Bradley Brownell

It’s unlikely that Porsche set out to build the perfect car when it kicked off the Taycan program — back then it was called Mission E — but it’s come about as close as any auto company ever has in the Taycan 4 Cross Turismo. In the vein of a Volvo Cross Country, or an […]

This week Toyota launched a near-production “concept” electric SUV. Toyota has produced two generations of electric RAV4 in the past, with the first available from 1997 to 2003, then again in 2012, but it has been seven years since you could purchase one new. Neither sold in large numbers, and both were too typically-Toyota conservative […]

Mercedes-Benz has been slowly trickling out new information about its range-topping electric sedan for the last few months, and every new info drop has me convinced that this will be the best luxury electric car ever. MB has clearly put a lot of effort into this machine, and it’s going to pay off for the […]

In the last month I’ve been on three lengthy road trips across sparsely populated segments of the United States. Thousands of miles traveled on two wheels and four gave me plenty of time to contemplate the American way of life for those of us not living in the density of cities or even towns. One […]

The United States has a commuting problem. Well, more realistically we have an infrastructure problem, a suburban sprawl problem, a city planning problem, a car dependency problem, a structural racism problem, and a micromanagement problem all rolled into one big commuting problem spaghetti. Electric cars alone will not solve our ills, we need to focus […]

Electric trucks are coming. Lots of electric trucks are coming. The first one to market appears as if it will be Rivian’s much ballyhooed R1T. It’s a cool looking truck, and I honestly hope they sell hundreds of thousands of them. It’s not likely to be an incredibly efficient truck, and it’ll certainly be a […]

The Stellantis merger deal is done, the dust has settled, and the giant international automaker Fiat Chrysler has merged with the giant international automaker Peugeot Société Anonyme. As the job of building cars for the world becomes ever more demanding and expensive, companies need to find economies of scale wherever they exist, and this merger […]

Back in 1974 the federal government took drastic action to reduce energy consumption by the nation’s automobiles in the wake of the oil crisis. Price spikes and supply disruption saw the passage of the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, which prohibited drivers from exceeding 55 miles per hour on any American road. For twenty-one years […]

  Enthusiasts, and I mean the dyed-in-the-wool wrenchers, homebuilders, and tinkerers, are the lifeblood of any automotive community. Those non-factory engineers and hobbyists have historically cultivated the foundation upon which car culture lives and thrives today. The qualities that modifiers and hot rodders imbue into their creations push demand from consumers and eventually trickle into […]

Choosing what car you drive says a lot about who you are as a person and what things you value. Maybe you chose your car to be a unique extension of who you are. Maybe you chose your car because you wanted to flex on fools or show off your wealth or because it was […]