Because open thread: ZR1 reveal tinight at 7:30 EST. Thanks to a dipshit YouTuber briefly pulling the trigger at 7:30 AM, we already know that it makes 1,064 HP(!) from a Z06 engine with twins and no hybrid nonsense.
Pretty wild! That puts the "Zora" that will apparently slap the E-Ray's pwered front axle on the ZR1 at 1,224 ponies without an ounce of aditional tuning.
I used to be so profoundly excited over new Corvette releases. At this point I don’t even care; which is honestly pretty sad on my behalf. I was really put off by the initial c7 debut and still don’t care for the base model cars. The widebody cars eventually grew on me pretty well at least but I was always up in arms over “heritage” and all the stupid buzzwords over the ass end.
The c8 was the the first time since 1996 I was geeking slightly, I was mentally ignoring the tail lamp and fascia treatment as I associated the car with a clean slate idea of design elements. Honestly it’s one of the ugliest butts out there but somehow it’s acceptable. My broken record self was put off not only by its lack of 3rd pedal, but also its size. It’s a BIG car in person. The Z variants are even larger.
They are now akin to a bloated Ferrari and the prices have followed suit. I don’t care about new Ferrari releases because I can’t begin to afford them. Now the KOTH has been so elevated in price it might as well not even be a Corvette. Toys for the ultra rich. Maybe I’m full of shit and they’ve always been double a base.
I miss the blue collar sports car aspect. Now we have DCT boomer Ferraris and the Mustang which seems to be trying to fill the gap reeks of an inflated RWD Honda Accord with its ever ballooning price tag to go along. I think I’m past my prime or missed my mark in life somehow. I’d have thought with enough hard work these things would be available to me in life. I guess not. Maybe my midlife crisis is just to be full of angst.
I went to the C8 roadshow event at the local dealer. Was ready to put my name on the list. Then I sat in the thing. I know bigger guys are supposed to fit, but I just couldn’t get comfortable in it. That I could get past. After all, I don’t fit in the C5 well. But throw in the wonky interior and the fact that it’s auto only and I decided to pass.
When the C8Z came out, I thought I’d give it another go. I had the same reservations. Not being able to drive one first spoiled that too.
This ZR1 sounds great on paper but even if I could afford it, I’m just not excited. I don’t care if it’s faster, an auto sports car isn’t something I can get excited about.
I'm with you in a lot of your sentiment and haven't liked a Ferrari since the 458. I love the current Z06 (and would still take one over this ZR1) because it's a modern, more attainable version built in the US, but during my senior year of HS, it was the C6 ZR1 that pushed me from guy that likes cars to a full-on obsessive.
On top of the otherworldly performance and classic curvy looks, it was primarily the attainability that captured my imagination. I'm afraid the new ones have lost a lot of that edge. I also agree about the undesirability of the base models - though I've always felt that way - the lack of a third pedal (which is why is still take that C6 over the new four-digit HP model), and the sheer size of the C8. I've said it here before, but I wish Tadge and the boys would have told golfers to cram it in their respective cram holes with the move to mid-engine architecture to keep it from looking like a Camaro when parked next to other ME sports cars!
My favorite C8 comment came from a fellow C7 owner I was talking to at a car show. He said “I’m sure the C8 is a nice car, it’s just not a Corvette anymore”.
From a design perspective, they slapped the C7 front and back ends onto a mid engined platform to call it a Corvette, but how is that any different from Ford adding Mustang-like front and back ends to the Mach-E and then calling it a Mustang?
C7 prices are dropping, now is the time to start looking at them if you’re interested. It appears that C6 prices are increasing a bit. Just an observation from auction prices.
The original leaker was "Eddie X" and a few outlets followed suit. As far as I can tell, GM successfully got everything taken down except for this one low-budget clip:
The founders went with needing to own property to vote:
John Adams wrote, " It is certain in theory, that the only moral foundation of government is the [agreement] of the people, but to what an extent shall we carry this principle? Shall we say, that every individual of the community, old and young, male and female, as well as rich and poor, must [agree] to every act of legislation?... Is it not equally true, that men in general in every society, who [are poor and do not own property], are also [unfamiliar] with public affairs to form a right judgment, and too dependent upon other men to have a will of their own? …Few men, who have no property, have any judgment of their own. They talk and vote as they are directed by some man of property, who has attached their minds to his interest."
Compare this to the voting themselves bread and circuses problem.
