More than just a pretty face

There are plenty of reasons to like the 2023 Honda CR-V Hybrid.

Fuel economy isn’t one of them.

Which is weird to say for a hybrid, given the formula has typically been to pay more for better fuel economy.

All of which is unfortunate, because for the most part, the 2023 CR-V is a wonderful compact crossover. It’s possibly the prettiest CR-V since the model began, with a cool interior design, great on-road driving characteristics, comfortable seating and a pleasant set of amenities.

Interested in Integra?

There are times when I wistfully remember my 1990 Acura Integra, so imagine my excitement when news came the Integra was returning.

Pathfinder back on track

The 2022 Nissan Pathfinder is a refreshing change for a vehicle that, ironically enough, had lost its way.

Power out the gazoo

VANCOUVER ISLAND MOTORSPORTS CIRCUIT, DUNCAN, B.C. — Toyota is investing heavily in a market segment it said a dozen years ago had ceased to exist, hot hatchbacks and sports coupes. And it’s coming with a cool new — or at least new to Canada — name: Gazoo Racing.

The Jeep that isn’t

The 2022 Wagoneer isn’t the largest vehicle I’ve ever driven, but it certainly feels like it is.

2023 Toyota Crown brings power, panache and parsimony to market

CANADIAN TIRE MOTORSPORTS PARK — It’s big, it’s bold and it’s set to become the flagship for Toyota in Canada, a market it hasn’t been sold in since 1965.

BR-Zee? More like BR-Wheeee!

NEW marketing slogan for the 2022 Subaru BRZ: you’ll be surprised by its usefulness!

EVs with a Vietnamese twist

NHA TRANG, Vietnam — This upstart automaker is only five years old yet is on the cusp of a massive global expansion driven by a jump into the electric vehicle market.

Crystal blue persuasion

HANOI, Vietnam — There are, according to our tour guide, 85,000 people living in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, a section of the city only 88 hectares in size.

A ’ute that’s still cute after all these years

It’s been four years since we bought our 2018 Mazda CX-5, and while the 2022 Mazda CX-5 is, perhaps, the last refresh of this particular generation, no other affordable crossover quite ticks our boxes like our CX-5.

Truck pretender, or contender?

Take even a cursory glance at online pickup truck forums and a fairly constant theme will emerge about the 2022 Honda Ridgeline and all its ancestors.

They’re not real trucks.

True. But who cares?

Those who don’t like the Ridge will fill their pockets with Coloradoes and Silveradoes and F-150s and Rangers. Fine. We didn’t ask you.

Ford’s tiny pickup so popular, you’ll be lucky to find one

SALT SPRING ISLAND, British Columbia — People wouldn’t like the 2022 Ford Maverick, they said. Too small, they said. Not trucklike enough, they said. Well, what do they know, anyway?

Ford in Canada is practically sold out — 4,116 sold so far and more on the way, all spoken for — and is not taking any orders until the order bank for 2023 models opens later this summer.

It’s easy to see why.

The Maverick is compact, fuel-efficient, fun-to-drive and much more handy than its small size might suggest.

Skyrocketing gas prices fuelling increased interest in electric vehicles

When William York, an electrical engineer in Edmonton, took a 15-hour, 1,400-kilometre drive to Seattle, he planned the usual stops — bathroom breaks, meals, an overnight sleep — and arrived having taken roughly the same amount of time as most leisurely trips between the two cities.

The difference? York, 35, drives an electric vehicle.

At a time when gas prices are going crazy, it’s reasonable to expect more Canadian drivers will start to consider electric vehicles. As this story is being written, prices in Winnipeg are $1.739 per litre for regular gas. In Vancouver, $1.969. With only 13 years to go before the federal government’s target date for EVs to comprise all new vehicles sold, the pull towards electric is strong.

For York, dispelling the misconception that EVs aren’t suited for longer distances starts by retelling the story of his Seattle vacation. The limiting factor is urology, not technology.

Look past the me-too styling and the 2022 Forester has a lot to offer

When the Subaru Forester first arrived, a reasonable question was whether it was a low SUV or a tall station wagon. For 2022, that question is reasonable no more.

It’s grown considerably since its early days, to the point that size-wise, it’s nearly indistinguishable from its mid-size crossover competitors. It is taller and longer than my Mazda CX-5 and just a bit narrower, though that only translates into an extra litre of seats-up cargo space (817 for the CX-5 vs. 818 for the Subie). Seats down, however, the Subie’s extra length means the cargo volume beats the CX-5 by almost 500 litres.

While the Forester’s quirky, Goldilocks-approved size — not too big, not too small — is lost, what hasn’t been lost is the benefits to handling of its horizontally-opposed four-cylinder Boxer motor, which keeps the centre of gravity very low.

That motor, a 182-hp, 176 lb-ft non-turbo across the lineup, means reasonable if not stellar acceleration, which is more than compensated by outstanding fuel economy. For the tank I used during my test week, it averaged less than nine litres per 100 kilometres. By way of comparison, I thought our CX-5’s 9.9 l/100km average was pretty good.

Honda’s hot hatch is back… almost

Just when you thought you’d never experience a Honda manual transmission again…

OK, the stick isn’t entirely vanquished from Honda’s lineup, but it is, or at least had been, reserved for the hotter models of Civic, the Si and the Type R. And then comes along the 2022 Honda Civic hatchback.

To understand the significance requires having driven Honda’s manuals in the past. While its competitors have since, mostly, caught up, Honda was renowned for producing transmissions and clutches so smooth, so effortless that if you couldn’t learn to drive stick in a Honda, you just weren’t trying.

News that non-performance models of Civic would only be supplied with the yawnfest of a continuously variable transmission was disheartening. So it was not without ear-to-ear smiles we heard Honda was sending a six-speed hatchback.

VinFast pulls out all stops to attract first customers

A mobile charger, discounts, service packages and a seven-day stay for four at a luxury resort in Vietnam: VinFast is rolling out the red carpet for its first customers in Canada.

In announcing pricing for the VF 8 and VF 9 all-electric sport utility vehicles, the Vietnam-based automaker also announced special benefits for what it calls its “VinFirst” customers.

First, the prices: the VF 8 will start at C$51,250 and the larger VF 9 will start at $69,750.

Canadians now have the ability to stake their place in line for the vehicles expected to arrive by year’s end by placing a refundable $250 deposit. VinFast Canada says 300 Canadians have signed up as of Thursday.

Buzz is building, but it’s a long way off

Like an acid trip that just keeps building, the story of the Volkswagen ID. Buzz took another small step forward this week when VW unveiled its back-to-the-future reincarnation of the Microbus.

The Microbus was the darling of the 1960s, as much a part of the cultural landscape as the Summer of Love and Woodstock. Its simplicity and its quirkiness — combined with a voluminous interior and exterior surfaces perfect for daisies and flowers and other psychedelic motifs — more than made up for its lack of power.

To recapture that magic, VW first unveiled the Buzz concept at the 2017 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, and since then has been delivering dribs and drabs of information every so often to keep the, ahem, buzz going.

Expect another teaser before it hits these shores, however: it’s not due here until 2024.

Tip of the hat to Taos

In the mountains of New Mexico, about two hours north of Santa Fe, is a charming, picturesque village known as much for skiing as for its beautiful scenery. It was also the home of John Muir, a structural engineer who dropped out and became a long-haired hippie mechanic who wrote an authoritative guide to fixing old Volkswagens.

Legend has it, the fact Muir — who died in 1977 — lived in Taos, N.M., is why Volkswagen named its latest SUV after the town.

“I think it’s a really cool name, but was it named Taos because John Muir lived there? I’m not so sure,” says VW Canada spokesman Thomas Tetzlaff, who has thumbed through many a page in Muir’s manual. “I think it’s just a really cool coincidence.”

Taos, the town, represents everything VW wants reflected in the Taos — it’s a picturesque, artsy community with architecture, vistas, old-style trestle rail bridges and a thriving social scene, he says.

Immortal Highlander remains a leading crossover

Proving it’s as durable as its mythical Scottish namesake — “Ya canna die, Highlander, you’re immortal!” (Sean Connery mode off) — the Toyota Highlander is still here two decades after it launched.

It’s grown over those 21 years: the first was a slightly enlarged compact crossover with only two rows of seats. Since the second generation and beyond, however, it is a three-row vehicle that isn’t huge, but is hardly compact, either.

Today’s Highlander comes in a variety of flavours, from the base model LE at $44,750 to the full-kilt Hybrid Platinum at $57,490. All-wheel drive is standard on all models.

Non-hybrid models use a 3.5-litre V-6 engine, which is mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission. It’s relatively miserly, as engines with 295 horsepower go: average fuel economy is 10.3 litres per 100 kilometres.

Iconic design for IONIQ 5

SAN DIEGO — Julian, Calif. is known for pies, beer and barbecue. It’s not known as a hotbed of electric-vehicle charging stations, though it does, apparently, have three. Those three stations would have been entirely overwhelmed by our visit, with 20 EVs, all the 2022 Hyundai IONIQ 5, descending on this SoCal town.

From San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter we came, 40 automotive journalists braving the perils of range anxiety and a wicked rain storm to test this, the first Hyundai developed exclusively as an EV.

If this is the future of Hyundai’s EV strategy, it’s off to a good start. Turns out range anxiety wasn’t an issue at all, at least after we remembered the dash is set to read in miles, not kilometres.

The range and the available charging times both answer the key objections many drivers have about switching to an EV. It’s available with up to 488 kilometres of range (most likely 414 km for the option Canadian drivers might prefer: all-wheel drive), and with a 250kW 800-volt direct-current fast charger, can charge from 10 per cent to 80 per cent in 18 minutes, and it can add 108 kilometres of range in only five minutes.

Tall car or short crossover, take your pick

I have to start this review with some full disclosure: I own two Mazdas and previously owned a third. The first is a 2018 CX-5 my wife and I got to replace our totalled Toyota Sienna. The second is a 2020 Mazda3 Sport that’s my daily driver. The third is no longer on this Earth: it, a 2001 MPV minivan, met its maker about 15 years ago.

I do not, unless it’s buried deep within a mutual fund I have no direct control over, own any financial position in the company. I just like their cars.

So if you want to take this all with a few grains of sodium chloride, I won’t hold it against you.

In a world where buyers are clamouring for the biggest, baddest SUVs they can find, the 2021 Mazda CX-30 is a pleasant surprise.

Speak like Spock… to your car

There are interesting parallels between the evolution of the human machine interface on Star Trek and in real-life vehicles today.

In the 1960s original series, Capt. James T. Kirk would press a button and speak to the computer. In the 2000s, drivers would press a button and speak to the computer.

In the late-1980s and 1990s, captains Jean-Luc Picard, Kathryn Janeway and Benjamin Sisko would utter a wake-up command, “Computer,” and when the computer was listening, would speak their commands.

In the 2022 Toyota Tundra and Lexus NX — and soon others — drivers will utter a wake-up command, “Hey Toyota” or “Hey Lexus,” and speak their commands.

Honda Pilot offers light-duty off-roading, high towing capacity and on-road comfort

If you’re looking for a vehicle that approaches the Acura MDX in ability, but is either less expensive or, perhaps, less triggering to those opposed to luxury brands, the 2022 Honda Pilot may be the SUV you seek.

The Pilot tops out its range $200 less than the entry-level MDX, and can be had in nicely serviceable form for as much as $13,000 less.

The value of the differences are in the eye of the buyer: the MDX has 10 more horsepower and an extra gear in the transmission, as well as Super Handling All-Wheel Drive as opposed to Honda’s Intelligent Variable Torque Management AWD system.

The MDX, arguably, has a more refined design, as should be expected when comparing mainstream and luxury versions of what is essentially the same vehicle. The interior trims are a bit more luxe, the exterior a bit sleeker. Again, in the eye of the beholder.

Call of the Wild-erness

Subaru has made its name through its relentless pursuit of all-wheel-drive perfection, but it’s never really swung for the fences in log-crushing, rock-crawling off-road ability.

It still hasn’t.

The latest Outback, the Wilderness model, takes the concept further, perhaps further than Subaru has gone before, and the Wilderness does hold its own on all but the worst off-road drives, but a Jeep Wrangler it’s not.

Truth is, it’s not trying to be. Though its approach angle (19.6 degrees) and departure angle (23.6 degrees) and 230 mm ground clearance (almost nine inches) are excellent, the Outback Wilderness is a lifted, ruggedized version of Outback rather than a Bronco-beater.

Going Rogue

The definitions of the word Rogue are few, and none is complimentary. It refers either to an unprincipled person, a person who behaves in an aberrant manner or a large animal driven from the herd.

That last definition seems to apply to the Rogue, which has broken free of the Nissan herd since its launch in 2007, and since 2012 has been the company’s best-selling vehicle in Canada, by a large margin. For the calendar year to the end of the third quarter, Nissan Canada sold nearly twice as many Rogues as its entire car portfolio combined (25,454 Rogues vs. 13,708 cars (even the small crossover Kicks outsells Nissan’s cars, with 14,132 sales)).

So the 2021 model, the latest generation, shows no sign of losing that popularity, and, it seems, looks more like its name would suggest than it predecessors.

With a bolder, rugged exterior, the new two-row, five-passenger crossover seems to eschew the soft-crossover look and feel of even its most recent progenitor. It carries more cues from the 1980s-era Pathfinder than third-generation Versa and looks like it’s ready to rumble… through cottage trails, at least.

The Pinnacle of practical

As practical as the minivan is, as much as it saved Chrysler in the 1980s, as much as it can’t be beat for interior volume for its footprint, there’s one question that comes to mind having driven the 2021 Chrysler Pacifica Pinnacle: Is there really a market for a $70,000 minivan?

“Absolutely,” says Jordan Wasylyk, who, as a product communications manager for Stellantis, has responsibility for Chrysler minivans. “With the Chrysler Pacifica Pinnacle, we are targeting customers who desire a vehicle loaded with premium appointments.”

“The lineup includes a range of options, from the budget-friendly Chrysler Grand Caravan… to the Pinnacle model for those who desire a premium people mover.”

There’s some substance to Wasylyk’s assertion: in the second quarter of 2021, Chrysler sold 893 Pacifica models. A breakdown by trim levels is not provided.

Civic duty

There was a time when the Honda Civic was a small car.

When it first came to these shores, the Civic was smaller than a modern MINI. Today’s version, the 2022 Civic, is larger than some incarnations of its larger sibling, the Accord.

Indeed, the new Civic is only 217 millimetres shorter than the current Accord and only 56 millimetres narrower. Which, ironically, makes a very good case for saving the $8,000 price difference between the two.

This is the 11th generation of the car first launched in 1972. Along the way, it’s had some designs that just didn’t seem to work, frankly. Starting in about 2005, the proportions just seemed a bit off, with a short front deck and a greenhouse that seemed to be falling forward. In the last two generations, however, stretching the wheelbase slightly has helped, and the current design hits all the right marks.

Cooking with… gas-electric?

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE — Coconut-crusted shrimp are crisping in the air fryer and vegetables are sizzling on the electric grill. Lunch is almost ready, but despite the use of electric appliances, no Manitoba Hydro electrons were the least bit inconvenienced in the process.

I’ve pulled off the road somewhere in the middle of nowhere (somewhere in the RM of Ritchot, actually) and set up the kitchen in the bed of a 2021 Ford F-150 Powerboost Hybrid. On board is a 7.2-kilowatt power centre feeding four 120-volt outlets and one 240-volt outlet.

I’m barely taxing its capabilities, which Ford says include the ability to run an entire job site. If I had a small refrigerator, no problem. If I was building a shed or a deck and wanted to cook chili for the crew while circular saws or electric drills were doing their thing, easy peasy.

This isn’t a story that attempts to say you need to spend $83,713 on this particular pickup to cook al fresco — Hibachis and portable gas grills have been doing that for about $83,613 less for decades — but is rather just a fun spin on a couple of recipes you might like to try at home, while spotlighting some new technology in the move towards greater electrification of vehicles.

Toyota looks ‘beyond zero’ with new EV

Toyota Canada, as part of the carmaker’s global push to launch 70 new electrified vehicles by 2025, will begin selling its first battery electric vehicle, the bZ4X, by the middle of next year, officials announced at a virtual pan-American unveiling this week.

The bZ4X will join an exploding new segment of electric vehicles — crossovers — an important development for the adoption of EVs. Most EVs to this point — Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi iMiev, Chevrolet Bolt — have been cars, and they have struggled despite generous incentives in three provinces to gain any foothold in a market dominated by the light truck segment. In February 2021, light trucks, which includes pickups, crossovers and SUVs, accounted for 88 per cent of Canadian vehicle sales.

Cyril Dimitris, vice-president, marketing and sales, for Toyota Canada, said following buyers into segments they are buying is key to EV adoption.

“It’s very important that we get cars into the market that people want to buy, and not because of government incentives,” he said. “Certainly, that will lead to greater acceptance of EVs.”

U.K. firm buys local automotive software company

Winnipeg-based Rapid RTC, which provides real-time communications between automotive dealers and customers browsing online, has been acquired by U.K. software developer Keyloop in a deal that promises to expand Rapid RTC’s reach to 16,000 dealers in more than 90 countries.

“When we first started Rapid RTC, we always had a vision of where our products could land and impact the auto industry,” said Glen Demetrioff, who founded Rapid RTC and will remain president and chief executive officer. “The most exciting part now is we’re able to move our products on a much more significant path to being adopted on a global scale.”

Rapid RTC, which began in 1996 as DMT Development Systems Group, supplies software that works with auto dealers’ websites to provide live text and video chat between customers shopping online and sales floor staff. The company rebranded as Rapid RTC — the RTC stands for real-time communications — in 2018. It employs 310 staff in offices in Winnipeg, Toronto, Dallas, London and Paris.

Rapid RTC has a current client list of 4,200 dealers and 27 automakers, from BMW to Toyota and beyond. Shoppers who have accepted a chat invitation while browsing an automaker’s or dealer’s website will most likely have been using Rapid RTC’s systems.

Travel is on the horizon

When the dark, murky cloud of COVID-19 finally lifts, it’s likely some ardent travellers will have suppressed their wanderlust for as many as two years. Yet with vaccinations on the way, so too is the potential for a return to the deep, coral blue of oceanfront getaways or the timeless history of the world’s ancient cities.

The travel industry is bracing for, hoping for, a bounce-back.

