I was driving 80mph when a white Jeep Gladiator blasted by me in the right lane.
“How dare he? And it such a vehicle!” Bitterness and disdain washed over me like an acid flashback washes over a Deadhead boomer. “Who buys these things?” I shouted, shaking my fist at the inside of my windshield.
After receiving a heavily revised engine with more horsepower along with a list of other changes for the 2019 model year that were significant enough to justify a change in the model designation to ND2, updates to the 2020 model are relatively few.
Maybe for the first time since I bought the car, I didn’t see a good reason I couldn’t just drive it. For a 70-year-old car, it starts and runs with shocking reliability. Now that the brakes are all sorted out, it stops too. I wondered if I could manage to use this old car eas my daily driver for a week. How would it fare on roads after seven decades of innovation?
For a split second my stomach was suspended weightless in my abdomen, just like at the top of a roller coaster descent. The four tires of my father’s red Isuzu Space Cab pickup had left the gravel road and were on their downward trajectory toward terra firma. As the truck landed, all three boy scouts and the grown boy at the wheel grinned, laughed and agreed that was the best jump yet.
The way I see it there are three paths for those folks who have hauled home a project only to find they’re in over their head. Bail out, sink or learn to swim.
Ever notice how hybrid and electric cars, share a similar shape no matter what brand they are? Of course there are exceptions like the Tesla Model S that make efficiency look sexy, but on the whole these cars look like an egg cut longways and dropped onto skinny tires.
We’re living in a weird transitional purgatory between yesterday’s traditional vehicles and driverless cars. Cars are designed to insulate occupants from road and wind noise. A quiet smooth ride is a sweet thing. The bone I have to pick is with being insulated from the experience of driving by invasive technology. Either give me a car that can drive me to the store, or let me get on with it without interfering.
When was the last time an Infiniti product set your pants on fire? If you’re like me, the answer is never. They’ve had a couple hits, but I can count memorable Infinitis on part of one hand. That is, until now…