Our recent QOTD post asked for your thoughts on the best Infiniti model ever. Therein, I promised a follow-up post with my answer to that very important question. So let’s get right down to it: I think the first generation FX was the best Infiniti ever.

Sometimes all it takes is a Tweet to generate a new Abandoned History series. A seemingly simple request: coverage of some GM models from the early 2000s, specifically a Daewoo. But there’s a long, winding, and dramatic history behind Daewoo Motors. The company’s origins trace back to the 1930s, and the very first Korean car. 

Throughout the ensuing decades, Daewoo Motors was formed, reformed, bought and sold, and generally passed around in Korea. Along the way, it offered other brands’ vehicles, its own, and even purchased a smaller carmaker. So sit back and relax as we travel to Korea in 1937, during the latter part of the country’s Japanese occupation.

Rare Rides Icons has been embroiled in the Stutz story since February of this year. Through six months and 20 total installments, we’ve covered the entirety of the Stutz brand’s evolution. Stutz started with a win at the inaugural Indianapolis 500 and eventually morphed into a manufacturer of high-powered luxury cars. After the emphasis turned to safety and away from racing, Stutz lost its footing quickly and went extinct.

Decades later it was resurrected by a wealthy man with a background in banking. In 1970 the new Stutz Motor Car Company capitalized on a wave of gauche neoclassical styling that the well-heeled of Hollywood and the Middle East so lovingly embraced. From there the Stutz lineup grew larger, more ostentatious, and more ridiculous. For a time the company sold its wares almost exclusively to foreign regimes, the exported vehicles long lost to time. 

We finish the series with the largest and most exclusive Stutz ever built. Massive in length, it was much larger than the Duplex, IV-Porte, Victoria, and indeed the Diplomatica. We close out the Stutz chapter of our lives with Royale and a very interesting recent announcement.

After its first few years as an 810, 910, Datsun by Nissan, Maxima by Datsun, Datsun/Nissan, and similar, the Maxima settled into its permanent home under Nissan branding. The well-equipped compact sedan sold over 198,000 copies in the United States between 1982 and 1984 (‘82 is the earliest year sales data is available) before an all-new Maxima arrived in 1985. With its second generation, Nissan veered off to distinguish the Maxima from its most direct competition, Toyota’s Cressida. Picture it, October 1984.

We return to the Lincoln Mark story at a very promising time for the personal luxury coupe. Aside from Ford’s floundering Thunderbird, several other new PLC models arrived in the late sixties. Every major Detroit automaker had one, and circa the turn of the Seventies even more would arrive! 

Together, they formed three tiers of personal luxury, segmented by asking price. At the top was the long-standing Cadillac Eldorado, and in the middle were the Thunderbird, Buick Riviera, and Oldsmobile Toronado. They’d be joined in the Seventies by the likes of the Pontiac Grand Prix, Chrysler Cordoba, and Chevy Monte Carlo. 

In 1965 Ford’s VP of passenger car product, Lee Iacocca, decided he’d make some use of the fifth-generation Thunderbird’s platform for a higher PLC purpose. With as much parts sharing and cost saving as possible, he’d create a luxurious new Mark that could take on the Eldorado. Ignoring the Marks III, IV, and V of the Fifties, the new Mark would start at III, and attempt to connect itself with the ultra-luxurious Continental Mark II of 1956. We begin today (oddly) with some endurance racing.

Thus far in Abandoned History’s coverage of Edsel, we’ve learned about the brand’s introduction to the American consumer, and the immediate confusion its pricing caused. As far as product, thus far we’ve covered two of the four single-year Edsel models: Pacer and Citation. While those two models were sedans, there were also two Edsel wagons that bit the dust after one year. Meet the Roundup.

In our last installment of Kia’s large sedan history, we took a look at the second generation Cadenza. With its second salvo at the likes of the Toyota Avalon and the Buick Lacrosse, Kia planned to capture the near-luxury sedan customer who cared about value. Unfortunately, the Cadenza didn’t excel at anything in particular, and failed to stand out against more established competition.

