Joe Victor

On the Road in Style!

Joe asks Jody Victor®: Best Cars for Summer Sports II

Summer is just around the corner so if you have a favorite activity you like to do all summer long you may want to choose your vehicle to match your sport. I aksed Jody Victor  to tell us more about it from an article by Claire Martin of MSN Autos and msn.com.

Jody Victor: Hey Joe, it certainly makes your activities a lot more fun when the vehicle you use gets you there and back with ease. Here’s the last five that could make your weekend fun, even more fun!

Kayaking | Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagen

The Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen is watertight, thanks to a special hot-wax treatment that fills in the tiniest nooks and crannies, which means no rust, even if you routinely expose your car to saltwater and sea air while traveling to your favorite kayaking destinations. Heavy-duty floor mats and a trunk liner keep your wetsuit and other gear from wetting down the fabric or carpeting after a paddling session. Roof rails accommodate an aftermarket kayak rack, and the panoramic sunroof lets your passengers keep an eye on your boat while you drive.

ATV Riding | Ford F-250 Super Duty

Few pickup trucks have beds long enough to accommodate an all-terrain vehicle without the tailgate down. The F-250 Super Duty, with an 8-foot bed, is one such vehicle. This allows you to load your ATV with several inches of room to spare. The F-250′s V8 engine also makes it well-qualified for towing, if that’s your preference. Telescopic rearview mirrors let you keep an eye on your trailer. A 6-speed automatic transmission helps you navigate the diciest of terrain as you make your way to sand dunes or desert flats.

Rock Climbing | Subaru Forester

The Forester has just the right amount of room for ropes, carabiners, shoes and a cooler to store après-climb refreshments. The extra ground clearance is essential for when you tackle dry riverbeds or seemingly vertical mountain roads to get to the best climbing spots. The car’s symmetrical all-wheel drive (as opposed to a front-wheel-drive car with added rear-wheel capabilities, or vice versa) provides peace of mind along the way.

Sailing | GMC Yukon Denali XL

When you’re hauling boats, you need the extra horsepower of a vehicle such as the Yukon Denali XL. With a 6.2-liter V8 engine that provides 403 horsepower and 417 lb-ft of torque, you won’t have to worry about whether it can handle your diminutive Sunfish sailboat or a bigger yacht. With a cargo area that’s 81 inches long and that boasts 109 cubic feet of storage space, you’ll have plenty of room for your sailing gear and other accessories. An integrated trailer-brake controller helps you apply the appropriate amount of brake force when you have a boat in tow.

Fishing | Ram 1500

Fishing is dirty business. You need some serious cargo space for rods, tackle, buckets, bait and all the other gear for a day out on the water, and you want it to be ventilated — fish stink. And if you’re going fly-fishing in some remote locale, you’ll need something pretty rugged to find the most productive fishing holes and tackle the dirt roads leading to them. The Ram 1500 is perfect. It is one of the most versatile half-ton pickups on the market, with plenty of power from the all-new 305-horsepower Pentastar V6, which is 20 percent more efficient than previous engines, a smooth ride on or off road, and slick styling. Plus, Ram offers some cool truck-bed storage options.

Thanks, Jody! We’ll be sure to check them all out!

Joe Victor

 

 

Joe asks Jody Victor®: Best Cars for Summer Sports

For every sport or outdoor adventure, there’s a perfect vehicle for ferrying your gear and getting you where you need to go, be it your favorite surf break, a new backpacking route or the ideal stretch of pavement for pedaling your road bike. But a kite surfer has different transportation criteria than a mountain biker, and a fisherman’s needs are not the same as those of an all-terrain-vehicle enthusiast. I asked Jody Victor  to tell us more about it from and article by Claire Martin of MSN Autos and msn.com.

Jody Victor: Sometimes you need all-wheel drive; other times, all you care about is whether your cooler will fit in the trunk. Here are the best cars for various outdoor sports, factoring in cargo capacity, hauling capability, horsepower, maneuverability and, of course, aesthetics, in 2 parts.

