I would personally take the higher option NA car, because I'd enjoy driving that more. There are already few enough places to really let a Coyote breathe to redline, and when you add power those places become rarer still.
You've obviously never been on any minor to major street in my town. Every sub 25yo "undocumented" male from south of here has a Camaro or Coyote Mustang that they treat like La Carrera Panamericana
This doesn’t answer your question but the Ford dealer was unloading a purple RTR convertible the other day. It’s the best looking current generation Mustang I’ve seen so far. It looked better than the GTD sitting in the showroom, IMO.
My first question would be "manual or automatic?" If the answer is "slushbox", then take the higher trim level. If it's "manual", then the question gets a bit harder.
What kind of guy are you? Would somebody calling you "redneck" or "hick" or "white trash" bother you? If so, get the higher trim level. If not (and doubly so if it were something of a point of pride), and *if* you live anywhere between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains and have room to give the car some legs on the roads around you, I'd take the blown version. I'd take the blown version every day of the week, but I'm a shaved ape.
If you live in the mountains, get the NA version with a manual.
The resale of the higher optioned car will be better, assuming such things matter.
Well said, I immediately thought "NA special" (but only if it's a true special, a la Mach 1) but I'm in Colorado so you might have cut through my local bias.
I'll say again though, the best Mustang is a Camaro. Low-mile SS 1LEs can be had in the mid $40s and all 'Stang guys can do to retort is complain about small windows because it's dynamically superior in every way.
Second, in my experience GM has NEVER matched Ford's build quality. Between my mom, dad, brother, sister and myself we've had about 20 cars, mainly FoMoCo but others like Chevy, Subaru, Toyota, Honda and GMs were always at the bottom of our quality experiences.
My '99 S-10 and '22 Colorado were nowhere near as well-put-together as my '16 Focus ST or my '20 Mustang GT. The interiors of the Fords were a whole lot nicer, too.
Sample size of one, but my S197 passenger door and trunk lid always took a little extra shove to close on the first try. Drove straight, so I don't think it got tweaked rolling on or off the delivery truck, but that was pretty much my only gripe.
1) 2006 GT never had mechanical issues, but the interior did literally fall apart. Super common problem with them where the door cards just… fall off, for example.
2) 2017 EcoBoost had the rear diff grenade itself at around 25k miles if I remember right
3) 2018 GT was stout, but was rattly at like 7k miles on. It is, however, the car I most regret selling. Will forever wish I still had it.
The canro is more than dynamically superior its in another league entirely. Subjectively though its off the mark stylistically and useably , and the coyote motor is a spinner. On Road is the Camaro giving you more of something you can use.
if I were doing some occasional track work, youd have to spend 4-5x the Camaro cost to get something objectively bette/faster. I wouldnt really track a mustang.
But the late deported mach 1 is the best mustang to come along since well prob the 60s. Theyre not making new camros but you can buy a new screentastic stang
For street, were all waitign for the hemi powered charger, prob 28 end of story.
If its mountain roads and new go stang over new charger. If its sued and for track use camro all day long, for road mach 1 stang.
Respectfully: I've never understood that argument. Does anybody buy a pony car for the purpose of sitting in traffic? Are there not FAR nicer places to use the car and FAR nicer places to sit?
If I want a rolling living room, there are cars built for that purpose.
Value proposition and accessibility, I'd like to think. This reason carries much less water now that the 'Stang has become an M2 competitor...and that the M2 even exists...I digress. It used to be you could get a GT Premium for far less money than any other non-Big 3 performance coupe. Plenty of nicely packaged interior gimmicks to amuse you in traffic, serviceable anywhere in the country (good luck with the euro-coupe d'jour in rural NE, for example), and when you clear the bumper-to-bumper, you can hammer it on 87 unleaded.
Not everyone has room and money for a fleet of vehicles that fit specific niches. If you can only have one car for all things, an auto Mustang is hardly a bad spot to be.
I don't know. The basic S650 GT manual cars use the MT82 and the Dark Horse gets the TR-3160.
I heard all kinds of horror stories about the MT82 but honestly, those tales always reeked of trackday redline slam-shifts. I missed a shift or two in my '20 GT 6MT but being the non-real-car-guy I am (apparently), I always backed off as soon as I felt grinding.
Hard to know what's a real problem and what's blown out of proportion by loudmouth dipshits who don't take care of their cars (I'm looking at the dude Jack highlighted who went through 3-4 LT1s, seems like a pretty easy to spot common denominator, there).
A "prehistoric nitrous setup," like the kind one imagines Gronk put on his Stone Age Motors Sabertooth GT to race Thak in his Pleistocene Automobiles Mastodon SS.
Normally I would ask if you’ve any experience in a car even remotely similar to a blown coyote, but since I can only assume with 90% certainty it will be an A10 model, the combination of that plus modern nannies make them scarily non eventful.
Still, even at a lower threshold you are looking at a 7-800hp car. It really is ALOT. You end up relinquishing your fun to highway pulls while driving around at part throttle much more than you think to ever enjoy.
Even if you screw up and mismatch choices it’s still going to be a 10 sec car. They need a lot of room to eat properly and if you like the turns forget it. Throttle modulation becomes much harder when things are instantly spooled. Tire choice become a real thing in a hurry. You get pigeonholed into a drag setup accordingly.
Maybe given their weight they are a bit more tractable when paired with a manual than my own nonsense. A10s work better but it’s mildly annoying not being able to use 100% of what you have when you want to. Not being able to go WOT until most of 2nd gear, having the car lose traction towards the top of each gear in 2-3, arguably more with an MT82.
My stuff is pretty light but you are on a knifes edge with street tires and have to watch yourself. I’ve had the car try to loop itself from an 80mph roll making a loaded hit in 3rd.
Fun, but frustrating and driving fast car slow sucks. Driving fast car fast = jail and or death.
A full bolt on e85 yote is going to much more than fun and unless you are trying to get on 1320 video - the easy correct answer for an all around performance car.
I mean I hated the GT350 I drove and I’ve driven manual transmission Kenne Bell ( I think it was a 3.1, early 2012 Mammoth) gen1 car. They are polar opposites with boost but one was an ice skate and the other was not.
A big pulley, turned down screw style would for sure help the low end, but that’s honestly just an attribute of a modular Ford. They are lazy feeling until they are twisted up, but then they STAY twisted up. So unless you are digging around from the bottom of the gear on the street, they work. Getting that weight moving faster is why people love the A10. Most of that feeling goes away.
I daily a 2.7 pullied Terminator a lot in the summer and it’s for sure a different experience than my old high revving, lightweight n/a 4v daily. Modulars love as much gear as you can possibly feed them to get rid of that 2 stroke feeling. I had 4.10s in the n/a car and doing it again id rock a 4.30 or 4.56. The blown one has 3.55s and it’s much more tame and can use the power delivery.
It’s why most of the fast blown coyotes run the lowest numerical gear possible (I think they’re back to a 3.08?) to make them more tractable with boost and less of a wheelspin machine to correct for the tq figures.
The NA car was more fun in the twisties by lot.
Conversely, the blown and cammed / meth injected LS car is like
Damn…daaaaammn….holllleeeshiiiiiiiiiiiii to drive at 3120 lbs and @ 740 crank. New stroker setup should start with shiiiii and end with fuuuuuuuuu lol
Certainly nice enough but at 46k to start, the GT has lost “deal” status and you’ll remember every time you get in that you didn’t spend the money on a used S4 or M340 each time you get in. Unless it’s a second car, then who gives a shit.
I’ve contemplated selling my 991.2 on BaT because it seems like THE market. But then I saw a pcarmarket auction for a T one recently that ended with commenters furiously scolding the dme report. God spare me. The seller sold it privately no problem.
I don’t know enough about the ranges to comment. It has me paranoid to see mine. I will say the small turbo motors have a relatively low redline but there are a lot of extra digits on the tach.
Is it a big deal? Idk. Maybe time will tell that it was just a Porsche tool for screwing customers more than a necessity for an engine that has relatives which rev to 9k in a GT3.
Automatic rev matching makes it obvious you’re about to money shift but it would be interesting too if that’s the feature that causes over revs. Just idle speculation on my part.
Range 1 and 2 is fine, it's basically bouncing off the redline. Porsche will CPO a car with these ranges. 3 and 4 is questionable, if it happened a while back you may consider the car but it's a red flag. 5 and 6 you'd think there must be a really good reason to get the car. There is a PTS GT3 touring for sale right now with the owner wanting $175,000 over MSRP cheerfully admitting he slipped and hit all 6 ranges. He's getting a big round of laughs at RL for his ask.
I've found the DME reports really useful over the years. You can not only see the overevs but all kinds of operating data like average speeds, when an event happened and so on. You can pretty well see if someone has lugged and short shifted the car in it's life.
I owned a 991.2 T for a little while, the small “t” turbo is not an exciting engine. The 4 liter in the 718 that's derived from the 3 L turbo is what should have been in the car.
What happened in those 1-2 seconds the engine operates outside of the mnfr’s suggested range? Are the pistons made of glass? Do the valves float and start trampolining off the seat? The preciousness of it…”we want to buy a sports car but certainly not one that got used as a sports car!” Meanwhile, a 180k junkyard LS truck engine will eat an extra atmosphere of boost all day long—do Zee Germans not know how to build an engine as well as the hicks in Detroit?
I don't think it's that. If you do a money shift and blow it up you'll know what you did. I've seen it and its spectacular. But if it doesn't blow up you have the potential for a shortened engine life or the perception that the engine has a shortened life. None of these cars are unique, there is always another one available. Why buy the one that's got a documented 5-6 range event? Even if you don't think it will ever be an issue, the next guy who is looking at your car is likely to see it as an issue. That translates to dollars and cents in either the buy or sell transaction.
Bummer, but BAT doesn't reward a functionally restored honest 911. Sorry to say you might end up selling to someone who will use it as the basis for a $200,000 'restomod.'
Yeah, maybe I screwed up. I can't tell. It's hard to sell at 58 when there are bunch in the high 30's and low 40's that have 150-200k miles on them and trashed interiors. To me it's a 65-85k car, depending on the day and the assemblage of bidders. I was really trying to get it listed in November, but it didn't happen. Did too many extra repairs.
I hear ya trying to be as neutral as possible from someone who has no dog in the fight- 58 plus buyers fee=61k seems reasonable to me.
Everyone has their own calculus when they own the car (cost basis plus repairs, storage, sentimental value etc) and I appreciate that but I do feel that the FB price is optimistic. I hope you get it but that’s just how it feels to a third party right now.
"In Hoc Anno Domini", by Vermont Royster (April 30, 1914 – July 22, 1996) Christmas Day, 1949 WSJ:
"When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.
"Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.
"But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?
"There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?
"Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.
"And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.
"So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.
"But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.
"Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.
"Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter’s star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.
"And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:
"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
1) What are the chances of a rail gun or laser weapons actually being deployed? I know they’ve been testing them for decades, but how close are they really to operational?
