As I was angrily berated yesterday for saying the Infiniti G20 was based on the Nissan Sentra, I decided to devote today’s post to the car that shared its engine – but not its platform – with the G20: the 1991-1994 Nissan Sentra SE-R. To create the Sentra SE-R, Nissan started with its base-level Nissan Sentra, which was a highly dull compact car with a 110-horsepower four-cylinder engine. It wasn’t just dull in terms of performance: its styling is actually nondescript, to the point where attempting to describe it just results in saying things like “slightly rounder than the previous...

“In the Hood” is my favorite segment here on PlaysWithCars.com, where I will – I swear – one day actually play with cars. Based on the traffic numbers, it’s also your least favorite segment. But since it’s Monday, and it’s been raining since early March, I’ve decided to give myself a treat and post up a few photos from the neighborhood. I like “In the Hood” because I can put on flip-flops, go outside, and photograph any of the bizarre WASPy cars parked around my neighborhood at any given time. Presumably, you don’t like it because the things I find are always obscure,...

There are few things in the automotive industry more comical than early-2000s Chrysler cost-cutting. Virtually every car the brand released at the time includes at least a few items where Chrysler trimmed a few pennies on the theory that “they’ll never notice this!” Examples, therefore, are easy to find. But no example is as egregious as power windows on the Dodge Neon and Jeep Liberty. The Neon is the best of the two. In order to make the car as cheap as possible – which would then become even cheaper with legendary incentives – Chrysler didn’t offer power rear windows on the...

It seemed like a good idea at the time. A lot of my “GM Bad Idea” stories could start out that way, presumably except the Envoy XUV, which couldn’t have seemed like a good idea to anyone, but was probably cheap to build. The Cadillac Catera is definitely an “it seemed like a good idea at the time” kind of car. In the late 1990s, Cadillac wanted younger buyers. This is totally understandable, since the Fleetwood Brougham was attracting the kind of people who thought: this vinyl roof looks spiffy! But they didn’t want to do any real development work to attract younger buyers. The result...

The 1990s were full of unusual automotive happenings. Rodney King, for example, was beaten half to death early in the decade, presumably because he was caught driving a Hyundai Excel. And let’s not forget OJ Simpson, whose own murderous rampage was allegedly caused by his white Ford Bronco’s poor turning circle. Of course, this was never conclusively proven, since OJ’s defense team got the Bronco to admit on the witness stand that it was racist. Automobilia wasn’t just difficult for celebrities. Automakers had their issues, too. Isuzu was forced to defend claims that its SUVs rolled over...

All car enthusiasts love fast Audis. A love for fast Audis may actually be a prerequisite to becoming a car enthusiast, along with complaining about the increase of modern technology in cars. This dates back to the days when they replaced levers with a steering wheel and people said: I’ll never buy one of them automobiles without a lever! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pan for gold. In the States, we’ve been fortunate enough to receive a few of the coolest fast Audis ever. The 2003 RS6, for instance, was a tremendous car for the 11 days per year when it was working properly. Same...

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Nissan Altima Hybrid. This alone would probably be fodder for an “It Exists” segment all by itself. Yes, it does exist. Nissan sold it from 2007 to 2011 as an answer to the Toyota Camry Hybrid. Except it wasn’t a very good answer, since it was created entirely using technology licensed from Toyota. Anyway, the Altima Hybrid got 33 mpg city and 33 mpg highway, which is actually better than the Camry Hybrid from the same period. I know what you’re thinking: I want to buy an Altima Hybrid! Or possibly: get to the point, dammit, I’m sick of reading about...

Ahh, the Saturn Ion. Possibly the best example of taking something that already wasn’t very good and making it much, much worse. Hardly a worthy successor to the mediocre S-Series models, the Ion represented the very end of the line for “unique” Saturn products, as everything that came after had a twin somewhere else in the automaker’s dominion. But while the Ion was bad, its roof rails were even worse. When the Ion was launched in 2003, it offered interchangeable roof rails that could be ordered in various colors to suit your mood. The press cars were all blue with silver roof rails and...

I once had a Lotus. That was pretty cool, except when people would talk to me about it. People who didn’t know cars would always ask things like: “How much does it cost?” and “How fast does it go?” Of course, they were always disappointed by the answers. Car people, on the other hand, would inevitably say: “Nice Toyota Celica!” This is about as funny as when people hear sirens and feel the urge to announce: “They’re coming for you.” What most car people don’t know is that the Celica wasn’t the only Toyota that shared its engine with the Lotus Elise. For one, there was the...

My first car was a 1996 Volvo 850 Turbo. I know what you’re thinking: I’m sorry. But actually, I loved the car. It was my parents who hated it, since they were on the hook for most of its repair bills, which were both constant and massive. During my tenure owning the 850 Turbo, I always lusted after the model’s slightly more exciting stablemate: the 850 T-5R. This thing was cool. They only made it in 1995, and it only came in yellow or black (plus an incredibly small handful in green). Plus, it had those really neat wheels that looked like they constantly had brake dust. Beyond the looks,...

The Toyota 4Runner is a pretty cool SUV. It’s reliable, off-roadable, and even family-able. Plus, if you buy one new today it’ll still be worth exactly what you paid in about seven years. This makes looking for a used one infuriating, since a 2008 Explorer costs about the same as a 2003 4Runner. Truly. The problem is that the 4Runner has never really been very fast. Not that you’d necessarily want it to be, since it’s tall and somewhat narrow. But for those of you who do want a spry SUV, the 4Runner was hardly the best choice. Or was it? From 1996 to 2002, Toyota offered a...

In addition to its usual array of old Land Cruisers and Land Rover Defenders, my old money ‘hood occasionally produces something really cool. This is that. Shown above (and below, which, admittedly, is odd) is a Mercedes 450SEL 6.9, which debuted in the mid-1970s as a predecessor to virtually every normal sedan with a huge engine offered today. (Think BMW M5.) Actually, that isn’t strictly true: the 450SEL 6.9 was technically the successor to the hot sedan that started everything, the 300SEL 6.3. But some might argue that the 6.9 is cooler. To make the 6.9, Mercedes took its typical...

When the Cayenne first came out, Porsche really had no idea what the hell they were doing. Evidence of this includes the attempt to make it both the best off-road SUV in the world and the best-handling SUV in the world, resulting in creating little more than the heaviest SUV in the world. If you’re still not convinced Porsche was out of its element in the SUV world, check out today’s feature fail: the Cayenne’s rear-mounted spare tire. Yes, that’s right: the first few years of Cayenne production included a rear-mounted spare tire option, sort of like the old-school Land Rover Discovery. The...

It’s rare to see actual rebadges in today’s world. Mostly, cars people call “rebadged” are a lot more than a grille swap and some new wheels. Usually they share mechanical components and architecture, but not actual body anels That isn’t true in this case. Behold the 2001-2006 Skoda Superb, which is precisely identical to the Volkswagen Passat in basically every way. How they thought this would fly is absolutely beyond me, though they may have hoped that changing the tail lights meant no one would notice. Well, I did notice, and I’m appalled. (Which means I will write this article and...

Every so often, a person will come to me and ask for my advice on the best high-performance SUV. My response is always the same: why the hell would you want that? But they usually can’t be dissuaded, until I tell them that my Range Rover gets 13 miles per gallon and it only has 300 horsepower, which means that a Mercedes ML63 AMG probably returns about the same fuel economy as a Boeing 777, while running on a similar grade of fuel. This usually ends the discussion. But there is at least one performance SUV that doesn’t suck down fuel like a NASCAR race: the Subaru Forester XT. Not the latest...