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Last night, my colleague Jason Torchinsky and I spent about three hours tearing apart the 170,000 mile Jeep 4.0-liter inline-six in the 1991 Jeep Cherokee that I had sold to a nice lady who had driven all the way from Chicago for a Jeep that would only take her 20 miles towards home before overheating. I was initially worried that the “unkillable” Jeep engine was toast, since it had such a severe knock, but then I learned that the noise was just the water pump banging against the engine block....

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. Renault Skeptical Of EV Price Parity While some auto analysts have been predicting EV price parity with combustion-powered cars, Automotive News Europe reports that Renault CEO Luca de Meo doesn’t see parity happening soon....

Rapport International was one of those peculiar “converter” companies, this one based out of London, somewhat like a coachbuilder-lite. Rapport actually had a showroom in the Mayfair area of London and did the work in Woking, so they were more visible than many similar companies. They’d take existing mass-market cars, and rework them with some body panel changes, lighting changes, and lots of interior upfitting — all in an attempt to make a more unique, premium vehicle out of mundane but reliable and accessible mechanicals....

If you haven’t noticed, we absolutely adore the GMC Motorhome here at the Autopian. So when I saw this at the RV/MH Hall of Fame during the RV Open House I was drawn in like a mosquito to a bug zapper. The exterior alone looks like it could have rolled off of a General Motors factory line in 2008, and the interior looks better than most of the far newer rigs that were at the show....

Just to let you know we are listening to some stuff, I can say that we are working with our tech team to try and improve the experience here; we’re looking into speeding up loading times, getting a way to edit comments, add pictures, and more. I don’t have a clear timeline just yet for those, but things are happening, and I want to thank everyone for being patient with our tech issues as we try to win an auction for that 16K RAM expansion module that should really speed everything up, finally....

As the M3 Touring is a full-on M3, it gets two lung-sized grilles and absolutely zero cohesive lines on the entire front end. I know that banging on about the nose is beating a dead horse but come on, what’s a dead horse going to say? It’s dead and I’m the one with the Louisville Slugger. Seriously, this car should come with a pixelated face and a sensitive content warning, for its front end may actually scare pedestrians....

When I say that cars played more of a role in the development of modern CGI than you’d think, I mean that automotive subjects show up a good amount in the early development of computer graphics. For example, the first object to be “scanned” in three dimensions to become a 3D computer model was computer pioneer Ivan Sutherland’s personal 1967 Volkswagen Beetle. And, speaking of Volkswagen, I’m pretty certain that the first true first-person driving simulator was developed by Volkswagen in 1972, and was almost certainly the first interactive driving simulator to feature actual computer-generated imagery for the road and other items, like those lollipop-looking trees:...

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. Genesis Is Out-Cadillacing Cadillac I’m not under any illusion that Korean luxury brand Genesis is going to build this giant electric convertible they’re calling the X Convertible Concept, but the sheer hutzpah of the thing is impressive....

Let’s follow the driver’s gaze here: What’s going on? Are they tailing a squirrel or field mouse or vole? Trying to smush a cockroach the safe, clean, gas-burning way? Is she a notary public who made a decision to shun a conventional stamp and instead ordered special tires with her notary stamp carved into the tire sipes, and is currently directing her car to a stack of documents in the field that need notarizing?...

The big news for 2024 is the new Denali Ultimate trim. GMC was an early player in the “cowboy Cadillac” arena, and the Denali Ultimate elevates luxury to compete with the Ford Super Duty Limited and Ram Limited. All 2024 GMC Sierra HD models get an all-new interior, but the Denali Ultimate decks things out with wood, massaging seats, saddle leather, and metal speaker grilles that look befitting of a luxury car....

This wasn’t intended to be a rant but David’s still wrapping up his Australian adventure and the lunatics are running the asylum, so a rant it may yet become. There are so many good cars. So many. Toyota is selling a three-cylinder rally car, basically, in the Toyota GR Corolla, and no one here even watches rally in America. We’ve got the Maverick and a million good trucks. Wanting something you cannot have is good....

What’s with these tiny wipers? source: CarsDirect I mean, look at the area these things actually clean…it’s a joke. Sure, some people will say that rear view cameras, giant screens, and beepers make a rear window of any kind superfluous today. To that I say shut up the fuck up, Elon. I think MOST people want to look out through the backlight, and through more than just some dinky little arc when it’s raining/salt spray covered....

In times of national crisis Great Britain always turns to the BBC. Its charter is to “educate, inform and entertain.” Me being British and having just finished my beans on toast, let me try to explain exactly what the deal is, why designers do it and what happens between sketch and showroom. Big Wheels First of all, big wheels. Customers love them, because they look good. Designers love them for the same reason....

I’m just about certain that everyone reading this right now is picturing the same thing: big, bold, tri-colored taillights, with deep horizontal ridges molded into the plastic shape, creating corrugated lights that were absolutely unmistakable. These lights were first used on 1971 Mercedes-Benz C107 coupé/R107 roadster, as wide, corner-wrapping units that helped define the distinctive look of that sporty car, which had other ribbed elements, such as the body detailing on the lower door and rocker panels....

[Full Disclosure: Toyota sent me to its headquarters in the quaint hamlet of Plano, Texas, sometimes called the Amsterdam of Denton County, for an event called Toyota HQ Confidential, so named because they showed us two cars I really want to tell you about, but can’t. While there, I finally got to drive the BR4Z or BXZ4 or whatever the hell this thing is called. Also, Toyota bought me a very nice steak....

Yep. And I’m inclinded to agree. Despite the difficulty finding parts that some commenters pointed out, the Ambassador is just a nicer and more stylish way to travel. Oh well. Let’s get back to stuff I could actually afford, if I were so inclined. Today we have a selection from the Underappreciated Survivors group on Facebook, and another suggestion from our buddy S.W. Gossin. One is a relatively unknown Japanese classic with an American twist, and the other is a shrunken version of a classic 4×4....

Here’s the video clip in question: Since I’m currently in Europe, I didn’t have access to the usual Autopian Mainframe (an IBM PCjr floating in a kiddie pool of rust-water in David Tracy’s crawlspace) so instead I used an old Minitel terminal to contact the European Autopian Mainframe, an Oric-1 enhanced with a massively parallel array of flea collars to enhance computing power, and had it isolate and enhance the cars from the video:...

Really, it’s not just the 335i I’m talking about – it’s anything with the N54 twin-turbocharged inline-six engine. Certain years of 135i, 135is, Z4 sDrive35i, Z4 sDrive35is, 335is, 535i, X6 xDrive35i – all that stuff. The N54 is a neat engine, but almost everything bolted to it is terrible. The turbochargers develop wastegate rattles that require serious hours to repair, the plastic valve cover cracks, the charge pipes leak, and the high-pressure fuel pump can go bang....

According to the Telegraph, the story goes like this. On May 11, a Saudi engineer was driving his rented Maserati Levante around Rome and ended up driving down Scalinata di Trinita dei Monti, otherwise known as the iconic Spanish Steps. Wait a second. An engineer doing some impromptu off-roading in a Stellantis product? David Tracy, come get your mans! Oh, did I mention that this urban descent was captured on CCTV?...

A Cessna 208 is a utility aircraft, so while it uses a single turboprop engine and tricycle fixed landing gear, the aircraft’s scale is a bit different than of a light aircraft. We’re talking about a plane more than ten feet longer than a Cessna 172, a plane with a rated landing distance of 1,655 feet. That’s more than 16 and a half Ford F-150 Lightnings longer than than the landing distance of a Cessna 172....