I accept your rebuke but I'm not sure I'm being inconsistent here. I can argue all day for a designated hitter in the National League but have a valid reason for complaint if the Mets manager pulls someone out of the stands for a double switch. My stated preference in no way disables me from pointing out a violation of current expectations.
There is something to be said about property ownership requirements, especially with more local elections. How could you reasonably expect somebody with no skin in the game to make the right decision regarding their community? If your decisions ruin a community, you lose little in moving elsewhere. We're seeing this now as people leave California, but it has also happened multiple times over history as those with means escaped the cities for suburbs and are now migrating out of suburbs into more rural areas.
That was me. Felt like a sucker living in Illinois paying high taxes to people who hated me and everything I stood for. So I moved to NC and right now it’s a much better situation.
Obama will make his endorsement at the convention where maximum spotlight will be on him. If she is polling OK, it will be a firmer endorsement. If she is poling badly it will be a bit more tepid of an endorsement with a few back handed complements. As always, he is going to do what is best for boosting HIS brand.
Generally, the expansion of the franchise will result in a race to the bottom in terms of gibs to buy votes amongst other negative outcomes. It also dilutes the individual value of any particular vote and promotes apathy.
There's a reason the franchise was limited and, unfortunately, those limitations were not enshrined at a level sufficient to prevent us from devolving into a mobocracy (though right now we have a technocracy at the federal level and more mobocracy at local and state). People are self-interested, better to grant the vote to those whose self-interest expands to cover others (families, property, stability) and who are rationally bent and have a culture of work and honor.
That people on the dole can vote to take more is a massive structural error. They shouldn't have the vote.
The Athenians knew this, the founders knew this, de Tocqueville knew this, why have we forgotten?
Egalitarian democracy as an end point is contra stable and functional systems and societies.
We forgot it because as the Good Book says, “For the love of money is the root of all evil”.
The way to reform government, and I say this knowing it will never happen, is to have a check and balance on everything. But it cannot be done with a government so large that not only don’t we know what it does, we don’t even know who runs it!
Hell, I'll hop into that empty seat. I'm a nobody so I've got nothing to loose if it doesn't go well, and a lot to gain if it does. Even if it's a one year placeholder seat, that'd be way cooler than NOT racing at all!
I’m not sure the constitution covers elections, only that they are held by the states. It is not so much that the democrats are violating the constitution, they are violating the entire idea of “the people” selecting the democrat nominee. There are apparently some legal challenges coming/being investigated for state election laws that may not allow this.
Well, if Hillary had beat Trump and put 3 justices on the Supreme Court the 2nd amendment would be interpreted to apply only to “militia” and citizens would have lost their rights. We can look at court cases last year and guess how all of them would have gone. It would have been quite bad.
No, the nation won't survive if Kamala wins. It -might- survive if Trump wins, but only because we're on a downhill ride in a basket to a very hot place. This country is now in it's end phase, because of a lot of stuff done by the democrats and far too many republicans over the last forty years.
I mean, according to every historical example we got like ten years until the wheels fall off. But hey, who pays attention to history, right?
I mean, that's why we know they don't really care about "democracy". Bernie was winning the states for crying out loud and everyone in the DNC but the voters took him out of the race.
The only argument for the DNC is that they technically don't have a democratic process for it's nominee, as they have delegates that represent the state's and super delegates who represent....the oligarchs. Of course the democrats only care when it's against a republican that it be democratic. I honestly feel bad for RFK jr, as he would have been a much better nominee.
I wonder how much the departure of Adrian Newey has affected the Red Bull team's performance. Verstappen wasn't happy with the latest batch of revisions.
La Gazzetta della Sport says that it isn't his personal salary demands but that Ferrari is balking at Newey's desire that they hire about 20 of his favorite engineers.
Are we already witnessing the impact of the departure of Adrian Newey, or does it go further back? I can’t help but wonder if you can trace this back to the death of Dietrich Mateschitz. Is this when the wheels started to fall off? There’s something very stinky inside that team right now. To put things in perspective, the car is still a winning package under the right circumstances and one of their drivers is arguably the best that has ever lived, but the pressure being exerted by McLaren is obvious and clearly contributed to the pretty significant error in judgement that we saw Max make on Sunday.
It's 100% kicked off by the death of Mateschitz. Benevolent dictators can accomplish a lot, but the power struggle when they die usually brings it down.
I find it more likely that Newey, Verstappen, GP Lambiase and Honda will be reunited at Aston Martin, where they will be joined by Yuki Tsunoda. Newey wants autonomy that is anathema to Ferrari.
An RX350? Who knew you were a divorced late 50 something year old female real estate agent with bottle blonde hair and a botox addiction.
