarming report on car seats a couple of weeks back. He also defended CR's practice of using outside labs for some of their testing, even as he...
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Posted by greg at
7:56 PM
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Comments (0)
January 24, 2007
Time was, it was so embarassing to be dropped off at school in a limousine, that kids would ask the driver to let them off around the corner. Obviously, that doesn't work with pre-schools, where a 3-year-old has to be...
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Posted by greg at
2:28 PM
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Comments (2)
January 19, 2007
He's taking Kid 1 and Kid 2 to the hospital to meet Kid 3.This minivan is new. I've never been in the same car with a person who still seemed so far away. In the rearview mirror, her little blond...
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Posted by greg at
10:32 PM
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Comments (1)
January 16, 2007
You want your kid to have friends, but then what if you don't like their friends? "Elmo and the Gecko Frog are my friends!" [via the kid just outside Baltimore on the way to NYC last week, image via usatoday]...
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Posted by greg at
9:34 AM
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Comments (2)
January 15, 2007
And you would be wrong. There's a vintage Jeep Grand Wagoneer owner crying into his single-malt scotch right now because of this. If this one's too small, Winding Road has a bigger one. Of course, everyone has a bigger one...
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Posted by greg at
12:38 PM
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Comments (2)
January 11, 2007
...basee sur la dernière S80... fonh fonh fonh... la possibilite du V8... fonh fonh fonh... presentation officielle... Salon de New York... fonh fonh fonh Translation: I just deleted my daily "240 GL Wagon MINT lo miles, one owner, all records"...
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Posted by greg at
8:12 PM
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Comments (7)
Just to be clear, it was Engadget who called the UWB-to-RSE-equipped MB R500 exhibited at CES an SUV. It is, in fact, a Not-A-Minivan [or Grand Sports Tourer in German]. As for what to call HD video beamed non-stop...
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Posted by greg at
12:26 PM
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Comments (1)
January 9, 2007
After Consumer Reports' tough love car seat tests were announced, several people emailed me about similar tests conducted annually by Which, the UK's version of a feisty, take-no-crap, independent consumer advocacy and testing organization. The tests are remarkably similar in...
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Posted by greg at
9:16 PM
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Comments (6)
January 7, 2007
I think it's clear now that Seal is a total car freak. But before you criticize, answer me this: if someone offered you a free Audi Q7, would you schlep to Detroit for a day and sing your 16-yo hit...
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Posted by greg at
11:57 PM
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Comments (0)
January 5, 2007
Sheesh, for going on three years now, I've had to be all equivocating and diplomatic and hedgy when writing about car seats, and facing regular email criticisms about how we must not love our child, and how could we use...
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Posted by greg at
9:52 PM
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Comments (18)
December 29, 2006
Unfortunately for readers in the Philadelphia area, that's "a German town," not "Germantown." Vauban is a new, 2,000-home development in the university town of Freiburg, Germany that's being developed on a 94-acre former military base as a haven for green,...
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Posted by greg at
6:14 PM
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Comments (1)
December 28, 2006
Where to start, another trip abroad just leaves me wondering what the hell is wrong with the car executives in the US? There are so many awesome-yet-practical, family-friendly cars in the world, and yet here we are stuck in a...
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Posted by greg at
7:04 PM
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Comments (3)
December 15, 2006
Gardenia Zakrzewski Johansson was arrested after she took her dog into Nieman Marcus in Scottsdale, AZ, but left her 2-year-old son in the car. She had asked valet Quest Wolfe to keep an eye on her son, who was sleeping...
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Posted by greg at
1:50 PM
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Comments (3)
December 14, 2006
I'm cleaning out the to-post folder here at DTHQ, and there are a few more cars you can't have, plus one I can [HAH!]: First off, the new Scion xB, called the Toyota bB in Japan, is just pimpy enough,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:50 PM
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Comments (3)
A: two years. [1] Top: 2009 Volvo XC60 Concept [jalopnik and jan at kidsrepublic.nl] Bottom: 2007 Mazda CX-7 Reality [daddytypes] [1] And yes, I know it's built on a different platform....
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Posted by greg at
10:49 AM
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Comments (4)
December 12, 2006
Ford NA has a long, storied history of botching the introductions of awesome rides from Ford Europe to the US market. The Merkur [flop], the Contour/Mystique [who?] the redesigned Focus [no-show]... Reports have surfaced that another cycle of build-up...
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Posted by greg at
7:35 PM
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Comments (0)
December 11, 2006
This was one of the cars that started it all. The VW CrossPolo was in a dealership across the street from my wife's conference venue, and it taunted it us with its higher stance, its sweet turbodiesel, its FauxWD,...
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Posted by greg at
2:04 PM
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Comments (2)
December 8, 2006
The Honda HR-V was the first car I couldn't have I saw when we went out of the hotel in Kyoto. It's 2WD or AWD, and frankly, it sounds pretty straightforward and Civic-based, mechanically. But it looks a lot...
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Posted by greg at
10:22 AM
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Comments (4)
December 5, 2006
It's one of the most excruciating things about traveling outside the US: seeing all the awesome cars that never make it into the US market. Literally within 15 minutes of leaving the hotel, I saw four cars I've lusted after--in...
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Posted by greg at
10:22 PM
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Comments (10)
November 27, 2006
Think Nordic was bought and shuttered by Ford before almost anyone even knew the world is ending. Now that it's almost too late, some new investors have been found to plug the Norwegian electric car company back in. While...
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Posted by greg at
5:47 PM
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Comments (1)
November 12, 2006
The newly redesigned VW Touran is a Golf-based 5- or 7-seat mini-MPV that's been getting great reviews in Europe. But since no one in Malibu drives such a thing, VW's execs know there's no market in the US, so don't...
