In MotoGP it's all lemons for LeMans... for the Marquez brothers.
Bagnaia, with a shocking return to form, thunders to pole position after a direct placement into Q2. Marc is forced into Q1 with a poor practice but gets through with an all time lap record and then takes 2nd position on the grid for the race. Bez, the championship leader, starts from 3rd. Then come Digi, the most consistent Duc rider this year, Acosta who serves as KTMs shining light, and Quartararo taking the Yamaha to its highest start position this year.
In the beginning of the race Bez makes a good start, but not as good as Jorge Martin who comes from 8th to 1st within the first three turns of the race. Martin then simply walks away from everyone else in an absolutely unbelievable turn of events. Bagnaia falls to 3rd and begins fighting it out with Bezecchi. Marc is the big loser and shuffles back behind Mir for 7th position.
Mir is stuck behind Quartararo for the entirety of the sprint and fails to pass, which is a testament to how sharp the #20 must be in the braking zones.
For Marc Marquez disaster strikes with a high side where he catches the bike with his leg and breaks his foot. This, however, led to the revelation that a screw in his recently injured shoulder had worked loose and was rubbing on a nerve. A likely cause for his still not looking as sharp as he was last year.
In the race proper Jorge Martin attempts, and fails, to make the same set of moves through the initial turns. His competitors were keen not to have a repeat occur. He is shuffled down to 7th place behind Ogura and Bagnaia. Bagnaia would make some aggressive moves and place behind Bez by lap 7. Two laps later and he is within half a second.
At the one third distance mark Bezecchi failed to open up a gap of more than a second and the front 5 were still packed fairly tight together. Jorge Martin was about 3.5s down from the race lead and worked past Ogura and close down on the big pack ahead of him. The 11 lap mark has Jorge 1.6s behind Acosta in 5th and running him down fast, two tenths or more quicker.
Bagnaia, continuing his run of bad races, crashes out in lap 16 for a DNF. Acosta is second now, with Martin hot behind him. Two laps later and he has Acosta firmly behind him.
Ai Ogura, in the meantime, has rallied in the way he did at COTA and is closing down on the lead trio as well.
Martin is cutting the lead of Bez down by 3 or 4 tenths a lap and looks incredible on the bike. With three to go he passes Bez for the lead and the eventual win.
Ai gets by a fading Acosta for the Aprilia triple podium, a first.
Digiantonnio is once again the strongest Ducati on circuit and he block passes Acosta in the last turn on the last lap for thirteen points.
Jorge Martin is now one point behind Bez in the championship and he looks excellent on the bike. He hasn't even figured out qualifying yet but his pace is solid at the start and blistering with a lesser fuel load (sprint + latter half of race).
MotoGP is in Catalonia this weekend. MotoAmerica is at Barber. WorldSBK is in the Czech Republic.
As always, MotoGP and KotB are the series to watch.
Well, since it's an open thread and all that, I have a question for the commentariat. I was shooting the breeze with a friend of mine who is clearly more intelligent than I am. This man does not play chess and does not understand my fondness for it; furthermore, he disdains my hypothesis that any man of significant intellect owes it to himself to at least take a crack at the game. Since this is a community comprised primarily of men of significant intellect, I'm curious to know how many chess players we count among our ranks. How many of us play chess? Are there any legitimately talented players here? Am I talking out of my ass when I state that he who would call himself a Renaissance man must be capable of playing a workmanlike game of chess?
Well, "legitimately talented" is a high bar. I most certainly do not qualify. If you can make it fifteen moves in against a skilled opponent without stepping on your pecker, you're better than 90% of the chess-playing population.
sure chess is hard and being intelligent is basically a prerequisite to being good at it and it is definitely one of the many talents of a proper classical renaissance man
but i wonder how many other videogames are just as much if not more mentally taxing declassee as they are? is the point of chess to look cultured or to redline your brain wrinkles
Last point first: You're smart, or you wouldn't be here.
Second point: I will refrain from commenting on video games, because I despise them to a truly irrational degree, and yet I admit that some of them must require significant mental horsepower. To me, the point of chess, much like boxing or shooting pool, is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.
I've played some of the HALO games, two or three CoD variants across several platforms, a few of the old computer strategy games, and a few others which I do not remember by name. It was always because some buddy of mine talked me into it in the hopes of gaining a fellow gamer. I do hold a soft spot for drunken MarioKart at parties.
Speaking of scamming billions, how about charging $5000 to put a gram of your cremated remains into orbit. The actual cost of that endeavor to the provider is about five dollars.
There was a big brouhaha around here because they'll cremate your pets. People though their pets were getting private cremation but they really put them all in a giant furnace and dole out some ashes to the families. So you get 1/40th of fido back and 39/40th of Kujo.
I learned to play because I was badly beaten by a close friend in my first match. I went to the library, checked out a book by Sammy Reshevsky, a current American Grand Master, read it, went back and beat the shit out of him. He could never figure out how I did that.
I played unsuccessfully as a child Then in my early 20s smoking some of the green was playing with freind and saw it very differently. The King queen Knights pawns castle etc, its a medieval game depicting kingdom and war and then it became tremendous fun. But I'm not a good player. As for medieval outlets of of the reasons I love the track, its modern day jousting.
That’s what I originally thought, but Grok says the original Persian means helpless or defeated and isn’t actually related to the Arabic and Hebrew words for death, “mate”.
I learned how to play chess with the “ChessMaster” video game on the Sega GameGear. I got it as a gift and thought it was stupid / boring - which it sort of is to a 12ish year old. Didn’t have many games and I got Road Rash taken away as a punishment so I decided learn how to play.
I will say it draws you in as a puzzle or challenge does. I found myself playing for hours trying to figure out a win. Once my power cord broke, it marked the end of the line for my chess career and the GameGear in general. I did try to fire it up on batteries a while back for nostalgia sake, but the screen is now broken / corrupted.
I bought an old Genesis system for $30 instead but no more ChessMaster.
Hard to say, if you're not a steady player. If you, as a first-time player, can play 50 games on lichess or http://chess.com and come out with a rating of 900 Elo, that's a "workmanlike" level of skill. If you score above 1200, you're good at playing chess. If you score above 1500, you're legitimately skilled and should play some more to find out if you really got it like that. If you score above 1800, you have my envy and you should compete in a FIDE-sanctioned tournament just for the bragging rights, because you absolutely do got it like that.
Edited: I have an Elo score of 1300 on Lichess and, I believe, 1070 on http://chess.com. http://Chess.com is widely believed to be the more accurate of the two in estimating Elo rating, so I can be considered to be a 1000-level player. Handle: thegr8landini on both. So, clearly, I am not a great chess player. I'm it it for the love of the game.
For some reason I've never enjoyed chess. My brother plays, participates in a local chess club, studies all the important games memorizing positions and moves, watches the championships played online. Finally convinced me one Christmas afternoon to play and I beat him, so he stopped bothering me.
I greatly prefer backgammon. Something about the random bad luck you must fight against. I really should start playing again.
I understand your point; chess is too deterministic to model real life. It still teaches some useful things, though. Maybe both chess and backgammon or poker should be taught in school.
When I was a teenager spending a summer in Israel, I brought back an inlaid folding sheshbesh (Backgammon) board that had a chessboard on the outside as a souvenir for my dad, who played a little chess (his true love was Bridge, he had some master points). I love to watch Middle Easterners play sheshbesh. The game is a recurring theme in the movie Salah Shabbati, with Chaim Topol before he got famous doing Fiddler on the Roof.
Played and play well are two different things, I've played before but I would not consider myself a chess player. The thought of memorizing thousands of moves to become a competitive chess player is right up there on my list of things to do with taking Organic Chemistry again, i.e. not at all.
I can appreciate anyone who is a master of a craft, be it cleaning toilets or being a grand master but it doesn't blow my hair back.
I read what you wrote, but thought I was replying to someone else. You didn't share your chess rating, but it's simply ridiculous how strong tiny children play these days. They are fed a steady diet of coaches, puzzles on their iPads, and endless tournaments against their peers.
A lot of older players have given up coming to tournaments, because they spent a lifetime acquiring a 1600+ rating and it's very painful to lose all those points when you're matched against one of these up-and-coming players who still have their "I'm a third grader, so my initial rating was 300 and it's still only at 700 now because I've only competed in 5 rated tournaments."
Anyone who still attends chess tournaments must have grown to accept that this will inevitably involve losing to a child half his size.
Workmanlike, yes; talented, no. In college, I played a lot of Chessmaster on a Mac Performa in order to get better at playing against actual humans. There were rankings; I got past Novice and Woodpusher (insert joke here) and that's about it. But yes - a man should know the rules of chess, just as a man should know how to change a flat tire, fire a gun, and grill a steak. You don't have to be an expert at these things, but you should know how.
I have a good friend I've known since grade school and the standardized tests always said I was smarter than he was. They labeled him around the cutoff between "smartest mainstreamer/dumbest gifted kid." But he beat me at chess about 2 out of every 3 games. He's a better strategic thinker, which the SAT doesn't test.
"yes - a man should know the rules of chess, just as a man should know how to change a flat tire, fire a gun, and grill a steak. You don't have to be an expert at these things, but you should know how."
Is there a more feminized advertisement than the Geico commercial about their road service phone app, that has a family in a minivan, mom at the wheel, with a flat tire at the side of the road, and every time dad tries to speak, from the passenger seat, mom shushes him and says she will handle it, by using the app.
I remember standing on a four foot long piece of iron pipe slipped over the handle of a tire iron as a cheater bar, trying to break lose the wheel bolts on my '67 VW Bus. That's 800 ft-lbs.
In the mid 70's I needed an app to remind me that 1960's Mopars had left handed lug nuts on the driver's side. I did field test the shear strength of a wheel lug or two until the big "L" on them became evident.
Butcher a hog (or other large mammal) and comfort the dying are the ones that stymie me. One for lack of interest and one for lack of opportunity. Ya'll decide which
I think we know which. I wish it upon no man to have to comfort the dying.
Butchery, though? Go shoot something and chop it up, brother, or else go to the local butcher or restaurant supply store, get a big joint of meat, and chop it up into manageable pieces for the freezer. You may never need this skill, but learning how to do it will cause your testicles to increase in size.
(This is not true, but you will feel as if it was).
I absolutely despise participating in any board games, including chess. I would rather go to the dentist. Not playing them is more important to me than having self regard as a Renaissance man.
Any decent Risk player soon figured out the Australia gambit. My strategy was to let them fight it out while I went for South America, which had only two pathways.
South America is good, but you have to slash and burn through Africa to get there. I've always started in Australia, built up a strong base in South Africa and waited for the Europeans to weaken.
I've played literally hundreds of games of Risk, though none in the last 15 years.
In our heyday (say, 1979 or so), we changed the board by drawing a line from Eastern Australia to Argentina, raising the point value of everything in the southern hemisphere by 1. It ended the ability to camp out and collect cards.
The best pinball player I ever saw was an ethnic Chinese guy going to Michigan on a Royal Bank of Thailand full scholarship. He'd play for literally hours on the first ball, stopping the ball on the flipper over and over. That's the key to pinball, catching the ball and stopping it.