This DC debacle is interesting to watch and should be more interesting to read about 20 to 30 years from now once it gets manipulated into the history books by the self anointed experts. No matter which side you want to win the way this went down for the blue just isn't right and certainly does nothing to unify anyone, not even within one party or another.
About a dozen years ago, I went to a party at a General Practitioner's house. I was one of very few guests who was not a medical doctor, and I also had one of very few cars that was not a Lexus RX350.
The RX remains the ultimate go to premium vehicle for people who aren’t into cars. It isn’t exciting, but it’s tried and true and requires no explanation.
Additionally, the RX is the OG premium crossover (The first gen Mercedes ML came out a year earlier and was body on frame, so a different beast), has had a stellar reputation for reliability, high residuals, and smooth ride for over 2 decades at this point - the things that matter to a lot of non-enthusiasts in the premium space.
The Q5 and XC90 dominate our town. The RX seemed to peak 2 generations ago. Once you're 1 or 2 towns over from us, the Tahoe and Suburban run thick. Some of that is space (those towns are less dense) and the purchase mechanism (our town leases; further out ones buy).
Weirdly, I still don't see as many current-gen GC's as I'd thought.
A lot of these trends are regional (eg: Im generalizing, but broadly, more HEVs and PHEVs on the coasts, more body on frame domestics in the South and Midwest).
The RX is solidly midsize, so it doesn’t compete with the Q5 or XC60 directly. I suspect those options have more attractive leasing options.
Anecdotally, in my market (largish wealthy metro in Canada), Audi and BMW are the local favourites with Lexus well represented in hybrids. Mercedes and Tesla seem to be losing traction in the premium space.
The extent to which Democrats are debasing themselves praising this mediocrity with superlatives is almost beyond cringe.
The mainstream media will not say a word about this, but there are plenty of TikTok and YouTube videos with black folks saying that "She's not black."
I don't know if you've seen the photo montage of Harris' face made up of portraits of the black men she kept incarcerated and exploited while she was AG of California. The Trump campaign should put up posters of that on every utility pole in urban America.
I think you misspelled “exploited inmates even while gaming excessive sentences for minor drug offenders and writing initiatives to decriminalize thefts under $950.”
A prosecutor who broke the law to deliver slave labor to her backers and a felon for whom the entire government spent four years fruitlessly looking for evidence of a criminal act before deciding to prosecute him for crimes that nobody else had ever been prosecuted for.
Always remember - and I know you will - that the same people both political and media who kept telling you that Biden was sharp as a tack and the best Biden ever for years/months are the same people who are now telling you that Kamala Harris is more than qualified to be President with many accomplishments on her resume.
In certain corners of the internet it's being noticed that references to her as the "Border Czar" and the most liberal Senator of 2019 are being wiped.
Yes, the retroactive "we wrongly called her Border Czar back then" has a whiff of "we've always been at war with Eastasia". They're retconning actual history now.
This would be effective, and I expect to see a lot of Tulsi from now until November. Kamala has so much policy baggage that it’s not even necessary to bring up her speaking style and word salads. But I do enjoy the Estee Palti impersonations because she captures the hallucinogenic quality of Kamala’s ramblings. https://m.youtube.com/@Mommyrn88/videos
The RX is about to become overlanding fodder. Make it so. All the guys searching for a Rig to Build will be coming here to read up.
Look, man. Throatus threw us all for a loop by pretending to be the bulwark against unaliving Joe Rob. Now she's Cackles the Wonder Woman. What a mark ass trick I feel like now. She's clever.
I have tried so hard to figure out what overlanding is. I see these people in town and out on the trails, I have driven their routes all over Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.
Best I can come up with is two seperate definitions.
Car camping
And
A competition to see who can weigh down their rig with so much shit that poorly maintained fire roads present a challenge .
I don't mean to pick on these guys in particular, but they do most of their filming in my neck of the woods so I feel better criticizing.
We have access to the most isolated terrain in the lower 48, but still are never more than a couple of hours from a nice hotel.
Their video on the most difficult trail in Idaho takes place a 15 minute drive from Sun Valley, not some remote range. If they dropped their gear in the staging station like everyone else they would have cleared it no problem. Or if they did bring their camping stuff they should have stayed at the old mining camp, it's spectacular.
I have lurked on the forums, and there just isn't much out there in the US that makes you feel like you are doing a dangerous resupply mission or a G4 challenge.
If you haven't seen Furiosa, you should check it out. Scrotus and Rictus make some solid appearances. "I am Scrotus, and this is my brother Rictus. Now we will kill you!"
