A 4-year-old boy in Blaine, MN, traded his car seat for the driver’s seat, borrowing his great-grandfather’s SUV. At 4 years old, I can’t imagine having the understanding and capability to successfully operate a car. But little Sebastian Swenson proved himself to be a special case.

His motivation? Resse’s candy. I believe this to be one of the most noble reasons to steal a car.

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When the invite from Fiat Chrysler came in, I hemmed and hawed. The event in question was an off-road drive of the 2020 Jeep Gladiator, along with other off-road-oriented Jeep and Dodge rigs, taking place at an off-road park in west-central Indiana. This was a regional event — media invitees all came from Chicago, Detroit, and Indianapolis.

If I hadn’t already driven the Gladiator in March, I’d have gone without a second thought. That’s why I hesitated – I’d driven the truck on the launch, and I’ll learn more from a second-look that takes place over a week-long loan (I have one scheduled) than I would from a few more hours of rock-crawling. Was it worth the time out of office?

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With the official start of summer just around the bend, your corner car meet is about to get a lot more crowded. Sure, you folks who are #blessed to live in warm climes have Cars & Coffee year-round but the rest of us plebes can only enjoy our precious metal once the calendar flips into the hottest months.

Import shows, classic muscle, modern performance — what’s your favorite type of car to see at a show?

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Due to weakening new-vehicle sales, the United States was staring down the barrel of near-record inventories a couple of months ago. Encouraged by the factory to ensure their lots were filled with the latest wares, dealers have watched their margins evaporate as employees and customers drowned in the sea of metal parked out front.

While still uncomfortably high, U.S. inventories started creeping back down in May. By the end of the month, the number of vehicles waiting to be adopted fell below 4 million for the first time since the beginning of 2019.  Read More >

Which SUV looked like a 1995 Range Rover at its debut in 1984, but was less reliable and more expensive?

Why, it’s a Laforza of course.

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The results of a Friday vote are in, and Volkswagen can breathe a sigh of relief. Five years after the United Auto Workers first attempted to place the automaker’s Chattanooga, Tennessee assembly plant under its umbrella, a second vote has yielded the same results.

Weeks and months of acrimony, ads, accusations, and other seemingly unavoidable aspects of union organizing led to a narrow win for the no-union side. As before, Southern auto plants remain just beyond the grasp of the UAW. Read More >

Like the sketchy garage near your old apartment, Porsche is now selling vinyl car wraps. Considering full-body aftermarket wraps have become increasingly popular in recent years, the German brand is seeing dollar signs and wants to take a stab at a pseudo factory version of the trend.

On Wednesday, Porsche announced a new online platform for vehicle livery design it calls “Second Skin.” While the name sounds like something associated with contraception, it’s actually an extension of Porsche’s car configurator. However, it doesn’t appear to apply to vehicles hot off the assembly line or exist as a direct extension of the standard ordering process. According to the website, which had to be translated from German, customer vehicles will be picked up from homs or driven by the owner to a “certified expert” before being returned.

It also doesn’t apply exclusively to Porsches. Second Skin says it can wrap any Porsche and will begin accepting pre-registrations for vehicles from other manufactures immediately.  Read More >

Every automotive journalist has a mental list of new models they’d like to see migrate to their home country. For many residing in North America, the Alpine A110 is at the top of the page. We didn’t get the resurrected A110, which is a faithful throwback to the original model that ended production in 1977, and this has left a subset of our staff feeling a little raw.

Alpine has since unveiled a spicier build of the car, throwing some additional salt on our collective butthurt — though we’ll happily acknowledge that probably wasn’t the automaker’s intent. It seems content building a two-seat sports car France can be proud of.  Read More >

Fiat Chrysler is no stranger to paying the piper when it comes to its less-than-stellar fleetwide emissions, with steep fines and pricey regularly credit deals keeping the automaker’s accountants busy on both sides of the Atlantic.

Some sort of relief is on the way in the form of a $10 billion electrification plan, the results of which will see 17 electrified (electric, plug-in hybrid) models enter the fray by 2022. That’s the intent, anyway. To give the looming crop of green Fiats and Jeeps a better chance of success, FCA has partnered with a pair of European utilities — providing customers with a way of fueling their vehicles. Read More >

Real-estate conglomerate Vingroup JSC’s auto unit, VinFast, rolled out its first model today, which also means Vietnam officially has a automaker. Starting with the Fadil hatchback, VinFast eventually plans to produce a sedan, sport utility vehicle, and some electric motorbikes.

VinFast’s primary goals include flexing Vietnam’s burgeoning industrial abilities while supporting the country with affordable vehicles citizens might be interested in. Easier said than done when the nation’s average annual income is around $2,600. Yet Vietnam is growing by leaps and bounds, supplying more individuals with the means to purchase their own car.  Read More >

Allow me to take you on a trip in the Wayback Machine for a moment. The year was 2001, and a 23-year-old Bark (that’s me) had just gotten a job as a Kiosk Sales Representative for Verizon Wireless. My first month, my sales quota was 55 new phone activations — I ended up selling over 120. If you doubled your quota, you qualified for a 300 percent payout. The regular commission was $27 an activation, which meant that I earned $81 per activation on 120 or so sales. I literally didn’t know what to do with all of the money — my dad was still paying my rent, and I didn’t have a dime of debt. A lot of it ended up going to a lovely young professional dancer named “Skyy,” if I remember correctly.