Surfing | Jeep Wrangler

The main benefit to the Wrangler is that your surfboard — long, short or anywhere in between — can fit in the vehicle when the top is off. If it hangs out a little bit, you’ll look all the more cool. When scoping out remote surf spots, the high ground clearance and 4-wheel drive come in handy. To keep valuables out of sight while you’re in the waves, the “add a trunk” feature creates a 3-cubic-foot mini trunk in the rear of the vehicle.

Mountain Biking | Honda Element

With enough space to fit three bikes and one rear-seat passenger, or two bikes and two friends in the back, the Element is ideal for mountain-bike outings. No need to hoist anything onto the roof of the car or to deal with a clunky rear-mounted bike rack. And you won’t have to remove your bikes’ front tires to fit them in, either. The vehicle’s all-wheel-drive capability helps get you to the trail. After your excursion, any dirt that collects on the Element’s urethane-coated floor is easy to sweep out.

Kite Surfing | Volvo XC70

This wagon’s minivan-size storage capacity lets you easily pack the bulky gear that kite surfing requires — boards, kites, harnesses and the like. But it’s also agile enough that you can negotiate winding coastal roads with power and ease. The XC70 is the longest of the Volvo models, making it easier to carry your quiver of boards inside the car without anything hanging out a window. Extra ground clearance and all-wheel drive keep you from getting stuck in any sand traps en route to the wind-whipped water. The optional plastic trunk liner keeps your wet gear from stinking up the car.

Road Cycling | Audi A3

If you’re a road cyclist, chances are you spend a lot of time on pavement that’s as fun to drive as it is to pedal, so you’ll want a car that handles well on twisting, curvy roads. The Audi A3 is turbocharged whether you buy the gasoline version or the diesel, and it has speed-sensitive power steering — helpful in hairpin turns. Roof rails make for easy installation of a bike rack, but because the A3 is a wagon, you could store your ride inside. Flip one seat down for one bike, or both to store two.

Backpacking | Ford Flex

To accommodate the bulky backpacks, tents and sleeping pads required for a backpacking trip, the Ford Flex has 83 cubic feet of cargo space with the seats down. If you’re taking a day hike, sans gear, the Flex is perfect for ferrying a group of friends to the trailhead; its three rows of seats accommodate seven passengers. Four skylights on the roof let you take in the beauty of your wilderness surroundings before you even get out of the car. Opt for bucket seats in the second row and you can also get a refrigerated console to keep your water supply cold.

Thanks, Jody! More next time.

Joe Victor

Joe asks Jody Victor®: What Vehicle Is Best for Your City? II

Cities are cities, right? Not necessarily! While there are many similarities, the differences are what makes certain vehicles more useful to one area than another. I asked Jody Victor  to continue with the second part of the article by Erik Sofge of MSN Autos and msn.com.

Jody Victor: Hey, Joe, here they are, the rest of the vehicles best suited for cities around this great country of ours.

City: Phoenix | Vehicle: Dodge Challenger SRT8 392

The criterion for a vehicle in a desert city is pretty simple: heat-bouncing, lighter-hued interiors. There’s nowhere to tow your personal watercraft, no sane reason to go camping and no weather to sully the long stretches of blacktop carving through the dunes. So you can drive whatever boring thing you want, or you can channel your inner Mad Max with the Challenger SRT8. It’s pure, vintage muscle on 20-inch, 5-spoke aluminum wheels. Its only shortcoming is that the 6.4-liter 470-horsepower Hemi V8 engine doesn’t punch right through the racer-striped hood.

City: Jacksonville, Fla. | Vehicle: Jeep Wrangler

Miami might get the attention, but Jacksonville is the bigger city (with more than 800,000 residents, more than double Miami’s population), and it is surrounded by more diverse day or weekend destinations. So, for transitioning from open-air highway driving to powering through swampy conditions to rolling right onto the beach, the venerable Jeep Wrangler just makes sense. It’s the only 4×4 convertible, becomes the ultimate beachcomber with the doors fully removed, and it can ford up to 30 inches of water. But remember, this is gator country — don’t go fording with the doors and roof off.