The biggest F1 story was Audi announcing they don't want to be competitive in F1.
Binotto isn't a has been, he is a never was. At best he is a walking pasta eating eraser headed embodiment of the Peter principle. I didn't think it was possible to be a downgrade of leadership from Arrivabene but he did it
Screw Audi and their weak sauce retread dick licking mindset.
The only reason to run an F1 team from not Southern England is national or personal pride. Peter Sauber is out, any purpose behind staying Swiss based is gone.
That makes some sense. Maybe Sainz and Binotto are besties. However Carlos seems like a smart guy, and he is no longer a young gun. He has seen what Binotto can do with all the resources and experience of Ferrari. No way he follows him to Hinwil.
The money he brings to the team aside, I've gotta think it would be a net gain for Red Bull to ditch Perez in favor of Sargent. Given how often Sargent has out-qualified Perez, it would at the least give Red Bull a driver creating a bottleneck a bit closer to the front.
There’s an Excel spreadsheet being built at Red Bull right now that models the drop in Red Bull sales in Mexico if they 86 Sergio vs. RBR’s payout if they come 2nd in constructors and the cost to make up not getting the first place payout if they keep him.
Lando is fast, but he's not the brightest and often comes across childish, as you said. Piastri on the other hand, I think is the most "future champ" looking new driver since Max Verstappen. He seems very smart,mature and cool under pressure for an F1 driver, let alone one in his second season. I think he'll win a wdc before lando, and we'll look back on this race as the turning point.
I agree. The whole thing was exactly that - childish. Yes, Lando, we all know you could have won the race. There was no doubt among anyone watching. But forcing your engineer to issue increasingly desperate and embarrassing radio messages that you ignore even when it is clear they're coming from the boss is both childish and stupid.
Jack's right - give back the position immediately or take the win and the consequences. Personally, I'd have given the spot back immediately upon the order - being part of a team, not to mention an _employee directed by the boss_ demanded it.
Because open thread: ZR1 reveal tinight at 7:30 EST. Thanks to a dipshit YouTuber briefly pulling the trigger at 7:30 AM, we already know that it makes 1,064 HP(!) from a Z06 engine with twins and no hybrid nonsense.
holy shid
theyre already gapping hellcats now but that is an assload of power
consider me hyped for the ugliest ferrari
Pretty wild! That puts the "Zora" that will apparently slap the E-Ray's pwered front axle on the ZR1 at 1,224 ponies without an ounce of aditional tuning.
and everyone knows there going to tune the hell out of those engines immediately because what else are you supposed to do with corvettes
and it already makes more than demon or veyron power
oh the pain, when 1200 HP is not enough,
I used to be so profoundly excited over new Corvette releases. At this point I don’t even care; which is honestly pretty sad on my behalf. I was really put off by the initial c7 debut and still don’t care for the base model cars. The widebody cars eventually grew on me pretty well at least but I was always up in arms over “heritage” and all the stupid buzzwords over the ass end.
The c8 was the the first time since 1996 I was geeking slightly, I was mentally ignoring the tail lamp and fascia treatment as I associated the car with a clean slate idea of design elements. Honestly it’s one of the ugliest butts out there but somehow it’s acceptable. My broken record self was put off not only by its lack of 3rd pedal, but also its size. It’s a BIG car in person. The Z variants are even larger.
They are now akin to a bloated Ferrari and the prices have followed suit. I don’t care about new Ferrari releases because I can’t begin to afford them. Now the KOTH has been so elevated in price it might as well not even be a Corvette. Toys for the ultra rich. Maybe I’m full of shit and they’ve always been double a base.
I miss the blue collar sports car aspect. Now we have DCT boomer Ferraris and the Mustang which seems to be trying to fill the gap reeks of an inflated RWD Honda Accord with its ever ballooning price tag to go along. I think I’m past my prime or missed my mark in life somehow. I’d have thought with enough hard work these things would be available to me in life. I guess not. Maybe my midlife crisis is just to be full of angst.
Seems fitting enough.
I went to the C8 roadshow event at the local dealer. Was ready to put my name on the list. Then I sat in the thing. I know bigger guys are supposed to fit, but I just couldn’t get comfortable in it. That I could get past. After all, I don’t fit in the C5 well. But throw in the wonky interior and the fact that it’s auto only and I decided to pass.
When the C8Z came out, I thought I’d give it another go. I had the same reservations. Not being able to drive one first spoiled that too.