They’ll obviously want the hulls laid before Trumps end of watch ( I doubt that happens tbh) however the first of these in full service has gotta be at least a decade (or two, given typical naval turnaround times) out right?
2) The Versa wasn’t an amazing car, but also it never promised to be. It was always the Minimum Viable Car for America, and that was enough. They’ve sold a bunch this past year too. With the Altima making a shocking 2026 comeback, it’s weird they didn’t want to just keep the Versa around as the only car in the US for sale for less than $20k. Nissan could ACTUALLY have a niche to themselves and be decent at it!
They could also slash the price of the “Kicks Play” (incredibly stupid name) to $19,995 and have something of a winner. Willing to bet that’s what they’ll go for after discounts anyway…
3) God Speed to the fella looking for a PT Cruiser. That’s a FASCINATING choice of automobile. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen a decent one. I’ll pass any along if I come across them.
Even here in the Automotive Land Time Forgot, and even with all the old people who shouldn’t be driving but still are, I have not seen a PT Cruiser in a long time.
This week I did see an absolutely mint Q45 and a Mazda 6 wagon rolling through Hooterville. Also, there’s a paint-to-sample pearlescent white low mileage 1995 928 for sale at a local Porsha mechanic for the ridiculous price of $130k!
Lots of Boomers with dumb money over here. But the 928 is cool. Some of the old cars I see here are the equivalent of seeing a zebra walking down the street.
It seems like a poor decision all around to buy a 928. If you want a ruinously expensive 70s/80s/90s European GT, Aston Martin and Jaguar both made cars that were so much better looking and maybe even slightly cheaper to maintain.
If I remember correctly, 1986.5 was the dividing line between the Mk III Supra you want and the one you DON'T, because that was when they replaced the 7M with the 1JZ - and the crossmember & several other systems to accept the new engine. Makes the swap SO much easier.
So if anybody's looking for a Mk III project, make '87 the oldest one you drag out of Elmer's back 40 over in East Fuckington County.
I'm going to assume you don't own one and be frank here: the 928 has always looked to me like the world's fastest, most complicated, and by far most expensive AMC Pacer ever built.
A friend bought a bagged out 928 years ago (mid 90s I think) for 1500 bucks. I helped him work on it to try and make it run for more than 12 seconds at a time. It was apparent that Porsche engineers hated mechanics and hated any owners outside warranty. That piece of shit was so needlessly complicated and impossible to work on. 928s don’t even look that good.
It’s like having a girlfriend who is a 5 and is also a narcissistic bitch.
I completely agree with the concern. The whole point of those future weapons, I thought, was that they had an infinite power source on a nuke boat and little risk from magazines exploding.
God forbid they are probably loading the things down with lithium batteries that already have a reputation for burning pleasure boats down to the waterline.
God bless the Japanese and their autistic dedication to technology labeled a dead end. Sometimes it just takes more time and dedication than the average US companies boardroom has.
I Japanese are succeeding where we failed. They have a rail gun in advanced testing. I always suspected the Japanese would be our most critical ally in regards to China. The Chinese are looking for some payback for what Japan did in WWII, but I think the Japanese think they have some unfinished business with China.
The US Navy didn't abandon rail guns. They have one, but the use case for it doesn't exist on existing ships.
I know everyone likes to shit on American Technology, because the press loves to make us look bad. But all of this stuff does exist in our arsenal, but it's not always capable to use with current platforms. Or it's being kept secret.
I worked in it, quite a bit. Our stuff is always better than everybody else's, but what a lot of other countries look at and say 'that's a step up', we often look at and say 'well, we already have something else that performs this role just as effectively and for a lot less money and maintenance'. Rail guns burn out barrels. So they either need to figure out how to build better barrels, or come up with a barrel changing system that's fast and can be used at sea.
The advantage of a large sized ship is that you have the actual space onboard to due the latter, until you've solved the former.
That is the point for these ships. They won't need the fleet oilers. They'll care more than enough fuel for themselves and may even be able to provide fuel to other ships.
They could deploy the rail guns tomorrow, if they wanted to. The problem with the rail guns is barrel life. I think it's around 200 rounds? Then you have to replace it. For a lot of ships, that's not enough, but for a larger gun on a large ship? With a limited task? That changes things.
The laser stuff HAS been getting deployed. But nobody talks about it. Because the US military and it's gear is supposed to suck according to our press.
The HemiKota and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and happy days this holiday season! https://youtu.be/9a5bV5GBjbk?si=2iPFcJb05CrBagjB (The main purpose of recording this was to capture the exhaust sound before I cut it all apart and redo it this weekend. If anyone is interested in seeing/hearing the result of that please let me know!)
One of my best friends from college has been a machinist in a ship yard for about 6 years now, and he's been busy ever since he started; but I think it's cool to see some new boats with new tech on them coming to an ocean near you! Not a fan of the classification but they could always change it later hahaha
However, I am a fan of the Dodge/Ram turnaround this year, and I hope they stay on this path. Tim K even announced that Dakota will be the name of the upcoming midsize pickup! I'm trying not to get my hopes too high for it though, because my lovely source believes it's going to be a rebadged and lightly reworked Gladiator which I really don't care for. We'll just have to wait and see on that front.
If they make the new Dakota with a sold front axle, recirculating ball steering, and the wrangler’s cabin layout they are dumber than I thought would be possible.
I don't wholly disagree, a new Rampage would be cool (it's already a Rampage in Mexico I think), just saying if the new Dakota was fwd based I'd have to go talk to somebody lol
Since Stellantis is #3 of the Big 3, they’re the ones who will lead the way with cool vehicles because they have to. It surely ain’t going to be GM or Ford.
Did the volume not come thru? It's rather loud in person. I'm not changing it to reduce volume, though that will be an effect, but I'm mostly after refining the tone and most importantly reducing the "flappy ass cheek clapping noise" when engine braking between 1700-2200rpm.
Yeah that's part of why I'm reworking the exhaust. It's a 5.7 Hemi from a 2020 Ram with stock log manifolds, and I ran some pipes back to the existing single chamber muffler and tailpipe from the stock 5.2 mag days. I'm going to clean up the routing, add a loop to the passenger side to make the effective length more similar to the driver side, run them thru an X pipe and then into a dual inlet double chamber muffler with a single 3in outlet. I'm hoping that all smooths out the tone, and it'll probably be quieter as well but the tone is what I'm after. It's stainless pipe so it'll still be on the deep side, but I hope it'll be more "challenger" and less "ram" if that makes sense.
Its worth noting that you don't need a special chamber to cut drone, you can do it with resonant area, so just adding a small resonator to the pipe will do the same thing.
Both are dead after 26 sadly. I bought a fully loaded 25 V60 this spring, guess I need to keep it running forever like my parents XC70.
Most V60 and all V90 were Swedish made. They only shifted V60 to Belgium for 24-26. My 21 V60 was Swedish and this 25 is Belgian. Never noticed a big difference in the Euro made cars and the motors are all Swedish. According to my friends at Volvo, the SC plant where they made S60s was actually the highest rated for internal quality-it’s getting the XC60 next year since they killed the sedan and the EX90 is not taking off as a full electric.
Here's a suggestion for people who would like to give Jack's book wider exposure. Buy a hardcover version. Hand-carry it to your local public library. Ask to speak to a Librarian (note, they are very status-conscious; Librarians have masters' degrees; book-shelvers don't) about a book you are willing to donate. Because people are loving it!
Offer to donate the book, BUT ONLY IF THEY PROMISE TO ADD IT TO THEIR COLLECTION. I'd go so far as to request that they provide you with a Donor Letter, and that the Donor Letter specify that they have added the book to their collection. You can say you want to show the Donor Letter to Jack.
You want to do all the above because otherwise, their path of least resistance is for a low-level person to mumble perfunctory thanks, and then, after you are gone, put Jack's book in the cart of Library Discards, to be sold for $2 or less. That's what happens to almost all used-book donations.
That is semi-understandable, because most public libraries have outsourced Collections Management to outside contractors. When libraries buy books, they usually buy the books from Library Service Bureaus who add that book to the online system inventory that library participates in.
Putting a self-published book into the Library's electronic systems manually ("Accession") is a chore they might not feel like doing.
If that library does not want to play ball, try a different one.
My local library drives me crazy. I'm one of the most successful authors in the state, they (she actually) know it, but getting them to put any of my books on their shelves is like pulling teeth (but not the local romance writers!) So I'm just done dealing with them.
Meanwhile a few towns over, their library goes out of their way to get local authors. Been thinking about talking with them instead.
I mean, I want to help the local library, but they've turned down cash donations and equipment donations from me.
The libraries out here in Texas that I've been too are not that bad. But yeah, some of them have become fairly political, sadly. Of course some of the larger and older ones have thankfully, not.
Like in any field having someone who knows how things work on a practical level and how the sausage gets made as a guide is priceless. Thank you for pulling back the curtain.
I, just two minutes ago, emailed Our Fearless Leader Jacques, thusly:
Hi, Jack.
I am a bit surprised that so far, nobody yet has asked:
"John, how many lady Masters of Library Science have you slept with, been married to, or had children with?"
The answer is 3.
# # #
My 15 minutes of worldwide Internet fame came about from my volunteering as a "Library Friends Volunteer." I was on the front page of the local daily paper, and there was one major article:
Living in Rhode Island, one friend complained: "John, you could have had me buy those books for $100, and we could have sold them to Sotheby's and split the loot."
That article is fascinating! Good on you for figuring it all out.
Man do I wish I could have purchased that version of Don Quixote! Southern libraries have tons of locally published religious content but nothing like you describe at our sales….unfortunately.
Hi, As I recall, it was only a small part of the whole book. Aldus Manitius, who invented Italic fonts, also invented the "Pocket book," and that book that attracted you was only a (IIRC) small part of the whole Quixote book. There were three companion volumes. But it was way cool. 1717!
"the “Golden Fleet” plan, the “Trump-class” battleships"
its all impossibly cringe. its like he saw the uss obama in black ops 2 and was like "yeah i need one named after me"
"helping the US Navy, which is being out-built something like a literal fifty-to-one by China"
arent a big chunk of those chinese ships just fishing trawlers (which are still a massive and persistent threat to marine life) or are they actually well made and threatening warships?
"relocate all important manufacturing capacity to the United States well in advance of said invasion"
obviously its more important to get blacks and felons employed even though it cost the entire chips act to fail and prevent arguably the most important resource on the planet from being made stateside becuase diversity is our strength right
"Two doors, 550 horsepower from the Hurricane"
excited for the aftermarket to turn each of these into 1000hp monsters
"Looking out for a clean PT Cruiser with a 5-speed"
but why that? if you want to teach someone stick just put them in a miata if they fit. easy to work a clutch and shifting is direct plus its fairly hard to stall. the pt cruiser turbo would leave it for dead however
Re chips act dei; I'll take that over critical national security components and fun PC parts being made by a potential enemy. My brother in law is gonna need a real job eventually!
