It's almost reassuring to know that since the absolute earliest days of human motorized travel, there have been people writing about cars, and people calling bullshit on what's written about cars. These exchanges should seem incredibly familiar to most of our readers even if they happened nearly 200 years ago. The…

The pre-history of automobiles is really pretty murky. As much as Mercedes-Benz likes to claim the invention of the motor car, the truth is much more complicated, with many different inventors adding parts to what eventually became the car. Most people would point to Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot's 1769/1771 artillery…

As Google's doodle reminded me, today is International Women's Day. It's kind of alarming how much I rely on something called a "Google Doodle" to know what's going on. So, in honor of women, I'd like to talk about one woman who's been a hero of mine for many years: Bertha Benz, the first person to take a real road trip …

Once you realize that pretty much everything around you, no matter how seemingly small and insignificant, has a story behind it, the world becomes much more interesting. Your car is packed full of parts with good stories behind them (the tragic tale of Sir Nathan Airfilter comes to mind) but the one I'd like to talk…

People who are interested in cars enjoy calling parts of a car by their proper names. "Wheel," for example, has such a more refined sound than "roundy roller-maker, what's under the get-inside part." You can usually tell when someone is interested in cars by their use of proper terms, such as the names for the parts of the …

What's the craziest thing you've ever done on a bet? Shaved your head? Snuck into a party when you weren't on the guest list? Played Russian Roulette with some enforcers from a Mexican drug cartel? (I would advise against the last one, personally. Things tend to go south a lot faster than you might expect.)

(Our friends at RIDES have responded to our Donk Guide. Here's their take, and our response. — Ed.)

What is this huge old car with giant wheels and a Spongebob paint job? That's what we call a donk, the most hated kind of car in the world right now. Why do people hate them so much? Allow me to explain.

While we use it everyday now, the word "automobile" had to start somewhere.

We mentioned that the most exciting new feature of the new Silverado was the heated cloth seats (automatically heated, not gastro-manually Dutch oven-style of seat heating), and that got me thinking about heated seats. Specifically, who had them first?