Mike Lale
The feature was supposed to be the restful part of the trip. Set the speed, set the following distance, let the car manage the Interstate. For hundreds of miles across the Midwest or through the rain-heavy Pacific Coast corridors, adaptive cruise control genuinely earns its keep — reducing the fatigue of manual throttle management while … Read more
The window sticker says AWD. The salesperson confirms it. The driver clicks the highway on-ramp in January with a quiet confidence that the vehicle is managing all four wheels through the ice — and in many cases, it is not. It is managing the front two wheels until the front tires slip, at which point … Read more
Two families plan a long weekend together. Four adults, two kids, one SUV. The vehicle has three rows of seats and the brochure claims over 80 cubic feet of cargo space. The math seems to work. Then the driveway loading begins. Two parents in the front, two adults in the second row, two kids in … Read more
The crossbars came with the car. They were listed as a feature, photographed in the brochure against a backdrop of mountain ridgelines, priced into the trim you wanted. They look purposeful. They suggest adventure. And on the highway at 75 mph, with nothing strapped to them, they produce a low-frequency howl that builds over the … Read more
The button is right there on the console, labeled with a leaf or the word ECO, and the logic of pressing it before a road trip seems airtight: you want to save fuel, the car has a fuel-saving mode, you press the button. Done. Except the button was designed for a different problem than the … Read more
According to guidance and safety research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), and Consumer Reports, lane-keeping systems are designed to reduce driver workload by making small steering corrections on highways. In real-world use, especially in construction zones with unclear or overlapping lane markings, those corrections can … Read more
Dealership showrooms are designed to sell a look, and nothing sells a modern SUV like a set of massive, 20- or 21-inch polished alloy wheels. But for drivers in the U.S. and Canada planning a long-distance trek to a mountain cabin or a lake rental, those “upgraded” rims often become the primary source of trip … Read more
A plug-in hybrid makes the most compelling case at 6:30 on a Tuesday morning: the battery is full from overnight charging, the commute is 22 miles each way, and the gas engine will not turn on until Thursday. Over a week, maybe two weeks, of short daily drives on electric power, the fuel savings are … Read more
The third row is where the trip either works or it doesn’t. Not for the driver — for the seven-year-old who has been back there since Illinois, who is now reporting that it is too hot, whose tablet just died, who cannot reach the cupholder without unbuckling, and who has fifteen minutes left on a … Read more
Four hours into a highway drive, someone in the back is too warm. The driver reaches for the temperature control. What happens next reveals more about the vehicle than any spec sheet. In an SUV with a physical temperature knob, the adjustment takes about half a second: reach, turn, done. Eyes stay forward. The driver … Read more