I bet the hurricanes will be a downpipe and email tune away from 700 just like a Q50 or N55 bmw, which would be cool streets still yearn for God's motor (the Hemi)
i think the "mandatory employed felons" was the bit that tanked the deal becuase humanities most complex tech probably shouldnt/cant be built by people who got clipped for a b and e and spent 15 in the clink
I’d prefer using my Trump issued letters of mark on them to your average load of Colombian marching powder. So would 99% of the other Florida sportsmen that have boats and arms for the job.
You and me both brother. Although if I find a turbo PT cruiser in good shape it’s gonna be a hell a lot more than three grand so it’s probably a pipe dream.
B/c I spent 14 years driving a five speed plymouth neon and enjoyed every minute of it. The Neon and the PT are the same damn car, but the PT has more practical room to haul my kids football gear around town. Any Neon left on the road today has probably had the snot beaten out of it 10x over (I sure as hell beat the snot out of mine) I am more likely to find a manual PT in better shape. Also not afraid to turn a wrench on either of those cars.
Now, if someone knows of a 2001-2002 Neon ACR that has been cared for over the last twenty years, THAT’D be the one I would want most of all. But I would have a better chance winning the billion dollar lottery than finding one of those.
an early neon acr would be a treat to rip around in and i think someone here (jack?) mentioned they were about as fun as a dc2 integra as far as fwd platforms go which really put them on my radar. the mopar speed parts for them were plentiful and if you ever went as far as to swap an srt4 engine into them you have a small missile on your hands
Nah, I’d keep the high output SOHC in it. To me, a turbo in a Neon seemed to… defeat the purpose of a Neon. Call me crazy. Most do. A turbo in a PT doesn't phase me.
Either way, any ACR Neon out there now has probably been treated worse than the proverbial redheaded stepchild. I bought my neon brand new in 2000. A year later they debuted the second gen ACR and I saw one on a dealer a lot in Maryland. I swear to God I almost traded in my new Neon for it on the spot. Would have been beyond dumb at that time because I barely had a pot to piss in and I would have been upside down and inside out on an auto loan. I still think about that bright red ACR though. I drooled on the hood, I think, when I saw it. The sales man drooled on me because he saw easy sale, easy money.
Oh, and before I forget, I should say I bolted a straight pipe and a dual tip exhaust on my neon. So it sorta had an ACR feel to it!
don't forget Golden Dome! and the Arc de Trump! and the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. and...
that is the irony and the hypocrisy of it all. the same people who were railing (rightly) against Biden for being too old and cognitively impaired to serve and against those in his inner circle who hid it from the public are silent about the same thing happening with Trump.
Merry Christmas to all! My daughter's first car was a five speed Nissan Versa Note — with a lot of Renault influence in the design. She put so many miles on it that the catalytic converter died and I couldn't deal with the repair properly because I was in rehab hospital recovering from a brain bleed. She then had a VW Golf, five speed, that we had to go to Virginia to find. She now has one of the last five speed Mini Coopers. All because her first car was a 1996 Corolla with a five speed. But her grandmother could drive stick shift, her mother could, so these family traditions have to be carried on.
Merry Christmas, glad to see you survived that brain bleed! And hell yeah to the stick shift tradition; it's something we should all try to keep going!
My sister's first car was a complete POS '88 Sentra coupe she got for like $400. She had to aim her keychain Maglite at the gauges because all the bulbs were burned out. To her credit, she bought it not just because it was cheap - it had a manual!
My aunt and uncle bought a new '87 Sentra coupe with dealer A/C and tape deck added on. Vinyl seats for that cool Oklahoma sun and a 4 on the floor. It was the cheapest new car they could find, hence afford. I hated that car but it absolutely refused to die despite multiple attempts at murdering it. Because of that, I'd love to find a twin to it. I'd proudly drive it and call it "solitary confinement" even though it wasn't as luxurious.
It's funny about stick shifts... in other cultures. I used to be in touch with a high-end Ferrari broker. He told me two amazing things that I never ever would have guessed!
1) Nearly every Ferrari built today is available with an automatic transmission. That's because the largest market is PRC China, and about half of those cars are "Hush Puppies" for the... MISTRESSES. Who cannot drive stick.
2) Regardless whether a guy in China can drive stick, he will order the autotrans car, because in Chinese society, being able to drive stick means that you were born poor and on a farm, and that you learned to drive on a farm tractor. You hick, you!
This is why high-end marketing is not for amateurs.
Ex.: The reason that Ford could not sell the Ford Pinto compact car in Brazil is that in Brazilian Portuguese-Language Slang, "Pinto" means a guy with a small "Tom Dick and Harry." So to speak.
There are consultancies who can tell you whether you are about to put your foot in it, in foreign markets; but the guys with corner offices are too busy "auto-inflating" themselves, so to speak.
Boy, if it didn’t have that deformed pin stripe over the right rear fender, that’d be the one. Probably about 3-5 grand for the body work, no? And that is assuming nothing is bent underneath.
I've got nothing to add regarding naval or military hardware because I know less than nothing about it. I'm glad somebody does, but I'm not that guy.
I also have nothing positive (note what I did there -- don't try this at home kids. I'm was the school paper editor in 1980 and I'm on a closed course) to add regarding the "Charger", other than to say "oh good, now Stellantis can add to the already crowded *cars people don't buy* non-Tesla EV segment". I'm not sure where the market is for a $75k Dodge EV, but it's not in the Midwestern hick-towns I've inhabited for the entirety of my life, nor the cities around which they orbit. It's not eurotrash enough for the cities and not "Hellcat" enough for my people. Neither fish nor fowl, it will languish.
The new Hurricane/Challenger is cool, but see above comment -- they're going to sell like cold-cakes in the places where Challengers sell (the hood, and rural America) because, even though "nature might be healing" with fossil-fuel powerplants, "nature" hasn't healed enough for an honest and God-fearing V8 to return under the hood. My people will wait for the return of the Hemi. If Stellantis wants to return to our good graces, they could throw us a bone by making the car available with a proper manual transmission.
I'm not sure who's steering the ship at Nissan, but dropping the Versa may be one of the stupidest things a car company has ever done -- and this includes Ford incinerating money in its EV bonfire of the vanities and GM dropping the Camaro. At a point in history when the market is crying for simplicity and economy, when gas prices are dropping like a stone and electricity prices are rising like a rocket, when CAFE regulations have been gutted but remain in place -- Nissan picks THIS moment to drop the only sub-$20K car on the market to focus on... what, exactly?
Regarding Volvo and the V60: Volvo is pretty much dead to me since they became a wholly owned subsidiary of my Asian betters (to summarize the editorial direction of the NYT and WSJ). Regarding Jack's dogged determination to throw good money after bad on his Lexi (Lexus in plural): some illnesses defy cure. Jack has an unusual inclination towards very complex and expensive cars that SHOULD be nice (in the hypothetical abstract), but which (in reality) are much LESS nice than the average Chrysler 300 -- which Jack knows, because he has or had one. What can a perfectly running Lexus/Phaeton/et al offer that a 300/Hemi cannot? I've always thought the 300 was the perfect thumb in the eye of the sycophantic "auto-press" who universally regaled them, presumably because the all-expenses-paid junkets to the Chelsea Proving Grounds are nowhere near as glamorous as the ones BMW provides.
I think I follow my fellow ACFer's thought process with the PT Cruiser, in that they used to be everywhere, and dropped so far out of favor that they feel like they ought to be cheap to buy and own. Except that like the Pinto, Vega, and Chevette*, all of them were "rode hard and put away wet". Never robust vehicles to begin with, they were generally not cared for and have ended up mostly scrapped, one would assume. I have a vibe that there are no Chevettes* or likely PT Cruisers sitting under tarps in carports waiting for Grandpa to die so the estate can sell for pennies on the dollar. I wish the seller success, but perhaps the search ought to be broadened to include Korean cars with manual transmissions. Perhaps even older Versas.
As I said below: Merry Christmas, gentlemen. I've only been here a couple of months, but (Minitours aside) it feels like home. God bless us, every one.
*These vehicles have fallen so far off the screen that "Chevette" is unrecognized by Google's spellcheck, and has a red squiggly line under it.
' What can a perfectly running Lexus/Phaeton/et al offer that a 300/Hemi cannot? I've always thought the 300 was the perfect thumb in the eye of the sycophantic "auto-press" who universally regaled them, presumably because the all-expenses-paid junkets to the Chelsea Proving Grounds are nowhere near as glamorous as the ones BMW provides.'
Having driven the alpha version of the 300 and an LS430 back to back just a month or so ago, I can provide a partial answer.
The LS430 is considerably more spacious inside, especially up front. It's quieter. All the switches have less play and slop in them, even comparing a 185,000-mile LS430 to a 9,000-mile Chrysler. The ride is considerably better. The seats are nicer. The doors sound much better when you close them.
I obviously think the LX platform is pretty good. But it's a step down from a proper European or Japanese D-sedan.
Well, sure -- the 300 is a CHRYSLER, after all. It's not trying to be a European sedan, which makes it "honest" in my opinion. The trim stuff and the way the doors sound "are what they are" as my dear father used to say (and "are" Chrysler/FCA/Stellantis' weakest point, going back to the Carter administration), and what is supposed to be Toyota's strong points, so I'll take them into account but not award bonus points for them.
The seats and ride are valid. Seats are interior trim and I just said they shouldn't matter, but they are "touch points" on the car (where my body contacts the machine) and therefore very much inform how I feel about the car. I like my wife's Pacifica WAY more than I should because of the seating position. I kept my V8 E39 at least $5000 longer than I should have because the seats were so nice.
"Ride" is a very, very subjective thing, but I assume by "ride" you mean how solid and tight the car feels on the road. In this regard, I'd naturally assume the Toyota should be blowing the 300 out of the water. If it were not so, I'd think there was something broken or worn out in your 185,000 mi. example. However, a 9000 mi. sedan that isn't tight and solid in 2025 is inexcusable. I'll give you this one as well.
Let's talk about the engine. I'm assuming your alpha 300 had the 6.4. I'm further going to guess the Lexus does not have 485 hp or 475 lb-ft of torque. I know I'm just an overfed, hick-town, white-trash ape who aged out of juvenile delinquency 4-1/2 decades ago, but it's hard for me to look past an overfed, hick-town, white-trash juvenile delinquent mill turning the back rubber through a ZF 8-sp.
Refined? Heck no. Is it nearly perfect for the township of which you are now a citizen?
I enjoy the heck out of my 300C, so much so that I restrict my enjoyment of it to rare occasions so I don't get used to how quick it is. I've put 10,500 miles on it over 26 months, compared to the 10,700 miles I have put on various Lexus sedans since... May.
I know something of warship design, and I see several problems with the Defiant.
First, it'll take AT LEAST five years to design the ship. The Navy will insist on a 10,000-page contract, written to ensure the government is never at fault for any fuck up. Whatever company gets the contract will overrun the cost and schedule by 300%. Construction on the lead hull won't even begin till halfway through the second term of Trump's successor.
Better to spend the time, effort and money on another half-dozen Burkes, honestly.
