The NonBillable Hour

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My New Favorite Blog

If you like cars, check out The Truth About Cars, my new favorite blog.  The editorials are great (check out this one on the failure of niche marketing by US manufacturers), but if you like good car writing, you gotta read the reviews.  Here are just a few passages that made me laugh out loud:

On the Jeep CommanderAfter five minutes in the Commander’s tippy-up “theater-style” rear seats, full-sized adults will wish they weren’t. Thanks to a foot well that’s shallower than the British Royal family’s gene pool, even polypeptide deficient three-year-olds sitting in the way back run the risk of giving themselves a pair of shiners with their knees (try explaining THAT to social services). The Commander’s third row is like the Porsche 911 Turbo’s cupholders: you may be glad they’re there, but you’d be foolish to use them. And yet you do.

On the Ford FusionIf customers swim into their local Ford dealer’s fishbowl to spawn between $17k and $21k on behalf of a new Fusion, they won’t be doing so because the sedan’s sheet metal haunts their dreams-- unless it’s a nightmare about being pursued by a giant razor. … Fire-up the Fusion and it’s immediately evident she’ll do the fandango. Just don’t expect thunderbolts and lightning.

And on the Hyundai SonataYou know what I love about the new Hyundai Sonata? Nothing. You know what I hate about it? Nothing. In other words, it’s a hit. Out there in the real world-- away from the elitist, over-educated automotive palate of a professional car reviewer-- any vehicle that asks nothing whatsoever of its owner is guaranteed a place in the average American motorists’ affections. If the automobile in question is cheap, reliable, comfortable and inoffensive, millions of people will buy it, love it and, eventually, buy another one. The new Hyundai Sonata is all that, and more. Not much more, but some…