The rest of it, I took to Hatfield Hyundai for a down payment on a 2001 Hyundai Santa Fe GLX. Hyundai Finance was kind to young buyers back then, and they allowed me to pay something like 5 percent APR over 60 months for the new-for-2001 SUV. My black and gray version had every box checked — leather, V6, and all-wheel-drive. My Santa Fe was the only one I had ever seen with chrome door handles, and I door-handle checked every other model I saw on the road just to confirm. I think the princely sum I paid was somewhere around $23k.

Yes, it’s true that Hyundai overstated the horsepower numbers, and the car had some minor issues along the way, but when I traded it in on my RX-8 in 2005, I had gotten about 100,000 worry free miles from Hyundai’s first SUV effort. Overall, I was incredibly pleased with the ownership experience — bland, perhaps, but reliable and competent.

Well, fast forward about eighteen years or so, and Hyundai has another small SUV on the market, and it’s roughly the same price that my Santa Fe was in 2001 (yes, I’m aware of inflation). But unlike that Santa Fe, this one is awful. It’s called the Kona, and what I’m about to tell you about it flies directly in the face of every other review you’ve read. Why? Read on.

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Large U.S. companies hoping to side-step the 25 percent tariff on Chinese goods by appealing to the government aren’t having much luck. Since July, the U.S. has imposed the tariff on billions of dollars worth of goods from the People’s Republic, leading to financial fallout for automakers heavily invested in the region.

And it seems no one complained more than General Motors. Tesla, Nissan, Fiat Chrysler, and Uber also sent in official gripes in the hopes of receiving an exemption, only to have the door hit them on the way out. Read More >

That didn’t take long. After six years spent crafting the design language of Lincoln’s growing stable of vehicles, design director David Woodhouse abruptly resigned earlier this week. The 50-year-old’s connection with parent Ford Motor Company was a long one — 20 years, since his days at Ford’s Premier Automotive Group.

The mystery as to where Woodhouse would land next is over. On Friday, Nissan announced the former Lincoln designer will go to town on the next generation of the brand’s vehicles. Read More >

Fans of excessive idling will want to consider a 2019 Toyota model rather than a 2020. The automaker has announced two new safety features destined for most of its lineup for the 2020 model year, one of them being a system that shuts off the engine if left running for too long. How long? That’s for Toyota to decide.

The second feature is one employed by automakers with unconventional transmission shifters that really want to keep litigation at bay. Read More >

Randy writes:

A few weeks ago I installed a pair of 9003 Philips Vision Plus 30 bulbs in an attempt to improve my wife’s Tucson headlight output. The light down the road is pathetic yet the headlight lenses are clear and the reflectors are still mirror like, at least to the extent I can see from the bulb mounting opening. And the light patterns are well defined, both low & high beam, which also suggests the reflectors are okay. But no joy whatsoever from the new bulbs.

I then did some voltage tracing down the headlight schematic. There is ~14.4 V coming from the alternator & battery into the SJB (smart junction box) that the Tucson uses to switch power to the bulbs. But only 12.5 V on the pins out to the bulbs. And then another couple of 1/10th V loss down the 0.5 mm2 (~20 AWG) wire to the headlamp connector netting 12.2 or 12.3 V at the bulb. The lead electrical tech at a local Hyundai service department says this is 2V headlight wiring voltage drop normal, even as much as 2.6V.

BUT, by my calculations, this means that although DOT specs for 9003 bulbs indicate 910 lumens (+/- 10%) at 12.8V, my wife’s car will be generating a little less than 800 lumens at the voltage actually supplied to the bulb. No wonder night driving is such a frightening experience.

I’ve toyed with the idea of trying some off road 90/100 9003 bulbs under the notion that at this lower voltage the output would be only 30 percent or so above the DOT standard and not likely to be blinding to oncoming traffic. And one hopes not so hot as to melt anything in the headlight assy. But I’d still wind up putting ~7 amps down a pretty thin wire which at 14 A/mm2 is double the recommended maximum current density I’ve seen for automotive wiring. I don’t wish to trade better light for burnt wiring or perhaps a fried SJB @ several hundred $.

My best idea at the moment is to wire the headlights via some fused relays using the car’s high/low circuits to switch the relays. I’d happily trade shorter bulb life for safe night vision.

Can anyone suggest an alternative solution? And yes, I’m aware of HID and LED “conversions” but am not willing to go that route, trading more lumens for rogue beam patterns.

BTW, is it common nowadays for headlight bulb voltage to be so low? Or is this unique to Hyundai? I realize that this improves bulb life … but at such a cost to safe night vision.

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