This ZR1 sounds great on paper but even if I could afford it, I’m just not excited. I don’t care if it’s faster, an auto sports car isn’t something I can get excited about.
I'm with you in a lot of your sentiment and haven't liked a Ferrari since the 458. I love the current Z06 (and would still take one over this ZR1) because it's a modern, more attainable version built in the US, but during my senior year of HS, it was the C6 ZR1 that pushed me from guy that likes cars to a full-on obsessive.
On top of the otherworldly performance and classic curvy looks, it was primarily the attainability that captured my imagination. I'm afraid the new ones have lost a lot of that edge. I also agree about the undesirability of the base models - though I've always felt that way - the lack of a third pedal (which is why is still take that C6 over the new four-digit HP model), and the sheer size of the C8. I've said it here before, but I wish Tadge and the boys would have told golfers to cram it in their respective cram holes with the move to mid-engine architecture to keep it from looking like a Camaro when parked next to other ME sports cars!
My favorite C8 comment came from a fellow C7 owner I was talking to at a car show. He said “I’m sure the C8 is a nice car, it’s just not a Corvette anymore”.
From a design perspective, they slapped the C7 front and back ends onto a mid engined platform to call it a Corvette, but how is that any different from Ford adding Mustang-like front and back ends to the Mach-E and then calling it a Mustang?
C7 prices are dropping, now is the time to start looking at them if you’re interested. It appears that C6 prices are increasing a bit. Just an observation from auction prices.
copium or not you still have a c3 vette and a sick foxbody among others i presume
maybe it doesnt draw crowds like a new zr1 but what youve got is far from lame
Do you happen to have a link for the too-lazy-to-search among us? I might actually have time to watch it.
The original leaker was "Eddie X" and a few outlets followed suit. As far as I can tell, GM successfully got everything taken down except for this one low-budget clip:
https://youtu.be/IcpXogGDafI?si=wbwWlyYfy4Z6Aydl
Enjoy it while it lasts!
I meant the link to the official release. I can never tell if it will be on YT or some microsite.
We won't have that until tonight but there's screenshots in the video linked above. I'll drop the real deal here later if you're interested.
the guy is addicted to racing period
probably why he wins all the time
also kyle larson did nothing wrong
The founders went with needing to own property to vote:
John Adams wrote, " It is certain in theory, that the only moral foundation of government is the [agreement] of the people, but to what an extent shall we carry this principle? Shall we say, that every individual of the community, old and young, male and female, as well as rich and poor, must [agree] to every act of legislation?... Is it not equally true, that men in general in every society, who [are poor and do not own property], are also [unfamiliar] with public affairs to form a right judgment, and too dependent upon other men to have a will of their own? …Few men, who have no property, have any judgment of their own. They talk and vote as they are directed by some man of property, who has attached their minds to his interest."
Compare this to the voting themselves bread and circuses problem.
All are variations of democracy.
I accept your rebuke but I'm not sure I'm being inconsistent here. I can argue all day for a designated hitter in the National League but have a valid reason for complaint if the Mets manager pulls someone out of the stands for a double switch. My stated preference in no way disables me from pointing out a violation of current expectations.
There is something to be said about property ownership requirements, especially with more local elections. How could you reasonably expect somebody with no skin in the game to make the right decision regarding their community? If your decisions ruin a community, you lose little in moving elsewhere. We're seeing this now as people leave California, but it has also happened multiple times over history as those with means escaped the cities for suburbs and are now migrating out of suburbs into more rural areas.
That was me. Felt like a sucker living in Illinois paying high taxes to people who hated me and everything I stood for. So I moved to NC and right now it’s a much better situation.
Obama will make his endorsement at the convention where maximum spotlight will be on him. If she is polling OK, it will be a firmer endorsement. If she is poling badly it will be a bit more tepid of an endorsement with a few back handed complements. As always, he is going to do what is best for boosting HIS brand.
So much for that prediction.....
Generally, the expansion of the franchise will result in a race to the bottom in terms of gibs to buy votes amongst other negative outcomes. It also dilutes the individual value of any particular vote and promotes apathy.
There's a reason the franchise was limited and, unfortunately, those limitations were not enshrined at a level sufficient to prevent us from devolving into a mobocracy (though right now we have a technocracy at the federal level and more mobocracy at local and state). People are self-interested, better to grant the vote to those whose self-interest expands to cover others (families, property, stability) and who are rationally bent and have a culture of work and honor.
That people on the dole can vote to take more is a massive structural error. They shouldn't have the vote.
The Athenians knew this, the founders knew this, de Tocqueville knew this, why have we forgotten?