“We anticipate that once all the safety is in place, we’ll return to that pre-pandemic level of travel, which was very high,” said Susan Postma, regional manager of customer experience at CAA Manitoba.

“We hear from our longtime clients: they miss travelling, they are dreaming and hoping and waiting.”

Subaru siblings

The 2020 Subaru Legacy GT and its wagon sibling the Outback XT are true winter road warriors.

It starts with the all-wheel drive, which Subaru dubs Symmetrical All-wheel Drive, and ends with the winter tires on the test vehicles. Rare will be the person who can outgun you at a light in slippery, snowy conditions.

As long as you respect the fact that the ability to accelerate doesn’t mean you can’t still put it into the weeds, it’s great fun to drive.

To get a wagon Legacy these days, you have to step up to the Outback, which means you also get greater ground clearance and a higher seating position. The Outback, as it were, is the SUV for people who don’t want an SUV.

Mercedes-Benz AMG Winter Sporting course offers thrills and chills

GIMLI — These are race tracks not unlike others of their size. They have multiple corners, straights, apexes, double-apexes and turn-in points.

These tracks, however, are known more for what they don’t have: traction.

By the time the Mercedes-Benz AMG E63 hits the right-hand Turn 2, we’re sideways. With a little bit of throttle play and some counter-steering, I hold the slide until the turn-in point for Turn 3. Foot off the gas, slight turn and hold the brakes until the car has swung to the left and we sail sideways around the corner. Back on the gas and we’re still sliding towards Turn 4. Rinse and repeat.

The crazy thing about ice racing is the fastest way around a comparable tarmac track would be excruciatingly slow here. Hit the apex of turns on axis with a bit of speed and guaranteed you’re in the snowbanks, which despite their fluffy, marshmallowy appearance are hardly soft and gentle.

Chill at Gimli’s Ice Garage

GIMLI — Manitoba’s Icelandic outpost has found itself a new identity for a few months each winter: an epicentre of a global carmaker’s experiential marketing efforts.

Now in its fourth year, AMG Winter Sporting, a program by Mercedes-Benz, has been bringing hundreds of guests each year from across North America to wine, dine and — when sober, of course — race luxury automobiles on a chunk of frozen Lake Winnipeg. Aside from the revenue the program generates, a more important component is building brand loyalty and excitement amongst customers.

“We want people to come, enjoy the program and then go home and have Mercedes-Benz be part of their dinner conversations,” said Virginie Aubert, Mercedes-Benz Canada vice-president of marketing.

With about a couple dozen Mercedes-Benz AMG models, guests learn the ultimate lessons in car control — essentially, learning to control a car when there is almost no control.

Dodge Challenger Scat Pack Widebody a retro powerhouse

AJAX, Ont. — It’s like stepping into a time machine, but this isn’t a DeLorean, there’s no flux capacitor in sight and the target date isn’t 1955.

Instead, the trip between the hotel and the Automobile Journalists’ Association of Canada’s annual TestFest at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park north of Bowmanville is definitely rooted in the late 1960s.

Before the Suez Canal crisis and before the days when muscle cars morphed into weaklings such as the all-too-forgettable Mustang II, there were V-8s, Hurst shifters, Holley carburetors and mag wheels. Many a garage had a regular appearance of greasy hands and a collection of projects just waiting to be completed.

The days of tinkering may be long lost to lines of software code, electronic fuel injection and systems that require an engineering degree to figure out, but there are again old-school muscle cars letting early boomers relive the decade of tuning in and dropping out.

CX-30 takes aim at size-conscious shoppers

JULIAN, Calif. — Blame China.

That’s the short answer to why the 2020 Mazda CX-30 — halfway between the CX-3 and CX-5 crossovers — isn’t called the CX-4. Mazda’s Chinese operation beat them to it, with a vehicle that’s less of an average between its siblings and more like a CX-5 Coupe.

“They have Google, too,” Mazda North America engineer Dave Coleman said, alluding to three years’ worth of search-engine optimization that would leave North American buyers searching for CX-4 looking at something not at all like the CX-30. “It’s an entirely different vehicle.”

As more crossovers enter the market, and more buyers jump aboard, look to carmakers to slice up any remaining white space even more finely than now. Mark Peyman, Mazda Canada’s national manager of product strategy and development, said there are buyers out there who find the CX-3 too small and the CX-5 too big. Enter the CX-30.

Diesel CX-5 has plenty of pull

When the diesel emissions scandal broke in 2015, it kicked the feet out from under many of the key players selling diesel vehicles, but the fallout has also created opportunity.

With Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes, among others, stepping away from diesels, the number of offerings has shrunk considerably.

In the sport-utility and crossover market, there’s the Chevrolet Equinox, available in a diesel at an accessible $35K-ish price point, but buyers looking for diesels in a premium product have to jump all the way to a brand such as Land Rover. That’s north of $60,000.

What that $30,000 represents is white space. With Mazda’s push to steal some sales from the lower end of the premium market, a fully loaded CX-5 Signature Diesel just south of $50,000 starts to become an attractive choice, particularly given the paucity of competitors.

Second opinion: BMW M340i

The one thing that stands out from my time in both the BMW M340i and the 330i is the glorious exhaust note.

The last time I had driven a 3 Series, it had an exhaust note that wouldn’t frighten a hamster. Indeed, the hamster may have wondered how many of its species were running the wheel driving the thing.

The new 3 Series, in both versions I’ve driven, is growly, aggressive and with a brapp on lifting the throttle that’s intoxicating. It seems BMW was listening and didn’t like what it heard, either.

The 340i in particular, available only with xDrive all-wheel drive in Canada, returns the 3 to what it had represented so well for so long — the joy of driving.

Madrid shows why it's called one of the most livable cities in the world

MADRID — There’s a duet over there singing the Ave Maria in voices so clear, so pitch perfect, you’d think this was a virtuoso performance in one of the world’s great concert houses. Just down the street, a man is singing reggae well enough you almost expect to see Bob Marley behind the guitar.

At various spots along the Puerta del Sol, this city’s first and one of many public plazas, an artist is perched dead still on a motorcycle statue as if he was performing acrobatics, while not far away, others balance in a duo as though they comprise a statue.

The Spanish capital — the 10th most livable city in the world, according to Monocle magazine — has roots dating back eons. There remains today structures from as early as the 900s. It’s believed the oldest building in the city dates back to the 1500s. It is not uncommon to see buildings with cornerstones dating back to the 1700s.

That livability has a lot to do with its history, and with its leaders not allowing the city’s core to be held hostage by the automobile, as so many around the world have. Public plazas abound, car-free zones are everywhere and walking this downtown is as easy as it is inviting. On the Calle del Arenal, in the Plaza Mayor or Plaza España, restaurants spill out into the road, with awnings, umbrellas and mist systems to beat back the heat.

These aren’t your grandfathers’ studded tires any more

To stud or not to stud?

Last week’s blast of the white stuff was a good reminder about the need for winter tires, and as the city settles in for what might be a long winter, it might be time to look at studded tires.

The same way today’s winter tires are light-years ahead of their 1970s ancestors, so too, are studded tires.

Bill Gardiner, the resident wrench on Motoring TV and a spokesman for Kal Tire, brought a handful of studs and a large demonstration stud from Nokian Tires to town last week, just as snow was piling up outside.

Veloster N: a ride you won’t want to end

Rare is the press car arriving in Winnipeg that inspires a full Charlton Heston.

Rarer still is such a car coming from the Korean Peninsula.

The 2020 Hyundai Veloster N is such a car. The company can get it back when it pries the wheel “from my cold, dead hands.”

When the Veloster was introduced, the idea that the word “velocity” formed part of its name was a chuckler. It was OK, but hardly thrilling. Yet, pack a 2.0-litre turbo under the hood, slap an N on the badge and you get something entirely grin-worthy.

Rams more like mountain goats

NEAR WHISTLER — As the trees close in on the 2019 Ram Rebel 1500, a thought occurs: it’s a good thing we took photos while there was still paint on these trucks.

We’re high above Whistler, clambering up Mount Sproatt in Ram Rebels and Ram Power Wagons. Wheels are turning, differentials are locking and mud is flying. We’re climbing nearly 2,000 feet for lunch at Canadian Wilderness Adventures’ cabin near the summit.

This was an off-road program extraordinaire, with rocks, steep hills, water and corners so tight even catching the best line required a bit of backing up and starting again. A steady soaking of rain in the days leading up to the event ensured there would be mud splashes in all the right places for photographs.

In every instance, the truck that can draw its lineage to the Second World War proved itself once again. Power Wagon was born during the great conflict, and then was marketed primarily to farmers starting in 1945. The key message was unparalleled off-road prowess.

2020 Mazda3: suspending disbelief

One of the realities of automotive public relations is hosting an event where the manager of vehicle dynamics speaks eloquently to journalists about how the new suspension allows for stiffer springs without sacrificing ride quality, and then everybody jumps into the cars and drives them on nearly perfect roads.

That was our experience earlier this year in Sacramento, Calif., where Mazda hosted an event to show off the new Mazda3. The roads were outstanding: curvy, hilly and almost silken in their smoothness. Not a frost heave or pothole in sight.

We got to experience how well the new Mazda3 handles, and how the seemingly incongruous decision to abandon an independent rear suspension in favour of a torsion beam actually offers a surprising improvement in handling over the previous generation. Can’t say we noticed the cleaned-up inputs, however.

So when Mazda Canada popped two models — a sedan and a hatchback — into the press fleet and sent them to Manitoba, it was interesting to drive them on Winnipeg’s roads, which are far from optimal.

No sacrifice necessary when it comes to Honda's new full-featured hybrid sedan

If you’re driving a $30,000 mid-size sedan that burns an average of 10 litres per 100 kilometres, how would you like to cut your fuel costs in half?

That is, in a nutshell, the case presented by the 2019 Honda Insight, a vehicle so far removed from the first quirky little runabout to wear the name you’d be hard-pressed to know it’s a hybrid.

Despite being a hybrid, the new Insight is as normal a sedan as you can imagine. You get a full trunk. The rear seats fold down. For anyone who has driven the Toyota Camry Hybrid or the Ford Fusion Hybrid, the first question that arises is, “Where’s the battery?”

Unlike crossovers, where it is relatively easy to hide all the electric bits that make a hybrid go, sedan hybrids have almost universally had to eat into trunk space to fit the battery. The first Lexus GS Hybrid, for instance, had such a tiny trunk compared to its gas-only sibling that if you had more than a couple overnight bags, there had better be only two of you in the car.

Checking out BMW’s latest fleet

DUNCAN, B.C. — The sound is intoxicating. If the exhaust note under acceleration from each of the six BMWs we’re driving wasn’t good enough, there’s this delightful bbbraaappp every time you lift the throttle. I find myself lifting a little, often, just to hear it one more time.

It’s there on the M850i, with its 4.4-litre V-8. It’s there on the M340i and the 330i. But it’s especially wonderful on the Z4 sDrive 30i and Z4 M40i: with the convertible top retracted, the exhaust note plays like a symphony in the trunk.

Of course, the engines aren’t just there to play pretty noises, and each delivers an impressive amount of power for its design. Considering that some are turbo four-cylinder engines, some are turbo inline sixes and some are V-8s, that each is a symphony for the ears suggests BMW was listening when reviewers complained about some previous 3-Series models sounding like egg beaters. No yolks were harmed this time around.

Even the largest BMW, the X7, delivered a spirited drive that belies its weight and girth.

New Ranger fit for duty

NEAR WHISTLER, B.C. — It may be smaller than the current Ford F-150, but the new Ranger still sneers down its nose at F-150s of old. It’s longer, wider and taller and significantly more capable. If you were expecting a truck as compact as the previous Ranger, this isn’t it.

Market demand pushed the old Ranger out of the market, as buyers migrated to 1500-series trucks and started demanding more capability and more size until we got to today’s behemoths, such as the F-150 and Chevy Silverado.

As that was happening, and as fuel prices and carbon taxation started to influence affordability, white space started to open below the F-150, to the point Ford — and GM — started to see a business case for getting back into a part of the market both companies had abandoned to Toyota Tacoma and Nissan Frontier.

“Ford knows trucks, and this segment is growing,” said Joe Comacchio, product marketing manager for F-150 and Ranger for Ford of Canada. “It’s a great opportunity to introduce a new truck.”

Honda’s new Passport a ticket to ride

It is perhaps testament to how hard it can be — and how disastrous some efforts are — to come up with new vehicle names that carmakers are resurrecting names that aren’t necessarily taken from stellar examples from the past.

Chrysler, for reasons unknown, dredged up the name Pacifica for its new minivan. It’s unfortunate, since the new van is exceptional, while the original Pacifica was not.

At the other end of the spectrum, Ford is unlikely to reuse the name Edsel, except in reference to the founder’s only son, and Cadillac doesn’t currently have plans to introduce a new Cimarron.

So it was with a bit of curiosity we found out Honda was introducing the Passport. As with Pacifica, the latest Passport is a fine vehicle, not at all reminiscent of the rebadged Isuzu that was the original Passport.

Kenaston Boulevard transforming into a luxury-vehicle corridor

Winnipeg’s Birchwood Automotive Group has embarked on a massive, multi-million-dollar expansion, adding three new dealerships, renovating three others and adding a new brand to the fold.

Expected to open in the summer of 2020 is Birchwood Lexus, while not far behind will be Jaguar Land Rover Winnipeg and Birchwood Volkswagen, the company’s first VW franchise, on Regent Avenue. The Jaguar Land Rover and Lexus stores will be neighbours facing Kenaston Boulevard.

Kevin McNeill, vice-president of operations, said Jaguar Land Rover and Lexus will benefit from having their own, stand-alone dealerships. Lexus currently shares space with Birchwood Toyota while Jaguar Land Rover is paired with Volvo Winnipeg.

Both the Toyota and Volvo stores will remain in their current locations in the Pointe West Auto Park.

Behind the wheel of the Panamera GTS

| SCARBOROUGH, Ont. — The Porsche Cayenne and Macan models attracted an entirely new set of customers to the brand, stealing sales from other brands’ crossovers and growing the company’s customer base.

The Panamera GTS — brilliant though it may be — will be no such vehicle.

Hyundai focuses on fresh design

It is a nondescript corner on what is quickly becoming a significant traffic corridor, but by the spring of 2020, the corner of Lagimodiere Boulevard and Almey Avenue is expected to become the new home of Focus Hyundai.

“It’s a really exciting time for Hyundai,” said Brian Lowes, president of Focus Hyundai and also of Mercedes-Benz Winnipeg.

“We’ve seen this movie a lot with Mercedes, an expanding product line, and when you invest in the store in a way that complements the flow of the customer, it’s been a great success for Mercedes and we’re trying to replicate that with Hyundai.”

The new Focus Hyundai building will be across the street from the Lowe’s (no relation) home-improvement store and a neighbour to the Olive Garden restaurant and Steinbach Credit Union.

From racetrack to road…

NEW YORK — Oliver Rowland isn’t your average electric-vehicle consumer. As a driver for Nissan’s Formula E electric racing team, Rowland is arguably at the leading edge of what promises to be an EV revolution.

He, perhaps more than most people, understands the concept of range anxiety, that fear of running out of power: if he runs out of juice, he doesn’t finish the race. He tries to not let it bother him.

“When you begin your racing career in karting, you learn how to not let the stressful times get to you,” he said.

Formula E, which launched in 2014, is not just a racing circuit to entertain fans, it’s a testbed for the future of electric mobility. Unlike other racing circuits, teams compete with the same chassis, same powertrain, same tires and the same battery.

City’s ‘hidden gem’: Transcona

Transcona — long the butt of many jokes in the rest of Winnipeg — has been identified as the city’s top “hidden gem” in a national study of neighbourhood livability.

“We generated all those jokes to keep bad people away,” Alex Morrison, executive director of the Transcona BIZ, said jokingly.

“What we have here in Transcona — an authentic downtown, a totally walkable community — is what millennials and young families are demanding,” she said.

The 2019 Re/Max Livability Report surveyed Canadians from coast to coast on how their neighbourhoods met key factors identified as making an area “livable.” Tops on the list were easy access to shopping, dining and green spaces, followed by proximity to public transit, work and preferred schools.

Nissan launches 50th anniversary edition of iconic sports car

NEW YORK — Fifty years ago, the last letter in the alphabet became the first word in Japanese performance cars. On this side of the Pacific, at least.

The Nissan S30 — among the most successful lines of sports cars ever produced — rolled onto our shores in 1969. If you don’t recognize the designator, it’s because here, it was called the Datsun 240Z. (The GT-R, which also celebrates its 50th anniversary, is actually an earlier car, having been launched in 1968; however, it didn’t appear in North America until 2008.)

Designed to compete with the MGB, the 240Z did so, not only on price but also on technology. Its four-wheel independent suspension and rack-and-pinion steering were superior to the MGB’s live rear axle and king-pin steering.

The car’s 2.4-litre (guess where the 240 came from...) produced 151 horsepower and 146 lb.-ft. of torque, which, in a car weighing only 1,400 kilograms, was good for zero-60 times of eight seconds. Respectable back in the day and hardly a slouch by today’s standards, either.

Drinking in Kentucky’s bourbon trail

Whiskey is on the nose, and we’re halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh, but this isn’t Scotland and a kilt is nae to be found.

This is the Kentucky bourbon trail, and Louisville — home of the Kentucky Derby and birthplace of the hot brown sandwich — is its epicentre. Within the city, and within a few hours’ drive, are some of the biggest, best and smallest names in bourbon: Jim Beam, Evan Williams, Maker’s Mark, Bulleit, Wild Turkey and Woodford Reserve are just a few.

They each offer tours of their distilleries, samples and lessons in bourbon history. Bourbon is a specific concoction of whiskey, so much so the U.S. Congress passed regulations in 1964 stipulating what can and cannot be called bourbon. Among eight requirements are that it be made with a grain base of no less than 51 per cent corn; that it must be aged in new, charred oak barrels; and must be made in the United States. (A common misconception holds it must be made in Kentucky.)

I started my tour at Maker’s Mark, about an hour south of Louisville, where our tour guide, Jackie, is recounting how the founder, Bill Samuels Sr., began the business in 1953.

Ascent soars to new heights

The 2019 Subaru Ascent may not be the first three-row Subie, but it may as well be.

Remember the Tribeca? Yeah, not too many do. Which, in some ways, is a shame: it wasn’t a bad crossover, despite, or because of, its original unique styling.

