Flexed Fiesta: We Stop By Funkmaster Flex’s Bronx Garage
It’s 99 degrees in the Bronx. Down the street at Yankee Stadium, New York’s top baseball team is playing to packed early September crowds. Welcome to the waning days of summer in the Big Apple. We’re...
View ArticleHoly Trinity: Fiesta Takes on Nurburgring, Autobahn, Stelvio Pass
What a day for a petrolhead. It’s the holy trinity: laps of the legendary Nurburgring Nordschleife, then onto the autobahn network, where in many places there is no speed limit. For the first and only...
View ArticleIstanbul’s Belly-Dancing Cabbie Meets the Ford Fiesta
Jump into any cab in London, Sydney, or New York and chances are you’ll find a driver happy to discuss sport, politics, and the weather. Hop into the taxi of Istanbul’s Ihsan Aknur, however, and get...
View ArticleSand, and Lots of it: Ford Fiesta Treks through Saudi Arabia
After a journey that had seen us hit our biggest problems in the Middle East, we were naturally anxious about crossing through Saudi Arabia. Leaving Amman, the prospect of 930 miles of driving in just...
View Article127 MPG: This Volt Story Must Be Told
Never mind the yellow journalistic brouhaha taking place on these here fine internets in regards to the 2011 Chevy Volt. Here’s why I’m so geeked on the Chevy Volt and why you should be, too. In...
View ArticleFiestas Journey Through China’s ‘Middle Kingdom’
The words have been attributed to Napoleon, but no historian is truly sure who once said, “When China wakes, it will shake the world.” At the end of an exhausting but immensely enjoyable and...
View ArticleElephant Learns to Write Ford Fiesta
Just 400 miles south of our last stop at Kunming in China, the Fiesta World Tour restarted its Asian leg in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It was impossible to export our Chinese-made Fiestas so we picked up...
View ArticleSunshine and Smog: Thailand’s Iconic Tuk Tuk Goes Solar
There are two things Bangkok has in plentiful supply: sunshine and smog. And they’re two of the biggest reasons why Air Marshal Morakot Charnsomruad, Thailand’s green transport guru, is on a mission to...
View ArticleAboriginal Art Car: Fiesta Gets Australian Outback Flair
These days, Aboriginal art sells for millions in New York, London and Sydney auction houses, created by desert-dwelling artists in the most remote corner of Australia. It took millennia to crossover...
View ArticleI Want a Mazdaspeed2
Disclaimer: I just spent a week driving nothing but heavy-duty trucks. The big ones. Duallys. The King Ranch Ford F350 I brought home to my puny, non-heavy duty single-car garage tipped the scales at...
View ArticleHow to Play ChargePoint Hopscotch in the Nissan Leaf
If only the real world were as simple as a game of hopscotch. Quite some time ago, hopscotch would have been on my daily schoolyard agenda, along with climbing jungle gyms and picking tanbark splinters...
View ArticleNew Car Sales: Higher Gas Prices Didn’t Matter…Until Now
Mainstream news outlets were quick to credit the popularity of compacts in last week’s March sales reports to rising gas prices. I’m not so sure about that. Except in California and a couple of other...
View Article2011 New York: Why VW’s New Beetle Must Challenge Ford’s Mustang
The 2012 VW Beetle was announced Monday morning as part of a dramatic three city debut in New York, Berlin and Shanghai. After the drapes dropped and speeches were spoken, I had the opportunity to...
View ArticleWhy Yes, a Fully Charged Nissan Leaf Can Go 87 Miles with Range to Spare
“Your mileage may vary” or some variant of this phrase is the most common utterance heard around our long-term Nissan Leaf these days. Inquisitive passersby have had loads of questions regarding the...
View ArticleThe Apartment Dweller and the Leaf – Day 1
“Range Anxiety.” It’s a rather insidious bit of marketing strategy, but an effective one. GM’s marketing team coined the term in describing the claimed benefits of the Chevrolet Volt’s hybrid...
View ArticleThe Apartment Dweller and the Leaf – Day 2
A reader of yesterday’s introductory blog asked what the point of this experiment is, and while it all made perfect sense when I thought of it, the best way I can describe it now is “because you asked...
View ArticleThe Apartment Dweller and the Leaf – Day 3
If this thing zaps me with static electricity one more time, I’m going to drive it into the ocean. Every time I get out of the Leaf, I inevitably get zapped with static electricity when I touch the...
View ArticleThe Apartment Dweller and the Leaf – Days 4 and 5 and the Conclusion
Danger, Will Robinson. When The Robot wanted your attention, it usually involved flailing appendages. The Leaf prefers warning lights with its audible warnings. By the time I pulled into work this...
View ArticleNissan Leaf Energy Report: One Month = 13 Gallons of Gas
In its first full month of service, and in the hands of 11 drivers, our long-term Nissan Leaf consumed a total of 438.196 kilowatt-hours-worth of electricity from Southern California’s utilities. In...
View ArticleProject PT Cruiser — Primping
Nephew Nick and his mom saved up the money for his first car (as it should be!) Uncle Frank is only lending his expertise and a bit of sweat equity to the project. The test drive and initial inspection...
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