I doubt it (unless the PLAN is dumb enough to sail east of Guam). We don’t have enough missiles afloat, and can’t reload them at sea. China has a lot of land bases anti-ship missiles.
For a non-politicized discussion of the Navy's plans for new ships, watch the "What's Going on with Shipping" channel on Youtube. Sal has excellent analysis of all things shipping, keeps politics out of the discussion, and is entertaining to watch. Turns out that a surprising amount of world events and economic matters are tied back into shipping.
Glad that Stellantis is pulling back from the brink of EV oblivion. Make some EVs, yes. Alongside a core business of making internal combustion engines. EVs are going to be a fringe market for a long time, the infrastructure and technology aren't there for any thing more. Wishing it otherwise, even if you are a government, doesn't make it a reality.
Heard on the news the other day that Ford is taking a $19 Billion write down this year. No idea how much of that is actual money that was lit on fire and burned, and how much of it is paper pushing by the accountants. But regardless, that is a staggering amount of money to throw away in the pursuit of appeasement. Half that amount could have been used by Ford to make a light truck diesel engine that doesn't self destruct before 100,000 miles. Or 10,000 miles. Something Ford hasn't been able to do since 2003.
Hell, they could have gifted a few billion to GM so they could make a small block V8 that doesn't grenade itself as it pulls off the transport.
They tore down a coal fire plant not far from me. It ran for over 100 years and occupied an area along the Detroit River that used to be full of industry (mills, chemical plant, etc.).
Instead of turning that land over to the Wildlife Refuge that sits next door, Detroit Edison decided that they’re going to stick a battery farm there.
I guess it’s no different than having a power wall at home to supplement your solar panels. My hate is directly related to the situation above. It’s not like there wasn’t ample room at the NPP 10 miles further south for this battery farm.
That Wildlife Refuge is home to the last untouched wetlands on the river. The whole area has de-industrialized over the past 20 years.
On the Mustang is it better to do a more basic GT and add a $14k Lebanon-style supercharger package or stick with a higher option NA car?
I would personally take the higher option NA car, because I'd enjoy driving that more. There are already few enough places to really let a Coyote breathe to redline, and when you add power those places become rarer still.
You've obviously never been on any minor to major street in my town. Every sub 25yo "undocumented" male from south of here has a Camaro or Coyote Mustang that they treat like La Carrera Panamericana
My vote is cheaper car+WREEEEEEEEEEE
do you want to go stupid fast or enjoy a nicer stereo and seats?
Ooh! Ooh! Stupid fast! Stupid fast!
Is this a trick question?
maybe?
i guess you could always get the nicer optioned car and then get a blower later
Porque no los dos?
Both. Thanks for asking.
seats and stereo are an easy upgrade. stupid fast is always the answer
This doesn’t answer your question but the Ford dealer was unloading a purple RTR convertible the other day. It’s the best looking current generation Mustang I’ve seen so far. It looked better than the GTD sitting in the showroom, IMO.
But to answer your question: Power.
My first question would be "manual or automatic?" If the answer is "slushbox", then take the higher trim level. If it's "manual", then the question gets a bit harder.
What kind of guy are you? Would somebody calling you "redneck" or "hick" or "white trash" bother you? If so, get the higher trim level. If not (and doubly so if it were something of a point of pride), and *if* you live anywhere between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains and have room to give the car some legs on the roads around you, I'd take the blown version. I'd take the blown version every day of the week, but I'm a shaved ape.
If you live in the mountains, get the NA version with a manual.
The resale of the higher optioned car will be better, assuming such things matter.
"If you live in the mountains, get the NA version"
I find this counterintuitive because forced induction was initially developed to compensate for power loss due to thinner air at altitude.
Point taken, but spinning out a free-breathing NA car in the twisties is pretty magical.
Perhaps “spinning out” is an unfortunate turn of phrase?
2nd point taken. “Spooling out”.
Or, if you're old enough : "taching out" .
And yes, running some old whip through the twisties as fast as is prudent remains fun until you die .
-Nate
so you can use more throttle is what youre saying
Soze I can use ALL the throttle.
Well said, I immediately thought "NA special" (but only if it's a true special, a la Mach 1) but I'm in Colorado so you might have cut through my local bias.
I'll say again though, the best Mustang is a Camaro. Low-mile SS 1LEs can be had in the mid $40s and all 'Stang guys can do to retort is complain about small windows because it's dynamically superior in every way.
Agreed with every word of the second paragraph.
Mustang's built better. And yes, it DOES have better visibility.
We're going to need to agree to disagree regarding FoMoCo build quality.
Let the record show that on December the 24th in the year of our Lord two-thousand and twenty-five, I FINALLY found SOMETHING we don't agree on.
Gotta have something...
I was thinking the same. Ice's first-ever bad take!
First, thanks!
Second, in my experience GM has NEVER matched Ford's build quality. Between my mom, dad, brother, sister and myself we've had about 20 cars, mainly FoMoCo but others like Chevy, Subaru, Toyota, Honda and GMs were always at the bottom of our quality experiences.
My '99 S-10 and '22 Colorado were nowhere near as well-put-together as my '16 Focus ST or my '20 Mustang GT. The interiors of the Fords were a whole lot nicer, too.
Sample size of one, but my S197 passenger door and trunk lid always took a little extra shove to close on the first try. Drove straight, so I don't think it got tweaked rolling on or off the delivery truck, but that was pretty much my only gripe.
I’ve had three Mustangs
1) 2006 GT never had mechanical issues, but the interior did literally fall apart. Super common problem with them where the door cards just… fall off, for example.
2) 2017 EcoBoost had the rear diff grenade itself at around 25k miles if I remember right
3) 2018 GT was stout, but was rattly at like 7k miles on. It is, however, the car I most regret selling. Will forever wish I still had it.
The canro is more than dynamically superior its in another league entirely. Subjectively though its off the mark stylistically and useably , and the coyote motor is a spinner. On Road is the Camaro giving you more of something you can use.
if I were doing some occasional track work, youd have to spend 4-5x the Camaro cost to get something objectively bette/faster. I wouldnt really track a mustang.
But the late deported mach 1 is the best mustang to come along since well prob the 60s. Theyre not making new camros but you can buy a new screentastic stang
For street, were all waitign for the hemi powered charger, prob 28 end of story.
If its mountain roads and new go stang over new charger. If its sued and for track use camro all day long, for road mach 1 stang.
Slushbox? What for? So you can have a wank while you're out and about?
I have no idea why somebody would buy a slushy pony-car, but they sell 'em, so somebody does.
drag racers and people with one functional leg might want one
Having one leg is the only legitimate excuse for having a slushbox pony car.
In ye olden days, many (most?) pony cars were sold with low-po engines and slush boxes to be driven by non-racing women.
Carroll Shelby famously called the original Mustang a "secretary's car."
and he was right
They actually make pretty decent daily drivers.
An auto Mustang GT Premium is not at all a bad place to sit in traffic.
Respectfully: I've never understood that argument. Does anybody buy a pony car for the purpose of sitting in traffic? Are there not FAR nicer places to use the car and FAR nicer places to sit?
If I want a rolling living room, there are cars built for that purpose.
Many people only have funds and space for one car and want it to have an air of sportiness.
Value proposition and accessibility, I'd like to think. This reason carries much less water now that the 'Stang has become an M2 competitor...and that the M2 even exists...I digress. It used to be you could get a GT Premium for far less money than any other non-Big 3 performance coupe. Plenty of nicely packaged interior gimmicks to amuse you in traffic, serviceable anywhere in the country (good luck with the euro-coupe d'jour in rural NE, for example), and when you clear the bumper-to-bumper, you can hammer it on 87 unleaded.
Basically, what Sir Morris said
Not everyone has room and money for a fleet of vehicles that fit specific niches. If you can only have one car for all things, an auto Mustang is hardly a bad spot to be.
Legit lol.
Aren't all sub-Dark Horse 'Stangs saddled with underwhelming manuals or did they fix that for the S650?
I don't know. The basic S650 GT manual cars use the MT82 and the Dark Horse gets the TR-3160.
I heard all kinds of horror stories about the MT82 but honestly, those tales always reeked of trackday redline slam-shifts. I missed a shift or two in my '20 GT 6MT but being the non-real-car-guy I am (apparently), I always backed off as soon as I felt grinding.
Hard to know what's a real problem and what's blown out of proportion by loudmouth dipshits who don't take care of their cars (I'm looking at the dude Jack highlighted who went through 3-4 LT1s, seems like a pretty easy to spot common denominator, there).
I must've missed that.
What kind of shitbird blows through FOUR LT1s?!
I put ~40k miles on an MT82 in two different cars and never had an issue.
In the S650s, they updated them quite a bit and they do feel A LOT nicer.
I live in Florida so no mountains or even many curves. But more traffic to deal with than a place like Iowa.
Living in FL also basically kills the "white trash" stigma because we are Floridians here.
I do expect the resale on the supercharger would be basically zero. From the discussion right now I'm leaning more towards the NA car.
I used to live in Florida. Not sure what the hell I was thinking.
"Is Florida Man the hero the state needs, or the one it deserves?"
Both.
I want a coupe with a manual transmission, rear-wheel drive, electromechanical systems and the fun part: a bulletproof V8 with a rocket supercharger.
https://dcids.substack.com/p/the-real-acme
A "prehistoric nitrous setup," like the kind one imagines Gronk put on his Stone Age Motors Sabertooth GT to race Thak in his Pleistocene Automobiles Mastodon SS.
I'm pretty sure we were separated at birth, Ice.
Could be...
Normally I would ask if you’ve any experience in a car even remotely similar to a blown coyote, but since I can only assume with 90% certainty it will be an A10 model, the combination of that plus modern nannies make them scarily non eventful.
Still, even at a lower threshold you are looking at a 7-800hp car. It really is ALOT. You end up relinquishing your fun to highway pulls while driving around at part throttle much more than you think to ever enjoy.
Even if you screw up and mismatch choices it’s still going to be a 10 sec car. They need a lot of room to eat properly and if you like the turns forget it. Throttle modulation becomes much harder when things are instantly spooled. Tire choice become a real thing in a hurry. You get pigeonholed into a drag setup accordingly.
Maybe given their weight they are a bit more tractable when paired with a manual than my own nonsense. A10s work better but it’s mildly annoying not being able to use 100% of what you have when you want to. Not being able to go WOT until most of 2nd gear, having the car lose traction towards the top of each gear in 2-3, arguably more with an MT82.
My stuff is pretty light but you are on a knifes edge with street tires and have to watch yourself. I’ve had the car try to loop itself from an 80mph roll making a loaded hit in 3rd.
Fun, but frustrating and driving fast car slow sucks. Driving fast car fast = jail and or death.
A full bolt on e85 yote is going to much more than fun and unless you are trying to get on 1320 video - the easy correct answer for an all around performance car.
A Ford Coyote NEEDS a blower, because on its own all the power's in the top half of the tach. It's like a giant Honda VTEC, yo.
You need the blower to fill in hollow lower end.
