You hear a lot these days about
“car sharing,” the vehicle-usage
model that allows people in a
network to borrow cars as they
need them. It’s the part of the
post-ownership society that
sounds most to me like a psy-
chological substitution for wife
swapping. But car sharing
promises to increase per-vehicle
efficiency, as the typical car or
truck spends around 95 percent
of its life just sitting around.
Editor's Letter:
— Eddie A lterman
Here at Car and Driver, we’ve been
running our own car-sharing pilot
program for well on to six decades.
It’s called the “car board,” and it
allows editors to sign themselves
out in a different car each night,
depending on what’s in our lot. W hile
successful in many regards—who
doesn’t want to spend an evening in a new Lamborghini
Huracán?—it is also a complete pain in the ass.
For one thing, you can’t leave items in any car. For me,
that means schlepping my watchmaking loupes, Connect
4 game, and espresso machine into the office every day.
And God forbid anyone leaves sunglasses or gum in a
vehicle—they’re as good as gone, snapped up by one of
the wolf-raised miscreants I like to call my co-workers.
Egg salad, however, always seems to escape the purview
of these janitorial endeavors.
Secondly, Bluetooth. I currently have the passkeys for
57 cars in my phone. An embarrassment of them are for
Corvettes and A MGs, Rs and Vs. Sounds great, right?
W hat’s the big deal about having so many cars linked to
one’s phone? Well, how about this scenario: You arrive at
work midway through a sensitive and ostensibly private
conversation with your urologist. You park next to some-
one who’s just arrived at the office lot in the car you drove
the day before. She’s sitting there, minding her own busi-
ness, making notes in the car’s logbook. Then her car’s
Bluetooth picks up your very personal and graphic con-
versation with your medical professional. I’m not saying
this happened, and neither is she. But I’d imagine that
small talk in the break room would be awkward for you
both from there on out.
There’s a reason each of us still owns at least one
personal vehicle that never shows up on the car board.
Sharing has its ups and downs.quality of their com-
ponents, but appar-
ently Land Rover just
lets the tooling wear
out and then shrugs
its shoulders when
things go wrong. After
decades of reliability,
suddenly pushrod
cups, which are
staked in place in the
cast rockers, started
to loosen up and
make noise. It started
in the 4.0 V-8 and
followed right up until
that poor engine was
put out of its misery
with the LR3.
- Worn-out cam
with mushroomed
lifters. Being as this
was/is a flat-tappet
pushrod engine living
in a roller-follower
overhead-cam world,
there isn’t enough
zinc in the oil to
properly lubricate the
old girls, and they
grind like Miley at an
awards show. It was
always a hoot to have
a dealer swap in a
fresh bullet only to
have them call back a
week later with a
truck with an engine
that has the same
get-up-and-slow and
cacophony of a
mid-’80s Volkswagen
Rabbit diesel running
two quarts low. - Finally, my
all-time favorite: loose
cylinder liners. This is
always good for a
laugh, tapping noise,
and sometimes a little
coolant loss. Wastes a
lot of a technician’s
time and a lot of a
customer’s money
replacing damn near
everything except the
cylinder block. But it
can’t be. How could
this happen? Well,
because Land Rover.
Truth be told, if I
were in the same
contest, I would have
made the same choice
in vehicle except I
would have used an
earlier Discovery
with a better depar-
ture angle. Getting
an old Discovery for
one of these chal-
lenges is almost
cheating; it is nearly
unstoppable once you
get it running.
—Ray Hagemann
Just-South-of-Armpit,
NJBLUE OH FACE
Your December 2016
“How the Chaste
Make Haste” article
about the 2017 Ford
Fusion Sport was
informative. Last
month I was able to
drive an early model
at a Ford dealership in
Hillsboro, Oregon. It is
everything you say it
is, and I am looking
for a vehicle to
replace my aging
Taurus SHO, which
has been the best“I ENJOYED
THE ‘BATTLE
OF T HE
OFF-ROAD
BEATERS’
STORY. THE
A R T ICL E
ALREADY HAS
ME PORING
OVER CRAIGS-
LIST POSTS,
TRYING TO
FIND AN OLD
GEO TRACKER.”
- CAR AND DRIVER. MAR/2017 Sic your dogs on us at: [email protected] or join: backfires.caranddriver.com