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Unique view of Bentleyville from the Harbor 360 Restaurant at the top of the Duluth Radisson. Photo by John Gilbert.

This has been a tumultuous year, whether you were involved in politics or not, but even if you were on the downside of all that bull-slinging, there have still been a lot of things to be thankful for on Thanksgiving week. 

Same with the auto industry; lots to be thankful for, but also reasons for being very apprehensive about the future.

Personally, I have been thankful for all the new vehicles I’ve been able to test drive and review for the Reader and all the Reader readers. The technology is changing so rapidly from gas-powered combustion-engine vehicles to EVs — Electric Vehicles — with stops at numerous hybrid models that combine the two, that it is a challenge to keep up.

I have been less thankful for the economic crunch afflicting the auto industry these days, which have caused me to miss several weeks of getting a new test vehicle from either of two regional supply depots in Chicago. It costs the manufacturers something for every vehicle delivered to the Midwest auto media, and frankly, they ran out of budget and put a hold on delivering those cars.

I am thankful for the array of top vehicles that have won the preliminary vote to be considered for the North American Car, Truck and Utility for 2025. I used to be on that jury, and enjoyed it immensely while putting a lot of time and effort into the evaluations. 

Politics prevailed, and ultimately caused my separation from that jury, but they still do a fair and quite objective job of their votes. With the electric and hybrid vehicles gaining favor, the 2025 selections reflect that.

Finalists for Car of the Year are: Honda Civic Hybrid (which I raved about as my favorite at the Fall Festival in Chicago), Kia K4 (formerly the Forte), and Toyota Camry (all of which will be hybrids for 2025).

Finalists for Truck of the Year are: Ford Ranger (which includes the Raptor), Ram 1500, (thoroughly redesigned by Stellantis, which used to be Dodge), and the Toyota Tacoma (redesigned from the ground up).

Finalists for Utility of the Year are:  Chevrolet Equinox EV (all redesigned), Hyundai Santa Fe (startling new restyling), and the Volkswagen ID Buzz (ultra modern redo of the old Microbus).

That’s an interesting and varied collection, but there are some dark clouds on the horizon for as soon as the next calendar year. 

Donald Trump, getting an early start on returning to the White House, has proclaimed that the first day, he will slap 25 percent tariffs on all things coming in from Mexico and Canada, and as much as 60 percent on anything from China. While his proclamation has reverberated around the auto industry, we need to evaluate a few things.

For example, how many people in the U.S., including incoming presidents, are aware that 88 percent of all pickup trucks sold in the U.S. are built at plants in Mexico? 

Now, in the past year I’ve driven trucks from every manufacturer and most of them are outstanding — the best ever made. But they are expensive, often costing more than $70,000 and sometimes closer to $90,000. Many of those trucks are put together in Mexico, shipped across the border to U.S. plants for the latest updates and revisions, then sent back to Mexico for final assembly.

If Trump’s 25 percent tariff goes into effect, how will pickup buyers react if their new pickup costs basically $3,000 more, just because those Mexican plants assembling our trucks are going to pass that tariff expense along with the new trucks?

And that’s before Mexico, Canada and China slap retaliatory tariffs on all their trade with the U.S. So maybe we can’t be thankful about those new tariffs, which also will affect U.S. inflation levels and the cost to each individual citizen. 

My flow of test vehicles will start back up again in another week or so, but in the meantime, we can catch up on the art of driving and how rallying back from the COVID cutbacks to the economic crunch shouldn’t be influencing drivers in normal traffic situations, but I’ve found less courteousness and more aggressive behavior that can be dangerous to us all.

For example, it seems that every time I drive into downtown Duluth these days there is more and more traffic streaming as it heads East, heading for the North Shore of Lake Superior. 

And in those streams, from dusk on, it seems more and more drivers are inattentively cruising along either without turning their headlights on, or turning them on and then leaving them on high beams. Both annoy me a lot, and I flash my lights at both extremes, to alert those driving in darkness to show us where they are, or to suggest to those blinding all of us in the oncoming lane with their high beams on.

My other biggest annoyances is how so many more drivers coming down the East-end avenues to the London Road throughway tend to slow down but then bolt through the stop sign without stopping, as though it is their right to spot a car-length gap in traffic and then barge into it. Dangerous, and, of course, illegal. 

Also, when you’re driving along at the speed limit, how often do you notice a suddenly enlarging vehicle behind you running right up on your bumper, as though their personal impatient rush needn’t allow you any room to stop or slow down safely.

So we aren’t at all thankful for those boorish types with whom we have to share the roads, just as we must remain vigilant to hesitate at a roundabout to make sure that guy barreling up to it intends to pause and yield, rather than run right in ahead of you.

But we are overwhelmingly thankful for the amazing driving aids built in to most new cars these days, and how their automatic headlight dimming feature takes care of one of my annoyances, and how the vehicle warning aids help you stay at a safe interval behind other cars.

At the Gilbert Compound, my wife Joan and I had a quiet and unusual Thanksgiving Day. We were not thankful for the fact that neither of our sons, Jack and Jeff, were with us for Thanksgiving dinner, for the first time in our memories. But we were thankful they are off in Washington and Texas, hopefully finding ways to enjoy the holidays.

We were also thankful for our own personal cars, especially our 2019 Hyundai Kona, with its remote starting feature that helped us out when we had to venture into the sudden chill of Thanksgiving week. 
We chose to let Joan avoid a day-long task of preparing a fantastic feast for Thanksgiving by instead making a reservation at Blackwoods Restaurant for their pre-fixed Thanksgiving dinner. It was very good, with plenty of turkey, corn, mashed potatoes, gravy, a tiny but good salad, rolls and pumpkin pie. We were able to zip down to eat after the Detroit-Chicago NFL game, and get home in time for the Green Bay-Miami chill-fest, if that mattered.

We thought also about how thankful we have been to get more than 30 miles per gallon while driving to assorted other restaurants for some of our favorite meals now and then. 

Among them are Valentini’s, out past the airport on Hwy. 53, where you not only find exceptional Italian food but you can get things like a prime rib sandwich, and a side salad with the unique built-in-house honey-mustard dressing. That dressing is so good that we talked them into buying a $5 vessel of it to take home.

Then there’s Big Daddy’s, which is known for great hamburgers, but has a subtle little treat on the menu — senior- sized (and priced) hot turkey, hot meatloaf and hot pot roast on bread with a mountain of mashed potatoes and gravy. The regular-sized portion is $17, and the Senior menu size is $9 — and you’d have to be a glutton to find the senior size insufficient. 

Last time we made our way up to Piedmont Heights for that, there was a breakdown in communication between our server and the cooks, and when they brought it out they realized it was the full order. They came out to apologize to us two or three times until I told them not to apologize, we’d suffer through it. But we couldn’t finish.

A new surprise dining spot we’ve discovered is the Harbor 360, that revolving restaurant at the top of the Radisson Hotel. Joan and I brought a friend up to the 15th floor because we both realized that it was cold out, and while we would like to visit Bentleyville, it was much more comfortable to view it from the revolving restaurant in all its glory. Not only that, the Monday special was for Smashburgers at $7, with maybe the tastiest French Fries in the city.

We’re thankful to the many great restaurants in Duluth and Superior, although we might be more thankful if Blackwoods offers to give each Thanksgiving Day Special customer a sack of leftover turkey to take home!