Egalitarian democracy as an end point is contra stable and functional systems and societies.
We forgot it because as the Good Book says, “For the love of money is the root of all evil”.
The way to reform government, and I say this knowing it will never happen, is to have a check and balance on everything. But it cannot be done with a government so large that not only don’t we know what it does, we don’t even know who runs it!
Sainz might luck out into the 2nd Mercedes seat at this rate. Kimi Antonelli looks like he needs a year or two in a Williams.
Hell, I'll hop into that empty seat. I'm a nobody so I've got nothing to loose if it doesn't go well, and a lot to gain if it does. Even if it's a one year placeholder seat, that'd be way cooler than NOT racing at all!
To paraphrase Dubya: "We have to violate democracy to save democracy" I'm sure that's what they're telling themselves so they can sleep at night.
I’m not sure the constitution covers elections, only that they are held by the states. It is not so much that the democrats are violating the constitution, they are violating the entire idea of “the people” selecting the democrat nominee. There are apparently some legal challenges coming/being investigated for state election laws that may not allow this.
Well, if Hillary had beat Trump and put 3 justices on the Supreme Court the 2nd amendment would be interpreted to apply only to “militia” and citizens would have lost their rights. We can look at court cases last year and guess how all of them would have gone. It would have been quite bad.
No, the nation won't survive if Kamala wins. It -might- survive if Trump wins, but only because we're on a downhill ride in a basket to a very hot place. This country is now in it's end phase, because of a lot of stuff done by the democrats and far too many republicans over the last forty years.
I mean, according to every historical example we got like ten years until the wheels fall off. But hey, who pays attention to history, right?
Primaries are held the way the party wants them held. The constitution doesn't mention them.
I mean, that's why we know they don't really care about "democracy". Bernie was winning the states for crying out loud and everyone in the DNC but the voters took him out of the race.
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. - Will Rogers.
The only argument for the DNC is that they technically don't have a democratic process for it's nominee, as they have delegates that represent the state's and super delegates who represent....the oligarchs. Of course the democrats only care when it's against a republican that it be democratic. I honestly feel bad for RFK jr, as he would have been a much better nominee.
Or Pelosi: We won’t know what Kamala stands for until we elect her.
Pass it and read it later.
I wonder how much the departure of Adrian Newey has affected the Red Bull team's performance. Verstappen wasn't happy with the latest batch of revisions.
Can Ferrari afford both Hamilton and Newey?
Would be interesting if there is something Ferrari can't afford. Usually, "can't afford" precedes "Ferrari".
La Gazzetta della Sport says that it isn't his personal salary demands but that Ferrari is balking at Newey's desire that they hire about 20 of his favorite engineers.
has newey to ferrari been confirmed yet
no, the rumors are in fact the opposite... Daddy Stroll is looking at him.
money really can buy everything
Except happiness.
Are we already witnessing the impact of the departure of Adrian Newey, or does it go further back? I can’t help but wonder if you can trace this back to the death of Dietrich Mateschitz. Is this when the wheels started to fall off? There’s something very stinky inside that team right now. To put things in perspective, the car is still a winning package under the right circumstances and one of their drivers is arguably the best that has ever lived, but the pressure being exerted by McLaren is obvious and clearly contributed to the pretty significant error in judgement that we saw Max make on Sunday.
It's 100% kicked off by the death of Mateschitz. Benevolent dictators can accomplish a lot, but the power struggle when they die usually brings it down.
Seems similar to MB falling apart without Lauda.
Yes, exactly right
I find it more likely that Newey, Verstappen, GP Lambiase and Honda will be reunited at Aston Martin, where they will be joined by Yuki Tsunoda. Newey wants autonomy that is anathema to Ferrari.
Yum, this is a delicious fantasy.
Isn't it though?
I’d like to take credit for the Cuck Norris sobriquet!
Absolutely deserved.
Of course review the Lexus! How does the Queen of Quality stand up to 2 years rental abuse?
MTGA (Make TTAC Great Again!) with the Rental Car Review.
Edit-Jack can use the opportunity to practice his wobble in case ever gets a chance to ride the journosaur gravy train again.
Especially interested in DG's take.
An RX350? Who knew you were a divorced late 50 something year old female real estate agent with bottle blonde hair and a botox addiction.
This DC debacle is interesting to watch and should be more interesting to read about 20 to 30 years from now once it gets manipulated into the history books by the self anointed experts. No matter which side you want to win the way this went down for the blue just isn't right and certainly does nothing to unify anyone, not even within one party or another.
