Chrysler’s 300M powers its way toward top-sedan echelon
2000 Chrysler 300M
LIKES:
Dramatic, racy styling has sleek lines, from a chopped-down nose to a bobtailed rear.
Interior has a classy appeal, with chrome-ringed white instruments that have a stark but classic look.
Lots of power (253 horsepower, 255 foot-pounds of torque) from the 3.5-liter V6.
Optional “performance” suspension and steering with larger chromed aluminum wheels enhance handling.
Heated leather seats are standard equipment.
AutoStick 4-speed automatic transmission lets you shift for yourself to match the performance image of the car.
Lots of room, front and rear.
Traction-control can be shut off when you want to spin your way out of a snowdrift.
Neat little ergonomic touches include tiny finger indents on the inside door pull grips and on the directional stalk tip.
Optional audio system has a 4-CD in-dash player and 320 watts blowing through 11 speakers.
DISLIKES:
The interior leather is wonderful, but please — PLEASE — spare us the high-gloss fake wood stuff. Think how many plastic trees have to be needlessly cut down to harvest so much phony woodgrain.
As good as the power and handling of the 300M are, it could be that much better if it wasn’t so needlessly hefty — 3,560 pounds.
The 3.5 V6 is strong, because its sheer displacement size overcomes its single-overhead-cam engine; the 300M will be sold in Europe with a hot version of the 2.7 four-cam V6.
The weight and luxury touches help push the 300M over the $30,000 mark; making it lighter and leaner might reduce the heavyweight price — and also improve the performance. But, who knows? Maybe we’ll get a downsized 300 model of the new Sebring.
On Fourth of July week, it is altogether fitting and proper to discuss a candidate to be the top U.S. high-performance/luxury sedan.
Since Mercedes has taken over Chrysler Corporation, DaimlerChrysler has continued to roll out its luxurious vehicles from Germany, and Chrysler has moved boldly forward with products such as the PT Cruiser and other flights of fancy. One of the vehicles that Mercedes officials seem to most appreciate in the Chrysler line is the 300M — a sportier luxury sedan that not only challenges as the top U.S. performance sedan, but might be successful as a product in Europe as well.
Back when Chrysler Corporation made a bold new step ahead in styling and turned out a stylish trio that included the Dodge Intrepid, Chrysler Concorde and Eagle Vision, things were looking good. When economics led to curtailment of some models, Chrysler did away with the Eagle brand, and has since dropped the Plymouth nameplate. Curtailing the Eagle was too bad, but the wheels were already turning, you should pardon the phrase, for the 1998 upgrade of the Intrepid-Concorde-Vision.
So Chrysler came out with a much-improved Concorde for ’98, and Dodge’s Intrepid got the same tighter treatment. The plan for the Vision had been to shorten it, separating it from its siblings to make it more of a Eurolpean sporty sedan. Call it visionary or delusional, but Chrysler almost seemed to see what was coming. A year later, Chrysler brought out the slightly stubbier would-be Vision, and called it by the 300 designation of its legendary old hot-performers of the 1960s.
The 300M worked, and captured the fancy of buyers who liked the styling and the performance, particularly when combined with the luxurious attempts to make it classy. Meanwhile, Daimler Benz was to take over Chrysler in what was loosely called a “merger.” But there was no chance of killing the 300M. Mercedes officials singled it out along with the minivans and the coming PT Cruiser as Chrysler vehicles that could be successfully marketed in Europe.
The Intrepid and Concorde continue to do well, but the shorter 300M seems to be everywhere. It also has gained acclaim from the more cynical among car magazine types. In two years on the market, Car and Driver has named the 300M among its top 10 cars, and AutoWeek just came out with a limited poll among some of its subscribers, and while it was far from scientific, and it was topped, predictably, by the Corvette as the repeat No. 1 vehicle folks would like to own, the Chrysler 300M was a startling second — ahead of the Ford F150 pickup, Cadillac Seville, Lincoln LS, Dodge Viper, Mustang, PT Cruiser, Taurus and Focus.
When I spent a week test-driving a gleaming silver 300M, it seemed like I saw 300Ms all over the place. And with good reason, based on the rave reviews, although the car resides in the lofty $30,000 price neighborhood.
That neighborhood puts the 300M into a highly competitive segment in the market, up there with cars that are loaded with luxury but still are willing to be hurled aggressively around a corner with predictable steering and handling. That segment used to includ the Ford Taurus SHO and the Pontiac Bonneville, as the top U.S. performance sedans. The SHO has vanished, however, so the hottest Bonneville is the remaining barrier for the 300M to achieve top-U.S. status. Of course, a lot more competition from all directions is out there — performance-oriented luxury cars from Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Volvo, Saab, Acura, Lexus, Infiniti and Mazda.
But against all of them, the 300M has the right blend of power, performance, luxury and pizzazz to compete. Only trouble is, it is built in Brampton, Ontario, and I don’t think Canadians are as fired-up about our Fourth of July as those of us on this side of the border.
POWER AND HANDLING
Primary, among performance sedans, is the capability of being responsive, both to the touch of your toe on either the gas or the brakes, and to your hands, at the touch of the steering wheel or shift lever.
The 300M doesn’t come with a big V8, and you can’t order one with a stick shift. However, the same can be said of the Bonneville, which still is selling its top SSE model with a supercharged 3800 V6 engine that began life about 40 years ago. The 300M does have a leg up on most automatic-shifted sports sedans by coming with Chrysler’s slick AutoStick, which is a 4-speed automatic transmission with a side gate for the shift lever that allows the driver to bump it to the right for upshifts or to the left for downshifts.
A lot of folks may not use the clutchless shift in that mode, but that’s fine, because you can just leave it in “D” for drive. I found that I used it almost always when coming off a freeway, dropping it out of “D” so that I could then downshift a gear, or even two, to slow down and/or to be in the best gear range for whatever city driving I had coming.
Upshifting is fun, more than terribly benificial. The 3.5-liter V6 is basically the 3.2 that has been bored a bit for more power. More power is the word, too, because the 300M packs 253 horsepower at 6,400 RPMs and 255 foot-pounds of torque at 3,950 under that stylish hood. So if you put the shifter in “D,” you could drive 150,000 miles and unless you hammered the gas pedal all the way to the floor and held it there, the automatic might never allow you to get near the power peak revs. Hand-holding the shifter in AutoStick, you can let it run up to 6,700 RPMs every shift, and you can feel the exhilaration whenever you get up there to the peak.