A GM-Saab-Subaru hybrid, the Tribeca only lasted nine years, and its Saab counterpart, the 9-6, was cancelled when GM sold its stake in Subaru’s parent company, Fuji Heavy Industries. In a way, that’s not all bad. The world didn’t need another Saab story just as the company was going up in flames.

As its next attempt at a full-size crossover, the Ascent hits the market as a largely capable, relatively fuel-efficient vehicle. It has Subaru’s almost-legendary symmetrical all-wheel-drive system, though many competing all-wheel-drive systems have caught up to its capabilities.

Updated Mazda offers Zoom Zoom all year round

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — There is, somewhere beneath our feet, the first hole of the Resort at Squaw Creek golf course. We’re not here to shoot par, however: today, the first hole is actually an all-wheel-drive demonstration track, with a few inches of ice atop several metres of snow.

It was the answer to my original question: “How do they plan to demonstrate all-wheel drive when they’re flying us to Sacramento in spring?”

We drove the 2019 Mazda3 through the fields of Sacramento Valley, past trees starting to bud and flowers in bloom until we arrived in the mountains and ended our drive at Tahoe, where the snow was so deep, the cabins of snow plows poked above the snow like turtles in a lake coming up for air.

So we’re in a car, on a bed of snow four metres deep, trying to make sense of Mazda’s i-Activ all-wheel drive, and how it will apply to compact-car customers seeking a bit more winter-driving control.

Nissan unveils Altimate track star

CIRCUIT MECAGLISSE, Que. — It’s an idea as outrageous as it is brilliant: take a regular sedan, remove the wheels, lift the suspension and add four tracks for unbeatable deep-snow performance.

Such is how the Nissan Altimate came to be. The brainchild of Didier Marsaud, Nissan Canada’s director of corporate communications, who also conceived of Nissan’s Micra Cup racing circuit, the Altimate is a marketing tool designed to highlight the standard all-wheel drive offered on the 2019 Nissan Altima.

It was or will be a star at the Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver auto shows, but it’s no mere stage accessory. It works.

Riding on large Dominator tracks from American Track Truck — which also supplied the tracks for the Nissan Rogue Warrior — there isn’t much that can stop the Altimate.

Big fun found in Mini package

When I reviewed the Mazda MX-5, I raved about its razor-sharp go-kart handling and spirited acceleration, but found in the company’s zeal to take out every ounce of weight it could, Mazda made the thing just a bit too small.

A helpful reader suggested trying the Audi A3 as a blend of go-kart nimbleness with a smidge of practicality, but most automotive journalists in Canada can only imagine what Audis are like, as the company has, apparently, a very limited scope of a public relations function.

Thanks to Mini Canada, however, I have found a vehicle that’s very nearly as responsive as the MX-5, but actually has space for people and stuff: the 2019 Countryman.

It’s not huge: you can still rub elbows with your passenger, but it has four seats and a cargo area good for more than a pair of tube socks, plus folding rear seats that make the latest Countryman’s cargo area approach that of another Mazda, the CX-3.

Nissan all-in with Altima

CIRCUIT MECAGLISSE, Que. — The big news out of the launch of the new 2019 Nissan Altima in California in September was also the least relevant, at least at the time.

For Canada, Altima would come with standard all-wheel drive. In the U.S., all-wheel drive is an option.

It was almost impossible to put the all-wheel drive to any kind of meaningful test on the dry tarmac surrounding Santa Barbara, so we’re here, about an hour north of Montreal, winding the all-wheel-drive Altima around Circuit Mecaglisse, a popular racetrack used summer and winter by many manufacturers.

To get here, we first drove on twisty, snow-covered country roads, which hinted that Nissan has got all-wheel drive figured out. Such was confirmed on the foot-thick ice that now covers the racetracks at Mecaglisse.

Commercial condos hit local market

A real estate trend popular in super-expensive cities in Canada — Toronto and Vancouver, for instance — is starting to show up in Winnipeg, though it faces an uphill battle to gain traction here.

Class-A office space in buildings such as the McKim Building on Main Street or Glasshouse on Hargrave Street is on the market, but rather than the typical leasing arrangement, these spaces are being marketed as commercial condos.

Kyra Winfield, a senior associate with Avison Young’s retail group, who is marketing the Glasshouse space, said these kinds of units move very quickly in Toronto or Vancouver, but she’s had to warn her client this space may take some time to sell.

“It’s the matter of the right time and place,” she said, painting a picture of the perfect buyer. “It’s a business that wants to maximize the opportunity of being well-located — an opportunity that doesn’t come up very often, with a hotel condo complex, two restaurants, a coffee shop and being almost right across from Bell MTS Place — someone who has a business, who sees the advantages of all those things and wants to build equity in that location.”

Hudbay doubling gold production in Snow Lake

Hudbay Minerals, which sent Manitoba’s mining sector reeling with the pending closure of its entire Flin Flon mining and smelting operation, is spending $124 million to double gold production in Snow Lake.

The company says refurbishing its New Brittania ore-processing mill, plus newfound gold, copper, zinc and silver deposits at its Lalor mine, is set to more than double gold production to approximately 140,000 ounces annually for the first five years.

Hudbay said its plan supports a further 10-year lifespan for the Lalor mine, with ore from nearby satellite deposits holding the potential to extend operations of the New Brittania mill beyond 10 years. The company estimates a gold-production cost of $450 per ounce, “positioning Lalor as one of the lowest-cost gold mines in Canada.”

Recent gold prices have been around the US$1,340 mark.

Process to select a jury an education in civic obligation

The lineup snaked out the downtown Winnipeg Law Courts Building doors almost to Kennedy Street. We were here on a surprisingly balmy January morning, awaiting our fate at jury selection, or to visit the probate office, divorce court or to file any manner of documents.

First up, screening by the sheriff’s officers who operate the body scanners and X-ray machines.

“Do you have a laptop in here?” one asks.

“No.” I did not.

Hyundai offers its biggest SUV to date

With six SUVs in the lineup now, the full-size Palisade just announced and — according to Hyundai America chief operating officer Brian Smith — another on the way, is Hyundai becoming an SUV company that also makes cars instead of a car company that also makes SUVs?

Currently, there are six in the North American pipeline: the Nexo fuel-cell crossover, the Tucson, the Santa Fe, the Kona, the Kona EV and the Santa Fe XL. Palisade is No. 7 and Smith said one more is coming.

The count may not as yet have overtaken its cars (eight), but that’s certainly where the market is headed.

The Palisade is bigger than anything Hyundai has built to date, even the short-lived Veracruz. It has seating for eight and, even with eight people, 509 litres of cargo room. That grows to 1,296 litres with the third row folded.

Modern twist on historic property

An Exchange District building with a link to Louis Riel that was without a name for 133 years is getting a new lease on life, and a name, as a 39-unit residential complex.

The building at 104 and 108 Princess St., on the northwest corner at Bannatyne Avenue, has been purchased by Winnipeg’s Legatum Developments, and work is underway to create apartments, loft-style apartments, retail space and a rooftop patio.

Warehouse 1885 is slated for occupancy by the end of 2019.

Co-developer Alex Boersma said the opportunity to blend old with new was too great too ignore.

Mazda CX-5 gets turbo treatment

WHISTLER, B.C. — Mazda wanted a CX Winter Drive program and Whistler delivered, with thick, wet snow that hampered exploring the limits of the 2019 CX-5’s new turbo, but offered a great workout of the i-Active all-wheel-drive system.

For 2019, the CX-5 not only gets the same turbo as the CX-9 and topline Mazda6, it also gets a new “Signature” trim level, hoping to snag some compact crossover buyers from the likes of Mercedes, Audi or BMW. It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.

Full disclosure: my personal vehicle is a CX-5, without the turbo.

For the past couple of years, Mazda has chased the goal of remaining committed to the mainstream customer, but at the same time, trying to steal sales from the premium segment. The Signature trim — now offered on CX-9, Mazda6 and CX-5 — is part of that effort. It offers a higher level of finishing materials — rosewood trim on CX-9, abachi wood trim on CX-5 and sandalwood on Mazda6 — as well as some technology touches.

Second opinion: Outlander’s success a pleasant surprise

Mitsubishi has sold 5,052 Outlander PHEV models so far in 2018, which the company says is the first time a plug-in hybrid has surpassed 5,000 sales in Canada in one calendar year.

If that number surprises you, it should. And it shouldn’t.

It should, if only because if any carmaker was going to do that, I wouldn’t have guessed it would be one of the country’s smallest. It shouldn’t, because the Outlander PHEV is actually pretty darn good.

First, aside from the badging, clues that this is any different from the gas-powered Outlander are few: there’s the extra filling door on the passenger side for the charging port, the shifter is a joystick instead of a traditional PRNDL stick and the instrument panel has details on the powertrain the gas model doesn’t.

Despite legalization, athletes urged to tread cautiously

In February, Bob Eyler of Michigan came from almost out of nowhere to win the Vegas Shoot, claiming US$52,000 in prize money and the prestige of winning the world’s largest indoor archery tournament.

In October, he was stripped of the title and the cash and handed a two-year exclusion period. His disqualification handed both the money and the victory to Canadian Christopher Perkins, who was the last man to have lost to Eyler in the shootoff (a tie-breaker in archery).

Eyler’s misdeed? He tested positive for cannabis use, as well as propanolol, a drug used to treat high blood pressure. Both are prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Getting out in front of legalization, which in Canada began Oct. 17, is something sports agencies have had top of mind since the federal Liberals gained power in 2015. Glen Bergeron, a professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Applied Health at the University of Winnipeg, has been part of that effort from the start.

Jeep on truckin’

LOS ANGELES — Jeep’s latest vehicle can hardly be called new: It had been in production almost continuously from 1947 to 1992, and it’s something for which Jeep’s “most vocal fanbase” has been clamouring ever since.

The 2020 Gladiator and Gladiator Rubicon hit the market in the latter part of 2019 and bring back a pickup truck to a brand that previously sold Scramblers and Comanches.

“Each time Jeep offers a new product to its portfolio, it introduces a new range of customers to the Jeep family,” said Tim Kuniskis, head of Jeep development. “We expand the Jeep lineup not by going out of our lane, but by widening it.

“Jeep has the most vocal fanbase on Earth, and they’ve been prodding us to build a truck.”

All-new Mazda3 gaining traction

LOS ANGELES — With available all-wheel drive and a gas engine that runs like a diesel, the all-new Mazda3 packs a technological punch into a pair of artful body styles, all while laying another brick in Mazda’s journey to becoming a Japanese premium brand.

Globally, five new engines will be available, including 1.5-, 2.0- and 2.5-litre Skyactive-G gasoline engines, a 1.8-litre diesel and the groundbreaking Skyactiv-X engine.

Mazda is also taking a run at Subaru by offering all-wheel drive for the first time in a compact sedan.

The i-Active All-Wheel-Drive system senses the vertical load on each of the four tires and works in concert with the system Mazda calls G-Vectoring Control to distribute torque as needed.

New pickup drives like a dream

It is, easily, the single most profitable segment of the automotive industry. Margins for manufacturers selling pickup trucks are huge, especially at the popular top end of the segment. Case in point, the 2019 Ram 1500 Limited, which as-tested tips the scales at $85,000.

All those profits make this an extremely competitive segment, and you can see that in how the various manufacturers keep upping the ante in both luxury and capability.

For 2019, Ram has softened some looks, hardened others and gone on a diet, which improves two key capabilities for trucks, payload and towing.

To get a sense of what’s improved from the previous generation, who better than someone who has driven one every day for just over a year? I reached out to my friend Erik Wanhella, whose 2015 Ram 1500 is still in excellent condition, and who also drives a big rig for work.

A little auto TLC goes a long way

This is a tale of neglect, resurrection and pure, blind luck.

My friend, Bill Gardiner, has neighbours who once owned a 1990s-era Toyota Corolla and they treated it terribly.

“If it didn’t stop it from driving, it didn’t get fixed,” he said. Didn’t matter what the problem was. If the car drove, it drove and that was the end of it.

So one day, perhaps feeling sorry for the old clunker, Gardiner approached them as the car had been sitting for some time, having been abandoned by the last of a few siblings to which it had been handed down. They were planning to tow it to the scrapyard for the scrap value, about $200.

MX-5 packs a punch, but pack light

In terms of unadulterated driving pleasure, the 2019 Mazda MX-5 is hard to beat.

It’s as nimble as Jack, just as quick and seemingly able to drive circles around candlesticks.

In terms of practical drivability… well, more on that in a bit.

The MX-5, Mazda’s term for what we still like to call Miata, is as close to a go-kart as cars get. You ride inches off the ground, you feel everything and its steering is point and shoot. It goes where you point it. The responsiveness of the handling will surprise you the first time you drive it, but you quickly get the hang of it.

Bustling dealerships find room to grow

Bursting at the seams, Winnipeg’s original Subaru dealership, Frontier Subaru on Pembina Highway, is moving to the Waverley Auto Mall.

At the same time, Frontier Toyota on Regent Avenue is building a new 45,000-square-foot dealership behind its current store.

Jack Zheng, general manager of Frontier Subaru, and Kirk Cancilla, general manager of Frontier Toyota, said both locations are too small for the volume of sales, and expansion at the Subaru location is impossible.

“We simply outgrew that store,” Cancilla said. “The Subaru brand, the business is growing. It’s incredible.”

Honda Clarity makes gas prices irrelevant

Gas, as I write this, is about $1.19 per litre. On the left coast, it’s pushing $1.50. Out East, about $1.25.

How much did I put into the 2018 Honda Clarity after a week? $0.

Zero litres times even $4 a litre is still $0.

It’s easily enough to make overlooking any issues more than worthwhile.

Keep your pooch away from your pot

As the Oct. 17 legalization of marijuana nears, Canada’s veterinarians are gearing up to add cannabis-based medicines to their tool kits for therapeutic uses in pets, but are also warning pet owners to keep a close eye on their stash.

“As a group, we’re excited to see more clinical research come out and be able to add these products as another tool for helping treat pain, anxiety or other neurological issues,” said Dr. Ian Sandler, CEO of Grey Wolf Animal Health and a veterinarian at Rosedale Animal Hospital in Toronto. Medical marijuana for pets isn’t something that’s necessarily imminent, he said.

Sandler quickly tempers his enthusiasm by warning pet owners against medicating their pets without a veterinarian’s help, and to take precautions to prevent inadvertent ingestion by a ravenous Rottweiler or curious cocker spaniel.

Dr. Jonas Watson, president of the Manitoba Veterinary Medical Association, said not enough is known about dosage and side-effects, but suggests that may come over time.

The Altimate sedan?

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — At a time when carmakers are dropping sedans like hot potatoes, Nissan is doubling down with a car it claims represents the biggest investment in vehicle development in Nissan’s history.

For Canada, the news around the 2019 Nissan Altima is even more interesting, with all-wheel drive as standard equipment, a clear shot at Subaru, which has staked out a sizable chunk of the Canadian market with a lineup of vehicles almost exclusively equipped with all-wheel drive.

It’s a strong entrant in the all-wheel-drive sedan market, as well, with a stylish new design and snazzy interior that wouldn’t be out of place in Nissan’s luxury brand, Infiniti.

The all-wheel push is unique to Canada, as the American market will get a choice of front- and all-wheel drive.

A worthy entry into the compact SUV class

If ever there was an argument against the current collection of hybrid vehicles, the 2019 Mazda CX-3 might be it.

Consider for a moment the CX-3 is $9,000 less than a comparable hybrid from another brand, yet still delivers fuel economy that is only slightly less efficient than its hybrid rival.

This is not to disparage hybrid technology. Far from it. The hybrids and electrics on the market now are important stepping stones to alternative fuels. Still, they don’t yet make an economic argument for themselves.

Consider: if you can save $9,000 and still get fuel economy in the seven litres per 100 kilometre range (my average for a week was slightly better than that official average, actually), your car probably won’t last long enough to achieve cost parity.

From pitchfork steaks to a thrilling mountain pass, a road trip to Utah is a treat

We came upon the badlands at 129 kilometres per hour, when the sweeping prairie landscape of rolling pasture seemed to crumble around us.

Gone were the grasslands, grazing cattle and oil wells, and in their places were cliffs, hoodoos and gullies formed in clay over millions of years of depositing and eroding.

North Dakota’s main east-west speedway, Interstate 94, offered only a sneak peek at the state’s badlands before changing scenery like the flipping of a switch.

Unlike mountains, which don’t exactly sneak up on you, the badlands are art in negative relief, carved into the prevailing terrain rather than sitting on top of it. With the exception of a brief glimpse between two dales from the highway, you don’t see the badlands until you’re in them.

Lincoln is bringing the power back

‘My pappy said, ‘Son, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’ if you don’t stop drivin’ that hot rod Lincoln.’”

That rockabilly hit came out in 1955. It may also have been the last time anyone put the words “hot rod” and “Lincoln” in the same sentence.

Many of the Lincolns coming down the pike since have been but warmed-over Fords — a recent MKZ Hybrid that came through had in the trunk Ford Fusion floor mats that fit perfectly. The MKC is the nicest Escape you can buy and an MKX is at its heart a Ford Edge. (To be completely fair, Lincoln is differentiating itself with exclusive engine offerings with more power.)

Enter the Continental, a car that doesn’t exist in any form with a blue oval on the front. A car presaged but never realized under Gerry McGovern’s American Luxury concept when the now-Land Rover design chief was penning new Lincolns in the early 2000s.

Crossover unobtrusively offers power, economy

TORONTO — In the end, Infiniti’s ground-breaking variable-compression-ratio turbocharged engine — a concept Infiniti said has long been attempted but never achieved — felt decidedly, unremarkably... normal.

There were no telltale cues of how it varied the engine’s compression ratio — from 8:1 for power to 14:1 for economy. No puffs of smoke, no jerky vibrations, no harsh clashing of gears.

The engine is a breakthrough of technology. Instead of choosing a fixed, compromise-compression ratio, which engine designers have had to do ever since 1864 when Nikolaus Otto burned gasoline inside a cylinder for the first time, the variable-compression-turbo engine uses a motor and a series of couplings to vary the travel of each piston according to demands.

That the engine’s technology felt altogether normal was music to the ears of Peter Wendel, Infiniti Canada’s product planning manager for the QX50. Offering both power and economy, unobtrusively, was a key design goal.

Luxury carmaker drives innovative sales model home and online

Genesis, the luxury-brand offshoot of Korean carmaker Hyundai, has landed in Winnipeg two years ahead of schedule.

