On a cold morning, the dashboard can produce a blue thermometer symbol that looks far more alarming than the engine sounds. The car starts normally. No steam rises from beneath the hood. Nothing sm
On a cold morning, the rear window begins clearing as expected. Most of the condensation disappears, but one neat horizontal stripe refuses to move. That stripe is useful evidence. The window has p
The car feels perfectly normal around town. At 35 mph, nothing rattles. At 50, there may be the faintest tremor. Reach highway speed and the steering wheel begins a steady dance between the driver&rsq
Shift an automatic car into Drive, release the brake and it begins moving without a touch of the accelerator. The movement is usually gentle. Just enough to edge forward in traffic, ease into a par
Cruise control feels wonderfully precise on a flat highway. Set it to 65 mph and the speedometer settles into place, leaving the car to handle the small adjustments that a human ankle normally makes.
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
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 seller has polished the paint, vacuumed the carpets and arranged the service receipts in a folder that looks reassuringly thick. The engine starts without complaint. No warning lights remain on af
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
Finding a hole in the exhaust usually leads to one conclusion: the muffler is rusting away and the bank account is about to become involved. That conclusion is often correct. Exhaust systems live a