The engine is a free-revving unit that is an expanded version of the 3.2 that any Dodge/Chrysler dealer will hustle you into in the Intrepid/Concorde. As I’ve written before, those single-overhead-cam engines are very good and develop a lot of power, but I prefer the higher-tech 2.7-liter base V6, which has dual-overhead-cams on its 24 valves and also has its excitement obscured by an automatic.
Still, the 300M needs power because it is surprisingly heavy at 3,560 pounds. During my week, I had fun with the AutoStick and I ran the revs up, particularly in second gear, often. Despite that, I averaged 21.5 miles per gallon in combined city-freeway driving. The EPA estimates are 18 city and 26 strictly highway.
The heft may aid the feeling of stability in the 300M, but this front-wheel-drive machine has plenty of stability and might benefit in agility as well as fuel economy if it were leaner and lighter.
Otherwise, performance is aided by the optional handling group that includes performance steering, suspension, oversized tires on bright chromed spoke wheels, and 4-wheel antilock disc brakes.
LOOK AND FEEL
The power and handling are all-important in such a sedan, but the look and feel of those attributes are almost as vital as the facts themselves. The 300M looks and feels the part very well.
When you settle into the driver’s seat, you are impressed with the quality of the leather bucket, and its 8-way power adjustable controls. A glance at the instruments displays more class. They are white-backed with bold, black numerals, stark in their roundness, but with a neat chrome ring encircling each one. It is not a gaudy silver outline, but a tastefully subtle rim on what Chrysler calls its electroluminescent gauges, which is a fancy way of saying that at night the lightness of the gauge darkens and light comes through the numerals to illuminate the instrument.
It is very stylish and classy, and the small, round clock at the top of the center dash is also encircled by a thin silver ring. That is reminiscent of the costly Infiniti Q45’s trademark, but whether that served as a guide or not, the little clock exudes class, as well as the time of day.
There are some things that I’m a purist about when it comes to cars. One is that I don’t want a fake convertible top on my car, because convertibles mostly only look good with the top down, so it would make more sense to saw off the roof and leave it a convertible all the time than to put vinyl on the nice smooth roof in hopes that somebody might mistake your 4-door sedan for an ugly convertible with the top up. The other is wood trim inside a car. I love fine woodgrain, just as I love real leather, so if you want to lavish me with leather and wood trim on the console, dash and doors, go ahead. But don’t put artificial seat covers and pretend they’re leather, and don’t put any fake wood stuff in there and expect me to be impressed. The 300M has great leather, but it has a lot of fake wood made even more plastic-looking by being extremely glossy.
On the flip side, somebody at Chrysler has done plenty of homework on ergonomics, that science of having controls and switches be where you instinctively reach. On the directional-signal stalk, little contours are carved into the knob which just happens to fit your fingertip perfectly. Often when you change lanes or exit a freeway, you just want to blink the signal two or three times, and it is a neat feeling when your finger is encouraged to push the switch in the right direction by fitting that contour perfectly.
Same with the hand-grip that you reach for to close the door once inside. That seems like no big deal. There’s a little handle, and you reach your four fingertips into it and pull. But you’ll notice on the 300M, tiny little contours are molded into the inside edge of the hand-grip, and your four fingertips fit into them just right. Neat.
The climate control and audio system also have gotten extra notice and work very well. The standard audio system is pretty potent, with AM-FM-cassette and CD, and nine speakers. The upgraded optional system has the same thing, but it has a four-CD holder in the dash, and the amplifier is improved to a b ooming 360 watts, feeding through 11 speakers in nine locations.
One of the most annoying things in modern society are the weirdos with costly, bass-booming stereo systems who insist on cruising with the system on so loud that the ground trembles for 50 feet in all directions. I mean, I love good music, and loud good music, but I would find it unspeakably rude to blast music I enjoy at bystanders who are angered to the point of rage. This 300M system could be used to confront such boors, or at least you could turn it up loudly enough so that their intrusive sound doesn’t intrude.
Come to think of it, the perfect rule for such loud audio zealots is that they can turn their systems up as high as they want — but they must keep their windows closed tight or be subject to a disturbing the peace ticket. Those types who want to blast their music to everyone would blow their own brains out if they had to do it with their windows closed.
Ah, but back to the 300M’s style. It appears that the shortening done to the 300M to differentiate it from the Intrepid and Concorde must have mostly been done on the front, because the rear seat has a lot of room, even with the front seat all the way back, and rear headroom is good and legroom is fine, and of course goes well beyond “fine” if the front seat is farther forward. The trunk, too, is very large. Meanwhile, visibility to the front is exceptional, because that nose slopes steeply away.
That helps the driver and front passenger see. But everyone can see that the 300M is a large-scale hit for Chrysler, for DaimlerChrysler, and mainly for customers seeking a true, U.S. sports sedan.
Vacation trips shortened by Venture, Town & Country videos
Every family that has ever taken a summer vacation trip knows the feeling. The parents are weary and irritable, the kids are bored and irritating, which is the perfect blend for vacation trips that can be memorable for the wrong reasons — unless, of course, you can sell the rights to Hollywood for a new Chevy Chase movie.
The perfect alternative to the Family Truckster of Chevy Chase’s original Vacation movie is the minivan. Chevy could even find a Chevy nowadays — the Venture Warner Bros. Edition — to relieve his hilarious stress. Or, he could spend the extra money for a Chrysler Town & Country, where his kids also could sit back, relax, and watch such a movie during the trip.
Yes, the time has come when the parents might have to be begging the kids to look away from the video screen to see the scenery. Get through the headphones to the rear of the minivan, or they might miss Mount Rushmore, or the buffalo roaming, or the Grand Canyon, or the ocean — pick one. But having the availability of watching videos or playing video games is about the best way to eliminate family-trip stress that I’ve ever imagined.
With all the publicity and hype about sport-utility vehicles and pickup trucks — which are unquestionably popular all over the country and especially Up North — I was surprised to learn that in Minnesota, we still rank even higher in minivans. That shouldn’t be a surprise, however, because minivans continue to be about the most logical way to haul a family, anywhere. In recent years, one of the more humorous explanations for the trend in automotive buying was to hear SUV buyers say they didn’t want to buy a minivan because it was too trendy. Apparently overlooked in that explanation was that buying an SUV is the trendiest thing to ever happen in the car biz.
