Car Thoughts: FF, Milage, etc
4/10/1

Here are some quick thoughts about cars.

I think that a front engine front wheel drive car is the safest. A FF car has the most weight over the engine and when the car starts to break free when cornering, it tends to go into an understeer situation. All you have to do to get control back is to let off the gas and have a little space to move over into while you regain control.

A FR car, front-engine rear wheel drive, tends to get oversteer, or it turns too sharply, when it loses control. In order to regain control here, you have to turn the car into the slide, have quite a bit of room to move over, and be a pretty good driver.

I like to think that I�m a good driver. But everyone likes to think they are a good driver, just like everyone likes to think they have a sense of humor. Even people who don�t have a sense of humor, or can�t drive worth anything, think they do/can.

A mid-engine, rear wheel drive car handles even better than a FR when in control, but the book Unsafe at Any Speed wouldn�t have been written if it wasn�t for the Corvair being MR. The joke is that if you own a MR car, any rear end accident you have is a one car accident. Though I love the Toyota MR2 from the 1980s.

All wheel drive is what I�m shooting for in my next car. I�m thinking the 1993-1999 Subaru Impreza. The practicality of the wagon both allures and repulses me. I oscillate.

As far as gas mileage goes, I see the acceptable range to be around 25 to 30 on the roads I drive. I don�t really have �city driving� or �highway driving� but a mix of the two. I don�t think about it enough to make an algorithm which would take the two numbers reported by the manufacturer and figure it out. I get around 32 in my SC2 and I got 31 in the Mirage. I�ve also gotten 30 in a Geo Metro.

My next car needs to have usable back seats. The best way to make this happen is to get a four door car. It also has to be reliable, semi-powerful, and handle well.

And that eliminates all the American cars besides Saturn.

I don�t have much of a fondness toward Saturn. As a Saturn owner, I feel kind of like I do about being a Wal-Mart customer. I hate them a little, but I�m not going to leave them yet.

In polls, people will say that they�d rather pay a little more and go to a nice mom & pop grocery with a more limited selection of quality items and slightly higher prices. But they are liars. All of them. Wal-Mart is taking over the world.

A key runner now is the 1992-1996 Honda Civic EX sedan. I really like the styling. The tail lights have been taken by the current run of BMWs and the �blind spot� area of the cabin has been taken by the current batch of Mercedes.

One of the things I liked best about the Mirage was that it has the 1992-1996 Camry�s headlights. And the taillights of the Evolution IV. I paused the rally race I was watching last night and looked in the garage.

When it comes to moving beyond the small car class, the Maxima stands out. The Maxima is a nice used car because you don�t have to search for what kind of engine it will have. The 1994ish through 1999 Maxima has a 190 hp engine. And you can get that with a manual transmission. With the Camry V6 which only has 160 hp, you must get an automatic.

Hey, I want to drive in the car, not eat a sandwich. And when I do want to eat a sandwich, I wait for a long straightaway.

Most European cars are dismissed due to reliability. Small trucks are also a consideration since no one in the family has a truck. Grr.

I had a dream that I had a truck. It had one of those flat commercial front ends. But rather than being big like those trucks, it was small and it had a flat bed. It was great. I�d love one.