City: Boston | Vehicle: Subaru Outback

The unpredictability of New England weather is so bad that it’s long been a point of pride for local residents. It’s also why Subaru, and the Outback, specifically, have always been so ubiquitous in the area. And so it goes for Boston, where the Outback and its symmetrical all-wheel drive is as adept at gripping rain-clogged streets as it is at forging through mud-spattered New Hampshire trails and snow-swept Maine roads. The 3.6R, with its 256-horsepower boxer engine, isn’t a necessary upgrade, but the rumors are true: Whether in rain, sleet or snow, Boston drivers go fast.

City: Seattle | Vehicle: Volkswagen Tiguan

For rainy Seattle, we could have just as easily picked the Subaru Outback again for its proven performance on wet roads, but the Volkswagen Tiguan is a capable all-weather traveler. VW’s power-juggling 4Motion all-wheel drive, and an off-road drive mode that’s exclusive to this model, provide more precise torque control, improved braking on loose surfaces and automatic speed adjustments during hill climbs and descents. The Tiguan has room to spare for outdoor gear, but it’s also a relatively luxe ride, with built-in iPod connectivity, leather two-toned interiors and a hipper overall look than its competition at Subaru.

City: Denver | Vehicle: Range Rover Evoque

The Evoque is a renaissance Range Rover, equally at home charging up and down the Rockies as it is cruising through downtown Denver’s LoDo neighborhood. This crossover won’t even ruffle the feathers of the famously environmentally active locals, with a fuel economy that is a rather commendable 19 mpg city/28 mpg highway. It’s not the rugged outdoors vehicle that other Range Rovers are, but it’s a snowy-weather road warrior, and the most stylish SUV on the market.

Thanks, Jody! We’ll be sure to check these great vehicles out!

Joe Victor

Joe asks Jody Victor®: Best Vehicles For Your City

Around the world, the city car is having a moment. Small, moderately peppy and easy-to-park models such as the Fiat 500 and Scion iQ would seem to be natural choices for the planet’s growing population of urban dwellers. I asked Jody Victor to tell us more about it from an article by Erik Sofge of MSN Autos and msn.com.

Jody Victor: The United States isn’t the rest of the world, and its city drivers tend to see their cars as more than daily transportation. Instead, they’re seen as ready-to-launch escape pods, with features as useful for extreme-weather commuting as for a day trip through the local wilderness. Here are the msn.com picks for the vehicles best suited to conquering America’s biggest urban jungles, and parts thereabouts, in two parts.

City: New York | Vehicle: MINI Cooper

Don’t worry, most of our choices aren’t as obvious as this classic city car. But for the most densely packed of U.S. cities, the MINI is the inevitable choice. It’s the appropriate size for parking and for squeezing past herds of double-parked offenders, but without being golf-cart small. What it lacks in cargo space (most New Yorkers aren’t hauling around lawn fertilizer and sheets of plywood), it makes up for in retro style. Since performance is wasted on the Big Apple’s cab-choked streets and cramped highways, stick to the base 1.6-liter 121-horsepower 4-cylinder trim, possibly in a hatchback for those biennial trips to IKEA or the beach out east.

City: Los Angeles | Vehicle: Nissan Leaf SL

There are a lot of places where the Leaf isn’t worth the cost, or the hassle of finding public car-charging stations, or the stigma of driving something that makes a Prius look sexy. In L.A., none of the above apply. In a city defined by standstill traffic, the all-electric Leaf qualifies for the prized HOV sticker (standard hybrids no longer do). Finding chargers within the Leaf’s 100-mile range is easy, and the SL trim can be fast-charged, cutting refuel time exponentially. In a city brimming with sports cars, this Poindexter of a compact is sort of sexy.

City: Chicago | Vehicle: Honda CR-V

The Windy City’s drivers don’t care about a stiff breeze. Rather, the nemesis of all car-owning Chicagoans is the cratered, moonscape condition of its potholed roads, among the worst in America. This compact SUV can handle snow and slick roads, and survive year-round abuse from below. Honda’s CR-V has the all-wheel drive to handle wintry commutes, enough elevation to clear the deeper chasms and, in one of the only comprehensive studies on pothole damage, Hondas came out on top. So what if the study was based in the U.K.? Any hope is better than none.

