We’re an opinionated lot here at CarExpert, and beyond our inter- and intra-office discussions we’ll take to the keyboard to write opinion pieces.
Though we don’t write as many op-eds as we do reviews or news, those we do write have a tendency to get our loyal readers talking.
Here are the top five opinion pieces of 2022 that generated the liveliest of discussions.
10 driver behaviours that piss us off
Mike Costello asked the rest of the CarExpert team what we thought were the most infuriating things that motorists do.
There were too many expletives for us to publish that as a straight transcript, but Mike has summarised the 10 worst driver behaviours – everything from truculent tailgaters to drivers befuddled by the concepts of roundabouts and merging.
FULL ARTICLE: 10 driver behaviours that piss us off
This… 
…or this?
What the CarExpert team would buy for the price of a RAV4 Hybrid
A lot of cars have had significant price bumps of late, but $50,000 can still buy you a decent car – a mid-range Toyota RAV4 XSE Hybrid being just one example.
But what if you want to live a little? While new cars are our domain, the CarExpert team went trawling through the classifieds to see what cool used cars we could get with $50,000.
The answer was a range of pretty fun vehicles, though most of our finds were packing V8 and even V10 engines and therefore were less sensible than a RAV4 Hybrid in more ways than one.
FULL ARTICLE: What the CarExpert team would buy for the price of a RAV4 Hybrid
Automotive guilty pleasures: The cars we’re almost embarrassed we like
We all have our guilty pleasures, the cars that objectively we perhaps shouldn’t like but have a strange allure nonetheless. Alborz Fallah alone seems to have a bunch, and they all seem to be convertibles.
Here, the CarExpert team has shared their guilty pleasures, ranging from the pretty respectable (BMW Z3, Volvo 240) to the downright embarrassing (Suzuki X-90).
FULL ARTICLE: Automotive guilty pleasures: The cars we’re almost embarrassed we like
Why 230km/h for police is not reckless driving
Should a police officer be exempt from punishment for speeding at up to 230km/h if they’re rushing to help an injured colleague?
That’s the question Paul Maric posed after Leading Senior Constable Bradley Beecroft did just that and faced 10 years in jail for the charge of reckless conduct endangering life.
The officer has subsequently had two of the four charges against him dropped, though this 16-year veteran of the Victoria Police and gold-class licence holder still faces charges of dangerous driving and speeding to be heard next year.
FULL ARTICLE: Why 230km/h for police is not reckless driving
The joys of driving a manual car again
Scott Collie penned an ode to the manual transmission after having spent just over a week driving three-pedal versions of the Hyundai i30 N and Subaru WRX back-to-back.
The number of manual-equipped cars on sale continues to dwindle, and many of us on the CarExpert team no longer own manual vehicles. But though automatics have come leaps and bounds over the years, there’s still that feeling of engagement that only a manual can offer.
FULL ARTICLE: The joys of driving a manual car again