When it comes to minivans, there are well over a dozen to choose from these days. Chrysler Corporation wrote the book, 16 years ago, and has dominated the segment, selling over 8 million Caravans, Voyagers and, more recently, Town & Country vans. Over the years, other challengers have come and some have persisted. It’s to the point now where virtually every minivan has some impressive assets. The mini-video screen deal in the minivans is something special, however.
So, with vacation-trip-time bearing down on us in midsummer, let’s look at a couple minivans with some strikingly similar assets — the Chevrolet Venture and the Chrysler Town & Country.
VENTURE IN A VENTURE
General Motors in general and Chevrolet in particular tried several methods to take on Chrysler’s dominance when the minivan urge first hit. They shortened a full-sized van into a tall, ill-balanced vehicle, then they came out with the Dustbuster-shaped plastic versions, before finally throwing it all away and coming out with what is virtually a copy of the Chrysler template. The Chevy Venture van has been successful in this newest form, and the 2000 Venture adds features to make it a viable competitor.
Powered by a 3.4-liter pushrod V6, the Venture has 185 horsepower at 5,200 RPMs and 210 foot-pounds of torque at 4,000 revs, although the RPMs matter less with the 4-speed automatic transmission. The Venture, in fact, doesn’t even have a tachometer adjoining the huge fuel and temperature gauges. It has a lot of low-end pulling power, and a towing capacity of 3,500 pounds with the optional package — which the test vehicle didn’t have, incidentally.
With a base price of $28,995, the Warner Brothers version comes quite loaded to begin with, and a firmer, touring suspension and traction control push the sticker to $30,305.
The prominent feature of the Warner Brothers edition is the little Bugs Bunny logo on the outside, and the flip-down video screen on the ceiling, just behind the front seat backrests. You wouldn’t want to be watching Daffy Duck while waiting for a traffic light, or while freeway-cruising across Nebraska, if you’re driving. But if you’re in one of the three seats in the middle row, or in the two rear-most seats, Daffy Duck is a definite upgrade over the fourth hour of cornfields outside the tinted-glass windows.
In the Venture, you flip down the screen, and you have a low-mounted video player at the base of the center dash area — perfect to retain parent-control over what the kids get to see.
As usual, GM has done an excellent job with interior appointments. The seats are edged in grey leather, with cloth inserts for the seating surfaces. The AM-FM-CD-cassette audio system is mounted on the center dash, and controlled by big, round knobs for power/volume and tune/display. The air/heat controls are located on that same center-dash panel, and also are simple to control with three large, round, ribbed knobs. A smaller panel below that controls the rear auxiliary air/heat controls.
There is a net between the front buckets, which is another neat touch, and a place where all sorts of stuff can be tossed and contained without rolling free under the seats. There are various other small cubicles for stowing other stuff, and a small flat platform with a knobby rubber mat on top of the dash.
Chevy has done its homework on the cupholder issue, too, which can’t be overlooked in such a people-hauler. You can fold and switch seats to form various configurations, and when all of them are upright, you can seat seven — with six cupholders in handy reach. Fold down the center seats, and you find more cupholders carved into the now-flat backrests. Same with the rear double seat. So with all the seats up, seven occupants have six cupholders, but with all the seats folded down, you are up to 13 cupholders (by my count), but, of course, you could only house two occupants that way.
The front-wheel-drive Venture has good power, good pulling strength, comfortable accommodations, and the added feature of two full side sliding doors for easy access for rearward occupants on either side. An integral child seat inside, aluminum wheels outside, and keyless entry when going from outside to inside add to the attractiveness, although I would prefer 4-wheel disc brakes to the disc/drum set-up. Also, while the Venture is the Warner Bros. Edition, you have to supply your own Daffy Duck video.
TOWN & COUNTRY
Chrysler had such a huge hit with the Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager that it gave itself a little gift in adding the luxury Town & Country under the Chrysler nameplate. Now, with Plymouth being phased out, the Voyager also will become a Chrysler, which will give Chrysler a basic minivan and a luxury minivan on the same showfloor.
We’re dealing with the most-upscale version possible here, the Town & Country Limited AWD, just to see how far Chrysler has come in its ongoing attempt to fend off challengers to stay in firm command of the minivan market segment. With SUVs and pickup trucks now priced well over the $30,000 mark, it was logical that you could build minivans worth that sort of stratospheric price structure. The “base” Town & Country comes so loaded that it is priced at $36,805; the test version adds a trailer-towing package with heavy duty radiator, transmission oil-cooler and special wiring harness, plus 7-passenger quad seating, and was $36,695.
The test T&C came with full-time all-wheel drive, which obviously is an upgrade beyond the standard front-wheel-drive, and while it enhances the overall feel of handling and cornering, it is never intrusive the way the more brutish 4WD trucks or SUVs can feel. Adding the all-wheel-drive version closes the gap between minivans and SUVs even further, and it should provide a big benefit in towing capability.
The Town & Country is powered by a 3.8-liter V6, a pushrod truck engine that runs smoothly through the AWD unit and 4-speed automatic transmission. For overhead-camshaft zealots, the 3.5-liter V6 will be coming out in the 2001 redesign. As it is, the 3.8 has 180 horsepower at 5,000 RPMs and 240 foot-pounds of torque at 4,000. That’s slightly less horsepower and quite a lot more torque than the Venture, and the all-wheel-drive gets that power down securely.
With the Chrysler, you don’t get a little Bugs Bunny icon glued to the outside, but you do get a similarly impressive flip-down video screen, with the video player mounted vertically in the console between the front buckets. And you also get some of the softest, most luxurious leather on all the seats that you’re likely to encounter in any vehicle. Like the Venture, the Town & Country was silver on the outside. The supple leather of the seats almost makes you forgive Chrysler for the high-gloss fake woodgrain on the center dash.
White-backed instruments add a classy and sporty touch, with the light-emitting feature making the effect of reversing to light-on-dark at night.
The rear seating configuration is different from the Venture, with two buckets in the middle row and three in the rearmost bench. You can move the seats around, of course, and, as with the Venture, you could fold down the middle seats and use them as tables and sit in the rear to watch your videos or play video games. I didn’t have Chevy Chase’s Vacation, but I did have some old video tapes I made 17 years ago of Canadian SCTV broadcasts, back when John Candy was not only alive, but young, barely known, and outrageously funny. A few dozen of those shows would be the perfect way to shorten a long trip, although I’d probably be pulling into wayside rests so I could move back from the driver’s seat to watch.
