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
The window glides upward, touches the top of the frame and immediately retreats several inches. Try it again and the same thing happens. Up, nearly closed, then back down. It has the comic timing of a
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
Replacing windshield wipers used to be one of those jobs that made everyone feel mechanically competent. Lift the arm. Turn the blade. Unclip it. Spend several minutes questioning the little plasti
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
Select Reverse, walk behind the car and one white lamp comes on. The other stays dark. The rear light clusters look symmetrical. Both contain clear and red sections. Surely one bulb has fail
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
The fuel light comes on. The dashboard says 80 miles to empty. The next gas station is 35 miles away, so there should be no problem. Ten miles later, the display reads 54. Nothing has leaked out. N
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