I m Looking For An Ultimate Road-Trip Car To Visit My Kid At College. What Should I Buy?
Photo: Raphael Orlove
Justin’s son will be heading off to college soon. He is not looking to buy his kid a college car but rather get himself something big and fast that can comfortably handle the five-hour round trip. It needs to seat four and accommodate a dog crate. What car should he buy?
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Here is the scenario -
My son will be heading off to college in the Fall. It takes about 2.5 hours to drive there almost exclusively on the highway. No, I don’t want a car for him. I would like The Ultimate Road Trip Vehicle for me to use when I visit him.
There’s never been a better time to get out and go camping somewhere than right now. It’s a chance to be socially distant somewhere that isn’t your house. For some, camping means buying a trailer, motorhome or a whole school bus. What if you could slide a camper into the back of your family sedan? That’s exactly what Toppola campers did for some Saabs.
There Was A Time When You Could Build A Tiny Camaro In Your Backyard
Graphic: Jason Torchinsky, Samba, FB Marketplace
I don’t think it’s a secret about how much I love the Volkswagen Beetle-chassis-kit-car-era, which is good, because I do. The sheer amount of janky fiberglass bodies you and an equally drunk friend could bolt to an old Beetle chassis in your backyard was once staggering: dune buggies, things that looked like old MG TCs and old Bugattis, strange kinda Corvette-shaped things, strange little vans, campers, mini big rig trucks, anything. And, yes, it seems you could build yourself a tiny Camaro, too.
The hybrid version of the popular midsize sedan offers more power and better mileage.
The Honda Accord Hybrid upends the conventional wisdom about such fuel-efficient vehicles. In the past, hybrids were much slower than equivalent gas-powered vehicles, which was the trade-off for getting better mileage. For example, the original Toyota Prius the first mass produced hybrid was so slow that being stuck behind a Prius driver became a punch line.
But the 2021 Honda Accord Hybrid is significantly more powerful and faster than the turbocharged 1.5-liter gas version. The hybrid version offers 20 more horsepower and 40 more foot-pounds of torque, which translates to one second faster zero to 60.
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Playing “cops and robbers” is probably something kids just don’t do anymore. If you lament the passing of that old-school playtime staple then maybe you’re in the target audience for the 2002 Chevy Camaro B4C we looked at yesterday. That Camaro was claimed to be a former California Highway Patrol vehicle and was liveried up in full CHP regalia, with everything short of a two-way and the mount for a shotty. It looked pretty clean, but at a $20,900 asking, it was obvious playtime was over. That price earned the Camaro a devastating 95 percent No Dice loss and probably a couple of points on its license as result.