Bright chromed spoke alloy wheels add a further classy touch, and inside them there are 4-wheel disc brakes with antilock, and the foglights were a welcome addition to the powerful but weirdly-aimed headlights.
For the extra money, along with AWD and the fancy interior, the Town & Country has a load-leveling height control, power quarter-vent windows, 8-way power driver seat (the Venture was 6-way), heated front buckets, steering-wheel audio controls for the 10-speaker, 200-watt system, keyless entry, heated outside mirrors, front and rear air/heat controls, and power outlets in both front and rear.
Like the Venture, the Town & Country has two full-sliding side doors for easy access. And I was also able to try out the removable rear seat. Open the rear hatch, flip the switches and you can rock the rear bench up on rollers. It’s easy to roll the whole thing back through the rear door. It is somewhat less easy for one person to lift and carry the removed bench seat for stowage in the garage. But that opened a huge rear storage area, and we stashed two full-sized bicycles in there, isolating them from touching the ceiling or either wall with elastic cords fastened to the upper hand grips. Putting bikes on an exterior carrying rack is simple, although the bikes are still vulnerable. Parking them inside was easier and more secure, and the highly-tinted one-way glass prevented even sidewalk passers-by, 2 feet away, from even seeing them.
Of course, with room for bicycles and luggage back there, it opens up more possibilities for more trips. But it also reduces the number of potential video viewers.
(CUTLINES:
1/ Selling 8 million minivans in 16 years of domination allows Chrysler to evolve upscale to the 2000 Town & Country Limited.
2/ Even two-decade-old SCTV videotapes spring to life on the Town & Country’s video screen.
3/ Removing the rear seat leaves room for four and a stable of bicycles inside the Town & Country.
4/ The 2000 Chevrolet Venture has taken more direct styling aim in going after the dominant Chrysler minivan market.
5/ Fold-down seats, dual-sliding doors and other amenities make the Venture competitive in the minivan market.
6/ The Warner Bros. Edition has a fold-down screen for videos and video games that can be a long-trip asset.
SUV varieties run from $15,000-$71,000 stirring political debate
The SUV market continues to be the most controversial, and baffling, automotive segment in anyone’s memory. Year by year, and virtually month by month, more companies make more SUVs, and we’ve now reached the point where there are virtually several SUVs for every need and price range.
Looking at a broad cross-section of the segment, you can find every imaginable configuration. Consider, for example, the $15,000 Jeep Wrangler, or the $20,000 Honda CR-V, if you’re on a budget. Slide upscale to the $40,000 Chevrolet Suburban, or slide even higher — off the scale, you might say — to the $71,000 Land Rover Range Rover. Those four vehicles are all SUVs, yet have distinctly different markets in mind. They all have definite assets and definite liabilities, depending on which critic is analyzing them. Because of that, they all have a hand in the ongoing debate about SUVs.
Nationally, there are two segments in the debate: the SUV lovers, which includes upscale SUV buyers and manufacturers who insist big and costly SUVs are what the public wants; and the SUV haters, which includes most car-drivers and virtually all environmentalists, who challenge the pollution and lack of economy of anything from midsize SUVs and upward.
Regionally, the Up North buyers represent another part of the SUV debate, because so many folks in the area actually need larger truck-like vehicles for towing and/or hauling, for tending farms or ranches, and for frequent travel to and from cabins up in the woods.
Politically, it even seems as though the SUV battle has taken on a larger-than-life presence. Conservatives vehemently arguing for SUVs and accusing the anti-SUV types as whiney liberals who are trying to force the masses into their niche of environmentally more responsible vehicles with better fuel economy. Liberals counter that the conservatives are striving to support the wealthy manufacturers and the wealthier types who want the freedom to buy expensive, low-mileage, high-polluting SUVs with which to better trample the more responsible masses.
My stance always has been that consumers should buy a vehicle that meets their needs, but that anything bigger than “big enough” is too big, and probably wasteful. The largest SUVs are probably too big for almost everybody, but if your family is large enough or has a legitimate need for a gigantic Chevrolet Suburban or an even larger Ford Excursion, go for it. Those used to be the paramaters by which people bought such large trucks.
But the family who simply wants an SUV to use in the role of station wagon or minivan doesn’t need the heft and off-road capabilities of the costliest SUVs, and can now choose from smaller, lighter and more car-like SUVs with more moderate sticker prices.
I’ve been accused of being anti-SUV because I’ve suggested that some buyers simply want to buy the biggest SUVs because of an illusion of safety and security, and for the status of going one-up on the neighbors. Actually, I like SUVs from a test-drive standpoint. They’re often useful, almost always comfortable, even if they lack the good manners of being fuel-efficient.
My biggest criticism of SUVs is that they have gotten favorable treatment from the government. This was to be the year that SUVs and light trucks would be forced to live up to the basic standards of cars. When the government came up with the corporate average fuel economy standards (CAFE) for cars, the aim was for 27.5 miles per gallon as a corporate average. Trucks, however, were viewed as being necessary as work vehicles, so they could meet only a 20.7 mpg level.
In case the government hasn’t noticed, trucks represent 50 percent of all vehicle sales in the U.S., and most of the SUVs and pickups are bought as personal family vehicles, no longer for work. So, logically, those trucks — many of which use identical engines as that company’s cars — should have to meet the higher CAFE standard. This was to be the year the law would be adapted to cover that, but the government voted it down.
There was speculation last week that the reason it was voted down was because so many legislators now own SUVs. Realistically, though, the legislators have caved in to the urging of manufacturers, via intense lobbyists, who insist that tightening the standards would force manufacturers to quit making the big SUVs that the public is demanding.
That, of course, is a joke. Reports are that General Motors and Ford make from $15,000 to $20,000 on every SUV costing from the mid-$30,000 range and above. While raking in such stunning profits, a manufacturer can make two engines — one cheaper to put in a truck and get lousy mileage with higher pollution, and the other with some more costly refinements to be put in cars. So tighter standards would simply mean manufacturers would have to carve only slightly into the ludicrous profits made on the biggest SUVs.
So I can like something about every SUV, but I still don’t have to like the politics of coersion. I’d like the SUVs even more if they got 20-25 miles per gallon, instead of 11-14. Wouldn’t you? Can you think of a single SUV owner who actually prefers to get 11 miles per gallon rather than 20-plus?