I've mostly stopped playing these games because I was always the downer on game night. My German genes coming out in force "There's rules for a reason, you have to follow them!"
if you buy all the houses you can stack money until you have enough to convert your houses into hotels on the 3 part properties and also have enough money to put the same number of houses on other properties
sure its expensive to buy but once you do that you have hotels and houses and you can start bargaining other players to pay their rent with properties so you can continue the cycle
My father feels the same way about chess, although he can play a fairly sharp game when he wishes, and his Renaissance credentials are not in question.
I had a high school letter, a point I occasionally bring up in conversation. The punchline is always, "In chess!"
I was the worst player on what was then the second-best chess team in the country; I learned a lot. My rating was around 1600, I had an mid-game a couple of levels better than that but could not be bothered to learn more openings than the currently popular ones used by the team, and tediously mechanical endgames bore me to the point of inattention (which can be embarrassingly hazardous).
As I grew older, my mental laziness in regard to games increased - I could not see the point in all that effort. Never could motivate myself to remember where all the cards are in a card game, for example. My father, in contrast, was driven by ego to show off and was a superlative bridge and chess player (for which he frequently did not bother with a board, just calling out moves). I did play a bit in the past couple of decades just to teach my wife's nephew, who is surprisingly talented.
I do see chess as a part of Western culture (ironic due to its origins),recommend it as a part of a good education, and believe some larger lessons can be drawn from it.
I have around a 500 ranking, mostly because I can't stick with it. Systems and mental flow chart thinking comes easy for me. But you have to spend time on it to develop any acumen. I just haven't. It's a good way to pass the time for me when I'm out hunting or sitting around in the car line to pick up the kids. But I would never spend big fat money on a nice chess set or try to really git gud. It's just not my thing. Though I do enjoy watching very good chess players play a high level game because they tend to think very quickly in strategic ways. That's like the big tiddy goth girl of nerds.
Used to be if a girl played chess really well AND played cello, I would instantly be drawn to her. Chess is a pretty good signal of what kind of personality and brain type someone is packing. But so is an ICP shirt and a vape.
I've never met a girl who played both chess and cello, but I have dated a couple of cellists, and I agree with your assessment.
Persons wearing ICP paraphernalia, or displaying it on their vehicle, are repugnant to me at a visceral level. I've known exactly one appreciator of the group who wasn't an odious knuckle-dragger.
The chess/cello combo is as yet undefeated with me for identifying VERY interesting women. I highly commend it to anyone in the dating world, or cheater scumbags.
Disclaimer: I am not a cheating scumbag, but I'm not your Dad either (person reading, not anyone in particular because my son doesn't read this. He's 6).
I suck at chess. The Radio Shack Chess Champion 2150l can beat me on fresh batteries.
I then realized that I didn't have to beat my opponent at chess. I just had to win. That could involve drinking, telling jokes, stealing pieces, localized earthquakes, and even more drinking. I do ok.
“Localized earthquakes”…this is not beneath grandmasters; when Korchnoi played Karpov for the world championship they had to build a partition under the table, because Karpov wouldn't stop shaking the table, and Korchnoi got fed up and started kicking him in the shins.
Hmmm. I would agree that a Renaissance man should meet your definition of 800+ ELO in chess, though maybe this is coming close to the No True Scotsman fallacy.
I can play chess, but don't like losing (in general), so it's not my favorite activity. I have played in a few rated tournaments since leaving San Diego for Idaho. My provisional USCF OTB is in the low 900s, IIRC. I played our state champion in a casual 5 minute blitz last weekend and he told me I'm good at chess, should play more, and probably am a 1200 OTB.
Why was I playing Josh Price? Because my oldest two sons enjoy playing and have repeatedly, narrowly lost the top slot in the annual scholastic chess tournaments to represent Idaho in the nationals. We have a strong contingent of second generation Chinese kids who do very well. Their parents are all scientists and engineers at Micron, with a sprinkling of engineering/math professors thrown in.
This year was a bummer. My oldest (7th grade) ended up placing third overall for middle school. My 5th grader had a disappointing two losses, which relegated him down to fourth place for elementary. So no followup Tournament of Champions for him this year.
Last year, my oldest came in third in the K-12 ToC, because of the luck of the two strongest Chinese kids in the tournament having to play each other early in the day. And the fact the strongest player in the state, also the son of a Chinese engineer, didn't show up because he was concerned he'd draw a match against the 1600-ish rated runner up in high school (but plays more like a 1900, he just doesn't have enough games in) and James Wei was trying to break 2000 OTB. I believe he was at about a 1980 then--so close!
Ah, now here's a man who knows chess! Both your sons would most likely break me OTB; I tend to win on time pressure more than anything else, and in a tournament setting I'd get creamed. Thank you for weighing in; good to know you and your sons are out there fighting the good fight!
I have a good friend who has done contractual work for Fisker. Dog shit engineering. 13k might be too high of a price for that rolling scrap.
Now that I’m dealing with EV’s myself, there is one huge upside to working on them: US born, educated autistic engineers. There are days I want to die, but it’s due to passionate debates with CFM models that inevitably have bad inputs and me tossing more nicotine into my face to tell them that you can’t simulate fluid dynamics because of God.
There is some solid fucking USA based engineering behind this fucking golf cart fad.
If by "foreigner" you mean someone, born in a place other than the US, who now legally lives here and is making his/her way, allow me to categorically state that I have personally met and befriended a number of such people who were outstanding in every sense of the word, men and women I would trust with all I have.
I’m not referencing legal residents. I’m talking about different continents / domiciles / education / work ethic. Nor is this racial. There are exceptions to the average sample populations.
Meanwhile, the reset of us work among masses of people who LEGALLY come and PAY TAXES (as though that is a great distinction--which it is in their low-trust home countries, which have around a 30% tax compliance rate) and engage of massive scamming (Somali Muslim LEARING Centers) and/or form ETHNIC CARTELS of mediocre-at-best "workers" who rapidly COLONIZE teams, then departments, then companies. I'm waiting to post an even better video until I can watch it, but here's yesterday's DAILY reminder that LEGAL immigrants from low-trust countries commit fraud and bend rules on a scale that simply overwhelms the government's ability to investigate and prosecute : https://xcancel.com/SaraGonzalesTX/status/2054569689410424932
The last 30 - 60 years have been seen historically high levels of migration to the US, both in numbers and relative to population, almost entirely from places which were severely restricted or even completely barred from migrating for most of the US history. None of your virtue signaling or platitudes change the reality of that.
Whether someone is BORN on the mission field, a military base, an American hospital adjacent to a birth tourism center like JNGC kingpin Juan Carlos Valencia González or Vivek Ramaswamy (whose mother was ~8 months pregnant when she arrived in the US on a temporary visa), or even a culturally similar allied country before moving to the US as an adult like Mick Fleetwood or Jacques Pépin is essentially the least the least important factor in terms of who is a "foreigner."
Shinoda was born in Los Angeles. I drove down to rural Illinois to interview the guy who owns Shinoda's personal Boss prototype. Supposedly he took it to the GM Tech Center, where he used to work, so a guard let him in, and he did donuts in the parking lot.
I didn’t know they actually got any of those made!
Do they still make the Karma Revero or whatever it’s called? I believe it’s been on sale for like a decade but I’ve never actually seen one even listed anywhere.
I think a few got made, but I wonder if any of them are still plated and driving. The "I'm rich, let me store 500 cars permanently" brain disorder thing really skews the market
There is a lot of early Audi R8 in that rear view--which I've always liked---and the design is well executed here, regardless of similarity. Here's hoping it carries the original run's more classic, horizontal lines over a longer body, and not the Emira's swooopity-dip-and-swoop styling over a stubby silhouette. Thus far, it bodes well for the former.
YouTuber Bembli just did a great video about the classic designs of the A5 and A6 vs. the present Audis.
The latest Audi designs are rather incoherent and your eyes can tell. They’re missing visual flow with lines and flourishes that go nowhere and/or don’t complement each other.
So many beautiful Audis, with the A6 having a number of handsome generations. The original A5's were lovely cars. I've always liked the A8, and up through 2009, man did the exude the brand's design aesthetic and German styling well. Everything is so busy now, but I will say that of the big three, Audi's are the best looking. The A6 elicits echoes of its former design success, and the RS6 Avant looks epically menacing, but I miss the mid to late '00s and earlier for them.
We're taught that the manufacturers make the product. But ultimately, the customers really make the product, and most of the customers are in China, I guess.
I’d say even the teens era was a high mark for Audi design. Practically everything they made in—say—2010-2017 was gorgeous from a design perspective, yet balanced and restrained. I saw Anatoly’s C7 2014-era RS 7 in person, and very nearly went and got one of my own. And I miss my 2013 A8 L 4.0T.
As a longtime fan and multiple-time owner of Audi products, it pains me to see the company work so hard to turn its cars into anonymous-looking blobs.
Agreed. My 2022 “B9.5” S5 Cabriolet (which already doesn’t look quite as handsome as the prior “B8” generation) was at the dealership for $1,900 worth of motor mounts (warranty paid, thank goodness)…and they gave me custody of a 2025.5 Q5 loaner for a day. I didn’t feel like it was anything special, and the styling was pretty blobby.
It didn’t drive well, either. Whatever advantages Audi’s longitude layout and neutered “true” Quattro hold over a cheaper transverse-engined car—like, say, VW Group’s own Tiguan—weren’t borne out in my experience. It felt like any other appliance, and I struggled to see why someone should pay Audi prices for such a vehicle.
It also seemed pretty delicate, from an electronics standpoint, with gizmos and gadgets galore that seemed antagonistic rather than helpful. The person who handed the keys to me said “I’m not going to the new Q5 is a *bad* car, but we’ve never done so many buybacks.”
I might do a full review, but that’s pretty much the flavor of it.
Haha, I’m sure it would have been cheaper elsewhere. The Audi dealer charges stupid rates. As it is, the extended service plan I have on this car (which is from a company called ASC) has no deductible, but leaves me on the hook for the sales tax and shop supplies. So I was only responsible for about $100 of that.
My other car is presently an XC90 T8 Recharge Ultimate that is CPO’d out to May 2034 and unlimited miles, because I’m about to need to drive a whole lot.
I did; it wasn’t. I’ve had two T6s. The first one, a 2017, was singularly awful and was subject to early SPA-platform Volvo woes. The second one, a 2022, was fine, but some weird resale value meant I got more for it than I paid. And I got sick of the Sensus system.
This third one is the T8, which I think is the magic I was looking for. It’s also got the new Android Automotive-based system, which is a little half-baked on Volvo’s part, but is much more robust.
All three of them were CPO and all three have had the excellent Bowers & Wilkins and 4-corner air suspension, but this latest one also has the Lounge package (faux-suede headliner, massaging seats). I could’ve done without that, but I’ll take it.
I'm not saying my Subaru's engine mounts would be more, but they are in a very inconvenient location that would require a lift, unbolting the transmission mount/subframe, and lifting the engine, with whatever hose, wire, and AC/PS line disconnection required. Easiest to do with the transmission completely removed, so it fully qualifies as a "while you're in there" repair. I decided that a new clutch assembly, rear seals, and a transmission rebuild was plenty festive for such a repair endeavor, lol. $1900 simultaneously sounds horrible and semi-reasonable (even for an Audi). Either way, man cars are expensive...
When I was young and ignorant, I bought V8 Camaro motor mounts at a dealer because I was only a few months into my car-guy learning curve and didn't know there were like 50 million small-block Chevy mounts rusting away in junkyards.
