Honda's small SUV has some sizable advantages

Mark Glover’s AutoGlo car reviews also can be seen in the Northern & Central California Cruisin’ News magazine published monthly out of Folsom, California.

Sacramento, California -- You see so many subcompact crossover sport-utility vehicles these days that you can become jaded ... eyes drifting ... shiny object somewhere in the distance.

But when the small SUV is made by Honda, well, you pay attention.  Honda has long been a master of building dependable, small vehicles that get good fuel mileage and win big awards. Oh, and they sell like penny pancakes.

Take the Honda HR-V, for example.

Maybe you don't want to get the prize-winning Honda CR-V.  You want to spend a few bucks less.  You want an easy-to-handle, practical-size sport-ute that can tackle your basic chores -- usually involving transportation of a few human beings or some humble cargo.

If that's the case, the HR-V might be what you want.

My 2019 HR-V tester was the all-wheel drive Touring edition, generously equipped and showing a price of $29,585 on the bottom of the sticker.  It was loaded with customer-pleasing, helpful perks for that price -- leather trimmed seats, heated front seats, steering wheel-mounted controls, plentiful high-tech plug-in options, LED lighting and a full boat of top-notch safety features.

Regarding that last mention, the 2019 HR-V received a max five stars in federal government overall safety testing.  When equipped with the optional front crash prevention system, the Honda HR-V gets a Top Safety Pick star from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

For the 2019 model year, Honda tweaked the HR-V here and there, with refreshed styling touches and an infusion of some new technology. All positives.

What you won't get in an HR-V is neck-snapping accelerations off the line.  Power comes from a 1.8-liter, four-cylinder engine rated at 141 horsepower.  On suburban roads and city streets, I had no problems as performance was adequate and handling quite agile.  Coming down the freeway on-ramp, however, I really had to put my right foot in it to easily blend in. No surprise there.

And no surprise that the fuel mileage is an impressive 26 miles per gallon in the city and 31 mpg on the highway.  Once again, Honda knows its audience, and this HR-V is aimed at the prudent buyer desiring the basics ... without crushing the household wallet.

Good news: This HR-V gives you all that in spades.

Given the plentiful on-board perks and excellent safety features, I'm guessing most HR-V buyers will enjoy long relationships with their motor vehicle of choice.

Upgraded Jetta long on charms, fuel mileage

Mark Glover’s AutoGlo car reviews also can be seen in the Northern & Central California Cruisin’ News magazine published monthly out of Folsom, California.

Sacramento, California -- Quick, what's the top-selling German car in the United States?

I'm guessing that numerous models popped up in numerous minds, but if you came up with the Volkswagen Jetta, proceed to the head of the class.

Bonus: There's more for American motorists to like this time around.

The Jetta received a major reworking for the 2019 model year, with sporty exterior styling tweaks, a freshened interior cabin and more space in the back seats and trunk.  OK, it looks pretty sweet inside and out, although I'd characterize the changes as party on the outside and more business-like on the inside.

The tested 2019 VW Jetta 1.4T SEL retained much of what I liked about the previous-generation Jetta.  Yes, you can drive it from Sacramento to Los Angeles on a single tank of gas and still have some fuel to spare for your own Hollywood driving tour.

The interior controls are straightforward and easy to understand.  Interior comfort on this affordable sedan is top-notch.  My upper level SEL was lavishly dressed up, but it showed a totally reasonable bottom line of $25,265 on the sticker.  Still too much?  You can get yourself a basic Jetta S for a starting price of less than $19,000.  Very nice.

Perks on my ride were plentiful, including a digital instrument cluster, LED lighting all around, an Intelligent Crash Response System, a power panoramic sunroof and heated/folding/power exterior mirrors.

Other goodies have been noted by other reviewers, particularly the 10-color ambient interior lighting system.  Cool enough, but I'm not one of these motorists who counts colors.

What I do notice is performance, and the tested Jetta's 1.4-liter turbo 4 delivered handsomely in all conditions.  It felt significantly more powerful than the advertised ratings of 147 horsepower and 184 foot-pounds of torque.  Handling and steering were spot-on, and I felt completely comfortable and secure when the Jetta was in serious traffic.

That Sacramento-to-L.A. trip sans fuel stops is made possible with fuel mileage ratings of 30 miles per gallon in the city and 40 mpg on the highway.

Shoppers looking for an affordable, reliable sedan these days are likely to hit the Toyota and Honda lots when they venture out with checkbooks in hand.  My 2 cents for those folks: You might be wise to plan a stop at a VW store, where Jettas are awaiting test drives.

Massive Ram pickup has refined road manners

Mark Glover’s AutoGlo car reviews also can be seen in the Northern & Central California Cruisin’ News magazine published monthly out of Folsom, California.

Sacramento, California -- There are big pickup trucks, and there are behemoths ... And then there are pickup trucks that have their own ZIP Codes and seemingly make their own weather.

A member of that last segment showed up in my driveway recently.  Its full name was a 2019 Ram 2500 Laramie Longhorn Crew Cab 4X4 Long Box.

For my money, it was nearly 22 feet of menace and intimidation.  It took me 10 minutes of pondering just to figure out how to get it moving without wrecking the homes of my neighbors.

