The world is full of takes. You probably read at least one take each day on this website and during the weekend, our David pulls an opinion out of his heart and mind. Some of you are still reeling over the revelation that David Tracy thinks timing belt engines are a form of unreliable. If you keep abreast of global news, you may even be reading takes and not even know it. With that in mind, do you have an automotive hot take? Do you have a car opinion so spicy it would ruin a family dinner?
I have two automotive takes that some might call hot. Maybe they aren’t as spicy as David’s timing belt take, but I still stand by them. Are you ready? Here we go!
My first take is a conclusion I recently came to: Nissans are ok! Hold on, before you fire up that keyboard, hear me out. Yes, I’m fully aware that a number of Nissan’s models don’t bring much, if any, excitement to the table. The Sentra isn’t raising your heartbeat and the Rogue doesn’t really live up to its name. Yet, it’s hard to deny that Nissans come reasonably well-equipped for the price and as of very recently, they don’t make you feel like you’re being punished for a crime you didn’t commit.
I know that’s a very low bar, but it wasn’t that long ago when buying the base model of a car meant crank windows, optional air-conditioning, and optional radios. Seriously, there were cars sold in America a decade ago that didn’t even have a radio. A Nissan may not thrill you and the brand doesn’t have the best track record for reliability, but I see why people buy them. They’re cheap new cars with decent styling and decent features, perhaps bought by people who don’t care about cars one bit. And that’s fine! Some people just want a transportation appliance that won’t piss off the HOA and will last the length of the warranty. A Nissan should do that just fine.
Now that I have you all hot and bothered, I’ll lay down my second take: Automatic transmissions are fine!
Look, I love a manual transmission. I spent five years looking for a manual version of a diesel wagon that was sold in America only with a terrible automatic transmission. If a car I want has a manual version, I’ll buy it, and that includes my daily driver Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI, my BMW X5, both of my Japanese imports, and my Saturn Sky Red Line. If my Nova Bus RTS-06 was available with a stick I would have bought one that way, too.
I mean, I even made a fun flight stick shift knob for a Mercedes-Benz 240D. I need to make another one of those.
Yet, I have seen some disappointing developments in car culture. Some people covet the manual transmission to the point of being toxic about it. I’ve seen it right here in our own comments and I find myself baffled. It’s just a transmission, it isn’t that big of a deal. Nowadays there are reliable automatics that shift faster than any human can while returning good fuel economy.
There are people who either do not want to shift a manual or just physically can’t. There’s no shame in driving or liking an automatic. Is the death of the manual transmission a travesty? Of course! But direct your scorn toward the automaker, not the automatic transmission or the person who buys an auto. I will always champion your choice to drive whatever you want, because car enthusiasts aren’t just people who drive brown manual diesel wagons.
Whew, that felt good to get off of my chest. What are your automotive hot takes?
Topshot: Bring A Trailer; stock.adobe.com/cyrano
Take #1:
0-60 is a fruitless pursuit that ruins sports cars. They often have awful gearing just to make sure 2nd tops out at 62, so much engineering time is wasted on launch control, and worst of all, everything keeps becoming AWD. AWD M-cars, AMG’s, Porsches, every compact sports sedan is some kind of Haldex FWD/AWD Evo clone, not even oddballs like the Kia Stinger and the upcoming Charger are safe. And all of this compromising and hamstringing of the fun ICE platforms is done to improve a metric in which they’ll never match EV’s anyway. All the things that are good about internal combustion, lightness, engagement, gearing, character, are all sacrificed at the altar of acceleration for people who race spec sheets.
Take #1.5:
Production car track times are a stupid metric and also ruin sports cars. Now, I’m not saying cars can’t or shouldn’t be track-biased or fast, or that they shouldn’t be tested on track, but their lap times at the hands of a professional are meaningless to a buyer, as track times only matter in racing. Racing is done with race cars, production car racing is usually in one-make spec classes where it doesn’t matter how fast the car is, and open classes use modified cars.
“But what about track days?”, one might ask. Track days serve to hone one’s technique and improve as a driver, what one needs is a competent car for those occasions. Competent, however, doesn’t mean fast.
