Charles Renny

Everyone laughed when the first Toyota Hilux came to Canada in the early 1960s. It was such a small truck that it could hardly get out of its own way. With the 2005 Tacoma, no one is laughing. This is one serious new truck and what makes it important is that the Tacoma does not […] Read more

Ford fans have a great deal to cheer about in the 2005 Escape. The company has put together a package that is a North American first. The Escape Hybrid is a true hybrid in that it has two sources of power that can work independently of each other or in conjunction. The main power source […] Read more

You may wonder what a Silverado pickup and a Trailblazer sport utility vehicle have in common. Until now the answer would have been little, except that they are both made by Chevrolet. For 2005, these two gas guzzlers have been chosen to showcase Chevrolet’s fuel improvement technology. There is a reason why the company has […] Read more

The first comment that Yutaka Fujiwara made about Honda’s 2005 Odyssey during its Canadian introduction in Banff, Alta., was that he had “changed a few things.” Fujiwara, Honda’s large project leader, is the first Japanese person I have met who has mastered the English understatement. What he should have said is that not only has […] Read more

Crossover sport utility vehicles are supposed to bring versatility back into the SUV marketplace. Depending on what you cross it with, that will probably be true. For the most part, this new breed of SUV tends to be a vehicle based on a truck and the manufacturers seem intent on turning that sow’s ear into […] Read more

The new Equinox compact sports utility vehicle, Chevy’s first based on a car chassis, isn’t intended for rural markets, but the company doesn’t phrase it that way. What it says is that median household income will be about $90,000, which eliminates most farmers I know. Also, Chevy says that roughly 60 percent of its sales […] Read more

Bad weather lets us know which part of our vehicle’s maintenance we have been ignoring. Tires are a good example. Because there was no serious rain for a few years across much of the Prairies, many of us were able to make do with the tires we had. Now that it is wet and muddy, […] Read more

The double-double jokes started within minutes of getting in the new Tundra Double Cab. Comments such as double the foot space and double the knee room were only half in jest. You can’t appreciate how much different the double cab is from a regular extended cab Tundra until you sit in the back. Toyota did […] Read more

Sometimes being a lazy know-it-all gets me into trouble. This time it was with the Ranier, the new sports utility vehicle from Buick that is based on GM’s short wheel base, mid-sized architecture. It is the same platform used by TrailBlazer, Envoy and Bravada. My mistake was assuming that the Ranier would have enough Buick […] Read more

The Chevy Colorado is a fine mid-sized truck and probably at least 10 times better than the S10 it replaces. It is available in regular, extended and crew cab styles with either a four- or five-cylinder engine, both of which are derivatives of the immensely successful, 4.2 litre, in-line six that was introduced in the […] Read more