I mean I hated the GT350 I drove and I’ve driven manual transmission Kenne Bell ( I think it was a 3.1, early 2012 Mammoth) gen1 car. They are polar opposites with boost but one was an ice skate and the other was not.
A big pulley, turned down screw style would for sure help the low end, but that’s honestly just an attribute of a modular Ford. They are lazy feeling until they are twisted up, but then they STAY twisted up. So unless you are digging around from the bottom of the gear on the street, they work. Getting that weight moving faster is why people love the A10. Most of that feeling goes away.
My Mustang felt like it had the power-delivery curve of a sportbike.
Nothing...nothing...nothing...WHOA SHIT!!!
I daily a 2.7 pullied Terminator a lot in the summer and it’s for sure a different experience than my old high revving, lightweight n/a 4v daily. Modulars love as much gear as you can possibly feed them to get rid of that 2 stroke feeling. I had 4.10s in the n/a car and doing it again id rock a 4.30 or 4.56. The blown one has 3.55s and it’s much more tame and can use the power delivery.
It’s why most of the fast blown coyotes run the lowest numerical gear possible (I think they’re back to a 3.08?) to make them more tractable with boost and less of a wheelspin machine to correct for the tq figures.
The NA car was more fun in the twisties by lot.
Conversely, the blown and cammed / meth injected LS car is like
Damn…daaaaammn….holllleeeshiiiiiiiiiiiii to drive at 3120 lbs and @ 740 crank. New stroker setup should start with shiiiii and end with fuuuuuuuuu lol
What, you can't get smog-motor 2.73s for an S550?
Get the one with the tremec
Yeah, there's that. MT-82 durability has already been discussed in this thread but you never hear anyone say, "Yeah, my MT-82 always shifts great"
Completely, 100% depends on how you intend to use the car. My opinion is that a base GT is a pretty miserable place to spend time for road trips etc
Use to be. The old 300a S550s had truly embarrassing infotainment setups. I still cannot believe Ford OK’d that.
S650 with at least the 301a (heated seats!) is decent now though.
Certainly nice enough but at 46k to start, the GT has lost “deal” status and you’ll remember every time you get in that you didn’t spend the money on a used S4 or M340 each time you get in. Unless it’s a second car, then who gives a shit.
If Jack will tolerate further self serving, my porch-A did not meet reserve on BAT yesterday, so if any of you would like present something slightly less memorable than https://a.co/d/bTB3zhi , allow me to humbly suggest https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/711257841734990/
the original BAT listing with all of its info and pics is here: https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1984-porsche-911-carrera-coupe-74/ I can obtain a CA smog if that is something a buyer would require. Merry Christmas!
I’ll run this by Santa quick. I’m sure she will be in favour of it.
I’ve contemplated selling my 991.2 on BaT because it seems like THE market. But then I saw a pcarmarket auction for a T one recently that ended with commenters furiously scolding the dme report. God spare me. The seller sold it privately no problem.
https://pcarmarket.com/auction/2019-porsche-911-carrera-t-7
Wasn't that one with ranges into 6? I didn't look that closely, but that's what one comment said. If that's the case I'd move on to the next one too.
I don’t know enough about the ranges to comment. It has me paranoid to see mine. I will say the small turbo motors have a relatively low redline but there are a lot of extra digits on the tach.
Is it a big deal? Idk. Maybe time will tell that it was just a Porsche tool for screwing customers more than a necessity for an engine that has relatives which rev to 9k in a GT3.
Automatic rev matching makes it obvious you’re about to money shift but it would be interesting too if that’s the feature that causes over revs. Just idle speculation on my part.
Range 1 and 2 is fine, it's basically bouncing off the redline. Porsche will CPO a car with these ranges. 3 and 4 is questionable, if it happened a while back you may consider the car but it's a red flag. 5 and 6 you'd think there must be a really good reason to get the car. There is a PTS GT3 touring for sale right now with the owner wanting $175,000 over MSRP cheerfully admitting he slipped and hit all 6 ranges. He's getting a big round of laughs at RL for his ask.
I've found the DME reports really useful over the years. You can not only see the overevs but all kinds of operating data like average speeds, when an event happened and so on. You can pretty well see if someone has lugged and short shifted the car in it's life.
I owned a 991.2 T for a little while, the small “t” turbo is not an exciting engine. The 4 liter in the 718 that's derived from the 3 L turbo is what should have been in the car.
I put softronic on mine and WOW. Came with a numeric shifter which is wonderful.
What happened in those 1-2 seconds the engine operates outside of the mnfr’s suggested range? Are the pistons made of glass? Do the valves float and start trampolining off the seat? The preciousness of it…”we want to buy a sports car but certainly not one that got used as a sports car!” Meanwhile, a 180k junkyard LS truck engine will eat an extra atmosphere of boost all day long—do Zee Germans not know how to build an engine as well as the hicks in Detroit?
I don't think it's that. If you do a money shift and blow it up you'll know what you did. I've seen it and its spectacular. But if it doesn't blow up you have the potential for a shortened engine life or the perception that the engine has a shortened life. None of these cars are unique, there is always another one available. Why buy the one that's got a documented 5-6 range event? Even if you don't think it will ever be an issue, the next guy who is looking at your car is likely to see it as an issue. That translates to dollars and cents in either the buy or sell transaction.
DME report is the pinnacle of Porsche faggotry
Ah, ah, amigo, that word could get you banned from Monday Night Football!!
Checked with a gay ACFer who confirmed this regarding DME
I will know I have succeeded in life when someone uses my name and Porsche faggotry in the same sentence.
Succeeded at what? Wasting your money? Driving the same car as a dentist?
Bummer, but BAT doesn't reward a functionally restored honest 911. Sorry to say you might end up selling to someone who will use it as the basis for a $200,000 'restomod.'
I saw that BaT featured your car on their Instagram story and was hoping that meant you were getting TOP dollar.
Sorry it didn’t work out, that’s a great car. If I wanted a hot rodded Carrera, it wouldn’t look much different than yours.
With all due respect I likely would have let that one run at 58 at this stage in the market
Yeah, maybe I screwed up. I can't tell. It's hard to sell at 58 when there are bunch in the high 30's and low 40's that have 150-200k miles on them and trashed interiors. To me it's a 65-85k car, depending on the day and the assemblage of bidders. I was really trying to get it listed in November, but it didn't happen. Did too many extra repairs.
I hear ya trying to be as neutral as possible from someone who has no dog in the fight- 58 plus buyers fee=61k seems reasonable to me.
Everyone has their own calculus when they own the car (cost basis plus repairs, storage, sentimental value etc) and I appreciate that but I do feel that the FB price is optimistic. I hope you get it but that’s just how it feels to a third party right now.
Yeah I appreciate that. Going for the high anchor... A lot easier to lower the price than to bring it up, ya know?
"In Hoc Anno Domini", by Vermont Royster (April 30, 1914 – July 22, 1996) Christmas Day, 1949 WSJ:
"When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.
"Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.
"But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?
"There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?
"Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.
"And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.
"So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.
"But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.
"Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.
"Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter’s star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.
"And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:
"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
Merry Christmas to Jack and my fellow ACF subscribers.
Merry Christmas, happy new year, Happy Hanukkah, and happy holidays to all!
Is the shitter full?
Has Hans Gruber fallen off Nakatomi Plaza yet?
He did, just the other night.
Yippie kay-aye, motherfucker.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! May the new year bring everyone peace, happiness and good health.
Merry Christmas ya filthy animals.
https://youtu.be/ET1J-7wmqbg?si=-4KgIHTRHkpfrJXZ
1) What are the chances of a rail gun or laser weapons actually being deployed? I know they’ve been testing them for decades, but how close are they really to operational?
They’ll obviously want the hulls laid before Trumps end of watch ( I doubt that happens tbh) however the first of these in full service has gotta be at least a decade (or two, given typical naval turnaround times) out right?
2) The Versa wasn’t an amazing car, but also it never promised to be. It was always the Minimum Viable Car for America, and that was enough. They’ve sold a bunch this past year too. With the Altima making a shocking 2026 comeback, it’s weird they didn’t want to just keep the Versa around as the only car in the US for sale for less than $20k. Nissan could ACTUALLY have a niche to themselves and be decent at it!
They could also slash the price of the “Kicks Play” (incredibly stupid name) to $19,995 and have something of a winner. Willing to bet that’s what they’ll go for after discounts anyway…
3) God Speed to the fella looking for a PT Cruiser. That’s a FASCINATING choice of automobile. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen a decent one. I’ll pass any along if I come across them.
Even here in the Automotive Land Time Forgot, and even with all the old people who shouldn’t be driving but still are, I have not seen a PT Cruiser in a long time.
This week I did see an absolutely mint Q45 and a Mazda 6 wagon rolling through Hooterville. Also, there’s a paint-to-sample pearlescent white low mileage 1995 928 for sale at a local Porsha mechanic for the ridiculous price of $130k!
IIRC they only made a few dozen of the final year 928s. I’m not surprised it’s going for dumb money.
Lots of Boomers with dumb money over here. But the 928 is cool. Some of the old cars I see here are the equivalent of seeing a zebra walking down the street.
I turned down a 1986.5 5-speed for $7000 in 2002. In retrospect, that was STILL a smart move.
That was a GOOD Jack Baruth car-buying decision in an era when you bought not one, but TWO Phaetons.
Well done dodging the 928 bullet.
It seems like a poor decision all around to buy a 928. If you want a ruinously expensive 70s/80s/90s European GT, Aston Martin and Jaguar both made cars that were so much better looking and maybe even slightly cheaper to maintain.
I agree. The mail-slot sunroof on the 928 is the non-icing on the non-cake.
If I remember correctly, 1986.5 was the dividing line between the Mk III Supra you want and the one you DON'T, because that was when they replaced the 7M with the 1JZ - and the crossmember & several other systems to accept the new engine. Makes the swap SO much easier.
So if anybody's looking for a Mk III project, make '87 the oldest one you drag out of Elmer's back 40 over in East Fuckington County.
Every time you mention “East Fuckington County” I think that would be a great country song or Netflix series.
I thought we didn’t get the 1JZ in the states?
I'll take ANY Mark III, I love them all.
That was also the best 928, the good motor in the classic bodyshell.
I have a friend who's had a standing offer to pay half the purchase cost of any 928 I daily through a Michigan winter
What did you do to him?
I wonder if the comparable BMW ans MB V12 coupes are better?
Compared to a front-engined PORSCHE? You even have to ask?
I'm going to assume you don't own one and be frank here: the 928 has always looked to me like the world's fastest, most complicated, and by far most expensive AMC Pacer ever built.
Correct on all counts.
They are interesting looking. Not, like, good looking in any way but certainly interesting. Maybe the ugliest, most frog like pop up headlights.
Tony Lapine openly admired the Pacer, as I recall.
A friend bought a bagged out 928 years ago (mid 90s I think) for 1500 bucks. I helped him work on it to try and make it run for more than 12 seconds at a time. It was apparent that Porsche engineers hated mechanics and hated any owners outside warranty. That piece of shit was so needlessly complicated and impossible to work on. 928s don’t even look that good.
