You might call it the Rodney Dangerfield of sports coupes. The Toyota GR86, in the words of that fabled comedian, “don’t get no respect,” but the fact is, it deserves some. Our Co-Host Chris Teague put a GR86 through its paces as summer transitioned to fall in Maine, and the car passed with flying (fall) colors. Toyota (Subaru?) added a bit more horsepower to the GR86 (BRZ) recently, and the results are palpable. And, more to the point, enjoyable.

And if you want to talk about enjoyment, you should take a road trip like Host Jack Nerad just completed. He enlisted the all-new 2023 Toyota Sequoia Capstone to be his family’s ride of choice as they attended the Ft. Worth Stockyards Rodeo, the TCU-SMU football game, and a Rangers-Mariners baseball tilt at Globe Life Field. With all the comings and goings, the Sequoia proved to be an all-around champ. Comfortable, quiet, convenient, and fuel-efficient are just some of the positive adjectives that can be attached to the newest version of Toyota’s full-size traditional SUV.

If you’d like to know what cars, trucks, and SUVs really get their owners’ heart rates pumping, we have the perfect guest for you this week. Frank Hanley is senior director of auto benchmarking at J.D. Power. We’ll talk with him about the results of the company’s APEAL Study that measures car owners’ emotional attachment to their cars. Of course, Chris Teague now owns a car he doesn’t love at all, and he’ll tell you about that, too.

In the news this week, we have a warning for you. If you drive an older Hyundai or Kia model, you’ll want to hear the details of a recall of more than 3 million vehicles. The issue is that they might catch on fire, so owners are asked to park them outside. We’ll have the details on the vehicles involved in this episode.

A Reuters report shows that traditional automakers aren’t making much headway in the fight to wrest electric car dominance from Tesla. We’ll have the intriguing figures for you coming up.

And if you’re intending to buy a used car soon, you might be forced to set your sights much lower than you might have anticipated. It’s a jungle out there right now as a number of factors have conspired to make car buying extremely expensive these days. And don’t get us started on the issue of six- and seven-dollar-a-gallon gas in California.

America on the Road is brought to you by Driving Today.com, Mercury Insurance, YourTestDriver.com, and EMLandsea.com , the publisher of Nerad’s latest book, Dance in the Dark, which is available HERE on Amazon.com