A competent track car is one that responds consistently and appropriately to driver inputs. It should understeer and oversteer the same way every time under the same inputs, and have the appropriate throttle response for high-speed shifting, devoid of rev hang or hesitation. Moreover, a good track car is reliable at the limit. It should have brakes that resist fading, suspension alignment that doesn’t chew up the outside edges of tires, and an engine that doesn’t overheat or lose oil pressure under hard acceleration and cornering.
These features help the driver improve their lap times, not the car. A Civic with appropriate suspension, brake and oil/cooling upgrades is just as good a track car as a 918, if not better. At the end of the day, the only relevant comparison for your current lap is whatever time you put down the previous lap. Nobody is impressed when someone in a fast car puts down a fast lap, it’s expected of them.
On to why it ruins sports cars, let’s go back to the year 2008, there was an upcoming event that shook the world: The R35 GTR was one year from release. Supercars were all about screaming engines, and everyone wanted some of that. We had the E90 M3, S2000, Golf R32, RX8 and many other fun-focused cars that weren’t all that fast. They weren’t slow around a track, but nobody cared, they just wanted fun. If you proposed an AWD M3 back then, you’d be laughed out of the room.
But then Nissan pulled out its big meaty twin-turbocharged thing and slapped it down on the table. “The supercar killer” was more than a moniker, it actually did kill the driver-focused supercar. In shameful defeat, everyone started scrambling to claw their way out of Ghosn’s grasp, and in doing so fell right into his hands. The R35 had a mixed reception, while the numbers were astounding, many found it too heavy and its smart AWD system too meddlesome. But that’s exactly how it put down such astounding times. As a result, there was an industry-wide push towards the GTR-ification of sports cars and supercars. DCT’s and advanced AWD systems were popping up everywhere and Nürburgring laps started being discussed more than ever, cars that were previously fun on a mountain road became hyper-stiff track weapons with advanced traction systems and too much power to touch the loud pedal for more than 2 seconds in the real world. Everything had to be either a supercar or a supercar killer. You weren’t allowed to be slower than a cheaper car around the Ring, and you definitely couldn’t be slower 0-60.
The one-upmanship has led to an endgame where every category has a super-something in it, from the super-hatch to the super-sedan and even the super-truck. I would’ve been amazed by it all as a child, but all I feel now is robbed. We could’ve had fun instead.
Oh, this is a GOOD hot take. Numbers are great. They’re objective. They look good on videos and in ads. But love isn’t objective. Feelings aren’t objective. And the way we actually use and enjoy our cars have little to do with those metrics. I love revving the nuts off of my NA Miata in normal daily driving and still being completely within(ish) the legal limits, smiling the entire time.
I missed my NA so much that I bought a 986.
Wow, this is the take to end all takes. And a very good one at that!
BTW, did we find James May’s Autopian pseudonym?
James May is my hero and my spirit animal, if I had a time machine I’d join him in the Bombing of the Nürburgring Campaign, maybe we could sneak a Spitfire on the trip back as a little keepsake.
People who think minivans aren’t cool are sheep driving the same uncool crossovers and SUVs as everyone else. . . and their kids will think those are uncool when they are grow up.
I’m having more fun driving my 20-year old new-for-me Lincoln Town Car than any of the other much cooler cars I have owned or do own.
Gotta hand it to the commentariat on this one – y’all understood the assignment. There are some absolutely scorching takes in here. Many of them boneheaded but that’s what was asked for!
Corvettes are overrated.
My hot take is that wagons are the best configuration of car ever made. We need more wagons!
For a great deal of my life I believed the only two automobile configurations really needed in the world were wagons and convertibles. One of each seemed like the perfect combo.
Minivans kick ass.
Now I just need to convince my wife.
My hot take? Three-row crossovers are the stupidest fucking thing ever, they’re the poster child for “Everyone has convinced me I NEED this thing that I’ll nearly never use because of some made-up use case” syndrome.
They sound good in theory – “I can ferry little JayLynn to soccer practice along with 5 of her teammates”, but what you end up with is an unnecessarily large vehicle with a mediocre second row and a third row that can’t hold baby seats and is too small for anyone over age 8 to ride for any length of time, as well as decimating cargo-carrying ability.
