The Big Chill: We pilot a trio of all-wheel-drive cute-utes to northern Michigan, where spine-chilling discoveries—and chilled spines—await. In June 1968, Richard Robison, his wife, and their four children were gathered around the living-room table, playing cards in their summer cottage, two miles north of Good Hart, Michigan. That’s when a killer wielding a rifle opened fire through a window. He then entered the cabin and, brandishing a handgun, concluded his grisly business, shooting all six family members and bludgeoning the daughter with a claw hammer. Twenty-seven days passed before police discovered the bodies, along with bloody footprints, shell casings, and the hammer. But to this day—more than 43 years later—the crime remains unsolved. Long since razed, the Robisons’ cottage stood just off Route 119, the so-called “Tunnel of Trees†road. For more than 20 miles, this almost continuously damp byway twists and coils and randomly opens to towering views of Lake Michigan, 100 feet below. Fog rolls in, and dense stands of birch and pine lean at grotesque angles above the roadway, creating a perpetual crepuscular gloaming. It’s nirvana as long as you’re E.A. Poe. The rest of the article can be found at... 2012 Nissan Juke SV AWD vs. 2011 Mini Cooper S Countryman ALL4, 2012 Jeep Compass Latitude 4x4 - Comparison Test - Car and Driver
The Compass has earned a bit of notoriety by achieving only a two star crash rating in the very latest European tests - Euro NCAP Jeep Compass - not that it's the first Chrysler/Jeep to get an awful rating. Chrysler/Jeep seem to always get appalling pedestrian scores as I guess they aren't designed to co-exist with pedestrians as they must do in Europe. The Compass is actually an improvement on one of the Cherokees (even Jeep wouldn't use the name Patriot here) that got red marking on every part of the front of the vehicle - 'designed to kill pedestrians' might have been Nader's headline. However it's interesting to see that even with a side thorax airbag, it got a bad side impact rating - illustrating that having a 'marketing airbag' ("it must be safe - just look how many airbags it has") is nowhere near as good as having an effective airbag.