A new car speaking to its driver no longer feels remarkable. Navigation systems issue directions, safety assistants complain about lane markings and voice controls wait patiently for somebody to remem
The usual history of the rearview mirror is wonderfully neat. Ray Harroun entered the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911 with a mirror attached to his Marmon Wasp. He drove alone while his competitors
A Toyota Corolla from 1980 usually means one thing: simple, reliable Japanese motoring. This one took a very different path. A KE70 sedan in Poland has lost its rear roof, gained a widebody kit, and n
Park some cars facing a garage door at night and start the engine. Before the wheels have moved an inch, the headlights perform a small piece of theater. The beams dip toward the ground, rise again
A car battery does not need to be completely dead to leave the car behaving as though it is. Sometimes the battery is charged and perfectly willing to work, but the electricity cannot get past the
A car sits empty in the driveway, engine off and doors locked, yet all three brake lights are glowing as though an invisible driver has a foot planted on the pedal. It looks like a wiring problem. Pos
Neutral has a reassuring name. It sounds harmless, disconnected and mechanically impartial. Put the selector in N, release the parking brake and the car can roll. Surely that means it can also be towe
There is something wonderfully unhelpful about the traction-control symbol. It shows a car wriggling across the road, which makes the button beside it look like the obvious thing to press when the roa
Red goes to positive. Black goes to negative. It is the sort of rule that feels too simple to forget. It is also incomplete. When jump-starting many modern cars, the final black clamp is not suppos
There are dashboard lights that can wait until the weekend. A low washer-fluid warning, for instance, is hardly a reason to abandon a grocery run. The red oil-can symbol is not one of those lights.