It’s like having a girlfriend who is a 5 and is also a narcissistic bitch.
A house is the most expensive thing a normal man will own in his life. Unless he buys a used 928.
The 40’ yacht in the slip would like a word.
Why, is it being used to find rare 928 parts?
Oh how I laughed at this comment. Really, really laughed.
Expand it to "used European anything" built since 2000.
Paint to Sample is like catnip to us. I just won an auction on BAT for a PTS Cayman S in Nordic Gold. I figure I paid about 15-18,000 for the color.
I paid $3000 to have my Audi painted a one-off color in 2009.
Nordic Gold is a nice color, however.
$3000 is chump change pal. The Porsch-a owner who ordered the '07 Cayman paid $4300 for the Nordic Gold. Know your place!
Thanks for the laugh!!
The paint to sample on the sticker on this 1995 928 was $16k. Bottom line price was $101k.
In 1995 money? That's current Ferrari $
Yes. Sticker breakdown was:
Metallic Paint to Sample $2664
Pearl White Metallic Effect $12938
Base price for 1995 928 GTS was $82260 which is $175k today. Crazy!
Your Cayman is gorgeous. I’m thinking the BaT photos don’t do that color justice.
I still haven't seen it, it's arriving next week. It will join the Peridot Green Cayman R in the car corral.
I thought they were having so much trouble with rail guns they have up. I suppose they aren't going to make that product roadmap public, so who knows.
How would they get the power for rail guns and lasers on a conventionally powered ship?
"How would they get the power for rail guns and lasers on a conventionally powered ship?"
That's the big question. Why NOT have the nuke in there to run the gun?
I completely agree with the concern. The whole point of those future weapons, I thought, was that they had an infinite power source on a nuke boat and little risk from magazines exploding.
God forbid they are probably loading the things down with lithium batteries that already have a reputation for burning pleasure boats down to the waterline.
Yes, in a perfect world, they would be nuclear powered.
But due to cost issues, they will be diesel and gas turbine powered.
The diesels give them long range and the gas turbines give them sprint speed.
If it’s to jump start the program with nukes expected later I suppose it’s ok in our political environment. But not ideal.
My guess is $$$$$$$$$$$
Money will be shoveled into the boilers of progress unabated.
Because the government doesn't like nukes and the AEC and the DOE will do everything they can to prevent nuclear powered anything in America.
Because they need the nukes to run "AI".
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/naval-reactors-ai-data-centers
They are going to use the railgun that Japan has just announced.
Here is a very detailed breakdown of the plan:
https://youtu.be/tdEMgU39S0w?si=Hb0d8Y4Cw_2uVMgS
God bless the Japanese and their autistic dedication to technology labeled a dead end. Sometimes it just takes more time and dedication than the average US companies boardroom has.
What was that old joke? That the centerfold in the May 1987 issue of Playboy was a Toyota pickup?
How big were the headlights?
Well, it was the Japanese edition, so...A?
I Japanese are succeeding where we failed. They have a rail gun in advanced testing. I always suspected the Japanese would be our most critical ally in regards to China. The Chinese are looking for some payback for what Japan did in WWII, but I think the Japanese think they have some unfinished business with China.
The Japanese also never abandoned Hair Metal the way we did.
The US Navy didn't abandon rail guns. They have one, but the use case for it doesn't exist on existing ships.
I know everyone likes to shit on American Technology, because the press loves to make us look bad. But all of this stuff does exist in our arsenal, but it's not always capable to use with current platforms. Or it's being kept secret.
I’ve worked enough around the defense industry to suspect its being kept secret to avoid embarrassment.
I worked in it, quite a bit. Our stuff is always better than everybody else's, but what a lot of other countries look at and say 'that's a step up', we often look at and say 'well, we already have something else that performs this role just as effectively and for a lot less money and maintenance'. Rail guns burn out barrels. So they either need to figure out how to build better barrels, or come up with a barrel changing system that's fast and can be used at sea.
The advantage of a large sized ship is that you have the actual space onboard to due the latter, until you've solved the former.
Gas powered turbine generators would do it. Quite a few of the diesel ships have those to handle power surges.
What about carrying around the fuel necessary to power said turbines? They drink fuel at an alarming rate.
Yeah, we have like 3 fleet oilers in the entire fleet. Those won’t last long and then the navy is screwed.
That is the point for these ships. They won't need the fleet oilers. They'll care more than enough fuel for themselves and may even be able to provide fuel to other ships.
Maybe. Depends on the mission. Iowa had a 15k nautical mile range, at 15 kts. Less at faster speeds.
On a ship that big, they'll carry more than enough.
Diesel is for primary power. The turbines are for when you need extra. So you don't really need to carry that much.
Power? Why they will use the dilithium hopium drive.
Ultracaps, maybe. Charge off the diesel, maybe size the bank to allow shooting with one while charging another
They could deploy the rail guns tomorrow, if they wanted to. The problem with the rail guns is barrel life. I think it's around 200 rounds? Then you have to replace it. For a lot of ships, that's not enough, but for a larger gun on a large ship? With a limited task? That changes things.
The laser stuff HAS been getting deployed. But nobody talks about it. Because the US military and it's gear is supposed to suck according to our press.
When did Nissan decide to bring back the terror of the Interstate (when the car is on its second owner, or the first one who buys it from a BHPH)?
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a69732529/2026-nissan-altima-details-pricing/
Not sure but it now comes in a neat green color!
The HemiKota and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and happy days this holiday season! https://youtu.be/9a5bV5GBjbk?si=2iPFcJb05CrBagjB (The main purpose of recording this was to capture the exhaust sound before I cut it all apart and redo it this weekend. If anyone is interested in seeing/hearing the result of that please let me know!)
One of my best friends from college has been a machinist in a ship yard for about 6 years now, and he's been busy ever since he started; but I think it's cool to see some new boats with new tech on them coming to an ocean near you! Not a fan of the classification but they could always change it later hahaha
However, I am a fan of the Dodge/Ram turnaround this year, and I hope they stay on this path. Tim K even announced that Dakota will be the name of the upcoming midsize pickup! I'm trying not to get my hopes too high for it though, because my lovely source believes it's going to be a rebadged and lightly reworked Gladiator which I really don't care for. We'll just have to wait and see on that front.
If they make the new Dakota with a sold front axle, recirculating ball steering, and the wrangler’s cabin layout they are dumber than I thought would be possible.
Yeah it would be an utter travesty. But better than importing the unibody fwd Compass based utes they have in other markets
They should do that AND have the Dakota tbh.
Works well for Ford! And the Maverick still somehow has no real competition.
I don't wholly disagree, a new Rampage would be cool (it's already a Rampage in Mexico I think), just saying if the new Dakota was fwd based I'd have to go talk to somebody lol
Since Stellantis is #3 of the Big 3, they’re the ones who will lead the way with cool vehicles because they have to. It surely ain’t going to be GM or Ford.
"If anyone is interested in seeing/hearing the result of that please let me know!"
i am duh lol
Me too. At present, it doesn't sound like much.
Did the volume not come thru? It's rather loud in person. I'm not changing it to reduce volume, though that will be an effect, but I'm mostly after refining the tone and most importantly reducing the "flappy ass cheek clapping noise" when engine braking between 1700-2200rpm.
Sounded like a stock Dakota on my end. Not trying to be critical. Those donuts have had me thinking about a street driven nascar truck ever since.
Yeah that's part of why I'm reworking the exhaust. It's a 5.7 Hemi from a 2020 Ram with stock log manifolds, and I ran some pipes back to the existing single chamber muffler and tailpipe from the stock 5.2 mag days. I'm going to clean up the routing, add a loop to the passenger side to make the effective length more similar to the driver side, run them thru an X pipe and then into a dual inlet double chamber muffler with a single 3in outlet. I'm hoping that all smooths out the tone, and it'll probably be quieter as well but the tone is what I'm after. It's stainless pipe so it'll still be on the deep side, but I hope it'll be more "challenger" and less "ram" if that makes sense.
Sounds like it will sound good! IDK how good you are at math, but if you google hiemholtz resonance you can find to formula for no drone. Alternately, you just throw it on the car, and if it drones, you add chamber volume, and if it's too quiet, you reduce chamber volume. This guy does a good job explaining: https://wilhelmraceworks.com/blog/drone-reduction?srsltid=AfmBOopFWaQgDOZXojBO6b2u-2DOeyVNzj3oYrvTCaovFMvHWppHS5cs
Its worth noting that you don't need a special chamber to cut drone, you can do it with resonant area, so just adding a small resonator to the pipe will do the same thing.
Truck looks like a lot of fun!
I'm getting a Ronald Reagan 'Star Wars' vibe. Nixon class ship FTW.
Is the V90 dead too? IIRC that one was actually made in Sweden.
V90 done BEEN dead, apparently. Fetching big money now
https://www.carvana.com/vehicle/3907394
Both are dead after 26 sadly. I bought a fully loaded 25 V60 this spring, guess I need to keep it running forever like my parents XC70.
Most V60 and all V90 were Swedish made. They only shifted V60 to Belgium for 24-26. My 21 V60 was Swedish and this 25 is Belgian. Never noticed a big difference in the Euro made cars and the motors are all Swedish. According to my friends at Volvo, the SC plant where they made S60s was actually the highest rated for internal quality-it’s getting the XC60 next year since they killed the sedan and the EX90 is not taking off as a full electric.
Here's a suggestion for people who would like to give Jack's book wider exposure. Buy a hardcover version. Hand-carry it to your local public library. Ask to speak to a Librarian (note, they are very status-conscious; Librarians have masters' degrees; book-shelvers don't) about a book you are willing to donate. Because people are loving it!
Offer to donate the book, BUT ONLY IF THEY PROMISE TO ADD IT TO THEIR COLLECTION. I'd go so far as to request that they provide you with a Donor Letter, and that the Donor Letter specify that they have added the book to their collection. You can say you want to show the Donor Letter to Jack.
You want to do all the above because otherwise, their path of least resistance is for a low-level person to mumble perfunctory thanks, and then, after you are gone, put Jack's book in the cart of Library Discards, to be sold for $2 or less. That's what happens to almost all used-book donations.
That is semi-understandable, because most public libraries have outsourced Collections Management to outside contractors. When libraries buy books, they usually buy the books from Library Service Bureaus who add that book to the online system inventory that library participates in.
Putting a self-published book into the Library's electronic systems manually ("Accession") is a chore they might not feel like doing.
If that library does not want to play ball, try a different one.
Just change the title to Trans Kitty Has Two Mommies and it will be on the stacks of every library in a few weeks.
My favorite is: "Heather Has Two Mullahs."
Heather is trading her little black dress for a large black dress.
Karen traded her MG for a white Chrysler LeBaron
My local library drives me crazy. I'm one of the most successful authors in the state, they (she actually) know it, but getting them to put any of my books on their shelves is like pulling teeth (but not the local romance writers!) So I'm just done dealing with them.
