These Are The Best Jalopnik Explainer Posts Ever

The 25 year import rule remains infamous today for halting the dreams of enthusiasts before they can even get off of the ground.

Money was certainly a factor, but they were not without other concerns about poor quality conformity conversions being done that could have put drivers in danger. Nobody wants to learn that a car they were told had airbags actually didn’t. Of course, the automakers complained about poor conversions harming their image.

Reputable importers had a solution that could have fixed this. Sadly, it was ultimately ignored.

Instead, New York and cities across the world clean tunnels using big special trucks. Most of these trucks use a combination of high pressure water streams and giant spinning brushes, like you’d find in a drive-thru car wash, to spray and scrub the walls of the tunnel.

The regulation requires every F1 team to stop work for 14 consecutive days. All development, analysis — really any work to be done to the car has to be stopped, unless it is pre-approved by the FIA. Teams and drivers are even prohibited from reading emails. However, teams are able to do maintenance to prepare for the 50 more weeks of racing ahead.

So what can we take from all of this? Automakers still have work to do—ideally the fires would stop. But despite millions of vehicles being affected by recalls, the decline of vehicle fires means that the recalls are doing what they’re supposed to: motivating people to bring in their vehicles for repairs before a terrible accident can happen.

Car booting is not only annoying for those who get booted, it’s an easy gateway for scammers to cheat people out of money, it often targets lower-income people, and it also compounds the basic problem of a car being in the way by making it unable to move. It turns out, a very common type of car boot is also super easy to remove without paying any fines.

If you have a car in California and want to take it off the road for a while, to save money on registration and insurance you can file “Planned Non-Operation.” Here’s a brief rundown on how “non-op” works, how to use it, and some potential pitfalls with it.

Planned Non-Operation, also referred to as PNO or just “non-op,” is an option you’ll see every time your annual California vehicle registration renewal notice comes around. “I forgot to put my broken BMW E30 on non-op three years ago and now I’m broke,” your car buddy might have once told you. Don’t be that friend!

All-wheel drive and four-wheel drive may seem like simple concepts, but in reality, there are dozens of widely different systems out there, and a lot of confusion in marketing material and in “common knowledge.” The dead of winter seems like the perfect time for me to publish this ridiculously deep-dive on the various ways cars can power all four wheels.

I’ve been doing a fair amount of winch research lately, and one thing I’ve always kind of wondered about is winching your truck backwards with front-mounted winch. Do you just kind of sling the cable underneath and start winching?

It turns out, yeah, you can do that.

This weekend, international drivers from multiple disciplines will be taking on stock car racing with the NASCAR Cup Series at Watkins Glen. If you’re new to the NASCAR series because you’re looking to check out the likes of Kimi Raikkonen, Daniil Kvyat, or Mike Rockenfeller, then you’re in luck. We’re going to break down the stock car series so even new fans can enjoy the action.