Why are my tires turning brown? Protective ingredients in the rubber can work their way to the surface, leaving a brownish film known as blooming. Road dirt and brake dust can look similar. Blooming i
Can tire shaving help when you need to replace one AWD tire? Sometimes. A specialist can remove tread from a matching new tire to bring it closer to the wear of the other three. It may avoid replacing
An engine splash shield can make a ridiculous amount of noise for a piece of plastic. One corner slips out of its clips, drops a few inches, and begins scraping the road. You hear it over the radio. Y
Tire valve caps have a talent for disappearing. One drops beside the air pump, another vanishes during a tire change, and the next set you find online looks far nicer than the little plastic ones the
Washing a car in winter can feel wonderfully pointless. The bodywork is clean for perhaps half a journey. Then a truck passes in the opposite direction, the windshield receives a cold brown showe
Before tanks had tracks, someone had to imagine that an engine, armor and heavy weapons might belong on the same vehicle. Frederick Richard Simms did more than imagine it. At the end of the 19th ce
Long before carmakers filled dashboards with screens, an important piece of engine information was displayed outside the windshield. Early automobiles often carried their radiator filler caps at
Few automotive features can make a parked car look as alive as pop-up headlights. Turn the switch and two neat sections of bodywork rise from the hood, pause with theatrical precision and reveal the l
A bright red car, a metallic blue car and a taxi painted the color of a highlighter will normally leave the factory with exactly the same footwear. Black tires. The color seems so inevitable
A concrete barrier beside a highway looks like one of the least forgiving objects a car could encounter. It is heavy, rigid and often positioned only a few feet from traffic moving at serious speed.