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Owning a convertible doesn’t have to be expensive
If you’ve always dreamed of driving through the country or along the coast in a cool and classy convertible but assumed that could never be a reality because of price, you could be wrong.
A web site, ClassicCars.com, has picked five used cars that fit the bill for summer fun, mostly small roadsters and under $10,000. Here’s the lineup:
MGB convertible
The MGB is called “every bit as fun and stylish as the pricier British roadsters.” There are many enthusiasts who own them and parts are still available to fix them, which judging from those we know who have owned one, you’ll be doing often. ClassicCars.com says the best years are 1966 or 1967. The 1970s ones are the cheapest.
Triumph TR6
The Triumph TR6 is set apart by what ClassicCars.com calls as “lusty six-cylinder engine.” It says the car has been underappreciated in the last decade, which could help when it comes to price.
Mazda MX-5 Miata
Even today, the Mazda MX-5 Miata is still made and has such devoted fans that Mazda has been able to drop the “Miata” part out of the name. It was introduced in 1990 and the early ones are fun because of their hidden headlights.
Nissan Juke driven 1 mile on 2 wheels, cool video
If you’re a car lover, you’ll probably think this is pretty cool. We do!
Driving up 1.16-mile hill climb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed is challenging enough to begin with, but it gets even more difficult if you decide to attempt the feat on only two wheels. British stuntman Terry Grant did just that, setting a new world record in a Nissan Juke Nismo RS — and breaking the record he set at Goodwood in 2011.
Grant drove two of the Nissan Juke Nismo RS’s wheels up a ramp and managed to continue driving the sporty crossover on two wheels all the way to the end of the course. He finished in 2 minutes, 10 seconds, setting a new world record for the fastest mile traveled by a four-wheel car on two wheels. That breaks Grant’s own record of 2 minutes, 55 seconds, which he set at Goodwood in 2011 in another Nissan Juke. (The outright record at Goodwood’s hill climb, incidentally, is 41.6 seconds and was set in a McLaren MP4-13 racing car in 1999.)
You can watch Grant’s achievement in the video here.
Bigger vehicles found to be safer
“Vehicle weight and price have a positive relationship with vehicle safety,” says Dietrich Jehle, MD, professor of emergency medicine in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Science. He recently did a study to determine whether or not bigger vehicles are actually safer than smaller ones.
Cars that you think are safe – regardless of their safety rating by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety –may not really be all that safe, if the findings of Jehle’s study are accurate.
“Neither media advertising nor the five-star safety ratings accurately reflect the level of danger or lack of danger in vehicles,” he adds. Why, you ask?
“When smaller cars hit a larger, moving vehicle, that change in velocity can force the smaller car to go into reverse, resulting in far more serious injuries to driver and passenger.” In this case, smaller vehicles would include any number of popular compact sedans, such as the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla.
So, which vehicles are the safest?
Planning tips for a perfect road trip
Summer is here which means road trip season is in full effect. Regardless of whether you’re hitting the road with friends or family, planning ahead is essential.
Road trips—where you take a long car ride and hit many stops on the way—present a unique set of challenges (and opportunities). Here are a few things you should keep in mind as you plan.
Plan your route and stops in advance
You know your destination, but deciding on your route and stops can really depend on your travel style. HowStuffWorks suggests you make sure everyone is on the same page before you leave to avoid being stuck in a car with unhappy passengers for 8 hours a day. If you have to travel with someone who’s style doesn’t mesh with yours, consider planning a shorter trip.
You’ll save yourself a lot of time and stress if you map out how you’re getting to your destination before you leave (obviously). These two services can help you plan.
- Roadtrippers: We’ve talked about Roadtrippers before. The service uses Google-Maps based directions to lay out your route and helps you find all the stops along the way. You can now save trips and edit them too. With Roadtrippers you can also calculate fuel costs, time, and distance.
- OnTheWay: Another app we’ve talked about before is OnTheWay, for iOS. The app can show you stops and restaurants along your route, but it can also help you find interesting things like museums, parks, and roadside attractions.
There are a lot of other apps you can use too, but these are two of the best. If you’re interested in some non-road-trip-specific travel planning apps, you can see what else we think is the best.
What Features To Look For In A Car for Your Next Road Trip
Whether you’re making a trip to visit relatives across the country or enjoying a road trip with friends, long car rides can become uncomfortable. Simple attributes of your car will make the journey more enjoyable for all.
When I was 13, Cox and I had a heated discussion about the features and engineering that optimize a car for long-distance travel. Cox, a friend of my dad’s who had logged about a million highway miles, argued that the best machine for a long road trip was a silent, smooth-riding car like his Buick.
I scoffed. Buicks were bourgeois luxury barges that no real driver would be caught dead in. Although I had yet to drive a single highway mile, I declared that the ultimate car for a long trip was the Ford GT, a machine that had won the 24 Hours of Lemans. Never mind that the GT’s engine wailed away just millimeters from the driver’s skull, or that the interior was the size of a Guantanamo confinement box – this was a true driver’s machine that would be ideal for a major trip.
Or so I believed.
In the decades that have passed since that argument, I have learned a lot about what makes a great highway car – and I have also learned that the Colonel was smarter than I realized.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I did a 3,000-kilometre road trip to Georgia and back. We’ve done this trip in many different cars. In some, the trip was effortless. In others, it felt like a four-wheeled version of the Bataan Death March.
