The ability to serve up a cold drink has vexed automakers for years. There have been a few attempts – the icemaker in an early-90s Previa and cooled gloveboxes powered by ducted air conditioning being good examples – but, by and large, most OEMs haven’t put serious thought into providing an in-car fridge. Vacuum cleaners? Sure! But relatively few refrigerators. (more…) Read more

Twisting the key (or, more accurately these days, pushing the button) only to come up with a fistful of no-go can be huge pain in the neck. While the root cause can be any number of maladies, identifying the fix as a simple jump start gets you going — at least for now. Stashing a set of jumper cables in the trunk of your car… Read more

It should be no surprise to anyone reading this post that pickup trucks are popular in this country, to put it mildly. Such is the market for these machines that manufacturers are ladling more and more luxury items on them, searching for the upper limit of opulence and price. By all accounts, they haven’t found the ceiling yet. Silverado, Ram, F-150 … nearly 1… Read more

Before jumping into this episode of The Buyer’s Guide, a heavy dose of caution is warranted. Aftermarket HID headlights can improve nighttime vision and allow you to see farther down the road ... if they’re installed correctly. And, for a lot of people, that’s a big if. (more…) Read more

Like it or not, electric vehicles are making up a steadily larger slice of the automotive pie. We will leave the timeline of the total shift for another post, but suffice it to say there are enough customers in this country buying EVs to make a list like this worthwhile. (more…) Read more

There are few things in life more frustrating than one’s car being equipped with a set of headlights which cast approximately as much light as two fireflies in a jam jar. The auto industry has steadily improved the situation by introducing LEDs to the front of many cars ... even if the IIHS has an annoying habit of deploying their ‘marginal’ rating far too… Read more

There are occasions when a sturdy canvas or cloth tool bag is handier than a cumbersome metal toolbox. Hitting a bump with the latter in your trunk or truck box results in a crashing sound not heard since the implosion of The Sands nearly 25 years ago. It helps to buy a tool bag whose length exceeds that of the longest item you’ll be… Read more

Look, just because it says 7+ on the box doesn’t mean your author (and probably a good many of you lot) will turn away a box of LEGOs — especially when those little bricks take the form of a car when pressed together. (more…) Read more

Most of us have been there – you’re rushing though the morning routine, late for work, running out to the car ... only to find that one of those round black rubber hoops has failed in its job of holding air. A flat tire. Great. (more…) Read more

Not much of the driving advice doled out by my long-suffering father has been retained by your author’s increasingly foggy brain. Gripping the wheel at ten-and-two has been replaced by nine-and-three, although dad’s exhortation that my preferred wheel grip of twelve-and-nothing was absolute bollocks brings a smile to my face even now. (more…) Read more

Several lifetimes ago, your author was the first person in his small town to install a good set of subwoofers, plunking them in the hatchback area of a rusting Ford. Aftermarket stereos had been around for ages, of course, but banging woofers? Not so much. All hands quickly followed suit, one-upping each other and generally infuriating the community’s rapidly aging populace. (more…) Read more

Here’s a tidbit of trivia for you. At a recent truck event, your author was told by an OEM engineer that running boards actually help, not hurt, fuel economy. Preliminary wind tunnel testing allegedly showed that the boards direct the air in such a way as to create something of an air curtain along the side of the truck, effectively creating a streamline effect… Read more

It’s January, meaning wide swaths of the country are enjoying apocalyptic quantities of ice and snow falling from the sky. This, of course, covers our vehicles with the same enthusiasm with which your author covers his french fries in gravy. (more…) Read more

There's no question the Jeep brand has been on a bit of a roll. After launching the new Wrangler a couple of model years ago, they followed that up with the similar-but-really-not Gladiator and are set to (finally) have a three-row offering in the new year. Combine that with volume from the Cherokees – both Grand and un-Grand – plus the Renegade, and FCA… Read more

For as much as a person may try, there does come the realization that we can’t fit everything into our vehicles — even if one did master the ancient arts of Jenga and Tetris as a youngster. Sometimes a person just has to accept reality, break down, and purchase some sort of auxiliary carrier and lash it to the car. (more…) Read more