Meanwhile a few towns over, their library goes out of their way to get local authors. Been thinking about talking with them instead.
I mean, I want to help the local library, but they've turned down cash donations and equipment donations from me.
So... yeah, kinda done with that.
The French catchphrase that fits your pickle is:
La Belle-Nuit, c'est passé.
Tout-ce qui reste, c'est en foutre.
The Honeymoon is over.
All that's left is the screwing.
jean-le-baptiste
Matthew 13:57
Nul n'est prophète en son pays.
A prophet is less than nothing is his own land.
Perfect!
jlb
Apropos, in Debian/Ubuntu and the Arch User Repository, check out the 'bible-kjv' app: nice minimalistic CLI with a man page dated 1993.
Library? You mean the bum masturbation center?
The library in the US is almost as cooked as public transportation now.
The libraries out here in Texas that I've been too are not that bad. But yeah, some of them have become fairly political, sadly. Of course some of the larger and older ones have thankfully, not.
Facinating.
Thank you.
Like in any field having someone who knows how things work on a practical level and how the sausage gets made as a guide is priceless. Thank you for pulling back the curtain.
This is SO FUNNY!
I, just two minutes ago, emailed Our Fearless Leader Jacques, thusly:
Hi, Jack.
I am a bit surprised that so far, nobody yet has asked:
"John, how many lady Masters of Library Science have you slept with, been married to, or had children with?"
The answer is 3.
# # #
My 15 minutes of worldwide Internet fame came about from my volunteering as a "Library Friends Volunteer." I was on the front page of the local daily paper, and there was one major article:
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-a-rare-19th-century-bible-almost-got-away/
Living in Rhode Island, one friend complained: "John, you could have had me buy those books for $100, and we could have sold them to Sotheby's and split the loot."
Look we all don’t know what we don’t know.
Started the article and will need to finish it.
So with the answer being three your saying you have a type? A certain personality you are interested in.
Will not make any additional jokes about sausage.
You did make me laugh. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
When I was an undergraduate at Brown, it got back to me that an upperclassman had said to someone (who talked):
"John's girlfriends are all dorky, or dyke-y. But preferably, both!"
I had to give the bloke credit. He nailed me!
Et cum spiritu tuo!
(And with your Spirit!")
That article is fascinating! Good on you for figuring it all out.
Man do I wish I could have purchased that version of Don Quixote! Southern libraries have tons of locally published religious content but nothing like you describe at our sales….unfortunately.
Hi, As I recall, it was only a small part of the whole book. Aldus Manitius, who invented Italic fonts, also invented the "Pocket book," and that book that attracted you was only a (IIRC) small part of the whole Quixote book. There were three companion volumes. But it was way cool. 1717!
“Searchlight on my trail
Tonight's the night all systems fail
Hey you good lookin' female
Come here!”
Bustin out of a cell;
A little of the ultra violence and the in and out;
And ROKN;
What a beautiful story.
Merry Xmas to all; hug your loved ones, remember those people and little creatures no longer with us
"the “Golden Fleet” plan, the “Trump-class” battleships"
its all impossibly cringe. its like he saw the uss obama in black ops 2 and was like "yeah i need one named after me"
"helping the US Navy, which is being out-built something like a literal fifty-to-one by China"
arent a big chunk of those chinese ships just fishing trawlers (which are still a massive and persistent threat to marine life) or are they actually well made and threatening warships?
"relocate all important manufacturing capacity to the United States well in advance of said invasion"
obviously its more important to get blacks and felons employed even though it cost the entire chips act to fail and prevent arguably the most important resource on the planet from being made stateside becuase diversity is our strength right
"Two doors, 550 horsepower from the Hurricane"
excited for the aftermarket to turn each of these into 1000hp monsters
"Looking out for a clean PT Cruiser with a 5-speed"
but why that? if you want to teach someone stick just put them in a miata if they fit. easy to work a clutch and shifting is direct plus its fairly hard to stall. the pt cruiser turbo would leave it for dead however
merry christmas to acf!
First paragraph made me legitimately lol
Re chips act dei; I'll take that over critical national security components and fun PC parts being made by a potential enemy. My brother in law is gonna need a real job eventually!
I bet the hurricanes will be a downpipe and email tune away from 700 just like a Q50 or N55 bmw, which would be cool streets still yearn for God's motor (the Hemi)
i think the "mandatory employed felons" was the bit that tanked the deal becuase humanities most complex tech probably shouldnt/cant be built by people who got clipped for a b and e and spent 15 in the clink
should have been taken more seriously
Your average murderer, however, can ABSOLUTELY be trusted with enterprise systems.*
* or so it says in the footnote to my technical resume
executing code
executing people
same diff
The Chinese fishing fleet should be a priority target imo
and theyre unarmoured too
neat
I’d prefer using my Trump issued letters of mark on them to your average load of Colombian marching powder. So would 99% of the other Florida sportsmen that have boats and arms for the job.
We're American.
We issue Letters of Grand Marq.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Grand_Marquis
except the drugs coming into the US come through... Mexico.
Cause there are lots of folks who will comfortably fit in a PT Cruiser that won’t fit in a Miata. Myself included.
And, a PT Cruiser, especially a turbo with a stick would be a darn sight cooler at the local cars and coffee then will be any Miata.
a turbo manual pt cruiser is pretty rare so im hoping you can land one of those
You and me both brother. Although if I find a turbo PT cruiser in good shape it’s gonna be a hell a lot more than three grand so it’s probably a pipe dream.
It’s 2025. All boats are fishing boats according to the TV.
Have to agree with the tv on this one.
And all drug runners are sailors.
No, fisherman.
B/c I spent 14 years driving a five speed plymouth neon and enjoyed every minute of it. The Neon and the PT are the same damn car, but the PT has more practical room to haul my kids football gear around town. Any Neon left on the road today has probably had the snot beaten out of it 10x over (I sure as hell beat the snot out of mine) I am more likely to find a manual PT in better shape. Also not afraid to turn a wrench on either of those cars.
Now, if someone knows of a 2001-2002 Neon ACR that has been cared for over the last twenty years, THAT’D be the one I would want most of all. But I would have a better chance winning the billion dollar lottery than finding one of those.
strongly agree on the acr
an early neon acr would be a treat to rip around in and i think someone here (jack?) mentioned they were about as fun as a dc2 integra as far as fwd platforms go which really put them on my radar. the mopar speed parts for them were plentiful and if you ever went as far as to swap an srt4 engine into them you have a small missile on your hands
Nah, I’d keep the high output SOHC in it. To me, a turbo in a Neon seemed to… defeat the purpose of a Neon. Call me crazy. Most do. A turbo in a PT doesn't phase me.
Either way, any ACR Neon out there now has probably been treated worse than the proverbial redheaded stepchild. I bought my neon brand new in 2000. A year later they debuted the second gen ACR and I saw one on a dealer a lot in Maryland. I swear to God I almost traded in my new Neon for it on the spot. Would have been beyond dumb at that time because I barely had a pot to piss in and I would have been upside down and inside out on an auto loan. I still think about that bright red ACR though. I drooled on the hood, I think, when I saw it. The sales man drooled on me because he saw easy sale, easy money.
Oh, and before I forget, I should say I bolted a straight pipe and a dual tip exhaust on my neon. So it sorta had an ACR feel to it!
naturally aspirated is the way to go for sure
even looking at oem parts swapping and mopar catalogue stuff could easily free up tens of horsepower and improve handling quite a bit over stock
kinda want one even more now if i didnt already have the miata
One got sold here on ACF a couple years back, via "drunkonunleaded"
Really?! What kind of shape was it in? What generation? Are there any more where it came from?! No joke, I would re-vector for a well treated ACR.
Now that I think about it... it was actually a near perfect 1999 coupe. It's gone now.
don't forget Golden Dome! and the Arc de Trump! and the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. and...
the narcissism is out of control.
tasteless and unrelenting
the man has never been in the best mental or physical health, and it is clearly deteriorating.
and much like biden it would be funny if he wasnt the most powerful guy in the world
that is the irony and the hypocrisy of it all. the same people who were railing (rightly) against Biden for being too old and cognitively impaired to serve and against those in his inner circle who hid it from the public are silent about the same thing happening with Trump.
two cheeks of the same ass
Merry Christmas to all! My daughter's first car was a five speed Nissan Versa Note — with a lot of Renault influence in the design. She put so many miles on it that the catalytic converter died and I couldn't deal with the repair properly because I was in rehab hospital recovering from a brain bleed. She then had a VW Golf, five speed, that we had to go to Virginia to find. She now has one of the last five speed Mini Coopers. All because her first car was a 1996 Corolla with a five speed. But her grandmother could drive stick shift, her mother could, so these family traditions have to be carried on.
Merry Christmas, glad to see you survived that brain bleed! And hell yeah to the stick shift tradition; it's something we should all try to keep going!
My sister's first car was a complete POS '88 Sentra coupe she got for like $400. She had to aim her keychain Maglite at the gauges because all the bulbs were burned out. To her credit, she bought it not just because it was cheap - it had a manual!
My brother and I called it the N'Natmobile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm4esb4f3Zs
She eventually traded it in on a first-gen Focus, trailing Battle-of-Kursk-level clouds of blue smoke on the way to the dealership.
My aunt and uncle bought a new '87 Sentra coupe with dealer A/C and tape deck added on. Vinyl seats for that cool Oklahoma sun and a 4 on the floor. It was the cheapest new car they could find, hence afford. I hated that car but it absolutely refused to die despite multiple attempts at murdering it. Because of that, I'd love to find a twin to it. I'd proudly drive it and call it "solitary confinement" even though it wasn't as luxurious.
It's funny about stick shifts... in other cultures. I used to be in touch with a high-end Ferrari broker. He told me two amazing things that I never ever would have guessed!
1) Nearly every Ferrari built today is available with an automatic transmission. That's because the largest market is PRC China, and about half of those cars are "Hush Puppies" for the... MISTRESSES. Who cannot drive stick.
2) Regardless whether a guy in China can drive stick, he will order the autotrans car, because in Chinese society, being able to drive stick means that you were born poor and on a farm, and that you learned to drive on a farm tractor. You hick, you!
This is why high-end marketing is not for amateurs.
Ex.: The reason that Ford could not sell the Ford Pinto compact car in Brazil is that in Brazilian Portuguese-Language Slang, "Pinto" means a guy with a small "Tom Dick and Harry." So to speak.
There are consultancies who can tell you whether you are about to put your foot in it, in foreign markets; but the guys with corner offices are too busy "auto-inflating" themselves, so to speak.
st. jean
Jack’s Amazon author photo is perfect.
Cat ladies everywhere should be swooning over that photo!
He might need security at a book signing.
And we all need to read his author bio on Amazon, its hilarious!
ALSO COMMENT OF THE DAY
Jesus, you look like a combination of a Bond villain and an 1840s riverboat gambler.
you say that like it's a bad thing... and not exactly the look he was after
"...absolutely luminescent acts of self-sabotage."
