I’d heard about this before, usually in the context of a 1972 project at Ford known as the Carousel. This was a “garagable van” that was built on a chassis derived from Ford’s full-size Econoline vans, and used the Econoline’s V8/rear-wheel drive setup. As I’ve usually heard this story told, the Carousel project was led by Lee Iacocca, and was shut down by Ford executives in 1974, partially out of fears that it would cannibalize sales of Ford’s popular Country Squire and other station wagons....

Okay, thanks for that. Here’s what the first official NHTSA crash test car was: a 1979 Plymouth Champ! Yes, a doubly-rebadged car, since the Champ was actually a captive import version of the Mitsubishi Mirage, which was sold in Europe as a Mitsubishi Colt, and in America through Chrysler as a Dodge Colt or Plymouth Champ. I suppose I find this an odd choice because you’d think NHTSA would have started these tests with much more popular cars, or even maybe the best-selling car in America at that time, which was the Oldsmobile Cutlass, selling over 500,000 cars in 1978....

But before we get there, let’s hear from Dr. Peter Grossman, of the burn clinic that bears his name: That’s great. Reports suggest he was a peach of a patient, and the hospital issued this statement as well: Leno received skin grafts from donor skin, and had to spend time in a hyperbaric chamber. These were pretty severe burns, but the Grossman clinic is known to be one of the best in the country, so he was in good hands....

Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. Lucid Gets Liquidity, Which I Shall Call Luquidity It’s a truism of building cars that the first car a company makes costs a $1 billion (or $400 million, or whatever), and the company slowly keeps making and selling until all the money it gets for selling the cars finally surpasses the cost of developing and building them, and then the company reaches profitability....

Yesterday’s Cavaliers stirred up some opinions, that’s for sure. Let’s see how the voting went down: Almost an even split, which goes along with what I saw in the comments. Lots of write-in votes for “both” or “neither” as well. I didn’t expect a pair of old GM compacts to be so polarizing, but there it is. Now, today, I won’t subject you to any General Motors foolishness, or cars that have been sitting for years, or any of that nonsense....

(Welcome to Member Rides. This is the weekly feature where we look at people who became members of the site by signing up here and parting with a little of their hard-earned dough to keep The Autopian going. Our plan is to do these every week! Today it’s Dutcher’s turn!) Autopian: Thanks for doing this! Tell us who you are and what you’ve got. I live in Austin, Texas. I’m an IT Auditor for a state agency....

Plus, this is 1984, when a significant amount of miniaturization had already been going on; this was the first big home computer boom era, after all, and that Rover could have been filled with many, many 48K Sinclair Spectrums (it is British, after all) that could have handled at least some of the computation duties, right? I have no idea just what was being recorded or tested or tabulated here, but I’m very curious about what and how....

And also a Geo Storm, and I always thought those were really cool. So let’s get yesterday’s convertibles out of the way first: I honestly had no idea which way this one was going to go. But apparently someone out there agreed with you all, as the be-stickered, dog-friendly, Gambler-veteran Eclipse is already in a new driveway. As for the Mustang, the only thing I can say for certain is that nobody who wanted it intended to leave it stock....

Don’t ever call a designer a stylist. Nothing winds them up more and it really belittles what a designer actually does, which after all is why I’m here to give you reprobates an idea what goes on behind the top secret closed doors of an automotive design studio. It’s not all flashy unrealistic sketches, sipping espressos and standing around pointing at clay models. That stuff you see in videos cover a very small part of a designers working life....

Since there was no poll on Friday, I don’t have any winners to announce. But the general overall consensus seemed to be that the Taurus was the most flammable, with the Saab and the BMW splitting the daily-driver vote. Myself, I’d daily the BMW and try my hand at rallycross in the Saab. And yeah, burn the Taurus. It’s just not special or interesting compared to the other two. If one’s got to go, it would be the least mourned....

Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. They Only Raised The WRX Price $1,025 I have not decided how I feel about the new Subaru WRX. The car had a good run as the best value in performance cars because of its racy AWD and lack of real competitors....

Later, after we had spent the equivalent of a mortgage payment on groceries, I’d get in the car and annoy her with facts about the Volkswagen Passat, genuinely upset and clueless as to why the V6 engine in her Ford Econoline, and not a big German W8, was shuttling all seven of us around. She’d tell me to shut up, and that those opinions in those magazines aren’t real life....

Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. The Future Of Cars Is Car Karaoke Chrysler will debut a two-seat car today with no steering wheel, no doors, no roof, no motor and no wheels. Technically, this is because the Chrysler Synthesis (great name!...

Granted, this thought did not occur to me when I landed. I was mostly happy to be getting off the helicopter. I enjoyed the ride up and down the coast and around the Statue of Liberty the Marines provided, but flying around thunderstorms with the doors open required me to focus on how cool it was and not how strange it was. Had this Lancia been waiting for me on the tarmac perhaps I could have distracted myself better....

Volkswagen of the late 1990s through early 2000s was properly insane. At the helm was none other than Ferdinand Piëch, a grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, engineer, and someone who could totally pass as a James Bond villain. He’s often credited with turning Volkswagen Group into what it is today. Under Piëch’s rule, Volkswagen purchased Bentley, Lamborghini, Rolls-Royce Motors, and launched the modern incarnation of Bugatti. Volkswagen’s expansion would be notable enough, but the Group under Piëch then proceeded to create some of the wildest cars that the world had ever seen....

Back in the 1970s, it was common to make pilgrimages to the Grand Browntain, as you can see in that picture. Often, as shown, people would bring dogs like Dalmatians there so they could be converted into browner dogs. This is partially why brown is by far the most common dog color, beating out the more natural greens and blues that would have dominated canines if not affected by the Grand Browning....

In case you’ve just wandered onto this website and have no idea what a Polestar is, it’s basically a Sino-Swedish tie-up that sees Volvo’s parent company Geely working across continents to produce electrified cars with an Ikea aesthetic. Their first car, the Polestar 1, was a hybridized-GT that offered a high level of performance wrapped in concept car skin. It was limited. Their first mainstream model, the Polestar 2, is a crossover-y sedan thing....

Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. Ferrari’s Business Model Can Apparently Withstand Supply Disruptions In our ongoing evaluation of whether inflation is a long-term marcoeconomic response to numerous intersecting factors or, perhaps, a short-term reaction to those factors exacerbated by large corporations extending their profits I would like to present Exhibit B: Ferrari....

Just like the S-10 Xtreme’s fashionable street truck look of the early 2000s, the ID.XTREME Concept adopts a popular aftermarket trend, safari-style builds. Volkswagen took an ID.4 development car, jacked it up, threw on some knobby tires and other accouterments, and incorporated a few really innovative ideas. Let’s start with the powertrain. Volkswagen swapped in a new rear motor and fiddled with the motor controller to take the ID.XTREME Concept from a stock 295 horsepower to a remarkably stout 382....

We’ve been following a lot of electric motorcycle concepts over the past several months. Most of them have been on the lower end of the market, while others brought along nifty features. But every once in a while, a motorcycle manufacturer or supplier will try to push the envelope. A good example is Autoliv, the company trying to put an airbag on your motorcycle. Davinci Motor Corporation, a startup company in China, wants to prove itself not just as a motorcycle manufacturer, but a tech company, too....