Jalopnik's Favorite Stories From 2023

Back in February I took a trip to Paris with nearly a dozen of my friends so we could attend the Rétromobile classic car show, which exceeded my already high expectations. It’s beyond anything else I’ve experienced, including Monterey Car Week, with an incredible variety of cars and an amazing selection of parts, books, memorabilia and other things for sale. I rounded up my favorite cars from Rétromobile, and also wrote about R-Fit Vintage, a company creating EV conversion kits for classic French cars like the Citroën 2CV and the Renault 5.

At the beginning of the year when I was just a contributing freelancer I wrote this story about why I don’t want to drive gas-powered cars anymore, and after another 12 months of driving new EVs and internal combustion cars, I stand by it even more firmly. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of fantastic ICE cars on sale, and new hybrids are getting even better — it’s not like I don’t want to drive the next Porsche 911 — but I’ve found myself so enamored by electric cars of all kinds that I’m ready for a swift, overwhelming transition to EVs. (Also shoutout to my story about Paris’ seemingly excellent EV infrastructure; this is the kind of thing the U.S. needs more of.)

Circuit of the Americas and MotoGP invited me to the track to sample some “backpack laps” on the back of a 2023 BMW S 1000 RR. Professional rider Nate Kern told the assembled group of journalists and influencers that us passengers determine the speed of the ride based on how well we followed instructions — and I’m proud to say I followed instructions so well that we hit 170 miles per hour on COTA’s back stretch, where I stared directly into the face of God in what remains the most exhilarating experience of my life.

Formula 1's much-hyped Las Vegas Grand Prix was ultimately a success, but it fell victim to one of the worst faux pas in the sport’s American history: F1 entirely ignored the concerns of the locals. Ahead of the race, we spoke to 15 people connected with Las Vegas in some way and found that an extreme lack of communication left them praying for the event’s failure.

I truly enjoyed going to Baja California Sur for the legendary Baja 1000 race. This was one of the last major motorsport events on my personal bucket list, and now that I’ve been there, I’ve seen just how grueling the race actually is. Digging in with a team and seeing the full extent of the logistics, personnel, and human fortitude required to get to the finish line was astounding and inspiring. I left a part of me in the desert; it was a near-spiritual experience. If you ever get the opportunity to go to Baja for the 1000, absolutely do it.

I loved writing my cigarette car story because I love writing colloquially, and sharing a stupid trend that I kept seeing on my TikTok feeds with Jalopnik’s audience was a lot of fun. I was surprised to learn how few people were aware of the trend, including some of my coworkers. I think it’s a great term to describe those ratty cars that so many folks drive and love, and it felt like a story that nobody else was writing about.

We here at Jalopnik get called out for calling out Elon Musk on his bull. His defenders just can’t seem to accept that we don’t see how he’s apparently changing the world. One of the ways in which he’s doing that is running right now under the Las Vegas Convention Center, and a few months ago I got to check it out. Yes, the Las Vegas Loop is just as dumb as I thought it would be. Even though I got a lot of heat for it, this is one of the my favorite posts I wrote all year.

Calling out the realities of the electric vehicle market isn’t being anti-EV; it’s calling out the realities of the EV market. Electric car market share is growing, but sales are slumping due to a number of factors, mainly affordability and high interest rates. I got a chance to highlight something that some buyers in the market for an EV might not be aware of: just how cheap these things have gotten on the used market. Many models that buyers were clamoring for or willing to pay insane markups to get a year or two ago have taken a nosedive and are now actually cheap. While it may seem boring to call this post one of the best things I wrote all year, I always jump at the opportunity to help people with car buying or making a financially sound decision.

In 2023, I’ve had the privilege of moving into a new medium: video. Now, I’m not exactly a camera-ready person, but I thought this would be a good use of space to shoutout the whole video department (especially, Video Producer Dan) for making some really great stuff this year. Nobody has ever done more with less than the whole G/O Media video team, and I thank them for their service.

Anyway, Quick Drives is something new we introduced this year. It’s a setting where I’m actually able to go out with a camera person (Dan) and shoot my very first impressions of a car. They’ve been a lot of fun, and I cannot wait to do more in the new year.

This is one of the rare times when I’m not driving the cars I’m talking about. I was lucky enough to get a behind-the-scenes look at a real rally event, allowing me to get into some semi-sketchy places, be pelted with rocks and shoot some of the coolest home-brew rally cars on earth. Did I get dirty? You bet. Would I do it again? Without a doubt. Once again, shout out to the whole video team for taking dozens of clips of cars sliding around and making them into something you all would enjoy watching!

Back in November, I got the opportunity to follow around the Alpine F1 Team during the Las Vegas Grand Prix. The new event created difficulties for everyone involved, including the teams. While working in the middle of the night was planned for, no one could have foreseen the shattered remains of a water valve cover destroying one of the team’s cars.

For the last few years, international travel has struggled to recover from the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Air travel is the first thing that comes to mind, but Amtrak’s three routes to Canada were also severed. America’s government-owned railroad worked to restore a vital service between New York and Montreal earlier this year, but freight company Canadian National maintained the route so poorly that it quickly had to be shuttered for months.

I love following right-wing extremists, mostly because they say the darndest things. In that vein, writing about Sovereign Citizens is one of my favorite subjects. In this story, I did a deep dive investigating the claims they make about not needing driver’s licenses or license plates.

I also love history, so my other favorite posts were history posts. I wrote about how Lee Iacocca invented the long-term car loan and changed America forever, and about Henry Ford’s company town in the Amazon rainforest.

This is why I love working for Jalopnik. None of my previous employers would have let me put “butt plug” in a headline, but Jalopnik did because, let’s be honest, it looks exactly like a butt plug. Is that headline possibly the reason we didn’t get invited to the new Tacoma launch? Who can say. What I can say is that you can’t put a picture of something that so clearly looks like a butt plug in a press release and get surprised when someone points it out. Plus, while I can’t tell you exactly how many people read that post, I can tell you that I’m confident we got more pageviews on that article than anyone else who wrote it up straight did. I mean, we’re talking about two companies forming a partnership to manufacture a solid electrolyte that will later be used in long-range electric vehicles. That doesn’t exactly scream, “Click me!” A butt plug, on the other hand, definitely does.

Yes, both of my favorite posts this year are about sex, and maybe that makes me immature, but hey, a guy’s gotta have fun somehow. And trust me, this was a fun post to write. I mean, I literally got paid to work every euphemism for sex that I could think of into an article. My only regret is that I didn’t think to include “playing hide the hog” at the time. Well, that, and not being able to find anyone who had done it in a Waymo taxi since the original report only included information on people getting it on in Cruise taxis. I’m not mad, San Francisco readers. Just disappointed. I even have a friend who lives in Phoenix and has ridden in a Waymo but refused to have sex with his wife in it because of concerns about “privacy” and “getting caught” or something like that. Ridiculous, right? Do you not care about my clicks, Scott? I’ve never felt more betrayed in my life.