Opening a car’s hood is oddly ceremonial. First comes the lever beneath the dashboard, usually hidden low enough to require an undignified search around the driver’s footwell. The hood
Electric cars have developed a sound of their own. Not the familiar chug of an engine or the rising growl of an exhaust, but a smooth, slightly eerie hum that seems better suited to a spacecraft glidi
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
Follow an SUV down a wet highway and its rear end soon develops a familiar gray coating. The bumper gets dirty. The license plate gets dirty. The rear window looks as though someone misted it with mud
The old-fashioned car antenna made no attempt to hide what it was. It was a long metal whip sticking proudly out of a fender, ready to catch radio stations, snag a car-wash brush or disappear overnigh
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
The low-fuel light is on, so a few gallons go into the tank. The engine starts, the receipt confirms that actual gasoline was purchased, and the gauge responds by remaining exactly where it was. No
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