This got me thinking about the essence of the long-distance machine. What are the automotive qualities that make distance disappear?
Winning Sports Car Design About To Be Revealed
5 years after his sports car design won out of over 400 contest entries,, we are about to see how 22 year old Ryo Mukumoto’s sports car design has turned out.
Ryo Mukumoto was 22 and into his third year making mock-ups at Honda’s research arm when he won an in-house competition.
Honda made him the youngest lead engineer in the company’s history and gave him a young team to help translate his ideas into reality.
Mukumoto’s vision — a low-slung roadster inspired by a speeding bullet — goes on sale next month in the most competitive segment in Japan’s shrinking car market.
“People of my generation think cars are simply a tool for transportation,” Mukumoto, now 26, said in an interview in Wako City, Japan.
“I wanted them to say — hmm, this car is different,” he said. “We have made a car that will turn heads.”
The introduction of the S660 roadster, named for the 660-cc engine capacity limit that defines the mini car category unique in Japan, comes as Honda searches for a way out of record vehicle recalls and quality lapses.
The company has blamed these problems in part on an overly ambitious sales target that placed undue stress on its vaunted engineers.
New Technology Allows Insurance Companies Insight On Teenage Drivers
It takes years for drivers to build up creditability with insurance companies. Now thanks to Ingenie and Aviva Insurance young drivers can receive compensation for good driving habits early on.
Normally insurance payments are steep until drivers reach 25. However, with this new UK based company operating in Canada, drivers between the ages of 16 and 24 have the chance to prove they are good drivers and receive lower rates.
How this is done is through an internet operated device that will review, record, and evaluate driving habits. This is a first in North America, as most drivers must wait until they reach 50 for the possibility of low rates because they are safe drivers, now we can reward them for their success earlier in their lifetime.
New Car Designs Astound At Geneva
Car enthusiasts everywhere look forward to innovations in their favorite cars in terms of design, speed and technology. Geneva annually demonstrates the best of the best when it comes to the automotive industry.
Geneva has long been less about the business of auto-making, more about the look – the design – of it. The Geneva Motor Show is held on neutral ground in Switzerland. All other major global shows – Frankfurt, Tokyo, Detroit, Shanghai/Beijing – are hosted by countries where auto-making is a key industry. Switzerland is famous for banks and other money-managing businesses, along with watches, chocolate and a host of non-governmental agencies such as the World Health Organization and the International Olympic Committee.
No one has a home-field advantage – or disadvantage – in Geneva.
Here, the designers and the visionaries take the stage, with the messy business side of the industry taking a back seat to old-style automotive glitz and glamour.
Audi Prologue Avant
The e Audi prologue Avant is a five-door luxury car that allows the driver and up to three passengers to enjoy a luxurious ride that allows everyone to be digitally connected thanks to a state-of-the-art infotainment architecture and connect technology. This plug-in hybrid is a look at possible styling for the next A6 wagon Power output by the 3.0 TDI engine and the electric motor in combination make the car sprint from 0 to 100 km/h in 5.1 seconds.
BENTLEY EXP 10
This is Bentley’s interpretation of a high performance, two seat sports car. “This one car showcases modern automotive design, highly skilled British handcrafting, the finest materials and advanced performance technology,” says CEO Wolfgang Dürheimer.
5 Tools You Need to Repair Your Vehicle
There are so many different types of car repairs and each part of your vehicle (engine, transmission, etc.) has it’s own unique set of repairs and maintenance task to keep it running at peak condition.
When you add up all these repairs and maintenance tasks, it’s becomes quite daunting, for non-professional mechanics, to maintain and repair a vehicle. None of that means that you can’t, or more importantly that you shouldn’t, do some of the minor repairs at home.
Here’s an example: A standard front brake job consists of replacing the front brake pads and resurfacing both of the front rotors. The majority of repair shops have a set price they charge for this service, and nationwide it averages $200. Then you add on shop supplies, taxes and any other miscellaneous fees. So after all of that is added, you’re going to end up paying $240-$275 for a front brake job. How would you feel about that price if I told you that you could do that repair by yourself for less than $100? Yes, that’s exactly how I’d feel too! By watching a couple of videos on YouTube for your specific vehicle, and having a few simple tools on hand, you can do that repair in about an hour and a half on a Saturday afternoon.
Get the list of tools that will help you accomplish some minor home auto repairs here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-dillinger/the-5-most-common-tools-y_b_6475168.html
Five of the Weirdest Kijiji Car Ads in Canada
Kijiji, the popular online classified site is a place where you can buy pretty much anything under the sun – jobs, houses, vacation rentals, twerking lessons, Isa red chickens or a dresser possessed by the spirit of an ex-girlfriend.
But by far the biggest section on the site is autos. Ten years ago when the site first launched there were about 15,000 car ads and in 2014 there were more than 4.7 million.
Kijiji has the largest inventory of cars in Canada and every month more than four million people visit the site to look for cars. In fact, the autos section is about a third of the traffic to the entire site.
So after 10 years, the Globe and Mail asked people who work at Kijiji about the weirdest and funniest vehicle ads they have ever seen on the site.
Check out the top 5 weirdest Kijiji car ads: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/in-photos-canadas-weirdest-vehicle-ads-on-kijiji/article23195586/