Genesis Winnipeg opened July 4 under the flag of the Murray Automotive Group, which also operates Murray Hyundai in the Waverley Auto Mall.

Nationally, Genesis employs a unique sales process, with customers booking test drives online and having all sales functions handled online. Test drives, new-vehicle delivery, and pickup and drop-off for service happen at the customer’s home or office at the customer’s convenience. A customer need never set foot in a dealership.

“When a brand like Genesis is trying to break into the market, it’s not going to do it on product alone,” Genesis Winnipeg general manager Richard Eccleston said. “We have to be a disruptor.”

Beauty at the birthplace of civilization

NEAR ELOUNDA, Greece — Pull over. Now.

The view is literally issuing navigation commands as we reach a hilltop overlooking Elounda, Greece, and the Aegean Sea.

From here, the crystal clear water to the sky to the land across the bay are putting on a study in blue, from pastel blue to navy to royal. It’s hard to tell where the sea ends and the sky or land begins.

It takes your breath away and rewards you for having the good sense to slow down and take it all in.

As more couples think outside the hall, rural settings are becoming more popular for unique weddings

ELMA — It’s under water today, but in 2012 Joy and Scott Sutyla got married on a patch of bedrock in the middle of the Whitemouth River.

“You can’t see it — we’ve had a lot of rain — but we were married on a rock shelf right over there,” Scott says, pointing from the dock off his property in Elma. “We had the river and the train bridge in the background and all the guests watching from the shore.”

Fast-forward to today, and Joy says the pair never planned to be in the wedding venue business, but the success of their own nuptials and the urging of friends convinced them their River’s Edge Resorts cottage-rental business could be so much more.

Their grand opening in June couldn’t have come at a better time, says wedding planner Leanne Rajotte, who says demand for unique, country weddings couldn’t be higher.

Get your Kicks with new subcompact crossover

MONTREAL — If you get hip to this kind of trip… Look, we’re not going to St. Louis, down to Missouri and this road isn’t Route 66, but we’re getting our Kicks anyway.

The 2018 Nissan Kicks subcompact crossover has just hit stores, and is shaping up to be quite the contender in an increasingly crowded segment. Competitors include Ford EcoSport, Hyundai Kona, Kia Soul, Mazda CX-3, Honda HR-V, Toyota CH-R and Chevrolet Trax.

Carmakers are all trying to get a piece of this pie, which Nissan expects to grow by 60 per cent from 78,994 units sold in 2017 to more than 126,000 units a year by 2022, a number that would be nearly 10 per cent of the market.

As a later entrant, Kicks has the advantage of some hindsight, which gives it a couple of competitive edges. It’s the lowest-priced SUV to feature automatic emergency braking as standard equipment, it offers amenities such as heated seats on a trim level thousands less than some competitors and proclaims to have the segment’s best fuel economy, at 6.6 litres per 100 kilometres on the highway.

Refreshed Sorento is a bona fide joy ride

LAKE ROSSEAU, Ont. — The turbo is no more. That may be the most noticeable difference between the 2018 and 2019 Kia Sorento.

For many manufacturers these days, adding power means slapping on a turbo, not an extra pair of cylinders.

But Kia, which until 2018 offered three engine choices — 2.4-litre four, 2.0-litre turbo four and 3.3-litre V-6 — is going the other direction, dropping the turbo and soldiering on with just the four and the V-6.

“We’ve always had the V-6, and if you’re talking fuel economy and emissions, a turbo is probably not the way to go,” said Ted Lancaster, vice-president of Kia Canada. “What do you do when you have a turbo? You put your foot on it because you want to get that turbo going.”

Ecosport a compact crossover with potential

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — It’s somehow fitting Ford is launching the 2018 Ecosport compact crossover here on the Rock, a place where the friendly locals gently chide “mainlanders” and have their own, unique dialect.

Fitting, because Ford is employing its own version of talking strangely. That’s because the company that fiercely demands its turbo engines be called EEKO-boost is just as fiercely demanding the Ecosport be pronounced “ECHOsport.”

Whatever you call it, the Ecosport is yet another entrant in the fastest-growing segment in automobilia, the compact crossover. And set against much of its competition, the Ecosport has a few things going for it.

First, unlike competitors Toyota CH-R or Nissan Kicks, it’s available with all-wheel drive. It feels more spacious than Mazda’s CX-3 (though Ford points out it doesn’t consider the CX-3 to be in the same class).

The NX300h is pretty fly — for a hybrid

The 2018 Lexus NX 300h is a smartly styled, luxurious entry into the premium compact segment. It’s also a hybrid.

There’s not much to dislike about the NX 300, the hybrid’s gas-only sibling, so if the few complaints with the hybrid system don’t put you off, you might like it. On that point, we’d then have to agree to disagree.

As with most of its current siblings, the NX is a notable departure from what had been some pretty ho-hum styling from Lexus. From a design standpoint, it’s hard to argue Lexus hasn’t found its mojo. The interior doesn’t so much as exist around you as it embraces you, with cleverly placed controls, high-end materials and nearly flawless execution.

And hey, I get the idea behind a hybrid is to be good to the environment, but there’s something about the hybrid system — the continuously variable transmission, perhaps — that saps some of the driving joy. Putting your foot into it and then hearing the engine stay at one speed throughout acceleration just feels odd.

It won't come cheap, but Ford's latest diesel-powered truck offering is worth the price tag

DENVER — Ford has hit a home run with its latest diesel offering in the 2018 F-150, but customers will be paying a pretty penny for the privilege.

The engine, a 3.0-litre PowerStroke diesel built in England and installed at the Dearborn (Mich.) truck plant, offers outstanding fuel economy, a stump-pulling 440 pound-feet of torque and a quiet ride that belies its oil-burning ways.

That the diesel’s fuel economy beats the entire rest of the F-150 lineup by a country mile should come as no surprise: diesel engines are inherently more fuel efficient, thanks to an ignition cycle that ensures every molecule of fuel inside the cylinder spontaneously combusts under pressure.

As 4x2 models, the diesel is rated at 10.8 litres per 100 km city, 8.0 highway and 9.5 combined. By comparison, the best 4x2 gas-burning F-150 — the 2.7-litre EcoBoost V-6 — is rated at 12.0, 9.4 and 10.8. Differences between 4x4 models are similar, even if the numbers are higher. As a 4x4, the diesel is rated at 11.8, 9.3 and 10.7.

Mazda unveils a radical refresh for its successful midsize sedan

VERNON, B.C. — When Mazda Canada’s Mark Peyman said the 2018 Mazda6 was the first sedan in Canada to get a four-cylinder motor with cylinder deactivation, veteran automotive journalist Jim Kenzie begged to differ.

“My Fiat 600 had it,” he said to laughter in the audience. Yes, retorted the others in attendance, but in the Fiat’s case, it wasn’t intentional.

Launching a somewhat radical refresh of a car that first hit the roads in 2012, Mazda’s changes go more than skin deep.

Two new motors are on tap, a 2.5-litre normally aspirated four-cylinder with cylinder deactivation, and a 2.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder delivering more than 300 foot-pounds of torque.

New Nissan Leaf's increase in computing power behind horsepower boost

OTTAWA — It is, interestingly enough, an increase in computing power and not a change in the engine or batteries that’s behind a 37 per cent increase in horsepower for the 2018 Nissan Leaf.

Owen Thunes, an engineer from Nissan’s Technical Center near Sacramento, Calif., said faster processor speeds in the computer driving the power inverter — which converts the drive battery’s direct current into alternating current to power the motor — along with increased cooling ability, allow Nissan to develop higher voltages at the inverter’s output, which translates into more power and torque from the motor.

“The motor itself hasn’t changed, it’s all in the inverter,” Thunes said.

Look, a detailed explanation would require a discussion about such things as root mean square and P=I2R, but suffice it to say, Nissan is getting more power by being smarter, not less efficient.

Hope blooms for revitalized Osborne Village

When Robert Orr lived in Osborne Village, he and his wife loved the hip, urban feel of the area, whether it was its variety of shops and services or its bars and restaurants.

Today, he looks at the dirty windows of a vacant coffee shop, the empty spaces where Desart and other shops were located, the dated exterior of one of its restaurants or the on-again, off-again — but mostly off-again — future of the former Osborne Village Inn and wonders what went wrong.

“It’s supposed to be a hip neighbourhood and it’s right in the heart of the city, (but) it just hasn’t seemed able to keep up with other parts of the city,” he said.

“What doesn’t make sense to me is, they’ve always talked about, for the downtown to thrive, you need people, and if you had lots of people, the businesses would follow,” he said.

Mitsubishi ditching cars on road to SUV-exclusive status

MONO, Ont. — We’re here in Mono, just down the road from Stereo, to watch Mitsubishi take the next step toward no longer being a carmaker.

We’re driving the 2018 Eclipse Cross, the latest example yet of Mitsubishi’s complete abdication of the passenger car market; when the last few Lancers and i-MiEVs leave the lot, Mitsubishi will be an SUV maker that used to make cars.

Don Ulmer, senior product planning manager for Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada, said buyers are abandoning the passenger car — and he pointed to declining sales for even stellar passenger car examples.

He thinks a market remains for compact cars, but then acknowledges how profit margins shrink as cars get smaller.

New regulations combat driving in the dark, permit new headlight technology

Driving in the dark in Canada could soon be a thing of the past thanks to new regulations unveiled in Ottawa Wednesday.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau released updated vehicle-lighting regulations that will, among other things, require all new cars sold in Canada by 2021 to feature automatic illumination of all relevant lights, including tail lights, in low-light conditions.

The move addresses a significant oversight in lighting regulations that have, since 1990, required cars to feature daytime running lights. The problem, Garneau said, is that some cars will light up the dash and daytime running lights automatically, but not the tail lights, presenting a hazard to vehicles approaching from the rear.

All jurisdictions in Canada require lights be turned on in low-light conditions, Garneau noted. In Manitoba, drivers must activate their lights between a half hour before sunset and a half hour after dawn.

Ford plans to bring hybrid technology to mainstream models

DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford showrooms in Canada and the U.S. are going to look significantly different in the next few years, starting with a new line of off-road SUVs catering to those who actually want to go off road, as well as a wide range of hybrid and electric vehicles.

Customers will also see more new and redesigned models more frequently, as Ford aims to cut the average age of designs in showrooms to 3.3 years from today’s 5.7 years.

The two SUVs, one of which is the new Bronco, offer a cross between on-road drivability and off-road ability. The other, as-yet unnamed and seen only in teaser images so far, appears a smaller sibling to Bronco but with the same characteristics.

Jim Farley, Ford’s president of global markets, said the new SUVs carve a niche out of the white space between hard-core off-roaders such as the Jeep Wrangler and soccer-parent crossovers such as Explorer or Escape.

GMC Sierra continues its growth spurt

HAMTRAMCK, Mich. — It’s longer. It’s wider. It’s taller. It has more cargo room and more passenger room. It has a bold, new grille that will fill rear-view mirrors and strike fear into the hearts of car drivers.

It’s the 2019 GMC Sierra Denali and Sierra SLT.

If you’ve ever leaped down from the seat of a current pickup truck, struggled to reach to clean snow off the windshield or needed a step-stool to check the oil and thought, “Man. Nice truck, but why does it have to be so puny?” GMC has your back.

The seemingly relentless march upwards in size continues to the point it won’t be long before these trucks are assigned their own postal codes. Today’s 1500-series pickups dwarf yesterday’s 2500- and 3500-series pickups by comparison, and today’s compact trucks rival yesterday’s full-size pickups in size.

Elantra Sport boasts significant upgrades over standard model

All too common lately has been a decision by carmakers to show off only their latest transmission designs, sending press cars only with dual-clutch automated manuals or gazillion-gear automatics.

That’s fine if such are the only offerings on the subject car, but if you want us to report on how fun a car is to drive, give us one that we actually find fun to drive!

So it was not without some surprise when I opened the door to the current examples — the 2018 Hyundai Elantra Sport and Elantra Sport GT — to find in both three pedals and a diagram for six manually selected gears on the shifter.

To be sure, the Elantra Sport in either variant is not designed to battle Ford Focus RSs, Subaru WRX STIs or Honda Civic Type Rs. What it is intended to do is inject a bit more fun into Hyundai’s compact sedan. It does just that.

Bricks-and-mortar stores embracing online sales with in-store pickup

Sears may have vanished from the Canadian marketplace and Target is still licking its wounds from an ill-fated expansion into Canada, but experts say neither is a death knell for bricks-and-mortar retail stores.

“If you look at the statistics, particularly in the U.S., about 10 per cent of shopping is done online, but if you flip that around, it means a whopping 90 per cent is still done in old-fashioned, bricks-and-mortar stores,” said Corey Quintaine, marketing manager for Kildonan Place and Grant Park Shopping Centres in Winnipeg.

Craig Patterson, editor-in-chief for the online trade publication Retail Insider, and a consultant to the Retail Council of Canada, said online shopping isn’t threatening retailers and said some operations on each side are embracing the other.

“I think what you’re seeing is a blurring of the channels,” Patterson said. “It’s merging into one channel, where you may order something online but go to the store to buy it, or use digital screens in the store to order something.”

Wedding bells will ring once more

NEAR GARSON — The pain lingered long after the flames went out.

When Robert and Tammy Belanger awoke to find their 1946-era barn — which they had moved from a neighbour’s property and turned into a wedding and event venue — ablaze, eight years’ work was going up in smoke.

“When it burnt, it was the most devastating thing that’s ever happened to us,” Tammy says. “To see the barn burning, and all the antiques we had in it and all the love and hard work we put into it, it was like losing a member of the family.”

Today, it isn’t the memory of that awful night in December 2016 that forces Robert to fight back a tear. It’s the response from family, friends, customers and suppliers.

Skyactiv-x brings diesel tech to gas engine

IRVINE, Calif. — Is the move to electrified vehicles (EV) ahead of its time?

That’s just one of the conversation starters at an event to unveil a groundbreaking new engine technology developed by Mazda, a gasoline engine that thinks it’s a diesel. At least, almost.

Robert Davis, Mazda’s senior vice-president, special assignments, pointed to the number of states — and provinces — powered by cleaner hydroelectric power next to jurisdictions still using coal, natural gas or nuclear power.

Davis suggested that instead of putting excess hydro power into cars, perhaps more overall gains could be made by having states or provinces ship clean power to jurisdictions still using fossil fuels.

Mistubishi electrifies the Outlander

VANCOUVER — Mitsubishi describes it as “the most significant model launch in our history.”

For a company that has been building cars for almost a century, that’s audacious. Yet, given how popular it is around the globe, the statement might just fit the 2018 Outlander PHEV.

“We have watched the success of the Outlander PHEV in country after country around the world,” said Juyu Jeon, Mitsubishi Canada’s vice-president, sales and marketing.

“It’s the bestselling plug-in hybrid in the world.

Acura TLX looks good, drives better

I can begin liking Acura again.

I mean, REALLY liking Acura again.

I’ve always been a fan of Acura’s driving dynamics, particularly the nifty super-handling all-wheel-drive (SH-AWD) system that not only improves traction, but is also a major benefit to cornering.

But the brand lost me for a generation with a number of odd styling decisions — not the least of which was a front grille that was more like a griddle. Flip it up and cook flapjacks. That kind of griddle.

'Spaceship' condos break the construction mould

It was an awkward lot with views only of a run-down rooming house and industrial sheds. But it was inexpensive.

Still, creating a compelling residential complex in such unattractive surroundings was a challenge: who wants to look at a retaining wall for the Disraeli freeway or the backs of condos on Waterfront Drive?

Such was the inspiration for the complex Winnipeggers tend to call the spaceship, a two-storey collection of suites elevated 40 feet above the base of the Disraeli, said Jason Manaigre, real estate agent for The Property Exchange Group, which is marketing 62M, a 40-suite condo/apartment building in the north Waterfront Drive neighbourhood.

“It’s not a place for everyone,” he said. “It is very unique, which makes it a challenge to sell.”

Canadian Tire gets an edge on winter tire market

You know Canadian Tire still sells, of all things, tires, right?

It’s sometimes easy to forget when the company’s current pitchman — Canadian actor Paul Constable — is hawking Christmas trees, electric grills, power tools and electric fireplaces.

Rubber has always been a big part of the company’s business since it began life in 1922 as the Hamilton Tire and Garage Ltd. in Toronto.

But as the chain diversified into housewares, tools and sporting goods, the company became the go-to for a bunch of products that had nothing to do with tires.

Ford's unveiling of 2019 Bullitt Mustang features the car that started it all

DETROIT — Sean Kiernan paid tribute to the memory of his father the best way he could. He finally restored his dad’s 1968 Mustang.

“I couldn’t go into the garage for two years after he died,” the Nashville resident said of the car that had been nearly completely disassembled at the time.

Kiernan’s dad, Robert, died in 2014 and left specific instructions for Sean to contact Ford in 2017 in preparation for a special 50th anniversary.

Robert’s Mustang, bought in 1974 for US$6,000, was no ordinary Mustang.

Five years after the Canadian Wheat Board: Many farmers relish the freedom, others still mourn the loss

Mike Bast, who farms wheat near La Salle, still hails the end of the Canadian Wheat Board.Ian Robson, who farms wheat near Deleau in southwestern Manitoba, still rails at the end of the Canadian Wheat Board.

Five and a half years after the federal government of Stephen Harper ended the board’s single-desk selling system for wheat and barley, and set in motion the end of the wheat board, the once hotly contested debate lingers for some, but is non-existent for others.

For Bast, freeing farmers to sell their wheat and barley to whomever they choose, whenever they choose, has boosted farm revenues, accelerated the receipt of income and provides more flexibility to deal with market changes.

“In the long-term and in the general, it was definitely a good move,” Bast said of ending the wheat board system. “Overall, I think it was a positive for Canadian farmers, in their net flows, their cash flows and for the growth of Canadian agriculture, as well.”

Ford Ranger re-emerges for 2019

DETROIT — Better late than never, or better than ever?

This week, Ford took the wraps off the 2019 Ranger, its compact pickup truck that’s been available globally for years and hinted at for North America at every opportunity. Ford is hoping Ranger’s array of features still makes a splash in a resurgent compact pickup segment despite coming in years after its rivals.

Ford dropped the once-popular model when tastes in trucks veered to full-size, and as full-size became super-size, space started to open up again for a compact truck that’s really not that compact.