Always thought that is a car for Pharmacists.
RX. I see what you did there.
About a dozen years ago, I went to a party at a General Practitioner's house. I was one of very few guests who was not a medical doctor, and I also had one of very few cars that was not a Lexus RX350.
LOLed thanks.
The RX remains the ultimate go to premium vehicle for people who aren’t into cars. It isn’t exciting, but it’s tried and true and requires no explanation.
Additionally, the RX is the OG premium crossover (The first gen Mercedes ML came out a year earlier and was body on frame, so a different beast), has had a stellar reputation for reliability, high residuals, and smooth ride for over 2 decades at this point - the things that matter to a lot of non-enthusiasts in the premium space.
Swell
The Q5 and XC90 dominate our town. The RX seemed to peak 2 generations ago. Once you're 1 or 2 towns over from us, the Tahoe and Suburban run thick. Some of that is space (those towns are less dense) and the purchase mechanism (our town leases; further out ones buy).
Weirdly, I still don't see as many current-gen GC's as I'd thought.
A lot of these trends are regional (eg: Im generalizing, but broadly, more HEVs and PHEVs on the coasts, more body on frame domestics in the South and Midwest).
The RX is solidly midsize, so it doesn’t compete with the Q5 or XC60 directly. I suspect those options have more attractive leasing options.
Anecdotally, in my market (largish wealthy metro in Canada), Audi and BMW are the local favourites with Lexus well represented in hybrids. Mercedes and Tesla seem to be losing traction in the premium space.
The extent to which Democrats are debasing themselves praising this mediocrity with superlatives is almost beyond cringe.
The mainstream media will not say a word about this, but there are plenty of TikTok and YouTube videos with black folks saying that "She's not black."
I don't know if you've seen the photo montage of Harris' face made up of portraits of the black men she kept incarcerated and exploited while she was AG of California. The Trump campaign should put up posters of that on every utility pole in urban America.
I doubt it would behoove the party that should be standing for law and order to point out Ms Harris worked to keep criminals in jail.
“Worked to keep criminals in jail.”
I think you misspelled “exploited inmates even while gaming excessive sentences for minor drug offenders and writing initiatives to decriminalize thefts under $950.”
We all understand the distinction here....too many other people will not.
The “Defund the Police” party will nominate a prosecutor.
The “Law and Order” party just nominated a felon.
exactly as it should
A prosecutor who broke the law to deliver slave labor to her backers and a felon for whom the entire government spent four years fruitlessly looking for evidence of a criminal act before deciding to prosecute him for crimes that nobody else had ever been prosecuted for.
Always remember - and I know you will - that the same people both political and media who kept telling you that Biden was sharp as a tack and the best Biden ever for years/months are the same people who are now telling you that Kamala Harris is more than qualified to be President with many accomplishments on her resume.
In certain corners of the internet it's being noticed that references to her as the "Border Czar" and the most liberal Senator of 2019 are being wiped.
Axios went so far as to go back and deny their own news coverage!
Border Czar? Are the Russians behind that?
Yes, the retroactive "we wrongly called her Border Czar back then" has a whiff of "we've always been at war with Eastasia". They're retconning actual history now.
The clip from the last Dem debate where Tulsi took her down in a minute was devastating.
The Trump campaign should hire Tulsi to follow her around in the campaign trail to both heckle and provide commentary.
This would be effective, and I expect to see a lot of Tulsi from now until November. Kamala has so much policy baggage that it’s not even necessary to bring up her speaking style and word salads. But I do enjoy the Estee Palti impersonations because she captures the hallucinogenic quality of Kamala’s ramblings. https://m.youtube.com/@Mommyrn88/videos
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not really a Tulsi fan but she would be useful.
If the entertainment industry wasn't so politically orthodox, Estee Palti would have already been on SNL.
The RX is about to become overlanding fodder. Make it so. All the guys searching for a Rig to Build will be coming here to read up.
Look, man. Throatus threw us all for a loop by pretending to be the bulwark against unaliving Joe Rob. Now she's Cackles the Wonder Woman. What a mark ass trick I feel like now. She's clever.
An RX overlander? Now I’ve heard of everything.
I have tried so hard to figure out what overlanding is. I see these people in town and out on the trails, I have driven their routes all over Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.
Best I can come up with is two seperate definitions.
Car camping
And
A competition to see who can weigh down their rig with so much shit that poorly maintained fire roads present a challenge .
The real question is how many morale patches can the headliner hold.
