A chance meeting between English race-car builder John Cooper and Fiat engineer Aurelio Lampredi at the 1959 Italian Grand Prix is celebrated in Mini folklore. Having driven an early Mini prototype to the race, Cooper was accosted by Lampredi, who begged him to borrow the tiny front-wheel-drive car. Returning it hours later, the Italian heralded […]
First, the good news: there will be auto racing in 2021. Now, the bad news: it’s likely going to be as disorganized as it was in 2020 with date changes, delays and cancellations affecting all types of racing and every sanctioning body. The first discouraging word of 2021 has already been heard in Australia, where […]
Several people commented on how “sharp looking” the Volkswagen Tiguan was. It looked like a mid-size SUV to me. Maybe we are all correct. My Tiggy was a 2020 model year. The 2021s will be arriving in VW showrooms soon, but the internals of the new model will be a carry-over. Tiguan starts at $29,770 […]
The 2021 Honda CMX1100 Rebel is a new middleweight cruiser that starts with a parallel-twin motor out of the storied Africa Twin adventure bike. Yup, a new cruiser coming to a segment that’s supposedly on the ropes. American Honda is still hanging on to the Fury and a couple of Shadows; but Honda Canada has […]
This all started about three months ago when I was driving with my wife west along Skymark Avenue in Mississauga when she stopped telling me how much she loved and admired me and started yelling, “Stop! Stop!” As I’m an eyes-on-the-road-all-the-time kind of driver, I yelled back: “Stop where?” And she said, “Over there! There’s a […]
One of the things I’m proudest of in my career is that I literally “wrote the book” on safe driving. Well, co-wrote it, with Doug Mepham. It was part of what we thought was a cleverly-named program called the “Road Scholarship”, sponsored by Labatt Brewery. The content of that book formed the syllabus of a […]
Guessing which Lexus model rules the sales charts might not be too difficult given how long it has been around for and how common a sight it is on our roads. Being in continuous production since 1998 will do that. And this nameplate certainly has produced a loyal following among North American consumers during its […]
The first plug-in hybrid Jeep Wrangler is getting close to hitting the market, and now we know how much it will cost. The 4xe uses a 2.0L turbo-four and an integrated electric motor with a 17 kWh battery back to deliver 375 hp, 470 lb-ft of torque and an estimated 40 km electric range. Starting […]
Back in early March, when we had no idea how dramatically the world was about to change, my biggest stressor was trying to plan a Vancouver Island getaway for this past summer and finding everything was booked solid. How time changes perspective. Today, as we hunker down at home and wait for this pandemic to […]
Vic Fedeli, who’s the provincial Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, and I have a couple of things in common, among them our affection for northern Ontario. He’s a former mayor of North Bay and represents the riding of Nipissing in the legislature. I was a kid in Kapuskasing. We had a long […]