The prior gen is a nice car, especially in SQ5 flavor. It also looks crisp. The new one? Again, might as well buy a Tiguan. Or, if you really want a luxury car, an NX 350h or an RX 350h and save yourself some headache.
If I ever get access to $300MM, I will set up a car company to build modern large, comfort-oriented vehicles: a sedan, a coupe and a wagon. They’d use whatever off-the-shelf existing American crate engines and transmissions were best-suited for the task, even if they were from two decades ago…and the focus would be on craftsmanship, design presence, and—most importantly—longevity and repairability. At the same time, they’d have a more modern and world-class experience than, say, a Panther-platform car.
Our own Mr Klockau would be a hired consultant, naturally.
But I prefer this 1966 one-off Duesenberg because it embodies 1960’s American swagger along with a great design. This is also believable as an updated Duesenberg. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RlB6jnrYxW8&ra=m
The 1999 is a disaster, but the strong front end on the 2025 actually is appropriate. I saw a lot of Packards last year between going to the Gilmore Museum and the Packard Museum in Dayton, Ohio, and they are just gorgeous cars. The barn at the Gilmore with all of the old classics is spectacular.
Check out this one-off Packard at the Dayton Museum. Designed by Pinin Farina but never built, some rich guy decided to commission it in 1995. I love the Italian and American design combination. https://thegentlemanracer.com/2025/04/packard-parisian-coupe/
It's possible that Pinin Farina was influenced by the Packard Pan American show car. I wrote about it, but out of respect to our host I won't link to the bagel shop.
I.kigjt sound like a broken record for bringing this up a lot, but the continued evolution of the Alfa 75 (rear transaxle sedans in general) would be amazing.
We need a billionaire to do this just like Sir Ratcliffe did with the Ineos Grenadier.
The key here is that no one needs to reinvent the wheel. All the best cars have already been made, so just take the best of the best and recreate them in one new package.
Further, to your idea, once a great modern platform is created, the new GK Motors could go the McLaren route and just keep issuing new versions and variations. There’s enough rich customers in this country to make it a success.
Agreed. I’m also appalled by all of the institutions who *haven’t* done this. General Motors, for instance, has all the expertise, history, culture, off-the-shelf componentry, and engineering might in the world to make a car like that. If anyone could make such a car and have it mean something, it would be GM.
And instead, when it was time to finally make a Cadillac that could once again rival a Rolls-Royce for presence and build quality (and price)…they chose to waste that opportunity on the Celestiq, a car that a) cost far more to engineer and build than any equivalent V8 car ever would, and b) is relevant to exactly no one, least of all the people who were doing $9,000 one-pay 24-month leases on Lyriqs before the tax credit went away.
The Celestiq making production when the gorgeous Sollei concept didn’t is mystifying. If you think of the glory days of the US automakers, they made sure that the social influencers of the day, mainly Hollywood stars, were seen in their cars, to make them desirable or aspirational. Who wants to be seen in a Celestiq?
I was at the Petersen Museum in LA in December, and they featured hypercars at their Saturday morning car show on the top floor of their parking deck. I’m not into hypercars, but they were fun to see. There were also a bunch of other interesting cars, but sitting there with no one looking at it was a Celestiq. All its potential customers were there, and nobody gave it a glance.
I think Cadillac actually has retained Lenny Kravitz to be a brand ambassador, specially for the Celestiq.
Thing is, if you make a car that people desire and envy, you don’t *have* to engineer credibility by giving the car to people who will drive it exactly as often as they are contractually obligated to. People will just buy it, and want to be seen in it.
You think Mercedes-Benz had to pay celebrities to drive an R107 SL-Class? I don’t.
The Sollei could have been that. Even with an electric powertrain that nobody wanted, it was so breathtakingly beautiful, it could have sold itself
Edit: while we’re at it, that’s also what Jaguar missed. Even if they were hellbent on transitioning to an EV, their bid to make and sell a car that costs Rolls-Royce money needed a design that was effortlessly gorgeous and striking and that looked like it belonged in that rarified air. If they’d have done that for the car we now know will be called the Type 01…I’d be pretty optimistic about their outlook. Instead, they presented a concept that looks like a middle-schooler’s brutalist sketch. And the actual production car appears to be a dorkier, more-apologetic version of *that.* Alas. I don’t think it’ll be long before JLR stands for “Just Land Rover.”
The CT6 was a decent start, but not what I'm talking about. The CT6 wasn't even as good as the S-Class, XJ, LS, A8, 7 Series, etc. I think GM meant to make a car at least that good, and then pulled back at the eleventh hour.
It was still a very nice car, but it wasn't world-class by any means.
I'm not sure GM *does* wish it hadn't scrapped the CT6. That segment is just about gone, anyway.
But if you're going to make a car in the $400K range--where the Celestiq lives--you don't have to worry about volume, really. You just need to at least have people *want* to want it, and that's where GM messed up. If it had been given a V8, it would have meant a lot more to a lot more people and--I guarantee you--rich people would have been knocking down the doors to buy it.
I hear you. At that price range they had the v16 concept. Thye could have even just epa certed a ryan falconer v12 which is based on a SBC.
Ironicaly sedans are showing some market growth. Makes sense if you grew up in a minivan you wanted a suv an if you grew up in a suv maybe a sedan or wagon is appealing.
I did read someone at Cadillac quoted as saying that fo they could go back in time and not cancel the CT6 tye would because whatever they rep[laced that capacity with was not worth it, and sedans do have asegment.
maybe it wasn't the best in class, but seems like it was pretty great car, and the rest of class has declined. I always suspected the short lived blackwing motor developed for that car is similar to the C8 z06 motor same block and architecture, but they say not. As Usual with Gm when they start getting ti right they stop producing it.
The wagon doesn't necessarily fit the image but I would take one of your modern day Electra 225s. The Estate Wagon could come in the LeSabre line.
If something more modern is needed to start from, the Holden Commodore was an incredible platform. It might not fit a bench seat all that well though. That would have to be fixed.
"After an extensive program of field research, and comprehensive analysis of the resulting data, it is the considered opinion of the academy that Bitches Be Trippin.'"
You can have that right now it is sitting in my garage, the only caveat is the E36 it was built on is not really a luxury experience, especially with the 8.8. solid mounted, bucket seats, and no AC.
If I had all the money that I spent on my e36 back, I'd buy or build your car almost exactly but still in a sedan. It's just my favorite e36 body config.
A modern Lotus Esprit that wasn’t electric or hybrid could be awesome. Sadly it seems that makes it impossible for Lotus to offer. Wonder if someone could buy the rights and continue production like the 7 aka Caterham.
The new Encor seems awesome except it is approaching 7 figures.
“I’m traveling this week etc” when are you NOT traveling Jack. Get out there make produce us some content in the wild. Make some LinkedIn comments in real life.
If it makes you feel any better i have personally disrespected more than a couple people this week, including a French dude who was bothering a hot desk clerk at the Carlyle.
"Lotus is back with its traditional mix of hybrid power, an engine by “Horse”, and a CEO named after an Amazon USB charger brand"
is it even worse keeping alive if its only to get shit on by foreigners making them build cars that have nothing to do with what lotus even means? whats the point of this latest car? what about it is lotus like?
"he used it as an opportunity to make a series of advertisements for an AI legal product"
just learning who he is and im already sick of him
"maybe he’d have been better off letting the AI do it"
sometimes i wonder if people this inept this high up the food chain is actually some kind of elaborate joke that im not clued in to instead of reality
"Which, unsurprisingly, she just doesn’t feel comfortable doing."
some people are too afraid of getting sued. assuming it happened. which it didnt. but it would be funny if it did.
"watch out for those $2,000 oil changes. They’re totally real"
oh theyre totally real. i almost got one for the miata. sure it included a spare 55gal drum of 10w30 but yeah it would have been 2k
Harry’s Garage did a bunch of insider videos on ordering his new launch Emira since he seemed to know the management and designers, then all of a sudden sold the car and bought a McLaren. He knew where Lotus was going.
Not that light I think its 3200lbs. But it does look good feel exotic nicely built and has a manual, plus the v6 is smooth.
Now if only they had as rumored just put a merc v8 in it.
But we hear its staying in production with a hybrid v6 and AT, so its not getting lighter for sure, but hey the paper numbers will be better which seems to be about as much of a performance car as the chiese understand.
The Frank Stephenson redesign video ruined the Emira design for me. When I see all the little tweaks he made that Lotus neglected to, I can’t unsee what Lotus did. I actually like the Evora design better. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YTYYfG3FdDA&pp=0gcJCQQLAYcqIYzv&ra=m
He actually paid a lot of respect to the original design and said they nailed it. His tastes tend more towards adding lines and more aggressive flourishes (see McLarens). I like the subtle styling on the Emira the same way I love the uncluttered design of my 2013 Quattroporte.
You didn’t even share the worse parts of Katyal’s bragging and TED Talk where he talks about how the AI named Harvey knew the Justices better than they knew themselves and he had them figured out. Which is the exact thing you *don’t* want to talk about in public about the 9 most powerful attorneys in the country.
I have near my job what might be one of the only privately owned oceans in the country. The solar panels look like dogshit. The fit and finish makes a C8 look like a Lexus. It’s utterly atrocious except for how endearing it is that some lunatic YOLOd his own money into this thing
They look incredibly blobular, from a design standpoint it's remarkable how aesthetically discordant they are. I almost certainly wouldn't but I'd be tempted at $13k, probably a lot more than $13k worth of batteries in the thing alone
where prices sit for raw materials you could probably argue its not trading much higher than scrap including batteries at these levels. and yes, i do also find them incredibly ugly.
There’s a dude on another car board who bought an Ocean AND invested what I imagine is a fair chunk of money into the Fisker company. He is a big Fisker fan (owns an original Karma and used to own the M6 reboot one). He was voraciously defending the car and the brand through the bitter end. Odd because he seems otherwise pretty reasonable.
serious investors know when an investment thesis has fallen apart and to stop defending it (usually before the company goes BK lol) so this is someone with a real emotional attachment to the brand... i wish them well but thats gotta be worse than being a SAAB guy at this point.
With something you can get passionate about it's pretty easy to fall prey to that trap. Best investor I know lost a bunch of money on Bode Miller's ski company. AFAIK he doest defend it, but I am surprised by it. He is one of my favorite people so I am glad it doesn't have much of an affect on him.
It's 2026, not 1976 (Ford vs. Carter): both parties are rife with FOREIGN AGENTS of non-allied powers. Vote AMERICANS* FIRST, then traditional considerations of party / policy / character.
* (Non-US readers adjust for your particular country)
In related news, career Canadian politician reaped what he sowed, losing to a Bangladeshi pizza shop owner, and considered a challenge due to possible election irregularities (inconceivable!):
I think they (like me) identify instinctively with the underdog. The danger, of course, is in misreading who exactly IS the underdog in any given situation.
I’ve been meaning to read that book, since it’s about my neighbors. We have Revolutionary War monuments here and the family names on the monuments are still around. My closest redneck buddy’s family has been around here for over 200 years.
