Thots on Cars

[thotsoncars]

Funny thing, feel. Hard to explain, harder still to build a business case around. And the older I get, the more I believe it’s all that matters.

Treat her like a Fairlady

[thotsoncars]

Who cares about Rolls-Royce, anyway?

Much of this was beside the point — or perhaps it was the point. The shabby-genteel nature of Rolls-Royce as a firm simply served to accentuate the sprezzatura of its customers. Imagine being gauche enough to obsess over the reliability of one’s automobile, the way a Lexus LS400 owner might! An undue emphasis on reliability suggests that one might be at someone else’s beck and call, and that one would need a perfectly reliable vehicle with which to be perfectly subservient. Should the typical Shadow owner experience a “failure to proceed”, by contrast, he could just send his man, meaning his valet, to handle the business for him.

Jack Baruth

[thotsoncars]

The car-spotters field guide would note the new model’s LED headlights, more-rugged roof rails and heavier cladding at the rocker panels and wraparound bumpers. For 2020, Subaru’s cobblers glued a bit thicker Vibram sole to its beloved hiking boot.

Dan Neil

[thotsoncars]

The Outback scratches a number of such contrarian itches. One is the urge to set oneself apart from the hordes driving look-alike, drive-alike family SUVs and crossovers swarming suburbia. Sitting in a parking lot crowded with fashionably tailored SUVs, the Outback’s anti-styling plays like a droll riposte. J’accuse!

Dan Neil

[thotsoncars]

Let’s look under this sociological rock a bit. There was a time in living memory when Americans dressed to go out, to work, to fly on planes, to go to church. I see people going to church these days dressed like they have tickets in the end zone.

Corresponding with the Era of Great Casualness, our automotive choices have become less formal and more recreational. If a three-box sedan is the equivalent of a blue blazer, a crossover is cargo pants.

Dan Neil

[thotsoncars]

But it won’t be practicality that moves the GLB’s tin. As compared with the urbanely styled GLA with which it shares so much mechanically, the GLB was re-skinned to look rougher and tougher, more lifestyle-adventurous and utilitarian—to read like a tough widdle SUV, a miniature sled dog straining its harness. The windshield angle is more vertical, the hood is more proud, the headlamps assemblies mounted higher, the grill more bluff, and the rear hatch more square—all landmarks moved in the direction of utility.

Note also the rounded shoulder line and large side windows, with a pronounced inward-canting of the canopy, very like ein grösser Mini Countryman. At the GLB’s front and rear, what the company calls “optical underride guards.” I think that means they are for looks only, but my German is a little rusty.

Dan Neil

[thotsoncars]

The Supra handles well on a track, it remains very composed on bumpy roads and it always feels fast – even if the motor is really done by 5,500rpm. I just can’t believe how much front-of-house architecture from BMW Toyota has used – it’s one of the strangest decisions I’ve seen in two decades of doing this for a living, because it has resulted in a car that is almost totally without identity. A really talented car that doesn’t seem to know what it is. And however much Toyota says its DNA is embedded in the joint project as it has been there from the start, it doesn’t stack up. If that’s the truth, they should have been shouting louder in the meetings.

Chris Harris

[thotsoncars]

The mostly unheralded and unobserved process by which automakers have swapped out six-cylinder and even eight-cylinder engines for these junky little four-bangers has got to be one of the biggest unpleasantries ever perpetrated on the buying public. They might make the same kind of numbers on a dyno or in a 0-60 sprint, but that’s like saying a Thomas Kinkade painting covers the same amount of wall space as the Mona Lisa. Quite a bit of character, charm, and enjoyment has been lost in the wholesale rush to the two-liter turbo four.

Jack Baruth

[thotsoncars]

Volvo V70 XC (1998)

Remember the 850 wagon? This is basically the 850 with all-wheel drive and a few other mostly cosmetic features.

Overall, we thought this was a very nice car. In fact, on paper, this maybe the world's most perfect vehicle. It's got everything: It's safe, with the standard Volvo crumple zones plus front and side airbags. It gets pretty good gas mileage, yet has plenty of power, with its five-cylinder, low-pressure turbocharged engine. It's durable, as Volvos tend to last as long as you're willing to keep throwing money at them. It's a wagon, so there's plenty of room for your dogs and all your stuff. It drives and handles wonderfully. It's comfortable as all get-out, as long as you don' t mind a stiff, European-style ride. Our test car came with an incredible Dolby Pro Logic stereo system. What else could you possibly want?

