A pair of Altezza lights from a black 2001 Lexus IS300 is sitting in Amanda Cline's mother's kitchen oven. The heat should soften the sealant so Amanda can open the housings, paint the silver interiors black, and reseal the lights. She found the instructions on my.is, and the job looked manageable. Then her mother came home, smelled heated plastic, opened the oven, closed it again, and walked away rather than ask why her kitchen had become a headlight shop.
The idea was sound enough. Heating a sealed lamp assembly is a common way to open it, but separating the housing is only half the job. The harder part is cleaning the mating surfaces, applying sealant evenly, and closing the assembly without leaving a path for moisture. Amanda's black housing conversion failed at that last stage. Condensation appeared inside the lenses, and she eventually had to replace the headlights. It is the kind of mistake we remember because the evidence fogs up every time the weather changes.
That failed job says more about Amanda Reviews Cars than a polished press-car launch could. Amanda did not begin by standing beside a 1,025-horsepower electric truck and reading numbers from a specification sheet. She began by pulling parts off her own car, trusting forum instructions, getting the seal wrong, and paying for replacement headlights. Her work now includes seat comfort, cup holders, PRNDL tech, zero-to-60 testing, locking differentials, and high-performance machinery. The method remains practical: touch it, operate it, load it, time it, and find out whether it works beyond the brochure.
That failed job says more about Amanda Reviews Cars than a polished press-car launch could.
The white Acura NSX was Amanda's school bus
Long before the IS300 went under the screwdriver, cars were ordinary equipment in the Cline household, even when that equipment was unusual. Amanda had a Barbie C4 Corvette when she was young. Her parents owned matching Jaguars at one point, and the family had a Lincoln Navigator known as the Stinkin' Lincoln. Its third-row seat could be turned around so the children could face backward and make faces at drivers behind them. Years later, Amanda asked someone responsible for the Navigator product line whether a newer version could do the same. The answer was an immediate no: it was not safe.
The family also had two Acura NSXs, one white and one dark green. The white NSX was transportation to school because Keith Klein's office was nearby. It was a two-seat car carrying three people: Keith drove, Amanda sat in the passenger seat, and Amanda's younger sister sat on her lap. The roof usually stayed in place, the school bags had to fit, and Shania Twain played during the trip. There is no need to dress that up. A white Acura NSX doing the school run, with two children sharing one seat in the 90s, is specific enough.
Those trips help explain why Amanda does not treat an interesting car as something to admire from a distance. The NSX was a performance car, but it also had to hold bags and get everyone to school. That same distinction matters in a modern review. Horsepower tells us what an engine can produce. It does not tell us whether we can fit what we carry, reach the controls, or tolerate the seat for a full day.
Family photographs later supplied details Amanda had not known herself. While preparing to share these stories, she and her mother spent hours going through albums. One picture showed a small Florida-plated car her mother had owned, complete with a Born to Shop bumper sticker. Family car history is often less orderly than memory suggests. We remember the NSX, the matching Jaguars, and the Stinkin' Lincoln. Then an old photograph reveals a forgotten car and a bumper sticker nobody has mentioned in years.
A 2001 Lexus IS300 turned curiosity into shenanigans
At 16, Amanda received the black 2001 Lexus IS300 that she named Alexis. This was not a car she merely washed and parked. She took it to car meets, researched it on my.is, and started changing things. One of the first jobs involved spray-painting the stock IS300 wheels pink. She did not notice how late it had become until only two wheels were finished, so the car spent a long stretch wearing two pink wheels and two silver ones.
Anyone who has modified a daily driver recognizes the mistake. We picture the finished car and underestimate preparation time, drying time, reassembly, and the inconvenient fact that the vehicle may be needed the next morning. A wheel job requires more than paint. A headlight job requires more than separating the lens. Amanda's oven experiment was ambitious because the IS300's silver Altezza lights defined the car's appearance, and painting their interiors black would change its face. The poor seal, resulting condensation, and replacement lamps supplied the less glamorous half of the modification.
The Lexus also accumulated damage at a remarkable rate. Amanda said she crashed it 12 times, though many incidents were minor fender benders. After one rear impact, the bumper came off while she was driving on 75. She later arrived at the Ritz-Carlton, where Keith Klein was staying, and asked the valet to park the bumperless Lexus. The valet's reaction made it clear that Alexis did not resemble the usual vehicle presented at that entrance.
The IS300 survived 11 other accidents before the final collision.
The IS300 survived 11 other accidents before the final collision. While leaving school in Orlando, Amanda was caught in a crash involving about six cars. A Jeep Wrangler struck the Lexus from behind and pushed it into a Jetta. The Jetta's exhaust system ended up in the IS300's engine bay. There is no sensible driveway repair for that. The car had survived plenty of previous damage, but once another vehicle's exhaust is lodged under the hood, the shenanigans are over.
Writing about cars joined two things Amanda already knew
Amanda's career choice was straightforward by her own account: math was not her strength, so she chose writing. She earned a bachelor's degree in English literature and a master's in technical communication from the University of Central Florida. She then realized she could write about cars, a subject she already knew and liked. The work joined an existing skill with years of hands-on interest rather than requiring her to manufacture a specialty.