In size, the Ranger — as well as its competitors Chevrolet Colorado, GMC Canyon, Nissan Frontier and Toyota Tacoma — resembles what was once the full-size truck.

New owner aims to reverse ailing fortunes of historic Royal Albert Arms Hotel

Winnipeggers who fondly remember hearing Monuments Galore, Green Day or Sum 41 pound it out at the Royal Albert Arms Hotel might soon be able to relive those glory days.

The historic 104-year-old hotel, considered a linchpin for redeveloping Albert Street, has a new owner, Neil Soorsma, after it was purchased at a mortgage auction in November for $1.35 million.

Soorsma, who describes himself as a successful landlord who has redeveloped a number of buildings over a 30-year real estate career, says plans for a restaurant to open on the main floor are underway.

“It’s not a name young people might remember, but it’s a good restaurant with a good history in the city,” he says. “We might have an announcement to make very shortly.”

Updated Camry offers great fuel economy, doesn't squeeze trunk space

It’s hard to write the words “game-changer” without feeling like some marketing department flunky who’s just trying too hard. It might not be a hyperbolic cliché when applied to the 2018 Toyota Camry Hybrid, however.

Aside from purpose-built hybrids such as the Prius, getting a hybrid passenger car has always meant a significant trade-off in cargo volume. The first Toyota Camry Hybrid, for instance, lost almost half its trunk space to the drive battery, and forget about fold-down rear seats.

The first-generation Lexus GS hybrid was even worse, what with having to accommodate both the rear axle and a drive battery. A set of golf clubs? Perhaps. If you didn’t need to carry the bag, too.

For most passenger-car buyers, that sacrifice was simply too great. Sure, you got good fuel economy, but only if you never had to carry anything larger than a couple of sleeping bags. In a market segment where trunk space is a key consideration, such a sacrifice relegated these cars to niche status.

Chance to learn car control on ice

Lake Winnipeg will be buzzing with Benzes again this February.

Mercedes-Benz is returning to Gimli with its AMG Winter Sporting tour, offering customers the chance to learn car control on racetracks groomed onto Lake Winnipeg near the Lakeview Resort and Conference Centre Gimli, which is the event’s host hotel.

“Last February was the first time AMG Winter Sporting was held outside Sweden, and the response and feedback from our participants was overwhelmingly positive,” said Danny Kok, chief instructor.

Kok said many of the registrants so far are returning customers, who will be bringing friends.

BMW X5 offers effortless acceleration

Christmas came early to the Taylor household this year when the Good Ferry, the Calgary-area company that ferries press vehicles around the Prairies, announced a delayed arrival meant I’d have almost an extra week in the 2017 BMW X5 xDrive 40e.

When it debuted in 2015, it was billed as BMW’s first plug-in hybrid “sports-activity vehicle” (BMW-speak for SUV). It offers up to 40 kilometres of electric-only mobility from a full charge, and operates as a hybrid once the battery runs out of e-drive-only juice.

A charge port just forward of the driver’s door and a charge-power indicator — showing whether the batteries are charging during deceleration or applying thrust during acceleration — are the only outward signs this is anything but a standard X5.

Locating the propulsion battery — distinct from the usual 12-volt car battery — under the cargo floor means the X5 loses zero cargo or passenger room to its electric-drive components.

New Infiniti turbo delivers fuel economy breakthrough

LOS ANGELES — It’s a technology automotive engineers have been dreaming about for 80 years.

Last week in Los Angeles, Infiniti made it happen.

It’s long been known that you could improve efficiency of a gasoline engine if you could vary the compression ratio: high compression for efficiency, low compression for power.

Many have tried, many have failed.

Survey suggests Winnipeg home prices will rise four per cent in 2018

Falling unemployment rates and rising household incomes in Manitoba are expected to counter moves by the federal government to cool off hot housing markets in Toronto and Vancouver, leading to a four per cent rise in average selling prices in Winnipeg in 2018, a market survey suggests.

“I think the big news is another strong year predicted, despite some of the regulatory changes coming in from the feds,” said Michael Froese, managing partner of Royal LePage Prime Real Estate.

“If I were to really sum it up, the pros are outweighing the cons.”

Royal LePage’s Market Survey Forecast predicts the aggregate house price in Winnipeg will rise four per cent to $315,120.

SUVs shaping up to be vehicles of 2018

LOS ANGELES — Sport utility vehicles are taking over the world.

Or at least the automotive market.

On the first press day of the Los Angeles Auto Show, of the 11 automaker press conferences held, eight featured SUVs. Only four featured sedans, convertibles or subcompacts. On the second day, there were three manufacturer press conferences featuring four SUVs.

Add to that two SUVs unveiled the night before at separate events and there’s no question: 2018 will be the year of the SUV.

Making things tougher for commuters helps build a better downtown, urban experts believe

Lyle Stafford prepares an americano as a passerby knocks on the door to inquire if his Joe and Lily café is open.

It’s not. Stafford is in just long enough to clean the floor and conduct a quick interview one Sunday morning in November. Yet the inquiry provides a key insight into Stafford’s thoughts about downtown, about traffic and about parking.

“When people are on foot or on bike, they’re coming into my shop,” he said. “When they’re in cars, they’re not.

“It’s a proven phenomenon.”

Downtown BIZ supports parking meter fee increase

Mayor Brian Bowman’s proposed $1 per hour on-street parking fee hike has the support of downtown businesses hoping to free up more short-term parking spaces for their customers, Downtown Business Improvement Zone chief executive Stefano Grande said.

“We are in favour of parking rates being used as a tool to move longer-term parkers into parkades,” Grande said Thursday.

Bowman unveiled the rate hike Wednesday in his proposed 2018 budget, which also proposes an increase in transit fares by 25 cents, meaning a ride for an adult paying the full fare would be $2.95.

Grande said the Downtown BIZ was hoping for the hike to apply to high-demand zones only — the Exchange District and the Sports, Hospitality and Entertainment District among them — but still supports the mayor’s decision to apply it across the board downtown.

The 2018 Ford Expedition is a big SUV with the feel of sports car

MALIBU, Calif. — At this event, a combined media launch for the 2018 Ford Mustang and Expedition, I came in expecting the handling story to be Mustang.

While this is not intended to disparage the new Mustang’s handling — which you’ll read about next week — the real surprise was Expedition.

We drove from Marina del Rey to Malibu in a 2.3-litre Ecoboost Mustang, carving up Mulholland Drive, Kanan Dume Road and Topanga Canyon Drive. Then we switched into the Expedition on our arrival at Calamigos Ranch Resort, and did many of the same roads all over again.

If you’re thinking those roads are twisty, you don’t know the half of it.

Manitobans divided on driverless cars: survey

Manitobans are fairly split on whether they favour the introduction of self-driving cars, but perhaps most surprising is that men are more accepting of computerized chauffeurs than women.

Those are the results of a short survey recently released by Prairie Research Associates. The survey said a slim majority (54 per cent) of Manitobans believe driverless cars will positively impact society, while 40 per cent believe they’ll be harmful.

By gender, 64 per cent of men and only 44 per cent of women favour driverless cars. As well, only 48 per cent of Manitobans think they’ll be safer, but by gender 62 per cent of men and only 36 per cent of women share that view.

“There’s this stereotypical view about men that they’re the ones who like to drive,” said Nicholas Borodenko, partner at Prairie Research Associates.

Cayenne SUV spicier than ever

ON THE ROADS NEAR Agios NIKOLAOS, Greece — This can’t be where we turn, can it?

We’re leaving our lunch of octopus and fish behind as we set out for the afternoon drive when the navigation system on the 2019 Porsche Cayenne tells us to turn down this nondescript, narrow gravel road with reddish, craggy rocks.

When we pass the turnoff, the nav system immediately recalculates and gets us to turn around. So glad we did.

The road is barely more than a car width wide, with no railing and a steep and most likely fatal drop to the Aegean Sea below. The scenery is breathtaking, like a watercolour painting, where the lines between the sea, the sky and the isthmus across the bay are blurred in shades of blue.

Carter project worth $40M to Winnipeg

HOSTING former U.S. president Jimmy Carter in July required hundreds of hours of preparation, solving “gut-wrenching” logistical problems and 3,000 volunteers, but a new report and statistics from Habitat for Humanity Manitoba suggest the Carter Work Project will spin off more than $40 million in benefits to Winnipeg.

“No question, it was a huge amount of work,” said Sandy Hopkins, chief executive officer of Habitat for Humanity Manitoba. “Goodness knows we couldn’t do it every year, but it was more than worth it. Absolutely.”

Hopkins’ comments come a day after the federal government said it is earmarking as much as $40 billion for a 10-year housing strategy. He hopes the results from Habitat’s study convince the federal government to include a home-ownership component.

“We’d be delighted to actually see the strategy,” he said. “It’s not clear how much money is available for home ownership.”

Building Belonging provides fun, safe haven for kids

Faith Nayler grew up in the Spence neighbourhood at a time when the wrong path was never far away. She credits Building Belonging, a program funded mainly by the United Way, for starting her down the right road.

"Absolutely," she said. "If you're occupied with other things, you don't fall in to the wrong crowd. You always had people to look up to, who knew right from wrong."

Building Belonging is headquartered on Langside Avenue at the Magnus Eliason Recreation Centre, a building named for the area's longtime former city councillor. It provides sporting activities, craft activities, field trips and assistance to children from "six to Grade Six."

When Nayler recently moved back into the Spence neighbourhood, it seemed only natural for her daughter, Hailey Lague, 6, to attend the same program.

Hunter & Gunn barbershop marks five years of trimming locks and giving back

Five years ago, Jeremy Regan left behind the world of high-priced hair salons and hasn’t looked back.

“I was at a fairly high-end salon and was charging $55 for a haircut, and that was five years ago,” the founder of Hunter and Gunn said. “If you were to add $2 or $3 a year, I’d probably be up to about $65, $75. For a haircut?”

On a shoestring budget — something that coincidentally gave his shop a hip, retro vibe — he leased space at the corner of Broadway and Balmoral Street and cut his price to $25.

It’s a formula that works. By donating $1 from every cut and a portion of product sales to local, non-profit organizations, his shop has surpassed $75,000 in donations, which he estimates translates into 65,000 haircuts over five years, or an average of 35 per day. He just raised the price for the first time, to $26.

Where's the beef? Argentina, that's where

BUENOS AIRES — It is, from a tourist’s sense, in the middle of nowhere.

We saw no hotels and no over-commercialized shopping malls. Nobody anywhere was yelling “Casa de cambio, casa de cambio!” as we made our way for five blocks from our subway stop. That stop was nine stations and two trains from our hotel in the city’s prime tourist district.

It is, from a gastronome’s perspective, a must-visit.

Parrilla Don Julio, nestled in the heart of Buenos Aires’ Palermo district, takes its place among the great steakhouses of the world. I’ve been to Morton’s. I’ve been to Queue de Cheval. I’ve been to 529 Wellington.

Velar appeals to Land Rover fans, with modern comforts

NEAR THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE — Cellphone service is a distant memory as we’re covering the rear window of the 2018 Range Rover Velar with sand.

The road is a dusty trail carved into the hills near Pioneer Town, Calif., and we have to negotiate rocks, ruts, sand, uphills and downhills.

Meanwhile, Sirius XM’s Classic Rewind is playing something by The Who over the umpteen-speaker sound system while we get a hot stone massage from the leather seats.

Dichotomy? Just a little.

MPI opens cutting-edge auto-repair training, research centre

Manitoba Public Insurance put the pace of change in automotive repair on display Tuesday as it opened its new centre for automotive repair and training on Plessis Road.

In one room, there were some classic cars from a time when the ability to bend steel and spread body filler was nearly the extent of qualifications for repair. In another, a BMW i8 with a carbon-fibre body and electrical system that could kill an untrained technician.

"The velocity of change is unbelievable," said Dan Guimond, president and CEO of Manitoba Public Insurance.

"Things go so fast that sometimes (an automaker's) repair procedures can have a lag of up to six months. It's six months after the release of a vehicle where they're providing the repair procedures."

Porsche Cayenne a versatile ride

GREVENBROICH, Germany — In one moment, we’re rocketing around a racetrack as though we’re in a 911 Turbo, while the next, we’re climbing rock faces, wading through water and cruising over rough gravel like a Jeep. We’re in the same vehicle.

Porsche’s vision for the Cayenne always has been of an SUV that is as comfortable clipping apexes as it is cresting summits. For 2019, the third generation, the company arguably has come the closest yet to hitting that goal.

A host of improvements have increased power, fuel efficiency, dynamic performance and off-road ability. The changes include three new engines, a new eight-speed transmission and a new front differential that lowers the car’s centre of gravity.

A new unitized body, with increased use of aluminum, has shed 51 kilograms of weight.

No strength in numbers for families of children diagnosed with rare diseases

There was no indication Donavon Jordan-Johnson would be anything but a healthy, bouncing baby boy when his mother arrived at the hospital to give birth.

Similarly, Sophia Jurkowski would be born into a healthy family; parents with no telltale genetic markers and a healthy older sister named Olivia.

But both babies quickly became members of tiny Manitoba communities made up of people with rare disorders. Just three others in the province share Donavon’s condition, four have Sophia’s.

● ● ●

Forgo the fruity drinks and the sunburn and consider somewhere colder for your next trip

IVALO, Findland — It’s March, when the average Winnipegger’s fancy turns to warm beaches, fruity cocktails and eating fresh seafood overlooking a Caribbean ocean.

So why am I here, 300 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle on a lake still covered with enough ice you could land a 747 on it?

On one hand, it’s business, as I’m here with Nokian Tyres on an automotive trip. On the other, there’s something oddly satisfying about visiting a Nordic country when it’s still in the grips of winter.

Even so, while we’re in roughly the same postal code as Santa Claus, winter’s grip doesn’t seem exceptionally firm. Thank the jet stream for that, as it heads northward from the Baltic Sea, generally cutting Finland’s upper atmosphere in half and moderating temperatures to a surprising degree.

GMC gives Terrain a striking new look

LAC BEAUPORT, Que. — It’s a little smaller, way more stylish and a bit less pricey than its predecessor. The 2018 GMC Terrain is no minor redesign.

“There are no carryover computer chips, body parts or controls,” said Mark Alger, brand manager for GMC sport-utility vehicles. “When I say everything is new on the Terrain, I mean everything.”

Like its mass-market cousin, the Chevrolet Equinox, the Terrain has received a complete rethink for 2018. Gone is the boxy, chunky body of old. Gone is any notion of installing a V-6 engine. Gone is any notion of a stripped-down base model.

Gone, too, is the shift lever, replaced by a mechanism featuring five push buttons and two pull levers: you pull on the levers to engage drive or reverse, you push on buttons to select park, neutral or to manually select gears.

Switching to an electric vehicle puts Manitobans on top of emissions savings

Manitobans who switch to an electric vehicle from gasoline lead the continent in the benefits bestowed on the environment, a new study suggests.

The study, by the 2 Degrees Institute, puts Manitoba and Quebec drivers on top of North America for emissions saved over their lifetimes, saving 85 per cent of CO2 emissions and reducing their carbon footprints by 25 per cent.

“It is probably the single-biggest thing a person can do to reduce their carbon footprint,” said Ryan Logtenberg, a director and researcher at the institute.

Manitoba gets high marks due to its reliance on hydroelectricity for 96 per cent of the province’s power, he said. Quebec, Newfoundland and Ontario also rank highly for the same reason.

A second opinion on the VW Atlas

Most of us first heard the name “Atlas” in the pages of our comic books. You remember, the ad where the scrawny guy and his girlfriend get sand kicked in their faces by some jock, so the guy signs up for a Charles Atlas fitness program so it doesn’t happen again.

Well, there’s no indication Volkswagen is some scrawny kid on the automotive beach, but it has been on the ropes lately after its diesel emissions-rigging scandal broke in 2015.

So it has launched its own Atlas program, beefing up its model line with the company’s first seven-passenger crossover and invoking the name of the mythical Greek titan condemned to hold up the sky for eternity.

It worked. Atlas has been flying out the doors, and combined with the new Tiguan, released in August, has driven Volkswagen sales in Canada to its highest monthly sales ever, at 9,032 units.

Hyundai makes hybrids likable with Ioniq

Hybrids have been on the market since the first Toyota Prius arrived in 1999, but in those 18 years, few have earned the adjective likable.

The 2017 Hyundai Ioniq is an exception.

Smartly designed, stitched together very well and — despite not being the most powerful hybrid on the road — fun to drive.

Perhaps the best thing about the Ioniq is it doesn’t beat you over the head with its greenness the way some do with their polarizing styling, unique shift levers or intrusions into cargo and passenger space.

A Panamera closer to Porsche’s heritage

NEAR DUNCAN, B.C. — Is this the one Porsche should have built first?

As capable as the Panamera is as a sedan, it’s hard not to look at the shooting-brake version and think it is more in keeping with the company’s sports-car heritage than a sedan.

In Sport Tourismo form, the Panamera exudes sportiness, with the swept-back roofline making it a car that looks fast at any speed.

While from the front, it looks just like the sedan aside from a slightly modified hood, from the B-pillar back, nothing is familiar. The entire body rearward of the front door is unique to the Sport Tourismo.

NAFTA talks nothing to fear

United States President Donald Trump’s demand to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement isn’t sending shivers through Manitoba’s business community — it presents an opportunity to “modernize” a trade pact signed 23 years ago, business leaders say.

Loren Remillard, president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, said business lobbies on both sides of the border are confident pragmatism will win the day in any negotiations.

“You have to make the separation between politics and economics,” Remillard said. “Certainly, some of the rhetoric during the election campaign was worrisome, but we’ve been speaking to our counterparts in the U.S., and our members have been speaking with their suppliers.

“At the business and economics level, the trade relationship and mutual benefits are not only well-understood, it’s something the business community on both sides of the border are trying to articulate clearly to all levels of government.”

Prius making its microcar mark

It would be easy for an automotive journalist to hate the Toyota Prius c.

Easy, but unfair.

The greater challenge when testing a vehicle such as the Prius, in any of its iterations, is to put yourself in the shoes of a buyer in the target market. Arguably, these folks aren’t looking for breathtaking acceleration, apex-carving handling or look-at-me levels of luxury.

Basic, reliable, economical transportation and that’s what the Prius c provides.

Titan XD provides towing innovations

LAKE ROSSEAU, Ont. — Thread, meet needle.