JEEP WRANGLER SAHARA
There are working SUVs and family SUVs, and then there are all-out fun SUVs. The Jeep Wrangler began life 60 years ago as a military vehicle, and has evolved, amid all the proliferation of SUVs, to remain a bouncy, off-road-loving vehicle that is pretty inefficient for any real family purpose, if such mundane things as trunk space matter. But those once-military elements of sturdy usefulness in hauling the colonel out to the command post now equate very well to active civilian lifestyles that thrust some folks into the wild, off-road, yonder.
The test vehicle I had was the upscale Sahara, which proves that even a Jeep that starts with a base price of $15,000 can be boosted to a Sahara base price of $20,545. That gets you the Sahara trim features and the 4.0-liter in-line 6-cylinder engine. Adding optional tires and wheels, antilock brakes, a quite-primitive 3-speed automatic transmission, air-conditioning, cruise control, a traction-locking differential, and a theft-deterrent system, boosts the sticker price to $24,320.
Open the doors and you’ll note that there’s a little strap holding the door from opening too far, keeping it simple. And when you enter on the passenger side, you can flip the bucket seat to allow access to the rear seats, but you can’t do the same on the driver’s side. Fuel economy is EPA estimated at 15 city, 18 highway.
The Sahara Edition also has foglights, a rollbar and all sorts of velcro and zipper fastenings for the plastic windows and the foldable soft top. It also is one of the most complex soft tops to put down, particularly in this era of simple sporty car convertible tops. The automatic transmission lets the big six pull the Wrangler with a lot of force, and there is a separate lever for 2- or 4-wheel-drive or low-range 4WD.
But to own one as your only vehicle, you’d have to be childless, preferably single, and spending a lot of your time churning through woods and roadless areas. Otherwise, you’d have to be able to afford the Wrangler as a second, or third, vehicle — mostly for fun.
HONDA CR-V
While virtually every other manufacturer was jumping onto the SUV bandwagon, for obviously beneficial economic reasons, Honda was late, perhaps joining a lot of analysts in being skeptical that the movement would go so far. Honda even contracted with Isuzu to get the Passport SUV, as a version of the Isuzu Rodeo. When Honda did come out with its own SUV, it was predictably user-friendly and fuel-efficient. The CR-V is not a heavy-duty off-road vehicle, although it can handle the unmaintained trail into the lake cabin, or most any light-duty off-road stuff.
Since SUVs are kept on the road in more than 95 percent of their applications, the CR-V is the perfect answer to a bigger and more useful station wagon. Its 2-liter, 4-cylinder engine can easily achieve its EPA ratings of 22 city, 25 highway (I got 24.2 in combined city/freeway use), but it also performs with quick response, thanks to a dual-overhead-camshaft design and the basic 5-speed manual transmission. It is close to perfect, for everyday use, because you can drive it moderately and perhaps get the notion it’s adequate but not too quick, and then you can stomp on it and get the revs up and singing, and realize it is surprisingly swift and sporty to drive.
The CR-V does not have a low-range lock for the transmission, which separates the hard-duty off-roaders. But it does have something called RealTime AWD, which is an all-wheel-drive system that is front-wheel-drive all the time, with up to half the torque automatically transferring to the rear when wheelspin is anticipated. The seat backrests are quite firm, but very supportive and comfortable. The interior is loaded with neat creature features, notably all sorts of trays, cubicles and slots for stowing papers and small items. A fold-up tray profides a surface with cupholders between the front buckets, otherwise it folds down securely and allows you a walkway between the seats. A platform on the rear floor conceals stowed items, and can be lifted out and its legs folded down, to turn into a picnic table.
The test vehicle was the top-of-the-line EX model, which is why its sticker came to $21,064 — thanks to dealer installed floor mats. Otherwise the sticker of $20,550 includes everything, from double-wishbone suspension with stabilizer bars, 4-wheel antilock brakes — although with disc front and mere drums in the rear, front and rear safety crumple zones and side impact door beams, keyless entry, air conditioning with micron air filter, AM-FM-cassette-CD audio system, power windows and locks, alloy wheels and all-season tires.
CHEVY SUBURBAN
The Suburban created the large-SUV niche, and had it all to itself until Ford brought out the Excursion. In fact, so dominant and so profitable was the Suburban that GM brought out a shortened version, the Tahoe. Now, when you drive the Tahoe, you have so much room that it’s hard to imagine something this much larger. The Suburban is huge, housing van-like quantities of cargo, and with three rows of seats.
For such a large vehicle, the Suburban is loaded with features to make it easy to live with, either as driver or passenger. It is so loaded, in fact, that it runs from a base price of $28,627 up to the actual $42,480. Full instrumentation, and the “smaller” 5.3-liter V8 engine with 4-speed automatic transmission, plus an evolving suspension that makes this Suburban handle better than its top-heavy predecessors, and 4-wheel disc brakes, all are assets. The lengthy option list includes a nine-speaker audio system with a subwoofer, keyless entry, front and rear heat and air conditioning, leather seats and trim, power windows, aluminum wheels, foglights, premium suspension, trailer package, bucket seats in the second row as well as up front, and a locking rear axle.
The smaller engine has an EPA estimate of 14 city and 16 highway, although owners have reported that those figures are optimistic. Because the Suburban is so large, stepping on the gas pedal produces a pause and then a lurch when you try to stay in rhythm with congested traffic. A curious ergonomic feature has a very handy grip handle for pulling the door shut, and a nicely angled handle for unlatching the door, but the unlatching handle is under the grip handle, and even after a week I still was groping several times before finding my way out. Similarly, there is the handy touch of three auxilliary power outlets behind a little door at the bottom of the center dash panel. But the door is hinged to open upward, meaning a driver or passenger can’t actually see the outlets unless you bend down so your head reaches the center console.
Eight cupholders, excellent controls with round, rotating knobs for air/heat and audio, and the plush seats make it comfortable, and the standard OnStar system should prevent you from getting lost, help you get found if you do get lost, or find out where the nearest fuel station, motel or restaurant might be up ahead. A push-button panel lets you switch from automatic 4-wheel-drive, to 2-wheel high, to 4-wheel high, to 4-wheel low. That would allow the Suburban to go off-road, and its high clearance should help such ventures. But it is huge, so maneuverability and agility would be challenged if the off-roading got too serious.