It's car camping for people who read Wes Siler.
https://venture2roam.com/
I don't mean to pick on these guys in particular, but they do most of their filming in my neck of the woods so I feel better criticizing.
We have access to the most isolated terrain in the lower 48, but still are never more than a couple of hours from a nice hotel.
Their video on the most difficult trail in Idaho takes place a 15 minute drive from Sun Valley, not some remote range. If they dropped their gear in the staging station like everyone else they would have cleared it no problem. Or if they did bring their camping stuff they should have stayed at the old mining camp, it's spectacular.
I have lurked on the forums, and there just isn't much out there in the US that makes you feel like you are doing a dangerous resupply mission or a G4 challenge.
Fucking LOOOOOOL
Yes. Nearly all the newsed stuff with awd and center lock get nudged into "Knobbies for commuter" or "Welcome back to the channel" gravel road duty.
Here's one on 32s, even though it's a Highlander with botox.
https://offroadium.com/lifted-2022-lexus-rx350-on-32-offroad-wheels.html
so its a japanese range rover then
Were you racing Spa on GT7 Tuesday night?
This kicks ass.
I don't care that a dirt road or a damp field is the most treacherous terrain it will ever see, it just looks sick as hell.
I mean it looks cool, also like the VW in that shitty Jude Law movie where he repo’s body parts and organs.
On a certain level, an rx overland prob makes more sense than the aging Cayenne conversions one sees on BaT
One of the two of these is more likely to make it to the trailhead 😉
lol Throatus. Sounds like one of Immortan Joe's mutant children.
Rictus Erectus cracks me up every time.
If you haven't seen Furiosa, you should check it out. Scrotus and Rictus make some solid appearances. "I am Scrotus, and this is my brother Rictus. Now we will kill you!"
Saw it, absolutely loved it. Came home and immediately watched Fury Road again.
God grant me the strength to never make peace with the world's injustices.
i asked the lord to make my enemies ridiculous and the big fella overdelivered
God doesn't work by half measures.
Men make plans and God laughs.
In Yiddish it rhymes: "Mann traoch, Gott lauch".
The biggest F1 story was Audi announcing they don't want to be competitive in F1.
Binotto isn't a has been, he is a never was. At best he is a walking pasta eating eraser headed embodiment of the Peter principle. I didn't think it was possible to be a downgrade of leadership from Arrivabene but he did it
Screw Audi and their weak sauce retread dick licking mindset.
The only reason to run an F1 team from not Southern England is national or personal pride. Peter Sauber is out, any purpose behind staying Swiss based is gone.
Just light the thing on fire.
That makes some sense. Maybe Sainz and Binotto are besties. However Carlos seems like a smart guy, and he is no longer a young gun. He has seen what Binotto can do with all the resources and experience of Ferrari. No way he follows him to Hinwil.
Teams Clinton and Obama hate each other, and Heels Up is in the former. There's got to be some Lenin / Trotsky parallels there.
Commie-la!
i think if theres anything we can all agree on its that perez deserves a contract extension in light of his recent exemplary performance
The money he brings to the team aside, I've gotta think it would be a net gain for Red Bull to ditch Perez in favor of Sargent. Given how often Sargent has out-qualified Perez, it would at the least give Red Bull a driver creating a bottleneck a bit closer to the front.
There’s an Excel spreadsheet being built at Red Bull right now that models the drop in Red Bull sales in Mexico if they 86 Sergio vs. RBR’s payout if they come 2nd in constructors and the cost to make up not getting the first place payout if they keep him.
put goku on cans of redbull and sales in mexico will quintuple overnight
problem solved
Lando is fast, but he's not the brightest and often comes across childish, as you said. Piastri on the other hand, I think is the most "future champ" looking new driver since Max Verstappen. He seems very smart,mature and cool under pressure for an F1 driver, let alone one in his second season. I think he'll win a wdc before lando, and we'll look back on this race as the turning point.
In Piastri I don't see the flashes of raw pace we saw from a young Alonso, Hamilton or Verstappen, or even Williams era Button.
He's a good qualifier and he's learning to extend the tires during the race. He's easily good enough to win in the best car.
I agree. The whole thing was exactly that - childish. Yes, Lando, we all know you could have won the race. There was no doubt among anyone watching. But forcing your engineer to issue increasingly desperate and embarrassing radio messages that you ignore even when it is clear they're coming from the boss is both childish and stupid.
Jack's right - give back the position immediately or take the win and the consequences. Personally, I'd have given the spot back immediately upon the order - being part of a team, not to mention an _employee directed by the boss_ demanded it.