It’s just after noon on a rare hot, sunny day in the Muskoka region when we pull into Parkers Marina near Windermere, Ont. We’re in a 2017 Nissan Titan XD towing a 23-foot Mastercraft speedboat and our task is to launch the boat.

Now, the launch at Parkers isn’t tiny, but I have seen bigger.

Rocking the boats: river traffic increases in city

On a typical weekday, Gord Cartwright welcomes 200 passengers aboard his Splash Dash water bus, ferrying people between various points on the Red and Assiniboine rivers downtown.

That’s about 200 more than in any of the previous three years.

Cartwright, who owns Splash Dash River Tours Inc., has had to keep the water bus in drydock until this year because summer flooding washed out the docks and made the bus service unusable. He’s relied on his river tours, which aren’t dependent on water levels.

“The last two weeks of June weren’t that great, but yes, overall it’s a good year,” Cartwright said.

A look inside the Gimli facility where Crown Royal is made

Doug Kozlowski’s career at the Gimli distillery didn’t just start on the ground floor. It began before there was a floor.

Kozlowski was working for his father’s construction company in the late 1960s, at a time when work typically ground to a halt as winter set in and when skyrocketing interest rates devastated the area’s construction market.

So in 1967, when Seagram’s was looking for skilled tradespeople to build a new distillery just north of town, Kozlowski jumped — to the dismay of his father, who had been setting him up to take over the family business.

“Back then, work pretty much ended when winter came, so even though I was making less I figured I came out a bit ahead by working 12 months instead of six,” he said. He was hired as a carpenter, framing the buildings and working on the foundations for the nine-storey distillery and its surrounding buildings.

The Mercedes-Benz E 400 Coupe strives for excellence – and succeeds

LILLOOET, B.C. — Driving between snow-capped mountains north of Whistler is not where you expect to find — of all things — a winery.

Yet here we are, two hours outside that famous winter playground, having a gourmet lunch at Fort Berens Winery.

This is where the excellent pinot noir at dinner the night before was grown, fermented, aged and bottled.

At a time when carmakers strive to host media ride-and-drive events that befit the car in question — in this case a 2018 Mercedes-Benz E 400 Coupe — it’s surprising to find a drive route through the middle of, essentially, nowhere.

Highlander remains a prominent staple in Toyota's marketing arsenal

Cue your best Sean Connery imitation: “You can’t die, Highlander. You’re immortal.”

It’s doubtful Toyota had immortal Scottish warrior clans in mind when it created what is now the 2017 Highlander, among the first of what we now call crossovers — more than cars but hardly rock-crushing SUVs — but the nameplate seems for now an eternal part of Toyota’s marketing plans.

It’s evolved since that first Camry-based model debuted in 2001, growing to today’s seven- or eight-seat midsize and developing a rather audacious persona not at all like the rather understated first model.

There’s nothing understated about the exterior design, with a large grille and prominent features that present as the 4Runner for people who don’t like 4Runners.

The Trans Canada Trail inside Winnipeg is a delight to discover

Transport trucks and cars are racing overhead as the Trans Canada Trail begins its winding journey through Winnipeg at Henderson Highway and the Perimeter Highway.

To my left, cars zip by heading into the city from East St. Paul, a few even obeying the 60 km/h speed limit.

While I respect the rights of cyclists to share the road, I try to avoid it, so when the entrance to Bunn’s Creek Parkway, the first real trail on the Trans Canada in the city, arrives, I’m grateful.

Heading east, the trail swooshes down a steep hill, leaving the frantic pace of Henderson Highway behind.

The Porsche 911 GTS a powerful ride

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — This high mountain lake sits at 1,897 metres, an elevation that practically speaks to you: if you feel winded, it’s not you, it’s me.

So it’s hard to know, when driving the 2017 Porsche 911 GTS, whether it’s the awesome mountain roads or the oxygen-deprived atmosphere taking your breath away.

Porsche may not offer many models — only six nameplates are on its roster — but it seems to offer infinite varieties of each. To the 911, which already came in 15 flavours, it’s adding five more.

The GTS comes as a coupe and a cabriolet, each with either all-wheel drive or rear-wheel drive and an all-wheel-drive targa. The market? A 911 buyer who wants a bit more power and panache but isn’t willing to make the nearly $80,000 leap to a Turbo.

Rest easy with this inflatable pillow

If you’ve ever stayed awake at night in a hotel room thinking to yourself, “If I just had a bit more pillow…” there’s something on the market you might like.

Created by Canadian company Pillowpacker Pillows, the inflatable travel pillow tucks away neatly in a suitcase and inflates with just a couple of puffs. A quick-release valve makes easy work of adjusting the pressure inside the pillow to the user’s preference.

On a recent trip to Finland, the Pillowpacker came in handy, supplementing the pillows at the Scandic Simonkentta Hotel in Helsinki and later at Santa’s Gisele Hotel in Saariselka. Kept in my carry-on, it was a welcome companion for the economy-class flight from Copenhagen to Toronto.

The pillow folds into a tube about the size of a football and features an outer pillow of either hypoallergenic microfibre, duck down or goose down. An outer cover is available in a variety of colours.

Christian college among Manitoba leaders discovering path to sustainability

OTTERBURNE — It was, suitably, a ball of fire in the night sky that was a turning point for a Christian school’s move towards environmentalism.

In late January 2014, the TransCanada Pipelines compressor station just west of Highway 59 blew, sending flames 200 feet into the air and melting part of Provincial Road 303, which leads to Providence University College.

“Students saw that and thought the world was ending,” said business Prof. Bruce Duggan with a laugh, perhaps only partially joking.

About 4,000 Manitobans throughout southeast Manitoba were without heat for two weeks as crews scrambled to restore gas service.

Equinox makes additions by subtraction

JORDAN, Ont. — Equinox: in celestial terms, it’s a double-edged sword.

Days are either getting shorter or longer, depending on which equinox — that point when the sun is directly over the equator — you’re observing.

Chevrolet has been on both sides of that sword. When the first Equinox was launched in 2004 as a 2005 model, it was another in a line of vehicles leading General Motors into the darkness of the 2007 bailouts.

Today, the 2018 Equinox is another in a line of vehicles leading GM into the sunlight.

Like it or not, the Internet of Things is changing our lives

IF your car lights up as you approach with the key fob or your home thermostat can be adjusted from your smartphone, you’ve already been introduced — in a small way — to the Internet of Things.

In simplest terms, the Internet of Things refers to a web of connectivity between machines, between sensors and machines and between it all and people. It’s about automation. It’s about real-time analytics. It’s about saving money, saving time and, in some cases, saving lives.

Sit back and buckle up, because what’s coming is going to be a rip-roaring roller-coaster ride through technological change, ethical conundrums and immense opportunity.

“I would say it’s probably happening far faster than anyone realizes,” said Daniel Burrus, a futurist, blogger, bestselling author and noted commentator on all things digital.

Will financial load be too much for Manitoba Hydro?

On March 12, 1873, six years before Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, Winnipeg businessman Robert A. Davis was lighting his Main Street hotel with electricity. Using an arc lamp and a steam-powered electric dynamo brought from New York, the man who would become Manitoba’s fourth premier set in motion a series of events that would culminate in today’s Manitoba Hydro. 

The Manitoba Free Press described Davis’ light — turned on four days after the founding of the Winnipeg Gas Co. — as an institution that “guides the weary traveller to a haven of rest, billiards and hot drinks, and lights up the streets probably more than the lamp of the newly incorporated gas company will for centuries to come.”

That Davis would cast a shadow on the future of gas lighting would turn out to be no small coincidence. Electricity would go on to become a cornerstone of the province’s economy, an economic driver providing residents with cheap power and a significant lure for energy-intensive industries. It would generate billions of dollars in jobs and revenue and establish Manitoba as a world leader in hydroelectric power.

So where did it all go wrong? Has it all gone wrong? Does Hydro’s forecast of a $25-billion debt bring the corporation perilously close to insolvency, or is it a temporary liability on the path to a stronger future? Opinion, it seems, is divided by ideology. If you’re on the political right, the sky is falling. On the left? It’s no worse than Hydro’s building boom in the 1970s.

Seven-seater CX-9 has brilliant handling and design

PHOENIX — The 2017 Mazda CX-9 is among the most attractive crossovers on the market — luxury or mainstream — and features an interior that wouldn’t be out of place if there were a tri-star, propeller or prancing horse on the steering wheel.

There may be other reasons the CX-9 is not quite on par with a Mercedes, BMW or Porsche, but the interior isn’t one of them. The design, choice of materials and execution is superb.

We had the CX-9 for five days in Arizona, where we were two families participating in the Arizona Cup, an outdoor archery tournament held every year about a half-hour north of Phoenix.

As a seven-seater, the CX-9 seemed perfect for six people and a bunch of archery equipment. Largely, it was — though more on that later.

Who takes a hit

Post-secondary educationUniversities and community colleges will see their provincial grants virtually frozen for 2017, leaving institutions largely responsible for recovering any expenditure increases, such as those driven by inflation.

Operating grants and strategic initiative spending increases slightly to $681.69 million from $679.79 million, spending on access programs is unchanged at $11,298, and advanced education and training assistance increases slightly to $6.38 million from $6.27 million.

Manitoba graduatesThe tuition fee tax rebate — designed to keep graduated students from leaving the province — will be phased out. The rebate drops from $2,500 to $500 immediately and will be eliminated entirely in 2018. The advanced tuition fee rebate, which allowed students to apply for future rebates in advance, is eliminated immediately.

The province found little sign the rebate was anything more than a gift to graduates who were planning to stay in Manitoba after graduation anyway.

No new taxes, but relief is minor

Hurry up and wait: that’s the message for taxpayers hoping for significant relief in the 2017 budget.

The province will continue to index both the basic personal exemption — the amount you can earn without paying taxes — and the various tax brackets to inflation, but the combined savings for 2017 will work out to $71 for people earning the most.

Those savings will increase to $157 in 2018, $254 in 2019 and $353 in 2020.

The estimated cost to the treasury for the 2017-18 fiscal year is $23.3 million.

A penetrating design for tires

Kelly Taylor

NEAR IVALO, Finland — How much engineering can go into something as simple as a stud for studded tires?

If your tire company has a target of 10 per cent improvement in tire performance each year, a lot, apparently.

Among the many enhancements to the Nokian Hakkapeliitta 9 winter tire — due out this fall as a replacement for the respected Hakkapeliitta 8 — is the latest generation of studs.

Taking a bite out of rodent claims

Manitoba Public Insurance is hoping to save $6 million annually by streamlining the way it covers rodent infestations, but shops that specialize in those repairs are worried about the health of their customers and are preparing to lay off staff.

“Would you want that in your car?” asked Roseanne Montemurro, owner of Winnipeg RV Service and Repair, as she looks at the “before” photo of a Subaru with a mouse nest and a pile of excrement behind the dashboard. “Now, we aren’t allowed to get in there and clean it out.”

Montemurro’s business is one of about 20 shops in Manitoba accredited for rodent-infestation claims. The Subaru in question was restored prior to March 1, when the new regulations came into force. The dash was cleaned.

Before March 1, MPI deemed an infested car to be such a health hazard that the company would advise customers to discontinue driving the vehicle immediately — and typically ordered a tow truck to take it the same day to the Plessis Road compound.

Discovery most capable off-road vehicle in Land Rover's lineup

SOMEWHERE IN THE UTAH DESERT — The coral pink sand is spraying everywhere, each wheel shooting up showers of silica as the SUV manages to maintain momentum up the sandy slope.

It’s the second day of the global launch of the 2017 Land Rover Discovery and we’re at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park and giving the Disco its hardest off-road test of our visit. It passes with flying colours. And flying sand.

The latest Discovery was unveiled in September as an all-new, three-row, seven-passenger SUV designed to be the most capable off-road vehicle in Land Rover’s lineup, but without sacrificing on-road comportment.

Based on our variety of tests here, it’s hard to dispute the off-road bits. It climbed rocks like a billy goat, sashayed through sand like a camel and wades through up to 900 millimetres — nearly a metre — of water. “It will actually do a metre of water, but the back end starts to float,” chief engineer Alex Heslop said.

From grain handling to e-commerce, innovators keep pushing Manitoba to the fore

The history of Canada’s largest grain-handling company doesn’t begin at Portage and Main. Instead, it starts at a modest tailor’s shop in Kingston, Ont., in the 1840s.The proprietor was a haberdasher to area businessmen and farmers and, at one point, he began taking grain instead of cash in payment.

Deciding there was more potential in Upper Canada’s grain trade than in clothing, he founded James Richardson and Sons Ltd. in 1857 — setting his descendants on a path that would one day weave them into the fabric of Winnipeg’s business community like few other families.

The man who moved the company to Winnipeg — the founder’s grandson, James Armstrong Richardson — would go on to build networks of grain elevators, shipping terminals and radio stations and founded a national airline that would become Air Canada.

In 1969, his son, George Taylor Richardson, operating the controls himself, would break ground on a 31-storey skyscraper that stood for years as the city’s tallest.

Ice-driving program fills Gimli's coffers during slow off-season

GIMLI — The roar of not-quite-legal studded winter tires punches through the darkness as 16 cars make their way down First Avenue, past the breakwater and onto the ice.

The ice, in this case, is Lake Winnipeg, or at least the top 100 centimetres of it.

It represents the final stage of an invasion, an invasion by a giant multinational dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars into a Gimli economy that in normal years goes into hibernation for winter.

“It can be pretty tough here in winter,” said Gimli Coun. Richard Petrowski, chairman of economic development. His wife runs a coffee shop on Centre Street. “You make all your money in summer and then try to budget to get through winter.

On thin ice at Porsche Camp4

NOTRE-DAME-DE-la-MERCI Que. — OK, let’s see if I got this straight: hard turn left, a hard, short punch of the brakes followed by a quick turn to the right and… patience… patience... THROTTLE!

It’s our third exercise of the day and it’s arguably the most difficult. It’s called the Scandinavian flick, and it’s a staple of rally and ice racing.

We’re here, at Mecaglisse racetrack north of Montreal, experiencing the Porsche Camp4 winter driving program, learning more about winter driving in a day than most people do in a lifetime.

Camp4 is held here, at what is in the summer an asphalt race track but starting in December is transformed into a pricey — and, for this year, sold out — premium winter driving experience.

Racing for pleasure in the Panamera

TOLUCA, Mexico — In motorsports, legendary racing events abound — Targa Floria, Mille Miglia, Indy 500 — but perhaps few have had as lasting an impact on sports-performance cars as La Carrera Panamericana.

The race’s golden era lasted only five years — 1950 to 1954 — but attracted racing icons Juan Manuel Fangio and Alberto Ascari, whom Mario Andretti credits as his inspiration to enter racing. Brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Ferrari and Maserati mounted significant efforts for the race.

But it wasn’t at Monza. It wasn’t at Spa Francorchamps. It wasn’t at the Nürburgring.

It was here, on regular highways throughout Mexico, held with the full support of the Mexican federal government. The roads were closed, comprising 3,293 kilometres of racing and crossing 11 Mexican states. It was considered the most dangerous race of its day.

Drivers missing from city’s road safety talks

If you see every problem as a nail, your solution always seems to be a hammer.

That much was evident at a recent forum on road safety that brought together engineers and traffic police to discuss ways of making Winnipeg’s roads safer.

The global statistics are startling. Every year, 1.3 million people are killed and 50 million are injured — on average.

In Canada last year, 1,800 people died and 150,000 were injured, said Jeannette Montufar, founder of MORR Transportation Consultants, a practising civil engineer and one of the panellists at the Jan. 30 forum.

Self-parking cars hit new level

OKAZAKI, Japan — The last time I was in Japan was the first time I saw a car park itself.

It was 2003, and Toyota had developed for Prius a system that was the precursor for systems we see today: you control the speed and gear changes, it controls the wheel for a perfect parallel or perpendicular park.

Cool, I thought, even if I did start to wonder, “Hey, if you can’t parallel park, do you deserve to drive?”

What Mitsubishi showed us last week, in a city about a half-hour by train from Nagoya, takes self-parking to another level. You stop the car along a stretch of parked cars where you think there’s a spot — and get out.

A whirlwind walking tour of Tokyo offers food, sights and more food

TOKYO — This city of 30 million stretches as far as the eye can see, even from 350 metres in the air, and a tour such as ours could easily take an entire day. We had six hours.

Ours was an ambitious plan: fortify ourselves with ramen before taking the subway to Tokyo Skytree, Senso-ji Temple, Akihabara and Shibuya — and then settling in for something called a ninja dinner at Ninja Akasaka restaurant, not far from the Imperial Palace.

Six hours and 22,643 steps (14.4 kilometres of walking) later, we had done it.

1 p.m.: RamenRamen is a staple of Japanese lunches, and it’s not at all like the packages of noodles and salt that are dirt cheap at the dollar store.

Lexus gets a grip

COWICHAN, B.C. — It’s not quite the corkscrew at Laguna Seca, but turns 10 and 11 at Vancouver Island Motorsports Park can be almost as harrowing.

After a quick downhill into Turn 9, the track takes a sharp, quick uphill before — right at the apex of Turn 10 — diving down and right toward Turn 11, a left.

In the two or three seconds it takes to complete the sequence, you’ve just had a crash course in inertia and in how your car’s springs react.

The sharp rise, at speed, compresses the springs, and they start to rebound just as you hit the peak — the combination of the springs unloading and the wheels starting to fall away as you crest the peak means the car gets very, very light.

All-season tires don't live up to the name

There remain a few diehards out there clinging to a 40-year-old notion that all-season tires are OK for driving in winter.

It’s understandable: Old ideas do die hard. I mean, how long did it take the church to finally accept the incontrovertible evidence that Earth is not at the centre of the universe? There are still Flat Earth Societies, decades after the first orbital circumnavigation of the planet.

Yes, 40 years ago, the worst all-season tires were better than the best winter tires. That was then. Today, compounds are being updated annually.

Did you know Finnish tire maker Nokian sets 10 per cent as an annual target for improvement in tire performance?

Chinese-built Envision is both spacious and comfortable -- and sports a first-rate interior

PRIDDIS, Alta. — So, if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump had a fit about Ford building the Fiesta in Mexico, what’s he going to say when he discovers the 2017 Buick Envision was conceived, designed and is built… in China?

Here’s the thing: Trump won’t know, and you probably won’t either.

The Envision’s ride, handling and build quality rivals anything coming from North American GM factories.