A similar story played out a few years before when Kia introduced the first full-size rear-drive luxury car it ever designed in-house. Called the K9 (Quoris or K900 elsewhere), the large sedan shared a platform with the new rear-drive Hyundai Equus. Both sedans were the flagship offerings at their respective brands. 

The Equus was flashy and almost American-inspired, while the K9 was conservative and understated. But it turned out a large and anonymous looking luxury car was not to the taste of most customers. Even in its home market, buyers vastly preferred the Equus and its large winged hood ornament. What was Kia to do?

We pick up our coverage of the life and times of Powel Crosley Jr. in 1916. At 30 years old, Crosley had a spouse of six years and two young children. He’d given up car-selling ventures in Indiana for a permanent return to his native land of Cincinnati. 

His experiences in car sales and hype in Indiana turned the inventor into a marketing man, and Crosley’s main source of income was ad copy. He did that in between short-lived side jobs at small local automotive companies (that all went bust). All the while Crosley kept one eye on the automobile market and took notice of just how common and numerous the automobile had become on American roads. It was almost time for a new car venture. 

We return to our Rare Rides Icons coverage of Lamborghini’s front-engine coupes at a moment of relative triumph. After three earlier design proposals failed to pass muster with Ferruccio Lamborghini, a fourth received approval and was chosen as the 400GT’s replacement. Part of an in-house collaborative effort between Mr. Lamborghini, Carrozzeria Marazzi, and Lamborghini’s engineers, the resulting coupe was sedate, elegant, and not that removed from the outgoing 400GT 2+2.

Today we find ourselves in the 19th chapter of Stutz historical coverage. In the early Eighties Stutz (somewhat) successfully branched out from its Blackhawk-only product line, and made the Bearcat targa, the Bearcat II convertible, some SUVs for dictatorial armament and parade usage, as well as sedans and limousines. 

We’re in the latter group of automobiles at the moment. So far we’ve covered the one-off Duplex that found no customers, and its successor the IV-Porte that did. After the IV-Porte came the Victoria, which added 10 additional inches to IV-Porte’s base, the B-body Bonneville. Victoria survived the Bonneville’s full-size demise in 1981 and moved its basis to the similar Oldsmobile 88 in 1982. Around that time Stutz added an even more exclusive, larger, and more garish sedan to the lineup. Let’s talk about Diplomatica.

Lincoln was in a bad way at the turn of the Sixties, both financially and in terms of its product. The company lost hundreds of millions (adjusted) in the early and middle portion of the decade, when it invested in and then promptly canceled the Continental Division. Attempting a rebound, Lincoln dumped lots more cash into a new unibody platform that was exclusive to Lincoln models. 

The new lineup was on sale from 1958 to 1960 and was unfortunately introduced at the start of a sharp economic recession. However, even after the recession ended Lincoln’s gaudy and overworked styling caused customers to steer clear of Lincoln and purchase Cadillacs instead. Lincoln lost $60 million ($550 million adj.) more. 

1961 heralded the arrival of an all-Continental lineup, the Elwood Engel design that was instantly popular and saved the company. However, the new and streamlined (in all ways) Lincoln lineup spared no room for a Continental Mark series. The Mark slumbered until 1968.

In our last edition of Abandoned History, we found ourselves in the earliest days of Edsel sales in 1958. The new company offered a full lineup of four sedan-based models and three different wagons. But because Edsel failed so spectacularly, 1958 was the only year it had a broad product offering. Four of seven models were eliminated before the company’s second model year.

Last time we covered the cheapest of the one-offs, the Pacer. Its near entry-level status confused customers as it wasn’t exactly a cheap vehicle at $2,700 ($27,973 adj.) before options like a heater or radio. Pacer was also based on a Ford, but priced more like a Mercury. Still, the Pacer found 19,057 customers in its only year; many more than the upmarket Citation found during its outing.  

Kia’s second attempt at a K7 (Cadenza in North America) arrived at a time when the company fully embraced a styling language of its own. More upscale and nicer to look at than the derivative generation of 2010 to 2016, the new Cadenza debuted in all global markets for 2017. Kia was hopeful the second Cadenza would sell better than the first one, particularly in North America. Any predictions on how that went?