RANGE ROVER
Land Rover is a proud English company that was recently sold to BMW, and then sold again, but it remains a proud British producer of classic off-road vehicles. The larger, mainstream SUV from Land Rover is the Range Rover, and while I also had the opportunity to test the more compact Discovery model, the big Range Rover is an impressive vehicle.
It should be, of course, with a sticker price of $70,920. But, for those who have all sorts of what they call disposable income (“they” in this case refers to someone who can even comprehend having “disposable” income), the Range Rover is overbuilt to be an over-achiever in virtually any circumstance. To put it bluntly, if you had to drive to the North Pole without using any roads, the Range Rover would probably be your choice. These are the vehicles that we used to see in the wilds of Africa, or South America, or wherever it was too wild for any normal vehicle to travel.
The test vehicle has no options. Everything is standard. That includes a 4.6-liter aluminum V8, Bosch Motronic engine management system, electronic 4-speed automatic with normal, sport and manual shift modes and two-speed transfer case; alloy wheels with 18-inch mud and snow tires; electronic five-height position air suspension with articulating rear suspension; four-channel all-terrain antilock brakes; climate control with dual settings and micro pollen filtration; trip computer and message center; delayed power for windows and sunroof after ignition shutoff; key-activated system for closing all windows; 300-watt, 12-speaker audio with amplified subwoofer and 6-CD changer, plus speed-sensing volume, will assure you of hearing tones you never heard before.
Underneath, there is amazing ground clearance, and the girder-like chassis beams and amazingly long suspension travel means you could go over the rockiest, most uneven terrain and stay pretty level. The front and rear airbags, 4-wheel disc brakes, full-length side impact beams, foglights, antisubmarining seat frames, and driver-alert defrost and ice warnings and weather-band audio system pretty well cover the possibilities.
Although it’s large, you get the feeling that it has full control of its heft. The center console has a neat flipover lid that has four cupholders, and the leather seats are supremely comfortable. Outside, a push-button allows the upper hatch to fold up, and a second push on the same button causes the lower hatch to fold down. While powerful, the fuel-efficiency is not great, with EPA estimates of 12 city and 15 highway.
At $71,000, is the Range Rover worth it? Can any vehicle be worth it? Only if you can afford it. And then it becomes the ultimate one-upmanship SUV. Especially if you have a cabin on the northern side of Hudson Bay.
[[[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ The Jeep Wrangler is a modern version of the military runabout of a half-century ago, and it’s aimed more at fun in current form.
2/ Honda has packaged a lot of useful features into the CR-V, an inexpensive and fuel-efficient SUV aimed at real-world utility.
3/ The 2000 Chevrolet Suburban is a refined and profitable version of the beast that started and dominates the large-SUV segment.
4/ Range Rovers are extremely expensive ($71,000) as the ultimate one-upmanship SUV, capable of conquering roadless trips.
Cell-phones are just one way of being driven to distraction
Driving along on the freeway with the cruise-control set at 70, you pull out into the left lane to pass a couple of cars that are going just under the speed limit, but once you’re out there, you see a menacing vehicle growing larger, quickly, in the rear-view mirror.
It is a brand new Isuzu Rodeo, a very nice SUV. This one, however, is not nice. Not the way it approaches, closer and closer, until it is right up on your rear bumper. Now, you’re on cruise, and you don’t particularly want to get off it, so you keep going, edging past the vehicle you were passing, and swinging promptly back into the right lane. Zoom! The Rodeo speeds up past you, and as it passes, you see it is being driven by a young woman who is talking on her cell-phone.
Almost immediately, the Rodeo slows down. Still on cruise, you are now closing in on another car in the right lane that is going just under the speed limit. So you pull back into the left lane to pass, and the Rodeo now pulls into the right lane, now having slowed to just under the speed limit. You can see through the rear window that the young woman driving the Rodeo is no longer on her cell phone, but something appears wrong. Her head is bouncing up and down and bobbing side to side. So now you edge past, and you glance at the driver — she is going crazy, singing along with her audio system, her head keeping time to the music.
This Rodeo driver was exhibiting the latest trend in driving problems — distraction.
We are told that a vast majority of serious highway accidents are because the driver is distracted. Most critics claim that cell-phones are the major problem, and that drivers shouldn’t be allowed to drive and talk on the cell-phone at the same time.
In many cases, those critics are right. For a lot of drivers, talking on a cell-phone is a major distraction. But our friendly local Rodeo driver proved a couple of things in a short minute or so: Cell-phones are a distraction, but only one in an ever-increasing scope of distractions. Loud audio systems are another, to say nothing of the CD or tape players that feed those audio systems. The music alone can drive a person to, as they say, distraction. But just think about driving alone and trying to reload a CD into the player. Then there are smokers, who may end up paying more attention to their cigarette, or lighting it, or sweeping the just-fallen ashes from between their legs, and wind up having their cars swerve just as their attention veers off course.
Then, of course, there is the worst distraction of all — those who have a few drinks and then drive. Remember, that the legal limit of alcohol in the blood is just a number, but everyone who drinks anything intoxicating diminishes their ability to focus properly on the task of driving to some extent. It may not be as bad as one who is “legally” under the influence, but any degree of impairment is serious, when the control of a two-ton vehicle is at stake.
In the tragic highway death of Minnesota Timberwolves player Malik Sealy a few months ago, there is no question that the driver of the other vehicle, who came down the wrong ramp — entering an exit and going the wrong direction on Hwy. 100 in the Twin Cities — is reponsible for the accident that took Sealy’s life. In the aftermath, we were told that Sealy had only had a couple glasses of champagne, several hours before the 4:30 a.m. accident. But in later tests, while the driver of the other vehicle had a blood-alcohol reading of .19, almost twice the legal limit of .10, Sealy was exonerated by having a blood-alcohol reading of .08 — under the .10 limit.
However, a lot of other states have .08 as their limit, and the Minnesota legislature, quite quietly, adopted a .08 limit since then, which means Sealy may not have been legally intoxicated at the time of the accident, but he was close then, and would be considered intoxicated under the .08 rule. The point is that either way, his judgment might have been impaired just a tiny amount, and we’ll never know whether having no alcohol in his blood might have allowed him an instantaneous reaction that could have let him avert or survive the tragedy.