Western nations have been force-fed self-hatred and some form of replacement theory for long enough that they, like the US et al, have sorta kinda enough gone along with it enough that they've accepted the inevitability of it happening and being a logical progression. Too kind, generous, and forbearing a people being taken advantage of by The Big Club That You Ain't In.
the most infuriating part of both of these scandals is that rational people are stuck waiting ages for the stupidest people alive to finally come around and realize that the world does not work like their childish view of how it works. everyone else is deeply nepotistic and is trying to take advantage of us and will do anything to help one of their own coethnics but those retards keep stepping on their dicks and importing and electing them by the truckload and getting blindsided every time they do something that benefits only them or their cohort
I was daydreaming this morning that Lotus should make a car that vaguely looks like a modern British f360 and throw a NA Cosworth V8 or V10 whose block is distantly related to a former F1 engine. If they add enough lightness and forgo the beeps boopals and bleeps that come with modern cars they might find some buyers.
I just saw a video of a 2026 Ineos Grenadier, and the “driver safety” beeps and boops totally ruin the vehicle.
It made noises for going over the speed limit, going over a lane marker, approaching the shoulder line, and worst of all, for detection of driver distraction, because there’s now a camera in the rear view mirror watching the driver. F*ck that!
The camera watching the driver is coming to every new car thanks to Bidens infrastructre bill, supported by douchbag republicans.
there si so much more crap being mandated on our cars though 20230 you'd freak out, and none of it widely published. By the time consumers hate it it will be too late.
As for the grenadier, thats all euro mandated stuff, that theyre too stupid to have an permeant off switch in the USa is mind boggling. But Euros think were all like then, thats why the German car industry is as good as dead unless they wise up.
DOt and BHTSA are looking n to harmonize our rules with the Euros, well the manufactures are pushing it for obvious cost saving reasons plus insurance companies. Look up intelligent speed control.
That's the reason I bought my X5 back in 2021. It does ZERO of these things. My wife's 2023 230e blinks when you go over the speed limit, my mom's 2025 230e blinks and beeps. That thing drives me nuts!! Worst thing that happened to cars were the idiotic EV mandates, second worst thing is that blinking and beeping nonsense...
Possibly even worse than the Horse-powered new Lotus, word on the street is that they are pulling the Toyota V6/Manual and AMG 4cyl/DSG powertrains from the Emira and replacing them with just a V6 Horse engine and a, wait for it, 4spd automatic. I can’t imagine how they think they’ll sell any of these with a 4spd auto. It’s incredibly laughable.
The only 4-speed automatics I like and want are in '90s and '00s domestic full size trucks because that's all the world ever needed from them, not some 21,000 speed gear-hunting Nervous Nelly of a beta-brained shift machine that fumbles the proverbial ball that the hoss alpha engine gives it. When it comes to cars, yeah, 6-speed manual or 6+ speed auto with DSG capabilities to bring out maximum engagement and driving efficiency.
You forgot that said 4 speed autobox will have an electric motor integrated and of course a battery. the emira is going near on 600hpo hybrid, prob gain few hundred lbs. But from the chiese perspective it will have better metrics, which is all they understand in a performance car.
Apparently it will be like a truck gearbox, with a high and a low, so effectively an 8 speed. Don’t care. I can’t imagine wanting an automatic Lotus unless I was actually missing a leg.
I used toi hate the auto box ide till I got eh guila. Well lest say a fast shifting paddle box with good paddles, for traffic and everyday use is great, if also love paddles in my track car. For recreational driving its stick all the way, along with great steering and a firm modulatable by pressure brake pedal. Id also throw in a NA motor.
A hybrid done right can give throttle response like a na motor and still have the turbo high hp. But the truth is you're adding much weight and complexity to get there, which negates the point. Id way ratter loose 200lbs(sub 3000lbs emira) than gain 200lbs(3400lbs + emira) and have just a turbo v6 with slight lag lower down.
Lotus is lost till the Chinese bail and someone else buys it.
Hey I was in NYC today, the part I was in (Macys on 34 area) must have missed the Fisker memo, would have loved to see them! I did use it as an excuse to get the last Moonswatch Earth Phase they had at the Grand Central location. Huge contrast from the last time I was there a few years ago and couldn’t get anything, anywhere! The clerk was talking about the new AP pocket watch, apparently the skinny is AP insisted on that exact form factor for the partnership to happen. As the owner of a very nice victorinox pocket watch I won off a Marlboro swag truck in Key West during college (that’s a story…), most of those will sit in a box… it’s tough to pull off the look, but maybe swatch will be the one to make it happen.
I literally just put a battery in my marlborro pocket watch! I don’t remember when I acquired it , or how long it has been locked up in a drawer, but it came back to life.
Ha that’s wild! I just pull it out occasionally, put a new battery it, let the kids play with it a bit (zero context for them, fun to see them figure it out), then right back in the box!
When Lotus announced they were going all electric, my only response was to shrug and think, "Oh well, they were always a fringe player anyhow. If they want to immolate, then there's no faster way to do it".
I always thought it odd that it would be LOTUS (of all the boutique car makers) who would decide to go all in on super-complex, heavy, numb transportation pods. "Simplify, and add lightness" is pretty incompatible with the entire BEV shtick
... and now, Lotus punts their eventual demise down the road a couple of years. Pity, that -- the Emira looked kinda' tasty.
"Lotus is back with its traditional mix of hybrid power, an engine by “Horse”, and a CEO named after an Amazon USB charger brand" was one of the more hilarious lines recently written. Well played, sir -- well played indeed.
Yeah...that resulted in the 2006 Lotus Europa...a car so bad that Top Gear UK threw away all their expensively shot footage of it because it was, in the words of Clarkson, "so dreary". Proton planned to produce it in Malaysia to keep the price down but never did. Less than 500 were made in total.
The chiese don't understand performance cars. I mean how many captains of the chiese auto industry even grew up when you could own a car in china. There is no driving culture per se, and their version of performance is better metrics, their best version of a car is a numbering lap record or something. They also love wall to wall screens in cars.
Geely bought lotus so they could slap a lotus badge on whatever 1000hp ev suv and be like porche.
Now were also getting a hybrid v6 emira, so its for sure not going to weigh less.
the head of lotus said they discovered that performance car consumers preferer the noise and vibration of ice to the superior effortless smooth power of an ev. To say they dotn get it is an understatement.
USA is the bulk of their sales and that been primarily v6 manual emira, so how a hybrid 4 speed at fits in I dunno.
I had always hoped lotus woudl have been bought by Honda or even Toyots, they coudl have done great things.
I think that might be stacking competencies. It isn't obvious that Mazda needs anything from Lotus to make the product they want to make, same for Honda.
Lotus needs an over-confident billionaire, one man's vision of something (I nominate me), and a willingness to take loses until customers find them. Expertise/outside bran equity can come from many places.
In MotoGP it's all lemons for LeMans... for the Marquez brothers.
Bagnaia, with a shocking return to form, thunders to pole position after a direct placement into Q2. Marc is forced into Q1 with a poor practice but gets through with an all time lap record and then takes 2nd position on the grid for the race. Bez, the championship leader, starts from 3rd. Then come Digi, the most consistent Duc rider this year, Acosta who serves as KTMs shining light, and Quartararo taking the Yamaha to its highest start position this year.
In the beginning of the race Bez makes a good start, but not as good as Jorge Martin who comes from 8th to 1st within the first three turns of the race. Martin then simply walks away from everyone else in an absolutely unbelievable turn of events. Bagnaia falls to 3rd and begins fighting it out with Bezecchi. Marc is the big loser and shuffles back behind Mir for 7th position.
Mir is stuck behind Quartararo for the entirety of the sprint and fails to pass, which is a testament to how sharp the #20 must be in the braking zones.
For Marc Marquez disaster strikes with a high side where he catches the bike with his leg and breaks his foot. This, however, led to the revelation that a screw in his recently injured shoulder had worked loose and was rubbing on a nerve. A likely cause for his still not looking as sharp as he was last year.
In the race proper Jorge Martin attempts, and fails, to make the same set of moves through the initial turns. His competitors were keen not to have a repeat occur. He is shuffled down to 7th place behind Ogura and Bagnaia. Bagnaia would make some aggressive moves and place behind Bez by lap 7. Two laps later and he is within half a second.
At the one third distance mark Bezecchi failed to open up a gap of more than a second and the front 5 were still packed fairly tight together. Jorge Martin was about 3.5s down from the race lead and worked past Ogura and close down on the big pack ahead of him. The 11 lap mark has Jorge 1.6s behind Acosta in 5th and running him down fast, two tenths or more quicker.
Bagnaia, continuing his run of bad races, crashes out in lap 16 for a DNF. Acosta is second now, with Martin hot behind him. Two laps later and he has Acosta firmly behind him.
Ai Ogura, in the meantime, has rallied in the way he did at COTA and is closing down on the lead trio as well.
Martin is cutting the lead of Bez down by 3 or 4 tenths a lap and looks incredible on the bike. With three to go he passes Bez for the lead and the eventual win.
Ai gets by a fading Acosta for the Aprilia triple podium, a first.
Digiantonnio is once again the strongest Ducati on circuit and he block passes Acosta in the last turn on the last lap for thirteen points.
Jorge Martin is now one point behind Bez in the championship and he looks excellent on the bike. He hasn't even figured out qualifying yet but his pace is solid at the start and blistering with a lesser fuel load (sprint + latter half of race).
MotoGP is in Catalonia this weekend. MotoAmerica is at Barber. WorldSBK is in the Czech Republic.
As always, MotoGP and KotB are the series to watch.
A few laps
Amigo, not so silent today, verdad??!!
Always Silent and more often than not silent.
Well, since it's an open thread and all that, I have a question for the commentariat. I was shooting the breeze with a friend of mine who is clearly more intelligent than I am. This man does not play chess and does not understand my fondness for it; furthermore, he disdains my hypothesis that any man of significant intellect owes it to himself to at least take a crack at the game. Since this is a community comprised primarily of men of significant intellect, I'm curious to know how many chess players we count among our ranks. How many of us play chess? Are there any legitimately talented players here? Am I talking out of my ass when I state that he who would call himself a Renaissance man must be capable of playing a workmanlike game of chess?
I can play a workmanlike game, but "legitimately talented" is a couple of bridges too far.
Well, "legitimately talented" is a high bar. I most certainly do not qualify. If you can make it fifteen moves in against a skilled opponent without stepping on your pecker, you're better than 90% of the chess-playing population.
15 moves is a tall order. 10, maybe. 5, for sure. I don't have games memorized, nor have I studied "classic" moves.
The fact that you know that tells me you're half decent at least.
sure chess is hard and being intelligent is basically a prerequisite to being good at it and it is definitely one of the many talents of a proper classical renaissance man
but i wonder how many other videogames are just as much if not more mentally taxing declassee as they are? is the point of chess to look cultured or to redline your brain wrinkles
im not a man of significant intellect obvs lol
Last point first: You're smart, or you wouldn't be here.
Second point: I will refrain from commenting on video games, because I despise them to a truly irrational degree, and yet I admit that some of them must require significant mental horsepower. To me, the point of chess, much like boxing or shooting pool, is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.
"I despise them to a truly irrational degree"
out of curiosity which ones have you played?
"to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women"
sometimes if you crush a team in valorant or battlefield or whatever they ragequit
its hilarious every time
I've played some of the HALO games, two or three CoD variants across several platforms, a few of the old computer strategy games, and a few others which I do not remember by name. It was always because some buddy of mine talked me into it in the hopes of gaining a fellow gamer. I do hold a soft spot for drunken MarioKart at parties.
I'm here, and I'm not smart. If I were, I'd have figured out how to scam a billion dollars out of the economy and live like a Mexican demigod.