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Posted by greg at
2:58 PM
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Comments (6)
November 8, 2006
A blog on Edmunds.com somehow ended up with spyshots of the 2008 Mercedes C-Class from just before someone starts covering them with blackout camo tape. They look kind of like the new Honda Civic, which is about as high praise...
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Posted by greg at
11:33 PM
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Comments (0)
November 6, 2006
I have to say, I love the look of the Mercedes C-Class wagons [which, naturally, they stopped selling in the US in 2005], and I hate hate hate everything about the new C-Class coupe except the headlights. So even though...
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Posted by greg at
11:52 PM
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Comments (2)
November 3, 2006
One of my first favorite cars was the Alfa Romeo boattail spider. And now one of my favorite Wagons I'd Think Of Buying That Will Actually Be Available In The US is the Alfa Romeo 159 Q4 Sportwagon, which...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:53 AM
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Comments (0)
October 24, 2006
Jessica Helfand is a designer's designer, and she plumbs deep meaning from the little things in our world the rest of us didn't even notice. This time around, not a moment too soon, she peers through the windshield of...
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Posted by greg at
8:28 PM
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Comments (0)
October 18, 2006
Mercedes: 1, BMW: 0: When a delivery van pulled in front of my wife this morning as she was driving our old 1985 Mercedes Tank Coupe, she stopped short. Far shorter than the BMW 6-series behind her, has it...
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Posted by greg at
11:36 AM
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Comments (16)
October 14, 2006
Californians are all up in their own grilles over a new ban on cellphones while driving. From the LA Times: The distraction caused by children is likely at least as serious a problem as cellphones. Unlike cellphones, it is not...
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Posted by greg at
11:21 AM
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Comments (2)
October 10, 2006
Two items from Jalopnik today show the deep and abiding love the Ford Motor Company has for you, the new families of America: Spyshots of the new Volvo V70 wagon: Or, the new families of Sweden, whatever, same difference. The...
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Posted by greg at
11:57 PM
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Comments (3)
October 6, 2006
WorldCarFans has spy shots of a test mule for the coming four-door Porsche, the Panamera. They call it "the 'family' Porsche." Quite an impressive transformation from the brand's previous positioning ["the dad who sees his kids every other weekend...
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Posted by greg at
7:17 PM
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Comments (3)
October 5, 2006
More breaking news from the self-promoting surveys department: The sponsor this time: the Yes Insurance Company of Great Britain. The topic: oh, the most popular cars to have sex in. The least surprising finding: different words for everything in England....
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Posted by greg at
11:18 PM
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Comments (2)
October 2, 2006
also I was researching some more HPCIA, when I came across these two print ads for the 2005 VW Golf GTi. Not sure which is more controversial at the moment: that the Playboy magazine next to the potty below...
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Posted by greg at
6:19 PM
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Comments (2)
September 26, 2006
Does it dull the pain to see that Ford's not alone in depriving the US market of its more interesting and promising-looking family-savvy cars? Does it help knowing that the Mercedes B-Class made it as far as Windsor, but not...
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Posted by greg at
10:40 PM
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Comments (2)
I naively went to ABC Kids Expo execting to stumble across row after row of baby gear innovations. But when I got there, all anyone could talk about was The Zaky. These plush toys that attach to your kid's...
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Posted by greg at
1:57 PM
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Comments (2)
September 23, 2006
Sometimes I ask myself why I even bother posting about sweet, sweet family-compatible cars that I will never be able to buy here. [*cough* Mercedes B-Class, *cough cough*] But then I realize how small my problems are in the grand...
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Posted by greg at
12:22 AM
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Comments (7)
September 19, 2006
Beer Ads* in Brazil, car show booth babes in Spain. Can boxing ring girls be far behind? It's Official. Hot Pregnant Women to Replace Stupid Men In Ads [adrants via gawker, who has more images] Seat Altea: The Family Sports...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 AM
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Comments (3)
September 12, 2006
Last night I went to Wynn Las Vegas to meet some folks after dinner. How classy [sic] is Wynn? Well, there's a Ferrari Store--not just a showroom, a store--full of Ferrari logo merchandise. Almost all of it is available...
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Posted by greg at
7:38 PM
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Comments (1)
September 7, 2006
My uncle used to get a new Porsche 911 every year, which is why I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon when I was a growing up. It's also why I never could forgive someone for putting a slant-nose...
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Posted by greg at
3:20 PM
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Comments (0)
September 6, 2006
I don't know about you, but when it comes to sperm production science, I prefer my revolutionary findings to be unburdened by citations, publications, and tedious explanationsn of methodology. And if possible, I like them roughly translated from a foreign...
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Posted by greg at
7:01 AM
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Comments (0)
September 3, 2006
You never know what you'll come up with when you search for photos of white minivans on flickr. I have a feeling no breeders were harmed in the Burning of this Van:Burning Van is a micro relief organization whose...
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Posted by greg at
6:15 PM
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Comments (0)
via contrabandbayou on flickr What do you get when you combine two '89 Dodge Caravans, an arc welder, two East Texas dads, and too much free time? The Doubleheader. Coming soon to an oddball car parade near you. [meager...
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Posted by greg at
6:01 PM
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Comments (0)
September 1, 2006
They're important enough to get our undivided attention, so here's news from the breastfeeding front: Lactation rooms, company-supplied breast pumps, "sorry about the background noise" comments during conference calls, it's all good news for working moms who want to...
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Posted by greg at
2:12 PM
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Comments (1)
August 21, 2006
"Ford Windstar Monster Van: Bidding for this item has ended" [ebay via jalopnik, thanks to dt reader jj daddy-o]...