I can count on my fingers the number of times I’ve actually seen a three-row crossover with all three rows full of people – people with large families or who often travel with a posse use minivans, full-size vans or Suburbans/Tahoes/Expedition XL’s.
Alrighty, let’s try this:
1) PHEV/range extended electrics aren’t an intermediary step, they’re the best-of-all worlds future for most users, at least until there’s a fundamental change in battery technology. The weight and resource cost needed to equip a car with enough batteries to make the once-a-month 300 mile journey far outweighs dropping a smallish ICE into it instead.
II) People that insist electric will be the death of car/death of enthusiasm are the same inert, bloviating, lawn-chair and socked-sandals windbags that were making loud mouth noises about small-displacement turbo engines from 1980-2010. Sometimes literally the same people. It takes the most minimal of efforts to look up how varied the strategies for electric performance can be; the aftermarket is small because it’s young, but when it starts to get wild, it’s going to get really wild. Liquid-nitrogen cooled stators, inline supercapacitors, and whatever else generation growing up with electric performance can cook up will make combustion engine tuning look dull.
c) Mandatory auto ownership is the only thing likely to ‘kill enthusiast cars’. The average person doesn’t enjoy driving any more than they enjoy using the toilet or brushing their teeth, and the systematic removal of any alternatives to clambering into a car leads to a market that wants safe, boring, dull cars that reliably get them from ‘a’ to ‘b’ with as little involvement on their part as possible. The average person wants a private Johnnycab. And unless people grow up about public transportation and walkable cities – that’s all that’s going to be left on the road. The boogeyman of a future where private auto ownership is rebellious act? File it next to Red Dawn in the ‘ain’t gonna happen’ bin. If we don’t give aging boomers and driving-apathetic zoomers alternatives, the future is paying a thousand bucks a month to lease your choice of identical soul-less self-driving boxes because human drivers aren’t allowed on the freeway and the only person selling anything in your neighborhood is the local pusher.
Turbo PT Cruiser is confused.
Ooh. Now I feel conflicted. Nothing a Hellcat PT Cruiser can’t fix though.
SUVs are a marketing travesty wrought on humanity.
SUVs and pickup trucks should be required to adhere to the same safety and environmental standards that automobiles do.
Registration fees should be based on vehicle weight.
Not sure where you are, but registration fees are based on weight here in North Dakota.
I’ve paid an extra $200/year for 31 years on my GMC 3500 truck, despite it being a standard cab/8′ bed pickup, just because it has a GVW over 8500lbs. It kinda galls me now because it only weighs about 5800lbs, and a shitload of big SUV’s and “half ton” pickups weigh that now, and only pay regular vehicle registration in Ca.
Vehicle modifications that change crash characteristics should not be road legal. I’m looking at you lifted trucks with bumpers 5ft off the ground.
I actually enjoy the car buying process, the search for a car, making the deal, the test drive, what they will give me for my trade.
It is like a game to me then I pause before signing the contract and think is is worth it? A few seconds later my heart overrules my brain and I sign.
Note: by this point I have already gone over the financials and what I can afford, the game is finding the best one for my needs.
Sure some times it goes wrong, I am looking at you 1990 Taurus SHO, but most of the time I win.
Performance/hot hatch variants (CTR, Golf R, GR Corolla) should not be manual-only
THANK YOU. A good DCT is absolutely brilliant, doesn’t make you hate your life in a traffic jam, and is accessible to people who physically cannot drive a manual. See: Hyundai Elantra N / Kona N.
I was about to go all knives-out when you led this with THAT pace car. That’s a pretty one.
…
Also, convertibles are unpleasant and leather/pleather interiors are the worst. Sorry for being a tidy adult who doesn’t need to childproof her interior and hates burning her skin in multiple ways (be it contact with hot p/leather in the summer or…ugh, convertible).