1. Assume a name that's a jumbled acronym of Ilhan Omar.
2. Buy, rent or steal a mobile home.
3. Register a generic name LLC
4. Link it to a burner phone.
5. Bill the shit out of some government agency.
Number 2 got a genuine laugh out of me.
#1: anagram?
Hey, he might have meant Oi!
Speaking of scamming billions, how about charging $5000 to put a gram of your cremated remains into orbit. The actual cost of that endeavor to the provider is about five dollars.
Because I want my ashes blown into the eyes of people who gave me trouble in life.
Voluntary transaction. They chose to buy it, regardless of whether it offends your sensibilities.
Now do withholding taxes, Learing Centers and hospices.
High-profit, low-competition niche. It would only be a scam if they failed to deliver (which they could easily do by overbooking).
There are 28.4 grams in an ounce. What ae the chances of "overbooking"?
There was a big brouhaha around here because they'll cremate your pets. People though their pets were getting private cremation but they really put them all in a giant furnace and dole out some ashes to the families. So you get 1/40th of fido back and 39/40th of Kujo.
People were upset.
You're plenty clever, Speed. Still full of the confidence of youth, but life has a way of rounding off most edges.
i dont deserve your compliments but thank you very much
"Still full of the confidence of youth, but life has a way of rounding off most edges."
one of my favourite things about acf is the ability to glean wisdom from its elder members.
Unless they are the dreaded boomers.
nope
everyone on acf gets my full attention becuase we are better than everyone else
Not just "rounding off" amigo. I'm so rounded I'm back where I started!!
I learned to play because I was badly beaten by a close friend in my first match. I went to the library, checked out a book by Sammy Reshevsky, a current American Grand Master, read it, went back and beat the shit out of him. He could never figure out how I did that.
I played unsuccessfully as a child Then in my early 20s smoking some of the green was playing with freind and saw it very differently. The King queen Knights pawns castle etc, its a medieval game depicting kingdom and war and then it became tremendous fun. But I'm not a good player. As for medieval outlets of of the reasons I love the track, its modern day jousting.
Chess has no catapults for decaying livestock. Boring.
"I fart in your general direction!"
Try the track, jousting
My squire is in the shop.
The word "checkmate" derives from the Farsi for "the shah is defeated."
"Shah mat" or "the king is dead," yes?
That’s what I originally thought, but Grok says the original Persian means helpless or defeated and isn’t actually related to the Arabic and Hebrew words for death, “mate”.
My only checkmate of note is a 21 ft checkmate Starflight boat with carbed 200 merc
I learned how to play chess with the “ChessMaster” video game on the Sega GameGear. I got it as a gift and thought it was stupid / boring - which it sort of is to a 12ish year old. Didn’t have many games and I got Road Rash taken away as a punishment so I decided learn how to play.
I will say it draws you in as a puzzle or challenge does. I found myself playing for hours trying to figure out a win. Once my power cord broke, it marked the end of the line for my chess career and the GameGear in general. I did try to fire it up on batteries a while back for nostalgia sake, but the screen is now broken / corrupted.
I bought an old Genesis system for $30 instead but no more ChessMaster.
You could find a 5.25" Floppy with ChessMaster loaded on it.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/187517337539
I see your 5.25" floppy copy and raise you a 3.5" Battle chess with animations!
I remember that so well.
What rating or classification would you define as "workmanlike?"
Hard to say, if you're not a steady player. If you, as a first-time player, can play 50 games on lichess or http://chess.com and come out with a rating of 900 Elo, that's a "workmanlike" level of skill. If you score above 1200, you're good at playing chess. If you score above 1500, you're legitimately skilled and should play some more to find out if you really got it like that. If you score above 1800, you have my envy and you should compete in a FIDE-sanctioned tournament just for the bragging rights, because you absolutely do got it like that.
Edited: I have an Elo score of 1300 on Lichess and, I believe, 1070 on http://chess.com. http://Chess.com is widely believed to be the more accurate of the two in estimating Elo rating, so I can be considered to be a 1000-level player. Handle: thegr8landini on both. So, clearly, I am not a great chess player. I'm it it for the love of the game.
I’m an on and off chess player. I use Tiger Chess on my phone without any assists. The trainer is set to 800 elo and I win 1/3 of the time
I play chess with my boss' expectations of my work.
I haven't tried out Tiger Chess; I'll give it a shot!
For some reason I've never enjoyed chess. My brother plays, participates in a local chess club, studies all the important games memorizing positions and moves, watches the championships played online. Finally convinced me one Christmas afternoon to play and I beat him, so he stopped bothering me.
I greatly prefer backgammon. Something about the random bad luck you must fight against. I really should start playing again.
I understand your point; chess is too deterministic to model real life. It still teaches some useful things, though. Maybe both chess and backgammon or poker should be taught in school.
Now, see, I never could play backgammon worth a damn, but it is enjoyable.
I first learned it from a friend who taught me just well enough to be able to beat me. I got better later.
When I was a teenager spending a summer in Israel, I brought back an inlaid folding sheshbesh (Backgammon) board that had a chessboard on the outside as a souvenir for my dad, who played a little chess (his true love was Bridge, he had some master points). I love to watch Middle Easterners play sheshbesh. The game is a recurring theme in the movie Salah Shabbati, with Chaim Topol before he got famous doing Fiddler on the Roof.
https://rokemneedlearts.com/images/sheshbesh.jpg
https://rokemneedlearts.com/images/chess.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAb6aPWIejA
That is a stunning board.
Thank you. After over 50 years, some of the smaller inlays have fallen out, but it's still in pretty good shape.
Backgammon: my minor in college in the '70s.
Played and play well are two different things, I've played before but I would not consider myself a chess player. The thought of memorizing thousands of moves to become a competitive chess player is right up there on my list of things to do with taking Organic Chemistry again, i.e. not at all.
I can appreciate anyone who is a master of a craft, be it cleaning toilets or being a grand master but it doesn't blow my hair back.
That's a fair point; the sheer amount of rote memorization is what's gonna keep me from ever advancing past the novice level.
I play chess and I could probably beat most six year olds.
Also, very pleased to be counted amongst "men of significant intellect."
Not six year olds at the US Chess Scholastic finals, with that ELO.
Always read carefully. That was one of the first things I learned. You will note I wrote "most" not "all."
I read what you wrote, but thought I was replying to someone else. You didn't share your chess rating, but it's simply ridiculous how strong tiny children play these days. They are fed a steady diet of coaches, puzzles on their iPads, and endless tournaments against their peers.
A lot of older players have given up coming to tournaments, because they spent a lifetime acquiring a 1600+ rating and it's very painful to lose all those points when you're matched against one of these up-and-coming players who still have their "I'm a third grader, so my initial rating was 300 and it's still only at 700 now because I've only competed in 5 rated tournaments."
Anyone who still attends chess tournaments must have grown to accept that this will inevitably involve losing to a child half his size.
....half my size and 10% of my age!!!
Workmanlike, yes; talented, no. In college, I played a lot of Chessmaster on a Mac Performa in order to get better at playing against actual humans. There were rankings; I got past Novice and Woodpusher (insert joke here) and that's about it. But yes - a man should know the rules of chess, just as a man should know how to change a flat tire, fire a gun, and grill a steak. You don't have to be an expert at these things, but you should know how.
I have a good friend I've known since grade school and the standardized tests always said I was smarter than he was. They labeled him around the cutoff between "smartest mainstreamer/dumbest gifted kid." But he beat me at chess about 2 out of every 3 games. He's a better strategic thinker, which the SAT doesn't test.
"yes - a man should know the rules of chess, just as a man should know how to change a flat tire, fire a gun, and grill a steak. You don't have to be an expert at these things, but you should know how."
Couldn't have put it any better myself.
Is there a more feminized advertisement than the Geico commercial about their road service phone app, that has a family in a minivan, mom at the wheel, with a flat tire at the side of the road, and every time dad tries to speak, from the passenger seat, mom shushes him and says she will handle it, by using the app.
I remember standing on a four foot long piece of iron pipe slipped over the handle of a tire iron as a cheater bar, trying to break lose the wheel bolts on my '67 VW Bus. That's 800 ft-lbs.
In the mid 70's I needed an app to remind me that 1960's Mopars had left handed lug nuts on the driver's side. I did field test the shear strength of a wheel lug or two until the big "L" on them became evident.
https://mopowergarage.blog/2025/12/24/why-chrysler-used-left-hand-threaded-lug-nuts/
Heinlein's list of manly skills is a bit longer.
https://www.brautaset.org/posts/heinlein.html
I can, to this day, quote that passage from memory, but I will never fulfill it because computers perplex me endlessly.
Butcher a hog (or other large mammal) and comfort the dying are the ones that stymie me. One for lack of interest and one for lack of opportunity. Ya'll decide which
I think we know which. I wish it upon no man to have to comfort the dying.
Butchery, though? Go shoot something and chop it up, brother, or else go to the local butcher or restaurant supply store, get a big joint of meat, and chop it up into manageable pieces for the freezer. You may never need this skill, but learning how to do it will cause your testicles to increase in size.
(This is not true, but you will feel as if it was).
I absolutely despise participating in any board games, including chess. I would rather go to the dentist. Not playing them is more important to me than having self regard as a Renaissance man.
A person only has time for so many things.
My contempt for board games is only exceeded by my contempt for card games.
What are your thoughts on vidya?
Since no one else has answered, I will!
Use as a getaway like every other hobby but don't let them ruin your life playing 8+ hours a day.
and if youre playing 10 hours a day you better be good enough to get paid doing it professionally
or just do it if you have a day off and you really enjoy it
I agree completely but the chess people get very cross when I conflate their game and games of chance.
There’s nothing like running a train on someone in a game of Monopoly. I love when people just give up.
I once introduced the concept of a corporate merger in Monopoly to stave off defeat.
I also prefer to start Risk from Australia. Let the other players fight their land wars in Europe and Asia while I built up forces.
When I was in college, the kids who played Diplomacy looked down on the Risk players.
Frankly, I prefer pinball and pool to board games.
Any decent Risk player soon figured out the Australia gambit. My strategy was to let them fight it out while I went for South America, which had only two pathways.
When I was a child I thought winning had something to do with reality and controlling sea lanes of communication.
South America is good, but you have to slash and burn through Africa to get there. I've always started in Australia, built up a strong base in South Africa and waited for the Europeans to weaken.
I've played literally hundreds of games of Risk, though none in the last 15 years.
In our heyday (say, 1979 or so), we changed the board by drawing a line from Eastern Australia to Argentina, raising the point value of everything in the southern hemisphere by 1. It ended the ability to camp out and collect cards.
Any smart man starts in Australia.
He's a pinball wizard, there has to be a twist...
The best pinball player I ever saw was an ethnic Chinese guy going to Michigan on a Royal Bank of Thailand full scholarship. He'd play for literally hours on the first ball, stopping the ball on the flipper over and over. That's the key to pinball, catching the ball and stopping it.
You can grief in Monopoly. Technically, you can't buy hotels directly. You have to convert houses into hotels.
So just hoard all the houses, and nobody else can do jack shit. Make people read the rules.
You won't have to play Monopoly with that group of people ever again. Win
...buddy that's fucked up.
It's a valid strategy, and obviously respect for rules-lawyering the most frustrating game in human history, but it's still fucked up.
I've mostly stopped playing these games because I was always the downer on game night. My German genes coming out in force "There's rules for a reason, you have to follow them!"