City: Houston | Vehicle: GMC Sierra 1500 Denali

There’s nothing particularly punishing about Houston’s weather or roads — a Camry would do. But Texas is truck country, where well-appointed 4-door pickups were born to roam. The Sierra doesn’t have the towing capacity of a Ford F-150, but it’s able to pull 9,600 pounds with its 6.2-liter V8 engine, more than enough to trailer a boat down to Trinity Bay. And it’s the classiest cargo-hauler in the business, with standard Bose speakers, heated and cooled leather seats, a remote starter and other features almost too fancy for any self-respecting truck.

City: Philadelphia | Vehicle: Ford Fiesta

Warmer and less cluttered than New York, but more quintessentially American in its history, Philly deserves a city car that’s more than a little patriotic. The Ford Fiesta is our pick, a car from the one Detroit automaker that didn’t ask for federal charity, and whose financial resurgence has a lot to do with its bold new designs, including the Fiesta. The critically acclaimed compact now gets up to 40 mpg on the highway with the more aerodynamic Super Fuel Economy package and, despite its entry-level sticker price, it comes standard with a voice-activated SYNC system.

Thanks, Jody! More next time!

Joe Victor

 

Joe asks Jody Victor®: 8 Convertibles You Can Buy for Less II

Twisting and turning down a tree-lined, back road with the sun on your face, and the wind in your hair. We’re talking about convertibles, of course. “I can’t afford one,” you say. We respectfully disagree. I asked Jody Victor® to tell us why.

Jody Victor®: Thanks to our recent economic downturn and ever-rising gas prices, the number of relatively affordable convertibles is down. But a number of models are still available for less than $30,000. Here’s the second half of the article by James Tate of msn.com.

Jeep Wrangler

Didn’t expect to see this one, did you? What can we say — it’s a convertible, after all, and at $22,045 it’s less than $30 grand. Besides, you can’t have a list of just seven cars. Despite having grown significantly in girth in its 2007 redesign, this old icon continues to be no less appealing. Its 3.6-liter 285-horsepower V6 engine is years ahead of the previous engine, and the interior can even be called livable now. Naturally, the Wrangler comes standard with 4-wheel drive, which can make your convertible adventures considerably more interesting. As you might expect, the gas mileage is horrible, at just 17 mpg city/21 mpg highway.

Chrysler 200 Convertible

This is the where our list starts to get a little questionable. When eight cars in total meet the criteria, the rundown is less a list of “best,” and more one of “in existence.” A disclaimer having duly been dropped, let’s meet the $26,775 Chrysler 200 Convertible. Its double-overhead-cam 2.4-liter inline 4-cylinder engine, which makes 173 horsepower and returns 20 mpg city/31 mpg highway, is a bit weak. There is a more powerful 6-cylinder option, but it costs five grand more. The premium, in our opinion, isn’t worth it.

Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder

The Eclipse Spyder seats four, looks like a flattened jelly bean and, at $27,999, sports a 2.4-liter inline-4 engine with 162 horsepower. (A V6 option is available, but it costs $32,828, so that’s out of the running.) The inline-4 comes with a 4-speed automatic transmission (those are apparently still made) and manages 20 mpg city/27 mpg highway. On the plus side, you get heated leather seats as standard and a 650-watt Rockford Fosgate stereo that’s pretty rockin’. Also a plus: The power top is down in just 19 seconds.

smart passion cabriolet

Sorry for this recommendation, but for $17,690, you get a very, very small car that has a top speed of 90 mph, goes from zero to 60 mph in 12.8 seconds, and has a 1.0-liter 70-horsepower engine and a 5-speed automated manual transmission that will make you wish you were walking. Now, once you’ve stopped worrying about being run over in traffic, there are a couple of pluses. Because it’s just 98.4 inches long, you can park it practically anywhere. You’ll also get 34 mpg city/38 mpg highway.

Thanks, Jody! We’ll be sure to check these vehicles out!!

Joe Victor