Car Talk

[thotsoncars]

Modern Porsches, just like the Hublot Big Bangs and their ilk, are ephemeral. Fleeting. Fake. Faux. Luxury. Junk. The pleasure of purchase is all you get. After that it’s a full-tilt rush to buy the next thing. Their Eloi owners won’t think about the Morlocks who own, maintain, race, and enjoy old Porsches. We don’t exist to them. They are simply chasing the next brightest thing. An unfixable watch, worn to a meaningless meeting and left in a disposable “luxury” car. We know it’s luxury because they tell us so, with every press release, with every five-star hotel used for the first drive, with every Chinese-sewn-junk branded polo shirt left on the hotel bed.

The old Porsches, the old Mercedes-Benzes, they had some integrity, some value for the Morlocks, for the third owners, for the hobbyists. They endured. They were like old Rolexes; expensive to run but durable by design. That’s no longer desired, if it ever was. Today’s “luxury” car is just like today’s “luxury” watch. The value of the thing is the price, the presence, the heavy flame-surfaced tank-like offensiveness of an X6 imposing your prosperity on your neighbor’s fragile psyche like a heavy gold chain worn around one’s neck a thousand years ago.

Jack Baruth

[thotsoncars]

Volvo V90

As your selfless advocate, dear reader, I admit there was no pressing need to review the estate version, except...

Except that Volvos are never more charismatic than when they have four doors, long roofs and hatches: the P220 Amazon Estate, the 145, the 245, the V70, the 850 GLT. This is the part where you see yourself in slow motion, raising the hatchback of your classic Volvo, Afghan hounds jumping out as you light a cigarette with your driving gloves on. Man, the ’70s were cool.

Dan Neil

[thotsoncars]

2015 Volvo V60 T6 R-Design

Speaking of staying planted, the R-Design package includes these astonishing front bucket seats, luxuriantly soft and dramatically bolstered speed couches that remind me of the seats in the old Saab 9000 Turbo, God rest it.

Dan Neil

[thotsoncars]

With the trailering package the Ascent is rated for up to 5,000 pounds towing so you can bring along your liberal guilt.

Beyond the running gear, the Ascent is among the most cunning efforts to separate parents from their wallets I’ve seen in a long time. It’s like one big rolling focus group. There are cubbies and USB ports and cupholders galore, 19 in all.

Dan Neil

[thotsoncars]

Volvo XC70

Naturally, I'm guilty. I used to wear a rather large and obvious diving watch. Oh, do you scuba dive? Why, yes, I do, and thank you for asking. . . . One fun fact about this watch is that it was guaranteed watertight to 300 meters, or 984 feet, which means that at that depth my lifeless corpse would know exactly what time it was. So now we come 'round the mountain to the Volvo XC70, the Scandinavian company's redesigned-for-2008 all-roading wagon. Essentially a V70 wagon wrapped in a Vibram boot sole, the XC70 is distinguished from its wagon kin by the hip-high composite cladding encompassing the vehicle, a couple-inch higher ride height and all-wheel drive as standard equipment. Think what happens when a Polaris ATV has carnal knowledge of a V70 wagon.

Dan Neil

[thotsoncars]

2019 Aston Martin DB11 Volante

On my annual tour of British car makers last week I read a biography of the Roman orator Seneca, with whom I discovered I have a lot in common. For instance, Seneca was an unforgivable hypocrite: He preached Stoicism—simplicity, non-materialism, the ready acceptance of whatever came—but as one of the richest men in the empire he never actually practiced it.

I too am deeply skeptical of the so-called luxury lifestyle but, like Seneca, I do not consider it beneath me. So I was pleased to be received at Aston Martin’s headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire, and handed the key-fob to a new DB11 Volante ($233,071, as tested), the drop-top version of the company’s grand touring scimitar.

Dan Neil

[thotsoncars]

Porsche Macan S

Honestly, Porsche. If the camera could zoom into the ghostly face of Ferdinand Porsche as he surveyed his legendary sports-car empire, now building glammy luxe crossovers for the recently divorced in West Palm Beach, would he have a single tear, like Iron Eyes Cody?

Dan Neil. WSJ.

[thotsoncars]

Fast-forward forty years, and the streets are filled with young couples who are buying crossovers despite the fact that they have neither children nor plans to have children. If they have a kid, the kid is the size of a Butterball turkey and could be carried easily in anything from a BMW 228i to a Cessna 152. Sometimes there’s a dog involved, sometimes there are just plans for a dog. But you see the irony here, right? Back when people actually had a bunch of kids, they still got a Monte Carlo because everybody else did it. Now that children are so rare that my own eighty-eight-home neighborhood has more Labradoodles than it does pre-teens, everybody’s idea of a minimum viable purchase is a 4,200-pound Goliath based loosely on a previous-generation subcompact sedan.

Jack Baruth. “In the Future, People Will Be Nostalgic for Crossovers.”