'Just have fun!"
I CAN'T DO THAT
I'm not really a rule follower in everyday life
you can make it worse
if you buy all the houses you can stack money until you have enough to convert your houses into hotels on the 3 part properties and also have enough money to put the same number of houses on other properties
sure its expensive to buy but once you do that you have hotels and houses and you can start bargaining other players to pay their rent with properties so you can continue the cycle
i did this and it was fun
My father feels the same way about chess, although he can play a fairly sharp game when he wishes, and his Renaissance credentials are not in question.
I had a high school letter, a point I occasionally bring up in conversation. The punchline is always, "In chess!"
I was the worst player on what was then the second-best chess team in the country; I learned a lot. My rating was around 1600, I had an mid-game a couple of levels better than that but could not be bothered to learn more openings than the currently popular ones used by the team, and tediously mechanical endgames bore me to the point of inattention (which can be embarrassingly hazardous).
As I grew older, my mental laziness in regard to games increased - I could not see the point in all that effort. Never could motivate myself to remember where all the cards are in a card game, for example. My father, in contrast, was driven by ego to show off and was a superlative bridge and chess player (for which he frequently did not bother with a board, just calling out moves). I did play a bit in the past couple of decades just to teach my wife's nephew, who is surprisingly talented.
I do see chess as a part of Western culture (ironic due to its origins),recommend it as a part of a good education, and believe some larger lessons can be drawn from it.
Remind me never to play you for money, Hex; anyone who can count cards is out of my league.
I can't finish counting cards. I can start to and have my mind wander though!
I can no more count cards than I can track game animals by smell; it's simply beyond me how anyone has that capability.
What openings did your team favor?
Colle System, for one. This was fifty-some-odd years ago, so I don't remember everything.
I haven't played chess since my sophomore year in college 20+ Years ago. I wasn't very good and I've never had any intention of getting better.
I have around a 500 ranking, mostly because I can't stick with it. Systems and mental flow chart thinking comes easy for me. But you have to spend time on it to develop any acumen. I just haven't. It's a good way to pass the time for me when I'm out hunting or sitting around in the car line to pick up the kids. But I would never spend big fat money on a nice chess set or try to really git gud. It's just not my thing. Though I do enjoy watching very good chess players play a high level game because they tend to think very quickly in strategic ways. That's like the big tiddy goth girl of nerds.
Used to be if a girl played chess really well AND played cello, I would instantly be drawn to her. Chess is a pretty good signal of what kind of personality and brain type someone is packing. But so is an ICP shirt and a vape.
I've never met a girl who played both chess and cello, but I have dated a couple of cellists, and I agree with your assessment.
Persons wearing ICP paraphernalia, or displaying it on their vehicle, are repugnant to me at a visceral level. I've known exactly one appreciator of the group who wasn't an odious knuckle-dragger.
The chess/cello combo is as yet undefeated with me for identifying VERY interesting women. I highly commend it to anyone in the dating world, or cheater scumbags.
Disclaimer: I am not a cheating scumbag, but I'm not your Dad either (person reading, not anyone in particular because my son doesn't read this. He's 6).
Cello player who enjoys chess, huh.
(I should call her)
(Actually I should not)
Past me is an idiot I caged in a magneto prison for my own good. I wouldn’t dare let him get his hands on what present me has made.
Nope. Everyone assumes software/hardware engineers all know how to play chess. I've always been more attracted to card games.
I suck at chess. The Radio Shack Chess Champion 2150l can beat me on fresh batteries.
I then realized that I didn't have to beat my opponent at chess. I just had to win. That could involve drinking, telling jokes, stealing pieces, localized earthquakes, and even more drinking. I do ok.
Drunken chess with your friends or family is a wonderful thing.
“Localized earthquakes”…this is not beneath grandmasters; when Korchnoi played Karpov for the world championship they had to build a partition under the table, because Karpov wouldn't stop shaking the table, and Korchnoi got fed up and started kicking him in the shins.
For the record, Karpov won.
Hmmm. I would agree that a Renaissance man should meet your definition of 800+ ELO in chess, though maybe this is coming close to the No True Scotsman fallacy.
I can play chess, but don't like losing (in general), so it's not my favorite activity. I have played in a few rated tournaments since leaving San Diego for Idaho. My provisional USCF OTB is in the low 900s, IIRC. I played our state champion in a casual 5 minute blitz last weekend and he told me I'm good at chess, should play more, and probably am a 1200 OTB.
Why was I playing Josh Price? Because my oldest two sons enjoy playing and have repeatedly, narrowly lost the top slot in the annual scholastic chess tournaments to represent Idaho in the nationals. We have a strong contingent of second generation Chinese kids who do very well. Their parents are all scientists and engineers at Micron, with a sprinkling of engineering/math professors thrown in.
This year was a bummer. My oldest (7th grade) ended up placing third overall for middle school. My 5th grader had a disappointing two losses, which relegated him down to fourth place for elementary. So no followup Tournament of Champions for him this year.
Last year, my oldest came in third in the K-12 ToC, because of the luck of the two strongest Chinese kids in the tournament having to play each other early in the day. And the fact the strongest player in the state, also the son of a Chinese engineer, didn't show up because he was concerned he'd draw a match against the 1600-ish rated runner up in high school (but plays more like a 1900, he just doesn't have enough games in) and James Wei was trying to break 2000 OTB. I believe he was at about a 1980 then--so close!
Ah, now here's a man who knows chess! Both your sons would most likely break me OTB; I tend to win on time pressure more than anything else, and in a tournament setting I'd get creamed. Thank you for weighing in; good to know you and your sons are out there fighting the good fight!
I have a good friend who has done contractual work for Fisker. Dog shit engineering. 13k might be too high of a price for that rolling scrap.
Now that I’m dealing with EV’s myself, there is one huge upside to working on them: US born, educated autistic engineers. There are days I want to die, but it’s due to passionate debates with CFM models that inevitably have bad inputs and me tossing more nicotine into my face to tell them that you can’t simulate fluid dynamics because of God.
There is some solid fucking USA based engineering behind this fucking golf cart fad.
I just realized I contradicted myself but whatever. Fuck.
"US born, educated autistic engineers"
god bless them
odd as they might be theyre preferable to foreigners
It is preferable. If I’m going to exist in a dystopian product hellscape, at least the engineers are responsive and give a fuck.
Plus, ironically, the autistic Americans have much better personalities and hygiene than the alternative!
Yeah, they'll wash themselves till they bleed.
IOW, they don’t 💩in the street?!
If by "foreigner" you mean someone, born in a place other than the US, who now legally lives here and is making his/her way, allow me to categorically state that I have personally met and befriended a number of such people who were outstanding in every sense of the word, men and women I would trust with all I have.
I’m not referencing legal residents. I’m talking about different continents / domiciles / education / work ethic. Nor is this racial. There are exceptions to the average sample populations.
*~=~* "And Then The Whole Bus Clapped" *~=~*
Meanwhile, the reset of us work among masses of people who LEGALLY come and PAY TAXES (as though that is a great distinction--which it is in their low-trust home countries, which have around a 30% tax compliance rate) and engage of massive scamming (Somali Muslim LEARING Centers) and/or form ETHNIC CARTELS of mediocre-at-best "workers" who rapidly COLONIZE teams, then departments, then companies. I'm waiting to post an even better video until I can watch it, but here's yesterday's DAILY reminder that LEGAL immigrants from low-trust countries commit fraud and bend rules on a scale that simply overwhelms the government's ability to investigate and prosecute : https://xcancel.com/SaraGonzalesTX/status/2054569689410424932
The last 30 - 60 years have been seen historically high levels of migration to the US, both in numbers and relative to population, almost entirely from places which were severely restricted or even completely barred from migrating for most of the US history. None of your virtue signaling or platitudes change the reality of that.
Whether someone is BORN on the mission field, a military base, an American hospital adjacent to a birth tourism center like JNGC kingpin Juan Carlos Valencia González or Vivek Ramaswamy (whose mother was ~8 months pregnant when she arrived in the US on a temporary visa), or even a culturally similar allied country before moving to the US as an adult like Mick Fleetwood or Jacques Pépin is essentially the least the least important factor in terms of who is a "foreigner."
okay cool me too
Zora Duntov did okay for a furriner.
he certainly did
larry shinoda was another who also had a neat hotrod to boot
Shinoda was born in Los Angeles. I drove down to rural Illinois to interview the guy who owns Shinoda's personal Boss prototype. Supposedly he took it to the GM Tech Center, where he used to work, so a guard let him in, and he did donuts in the parking lot.
hell yeah
ugh, but I WANT a Karma
or better still, one of the 1 or 8 completed "Destino" LS9 karmas Maximum Bob had made
https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/news/a29461/bob-lutz-fisker-karma-vlf-destino/
I didn’t know they actually got any of those made!
Do they still make the Karma Revero or whatever it’s called? I believe it’s been on sale for like a decade but I’ve never actually seen one even listed anywhere.
I think a few got made, but I wonder if any of them are still plated and driving. The "I'm rich, let me store 500 cars permanently" brain disorder thing really skews the market
The Karma Revero is still out there https://www.carsforsale.com/karma-revero-for-sale-C1675994
You can even get them new a handful of places, eg: https://www.karmafv.com/new-inventory-specials/
Fascinating!
That has to be among the worst $150k+ anyone could possibly spend on a car
I think its a very iconoclastic choice that's for sure. Sometimes, you really have to WANT to be different
150k is brand-new S580 or barely-used S63 money too...
The same crew exists in the world of nuclear fusion clusterfuck in the PNW . It's wonderful.
There is a lot of early Audi R8 in that rear view--which I've always liked---and the design is well executed here, regardless of similarity. Here's hoping it carries the original run's more classic, horizontal lines over a longer body, and not the Emira's swooopity-dip-and-swoop styling over a stubby silhouette. Thus far, it bodes well for the former.
YouTuber Bembli just did a great video about the classic designs of the A5 and A6 vs. the present Audis.
The latest Audi designs are rather incoherent and your eyes can tell. They’re missing visual flow with lines and flourishes that go nowhere and/or don’t complement each other.
So many beautiful Audis, with the A6 having a number of handsome generations. The original A5's were lovely cars. I've always liked the A8, and up through 2009, man did the exude the brand's design aesthetic and German styling well. Everything is so busy now, but I will say that of the big three, Audi's are the best looking. The A6 elicits echoes of its former design success, and the RS6 Avant looks epically menacing, but I miss the mid to late '00s and earlier for them.
Always liked the styling of the earlier A5, both coupe and convertible.
Amazing how Audi themselves managed to make their facelifts look like the Chinese knockoffs.
I will posit that its not just Audi, but all the German brands.
The bucktooth bimmers are especially horrendous.
We're taught that the manufacturers make the product. But ultimately, the customers really make the product, and most of the customers are in China, I guess.
Audi is the least worst. We have some new "AMG" mercedes in the parking lot and my kids power wheels looks better
And you would be correct.
But Audi really embodies the aesthetic, for some reason.
I’d say even the teens era was a high mark for Audi design. Practically everything they made in—say—2010-2017 was gorgeous from a design perspective, yet balanced and restrained. I saw Anatoly’s C7 2014-era RS 7 in person, and very nearly went and got one of my own. And I miss my 2013 A8 L 4.0T.
As a longtime fan and multiple-time owner of Audi products, it pains me to see the company work so hard to turn its cars into anonymous-looking blobs.
