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A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Watch this phantom Buick drive itself down the highway in a snow storm

Years ago, General Motors used Buick cars to test out the idea of a "smart highway" concept. More recently, GM has been talking up its award-winning Super Cruise semi-autonomous technology that will roll out with Cadillac and make its way to Buick. The LeSabre in the video above has nothing to do with any of that.
On Interstate 15 in Utah, a man driving this LeSabre got into an accident that rearranged the front end and set the horn on permanent blare. At the time of writing this, no one is sure what happened next, but the man ended up sitting in the snow in the highway median while his car carried on down the highway without him. Passing traffic stayed well to the right.
The 51-second video below provides a different take on our autonomous future. A local newscast on KUTV covered the story the evening of the incident, but the Utah Highway Patrol didn't have any update on the fate of the LeSabre. We'll take that to mean that Buick's take on Christine could still be out on the prowl... so watch out!

Jeep Wrangler EcoDiesel, Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid and Tesla Cybertruck | Autoblog Podcast #606

In this week's Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Senior Editor, Green, John Beltz Snyder and Associate Editor, Joel Stocksdale. With their powers combined, they create a great episode full of driving impressions from the Jeep Wrangler EcoDiesel, Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid and BMW X6 40i. They return to the topic of the Ford Mustang Mach-E before diving into the Tesla Cybertruck and a future without Buick sedans. Finally, they help a listener choose a new, sporty sedan in the "Spend My Money" segment. Autoblog Podcast #606 Get The Podcast iTunes – Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes RSS – Add the Autoblog Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator MP3 – Download the MP3 directly Rundown Cars we're driving: 2020 Jeep Wrangler EcoDiesel 2019 Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid 2020 BMW X6 40i Ford Mustang Mach-E (Watch the ride-along here) Tesla Cybertruck Bye to Buick sedans Spend My Money Feedback Email – Podcast@Autoblog.com Review the show on iTunes Related Video: