If you’re unfamiliar Star Wars, allow me to be the first to welcome you to wakefulness after the coma you fell into in 1976. If you’re not familiar with Andor, it takes place well before the events of the first 1977 Star Wars: A New Hope movie and follows Cassian Andor, who ends up being part of the Rebellion, and – you know what, just watch the trailer: Don’t worry about specific plot stuff, because that’s not what we’re here for....

That’s the Ganeshan family you see in these photos, and the little four-year-old is Sagar. I know him because, a while back, he cold-emailed me to ask how he could become an automotive engineer. I gave him my phone number, and we chatted about things he (someone who was a little self-conscious about his grades, though I told him they were fine) could do to get that dream job in the auto industry....

First, a note about prank season in Sterling. Pranks aren’t limited to springtime here, but it is prank season. The college seniors are in high spirits and wanting to leave their mark. The young livestock are highly visible in the surrounding fields, and some youngsters may find it tempting to deposit them somewhere completely out of context where shrieks and mayhem will ensue. And very specifically, cars (usually small ones) tend to get resituated in unnatural settings and arrangements....

Closer than I thought, actually. I expected the BMW to run away with it and leave the poor old Jensen languishing in obscurity. Personally, given the choice between these two, I’d probably take the Jensen, mainly because it’s as close as I’ll ever get to a Lotus. Moving on: Somehow, amid the baggy jeans and the Pauly Shore movies and the saxophone-playing politicians, a funny thing happened in the 1990s: Cars got good....

I should note that I’ve dabbled in this sort of thing before, but I have only had access to a much more basic version of this software, once known as DALL•E Mini but now called Craiyon. The samples I’m going to show you now were made with the full version of DALL•E 2, which produces substantially better results than the crap I was playing with. That better version is invite-only access, and I’m just on the waiting list....

[Full Disclosure: Toyota gave me the car and a tank of gas for a week. It was a pretty good week.] The Basics Price: Starts at $28,995 (Tested the Premium trim at $33,095 with destination) Engine: 2.4-liter boxer four, 228 hp, 184 lb-ft Transmission: 6-speed manual, 6-speed auto available, RWD Fuel Economy: 20 city/27 highway/22 combined Body Style: Two-door coupe Why Does It Exist? A fair question. Toyota spent much of the early part of the 2000s offering cars that were as beige on the inside as they were on the outside....

I realize that we here at The Autopian are a bit heavy on “cars found for sale” content, but there’s just so much good stuff that found its way to my computer screen lately, and I’d be a fool not to share it all with you. I figure, if I’m gonna bother all my friends and coworkers with this stuff, I may as well bother you all, too. We’re friends, right?...

Let’s talk about the little Audi 50 a bit here; it’s better known as the Volkswagen Polo Mk1, which it was re-badged as six months after its introduction, but I prefer the slightly more refined Audi version. The design is very much like a smaller Golf, but it feels like that famous ItalDesign Golf has been filtered and distilled down to its absolute fundamental essence, and it works better as a result....

The Middle Ages were a trip. Much of the world was advancing culturally, and Europe was grappling with changes in climate, the collapse of the dominant empire, and the rise of Christianity. However weird Europe was at this point in history, Medieval Christianity was its own bizarre experiment highlighted (lowlighted?) by the Crusades. Essentially, the Pope and a bunch of his best buds decided that it was important to reclaim the Holy Lands....

While the old GranTurismo’s astonishing naturally-aspirated V8 is out of production, the GranTurismo Folgore packs electric power that pairs well with luxury sensibilities. Oh, and it should be quick enough to rip cat’s eyes out of the tarmac. Maserati expects a zero-to-60 mph time of just 2.6 seconds and a top speed north of 200 mph. Credit three electric motors cranking out 1,200 horsepower with achieving those feats. Charging time doesn’t sound bad either, an 800-volt architecture should let the GranTurismo Folgore gain 100 miles of range in just ten minutes....