Every automotive manufacturer should be allowed to remake one vehicle to the specs it has when it originally came out. That means if Jeep wants to bring back the 1943 GP military vehicle then they get to bring it back exactly like it was back then. Same frame, same engine, same gas mileage, same safety features, same smog emissions. That also means no back up camera, no tire sensor monitor, no touch screen infotainment module. BUT they must also sell it at the modern equivalent of what it sold for when it came out. So if that Jeep cost $1,000 in 1943 then the price today has to be $18,481.
I will throw fists with David Tracy over that timing belt hot take. But that’s just my VW/Audi timing chain PTSD talking… Their belts last longer and at least you get a recommended interval with which to change them–and most of them last well over 100k miles anyway, are far cheaper and simpler to replace than their chain systems.
I promise it will be a lot cheaper and easier for me to get a timing belt engine to 300k miles than a chain engine. Bet.
Besides that, my personal odd hot take: the last mostly reliable (just loctite those cam adjuster bolts), affordable, manual-transmission equipped pure ICE VW is the 2019-2021 Golf and Jetta with the 1.4 TSI.
With that 02S 6 speed, they will get mid to high 40s MPG highway, most of them stickered for low 20s when new and could be pretty well-equipped at that price point. The whole vehicle is one of the last few you can buy with a curb weight just South of 3,000 lbs to boot.
This long-time VW diesel dork is legitimately thinking that might be the last vehicle of VW’s original formula for affordable, semi-fun, comparatively lightweight, highly efficient offerings. Once the manual is killed off completely, it will be the end of an era. And we’re not far away from that happening. Not far from their ICE offerings being completely killed as well. You can no longer get a plain old Golf anymore, either. Only the GTI exists now since the Mk7 Golf got replaced after 2021.
In 2022, the base model Jetta’s 1.4 TSI was replaced with an all-new 1.5L TSI, which seems to have some pretty serious issues that VW techs are having to fix under warranty… I’m not sure I’d touch one until VW proves they’ve gotten the initial teething issues taken care of.
And guess what? Both of the engines mentioned use timing belts. And they will be more reliable than the chain systems on their other 4 cylinders. Bet.
Other hot take: EVs still aren’t ready for prime time for *everyone* just yet. This is now being reflected in how the new car market is trending: more to hybrids than it is pure EVs. Range anxiety and worries about grid capacity as well as fast charge availability are real for many people still.
As an all EV household, I agree. EVs aren’t for everyone yet.
What we gain in day to day convenience, we lose in road trip planning.
I’m right with you on timing belts – I posit that they’re more reliable than chains, because it’s exceedingly rare for a modern or semi-modern vehicle to have one go before the specified replacement interval, while chains and their associated hardware can(and will) shit themselves randomly at higher mileage. And belts can nearly always be done by a reasonable skilled DIY-er.
1 – Any car with an engine that is useless below 4000 RPM (looking at you, 1997 Del Sol VTEC with a B16) is far too tedious to use as a daily where traffic exists, and too intrusive to comfortably road trip in.
2(a) – Convertibles > cars with roofs. Always.
2(b) – Anyone who complains that a hard top sports car is better than its convertible counterpart has no soul, and will never reap that extra .5% of performance attributable to the more rigid chassis anyway.
3(a) – People who say that “truck buyers don’t do truck stuff with their trucks” are only trying to justify their bias. Virtually *any* homeowner can benefit from having a truck (if only to haul shit to the dump, maintain their lawn, or get what’s needed for assorted home improvements), and once you have one you will find other ‘needs’ (ie, I need my truck to haul a camper trailer).
3(b) – Per above, y ou should buy a truck anyway, so buy a nice fucking truck. My ’15 Ram has 150,000 miles on it & looks like hell on the outside from using it for ‘truck stuff’, but I still love the stereo, dual zone climate control, heated and cooled seats, and especially the heated steering wheel.
4 – The Nissan Juke was actually a decent car (especially in high altitude/winter climates) that was undermined by a shitty transmission and a slightly underpowered engine. I still dig the styling (tho I would have preferred a bit of rake), and lament Nissan’s subsequent descent into beige meh.
I can certainly get behind your first hot take.
I’ve also been driving diesel VWs for 20 years, where the torque peak is 1900 RPM and you’re basically out of steam by the time you hit 4000.