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Posted by greg at
3:39 PM
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Comments (2)
August 18, 2006
What, no sippy cup?: "Boyce had an open 30-pack of Budweiser and a cooler in the vehicle when the crash occurred..." Police: Dad accused of DUI said 4-year-old was at wheel [ap/centredaily.com via dt reader edwin]...
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Posted by greg at
10:41 AM
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Comments (0)
August 3, 2006
So some woman in Florida accidentally locks her baby in the van in a Wal-Mart parking lot, begs the shopping cart guy for help, he says talk to the manager. Eventually the manager says something along the lines of, "Hey,...
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Posted by greg at
3:26 PM
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Comments (6)
July 31, 2006
So Ford's got a whole slew of new vehicles for hauling people and gear. They're all based on the same Mazda-derived platform, they're roughly the same size and capacity. There's one thing we know for sure, though: they're all-new, not...
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Posted by greg at
2:07 PM
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Comments (6)
July 19, 2006
GM-Chevrolet is one of the founding sponsors of Safe Kids Worldwide, contributing over $25 million, and showing "their dedication to Safe Kids by promoting children's safety in a unique and effective way." One of those unique ways: getting folks to...
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Posted by greg at
9:41 AM
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Comments (1)
July 18, 2006
Has anyone found a TV Primary Caregiver Hall of Fame out there yet? Because Mr. French would be in it. He was the one doing most of the day-to-day work with those Family Affair kids, after all. And would...
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Posted by greg at
6:01 PM
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Comments (2)
July 11, 2006
I had to re-read the announcement of Toyota's recall of Tundra pickups three times to figure it out. Between 2003-2005, Toyota sold its Tundra pickups with an airbag cut-off switch, but without LATCH carseat anchors in the front seat....
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Posted by greg at
8:13 AM
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Comments (1)
July 5, 2006
And the valet better make damn sure he brings it before he brings that Honda over here. It's the best "SUV driver abuses the help, confirms assness" story to come out of the Hamptons since Lizzie Grubman backed over the...
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Posted by greg at
5:36 PM
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Comments (1)
July 3, 2006
Audi's revolutionary all-aluminum wagon, the A2, which was one of the coolest not-so-great cars ever [it got phenomenal gas mileage, in the 60mpg range, had tons of trunk space, and came with a glass roof, but you had to...
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Posted by greg at
2:24 PM
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Comments (1)
June 29, 2006
Now, a CRV's a chick car, right? Like the RAV4? Then never mind. I'm sure it's very nice. On the bright side, the Subaru Tribeca's probably feeling better about itself right about now. 2007 Honda CRV spotted on the street...
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Posted by greg at
5:54 PM
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Comments (1)
June 28, 2006
I like to check in on Mercedes Benz Canada every once in a while, mostly because they have the Smart and the B-Class, and I want them. According to their own marketing--specifically, the new B-Class microsite, theanswerisb.ca--the B-Class is...
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Posted by greg at
11:39 PM
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Comments (1)
WorldCarFans has spyshots of a very lightly disguised production version of the 2008 Acura MDX, which it reports will go on sale in early 2007. Major changes include big wheel well flares--oh, wait, that's kind of minor--a longer wheelbase, and...
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Posted by greg at
7:31 PM
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Comments (2)
A DT reader from gun country sent this in. He spotted it outside the local hospital. "Hopefully this isn't some newborn's ride home," he says of the Browning Special Edition Polaris Sportsman 700 outfitted with an Oshkosh infant carseat...
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Posted by greg at
9:13 AM
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Comments (3)
June 26, 2006
Not to steal their thunder by quoting the last paragraph, but Jalopnik's started one of their 3-part reviews on the new VW Passat Wagon 2.0L, the near-base version of the car that some reviewers think thinks its an Audi:...this is...
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Posted by greg at
2:19 PM
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Comments (4)
June 25, 2006
Whether vintage, hard-to-find, or just a good deal, interesting eBay auctions show up here at daddytypes from time to time. And when they don't, I try to find them myself for your shoppertainment: First off, the Creative Playthings hobby...
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Posted by greg at
1:37 PM
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Comments (2)
June 22, 2006
I just read Jen's story of shopping for a new car seat, and I don't know what's more unbelievable: - that the Maxi-Cosi Tobi doesn't install correctly on cars with either cloth or leather seats [what's left?], - that the...
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Posted by greg at
6:51 AM
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Comments (7)
June 21, 2006
After the JPMA convention in Orlando last month, I was all stoked to write about my rental car, the Ford Focus. But I kept putting it off, then last week, a Business Week story came out about how horribly...
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Posted by greg at
11:05 PM
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Comments (10)
First off, Happy Go Skateboarding Day. You have at least two hours left to celebrate. Second, there's no mention of LATCH adapters for them, but from this article in the coolhunting trend rag known as USA Today, it sounds...
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Posted by greg at
9:34 PM
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Comments (2)
June 20, 2006
With his camera always at the ready, DT reader Karl helped expand the daddytypes photopool on flickr last night by sending snapshots of a Dodge Caravan convertible being driven by a slightly crazy-happy boomer along I-70 in Colorado. To...
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Posted by greg at
10:14 AM
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Comments (0)
June 14, 2006
En fait, elle est inspiree par l'Acura TSX, mais le nom est l'Accord Tourer: Aussi plaisante et racee que l'Accord 4 portes, l'Accord Tourer n'a pas grand chose a voir avec l'image stereotypee qu'on se fait habituellement d'un break....
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Posted by greg at
8:35 AM
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Comments (9)
June 12, 2006
Guess that Element was too loud after all. And according to Matt's comments in his flickr photostream, even with its vaunted hose-out-ability, it's not as convenient as the Ridgeline for hauling dirt. In any case, it's good when a marketing...