For those who don’t know, ‘Speed’ is the trim moniker that Bentley gives to its fastest vehicles (i.e. Bentley Continental GT Speed), because Type R is far too bourgeois. The engineers at Crewe have tuned the Flying Spur Speed’s twin-turbocharged W12 engine to produce a very stout 626 horsepower and 664 lb.-ft. of torque. Putting it all down through a ZF eight-speed automatic gearbox and all-wheel-drive nets a quoted zero to 60 mph time of 3....

E15 Is Great If You’re A Farmer, Less If You Drive A Lot I’d wager that most people in the United States reading this are putting E10 gasoline (that’s fuel with 10% ethanol) in their cars, whether they’re aware of it or not. Whether or not E10 is good or bad is not something I’m going to engage with right now. Technically, the use of E10 violates federal limits on air pollution in the Clean Air Act due to its volatility (you can read about Reid vapor pressure here, which is how they measure volatility)....

Blue Bird has been around for almost a century, and through much of that time the company was known for one thing: building buses. Today, the company is one of the top school bus builders alongside Daimler’s Thomas Built Buses and Navistar’s IC Bus. The Henry Ford Museum notes that entrepreneur Albert Luce Sr. was the owner of two Ford dealerships in 1925. That year, he was approached by the Penn Dixie Cement Co....

Now, I picked the following cars based on what catches my fancy. So, if you dear readers have any special requests based on cars in the museum’s collection, I’ll be taking requests like an all-night DJ at that taillight bar Torch keeps talking about. This week I’ll focus on pre-war trafficators, also known as semaphores. These early turn signals were like illuminated flags that extended out from the B-pillar (or in front of the A-pillar) so that they could be read from either direction of travel....

This is Noon, a 1939 Benton painting from the collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and I hope you can see the resemblance I’m talking about. There’s something about the warm color palette, and the way that Benton always seemed to render everything in a sort of rubbery, rounded way that I think meshes well with the overstuffed sofa-like lines of late ’40s automotive design. There is, of course, a strong thematic and cultural link as well, as it would be incredibly easy to imagine that truck hanging out in the background of that undulating farmscape....

From The Times: That works out to roughly $683 million in today’s money, a fairly shocking burn rate. No wonder Alfa Romeo was looking to get with other carmakers. While British Leyland was shacking up with Honda, Alfa Romeo found a partner in Nissan, leading to a new model called the Arna, produced under a joint venture of a similar name. Arna, like CARE Package or bagel BELT (a popular breakfast in Canada consisting of bacon, egg, lettuce, and tomato on a bagel), is actually an acronym....

I’ve been wrenching on junky Jeeps for a while now, rebuilding AMC 360 V8 engines, replacing cracked cylinder heads on AMC straight-six enginesc, tuning carter W-0 carburetors on Willys Go-Devil motors, replacing synchros and bearings in manual transmissions, extracting broken exhaust studs, and on and on. While I’m far from an expert when it comes to internal combustion engine vehicle repair (given that I haven’t worked on much from this millennium), I’m ready to branch out....

[Before I get started, allow me to just vent for a moment. I spent all of Sunday trying to get my 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle’s replacement AMC V8 engine running. Should I have been editing, writing, answering emails, researching, and hiring? Yes. But instead I was elbow deep inside what has to be the most poorly designed engine I’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with. The shittiness of the AMC V8 is severely jeopardizing The Autopian’s future outlook; that’s fitting, in some ways....

In January 2021, I announced that I was importing a Honda Beat from Japan. Soon after, the scope of my quest expanded to include a second kei car, a Suzuki Every van. I employed the help of Washington state-based importer The Import Guys to help me find and import the Beat. The shop’s owner, Dylan Cain, guided me through the process of importing a car and actually made it easier than buying a car fresh off of a dealership lot....

It looks like the Mondeo resonated enough to pull out a very strong 114-vote victory over the 200D. I get it, measuring acceleration times with a calendar does sound a bit tedious, plus the Ford packed the internet-breaking combination of a long roof and three pedals. Anyway, let’s head back to Japan where I have two extremely different JDM machines for your consideration. 1982 Toyota Crown Super Deluxe – ¥290,000 Engine/drivetrain: Two-liter inline-six, automatic gearbox, rear-wheel-drive....