Should I Buy a Car or Crossover?
The Honda CR-V (left) costs about as much as a Honda Accord (right), and offers about as much passenger space? Which would you buy?
The sedan is dead. By now, you’ve probably heard the dire prognostications for what was once the auto industry’s most popular type of passenger vehicle. The four-door sedan—long a staple of American motoring—has given way to the crossover SUV, and it doesn’t appear that consumers are looking back.
Cheap Wheels: 1998-2003 Ford ZX2
2001 Ford Escort ZX2
by Don Sikora II
Note: The following story was excerpted from the august 2018 issue of Collectible Automobile magazine.
When Ford redesigned the Escort subcompact for 1997, there was no longer a two-door version. That changed for the 1998 model year with the addition of the Escort ZX2, a new coupe variant with a sportier attitude than its four-door sedan and wagon siblings.
2019 Ford F-150 Lariat Power Stroke in Velocity Blue
2019 Ford F-150 Lariat 4×4 SuperCrew Power Stroke
Class: Large Pickup Truck
Miles Driven: 361
Fuel Used: 13.9 gallons
1933 Hupmobile K-321 Convertible Coupe
Note: The following story was excerpted from the April 2004 issue of Collectible Automobile magazine.
The automobile was meant to foster travel and, by golly, here’s one that has. The Hupmobile convertible coupe featured on these pages has been to Australia and back during its lifetime.
2019 Honda Passport Elite in Lunar Silver
2019 Honda Passport AWD Elite
Class: Midsize Crossover
Miles Driven: 295
Fuel Used: 19.5 gallons
1985 Buick Electra
Which of the following events was more jarring? The addition of Elmo to the cast of Sesame Street, or the introduction of a front-wheel-drive Buick Electra? Both events, coincidentally, took place in 1985, and both events were met with a certain amount of grumbling.
2019 Mazda CX-5 Signature in Soul Red Crystal
2019 Mazda CX-5 Signature AWD
Class: Compact Crossover
Miles Driven: 366
Fuel Used: 16.1 gallons
2019 Ford F-150 with a regular cab and short bed.
It took a recent conversation with an old friend to jog my memory. But the more she talked, the clearer my recollections became. There was a candy bar sold in the mid Seventies called Seven Up, and I had purchased many of them back in the day.
Test Drive: 2019 Nissan Murano SL
2019 Nissan Murano SL in Sunset Drift
2019 Nissan Murano SL AWD
Class: Midsize Crossover
Miles Driven: 345
Fuel Used: 17.2 gallons
Cars of Cuba: A Gallery
Cuba is something of a paradise for old-car spotters. This 1951 Chevrolet four-door sedan is just one of thousands of vintage automobiles still in faithful use as daily-driver transportation.
My wife Kristin and I will be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary this year, and we decided that we needed to take an out-of-the-country vacation as part of that celebration. We were looking for somewhere reasonably close, to minimize flight time and the jetlag that usually goes along with it. Kristin is fond of Latin American countries, bird watching, and rugged-outdoors adventuring, and she speaks enough Spanish to get around quite well. Me? I really love old cars. Cuba checks all those boxes, so it was a natural choice.