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Posted by greg at
12:47 PM
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Comments (6)
June 10, 2006
Spy shots of the wagons that might be in your future, if you're in the wagon market in, say, 2007 or 2008, respectively [via jalopnik]: While driving to the car wash, a Scionlife poster spotted a new Scion xB on...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 AM
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Comments (5)
You know how they say boys and girls play differently? It's the same way with Canadians and Americans. Like, when we take a buzzsaw to our minivans, they get pulverized beyond recognition. Canadians, meanwhile, make nice, neatly trimmed little...
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Posted by greg at
9:00 AM
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Comments (0)
June 7, 2006
Jonathan at How Bourgeois snapped some photos of a slightly disguised 2008 Dodge Caravan at a gas station, then he recalls his high school punk-in-a-Caravan days, then he invokes the Dodge owner board's most reliable punchline: "HEMI Caravan." It's a...
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Posted by greg at
1:48 PM
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Comments (0)
I guess the absence to date of any actual spy photos or auto show concept cars has been enough to keep me in the dark about BMW's plans for the RFK [Room Function Concept, which is BMWspeak for minivan....
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Posted by greg at
7:18 AM
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Comments (1)
June 3, 2006
I can't bring myself to do an actual Minivan Week yet, but here are an unsettling number of interesting minivan-related tips I got from dt readers jj daddy and, why, they're all from jj daddy. Wonder what kind of...
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Posted by greg at
2:11 PM
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Comments (3)
May 25, 2006
The aging little SUV from Saturn, the VUE, is getting a hybrid option for 2007, but just barely. The VUE Green Line is like a hybrid hybrid: lower-powered batteries that help the engine, but can't step in for it. This...
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Posted by greg at
10:54 PM
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Comments (2)
May 22, 2006
The LA Times' Dan Neil has a great review of the Mazda5, a category of car which he points out is called a "space wagon" in Japan and Europe, but which is, well, it's a minivan, people. And it's a...
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Posted by greg at
12:34 AM
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Comments (4)
May 17, 2006
"A lot has been said about Park Slope how, you know, you get trapped behind a mother with a doublewide stroller and their dog and stuff, well, you really can't blame them; what you really need to do is...
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Posted by greg at
1:41 PM
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Comments (2)
May 11, 2006
Sunny Bebop Balzary. Who knew? Sure are cute, though. Again, who knew? [via celebrity baby blog] Related: Flea used to own this multi-colored Mercedes [hooptyrides]...
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Posted by greg at
1:08 PM
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Comments (0)
April 26, 2006
Whew. For a second, the thoughts of all these Salon contributors selling out and going bourgeois in Brooklyn brownstones had me worried. But then I read Molly Jong-Fast's article about how all the moms in Manhattan just can't live without...
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Posted by greg at
11:57 AM
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Comments (2)
April 21, 2006
The Honda Element SC concept car has 10 more horsepower, a lowered sport suspension, single body paint, a leather [!] and carpet [!!] interior, and even a choptop. It's apparently the kind of mods Honda wanted to see its...
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Posted by greg at
10:29 PM
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Comments (4)
You may not be able to fit a Cameleon fleece canopy on a Frog, but now you can put an AMG bodykit on a run-of-the-mill E-Class wagon. Next up: does shaving your head make you Seal? AMG Looks, No...
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Posted by greg at
8:51 AM
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Comments (1)
April 19, 2006
So as we already know, Mercedes has been giving mad incentives to move the R-Class, and even so, it's been falling short of original sales projections. Now it turns out they're refocusing their marketing efforts away from the original, intended...
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Posted by greg at
2:54 PM
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Comments (3)
April 12, 2006
So I'm reading along through the press release for the 2007 Mercedes E-Class, looking for anything that signals news... [not that newsworthiness is ever the sole criteria at Jalopnik, mind you] ... and frankly, the car looks and sounds almost...
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Posted by greg at
12:59 AM
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Comments (1)
April 10, 2006
On Friday an unidentified Brooklyn man was seen toting his daughter to the car. The car seat is easy enough to identify--throw a rock in the Slope and you're sure to hit a Graco SnugRide [whether it's in Trek...
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Posted by greg at
10:13 PM
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Comments (8)
April 9, 2006
When Forbes put two box-shaped cars--the Scion xB and the Honda Element--up against each other last year [1/05, so I'm slow], the impassioned replies lit up the message boards of the respective owners clubs. Reading the preaching that went...
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Posted by greg at
9:07 PM
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Comments (6)
April 8, 2006
Time was, if a man wanted a Honda Element in just one color, he had to find a dealer who was offering to paint the standard black composite body panels for him, or he'd have to wing it and do...
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Posted by greg at
8:29 PM
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Comments (5)
March 30, 2006
Meanwhile, this black cotton bodysuit [the label looks like American Apparel] with a gold-printed Screamin' Chicken on it is patterned after the legendary Bandit, the 1976 Pontiac 50th Anniversary Limited Edition Trans Am, which was the first production model to...
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Posted by greg at
10:14 PM
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Comments (4)
March 24, 2006
I'm gonna take a break from posting about generic diaper wipes and $12 Ikea tables to throw a little more fuel on the pyre. Jalopnik has a couple more cars that say "wayyy too much money and wayyyy too little...
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Posted by greg at
8:35 PM
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Comments (0)
March 20, 2006
When I saw The Sopranos last week, and Tony's cruising around in an Escalade, and Carmela can't shut up about her new car ["It's a Cayenne. Like the pepper!"], I thought it was perfect: who else but a murderous New...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (3)
March 18, 2006
LOLOLOLOLOL. That's why he wins the big Pulitzers. Just as Mercedes unveils the newly redesigned GL-Class, Dan Neil pulls back the curtain on the hollow ridiculousness of such a bloated vehicle:Mercedes-Benz executives offer this wholly meritless defense: Many of...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 PM
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Comments (3)
March 7, 2006
For several months now, I've been mulling over the idea of getting dads and dads-to-be to review cars and give accounts of their car-buying-or-not-buying experiences. It turns out DT reader Kaz has been eyeing the Toyota Highlander Hybrid to replace...