We return today to our coverage of the life and times of Powel Crosley Junior, the first subject in our new Rare Rides Personas series. Born in Cincinnati in 1886, Crosley was the son of a lawyer and the eldest of four. From an early age, he showed adeptness at engineering and technology but lacked an interest in the classroom learning behind it. 

He and his brother Lewis built their first car - an EV wagon - at ages 12 and 10 to win a bet with their father. It was the first of many car ventures for Crosley, who was completely fascinated with the up-and-coming automobile. By age 21 he was raising funds to start a car company. 

When we last left Lamborghini’s front-engine coupe timeline, Ferruccio Lamborghini found himself about out of time to designate a replacement for the 400GT 2+2. Touring’s Flying Star II two-seat shooting brake was radical and possessed neither the restrained GT styling Mr. Lamborghini desired, nor the full four-place capacity. The company turned to Bertone and design legend Marcelo Gandini, who proposed the four-seat Marzal. 

The Marzal’s design was as radical as the Flying Star if not more, and had gullwing doors and an interior filled with silver textile. After it debuted Ferruccio remarked how the Marzal was just a fun design exercise and was not intended to be a production car. Whether that statement was actually true remains unclear, but seems unlikely given the events that occurred post-Marzal. Lamborghini needed a real production design, and fast.

With the recent and not surprising news of the Nissan Maxima’s planned demise in 2023, it’s time for a Rare Rides retrospective on a nameplate that was once lauded as one of the best sporty sedans on the market. From its origins as a rear-drive Datsun to the eighth generation that’s a shadow of its former self, the Maxima persisted with its unique value proposition: That it was a step up from the standard Japanese family sedan. Our story begins in Japan, with the Bluebird range.

We resume our Mark series coverage in the 1960 model year, which happened to be a last-of for several reasons. It was the last of the unibody Lincoln lineup that debuted in 1958, the Continental Mark line of models, and for Lincoln’s model naming scheme as a whole. We covered the visual edits in our last entry; a return to some of the garishness of 1958 that Elwood Engel tried to tone down in 1959. With the additional gingerbread hanging off of every possible surface of the Mark V Continentals for 1960, the lineup grew larger in every direction and heavier than ever before.

Today’s Rare Ride is brought to you by a Tweet that featured today’s subject and was the exact moment your author became aware of its existence. Released in the Nineties prior to the American retro styling craze, the Classic was a limited edition sedan sold only to Japanese customers. Curious yet?

The TTAC podcast is back, and we were aggressively Midwest this time around.

It’s a safe bet that most DIYers are grateful to the wrenching deities for the democratization of LED illumination – especially when talking about work lights. Your author used to toil under cars and in tight spaces with incandescent work lights that heated themselves to approximately the surface of the sun, as I’m sure you all did as well.

We’ve covered mechanic’s sets in the past but, in this updated post, we are going to focus on dedicated socket sets. That means no sets with piece-count padders like Allen keys in an obscure size or that one tool that only serves to remove the Färhfvingenator on your clapped-out Volkswagen.

Scattered amongst all the commerce posts you’ve read on this and other sites about ZOMG PRIME DAY DEALS featuring a wide array of products are lists like this one, focused on a single type of car part that you’re not likely to think about until its actually needed.

If you followed our advice about socket sets and garage door openers, you’re well on your way to dabbling in a bit of automotive DIY. A good place to start? The simple oil change. Since oil is the lifeblood of your car, it’s an excellent idea to understand why it’s important to change it regularly.

The TTAC podcast is back! In our fourth episode, we talk Ford Lightning, Kia Sportage, Formula One in Miami, and the best cars from 2007.

There’s solid evidence in the comment section of this august publication that we (the collective we, which includes readers and authors) have held the keys to a horrible car or two at some point in their automotive career. A quick headcount in the official TTAC Slack chat reveals humans with a propensity to own decrepit Miata convertibles and Lincoln coupes alike.