I gotta use that!
COMMENT OF THE DAY
After you reach #1 on the NYT Cat Ladies’ best seller list, book #2 has to be Minotaur Tales!
Give the ladies what they want!
(in a weird twist, auto correct kept suggesting “car ladies”)
I don't see why not.
I’d request a free book from Jack for getting COD, but I already ordered a copy yesterday. So yer off the hook, Jack.
2004 PT Cruiser GT Turbo for $1200, but has a pretty good whack on the right rear: https://denver.craigslist.org/cto/d/denver-2004-chrysler-pt-cruiser-gt/7903023074.html
EDIT: It's a stick shift.
Boy, if it didn’t have that deformed pin stripe over the right rear fender, that’d be the one. Probably about 3-5 grand for the body work, no? And that is assuming nothing is bent underneath.
We could porta-power it out for free, but it would never look "right".
I suppose that would mean I’d have to buy it, and then from Denver ship to Ohio, and then from Ohio ship it to New York! Deal!
No, just drive it across I-70 to here, then up I-80 to New York!
Cool. Ill ducktape the right rear door shut on the way to Ohio.
I've got nothing to add regarding naval or military hardware because I know less than nothing about it. I'm glad somebody does, but I'm not that guy.
I also have nothing positive (note what I did there -- don't try this at home kids. I'm was the school paper editor in 1980 and I'm on a closed course) to add regarding the "Charger", other than to say "oh good, now Stellantis can add to the already crowded *cars people don't buy* non-Tesla EV segment". I'm not sure where the market is for a $75k Dodge EV, but it's not in the Midwestern hick-towns I've inhabited for the entirety of my life, nor the cities around which they orbit. It's not eurotrash enough for the cities and not "Hellcat" enough for my people. Neither fish nor fowl, it will languish.
The new Hurricane/Challenger is cool, but see above comment -- they're going to sell like cold-cakes in the places where Challengers sell (the hood, and rural America) because, even though "nature might be healing" with fossil-fuel powerplants, "nature" hasn't healed enough for an honest and God-fearing V8 to return under the hood. My people will wait for the return of the Hemi. If Stellantis wants to return to our good graces, they could throw us a bone by making the car available with a proper manual transmission.
I'm not sure who's steering the ship at Nissan, but dropping the Versa may be one of the stupidest things a car company has ever done -- and this includes Ford incinerating money in its EV bonfire of the vanities and GM dropping the Camaro. At a point in history when the market is crying for simplicity and economy, when gas prices are dropping like a stone and electricity prices are rising like a rocket, when CAFE regulations have been gutted but remain in place -- Nissan picks THIS moment to drop the only sub-$20K car on the market to focus on... what, exactly?
Regarding Volvo and the V60: Volvo is pretty much dead to me since they became a wholly owned subsidiary of my Asian betters (to summarize the editorial direction of the NYT and WSJ). Regarding Jack's dogged determination to throw good money after bad on his Lexi (Lexus in plural): some illnesses defy cure. Jack has an unusual inclination towards very complex and expensive cars that SHOULD be nice (in the hypothetical abstract), but which (in reality) are much LESS nice than the average Chrysler 300 -- which Jack knows, because he has or had one. What can a perfectly running Lexus/Phaeton/et al offer that a 300/Hemi cannot? I've always thought the 300 was the perfect thumb in the eye of the sycophantic "auto-press" who universally regaled them, presumably because the all-expenses-paid junkets to the Chelsea Proving Grounds are nowhere near as glamorous as the ones BMW provides.
I think I follow my fellow ACFer's thought process with the PT Cruiser, in that they used to be everywhere, and dropped so far out of favor that they feel like they ought to be cheap to buy and own. Except that like the Pinto, Vega, and Chevette*, all of them were "rode hard and put away wet". Never robust vehicles to begin with, they were generally not cared for and have ended up mostly scrapped, one would assume. I have a vibe that there are no Chevettes* or likely PT Cruisers sitting under tarps in carports waiting for Grandpa to die so the estate can sell for pennies on the dollar. I wish the seller success, but perhaps the search ought to be broadened to include Korean cars with manual transmissions. Perhaps even older Versas.
As I said below: Merry Christmas, gentlemen. I've only been here a couple of months, but (Minitours aside) it feels like home. God bless us, every one.
*These vehicles have fallen so far off the screen that "Chevette" is unrecognized by Google's spellcheck, and has a red squiggly line under it.
' What can a perfectly running Lexus/Phaeton/et al offer that a 300/Hemi cannot? I've always thought the 300 was the perfect thumb in the eye of the sycophantic "auto-press" who universally regaled them, presumably because the all-expenses-paid junkets to the Chelsea Proving Grounds are nowhere near as glamorous as the ones BMW provides.'
Having driven the alpha version of the 300 and an LS430 back to back just a month or so ago, I can provide a partial answer.
The LS430 is considerably more spacious inside, especially up front. It's quieter. All the switches have less play and slop in them, even comparing a 185,000-mile LS430 to a 9,000-mile Chrysler. The ride is considerably better. The seats are nicer. The doors sound much better when you close them.
I obviously think the LX platform is pretty good. But it's a step down from a proper European or Japanese D-sedan.
Well, sure -- the 300 is a CHRYSLER, after all. It's not trying to be a European sedan, which makes it "honest" in my opinion. The trim stuff and the way the doors sound "are what they are" as my dear father used to say (and "are" Chrysler/FCA/Stellantis' weakest point, going back to the Carter administration), and what is supposed to be Toyota's strong points, so I'll take them into account but not award bonus points for them.
The seats and ride are valid. Seats are interior trim and I just said they shouldn't matter, but they are "touch points" on the car (where my body contacts the machine) and therefore very much inform how I feel about the car. I like my wife's Pacifica WAY more than I should because of the seating position. I kept my V8 E39 at least $5000 longer than I should have because the seats were so nice.
"Ride" is a very, very subjective thing, but I assume by "ride" you mean how solid and tight the car feels on the road. In this regard, I'd naturally assume the Toyota should be blowing the 300 out of the water. If it were not so, I'd think there was something broken or worn out in your 185,000 mi. example. However, a 9000 mi. sedan that isn't tight and solid in 2025 is inexcusable. I'll give you this one as well.
Let's talk about the engine. I'm assuming your alpha 300 had the 6.4. I'm further going to guess the Lexus does not have 485 hp or 475 lb-ft of torque. I know I'm just an overfed, hick-town, white-trash ape who aged out of juvenile delinquency 4-1/2 decades ago, but it's hard for me to look past an overfed, hick-town, white-trash juvenile delinquent mill turning the back rubber through a ZF 8-sp.
Refined? Heck no. Is it nearly perfect for the township of which you are now a citizen?
I think so.
I enjoy the heck out of my 300C, so much so that I restrict my enjoyment of it to rare occasions so I don't get used to how quick it is. I've put 10,500 miles on it over 26 months, compared to the 10,700 miles I have put on various Lexus sedans since... May.
Reminds me of Mr. Regular's review of the C4 Corvette.
"It's so fancy, I'll need a second monocle."
I know something of warship design, and I see several problems with the Defiant.
First, it'll take AT LEAST five years to design the ship. The Navy will insist on a 10,000-page contract, written to ensure the government is never at fault for any fuck up. Whatever company gets the contract will overrun the cost and schedule by 300%. Construction on the lead hull won't even begin till halfway through the second term of Trump's successor.
Better to spend the time, effort and money on another half-dozen Burkes, honestly.
I'll defer to my friend Ice here. As I said, I know nothing.
I do understand how long ANYTHING takes to do in this country, and how much extra it costs.
Thanks!
And I speak from depressing experience here.
I think of naval ships these days as mobile pre-artificial reefs. Those Mach 5 hypersonic missiles can get launched both ways.
I suspect the Chinese are gonna get ONE CLEAN KILL AT BEST with their hypersonics.
Then we scour their navy from high seas.
I doubt it (unless the PLAN is dumb enough to sail east of Guam). We don’t have enough missiles afloat, and can’t reload them at sea. China has a lot of land bases anti-ship missiles.
But we have SUBS.
Most of which are either in for maintenance or waiting for maintenance. (source: acquaintance who is a civilian engineer who works on attack subs).
all of this is true. but he got to control a news cycle or two and take away attention from Epstein and affordability and all the rest.
1985 Chevette LaserDisc promo (note the tow rating!):
https://youtu.be/vYkjrX8ySfU
Even the Neon population seems to have collapsed.
'Even the Neon population seems to have collapsed.'
Can't even find them in junkyards now.
They are all Chinesium spatulas hanging on pegs at Walmart.
Or LG refrigerators which will fail three months after sale, and for which the warranty won’t be honored.
For a non-politicized discussion of the Navy's plans for new ships, watch the "What's Going on with Shipping" channel on Youtube. Sal has excellent analysis of all things shipping, keeps politics out of the discussion, and is entertaining to watch. Turns out that a surprising amount of world events and economic matters are tied back into shipping.
Glad that Stellantis is pulling back from the brink of EV oblivion. Make some EVs, yes. Alongside a core business of making internal combustion engines. EVs are going to be a fringe market for a long time, the infrastructure and technology aren't there for any thing more. Wishing it otherwise, even if you are a government, doesn't make it a reality.
Heard on the news the other day that Ford is taking a $19 Billion write down this year. No idea how much of that is actual money that was lit on fire and burned, and how much of it is paper pushing by the accountants. But regardless, that is a staggering amount of money to throw away in the pursuit of appeasement. Half that amount could have been used by Ford to make a light truck diesel engine that doesn't self destruct before 100,000 miles. Or 10,000 miles. Something Ford hasn't been able to do since 2003.
Hell, they could have gifted a few billion to GM so they could make a small block V8 that doesn't grenade itself as it pulls off the transport.
And the taxpayer will back door bailout fords battery factory by the government buying the batteries for god knows what purpose.
Power storage to supplement renewable generation.
They tore down a coal fire plant not far from me. It ran for over 100 years and occupied an area along the Detroit River that used to be full of industry (mills, chemical plant, etc.).
Instead of turning that land over to the Wildlife Refuge that sits next door, Detroit Edison decided that they’re going to stick a battery farm there.
I suppose I knew the purpose but it was too sad and stupid for me to want to contemplate.
I guess it’s no different than having a power wall at home to supplement your solar panels. My hate is directly related to the situation above. It’s not like there wasn’t ample room at the NPP 10 miles further south for this battery farm.
That Wildlife Refuge is home to the last untouched wetlands on the river. The whole area has de-industrialized over the past 20 years.
I’m assuming the economics are probably terrible due to their durability. See worthless bricked early model Ss for example.
I’ll bet money the battery farm ends up being more detrimental to the environment in the long run than the coal plant was.
I'll take that bet
Is that Hillary Clinton riding shotgun in the PT Cruiser pic?
No idea but why is Kim Jung Un driving?
when youre late to the execution of a party official you have to take matters into your own hands
Forget the Epstein photos, THIS is the information we need.