by Denise McCluggage | Dec 30, 2013
Thirteen Vermont winters and a class win in the Monte Carlo rally might lend me cred as a driver in snow. However, probably even more useful, and certainly more concentrated, are a number of sessions I had over the years at the Bridgestone Winter Driving School in...
by Denise McCluggage | May 29, 2012
Doug, a friend and regular at Santa Fe’s Tuesday Car Table, test drove a Fiat 500 Cabriolet that I had for a week and loved it. But considering our city’s 7000-feet altitude decided a turbo was indicated. He’d wait for the Abarth. He told Fred Vang, another Car Table...
by Denise McCluggage | Mar 1, 2012
Editor’s Note: Battery-carmaker Tesla has been roiled in controversy as it turns out customers can turn their car into a virtual “brick” by failing to keep the vehicle charged. We asked our intrepid correspondent, Denise McCluggage to muse on the risks of cutting-edge...
by Denise McCluggage | Nov 14, 2011
I muse to amuse myself. Subject: What particular aspect of development in Asian cars trails European cars the most? I drive and I think. My decision: the suspension systems in Asian cars, specifically the fast improving Hyundai/Kia line-ups, are lacking in the...
by Denise McCluggage | Nov 7, 2011
Anyone reading or most certainly writing about cars is delighted that Bob Lutz hasn’t gone gently into that good afternoon of retirement after all. Consultant to GM renewed. (Insultant to all deserving of it, if the Lutzian manner hasn’t changed.) Bob was always the...
by Denise McCluggage | Jun 17, 2011
Is it just me or are there more fuel management problems than usual in racing? Take Chip Ganassi’s team at Indy’s 100th anniversary run. A one-two finish looked to be a lock with either Scott Dixon or Dario Franchitti crossing the line first. Dario had set fastest lap...
by Denise McCluggage | May 16, 2011
Buying a car, these days, can test the patience of Job, columnist Denise McCluggage noted in her latest McBlog, yet the worst of times can turn into the best of times…with a little help. Here’s a sidebar to her column. Fred Vang is a personal consultant to...
by Denise McCluggage | May 13, 2011
Held captive by disbelief we watched on TV that improbable tsunami, dark with disturbed sand, textured with the detritus of people’s lives ranging from children’s plastic sandals to grown-ups’ cars. How could this be? An uncontrollable King Kong nightmare flinging...
by Denise McCluggage | Apr 13, 2011
Sam Mitani made a point in his May Road & Track column that resonated through me like a temple gong. I’ll get to that but first you’ll welcome some background. Trust me. In the first running of the Indianapolis 500 in 1911 Ray Haroun strapped a mirror in his race...
by Denise McCluggage | Mar 21, 2011
“I think this is the nicest car you ever had,” my mother said to me from the passenger’s seat. Her eyes, still a snapping dark brown in her late 80s, choked off my emergent laugh though that’s the response the remark deserved. After all we were not in my Porsche, my...
by Denise McCluggage | Feb 14, 2011
Numbers have a specificity that is irresistible to our embattled minds. That’s why cops give you a ticket for 87 mph in a 75 mph zone and not to someone else for “unimaginably idiotic attempts to maneuver an automobile in the presence of others.” The...
by Denise McCluggage | Nov 29, 2010
Odd though it may seem, I am smitten with the Ford Transit Connect. First, there’s the name. Two words with individual meanings that seem rather specific. “Transit:” getting from one place to another. And “connect:” hooking up, joining. But together they seem like one...