But you know what? It works perfect for daily driver duties. It has all the torque exactly where you’d just be kind of cruising. It’s faster than its horsepower number would have you believe.
3a is 100% incorrect.
No, it’s pretty accurate.
No one who actually owns a truck says anything like the anti-truck people here.
“No one who actually owns a truck says anything like the anti-truck people here.”
Well no duh. If the truck owners said anti-truck shit, they wouldn’t be owning trucks.
You can get sacks of topsoil and potted plants just fine with an Accord and a tarp for the trunk
I used to feel the same way, but experience in the last few years tells me that there’s a HUGE difference between “sacks of topsoil” and “I’m going to buy enough topsoil to level the front * back yards, and fill the elevated garden I just built”.
Moreover, you can’t haul multiple 4×8 sheets of plywood in a mid sized CUV, much less an Accord. Or haul multiple 1-2000 lbs loads of decorative exterior brick to the dump. Or haul stacks of firewood to the house. Or pile multiple mountain bikes in the trunk in addition to the 2-4 hanging on the rack. Or chuck skis and snowboards for you, your family, and your daughter’s friends in back with room to spare, or go to Ikea to fully outfit your daughter’s first apartment, or…
For the money that I save driving a small efficient hybrid, I can hire loads delivered, or rent the pick-up at the Home Depot.
More power to you if you feel you need a truck, but there are so many ways to get around needing one (unless you use it for hauling almost every day.)
It’s only a daily between November and March. I spend the less snowy months driving a Honda that gets ~30 mpg, and use the truck primarily to navigate winters in the Utah mountains where 4wd is mandatory (and where I live, 4wd and all terrain tires *are* mandatory), do the aforementioned household stuff, haul my bike(s) to the trailhead, and go camping as often as possible (either hauling a small trailer or with an air bed under the topper on solo trips).
I could get by with less, but I prefer the ability to do what I want with only minor vehicle-based limitations
Spoken like someone with experience. I salute you.
Is the extent of your home ownership experience never purchasing anything bigger than a couple bags of soil and potted plants? Lol not everyone lives in studio apartments.
I tried to avoid buying a truck when we bought our first house, so I bought a Buick LeSabre Estate Wagon. Sure, I could stuff a couch in that thing and shut the door. But bring home heavy stuff and have a blast trying to get it out of the car. If I wanted to transport motorcycles, it required me to store a trailer.
Eventually, I relented and bought a used ’88 Toyota Pickup for $4000 and drove it daily for ten years. I’d go to the home center and they’d just dump two yards of soil in the back. Or drop a pallet of fieldstone in there. Or stick a couple motorcycles in the back.
After that, I bought the cheapest F150 on the lot and have had it 25 years. It’s endlessly useful. I bought a 42″ rolling tool chest and the guys at Lowe’s had a big gizmo to just plop it in the back. I tend to have large things to haul or bulky loads of dirty, yucky stuff, so the sedan thing won’t work for me. I even tried a station wagon. I used to drive it to the airport and I’m sure people were clucking their tongues at me for driving a bare bones half ton alone.
The problem with truck/no truck arguments is that it’s an attempt to render a vehicle that has a spectrum of appropriateness as a solution into a binary result.
For your use case, sure, an Accord will take your half dozen sacks of soil. You can probably put more in the back seat and around the car. But I don’t think you’re loading four dirt bikes into the back of that thing and all the gear and crap that goes with it and loading four folks in it to go riding somewhere.
The truck/no truck argument is a classic logical fallacy: the false binary. Don’t get lured into it.
Whether a truck is the right solution for you is up to you and nobody else.
I always liked the idea of a convertible but hated the looks of the soft top and the inevitable fading you had to deal with. I bought a 2011 BMW Z4 with the folding hardtop about 10 years ago and still absolutely love the best of both worlds nature it has.
Coupes that are converted into convertibles tend to suffer more, but I agree…most folding hardtops look better. My only hesitation is the increased complexity…you can (almost) always manually retract a softtop if the hydraulics fail.
And they *will* fail.