I assumed that people who need to move massive cattle trailers or position a double-wide prefabricated home would need the bulk of my tester.  And pay the price. The bottom line on my ride was just short of $80,000.

Everything associated with the vehicle was big.  The owner's manual weighed in at 718 pages, or about the length of a Stephen King novel trilogy.  The complex instructions for positioning the tri-fold tonneau cover out of harm's way took me back to my first algebra class all those years ago.  Cold fear of messing it up.

I quickly concluded that this was a truck dripping in massive macho ... way above my pay grade.  I was not in its league.

But then I drove it.

Amazingly, it handled like a charm on the open roadways.  Steering was as comfortably firm and easy as that found in a crossover SUV.  Power was never a problem, with the 6.7-liter, six-cylinder Cummins turbo diesel dishing up propulsion and torque in massive doses.  My biggest problem was keeping the tester under 80 miles per hour on the freeway.  Cruising along at 75 was effortless.

Getting comfortable, I was amazed at the number of top-flight perks surrounding me in the cabin of this big brute: heated/ventilated front seats, heated steering wheel, 17-speaker primo Harman Kardon audio system, 12-inch navigation/video display, wireless charging pad and a power sunroof to name just a few.

It was all enough to make me forget about the possibility of wheeling this pickup on tight downtown streets or, heaven forbid, space-challenged parking lots.  And I can pretty much guarantee that if I owned this Ram as my only vehicle, it would never see a fast food drive-through lane in its lifetime.

But hey, I know that they make these heavy duty trucks for a reason, and that there are buyers out there who crave a big-daddy pickup.  For you folks, this might be your dream ride ... if you don't mind walking to the inside customer counter when you're craving a Big Mac from McDonald's.

Welcome to the joke that is Formula One

Mark Glover’s AutoGlo car reviews also can be seen in the Northern & Central California Cruisin’ News magazine published monthly out of Folsom, California.

Sacramento, California -- For someone who has had a lifelong love of auto racing -- particularly high-speed, open-cockpit, open-wheel racing -- the fiasco that occurred Sunday at the Formula One Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal was heartbreaking.

F1 is the most sophisticated, expensive and exotic international racing series in the world. It's also the least competitive ... and has been for a long time.

This year, as has been the case for the previous five years, Mercedes has dominated the races. Everyone else is racing for second or third place on most weekends.  On-track passes for the lead in Formula One are as rare as a solar eclipse at a fixed spot on the planet.

So, on Sunday, there was a real race for the lead, with Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel driving his guts out to hold off a hard-charging Lewis Hamilton in his Mercedes.  Vettel, pride of Germany with four F1 series championships, and Hamilton, the superstar Brit with five F1 titles, are rightly regarded as the two best pilots in the globe-hopping series.

On Sunday, they were giving thousands of Canadian fans and millions of TV watchers worldwide something we don't see in F1 -- an exciting dice at the head of the field. Coming on the heels of a pulsating finish between Alexander Rossi and eventual winner Simon Pagenaud in the May 26 Indianapolis 500, this was something F1 needed to drum up genuine excitement.

Leave it to the convoluted, Byzantine, wrong-headed rules of Formula One to screw it up.

On lap 48 of 70, with Hamilton within striking distance of passing Vettel for the lead, Vettel made a mistake entering a high-speed corner.  Simply put, he overcooked it, and went off let into the grass. He quickly snapped the Ferrari right, re-entered the course and hung on as his car drifted right and blocked Hamilton from blazing past.  Vettel kept on with the lead and Hamilton right on his tail.

Commentators in the worldwide TV feed immediately speculated that race stewards would review the lightning-quick incident for an "unsafe re-entry" to the course, blocking Hamilton.  The commentators quickly speculated that such an appeal would be denied, given the nature of the racing incident.  They felt (as did I) that it was a high-speed run off-and-on, and Vettel didn't really have time to do a controlled block of Hamilton.  Vettel was simply trying to hang on to his car.

In my view, anybody who has watched high-speed auto racing for even a short time knows the physics of this incident: a winged bullet moving at high speed through the grass cannot be turned left on a dime once it re-contacts paving.  Vettel was fortunate that he simply hung on to the car and did not slam into the right-side barrier.

Alas, the lords of F1 didn't see it that way.  They slapped a five-second penalty on Vettel for unsafe re-entry and blocking Hamilton.  Ultimately, Vettel took the checkered flag first, but the penalty handed the win to the close-following Hamilton.

Not surprisingly, Vettel went ballistic.  One of the exasperated TV booth announcers wailed: "It's racing!"

I couldn't agree more.  F1 finally has a blazing shootout for the lead on its hands, and it makes a call that defies physics and rational thinking.  It's almost like they don't want real racing, which is probably why F1 has never caught on in the United States the way it has on distant shores.

I suppose if the lords of F1 had been watching the last 13 laps of this year's electrifying Indy 500, winner Pagenaud would have been disqualified for over-aggressive driving, or blocking or maybe driving a car that was too yellow.

I keep watching F1 events in the hope that something will be done to make the racing more competitive.  Looks like I'm in for a long wait.