CELL-PHONE PROBLEM
One of the best bits of advice while driving is to not only be aware of your vehicle and what it’s doing and how you’re controlling it, but to also try to be aware of every single vehicle in your scope of vision, ahead and behind you and approaching from every angle. Then anticipate that all of them might make a move that threatens your vehicle, just to be prepared for the worst, with the thought of surviving such a problem.
While being aware of other vehicles, you will notice a lot of cars being driven erratically, and often, these days, you will find they are driven by people who are using cell phones. What is easiest to notice is that those drivers don’t signal their turns, because they have to keep one hand on the steering wheel, and the other hand is clutching the cell phone.
I must confess, I engage in a variety of alternative things that might be considered “distractions” while I drive:
I fiddle with audio systems, changing discs and groping through the cases to find the ones I want to play next.
I often will eat a sandwich while on the freeway, and, whether engaging a sandwich or not, I will be drinking a tall cup of coffee in a thermal mug, or drinking a can of pop, and putting it in or taking it out of whatever receptacle is in whatever car is a distraction.
I play music, or listen to the radio, and sometimes I play it loud, if it sounds inspiring to turn it up.
But I have practiced the self-discipline to do more than one thing at a time, and to stay focused on driving all the while.
It all goes back to several emergency driving courses I’ve taken, and to a couple of extensive sessions driving on German autobahns, during which I truly learned the meaning of focusing on driving. When you’re whistling along at 135 miles per hour or so, you are not interested in cell-phone talking, or sandwich eating, or coffee drinking, or even the audio CDs.
But in normal driving, even on the two-hour freeway trips from Duluth to the Twin Cities or back, driving must be your No. 1 priority. Spill your coffee, put your cell-phone friend on hold while you set down the phone, or interrupt your CD-loading task, if any of those distractions are getting in your way of making a normal gear change or signalling a turn.
There are other distractions I’ve witnessed but never committed. I don’t read while I’m driving, but I’ve seen numerous other motorists actually reading on the freeway — setting a book or notebook on the steering column , and reading from it with only occasional glances up at the road ahead. I’ve also seen folks write things in notebooks while driving, balancing the notebook on the steering wheel while writing, and only occasionally looking up at the roadway.
But when the question turns to serious distractions, the main point is that it is possible to keep your attention focused on the responsibilities of driving, even while the cell phone rings. You answer, preferably by plugging in a headphone, but your gaze doesn’t leave the road, and controlling your vehicle remains your biggest priority. If you’re talking, and you need to make a left turn, simply telling the person on the other end of the phone call to “Hang on, I’ve got to signal for a left turn,” will earn you points — both from your caller and from the drivers on all sides of your vehicle.
Listen to loud music, but make sure that you don’t get too crazy, bobbing your head to follow the rhythm or singing along with the words, to carry out the requirements of safe — and focused — driving.
Drink your coffee, and eat your sandwich, but don’t let it become your main focus. Your vehicle is what counts, and your control over it.
[[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ Using a cell-phone while driving, even with an earphone, can be a dangerous distraction while driving, unless the driver can maintain focused priority on driving.
2/ Drinking coffee or pop is another of many potential distractions.
3/ Music can make a trip seem shorter and more pleasant, but don’t let the beat, or changing the CD, take over your concentration.
Identity crisis can’t obscure value of Acura 3.2CL-S, 3.5RL
Auto-makers design cars to have a lifespan, something around five years before redesigning for technical or styling updates. Traditionally, buyers were reluctant to buy a model in its first year of existence, preferring to wait until the “bugs” were worked out, but with the current technique of computer designing, the trend has changed. Nowadays, it often makes sense to buy a first-year model because it comes out near-perfect and its technical innovations might pay off in resale five years down the road, and customers might be reluctant to buy the last year of a model’s run for fear of missing out on some new technology.
With Honda, however, it seems that there are advantages to choosing either the first-year or last-year in a particular model run, because it generally turns out advanced engineering tricks that work at introduction time, and they, plus continued upgrades, tend to make those same vehicles maintain their value well throughout their lifespan.
Honda went upscale in the mid-1980s, bringing out its Acura companion line, featuring the luxury Legend and the entry-level Integra, and later a shorter-lived and less-popular midsize vehicle called the Vigor. Later, the NSX sports car gave Acura an exotic, Porsche-type performance vehicle.
Things got puzzling in 1995, when Honda decided arbitrarily to go to “alphanumeric” model designations rather than to weird names. The replacement for the Legend became the “RL,” while the middle-class luxury sedan became the “TL,” and then Acura made a coupe called the “CL.” Meanwhile, Acura loads those cars with V6 engines, using either a 3.2- or 3.5-liter displacement, with the 3.5 in the larger RL and the 3.2 in both the TL and CL.
Got that?
If you do, you’re one-up on most of us. Stately German vehicles from Mercedes and BMW always have used valid numbers to designate their vehicles, but in recent years, the proliferation of cars, trucks, vans, SUVs worldwide has led to some great confusion. No matter how much I study cars, when somebody asks, “What do you think of the new RL?” I’ve got to stop and recalibrate my brain to first decide that RL means Acura, and, let’s see, is it the big one, the middle one or the coupe?
To try to set the record straight, I’ve recently had the opportunity to drive the all-new 2001 Acura 3.2CL-Type S coupe. That adds yet another wrinkle to the confusion, because the CL tells us it’s the coupe, and the 3.2 is the engine size, but the Type S is a special high-output, sporty performance model.
Having written several months ago about the 2000 model 3.2 TL sedan, which was completely revised in 1999, I also had the chance to thoroughly test the 2000 model year 3.5 RL. The 3.5 RL is completing the last year of its current lifespan, and it proves that an outgoing model can be a worthy choice for long-term companionship.
Ah, but the CL coupe — particularly in racy Type-S trim — gives the upscale end of the Acura line a worthy compatriot for the sportiest Integra boy-racers and the exotic NSX. The Acuras further blur the line between domestic and import cars. They are 75 percent domestic (North American) content, and are assembled at Honda’s Marysville, Ohio, plant, which, in some views, makes it more domestic than a lot of U.S. vehicles now being built in Canada or Mexico.
3.2CL-S COUPE
The 3.2TL mid-range sedan has been an enormously satisfying car for Acura in the past year since its reintroduction, and, in fact, it infringes on the larger RL territory because of the high output of its smaller V6. The CL is a coupe version of the midrange sedan, and Acura has connected again, with a neatly styled but understated vehicle that has moderately good performance.
