Tag: jalopnik.com

The best part of renting a car is the moment of relief that comes over you when you leave the keys with the rental car employee, having agreed that everything is good, and you’re finally free. That is, unless the rental car company reaches out a few days later saying you owe almost $10,000 for…

Billet and forged car parts have the same starting point: a processed piece of metal. But what happens to that metal afterward is different, and that gives their resulting components different traits, too. At the most basic, billet components — created by machining the metal — can be made to more precise specifications. Forged parts,…

The minivan was a revolutionary concept in the 1980s when Dodge and Plymouth first introduced the Caravan and Voyager, respectively. There were some earlier minivan-esque vehicles produced before the Chrysler minivans like the Stout Scarab and Volkswagen Transporter, but the Chrysler products were the first front-engine, front-drive minivans to become true sales successes.  Competitors didn’t…

Word from CarEdge is that a whopping 117 different new vehicle models have rolled off production lines across America in 2026. There’s an abundance of choice if you want to support domestic manufacturing — or to potentially shield yourself from the worst effects of recent tariffs.  But as with cars assembled anywhere else in the world, not all…

Ah, the vaunted 0-to-60-mph test. We all know and love (or loathe) this car acceleration test metric -– even non-gearheads get the gist of why it exists. The prevailing wisdom is pretty straightforward: does a car leap off of the line quickly from a stop? Look up the 0-to-60 time, and you (kind of) have…

Bosch has been an important innovator in the braking industry since 1927, pioneering systems like anti-lock brakes and electronic stability programs back in the 20th century. The company — whose magneto ignition device made spark plugs possible – hit the headlines in 2025 with another advance: a brake-by-wire system in which the brake pedal isn’t mechanically part of…

The results are in, and once again the most popular car colors are white, gray, and black. Boring! If you want to know what it was like when parking lots weren’t an endless sea of sameness, walk into your nearest guitar shop, and behold the spectrum. Many of the classic shades you’ll find were originally…

For as many automotive brands, segments, trims, and options out there out there to tickle any consumer’s fancy, there are just as many (or more) tire brands. A tire may be selected by a manufacturer to increase fuel economy and wear life, enhance grip in different scenarios, or even maximize ride quality — it all…

BMW created something truly remarkable when it revived the iconic Mini Cooper for the 2002 model year, injecting a healthy dose of exciting driving dynamics and genuine style into the otherwise rather sedate turn-of-the-century hatchback market. The fourth-generation Volkswagen GTI was not the chuckable, gritty, rowdy, machine that its predecessors were, and even the Honda…

There’s no shortage of “these are the most stolen cars” articles, and they’re usually grounded in research by the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The problem with these lists is that the NICB is looking at aggregate theft data (that is, how many of each model are stolen across the country in a year). There are certainly…