By the time of these stories, Amanda had worked in automotive journalism for about six years. Under Amanda Reviews Cars, she publishes written work at amandareviewscars.com and videos across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. David, whom she met at a car meet when she was 16, handles photography and video for the reviews. Their driving setup uses Meta glasses for the forward view, an iPhone pointed at Amanda, and a 360 camera mounted behind her head to capture more of the cabin and the road outside.
The setup is polished, but the judgment behind it comes from using cars rather than admiring them. Amanda knows the cost of a bad cup holder because she has cleaned spilled coffee from a cabin. She knows a metal PRNDL knob can become a usability problem because the large metal ball in the IS300 grew painfully hot in Florida. She knows a modification can look right and still fail because condensation appeared inside the headlights she had resealed.
This is where practical automotive journalism earns its keep. Press-car access alone does not make a useful critic. The job requires enough mechanical curiosity to inspect what a feature does, enough experience to recognize when it is awkward, and enough honesty to correct a test when the method is weak. The damaged IS300, half-finished pink wheels, and fogged Altezza lights belong beside the professional camera gear. They show how Amanda learned to notice consequences, not just intentions.
Press-car access alone does not make a useful critic.
Why an expired can of beans belongs in a car review
The can of refried beans began with coffee in the wrong cup holder. Amanda was carrying a thick-walled Tervis tumbler when another driver stopped short. The cup holder did not secure the tumbler, and coffee spilled through the cabin. Some of it remained in the car's nooks and crannies. Once we have cleaned up a spill like that, cup-holder shape stops being trivial. A shallow circular recess may look finished, but if it cannot control a loaded tumbler under braking, it has failed.
While reviewing a Highlander nicknamed the Green Bean, Amanda wanted a dry way to test whether its cup holders could accommodate the tumbler she used. A can of refried beans had roughly the right size and circumference. It also provided useful weight without requiring her to place an open drink in every press car. She put the can in the holders, found that the method worked, and kept using it.
The point is repeatability. We cannot compare cup holders properly if we use a narrow bottle in one car, a large coffee cup in another, and nothing in the third. The same can quickly reveals whether a holder is too shallow, too loose, obstructed, or badly positioned. It cannot represent every container an owner might bring, but it gives Amanda Reviews Cars one consistent object to use across different interiors.
The original can expired in 2021. Amanda later dropped it and badly dented it, so its remaining service life is uncertain. Nobody should eat it. As a test tool, though, it has lasted longer than plenty of purpose-built gadgets. The method also puts everyday details in their proper place within a review. Seat comfort and cup holders do not compete with acceleration or chassis hardware. They answer different questions, and owners will use the seats and storage on every trip whether or not they ever attempt a maximum-performance run.
From 1,025 horsepower back to an analog Mercedes-Benz
Amanda's press-car work ranges from the Maserati MC20 and McLaren 750S to the Cadillac Escalade-V, Rivian R1T, and INEOS Grenadier. She considers the MC20 especially distinctive among the supercars she has driven. The Escalade-V brought almost 800 horsepower in a large SUV whose small V badge did not prepare every observer for how hard it could leave. The purple Rivian R1T was more extreme on paper and in use: 1,025 horsepower and almost 1,200 pound feet of torque, with acceleration that defied the expectations created by its truck body.
To compare that acceleration, Amanda records a zero-to-60 test in the cars she reviews. She is not trying to make a brake-boosted attempt under ideal conditions to beat the manufacturer's figure. The test is closer to leaving a red light hard and seeing how the vehicle responds. A casual run shows what the acceleration feels like without turning the review into a formal performance test, but the timing still needs to be accurate.
A Mazda CX-5 video exposed the weakness of counting manually. Amanda posted a run and apparently counted about six seconds when commenters believed the result was closer to nine. She did not defend the bad count. Instead, she bought a Draggy, a device that connects to satellites and provides a more reliable zero-to-60 time. The nature of the test stayed the same, but the measuring tool improved. That is the sensible fix: keep the real-world procedure and remove the avoidable timing error.
The 2026 INEOS Grenadier required a different kind of test. Around Naples, Florida, Amanda can find dirt holes, but summer often fills them with water. A borrowed press car is not something to drop into an unknown hole simply to prove enthusiasm. In British Columbia, she could use the Grenadier's off roading equipment with experienced people nearby. The vehicle had three locking differentials: front, center, and rear, along with off-road mode and wading mode. Deep in the woods, the Grenadier felt capable enough that Amanda worried more about scraping the paint than whether it could handle the route.
Even with access to that new machinery, Amanda's target car points backward. She wants a 1990 Mercedes-Benz 190E Evo II, the rare version with the large rear wing that she has seen reach about $600,000. She would also accept an Evo I, and she keeps alerts set for the 190E. More broadly, she is looking for something old and manual because she believes new vehicles have moved too far away from driving.
More broadly, she is looking for something old and manual because she believes new vehicles have moved too far away from driving.
That preference does not diminish the R1T's 1,025 horsepower, the Grenadier's three locking differentials, or the MC20's appeal. It defines the range a car critic must cover. We can measure satellite-timed acceleration in a purple electric truck, work differential locks in British Columbia, check cup holders with an expired can of beans, and still want an analog Mercedes-Benz with a manual gearbox. The standard is physical use: operate the equipment, note exactly what happens, and report what a specification sheet cannot tell us.
