Chevy Malibu (2014)

Redux: Stop the madness.

You know the feeling.  You look at the selection of cars and realize "oh great, it's down to just the American cars."  Does anyone actually *want* to drive one of these?

This thing handles like you expect.  You have no idea what the tires and the road are negotiating beneath you.  The handling feels like a video chat -- you move your hands but the steering doesn't see it for half a second.  A bouncy house and a fish had a baby and put a tinny engine in it.

It has cute bells and whistles .. but all the interactions with them are nonsensical.  Here's a sample of the goofiness.

You can pair up your phone and play music through the car's audio system.  Great right?

But the next time you start up the car, it seems to have forgotten all about that.  It just switches on the XM radio, tuned to whatever your first station preset is.  It doesn't even remember which XM station you may have last listened to -- it just switches on the first and starts blaring.  Before your stopover, you were grooving to Caro Emerald -- as soon as you start the car back up, you're listening to John Tesh.

Can you imagine if your first preset was a Country station?  Think of the children!

Nissan Maxima (2014)

Redux:  Look for one of these, next time you have a choice.

Maybe it was the luck of the draw, but mine had really nice stuff.  It had an automatic climate control that could *subtly* bring the temperature down after a day in the sunshine.  It had keyless ignition and entry.  And the remote lock/unlock doesn't do that stupid thing where it makes the car honk at anyone standing in front of it.

I think my favorite thing was that switching from automatic transmission to manual push-button causes it to shift down one gear from what the automatic had it in.  That's *exactly* what you use that for!  You're either trying to get more kick, or you're trying to engine brake so the fuzz doesn't see your brake lights come on.  Obviously, a manual driver had a say in how this feature works.

Nice handling, shifts when it should, and the engine has zoom without gobbling gas.

The only issue I had with it is that there's no "accessory port" (lighter) near the dashboard.  So if you're hanging your phone in the general dashboard region, there's no place handy to plug in and charge.  Not a deal breaker in the slightest.