Not A Car Guy

  Almost 11 years ago , I embarked on a journey to understand what inspires car enthusiasts to love cars as they do. Back then, the plan was to get a different, highly depreciated, interesting car each year. Well, the annual cadence turned out to be too ambitious. But I did enjoy learning a lot during my time with a Porsche 911 , a classic 1965 Corvette , and a modern Mercedes S Class . As well as returning to my true passion car, the Mazda Miata .  That brings me to car #5 in my automotive journey: a 2025 Lexus LC 500 Coupe.  Why the LC 500? Well, we are in the twilight of the internal combustion era, and this is among the peak final exemplars of the breed. This will almost certainly be the last naturally aspirated V8 engine that ever comes out of Japan. It's a "halo car" for Toyota, made in a special factory to extremely high quality standards, realizing a particularly Japanese take on the "GT car" -- a high performance highway cruiser. Basically, it's a J...

  Thanks to a friend of a friend (thanks, Rich!), I got to take a 2024 Lexus LC500 out for a drive. I've long been enamored by the LC500, which has been largely unchanged since its launch in 2018. It's almost certainly the last naturally aspirated V8 coupe that we will ever see from Japan. Car critics almost universally love this car, even as they admit that it doesn't win on specs against its competitors (see this recent LC500 vs. Porsche 911 comparison from Throttle House). A significant part of that adoration stems from the incredible V8 noises that this car makes when you put the pedal down.    But that's not what impressed me most about this car. Here are my takeaways, more or less in order of importance: That blue! Lexus doesn't have many truly amazing colors, but this blue is certainly one of them. Hovering right between electric blue and indigo, this is one impressive factory paint job. I also quite like the stock wheels. And it's a gorgeous car, even b...

Thanks to a trusting friend, I got to spend four hours behind the wheel of the 2025 Corvette Stingray. The Corvette has been an American automotive icon for nearly 75 years—often regarded as the blue-collar dream machine that many finally afford only after retirement. Now in its eighth generation (aka C8), this Corvette marks the first-ever mid-engined version, though the classic V8 heart remains intact. Car wags agree that this Corvette represents one of the greatest bargains in sports cars today, serving up performance you’d typically pay double for from European badges. That still means that these start in the high $60k range, and the trim package here is really in the mid-$70k range. (Super high-end variants go up into six figures, but it's hard to imagine that you could need any more performance for street driving.) Visually, this might be the only American car that consistently tricks me into mistaking it for a Ferrari or Lamborghini—particularly in blazing orange, which is ...

This represents my 15th time attending the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, but only my third time using it as an excuse for an epic road trip on California's backroads (see also 2019 and 2023 ).  A relatively late, wet Spring meant that California was surprisingly green, but not yet covered in flowers (as it was in 2023). And mercifully, there were far fewer potholes than there were after the epic rains of 2023. I largely stuck to the roads that I'd discovered on my previous Coachella road trips, which faithfully provided ~1200 miles of the kind of driving that my 2018 Miata was meant for.  Day One: SF to Santa Maria I made a few edits to my previous itineraries in this first 300 mile leg of the trip.  I began by making my way from SF to Skyline Drive (35), which I followed past Alice's Restaurant all the way to Highway 17. It had been a few years since I'd driven the single lane goat track that is 35 between Highways 9 and 17. It's a lovely set of twisties that...

Well, it seems like every few years, my old Porsche 911 Turbo, the one that started my whole "interesting depreciated cars" adventure, gets resold on the car auction site, Bring a Trailer (BaT). And here we are again . When I sold it there back in 2016, it was the first 911 Turbo from the 996-era (2001-05) Turbo that had ever been listed for sale on Bring A Trailer (at least, that's what they told me at the time, tho it looks like a red one may have beat mine by a couple weeks). Since then, there have been lots and lots  sold on BaT.  I bought this car in 2014 for $38k with 50k miles on it, sold it in 2016 on BaT for $45k, and then watched it be sold again in 2020 for $42.5k, and then for $64k in 2022 .  But it seems like the appreciation bubble may have burst. Today, in 2024, after 9 owners and 71,000 miles (which means that it has only put on 21,000 miles in the past 10 years!), the auction bidding reached $54,000 but did not meet the seller's reserve price. I...

  Five years, fifteen thousand miles. Time flies.  The car remains a joy to drive. As I anticipated when I bought it , I don't miss the extra horsepower you get in the 2019 and onward model years (aka ND2). That extra power is reportedly mostly at the top of the rev band, an area where I don't spend much time. The joy in this car, for me, is less about going fast than about the ways it engages you in the act of driving.  Cost of ownership? Here's the math:  Maintenance = $1,057 (basically oil changes, plus an engine air filter and transmission oil change) Depreciation = $500 (yes, Kelly Blue Book says I can basically get what I paid for it!) This makes the Miata by far the cheapest car to own that I've had, beating out my 2010 Honda Fit . Most of this is down the the crazy high post-pandemic used car prices holding depreciation in check. But that doesn't diminish the joys of simple reliability, which not all newer cars can provide.  Here's to the next 5 years!...

  I borrowed a 2021 Volvo XC40 Recharge for a few hours (thanks Rob!), which I used to drive from San Francisco to Sonoma and back. Overall, I really liked it -- comfortable, easy to drive, excellent audio system, and plenty of power (perhaps too much, see below). It also has the advantage of actually fitting in our garage (made possible by power folding wing mirrors), which is something that neither the Tesla Model Y nor the Ford Mach-e can say.  Here are some impressions, in no particular order:  It feels like a regular car.  Some EVs (see, e.g., Tesla) seem committed to making the EV experience feel very different from regular ICE cars, leaning into huge screens and new interface conventions. This Volvo is not like that. It all feels very familiar. There's a screen, but there's also the familiar window buttons, steering wheel buttons (real buttons, not touch/swipe, thank god), buttons for defrost. Nor have they departed from familiar digital dash cluster design (s...