Continuing the recent trend of DIY tools, we’ve selected spark plug sockets as today’s list of choices. While not all of us set gaps and fiddle with old fashioned points systems, there’s a solid chance most of our readers have had cause to throw a new set of plugs in their beater at some point or another.

The next episode of the TTAC podcast is here!

It is freely admitted a bit of help was enlisted for this post. After all, your author does not generally purchase items for his daily driver that intentionally make it less comfortable, except for the U-Cheap-OutTM suspension kit he once purchased (best to gloss over that one).

There are some things best enjoyed without filters – Instagram photos, discussions about pay with your boss, and those Camel cigarettes from the ’80s. What definitely does require a filter is the oiling system on your car’s engine. We’ve gathered a few of them here.

There will be a few in our readership who are going to immediately point out that cordless drills aren’t strictly an automotive tool or accessory. And, for once, they’re technically correct. The first genre one generally thinks of when an ad for cordless drills appears is the construction industry. An maybe the props department for a science-fiction B-movie.

After two weeks of smoldering in the Atlantic Ocean, a cargo ship loaded with several thousand German automobiles has sunk. Packed with over 4,000 vehicles from Volkswagen Group, the Felicity Ace (pictured) originally gained notoriety for being a successful fire rescue mission conducted in open waters. But it was later revealed that a large number of the cars onboard were higher-end products from brands like Audi, Porsche, Bentley, and Lamborghini — making the salvage operation that followed likewise engaging.

Due to the immense size of the Felicity Ace, it would need to be towed several hundred nautical miles back toward Portugal so it could be serviced. Crews reportedly arrived on February 25th to evaluate the ship and prepare it for the trip back East. However, the cargo vessel began listing until it started to fall onto its starboard side and is now deemed unsalvageable. It’s assumed that the craft will be sinking near its current position, roughly 220 nautical miles from off the Portuguese Azores, taking its vehicular cargo along for the ride.

For those of us unable or unwilling to make monthly payments to an OEM overlord, preventing us from ordering a car exactly as we’d like it from the factory, turning to the aftermarket sates our desire for owning a vehicle that’s a bit different than all the others that left the factory. Beats turning to illicit substances, I suppose.

There’s a general understanding amongst gearheads that no matter how big one’s garage or storage space, it’ll eventually fill up. A two car garage will be just as full as a single, while that 40’ x 40′ unit your neighbor is building will be filled to capacity by year’s end. It’s just the natural order of things.

We’ll preface this post with the admonition that, unless you’re reasonably familiar with the environs of an engine bay, you should keep your paws off stuff like this. However, a case can be made that anyone who’s fleet is comprised of machines that actually need these products is probably intimately familiar with the contents of a rusty toolbox.

It has been a seller’s market over the last few months (more than that, if we’re honest) in the car industry, with demand far outstripping supply for most vehicles. Images of dealer lots bereft of vehicles to sell have become familiar. This has led to some stores slapping so-called market adjustments on hot-selling inventory, sure in the knowledge that someone will pay the inflated asking price.

Manufacturers are noticing. Ford chirped about the practice earlier this year, and now GM has seen fit to send its dealers a sternly worded letter as well.

With electric vehicles getting a lot of press, you might be wondering which models are scratching consumers in all the right places.

According to J.D. Power’s U.S. Electric Vehicle Experience Ownership Study, the Kia Niro EV is the best thing the mainstream BEV market currently has to offer. The Korean model garnered a satisfaction rating of 744 points out of a possible 1,000. However, it wasn’t the top dog overall. That honor fell to the Tesla Model 3, which achieved a score of 777 points — besting the industry average for premium electrics by a whole seven points.

Americans like their SUVs – and for some customers, bigger is better. One need look no further than parking lots filled with Tahoes and Grand Wagoneers for confirmation, not to mention their extended-length brethren like the Suburban and upcoming Grand Wagoneer XL.

Toyota has been in this game as well, albeit with an offering older than Methuselah. That changes for 2023, with the introduction of a new Sequoia.

If you tend to skip over our DIY post weeks, perhaps this one will be more to your liking. While not everyone wants or has the space to wrench on their own ride, there’s a solid chance that most gearheads like to have a few cleaning tools on hand.

