On The Road

When I think about the modern car, I tend to think of safety first.

Photos courtesy of Fiat Chrysler
The Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk comes with a 707-horsepower, 6.2-liter supercharged engine.

Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of physics says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So it is with automobiles.

courtesy of Honda
The 2019 Honda Insight is a hybrid that delivers 51 mpg city and 45 mpg highway.

Honda, the carmaker that rarely gets it wrong, has done so at least twice – 10 years apart.

In 1999, Honda decided to be the first with a hybrid in North America. The first-generation Insight beat the original Toyota Prius to showrooms by seven months. The head start was of little help. In seven years, just as the second-gen Prius was setting sales records, Honda pulled the plug on the Insight. It was funny looking (even compared to the Prius) and impractical, as it had only two seats.

Dismayed by the increasing costs of airfare, missing a series of friends stretched across the country and longing for the open road, my husband and I embarked on an impossible journey last summer. We took our toddlers, ages 3 and 2, and departed Mountain View for a six-week road trip across the U.S.

A customer recently brought in her 2009 Audi Q5 quattro 3.2 liter. She said the low engine oil warning prompted her to add oil, but the light remained on – and the car does not have an engine oil dipstick to manually check the level.

k The 2019 Buick Regal GS AWD features a 3.6-liter V-6 engine offering 310 horsepower. The sedan goes 0-60 mph in under 6 seconds and gets 27 mpg on the highway.

Shopping for a sports sedan? Here’s a radical idea: Buick.

OK, I know; this is the Bay Area. The last time Buicks were hot on the Peninsula, Grandpa went down to Simpson Buick at California and Castro streets in Mountain View and came home with a block-long Electra 225 with tailfins.