I actually go the opposite way, I find most folding hard tops ugly. I like T-tops and Targa tops as a compromise because the rear 1/4 panel follows the coupe lines, but hard tops have that hard divide between body and top that in my opinion looks way better when the top is made of canvas. I love the variety of opinions here, I’m glad we don’t all like the same stuff.
I don’t care about ICE cars being phased out by EVs, because all current ICE cars are just as boring as EVs
Also that light gloss blue that every car comes in now looks like shit
Black is the worst color for a vehicle interior. Tan and gray are both superior.
That’s funny, we’re the opposite. Grey, specifically light grey, is the worst interior color out there. I’ll take black any day over that.
Black interiors magnify every pet hair and particle of dust even moments after a complete cleaning, and they’re hotter than donkey balls in summer. Tan and gray downplay whatever crud is in the vehicle and are orders of magnitude more pleasant on hot days. Respectfully, you’re dead wrong.
Tan and gray are ridiculously difficult to keep clean as well. If you don’t properly maintain the leather, it starts to get crusty, crack, and absorb dirt.
Furthermore, I’m not even arguing about the cleanliness of the colors. Light grey is a massive eyesore, double so once it’s aged a few years. Its always looked cheap. Go look at a late 90’s BMW, Mercedes, or Audi with a light gray interior and then come talk to me.
You say cheap, I say utilitarian, and the vehicles I’ve owned with the most utilitarian interiors were the ones that were the easiest to clean and the most durable.
Though I don’t fault you for dabbling in European makes, 1980s through mid-aughts Japanese and domestic pickups and their SUV relatives are what fills my heart with lust. Bonus points if they have crank windows and vinyl flooring. Easy to work on and cheap to repair, something very few European cars can boast.
I will welcome any color interior besides black. I’d really like some bright stuff like we used to get in old Detroit iron.
TRUTH. Let’s not forget about our blue, red, green, purple, yellow, and varied prismatic brethren. Anything looks better than a coal bin.
After owning nothing but cars with black interiors, having one with a nice light tan has been wonderful. So much cooler in the summer, and even though the seats are fake leather, no ass burning after being parked outside on a hot day.
The Mark IV Supra is hideous.
I was going to say this very thing, but you did it first!
The greenhouse looks small compared to the wide, melted soapbar body, and the headlamps/taillamps are unnecessarily set in from the edges – it reminds me of a larger person with small facial features
The MkIII Supra, though, that’s a pretty car!
Yeah, I like both the Mark II & III.
It’s a crime against eyeballs.
Posted this same thought elsewhere here. They couldn’t give those things away when they were new.
Yup!
I think paddle shifters are freakin’ lame as hell. I’ve driven “good” ones and bad ones and they are all dumb.
Every vehicle should have a sensor in the back of it, and every vehicle should have big “up” and “down” buttons on the dashboard. When you’re behind someone, you get one upvote or downvote. Their ECU adds or subtracts 1 mph to their maximum speed accordingly!
Electric cars as they exist today are a complete and total scam and we’re all gonna be paying for it in a few years. Don’t come complaining to me when the government “rations” electricity by restricting everyone’s charge rates or monthly miles allowed!
If you can only afford one vehicle, a newish lower-trim pickup or SUV actually makes a lot of sense. They are really efficient these days and the space is worth a lot. It’ll occupy less driveway space than a daily and a beat-up old hauler, and it’ll work (hopefully) all the time.
That being said I’ll never bite that particular bullet because I don’t ever want to drive a vehicle that beeps, flashes, scolds, and tracks you like modern cars do. My dad was driving a rented Escape a while ago and it sternly told him to “PULL OVER AND REST” at one point. I really, truly don’t understand how all this information overload is supposed to be safer than training people to sit still and pay attention! while driving.
Safety is overrated.
First, fuck active systems. I hate when the lane keep assist takes the wheel off my hand.
Then, every car nowadays looks bloated from the outside while being cramped on the inside. I love how roomy an OG Mini is despite its size.
Finally, airbags … Ok, airbags get a pass because they saved my life once but a classic steering wheel still looks better!
My hot take: It’s super-dumb to drive a pickup truck as a daily unless you need to regularly tow or haul stuff.