The interior is first-rate, stitched together with precision and employing attractive materials throughout. The electronics work like in any other GM product and the powerful and smooth powertrain — in the 2.0-litre turbo model we drove — put the Envision on par with any of its competitors.

Predicting Canadian Car of the Year winners

Kelly Taylor and Haney Luoka are veterans of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada’s (AJAC) annual Canadian Car of the Year competition, with 16 and 14 years respectively. Each year, they try to get into the minds of nearly 70 voting journalists, whose job it is to get into the minds of Canadian consumers — to come up with fearless predictions about which entries will take their category. Predictions for this year’s event, which culminates today, are as follows:

Small car: Chevrolet Cruze, Chevrolet Spark, Hyundai Elantra, Mini Cooper Clubman, Subaru Impreza.

KT: It’s hard not to be impressed by the Impreza. Powerful boxer engine, standard all-wheel drive — and a full-time system at that — and outstanding handling give it a leg up. As with the Cruze, the Impreza has a much more impressive interior than some previous models and, for better or worse, has lost the quirky design that made for a very polarizing exterior.

HL: The Impreza has always appealed to journalists, but these days it aims for the heart of the market, and this new model finally puts the words “Subaru” and “appealing design” in the same sentence. The key is whether the Impreza’s unique character has survived the transformation. We shall see.

Challenger is a modern muscle car suited to daily drivability

Throaty, burbling with raw power and a rumble that intoxicates. The engine vibrating, its nostrils poking through the hood, seemingly wanting to rip itself from its moorings and be free. The rear wheels, breaking loose on demand, almost begging to be transformed into billowing clouds of vaporized rubber.

Joy, thy name is Hemi Scat Pack Shaker.

The 392 Hemi Scat Pack Shaker joined the Dodge Challenger lineup as another in a long line of homages to the muscle-car era. It may not be a Hellcat, but it might just be a Hellkitty.

Under the hood is a 6.4-litre Hemi V-8. While it doesn’t approach the 707 horsepower of its devil-inspired Hellcat sibling, its 485 hp and 475 pound-feet of torque are well-suited to daily drivability, with hell-raising fury only a tap of the throttle away.

Prototype Fusion gives glimpse into driverless future

DEARBORN, Mich. — The instructions for the car were simple: drive to the end of the Ford campus and return. There was no more human involvement in the three kilometre drive.

The Fusion, outfitted with radar, lidar (light distance and ranging), infrared sensors and cameras, activated its turn signals and began the drive. Even though this was on Ford property, there was nothing simple about the route. It’s not a “professional driver on a closed course” kind of demonstration. The streets are filled with regular cars driven by regular drivers and there are left turns through traffic, four- and two-way stop signs, traffic signals and pedestrians.

It stopped, by itself, for the first stop sign and waited for a truck on the cross street to pass and pulled out and made a right turn. At the next stop, a four-way, the car activated its turn signal on approach, stopped, waited its turn and then pulled out and turned left. When we arrived at the first pedestrian crosswalk, which was manned by a Ford staffer to ensure there would be a pedestrian, the car saw him approaching the crosswalk and stopped. It waited until the pedestrian was past before proceeding. At other crosswalks, pedestrians who weren’t staged by Ford approached, activated the flashing lights and crossed. The car stopped and waited.

What was most interesting about it all was Ford’s response to a longtime question about autonomous cars: What if the car can’t see lane markings? It’s a problem that continues to plague today’s lane-departure warning systems. Ford’s answer? Ignore them.

‘Great opportunity’ ahead for automakers

DEARBORN, Mich. — For the past 113 years, Ford and other carmakers have had a relatively simple business model: sell stuff people want.

But what if they don’t want it, whatever that “it” may be, anymore?

For technology journalist Dan Lyons, the coming decades for carmakers could be either the apocalypse or the dawn of a new generation.

For increasing numbers of people, cars are not the stuff of dreams the way they’ve been since the days of American Graffiti.

V is for Volvo

‘Is the car big enough? You know Nigel is bringing his bow case, too, right?”

That’s my wife, sending shivers of panic up my spine. The car has been booked for weeks, and the Canadian National Archery Championship in Peterborough, Ont., is a week away. To say it’s too late now to ask for another is an understatement.

“It’ll be fine,” I say, only partially comforting myself.

But as we swing over from Toronto’s Pearson Airport Terminal 1 to Terminal 3 to pick up my son’s coach, I’m already feeling better. The car, in this case, wasn’t a Mini anything and it wasn’t a Fiat 500. We got the case for my and my son’s bows in without a worry and even with our luggage, we still had room for an extra one.

A Porsche in every way — except price

CAYUGA, Ont. — Racing instructor Jonathan Ulrin is ahead of us in a Porsche Macan GTS, with about 100 more horsepower and 100 more foot-pounds of torque than our Macan, as we hit the main straightaway at Toronto Motorsports Park.

His added thrust means he pulls away from us in the straight, but given how close we stick to him through the rest of the course, almost all turns, it’s clear this new Macan, the lowest-price Porsche in the fleet, is still very much a Porsche.

“Even though I had 100 more horsepower, I sure didn’t have much of an advantage over you guys,” the ever-grinning Ulrin says as we stop after five laps for a driver change.

Indeed, the lighter weight overall of the Macan, as well as a lighter front end — given the four-cylinder turbo relative to the V-6 in the GTS — means it may be a touch slower off the line, but faster through corners, than the GTS.

The Toyota that isn’t really a Toyota

One of the most common automotive journalist complaints is that carmakers, eager to impress, offer out models loaded to the nines. Lost in the leather, dual-zone climate control, heads-up display and satellite radio is a sense of what the car really will be like for the average buyer.

That wasn’t an issue with the Toyota Yaris Sedan I’m driving, which was as standard as they come, save for the automatic transmission. I was given a refreshing look at the basic model, warts and all.

First, a refresher on this Toyota that isn’t really a Toyota: The story begins after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which devastated parts of Japan. As the death toll approached 16,000 and with another 2,500 missing, car plants were flooded, production shut down and the economy staggered. In response, Toyota issued a moratorium on the construction of new plants while it recovered from the blow.

Meanwhile, Mazda was tooling up a plant in Mexico to produce the new Mazda2, a car it would later decide had limited market appeal, and which would be cancelled altogether in Canada. (It also doesn’t appear on Mazda’s U.S. website.)

How will we deal with stoned drivers in the era of legalization?

Joey Cowan’s life didn’t really begin until he died.

A history of drug and alcohol abuse, starting with his first six-pack at age 11, came crashing to a halt in 2008 when his opiate abuse led to the inevitable overdose.

“I was clinically dead for 9½ minutes,” he said. “Fortunately, the ambulance got to me in time.”

So when Cowan has strong opinions on the legalization of marijuana, he’s come to them the hard way, and not the least of his concerns is dealing with stoned drivers.

With Canada ranked third-worst in road safety, can Sweden be a model for driver training?

It took Mattias Strandberg 27 lessons, a written test and two in-car exams to get his driver’s licence.

It’s not that the 25-year-old university student is awkward or inept: he lists hockey, reading, politics and soccer among his hobbies. It’s simply the price of admission to drive on the safest roads on Earth.

Strandberg doesn’t live in Canada or the United States. He lives in Sweden.

A U.S. Centers for Disease Control study — titled Vital Signs: Motor-vehicle Injury Prevention, a comparison of data from 20 developed countries — shows Sweden is the lowest-risk place to hit the road. Canada and the U.S. were in the bottom three.

Modern ART

HARRISON HOT SPRINGS, B.C. — What do you get when you take 20 automotive journalists, a handful of Ford employees, a few tubes of various colours of acrylic paint and a bunch of canvases with the outline of a Ford Fusion already pencilled in?

You get one, courtesy of Ford’s product development manager Bill Rowe, that looks less like a Fusion and more like a second-generation VW Scirocco, a few that look like fastback Audi GTs. Included in that bunch are a few pretty freaky concept-car ideas, including Fusion Coupé, Floating Fusion, Visionless Fusion (the windshield was accidentally painted over), Fusion Wagon and Fusion Overland (with massive tires thanks to a slight error in perspective). I nicknamed mine Drag Racing Fusion (even though I overemphasized the rear wheels of a front-drive car).

Only a few actually resembled the Fusion. Did it help we had spent the day previous flying early to Vancouver, learning about the 2017 Ford Fusion and driving to Harrison? Likely not, but little matter: the Louvre will not be calling.

Yet, while none of us will be on the consideration list for the Museum of Modern Art, you might want to put Fusion on your list if you’re thinking of a new mid-size sedan.

Plenty to cheer about with Volkswagen's gasoline sipping econo-car

Lost in the diesel-emissions scandal may be that Volkswagen still makes gas-powered vehicles, and some rather efficient ones at that.

As with many other manufacturers — Ford, Honda, Porsche and Mercedes-Benz among them — VW is choosing turbocharging as the replacement for gasoline displacement. And in today’s subject, the Jetta 1.4 TSI, it’s working quite well.

Now, let’s not put complete faith in the computer programming of a company that’s proven so adept at cheating with computer programming, but there’s no cheating the amount of gas left in the tank. That level suggests there’s at least a modicum of truth in the dashboard’s reading of as low as 6.7 litres per 100 kilometres at the end of a city drive. After a week and 260 kilometres, the car hasn’t yet burned a half a tank. For all three Winnipeg journalists each having a week in the car, the fuel gauge did not drop below half.

What turbocharging does is make small engines punch above their weight class in power and torque, but only when needed. The turbo kicks in when you put your foot into it, but basically just idles at cruising. And you can see this in the fuel consumption meter, which in VWs resets every time you start the engine.

New Prius a better, more affordable car

One week, 164 kilometres, $8.64. It’s a small sample size, I know, but it was a week punctuated with, “Will the gas gauge ever move?” until, “Finally, it moved.” Even then, it was impossible to stifle a laugh when the pump clicked off before the gas-station attendant could finish telling me the pump number (to pay inside) and asking whether I wanted the oil checked or windshield cleaned.

This is the latest generation of Prius, and as far as eco-sensibility goes, it's undoubtedly the best yet. Refinements to the hybrid system — which maintains the traditional 1.8-litre gas motor and two electric motors for its architecture — have given Prius its lowest fuel consumption figures yet. Toyota has redeveloped the hybrid transaxle, allowing for higher shaft speeds and reduced parasitic losses.

Similar refinements in the engine allow Toyota to claim thermal efficiency figures that rival diesels at 40 per cent. Typical gasoline engines have such figures between 20 and 30 per cent. Thermal efficiency is a rating of how much of the fuel’s thermal energy is converted into kinetic energy (vehicle motion), with the remaining 60 to 80 per cent lost to heat, friction, pumping losses and waste.

As well, a new exhaust-gas recirculation system heats up the engine’s coolant much more quickly, allowing the auto-stop feature to begin working earlier than ever. All of this results in a combined average rating of 4.5 litres per 100 kilometres. My average was 4.4. To put that into perspective, the Toyota Tundra I recently drove was running about 17 litres per 100 kilometres. At $1.129 per litre, those 100 km cost $19.20 in the Tundra and $4.97 in the Prius. And while previous Toyota hybrids felt a bit jerky when the engine started up again, the new one seems more seamless.

Changes to new Ford Escape far greater than meet the eye

JASPER, Alta. — The elk looked up as we approached, and then almost seemed to shrug his shoulders as he went back to eating the grass. Dawn has just broken over the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge and we’re about to leave paradise and head back to Calgary, the airport and real life — when a gang of five of these large ruminants stopped us dead in our tracks. With not the slightest fear of humans, the elk casually munched away as tourists and a few automotive journalists snapped photos. At one point, an elk almost seemed to pose for a shot.

It was the exclamation mark on two days of driving through pure beauty. The Icefields Parkway, running from the Trans-Canada Highway west of Lake Louise to Jasper, may not rank as one of the world’s great drives, but it’s fairly high on the list and offers jaw-dropping vistas at nearly every turn.

And… oh, yeah, by the way, we’re here to drive the 2017 Ford Escape.

One of the dangers, or perhaps one of the advantages, of holding a media drive event here is the vehicle risks becoming secondary to the equation, lost in the fast-flowing creeks, towering granite peaks and postcard-perfect snow-covered evergreens.

Tight margins, volatile pricing makes it tough for smaller gas stations to keep the fuel flowing

In almost every respect, Jeff Kendel is still running the typical corner service station.

There are three service bays, six gas pumps and a diesel pump, an air compressor and windshield washer fluid, coolant and oil products for sale. Customers know it’s a place where even small repair jobs — a burned-out headlight bulb, a blown fuse — are still welcome.

“Come back first thing in the morning. If you can make Pete smile at 7 a.m., I’ll buy you breakfast,” Kendel joked to a customer who was moments too late for a quick battery-cable repair, referring to his mechanic, who had just left for the day.

“Make the repair free,” the customer fired right back. “I’m a Mennonite, remember.”

Run-flat tire name being phased out in favour of low-pressure mobility moniker

DALLAS — There’s a major shift occurring in how run-flat tires are sold. At least, if the latest evolution from Bridgestone/Firestone is any indication.

Driveguard, the company’s newest product name for run-flats, isn’t being sold as a run-flat. Instead, Bridgestone is pitching its ride quality, noise levels, tread life, traction... and, oh, by the way, it can run for up to 90 kilometres after a puncture. Even the name, run-flat, is being phased out in favour of low-pressure mobility.

“This is a true premium tire. You could install it without regard for its low-pressure mobility, and it would still be a great deal,” said John Arnold, education manager for Bridgestone Americas.

Run-flat tires are not new, but they’ve developed a reputation as hard-riding tires, even when inflated, because of the stiffness of the sidewall that allows for run-flat operation. “The typical fix was to increase the sidewall stiffness so it would stay rigid, but I’ve just described a concrete tire, haven’t I?” Arnold said.

Spring is perfect time to have your vehicle checked

Bill Gardiner has seen this before, but even he is astounded. We’re under a Ford Explorer at Kal Tire on St. James Street looking at where the front stabilizer-bar link used to be. It’s completely gone. So, too, is any stabilizer action, so this driver should have noticed much more sway in turns than usual.

“This is the part that’s going to fail first,” said Gardiner, an independent mechanic, the resident wrench on TSN’s Motoring TV and, today, spokesman for Kal Tire.

It’s easy to see why: the stabilizer-bar link takes every bump, every pothole and every sharp turn. It connects to the lower control arm and rises about six inches to the stabilizer bar, and takes more of a pounding than most suspension components. Its function is to transmit the movement of one wheel to the other, through a thick bar running under the engine to the other side. Working properly, it serves to equalize wheel movement in turns and reduce body sway. A failure here is often misdiagnosed as a bad strut, Gardiner said.

In this case, this link is the perfect demonstration of the havoc winter can wreak on your car. Road salt, slush, sand, slime and other detritus is kicked up on the rubber boots on such components as the stabilizer link, constant-velocity joints, steering rack and ball joints. The grit helps wear through the rubber and eventually exposes the lubrication inside to the elements. The lubrication doesn’t stay behind long, and, combined with erosive action of any grit inside, quickly leads to failure of the joint.

Newest Lexus sure to extend brand’s streak

EDMONTON — For most of its existence, Lexus has had a relatively good run.

It’s been successful by most measures, more than enough to keep the lights on, but hardly Earth-shattering.

The brand, launched in North America in 1989, has done a decent job of either tweaking existing Toyota products (Camry/Avalon to ES) or rebranding Toyotas not sold here (Arista to GS) and expanding the reach of Toyota’s manufacturing.

But in the last 18 months, it’s been lights out for the brand. Director of Lexus, Jennifer Barron, said that stretch has seen 18 consecutive monthly sales records, the longest such streak.

Lexus RX worthy of its luxury label

Being the first at something doesn’t always mean being the best. Competitors see your flaws and fix them when they launch their products. And then you catch up, but by then, competitors have also tried to get out ahead of you.

That seemed to be the case with the Lexus RX, which billed itself as the segment-starter for the premium, mid-size SUV. But since that first RX came out, it’s struck me that the rivals that followed — Audi Q5, BMW X3, Porsche Cayenne, to name a few — always seemed to have a leg up. The RX had some nicer details than a Toyota, but I was always struck by Robert DeNiro’s line from Analyze That: “That’s like, a Toyota.”

I wasn’t a huge fan of its early interiors: the placement of the shifter, high on the centre console, sticking out at an angle not unlike our minivan’s shifter, and some very Toyota-like switchcraft always left me with a sense of, “It’s nice, but…”

Balanced beauty

C. It is the third letter in the alphabet and the thirteenth most used letter in the English language. It is, arguably, also the first letter in the Mercedes-Benz alphabet.

Mercedes has cars that are less expensive than the C-Class and SUVs less expensive than the GLC — the B-Class and CLA cars and the GLA SUV come to mind — but are they true luxury? The C-Class and above? Brilliant. The GLC? Fantastic. The lesser models? Not so much.

Initially, it was hard to put my finger on why I like the GLC so much better than its smaller sibling. The power isn’t significantly more (241 horsepower, 273 lb-ft of torque vs. 208 hp and 258 lb-ft). That power shaves only three-tenths of a second off the 0-60 time (6.3 in the GLC to 6.6 in the GLA). The design inside and out, save for size, is similar.

With all apologies to GLA, it just doesn’t feel “luxury.” It’s not just the additional torque of the GLC’s engine or the greater smoothness of the GLC’s conventional automatic (the GLA features a seven-speed, dual-clutch transmission), though both of those help.

Midsize melee

Ford and Kia have both made significant advances with their midsize SUVs: the Edge gets a new unibody that dramatically improves chassis stiffness and handling, while the Sorento gets a complete makeover, enough to get it onto the podium for Canadian Car and Utility Vehicle of the Year.

When the opportunity arose to have both at the same time, the comparison seemed obvious. Sure, the Sorento is available with a third-row and the Edge isn’t, but they’re similar in size, with nearly identical cargo capacity, while — oddly given the Sorento’s third-row option — the Edge is just slightly larger overall.

They have similar available powertrains, and are roughly in the same price class, though the Sorento does win on starting price, at $27,495 to the Edge’s $31,049. That base-model Sorento, however, comes with a 2.4-litre, four-cylinder, non-turbo engine. The base Edge has a turbocharged 2.0-litre with 60 more horsepower and nearly 100 pound-feet more torque.

