For most of the year, the liftgate rises with one push and waits politely while the shopping is unloaded. Then the first properly cold morning arrives. The hatch opens halfway, pauses as though rec
A car left in the afternoon sun does not need long to turn into a small greenhouse. The steering wheel becomes unpleasant to touch, the seats feel freshly ironed and the dashboard claims it is 104 deg
The car drifts gently toward the shoulder, and suspicion immediately falls on the alignment. That is understandable. A car should travel where it is pointed, and anything that seems to tug at the s
There is nothing behind the car. No wall, no shopping cart, no decorative boulder placed by a landscape designer with a grudge. Still, the moment Reverse is selected, the parking sensors erupt. The
Automatic stop-start has a peculiar talent for irritating drivers both when it works and when it does not. At one traffic light, the engine shuts down the moment the car stops. At the next, it keep
The tire-pressure warning light is not one of the dashboard’s more mysterious creations. It looks like a sagging tire with an exclamation mark inside, which is a fairly direct way of saying, &ld
A turn signal normally keeps a relaxed, predictable beat. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Then, without warning, it sounds as though someone has doubled the tempo. The arrow on the dashboard flashes furiously
A cold engine starts, and a pale cloud rolls out of the exhaust. The sight is particularly dramatic on a winter morning, when the plume hangs behind the car as though the engine has chosen a new caree
It may be the most famous sentence ever permanently printed on a car. “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” The wording has turned up in films, songs and countless jokes, but it
The sticker inside the driver’s door says 35 PSI. After an hour on the highway, the dashboard says 39. Four extra pounds of pressure sounds like a problem. The tires were set correctly that morn