Tag: jalopnik.com

Before the days of electronic ignition, car owners and mechanics would have to set ignition points. The distributor’s internals — which is where you’ll find the points — need to be timed correctly for the plugs to receive a powerful and well-timed spark. Over time, the ignition points will stray from their ideal settings, so it…

Getting a DUI is an expensive proposition. There are a number of costs associated with a DUI arrest and conviction, and one of the consequences is more expensive auto insurance. Rates tend to go way up even after just one DUI. The average yearly premium for full-coverage auto insurance in the U.S. is $2,524 for a…

In fiction, it’s usually considered lazy writing give your carpenter character the name “Bob Carpenter.” Sure, “Sally Bitchofanexwife” might make a decent placeholder while working on your pro-Tesla screenplay, but you’ve got to change that before you hit publish. It’s just not realistic. If you met someone with the last name “Heist,” you’d think that…

You may not have heard of the classic 1971 sci-fi movie “THX 1138,” but you might have heard of another little movie called “Star Wars,” done a few years later by the same director. While there are some similarities to be drawn, this early entry by George Lucas didn’t have nearly as much budget. The…

The long-defunct General Motors brand Saturn is often reduced to a punchline in 2026, but real heads know that Saturn was among the most innovative and interesting car brands on the road in the 1990s. We should all be putting more respect on the Saturn name. For example, did you know that the company built…

Every time I praise the design of a new Hyundai Motor Group product I’m accused of being a paid shill (the same goes for all of my industry colleagues), but I’m sorry, there are just no other companies doing it like the global teams of world-class designers that have been assembled by Hyundai, Kia and Genesis. On Monday…

Affordable and convenient — especially when compared to cars — e-bikes are quickly becoming a popular choice for personal transportation. In the United States alone, the e-bike market was worth some $2 billion in 2025, and that’s expected to more than double, to $4.3 billion, by 2035. And there are more and more companies selling e-bikes,…

Most private space companies are commercial launch providers. They have one job: delivering equipment from terra firma to space. Blue Origin successfully reused its New Glenn rocket for the first time on Sunday, but there was one significant problem. The rocket placed its payload into the wrong orbit. The tennis-court-sized satellite will face a fiery…

New cars are too damn expensive. In fact, when adjusted for inflation, the average cost of a new car in 2026 is still over $12,000 more expensive than the average cost of a new car in the year 2000. It’s great news then, that for around $10,000 less than the price of the average new…

The Consumer Reports list of the best sports cars available in 2026 has some worthy candidates, but also raises an age-old question: Just what defines a “sports car” in the first place? Road & Track notes that the original definition of a sports car, as promulgated by the Sports Car Club of America, was “any car that seated two, had a soft top,…