Day: Apr 7, 2016

How Objective Is Top Gear’s Rating System?

As I mentioned recently, I have been leafing through the Top Gear 2016 Car Buyers [sic] Guide. I made an interesting discovery.

2016 Ford S-Max: www.ford.co.uk
2016 Ford S-Max: http://www.ford.co.uk

Top Gear provides a rating for every car they review, graded as marks out of ten. I crunched the ratings for six classes of car: MPVs, city cars, hatchbacks, executive cars, sports cars and cabriolets. Continue reading “How Objective Is Top Gear’s Rating System?”

Theme: Japan – 1985 Nissan CUE-X

Japanese automotive engineering went into warp-drive mode in the middle 1980s. The Nissan CUE-X of 1985 remains an impressive tour de force of the purest styling and technical experimentation.

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Starting under the skin of this elegant and minimalistic design, we find electronic air suspension which controlled the spring rates, ride height and attitude. The damping could be altered as well making this a car which had the potential to fill a brief written by Citroen. Going further than Citroen did with their 1988 XM, the Cue-X also boasted four-wheel steering* The description of how it works is very similar to that of the XM: sensors sent signals to the vehicle’s central processor. The data described vehicle height, road speed, steering input, braking forces, throttle position and gear position. Continue reading “Theme: Japan – 1985 Nissan CUE-X”