Fresh motor oil is reassuring stuff. It pours from the bottle in a clear amber stream, looking clean enough to belong in a kitchen rather than an engine. A few hundred miles later, the dipstick can
The reservoir under the hood is sitting close to the minimum line. There is a bottle of brake fluid on the shelf. The obvious response seems to be pouring in enough fluid to bring the level back to &l
A used car with gleaming paint, freshly shampooed carpets, and half a dozen pine-scented air fresheners may look beautifully prepared for sale. Or it may be trying much too hard. Flood-damaged
Park on a slope, move the shifter to P, take a foot off the brake, and most automatic cars will perform a small, familiar shuffle. The body rolls a fraction of an inch, stops with a muted clunk, then
A car can sit unused for several days without concern. Stretch that pause into several weeks, however, and the first signs of neglect may begin to appear. The battery loses charge, the tires remai
There was a time when changing the temperature in a car took half a second. You reached down, turned a knob, and somehow civilization survived. Now, in some cars, the same job feels like openin
Most people do not think about their tires until one of them does something rude. A warning light comes on. The car starts feeling strange. A road trip gets interrupted. Something looks low.
Nothing makes a normal morning more annoying than a garage door that suddenly decides it has boundaries. You hit the button, the door starts to move, then stops, blinks at you, reverses for no
A lot of people shop for used cars like they are shopping for avocados. They want the freshest-looking one, the lowest number, the cleanest surface, and they assume that if they can just find t
BMW and reliability have had a weird relationship for a long time. There was a stretch where people talked about older BMWs like they were carved out of granite. The straight-sixes had a reputa