Today’s Rare Ride was a single-year offering at Buick; it came and went in 1958. As General Motors reworked its large car offerings that year in response to styling changes at one of its biggest competitors, it reintroduced a historical nameplate at Buick: Limited.

Maintaining your out-of-warranty ride often forces us to learn the different systems in our vehicles. After wrenching on them for interminable amounts of time, knowing the ins and outs of the braking system or suspension bits is kind of inevitable.

Well, that didn’t take long. Mere minutes after our post this morning about the upcoming Cadillac Escalade V, the brand dropped official images of the thing – much earlier in the day than expected. But if you think TTAC had anything to do with that decision, we’ve some bridges in which you may be interested. After all, no one at RenCen reads TTAC, right? Right? (*nudge, nudge, wink, wink*)

As for the upcoming Escalade V, it promises to be a ground shaker.

Quick – what’s the first thing you reach for when starting any DIY project? No, it isn’t the perpetually absent 10mm socket, nor is it a quarter for the swear jar. It is, most likely a good pair of gloves.

Despite Stellantis making formal announcements that it will be investing 30 billion euros ($34 billion USD) into its novel electrification strategy, CEO Carlos Tavares has been making it sound as if the automaker’s plan was crafted under duress. He’s been telling European media that the widespread adoption of EVs is primarily being pushed by politicians who are ignoring the environmental risks and logistical shortcomings.

“What is clear is that electrification is a technology chosen by politicians, not the industry,” he said told the press this week.

A modern and efficient V8 of 4.1 liters, the HT4100 was the exciting way forward for Cadillac’s propulsion needs in the early Eighties. The engine came hot on the tail of a very iffy cylinder deactivation experiment, V8-6-4. Unfortunately, just like the cylinder games before and the Northstar after, the HT was plagued with issues that took years to iron out. The HT in its name meant High Technology but could’ve meant Halfway There. Let’s travel back to the Seventies and talk cylinders.

After years of Ford unsuccessfully trying to court the Chinese market in the same way General Motors did, Blue Oval has finally hit an important milestone. For the first time ever, the Lincoln luxury brand has achieved more sales in China than in the United States.

On Thursday, Lincoln announced that it had delivered more than 91,000 vehicles in China in 2021 – representing an increase of 48 percent increase against 2020. Meanwhile, the brand managed to lose ground in North America with just 86,929 sales for last year. That’s the worst Lincoln has seen in over a decade, though the company has basically witnessed its share of the U.S. market seesawing in the wrong direction since the 1990s.

As we make our way into the 12th installment of Rare Rides Icon’s Imperial coverage, the third generation 1967 Imperial became the shortest-lived in the nameplate’s history. After the decade-long reign of the D-body, Imperial switched to the unibody C platform to cut costs, and move on from dated body-on-frame underpinnings. But it was an odd time to introduce a new car, as the C-body was no spring chicken when the Imperial debuted. More importantly, Chrysler was on the cusp of an entirely new styling direction: The Fuselage Look.

Back in 2016, I had plenty of nice things to say about Cadillac’s flagship performance model of the day, the third-generation CTS-V. But while Cadillac’s naming conventions have become much more convoluted over the past six years, on paper the CT5-V Blackwing seems like more of the same: A big, boosted V8 still remains under the hood, and it’s still underpinned by an updated version of GM’s Alpha platform. The interior still isn’t on par with its German rivals, and because it’s still rear-wheel drive, it’s still a few ticks behind its all-wheel-drive competition in the sprint to 60 MPH.

Yet despite these objective facts, the CT5-V Blackwing proves to be a stone-cold revelation. Yes, the re-introduction of the six-speed manual transmission plays a significant role in that, but there’s much more going on here than just the availability of a third pedal. Not only has Cadillac addressed virtually all of the shortcomings that held the CTS-V back from venturing into instant-classic territory, they’ve refined and improved the formula in so many subtle ways that the CT5-V Blackwing feels like a totally different car.