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Posted by greg at
9:29 AM
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Comments (43)
March 4, 2006
Consumer Reports has issued their Top Picks for 2006 evaluation of over 200 cars in 10 different categories. Ignoring minivans for the moment--because deep down, aren't we trying to avoid minivans here? Yes, yes we are--Daddy Type cars have landed...
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Posted by greg at
7:36 AM
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Comments (1)
February 28, 2006
The mystery of the Great Ferrari Crash has been the talk of the 'Bu for the last week [Remember, The 'Boo = Bugaboo, The 'Bu = Malibu. Still with me? Greeeat.] A failed Swedish video game designer named Stefan Eriksson...
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Posted by greg at
3:53 PM
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Comments (0)
February 24, 2006
The new VW ads are hilariously hooooooooorrrriiibbblle. Is this really what you get when you put a bunch of out-of-touch Germans in a Malibu house for a year with a bunch of whiteboards? They've been on Comedy Central the...
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Posted by greg at
10:42 AM
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Comments (3)
February 23, 2006
The new Audi Allroad Quattro will debut at the Geneva Auto Show, but photos started popping up on the autofanblogscape today. Here is a side-by-side comparison with a photo of the current Allroad. Also being unveiled at Geneva: the...
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Posted by greg at
5:18 PM
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Comments (2)
February 21, 2006
I know what you're thinking: How can something so wrong feel so utterly, completely, and unflinchingly wrong? Via Jalopnik, here's a shoutout to the Mazda5 crowd, the wise folks who, when they think of dropping six figures for something, expect...
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Posted by greg at
2:19 PM
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Comments (0)
February 20, 2006
I hate those piece of crap-lookin' suction cup sunshades you put on the rear window of the car to keep the kid from baking. If I wanted to roll with Pooh, I'd strap him to the grille, and if Safety...
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Posted by greg at
9:57 PM
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Comments (12)
Another in an ongoing series of posts to make sure no carmaker ever even thinks of advertising here: Jalopnik points to Jeremy Clarkson's awesomely devastating burial of the new Jetta in the Times of London, which includes such colorful descriptors...
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Posted by greg at
9:04 PM
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Comments (5)
February 19, 2006
The guy walks through a high school halway, and all the girls he passes check him out. They start with coy eye contact, but then their gaze lowers. When we finally see his face, whoa, that guy's kind of old...
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Posted by greg at
10:58 PM
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Comments (3)
February 16, 2006
DT reader Mark [aka Island Dad, and, it should be noted, a BMW driver] gleefully points to a report about dismal Mercedes R-Class sales from the always-opinionated, never-shy industry veteran Peter DeLorenzo's site, AutoExtremist.com. According to AE, the country club-ready...
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Posted by greg at
1:56 PM
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Comments (3)
February 10, 2006
A question from DT regular Kaz, who loves the environment almost as much as he loves eating beef and wearing leather shoes:I am close to pulling the trigger on buying that Highlander Hybrid I’Äôve wanted, but I have some...
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Posted by greg at
8:52 AM
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Comments (15)
While it sounds like a b-list celebrity baby name, Subaru Tribeca is actually a car. And it's a car born with a funny-looking nose. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that it's corporate parents have such high aspirations for it:...
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Posted by greg at
12:17 AM
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Comments (0)
February 8, 2006
Judging by the comments and my email, I have not been the only one with alphabet floor mats on the brain. They seem to embody the love it/hate it march of primary colored kidstuff across new parents' once-sophisticated lives. There...
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Posted by greg at
5:21 PM
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Comments (2)
February 3, 2006
A Subaru Outback. A Bugaboo. And Clogs. It was only a matter of time before The Park Slope Lifestyle was available in T-shirt format. Wear'em to the Co-op! Collect'em all! Trade with your friends! Or not, since your friends...
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Posted by greg at
3:32 PM
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Comments (0)
January 31, 2006
Check out this sweet, Verner Panton-esque car booster seat, which was featured in the 1969 and 1970 Volkswagen accessories catalogues. The full page is available here, at kdf-wagen.de, which has scans of nearly all the printed matter pertaining to...
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Posted by greg at
4:36 PM
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Comments (3)
This one goes in the 'cars' category because, as DT reader and Dutch gearshark Jan points out, the Bakfiets has really made a name for itself in Holland as a car replacement. According to Jan, it can take up to...
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Posted by greg at
9:34 AM
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Comments (6)
January 19, 2006
This British commercial for Honda's Odyssey is pretty funny, but the sexy music starts right in, so...just in case, you know, there are children watching. Honda Odyssey - Sexy Parents [visit4info]...
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Posted by greg at
9:28 AM
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Comments (0)
January 18, 2006
According to Dan Neil, crossovers like this VW Golf-based mini-SUV are targetted at shiftless focus-group monkeys or something. If that's you, then you'll be happy to learn it's undergoing final cold-weather testing in Scandinavia, and may be coming to...
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Posted by greg at
11:30 PM
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Comments (0)
The BMW 325xi wagon is the all-wheel-drive variation of the redesigned, highly praised, 3-series. It doesn't offer the biggest engine that the sedan/coupe does, and there's no M-wagon yet, but the LA Times' Dan Neil is still in love...
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Posted by greg at
6:06 PM
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Comments (3)
January 14, 2006
It's a sign of German VW execs still not getting the US market, a subversive sense of irony in the branding department, or an ostensibly impossible mind game that leads to enlightenment, take your pick. The name for the new...
