The Sportage sits five adults in relative comfort. If you fold down the seat, you get a reasonably flat floor
The Kia Sportage was into its third overhaul in 2012, including a major facelift and a larger four-cylinder engine. The first generation of Sportage, introduced to North America in 1993, had a less than stellar reputation. Despite featuring body-on-frame construction, with significant engineering input from Mazda, its various shortcomings almost finished Kia’s foray into SUV…
Mazda has mastered the art of building innocuous, practical family transport, and CX-30 is right on target
Car manufacturers sometimes market their products in a confusing way. In the old days, it was called “badge engineering,” where one model would be gussied up or slightly altered and sold as something else – even though it was virtually identical to the vehicle it was based on. The Oldsmobile Cutlass, for example, was sold…
Car racing relies on oil and gas. Canada should be the choice supplier, rather than nations like Saudi Arabia
German Formula One driver Sebastian Vettel sat on a podium in Montreal last week in gear emblazoned with his sponsor logos – including Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil giant Saudi Aramco, owned by the tyranny state of Saudi Arabia – and told reporters that Alberta’s oil sands is “criminal.” He had arrived earlier…
Available with either a four-cylinder or V6 engine, this generation was offered in a variety of trim levels
There wasn’t much to separate the Toyota Camry between 2010 and 2012, aside from minor styling cues and options packages. These were all pretty good years for Toyota’s mid-size sedan, and it maintained its reputation as one of the more reliable cars on the road. Available with either a four-cylinder or V6 engine, with a…
The battery on the Lightning is strong enough to actually charge other electric vehicles, including stranded Tesla owners
It has been a year since I first wrote about the Ford F-150 Lightning, a fully EV version of the wildly popular American truck. My original piece contrasted the illusion behind the still unreleased Tesla Cybertruck and the reality of the Ford Lightning, a truck that has certainly been a lot of talk, but even…
First introduced to the market in 1982, it’s now in its eighth generation and has never been better
Things have slowed down a little in the compact sedan market over the past few years. It used to be that when people went shopping for affordable transportation, they’d be thinking about the Honda Civic, Chevrolet Cruze, Volkswagen Jetta, Nissan Sentra and so on. But these days, it’s compact SUVs that are catching people’s eyes:…
Here are facts for Canadians forced to face the real-world impact
The marvellous Christmas movie The Polar Express, starring the inimitable Tom Hanks, ends with the words “anything is possible, if you only believe.” Except, as adults understand, many things aren’t possible, not even if some people do believe them. An obvious example is the fantasy that the 84 per cent of global energy supplied by…
A high-performance car for buyers who like to drive with enthusiasm and want everyone to know it
The 2012 Chevrolet Camaro offered a wide range of powertrain choices, including a convertible and the hell-raising ZL1. General Motors was banking heavily on baby-boomer nostalgia with this, the fifth-generation version of the Camaro. Aside from the fact that it delivered better fuel economy than its predecessors, had better handling and braking, and was more…
This is a fun, lively car to drive. The shift mechanism, with its rifle-bolt precision, is a treat
The old saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies in spades to the Mazda MX-5, or Miata as many of us still call it. Yes, it’s changed over the years – it’s a little bulkier and more upscale than it used to be. But, more than three decades after its introduction, it remains…
Standard equipment includes telescoping steering, split folding rear seat, anti-lock brakes and more
In 2012, the Toyota Corolla sedan accounted for 40 per cent of the company’s total Canadian sales. It had been at or near the top of the sales heap in the compact car category for the previous two decades. This generation of the Corolla received a re-do in 2009, apparently styled in part in Turin,…
The Kia Sportage was into its third overhaul in 2012, including a major facelift and a larger four-cylinder engine. The first generation of Sportage, introduced to North America in 1993, had a less than stellar reputation. Despite featuring body-on-frame construction, with significant engineering input from Mazda, its various shortcomings almost finished Kia’s foray into SUV…