Compact crossover land is a funny place. It’s a place where every vehicle is broadly similar, and where the most subtle of differences can distinguish one vehicle from the next. It’s not a world where standing out with something radically different either in styling or engineering will typically yield wins.

Subtle differences certainly show with the 2022 Hyundai Tucson. The styling is a touch different than the rest, with an unusual front lighting setup and interesting character lines throughout. One difference, however, can cause some consternation among some drivers.

Builders of half-ton trucks in this nation are perpetually searching the upper limit of what customers are willing to pay for a new rig, with the moneyed set having plenty of choices when looking for a leather-lined and luxurious pickup. For the last few years, Toyota has had the 1794 Edition as an arrow in its quiver to compete against the crew from Detroit. Now, with their recently refurbished pickup truck, they’re going a step further. Meet the Toyota Tundra Capstone.

The Pontiac Grand Prix started life as a sporty hardtop coupe version of the full-size 1962 Catalina, then spent the 1969 through 1987 model years as a midsize rear-wheel-drive sibling to the Chevy Monte Carlo. For 1988, the Grand Prix moved to the brand-new front-wheel-drive W platform, immediately winning Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award and carrying on John DeLorean’s tradition of affordable personal luxury cars with a rakish bad-boy-in-a-suit image. Here’s an ultra-rare example of the most expensive Grand Prix available for 1990, found in a Denver-area self-service yard last month.

1988 was an interesting year for The General’s Cadillac Division. The Cavalier-based Cimarron was in its final year of sales, the Hamtramck/Turin-built Allanté was in its second year (and priced about the same as a Mercedes-Benz S-Class), and the “traditional” rear-wheel-drive Brougham sedan shared showroom space with the front-wheel-drive De Villes, Eldorados, and Sevilles. The old Sixty Special name was still being used, along with such slightly newer titles as Elegante and d’Elegance. While the Allanté lived at the top of the GM prestige pyramid for ’88, the Fleetwood was the car of choice for those very wealthy Cadillac shoppers who insisted on four doors and zero Pininfarina nonsense. Here’s one of those cars, found in excellent condition in a Denver yard last spring.

If you live in an area that experiences freezing temperatures in the winter, you can appreciate the effect of the best heated seat covers for your car. Getting into a cold car with cold seats on a 0 degree morning is a harsh way to start the morning. Even if you start the car in advance to let it warm up a bit, the seats often hold in the cold, creating an uncomfortable situation for the early portion of your morning commute.

Before you get bent out of shape, know that this post isn’t about those infernal gadgets that late-night television tries to sell us. You know the ones – they promise to send an electric charge through the body of a vehicle to allegedly neutralize conditions in which rust normally forms. The less said about those, the better.

If you live in a region that gets harsh winters, with snow and ice that makes driving a nightmare, you want the best winter tires possible. Whether you drive a car, truck or sport utility vehicle – even one with four-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive – proper snow tires will allow your vehicle to accelerate, steer and brake more confidently and more safely than an all-season tire.

While we wouldn’t suggest you do it, if you are someone who might occasionally drive a little north of the posted speed limit, having one of the best radar detectors available with you could save you some potential problems. The average cost of a speeding ticket in the United States is $150, but the average insurance rate increase for an average speeding ticket is roughly $350, so if you get caught going a little too fast, it could end up costing you up more than $500. And that cost can increase exponentially if it happens more than once in a year.

General Motors now requires salaried employees operating in the United States to disclose their coronavirus vaccination status. As confirmed by the automaker on Thursday, the decision is supposed to help the company determine what percentage of its own workforce is vaccinated so it can make better decisions about which safety protocols to implement. But your author is under the assumption that “as many as possible” will always be the preferred answer.

Earlier in the month, GM forced all salaried employees to disclose whether or not they were immunized for COVID-19 using the automaker’s internal network. Those answering to the affirmative were required to submit proof of vaccination by last Monday. But it sounds as though the manufacturer is just getting warmed up for more invasive activities.

Given the general propensity for most of our readership (and authors) to drive horrible but charming rotboxes, there’s an excellent chance that at least some of you have welded together a piece of metal or two in order to keep your heap on the road.