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Posted by greg at
8:57 PM
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Comments (2)
January 12, 2006
A Godless, activist judge has ruled that a fetus is not a person--for purposes of using the carpool lane, anyway. While fetuses and blow-up dolls are being oppressed, . Who do the liberals running our coutry consider a "person"? Hookers,...
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Posted by greg at
10:05 AM
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Comments (6)
January 7, 2006
Uh-uh. Remember how the Mercedes R-Class was the Official Car of the latest Rolling Stones tour? Well, my mother went to the Rolling Stones concert in Salt Lake City. On a whim. We found out after, and it all sounded...
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Posted by greg at
12:23 PM
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Comments (0)
Horrible mileage, unsafe menace, the over-compensating arrogance of their drivers, largely imaginary utility. People hate SUV's for all kinds of reasons. But trucks do all these things, and I like them...I just realized the real reason I don't like SUV's:...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:40 AM
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Comments (0)
January 3, 2006
When asked about theft and vandalism at a local car dealership, a Wisconsin man denied involvement, saying he was babysitting at the time. Which, technically, was true; except that his 6-year-old babysittee told police the pair had gone jackin'. "The...
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Posted by greg at
2:56 PM
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Comments (1)
December 15, 2005
Q. What has 8 or 10 cylinders, around 500 hp, ultra-low profile 19-inch wheels, deep airdams, throaty double exhausts, plenty of room to haul the kinden and their gear, and is covered, either with useless disguises or with windblown Swedish...
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Posted by greg at
5:27 PM
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Comments (2)
November 17, 2005
Not including plus Carmel and Tel Aviv [666-6666 and 777-7777, respectively] I have at least ten NYC car service numbers lodged in brain. [Funny what a decade of late nights at the office and constant travel'll do to you.]...
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Posted by greg at
4:58 PM
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Comments (14)
November 15, 2005
Metrodad was surfing around Wal-Mart.com, [See? Even with the whole Dadcentric thing, he's still Metrodad from the block, people.] where he found this sweet and/or desperately wrong in so many ways Fisher-Price Power Wheels Cadillac Escalade [with "all the...
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Posted by greg at
12:10 PM
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Comments (6)
November 4, 2005
I didn't know it'd be Audi week when I set out to do the laundry, I swear. But remember when the crew at the NY Times hated on the new Jetta for abandoning the volks, and pretending that some chrome...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:56 AM
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Comments (0)
November 3, 2005
Just two years ago, Honda targeted its sport pickup concept at "cool dads." Now it seems like they'd be happy if anybody bought one, no kids, no cool, no problem. Jalopnik reports that Honda's parking a bunch of modded...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:16 PM
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Comments (2)
Went to a/the laundromat on Charles St. in Boston's Beacon Hill this morning to wash all the kid's puke-covered gear, and other than the near total Bugaboo hegemony [seriously, except for two Quinny Zapps and a Phil & Ted's, and...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:11 AM
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Comments (27)
November 1, 2005
Because I apparently didn't. At least not all the way. It's not like I was going to run out and buy a "baby on board" sign for the rear window, but I think my driving has become a bit more...
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Posted by greg at
11:44 PM
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Comments (11)
October 28, 2005
Volvo North America and Portland-based Volvo specialists IPD are going to debut the XC70 All Terrain concept car at the upcoming SEMA show in Las Vegas. Though it's based on a production model XC70, ipd has managed to squeeze 408hp...
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Posted by greg at
10:31 AM
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Comments (4)
October 25, 2005
When his kid was born, Jeff Sabatini ge gave up his Miata, his motorcycle--and his job, because his wife makes more than he did. So who's he left with? Besides the kid, I mean? His Mazda M5 space wagon, er,...
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Posted by greg at
6:23 PM
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Comments (4)
October 23, 2005
According to Kids and Cars, a child safety advocacy organization, the number of children killed by having a car back over them has nearly tripled since 1999, from 66 fatalities to 165 in 2004 (and 83 in the first half...
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Posted by greg at
11:29 PM
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Comments (0)
The 2-inch lift kit and the flared wheelwells on the Kleemann E50KCC answer the question of what'd result if a Mercedes got knocked up by the Audi Allroad she met in that youth hostel in Copenhagen. Of course, if...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:27 PM
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Comments (0)
October 18, 2005
I swear, it's not just because we live here, but I'm coming to the conclusion that our DC neighborhood is the epicenter of yuppie parenting trends. I mean, both Ann "Raising America" Hulbert and Judith "Perfect Madness" Warner live around...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:53 PM
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Comments (10)
October 11, 2005
As the saying goes, you can take the dad out of Southern Alabama, &c. &c. Illinois dad Paul Smith has four sons and some steps, and between that, the two jobs, and all the drag racing he does in his...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
6:52 AM
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Comments (3)
October 7, 2005
Obsessed over Bugaboos And dollhouses Hunted Seal If Lindsay Lohan were to run me over in her Mercedes tomorrow, that'd be my epitaph. I'm not Jewish, but I think I'll be doing some serious repentance when Yom Kippur rolls...
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Posted by greg at
5:15 PM
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Comments (0)
October 5, 2005
Nissan is definitely bringing the next-gen Cube to the US. In 2008. [not 2007. Or 2006.] This story will be leaked every six months until your kids are in college. [autoweek via jalopnik] Spoiled by Priuses, treehugging Canadian anti-snobs...
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Posted by greg at
10:01 PM
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Comments (1)
October 3, 2005
I was a too young 17, and trying hard to prove my post-punk North Carolina bona fides to all the so-cool Southern Californians at Brigham Young University. It was long after the Rat Pack, but long before Swingers when, on...
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Posted by greg at
12:58 PM
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Comments (5)
October 1, 2005
Now I'm no workshop guy, but I surprised myself by burning an hour last night, totally transfixed by Hooptyrides, the weblog full of the insanely cool, warped, and fascinating projects of one Mister Jalopy of Southern California. [Yes, the...