The testers in each, however, were upgraded: the Sorento came with a 3.3-litre normally aspirated V-6 while the Edge had the 3.5-litre V-6.

Elantra among innovative vehicles elevating Hyundai to new heights

VICTORIA -- "How do you double the value of a Hyundai? Fill the tank."

"Why are Hyundai owner's manuals so thick? Because they include a bus schedule."

This wasn't just some sot at some open-mike night, either; this was Don Romano, president of Hyundai Auto Canada, cracking one-liners courtesy of Jay Leno for the first, and for the second, his daughter, "who is now unemployed and looking for bus tickets."

Rim shot, please.

Lincoln’s version of Ford Edge more elegant

PERHAPS it’s just an illusion, but having recently driven the Ford Edge, I can’t help but think the Lincoln MKX has a smoother ride.

Maybe it’s slightly different suspension tuning, since a glance at the specs of the 2015 Edge and 2016 MKX reveals these vehicular cousins have the same suspensions: Mac-Pherson strut up front and integral link independent at the back.

The Edge, I found, had a bit of an edge to its ride. Not quite truckish, but not entirely carlike, either. Yet there’s no such feeling in the MKX.

If the goal is to provide much the same vehicle — saves development, tooling and production-line costs — but with a higher degree of luxury, then mission accomplished.

Compact SUV shares more than just a name with its Jeep ancestors

I was not expecting this. See, the Fiat 500 and 500L are far from my favourite cars, and knowing the Jeep Renegade and Fiat 500X are basically the same vehicle, I wasn't optimistic about the Renegade's chances of impressing.

Here's the gist of my surprise: not only is the Jeep Renegade a fun-to-drive, well-sorted compact SUV, so is the 500X. Indeed, the 500X is impressive enough, relative to the 500 or 500L, I'm tempted to ask: Is this really from the same company?

In Jeep form, the vehicle comes equipped for off-road, particularly in the lineup-topping Trailhawk version, the tester, which comes equipped with the full suite of Jeep off-road mechanicals. Included is Jeep's Selec-Terrain four-wheel drive system, Jeep Active Drive Low and skid plates for the transfer case, transmission, fuel tank and front suspension. In 'auto' mode, the system completely decouples for true front-wheel drive with automatic 4x4 engagement. Full-time 4x4 mode features an active on-demand clutch. The system can deliver torque to any one wheel if required. The Renegade comes with one of three ground clearances: 6.7 inches for 4x2 models, 7.9 inches for 4x4 models and 8.7 inches for the Trailhawk. Even without the Trailhawk's amenities, the Renegade is no off-road slouch, with short front and rear overhangs for good approach and departure angles.

I had it during the worst of Winnipeg's two recent snowfalls, and despite committing the sin of not wearing winter tires, handled itself well. I did not have to switch the all-wheel drive out of 'auto' into one of the four other settings -- rock, sand, mud, snow -- to be able to shrug off the pre-plowing daily commutes.

Honda's new Pilot an impressive family cruiser

The box is gone. It's about time. Honda's Pilot has been completely redesigned for 2016, and while it was always a decent SUV to drive, as a looker, not so much. The angular lines and boxy shape were distinctive, but weren't exactly sleek and didn't look all that aerodynamic.

But, give it a raked-back grille and sloping rear hatch, refine some of the interior details and it begins to look quite stylish inside and out. One decision that may serve Honda well down the road, when today's new vehicles become tomorrow's used, is the decision, so far, to find alternatives to turbocharging for fuel economy.

Small, turbocharged engines are good for delivering power and fuel economy, but it's just hard to escape the feeling that so much power from such small engines will lead to long-term reliability problems. There was a time when a 2.0-litre engine was good for small cars only, now they're powering full-size SUVs. Something will have to give somewhere. I hope to be proven wrong.

So with the Pilot, we have a time-tested 3.5-litre V-6 delivering 280 horsepower and 262 pound-feet of torque. It's smooth, powerful and surprisingly efficient, with an average over my week of testing just less than 11 litres per 100 km. That's in line with the stated figures.

Pricey Porsche worth every penny -- all 1.77 million of them

On the surface, the choice seems dead simple. But it isn't, at least for us mere mortals. In the driveway recently was the 2016 Porsche 911 Carrera GTS Cabriolet and the 2016 Mazda MX-5. For most weeks, the 911 sharing the driveway with anything else means drastically reduced seat time in whatever that anything else might be. So, sorry, Ram Power Wagon, but you'll have to wait.

Sure, the 911 easily beats the MX-5 in all categories: more power, more luxury, more panache and more eye-turning power. The Porsche has more features, arguably a better sound system and puts a smile on your face every time you put your foot into it.

But the MX-5 has its own charms. It's got way less power, but much less weight, too. And Mazda was wise to send one with a stick, which amplifies its fun quotient by orders of magnitude.

It's here where I have to stop myself: you have a hard time choosing between a 911 and an MX-5? You hit your head, or something? And yeah, all things being equal the 911 wins hands, feet, head and shoulders down. It really is no contest. It is every bit as good as its name suggests.

New SUV features significant upgrades, even if it looks hauntingly familiar

LOS ANGELES -- Is the SUV going to be the normal of a new generation? Just look at Ford, for example. It says it's on target to sell 500,000 SUVs in Canada in 2015, or nearly a third of the entire market. Even more interesting, Ford says in a few short years, carmakers of all kinds will sell more compact SUVs than compact cars.

Leading the way, Ford predicts, will be the boomers, the millennials and the lost generations in between. Boomers are drawn by the slide-in seating and extra space while millennials will be looking at their first new-car purchase and possibly looking forward to growing their families.

For designers of the compact SUVs of tomorrow, the message is clear: don't screw it up.

It's against this backdrop Milton Wong had a daunting task. Design the next generation of the best-selling compact SUV on the market. Wong, chief engineer of the 2017 Ford Escape, unveiled this week at the Los Angeles International Auto Show, said the challenge is answering customers' needs now and anticipating future needs.

Successor to GLK brings panache, performance

ATLANTA -- In 1993, a 35-year-old rocker from Minnesota changed his name from a mononym to an unpronounceable symbol, making him the Artist Formerly Known As Prince.

In 2015, in an effort to bring order to what was, apparently, chaos, Mercedes-Benz is changing the name of some of its SUVs, giving rise to new, unofficial but hopefully temporary monikers, including the SUV Formerly Known as ML and today's subject, the SUV Formerly Known As GLK.

So, GLK becomes GLC, ML becomes GLE, GL becomes, well, GL and G-Class remains G-Class. With me so far?

For 2016, the GLK didn't just get a new name, it's entirely new. The GLC dumps the boxy shape of its predecessor in favour of a sleek body style that harmonizes with the rest of the Mercedes lineup.

What’s best at TestFest?

CANADIAN TIRE MOTORSPORT PARK, Ont. -- TestFest returned to an actual racetrack for the first time since 2005 and the timing couldn't have been better. While we didn't use the Grand Prix track, the smaller, tighter driver development track was a far better test of acceleration, handling, braking and steering than TestFest has provided since that last racetrack, which was Shannonville.

Just off the Grand Prix track, the development track was created specifically to attract ride-and-drive programs from a variety of carmakers. In addition there was also an excellent off-road course to evaluate trucks and SUVs.

Carmakers provided a shortened, but worthy list of entries for both courses. Some of the off-road stars included the Jeep Renegade, Volvo XC90 and even, most unexpectedly, the new Honda HR-V.

On the racetrack, the Mercedes AMG GT S, Mazda MX-5, Chevrolet Corvette Z06, Cadillac CTS-V and Ford Shelby 350 GT all earned high praise.

Battery up!

When the Smart Fortwo was launched, it quickly became the biggest thing in small. I won't say I hated it, but my feelings for it were certainly leaning toward that end of the emotional spectrum.

The combination of the gas motor and sequential gearbox meant if you didn't switch to manual mode and hit your shift points just right, you would lurch forward as the car came out of gear and get pitched back when acceleration resumed.

There was also a certain cheapness to it -- despite the price -- that didn't quite befit parent company Mercedes-Benz. And, it didn't feel nearly as nimble as its size would suggest.

All of which means I was very interested to drive the Smart Fortwo Electric Drive. It's pretty much the exact same car, but without the gasoline and without the herky-jerky transmission. This tranny is stepless.

It's built by Mazda, but the new Yaris is a winner

QUEBEC CITY -- This is the best Toyota Mazda ever built.

It's the 2016 Toyota Yaris sedan, an all-new Yaris and a departure for Yaris in many ways. For one, it feels almost as large as a Corolla, and secondly, it isn't the morphing of a hatchback into a -- let's be honest here -- somewhat dorky-looking sedan. The Yaris now has a great roofline, interesting swales on the sides of the car and a great interior.

But most interestingly, it isn't actually a Toyota.

The Yaris sedan is the result of a collaboration between Toyota and Mazda and is built by Mazda in Mexico. It is built in the same plant, and on the same platform, as the Mazda2.

Ford's new Explorer all good, no bad

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- "If that's true, if you don't know who I am, then maybe your best course is to tread lightly."

Chilling words from Walter White, methamphetamine cook extraordinaire, came to mind as William Mattiacce, an SUV communications manager for Ford Motor Co., was explaining why the list of stops in the Breaking Bad tour programmed into the Explorer's nav system didn't include 3828 Piermont Dr. NE, better known as 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, the White house.

"She hates you already," he said of the woman who has lived in the home since 1973.

Not sure how he came to that conclusion, because every indication is that Fran -- we don't know her last name -- is the sweetest grandmother you'll ever find. Maybe it was just the sign asking oglers to stay on the street. Fair enough; it is a private home, not a museum.

Getting Smart

PORTLAND, ORE. -- You couldn't say it nicely if you tried, so in the end, they didn't bother.

"Fixing the transmission was our No. 1 priority," said Chris Goczan, national product manager for Mercedes-Benz Canada, and by extension, Smart Canada.

For the first two generations, the Smart Fortwo had a few, shall we say, issues. Chief among them was a transmission that took so long to shift, you would lurch forward under deceleration between gears and then get launched back into your seat when the next gear locked up.

Come for the golf, stay for the wine in Missouri

Come for the golf, stay for the wine

A surprisingly large collection of wineries proves Missouri has something for everyone

By Kelly Taylor

BRANSON, Mo. — For a trip that was supposed to have been about golf — this is the Midwest, after all — there have been a surprising number of wineries along the way.

New Porsche HQ part museum, part toyland – and oh, yeah, a workplace, too

ATLANTA -- We're in a Porsche Cayman, passing through a pair of white pylons, when all of a sudden the scenery through the windshield is shifting wildly from one side to the other.

Can you say "Hooooolyyyyyy...!"?

Welcome to the kick plate, one of six car-control training tools Porsche has installed here, next to the busiest airport in North America, in the shadow of arguably the coolest workplace in the world.

The kick plate is designed to start a car rotating, and you'll never know if it's going to kick the rear tires left -- sending the front of the car right -- or right. Once you're off the kick plate, you're on some of the most highly polished concrete ever, riding a thin film of water thanks to a continuous shower from built-in sprinklers.

The futuristic world of driverless cars is coming sooner than you think

It’s 7 a.m. on a sunny Monday morning in the not-too-distant future, like a hundred Mondays before. You eat breakfast and hop in your car. As the garage door opens, sonar, cameras and radar guide you out and determine if it’s safe to exit the driveway.

Forty-five minutes later, you’re at work; you walk in and begin your workday.

What’s different? You didn’t drive. Your car did.

Driverless cars, where human driving skills are replaced by those of a microchip, are coming sooner than you think — possibly before this decade is out.

Double threat

If ever there was a poster child for having first impressions swept away by reality, the Land Rover Discovery Sport might be it.

Walk up to it, drive it in daily driving and you'll marvel at its on-road prowess. You might even dismiss it as the best-looking Honda CR-V you've ever driven. An off-road beast is not what comes to mind.

But this is a Land Rover, and for whatever perception you might have about the reliability of some of the company's vehicles, off-road ability is something the carmaker takes very seriously. A Land Rover that can't handle dunes, mud moguls, snow or rocks would be like a Porsche that can't carve up a racetrack.

So don't be surprised if you see a buttonized version of Land Rover's Terrain Response system, which lets you alter a number of vehicle parameters (accelerator pedal response, transmission shift patterns, traction control, etc.) according to programs for sand, snow, mud or on-road driving.

Vermin infestation turns family van into rat rod

It started with some torn napkins.

It ended four months and $9,462.63 later.

Suffrin' succotash! Where's Sylvester when you need him?

We first noticed the sign of mice in August. We thought we had it covered, but by Sept. 5, our Toyota Sienna was on the business end of an F-250 tow truck headed for the insurance compound.

Penny pincher

There were a couple of things I didn't like about the 2015 Prius V, but they were all trumped by the one thing I loved: $14.

That was my total bill for a week's worth and 215 kilometres behind the wheel of the Prius V, in almost exclusively city driving.

Not to make a big deal about it, but since most automotive journalists, by far, pay for the gas out of whatever they make writing about the cars, a tiny gas bill such as that improves our profit line considerably.

It is a pretty big tradeoff, however. The Prius V (like its siblings Prius c and Prius) is made to save fuel, not give auto journos their jollies. In both respects, it performs admirably.

Fun, but not fuelish

So much fun, so little fuel.

As we've seen from cars such as the Honda Fit or Mitsubishi Mirage, getting a car with fuel consumption below the eight litres per 100 kilometre range isn't impossible.

Getting it in a car that's an absolute joy to drive? That's a bit more challenging.

Then along comes the Volkswagen Golf 1.8 TSI. It's powered by a 1.8-litre turbocharged four-cylinder gas engine. In the tester, it was mated to a slick five-speed manual.

Droptop on a diet

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- The fog that greets almost every day in Los Angeles is starting to burn away as we pull onto California 101, hinting at a SoCal scorcher to come.

Sure enough, within an hour, my driving companion, Antoine Joubert from L'Annuel de l'automobile, and I are digging out the sunscreen and slathering on another layer. By mid-afternoon, the car's thermometer says it's 97 degrees F (36 C) and we're into our fourth layer of SPF 60.

And it's all very necessary, since we're driving the new 2016 Mazda MX-5, the latest generation of a revolution of roadsters dating back to the 1989 Chicago Auto Show.

Before we returned to the hotel, we capitulated. In the name of journalism, of course. I mean, we just had to test Mazda's claim the new soft top is 40 per cent quieter than the previous generation, right? And it was, but it was far from the most remarkable part of this brilliant car.

Hate to drive? Here’s what you can do

I once had an assignment that required me to recommend cars to people who hate to drive.

Naturally, as someone who loves to drive, it was hard to put on the hat of someone from the opposite perspective.

What defines hatred of driving? Former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson almost nailed it without even knowing: These people probably hate to drive because they're bad at it. How many times have you pulled up beside some slowpoke to see the driver has got their steering wheel in a death grip, a nervous look on their face and a vein popping on their forehead?

If hating to drive is a result of a lack of confidence, there are things you can do to overcome the problem. The first is to find a good driving school. There are a few that operate across Canada, some of which operate travelling road shows to take their messages across the land. Check the websites of the performance-oriented brands (Porsche, BMW, Mercedes-Benz) and you might find one near you. Sometimes the local dealer will know of a good school.

In Focus

WHITEFIELD, N.H. -- Focus is usually a visual attribute, so it's interesting the most significant news out of the 2015 Ford Focus is sound. Or, rather, the lack thereof.

Arguably the biggest change for the 2015 model is the addition of a 1.0-litre, three-cylinder EcoBoost engine. This engine, available on the current-generation Fiesta, offers improved fuel economy over the standard 2.0-litre engine and cuts CO2 emissions by up to 15 per cent.

But, while its three-cylinder format would usually mean a thrashy, noisy mill working hard just to get out of its own way, the technology has made this engine, particularly in Focus, remarkably quiet.

The first three-cylinder engine to come these ways could charitably be called a nightmare: loud, raucous and shaky. The three-bangers in those early Suzuki Swifts sounded like they were trying to thrash their way out of the engine bay.

Alternate histories of the automotive industry

My favourite episode of the original Star Trek TV series was called City on the Edge of Forever.

You might remember it: A deranged Dr. McCoy escapes Capt. Kirk and Spock through a time portal (the Guardian of Forever) to 1930s New York City. Everything Kirk and Spock knew -- the Enterprise, the crew, Starfleet -- vanished as soon as McCoy disappeared.

McCoy had altered the timeline back in the Big Apple. He saved the life of a peace activist who, now having lived long enough, went on to successfully lobby the United States to delay its entry into the Second World War. The reprieve was enough for Hitler to develop the atomic bomb first, win the war and conquer the world.

For history as Kirk and crew knew it to be saved, the pacifist had to die.

Automakers share blame for tail-light trouble

Oblivious. While it's a word that applies to many drivers, in this case, the oblivious driver had an accomplice: the manufacturer of the car.

The incident happened on my way home from work late one night. Driving down a not-so-well-lit street, I came upon -- rapidly, I might add -- a driver with no tail lights.

When, later, I was able to pass her, I realized the reason her lights were out: daytime running lights.

Now, don't get me wrong, DRLs are a good addition to a car's safety package. Headlights help you be seen by others whether it's day or night, so a system to turn them on automatically isn't a bad thing.

NASA, Nissan to co-develop autonomous drive

When you're sending a vehicle 400 million kilometres away expecting it to roam another planet, extract soil samples and send back data, you need it to think for itself.

So Nissan is betting the organization that has taken autonomous-vehicle technology to an interplanetary scale can help it develop self-driving cars right here on Earth.

The carmaker, which has previously vowed to put self-driving cars on the road by 2020, has teamed up with the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration to co-develop autonomous-drive systems, human-machine interface solutions, network-enabled applications and software analysis and verification systems.

Researchers from both organizations will test a fleet of zero-emission autonomous vehicles at the Ames Research Center in California with the goal of demonstrating remote operation of autonomous vehicles to transport goods, payloads and people.

Winter driving is tough enough when healthy

My wife says I'm the biggest baby when I get sick. She's right.

Even if it's just a cold, all the energy seems to drain out with every blown nose. Getting out of bed is not high on my list of priorities. Give me a big box of Kleenex, a good supply of water and the iPad with Netflix and leave me alone. Please and thanks.

With a flu, it's even worse. Delirium and fatigue are common symptoms, as is a loss of the ability to focus on a task. What was I saying again... ?

Which raises an interesting question: should you drive when you're sick?