Audis always struck me as having surgically-sterile styling, as if they were the reputed Teutonic lack of a sense of humor wrought in metal.
Agreed. My 2022 “B9.5” S5 Cabriolet (which already doesn’t look quite as handsome as the prior “B8” generation) was at the dealership for $1,900 worth of motor mounts (warranty paid, thank goodness)…and they gave me custody of a 2025.5 Q5 loaner for a day. I didn’t feel like it was anything special, and the styling was pretty blobby.
It didn’t drive well, either. Whatever advantages Audi’s longitude layout and neutered “true” Quattro hold over a cheaper transverse-engined car—like, say, VW Group’s own Tiguan—weren’t borne out in my experience. It felt like any other appliance, and I struggled to see why someone should pay Audi prices for such a vehicle.
It also seemed pretty delicate, from an electronics standpoint, with gizmos and gadgets galore that seemed antagonistic rather than helpful. The person who handed the keys to me said “I’m not going to the new Q5 is a *bad* car, but we’ve never done so many buybacks.”
I might do a full review, but that’s pretty much the flavor of it.
"at the dealership for $1,900 worth of motor mounts"
oh dear lord
Haha, I’m sure it would have been cheaper elsewhere. The Audi dealer charges stupid rates. As it is, the extended service plan I have on this car (which is from a company called ASC) has no deductible, but leaves me on the hook for the sales tax and shop supplies. So I was only responsible for about $100 of that.
My other car is presently an XC90 T8 Recharge Ultimate that is CPO’d out to May 2034 and unlimited miles, because I’m about to need to drive a whole lot.
Didn’t you have an XC90 a few years back? Was that the PHEV?
I did; it wasn’t. I’ve had two T6s. The first one, a 2017, was singularly awful and was subject to early SPA-platform Volvo woes. The second one, a 2022, was fine, but some weird resale value meant I got more for it than I paid. And I got sick of the Sensus system.
This third one is the T8, which I think is the magic I was looking for. It’s also got the new Android Automotive-based system, which is a little half-baked on Volvo’s part, but is much more robust.
All three of them were CPO and all three have had the excellent Bowers & Wilkins and 4-corner air suspension, but this latest one also has the Lounge package (faux-suede headliner, massaging seats). I could’ve done without that, but I’ll take it.
I'm not saying my Subaru's engine mounts would be more, but they are in a very inconvenient location that would require a lift, unbolting the transmission mount/subframe, and lifting the engine, with whatever hose, wire, and AC/PS line disconnection required. Easiest to do with the transmission completely removed, so it fully qualifies as a "while you're in there" repair. I decided that a new clutch assembly, rear seals, and a transmission rebuild was plenty festive for such a repair endeavor, lol. $1900 simultaneously sounds horrible and semi-reasonable (even for an Audi). Either way, man cars are expensive...
When I was young and ignorant, I bought V8 Camaro motor mounts at a dealer because I was only a few months into my car-guy learning curve and didn't know there were like 50 million small-block Chevy mounts rusting away in junkyards.
Hey, that's 100 bucks cheaper than an oil change down the road at the Merc dealer!!!!
That’s a gorgeous car!
“I’m not going to the new Q5 is a *bad* car, but we’ve never done so many buybacks.”
Wild. The prior generation is everywhere on the east coast.
The prior gen is a nice car, especially in SQ5 flavor. It also looks crisp. The new one? Again, might as well buy a Tiguan. Or, if you really want a luxury car, an NX 350h or an RX 350h and save yourself some headache.
Echoing @Ataraxis, what a great choice with the S5 vert.
Is your extended service plan like a warranty, or something totally different? Would you recommend ASC (or other third party warranties) to others?
Your experience echoes mine regarding the Q5. I wouldn’t say it didn’t drive well, but rather underwhelming when compared to the new X3.
True, although the X3 has morphed from reasonably palatable to rather hideous. I wouldn't have either that or the Q5, personally.
Eh, the new X3 has grown on me. To my eye it is much better in dark colours. A neighbour has one in Tanzanite Blue and I don’t mind it.
It’s a shame about the Chinese owning Lotus.
Too bad no one is starting a new ICE car company.
I guess we are stuck with the ones we have until they all whither away.
If I ever get access to $300MM, I will set up a car company to build modern large, comfort-oriented vehicles: a sedan, a coupe and a wagon. They’d use whatever off-the-shelf existing American crate engines and transmissions were best-suited for the task, even if they were from two decades ago…and the focus would be on craftsmanship, design presence, and—most importantly—longevity and repairability. At the same time, they’d have a more modern and world-class experience than, say, a Panther-platform car.
Our own Mr Klockau would be a hired consultant, naturally.
a modern packard would be incredible to behold
It’s been done to a high degree by a crazy Dutch Packard aficionado. He started with a Bentley and made what he thinks a modern Packard should be.
I like it, but I can see how some might quibble with the styling. But he gets an A for effort and detail. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=15EhSI81kjc&ra=m
But I prefer this 1966 one-off Duesenberg because it embodies 1960’s American swagger along with a great design. This is also believable as an updated Duesenberg. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RlB6jnrYxW8&ra=m
i was aware of the 1999 packard but the 2025 car was new to me but the front end is
uh
strong
The 1999 is a disaster, but the strong front end on the 2025 actually is appropriate. I saw a lot of Packards last year between going to the Gilmore Museum and the Packard Museum in Dayton, Ohio, and they are just gorgeous cars. The barn at the Gilmore with all of the old classics is spectacular.
Check out this one-off Packard at the Dayton Museum. Designed by Pinin Farina but never built, some rich guy decided to commission it in 1995. I love the Italian and American design combination. https://thegentlemanracer.com/2025/04/packard-parisian-coupe/
GORGEOUS
Have you seen Fran Roxas' Packard Myth custom?
I wrote about the 1999 Packard. It's hideous but with a Falconer V12 it's got pretty impressive mechanicals.
There's a guy in Ohio that is trying to revive the Packard brand but so far all he's sold are Packard branded watches.
It's possible that Pinin Farina was influenced by the Packard Pan American show car. I wrote about it, but out of respect to our host I won't link to the bagel shop.
I like an Excalibur far more than those rebodied cars, plus an Excalibur is al copone gansta cool.
I.kigjt sound like a broken record for bringing this up a lot, but the continued evolution of the Alfa 75 (rear transaxle sedans in general) would be amazing.
I endorse this.
We need a billionaire to do this just like Sir Ratcliffe did with the Ineos Grenadier.
The key here is that no one needs to reinvent the wheel. All the best cars have already been made, so just take the best of the best and recreate them in one new package.
Further, to your idea, once a great modern platform is created, the new GK Motors could go the McLaren route and just keep issuing new versions and variations. There’s enough rich customers in this country to make it a success.
Agreed. I’m also appalled by all of the institutions who *haven’t* done this. General Motors, for instance, has all the expertise, history, culture, off-the-shelf componentry, and engineering might in the world to make a car like that. If anyone could make such a car and have it mean something, it would be GM.
And instead, when it was time to finally make a Cadillac that could once again rival a Rolls-Royce for presence and build quality (and price)…they chose to waste that opportunity on the Celestiq, a car that a) cost far more to engineer and build than any equivalent V8 car ever would, and b) is relevant to exactly no one, least of all the people who were doing $9,000 one-pay 24-month leases on Lyriqs before the tax credit went away.
The Celestiq making production when the gorgeous Sollei concept didn’t is mystifying. If you think of the glory days of the US automakers, they made sure that the social influencers of the day, mainly Hollywood stars, were seen in their cars, to make them desirable or aspirational. Who wants to be seen in a Celestiq?
I was at the Petersen Museum in LA in December, and they featured hypercars at their Saturday morning car show on the top floor of their parking deck. I’m not into hypercars, but they were fun to see. There were also a bunch of other interesting cars, but sitting there with no one looking at it was a Celestiq. All its potential customers were there, and nobody gave it a glance.
I think Cadillac actually has retained Lenny Kravitz to be a brand ambassador, specially for the Celestiq.
Thing is, if you make a car that people desire and envy, you don’t *have* to engineer credibility by giving the car to people who will drive it exactly as often as they are contractually obligated to. People will just buy it, and want to be seen in it.
You think Mercedes-Benz had to pay celebrities to drive an R107 SL-Class? I don’t.
The Sollei could have been that. Even with an electric powertrain that nobody wanted, it was so breathtakingly beautiful, it could have sold itself
Edit: while we’re at it, that’s also what Jaguar missed. Even if they were hellbent on transitioning to an EV, their bid to make and sell a car that costs Rolls-Royce money needed a design that was effortlessly gorgeous and striking and that looked like it belonged in that rarified air. If they’d have done that for the car we now know will be called the Type 01…I’d be pretty optimistic about their outlook. Instead, they presented a concept that looks like a middle-schooler’s brutalist sketch. And the actual production car appears to be a dorkier, more-apologetic version of *that.* Alas. I don’t think it’ll be long before JLR stands for “Just Land Rover.”
JUST LAND ROVER
I'm laughing and crying at the same time.
I’d want to fly away from the Celest-ick as fast as possible!
Lenny Kravitz.
Why does a guy who looks like the second coming of Jimi Hendrix have a name like a Manhattan personal-injury lawyer?
Speaking of a Mercedes promotion, does anyone remember the tunnel roll ad? That was a classic!!!
They did have the ct6, even made a new motor for it, then they scrapped it, now they wish they hadnt , cause GM.
The CT6 was a decent start, but not what I'm talking about. The CT6 wasn't even as good as the S-Class, XJ, LS, A8, 7 Series, etc. I think GM meant to make a car at least that good, and then pulled back at the eleventh hour.
It was still a very nice car, but it wasn't world-class by any means.
I'm not sure GM *does* wish it hadn't scrapped the CT6. That segment is just about gone, anyway.
But if you're going to make a car in the $400K range--where the Celestiq lives--you don't have to worry about volume, really. You just need to at least have people *want* to want it, and that's where GM messed up. If it had been given a V8, it would have meant a lot more to a lot more people and--I guarantee you--rich people would have been knocking down the doors to buy it.
I hear you. At that price range they had the v16 concept. Thye could have even just epa certed a ryan falconer v12 which is based on a SBC.
Ironicaly sedans are showing some market growth. Makes sense if you grew up in a minivan you wanted a suv an if you grew up in a suv maybe a sedan or wagon is appealing.
I did read someone at Cadillac quoted as saying that fo they could go back in time and not cancel the CT6 tye would because whatever they rep[laced that capacity with was not worth it, and sedans do have asegment.
maybe it wasn't the best in class, but seems like it was pretty great car, and the rest of class has declined. I always suspected the short lived blackwing motor developed for that car is similar to the C8 z06 motor same block and architecture, but they say not. As Usual with Gm when they start getting ti right they stop producing it.
Are you referring to their bike racing team? If so, indeed, it has been mightily successful!!
No, the actual truck.
Excellent Smithers! Another Old Fashioned!
How dare you interrupt my lime rickey!
The wagon doesn't necessarily fit the image but I would take one of your modern day Electra 225s. The Estate Wagon could come in the LeSabre line.
If something more modern is needed to start from, the Holden Commodore was an incredible platform. It might not fit a bench seat all that well though. That would have to be fixed.
We love a Deuce-and-a-Quarter 😁
I'd crown myself king of Cleveland County in mine. Brocade upholstery would be mandatory in my chariot!