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Posted by greg at
11:40 AM
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Comments (1)
September 30, 2005
Sensible, gainfully employed, good at math, available... I can't figure out why Brian Feldman hasn't been snapped up by some sweet, family-minded Pennsylvania maiden. I mean, he already has a Chrysler Town & Country minivan, and he loves loves LOVES...
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Posted by greg at
4:51 PM
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Comments (0)
September 28, 2005
In the LA Times today, Dan Neil gives the newly redesigned Audi A6 Avant some of the highest praise a wagon--or any car, for that matter--can get:...quietly gorgeous... ... While other companies agonize over their "crossover" designs ó too...
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Posted by greg at
11:41 PM
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Comments (2)
September 27, 2005
The Klum-Seals hit the town last week, where they got ambushed by paparazzi hoping to score a photo of the new kid. Meanwhile, Seal looks to be toting Henry in a carrycot that's part of a stroller; that thick...
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Posted by greg at
6:27 PM
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Comments (7)
September 18, 2005
This is the true story of 33 foreigners [Germans, mostly], picked to live in a house and have their lives taped, and find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting REAL. The Real World! Well, one...
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Posted by greg at
1:38 PM
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Comments (3)
September 17, 2005
I just heard a radio commercial for the new Mercedes R-Class: "What it is, is the difference between first class and coach." Does this mean that you can get one for the price of a C-class and 10,000 frequent flyer...
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Posted by greg at
1:29 PM
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Comments (1)
September 3, 2005
Men, of course, do not give birth, but they have their own shadow form of labor: installing the babyÔø‡s car seat. This seemingly simple job has ruined plenty of golfing Saturdays, even for guys who solved RubikÔø‡s Cube when they...
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Posted by greg at
4:49 PM
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Comments (6)
September 2, 2005
Auto critic Robert Farago's column in the San Francisco Chronicle just got canceled, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the thorough demolition derby of a review he just gave the Subaru B9 Tribeca. Absolutely nothing at all. That's...
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Posted by greg at
5:16 PM
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Comments (1)
August 30, 2005
If you were having any doubts about whether you are demographically appropriate for the new Mercedes R-Class, let me clear them up right now: The R-Class is the official car of the upcoming Rolling Stones tour. Meanwhile, I'm sure it'll...
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Posted by greg at
4:55 PM
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Comments (0)
August 19, 2005
A couple of other people have some opinions on family cars I've mentioned recently on DT. [Ok, fine. They're car critics, real ones, who've actually driven the cars I just ruminate about from the curb, and one of them has...
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Posted by greg at
5:04 PM
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Comments (0)
August 18, 2005
With some rare exceptions, I'm not a fan of the SUV's. They don't need any publicity from me, and I'm only too happy to oblige by ignoring them. And there are plenty of plenty cool wagons and urban transport-type...
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Posted by greg at
1:32 PM
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Comments (5)
July 27, 2005
DT reader JJ points to one of the first behind-the-wheel reviews of the new Mercedes "grand sports tourer" (the phrase will always have quotes around it, I fear.) at The Truth About Cars. Even though it does a lot of...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 PM
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Comments (0)
July 26, 2005
Jalopnik has the buzz on so many cross-overs, sport wagons, and even--yow--cool minivans you can't buy now, I advise you not to click through if you're in the market; it'll only bum you out. There's the 2006 Audi Allroad wagon,...
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Posted by greg at
5:43 AM
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Comments (4)
July 19, 2005
Tribeca conjures up all sorts of romantic images: young families in winter (that's when the banks hand out their bonuses) fleeing low-ceilinged oppression on the Upper East Side, with friendly, accented nannies pushing the Bugaboos over restored cobblestone streets. Or,...
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Posted by greg at
9:16 PM
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Comments (16)
July 16, 2005
A wagon? From Jaguar? Who even knew? In the LA Times, Dan Neil says he loves the Jaguar X-Type SportWagon for it's body, not for it's money: "Try as I might, I can't help liking this car. Buying one is...
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Posted by greg at
12:27 AM
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Comments (8)
July 3, 2005
This isn't news to anyone here, but it's interesting reading nonetheless. Turns out the Gen Y and Gen Whatever Ad Agencies Call 18-24 Year-Olds Now are Gen Poor, and so they're not rushing out to buy the Honda Elements and...
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Posted by greg at
6:53 PM
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Comments (1)
July 1, 2005
I don't know what's more surprising in the "docufilms" Mercedes produced to introduce the new R-Class GST (Grand Sports Tourer): seeing skater/shill Tony Hawk talk about what kind of car he'd be ("not a clunky SUV"), or hearing the...
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Posted by greg at
10:00 AM
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Comments (4)
I can't figure out how he did it with backseats that small (a VW Beetle and BMW 325), but DT reader John managed to conceive two kids, and now he's got himself a dilemma: "We have a Graco Snug Ride...
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Posted by greg at
8:02 AM
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Comments (12)
June 8, 2005
Remember this day well, dear readers. Because you'll be telling your kids about it someday, and they won't believe you. "That," you'll say, "was the day when VW Passat Wagons only existed in pictures on the Internet, a day before...
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Posted by greg at
5:00 PM
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Comments (1)
May 28, 2005
Listen, it sounds crazy to synch your family planning schedule with the arrival of the Nissan Cube. So just keep it to yourself. And if you just happen to be expecting a kid in 2007, and you just happen to...
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Posted by greg at
12:06 PM
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Comments (1)
May 26, 2005
So we've been waiting for months, almost, for the arrival of our Maxi Cosi Priori, the next car seat ["Don't let this happen to you" cautionary tale forthcoming, I'm afraid]. The Cabrio's been great, but even though the kid's still...