And then comes the Type-S, which vaults Acura’s slightly larger front-wheel-drive coupe up, up and away. The 3.2 V6 comes standard with 225 horsepower and 215 foot-pounds of torque — very good in the larger TL sedan, and excellent for the smaller coupe — as the replacement for the 3.0-liter engine in the model’s predecessor. But the Type-S shows Honda engineering at its best. Tweaking Honda’s VTEC variable-valve timing system toward high-performance, the Type-S vaults up to 260 horsepower at 6,100 RPMs, with 232 foot-pounds of torque at a flattened peak from 3,500 up to 5,500 RPMs.
Extracting 260 horsepower out of 3.2 liters shows what technology can do, and Honda does it with a single overhead-camshaft on each bank of the V6. That means there still is something in reserve, in case Honda wants to advance to even more power by going to dual overhead cams. Altered pistons, higher capacity exhaust flow, and the CL-S has a dual-stage induction system, which is timed to open a second intake surge when the revs hit 3,800.
As usual, the technology that develops a lot of power from a comparatively small-displacement engine also achieves good efficiency throughout. Even the high-output Type-S engine qualifies as both a low-emission and ultra-low-emission standards, and its EPA fuel estimates are 19 city and 29 highway.
To differentiate the CL-S from the standard CL, and further lift it above the TL sedan, the car has silvery-white faced instruments on the inside, and a revised and stiffer springs on the double-wishbone suspension with low-profile tires on 17-inch alloy wheels underneath. Still, the CL-S maintains its dignity, staying supple instead of harsh and always letting you know that it’s a luxury coupe — albeit a scorching one — rather than a sports car.
When you do want to go hard, and swiftly, you can shift the standard 5-speed automatic lever over to the left, where it rides in an alternative channel for spring-loaded bump upshifts or downshifts. Called Sequential SportShift, it’s a more enjoyable way of commanding the willing engine to zoom up to its 6,300-RPM redline, but you can always switch back to “D” in the normal gate to use the automatic shifter.
The coupe also shares the benefit of Acura’s navigation system, which has a large screen on the upper center dash, and operates by a digital versatile disc (DVD) system that lets you code in your destination and then advises you on the best route to take. The Type-S adds the new Vehicle Stability Assist system to coordinate the throttle and injection systems with the standard antilock brake and traction-control devices. That system began life on the 2000 RL sedan.
According to Honda’s plan for Acura, the 3.2CL-S includes everything as standard equipment — from the four-wheel disc brakes, the high-output engine, the sports suspension, dual-stage driver and passenger airbags, keyless entry, navigation system, to the power leather seats that are heated, in-dash 6-disc player, power moonroof, Xenon high intensity headlights and climate control. The only thing added to the base price of $32,330 is a destination and shipping fee.
3.5RL SEDAN
The company flagship represents the polished end of its current ride, but the 3.5RL has fulfilled its luxury objectives. Critics have a point, that the current model is so understated as to blend in almost anonymously with numerous competitors from Lexus, Mazda, Infiniti and some German and American models.
There is a lot of speculation about what the new RL sedan will be like when it is unveiled in revised form for 2001, but the 2000 model deserves scrutiny from those who want performance and technology packed into their luxury sedan.
I had the opportunity to do a week-long test of a 3.5RL on the same weekend as the Indianapolis 500, so my son, Jeff, and I drove it there and back. We went through Chicago, which is never a pleasant task, but is particularly unpleasant when approached during rush hour just before a holiday weekend. The Bose audio system, dual-mode climate control and the plush leather seats inside the spacious RL made it a pleasure to sit in, even then.
On our return trip, however, we decided to avoid Chicago at all costs, having experienced that weekend-ending traffic in previous years. We checked the maps and decided that the best way was to circle west, through Champaign, Ill., and then curve northward to Rockford before rejoining the freeway system as Illinois turns into Wisconsin.
As an experiment, we also calibrated our Twin Cities destination into the navigation system, and I hit the choice to find the most time-saving direct route. In a flash, the screen suggested we should go west out of Indianapolis, circling north at Champaign to Rockford and on into Wisconsin. It also charted us directly to our home address as the ultimate destination, and a pleasant voice always advised us ahead of time to prepare to turn at the next exit — that sort of thing.
We got a late start home, at about 9 p.m., and wound up driving straight through. It sounds more grueling than it was, because the plush accommodations made it always pleasant.
The 3.5RL has a definite luxury look to it, long and lean, but understated. It, too, has every imaginable thing included, and the price tag of $44,000 lacks only the destination charges. To make that price worthwhile, Honda has spared no effort to put the RL at the upper echelon, with special attention to details such as real Tendo-camphor wood trim, specially bolstered seats, and all sorts of safety touches, with the strongest unit-body structure the company has ever produced, with a honeycomb structure for rigidity at the bottom, and two-sided galvanized steel all around to make it corrosion-proof.
That stability system and the navigation device are impressive. And the Xenon lights, audio system and climate-control are all first-rate, and the roominess of the rear seat and trunk make it an easy long-range traveler.
As for signs that it’s time for Acura to revise the RL, the 3.5-liter V6 has 210 horsepower, which is less than the 3.2 in the TL, and considerably less than the 260 in the CL coupe with the 3.2. The RL has 224 foot-pounds of torque, which is an adequate amount, with the key asset that it peaks at 2,800 RPMs. That is obvious proof that Honda knows what American drivers want, which is strong low-end acceleration, so the torque comes in heavy at low RPMs to help at launch.
The four-speed automatic transmission has a grade-logic computer control for shifting according to driving style, but the RL has the new five-speed. Presumably, we can look for such upgrades from the new model, but that doesn’t mean the 2000 is obsolete.
In fact, with Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Infiniti, and other luxury car-makers building front-engine/rear-drive models for their top-end sedans, the Acura 3.5RL remains front-wheel-drive, which is an obvious asset in Up North winter driving.
[[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ The Acura 3.2CL-S is the 2001 example of Honda technology in a luxury sports coupe.
2/ The smoothly sculpted rear of the CL houses the Type-S dual exhaust tubes, which help it hit 260 horsepower.
3/ White-faced instruments and Honda’s helpful and efficient navigation system set off the coupe’s interior.
4/ Acura’s flagship 3.5RL provides high-tech answers to all the luxury car questions, even as it heads for replacement this fall.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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