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Posted by greg at
10:06 AM
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Comments (7)
May 16, 2005
From this Edmunds.com review, the Scion xB sounds so perfectly suited for hauling around a baby and his gear, I wonder if new parents--not just new freshmen--aren't Toyota's secret target market:One of our editors, who used the xB to take...
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Posted by greg at
12:39 AM
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Comments (10)
March 29, 2005
Tired of paying out all their SUV profits in Royalties to the Touareg people of Northern Africa, VW has astutely chosen and trademarked an alternate spelling for their new smaller, Golf or [depending on who you read] Jetta-based mini-SUV: it'll...
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Posted by greg at
3:29 PM
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Comments (1)
March 1, 2005
The new B-Class Mercedes--which goes on sale in March in Europe, in October in North Amer-, er, Canada--will be the first Mercedes to feature an iPod integration kit. [You may know it better as a EUR183 adapter cable, and it'll...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 AM
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Comments (0)
February 28, 2005
The Mercedes I've been waiting to see is the R-Series, a large, sleek wagon--Ach, don't call it a wagon!--Grand Sports Touring crossover/hybrid concept whatever. It's been making the auto show rounds as the Vision R, and it goes on sale...
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Posted by greg at
9:39 PM
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Comments (5)
February 18, 2005
Dan Neil, the LA Times car critic, gives high praise to Honda's new Ridgeline truck, aka the truck for "cool dads": It's "so scary good, so smart and so instantly likable that it's going to send everybody back to pickup...
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Posted by greg at
8:27 AM
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Comments (1)
February 1, 2005
From the TMI Department by way of boingboing comes Stick Family Robinson, a customized collection of stick figure stickers for your car that allows you to telegraph the makeup and personal information for your entire family to the entire world....
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Posted by greg at
8:24 AM
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Comments (4)
January 30, 2005
There's a hi-larious insurance commercial where a young black guy is trying to fit a giantic car seat into the back of an old Volvo coupe as his very pregnant lady watches on. When he gets himself wedged in and...
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Posted by greg at
11:38 PM
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Comments (5)
January 15, 2005
DT reader Hadi is about a week away from the arrival of his baby, which means he has PLENTY of time to kill surfing around European baby sites and writing in-depth ruminations about the Quinny Zapp travel stroller and the...
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Posted by greg at
1:55 PM
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Comments (75)
December 2, 2004
Metrodad is driven [sic] to typing in all caps by the idea of men driving a minivan. "MINIVANS ARE FOR SOCCER MOMS!!" he says, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. You have to read the whole hilarious post....
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Posted by greg at
4:40 PM
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Comments (2)
November 30, 2004
OK, laugh all you want, but I would buy one of these Nissan Cubes in a second if they ever sold them here. Turns out the Scion B is only the US-legal tip of the Japanese box-car iceberg. The...
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Posted by greg at
2:36 PM
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Comments (3)
November 28, 2004
Because I've been wondering who it was. We have several friends who celebrated the expiration of their child-free status by getting a VW Passat wagon. I really liked the clean, geometric lines and face of the redesigned Passat in 1997....
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Posted by greg at
9:56 PM
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Comments (6)
November 3, 2004
Honda is introducing its first mid-sized truck--a SUT, in fact--to the US market next spring, which will be based on the Pilot SUV platform. Dubbed the Ridgeline, the truck is designed to appeal to "Cool Dads," who like to "tear...
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Posted by greg at
2:34 PM
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Comments (1)
October 3, 2004
I used to say, when I was a car-mad teenager, I would only ever have enough kids to fit in the backseat of a Porsche: two very small ones. Never mind that before the Boxster--a car designed to separate...
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Posted by greg at
10:32 AM
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Comments (0)
September 19, 2004
I'm confused. First, VW introduces a redesigned Microbus on the 2001 autoshow circuit, charmingly reminiscent of the beater your peacenik, no-shaving-allowed parents probably conceived you in. Finally, you say, a minivan you wouldn't be ashamed to drive (all weirdness...
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Posted by greg at
2:12 PM
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Comments (1)
May 29, 2004
I don't know anything about their ride, reliability, utility, resale, or safety. Even as I laugh at and reject the flawed, obvious, "this is the most expensive car I can afford" approach to carbuying, I'm probably too brand-conscious to ever...
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Posted by greg at
1:24 PM
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Comments (1)
May 7, 2004
It was a traumatic moment for this new dad New Yorker. Driving around DC yesterday, I decided--for the first time ever--where to eat based on whether or not I'd have to get the kid out of the carseat. Obviously, I...
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Posted by greg at
12:05 PM
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Comments (1)
April 12, 2004
Are all auto critics stay-at-home dads? Or as Dan Erwin puts it in the BMW Car Club magazine, not only "stay-at-home soccer dads," but "househusbands"? Eh. Although his giddy-in-my-head writing style makes me think he may not actually interact with...
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Posted by greg at
9:25 PM
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Comments (0)
April 10, 2004
So while the straight LA dad's coming out of the closet for loving a station wagon, this gay "soccer daddy or mommy or whatever you want to call me" in Beverly Hills traded in his Mercedes SL--first, for a Range...
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Posted by greg at
10:43 PM
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Comments (0)
LA Times auto critic Larry Neil just won a Pulitzer for columns such as this one, where he comes to terms with the fact that the car which gives him the deepest, most meaningful fit is a station wagon. A...
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Posted by greg at
5:29 PM
March 16, 2004
Unlike the Element, which is popular with guys who think they're still cool, Honda's new SUT will target "cool dads--young fathers with 9-to-5 jobs and growing families that like to tear it up on the weekends with their ATVs and...
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Posted by greg at
11:28 PM