Six nine Buick
Deuce keeps rollin'
One hubcap
Cause three got stolen!
A Renaissance Man should also be able to quote Sir Mix-a-Lot lyrics.
I'm really more Sophisticated As Hell.
"After an extensive program of field research, and comprehensive analysis of the resulting data, it is the considered opinion of the academy that Bitches Be Trippin.'"
LS1, with the cable throttle.
T56 manual.
Ford 8.8 Torsen diff.
Build something around THAT pile.
You can have that right now it is sitting in my garage, the only caveat is the E36 it was built on is not really a luxury experience, especially with the 8.8. solid mounted, bucket seats, and no AC.
Luxury? Bosh, flimshaw! Does it run?
Like a raped ape.
Oh please. That ape was good to go last night.
I would like to pilot this at your earliest convenience, please
Get yourself to Charlotte and I'll throw you the keys
Many ACF dudes down that way!
If I had all the money that I spent on my e36 back, I'd buy or build your car almost exactly but still in a sedan. It's just my favorite e36 body config.
Your 300 million will last 6 months case the cost to build a saleable car is extreme. .
Rivian has lost 23 billion dollars. They ONLY lost 3.6 billion in 2025
The new ICE car companies are only building $300k-$2MM recreations of old stuff.
A modern Lotus Esprit that wasn’t electric or hybrid could be awesome. Sadly it seems that makes it impossible for Lotus to offer. Wonder if someone could buy the rights and continue production like the 7 aka Caterham.
The new Encor seems awesome except it is approaching 7 figures.
The Japanese who own Caterham should try.
Theyre all the way down the rabbit hole with their ev project V. Thats a car thta looks great, if only they just put v6 in it.
Agree, it’s beautiful. Theres a great Harry’s Garage episode where he walks around the car with the designer.
And ill bet theyre spending way more on it than an ice car which would be out already, and for which there is clearly a market gap.
“I’m traveling this week etc” when are you NOT traveling Jack. Get out there make produce us some content in the wild. Make some LinkedIn comments in real life.
If Road & Track can have a travel club, what is Jack waiting for?
I just saw a reel/story of the Commander doing pull ups on the subway. He’s posting!
Short form video posting? That’s foid coded!
If it makes you feel any better i have personally disrespected more than a couple people this week, including a French dude who was bothering a hot desk clerk at the Carlyle.
Watched the French Taunter scene on YouTube last night.
Best comment: "Welcome to the Quebec Border Crossing."
Ok great start. now let’s get the Axon BaruthCam9000 set up (access for track day club and premium onlyfans members only)
What did you do, say in a loud, goofy voice, "Hey! IT'S INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU!"
"Lotus is back with its traditional mix of hybrid power, an engine by “Horse”, and a CEO named after an Amazon USB charger brand"
is it even worse keeping alive if its only to get shit on by foreigners making them build cars that have nothing to do with what lotus even means? whats the point of this latest car? what about it is lotus like?
"he used it as an opportunity to make a series of advertisements for an AI legal product"
just learning who he is and im already sick of him
"maybe he’d have been better off letting the AI do it"
sometimes i wonder if people this inept this high up the food chain is actually some kind of elaborate joke that im not clued in to instead of reality
"Which, unsurprisingly, she just doesn’t feel comfortable doing."
some people are too afraid of getting sued. assuming it happened. which it didnt. but it would be funny if it did.
"watch out for those $2,000 oil changes. They’re totally real"
oh theyre totally real. i almost got one for the miata. sure it included a spare 55gal drum of 10w30 but yeah it would have been 2k
Harry’s Garage did a bunch of insider videos on ordering his new launch Emira since he seemed to know the management and designers, then all of a sudden sold the car and bought a McLaren. He knew where Lotus was going.
Too bad...I'm very tempted by the Emira. It could be the last true lightweight Lotus before QingDong gets his way with it.
Not that light I think its 3200lbs. But it does look good feel exotic nicely built and has a manual, plus the v6 is smooth.
Now if only they had as rumored just put a merc v8 in it.
But we hear its staying in production with a hybrid v6 and AT, so its not getting lighter for sure, but hey the paper numbers will be better which seems to be about as much of a performance car as the chiese understand.
The Frank Stephenson redesign video ruined the Emira design for me. When I see all the little tweaks he made that Lotus neglected to, I can’t unsee what Lotus did. I actually like the Evora design better. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YTYYfG3FdDA&pp=0gcJCQQLAYcqIYzv&ra=m
He actually paid a lot of respect to the original design and said they nailed it. His tastes tend more towards adding lines and more aggressive flourishes (see McLarens). I like the subtle styling on the Emira the same way I love the uncluttered design of my 2013 Quattroporte.
Being inept is nothing new for Lotus. Remember, their corruption and stupidity took down the fine British carmaker Jensen also.
Remember all the drama and unintentional humor when Dany Bahar was running Lotus?
You didn’t even share the worse parts of Katyal’s bragging and TED Talk where he talks about how the AI named Harvey knew the Justices better than they knew themselves and he had them figured out. Which is the exact thing you *don’t* want to talk about in public about the 9 most powerful attorneys in the country.
One doesn't need AI to know that KBJ is a moron and Roberts spends his life on his knees.
I have near my job what might be one of the only privately owned oceans in the country. The solar panels look like dogshit. The fit and finish makes a C8 look like a Lexus. It’s utterly atrocious except for how endearing it is that some lunatic YOLOd his own money into this thing
I saw one last week in a neighborhood here; pretty sure it was privately owned.
They exist, I see one (two?) from time to time out here
i think theres 8k? in the wild. surely highly concentrated
They look incredibly blobular, from a design standpoint it's remarkable how aesthetically discordant they are. I almost certainly wouldn't but I'd be tempted at $13k, probably a lot more than $13k worth of batteries in the thing alone
where prices sit for raw materials you could probably argue its not trading much higher than scrap including batteries at these levels. and yes, i do also find them incredibly ugly.
There’s a dude on another car board who bought an Ocean AND invested what I imagine is a fair chunk of money into the Fisker company. He is a big Fisker fan (owns an original Karma and used to own the M6 reboot one). He was voraciously defending the car and the brand through the bitter end. Odd because he seems otherwise pretty reasonable.
henrik? is that you?
serious investors know when an investment thesis has fallen apart and to stop defending it (usually before the company goes BK lol) so this is someone with a real emotional attachment to the brand... i wish them well but thats gotta be worse than being a SAAB guy at this point.
With something you can get passionate about it's pretty easy to fall prey to that trap. Best investor I know lost a bunch of money on Bode Miller's ski company. AFAIK he doest defend it, but I am surprised by it. He is one of my favorite people so I am glad it doesn't have much of an affect on him.
You win some you lose some
I've been drinking, but for a second I thought "oh no, Bezos bought an Ocean so he doesn't have to sell his yacht"
The name horse sounds like an elaborate joke.
A 13k rideshare vehicle is an excellent value it is only when you have to pay retail they don't always measure up.
Whoever paid 2k for an oil change shouldn't have a fucking car because they are to fucking stupid especially that one.
"American" politician, mayor of Arcadia, CA, pleads guilty to being a Chinese CCP agent:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/arcadia-mayor-federally-charged-acting-illegal-agent-peoples-republic-china
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-11/arcadia-mayor-plea-agreement-foreign-agent-china-charges
It's 2026, not 1976 (Ford vs. Carter): both parties are rife with FOREIGN AGENTS of non-allied powers. Vote AMERICANS* FIRST, then traditional considerations of party / policy / character.
* (Non-US readers adjust for your particular country)
In related news, career Canadian politician reaped what he sowed, losing to a Bangladeshi pizza shop owner, and considered a challenge due to possible election irregularities (inconceivable!):
"The Liberal Party spent 10 years importing voters. Today those voters showed up." https://xcancel.com/mario4thenorth/status/2053290685550198920#m
Video: http://www.oakvillenews.org/local-news/ontario-liberal-leadership-hopeful-loses-bid-to-be-partys-scarborough-riding-byelection-candidate-12263544
Scotland just elected a trans Indian to their parliament who is not a UK citizen and lacks a permanent UK visa.
Scotland is a freakshow of stupidity.
I'd love to understand how such an inventive people became so stupid. Maybe the distilled alcohol evolved into heavy drug use.
I think they (like me) identify instinctively with the underdog. The danger, of course, is in misreading who exactly IS the underdog in any given situation.
i think youre on the money tbh
Sounds like P13 - P22 of https://unabombermanifesto.com/
Still unclear why this underdog mentality dominated Scotland moreso than other places.
Maybe because they found themselves under the English heel for 400 years?
They had their time and it passed.
The “colonized by wankers” scene from Trainspotting nailed their despair. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xCtPBFHKSNg&ra=m
Ahem, it might be best not to write off such a significant part of the founding stock of your continent:
https://www.jameswebb.com/books/born-fighting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Canadians#Notable_Scottish-Canadians
I’ve been meaning to read that book, since it’s about my neighbors. We have Revolutionary War monuments here and the family names on the monuments are still around. My closest redneck buddy’s family has been around here for over 200 years.
You beat me to posting that exact, classic scene.
Western nations have been force-fed self-hatred and some form of replacement theory for long enough that they, like the US et al, have sorta kinda enough gone along with it enough that they've accepted the inevitability of it happening and being a logical progression. Too kind, generous, and forbearing a people being taken advantage of by The Big Club That You Ain't In.
Back to the second part of my original post, apparently Nate Erskine-Smith is also not in The Big Club.
They'd benefit from a language people could understand.
"There you go again."
Liberal education and welfare made them soft and stupid.
They eat fried Mars bars there. What's that tell you?
Sounds like light work to literally any county and/or state fair that exists in the US
see this is one of those things that proves the ethnic origins of the american people
like if the scotch egg hadnt been invented by an englishman it would have been invented by some dude in gainsville
If it was invented by an American it would taste better
How do you know this shit???
It just comes my way.
Lollers. And his name is 'Q'.
the most infuriating part of both of these scandals is that rational people are stuck waiting ages for the stupidest people alive to finally come around and realize that the world does not work like their childish view of how it works. everyone else is deeply nepotistic and is trying to take advantage of us and will do anything to help one of their own coethnics but those retards keep stepping on their dicks and importing and electing them by the truckload and getting blindsided every time they do something that benefits only them or their cohort
Stay tuned; there's a new documentary I might share about that.
I was daydreaming this morning that Lotus should make a car that vaguely looks like a modern British f360 and throw a NA Cosworth V8 or V10 whose block is distantly related to a former F1 engine. If they add enough lightness and forgo the beeps boopals and bleeps that come with modern cars they might find some buyers.
Some? The world would beat a path to their door. There would NEVER be a better time for Lotus to be Lotus.
Ha. Exactly. The only bleep I want in a sports car is one that comes from me.
I just saw a video of a 2026 Ineos Grenadier, and the “driver safety” beeps and boops totally ruin the vehicle.
It made noises for going over the speed limit, going over a lane marker, approaching the shoulder line, and worst of all, for detection of driver distraction, because there’s now a camera in the rear view mirror watching the driver. F*ck that!
Unfortunately some of the Driver Surveillance features will be mandatory on all vehicles from MY2027.
And there is more.
Somehow this should become a consumer outrage issue, but so few know about it.
The camera watching the driver is coming to every new car thanks to Bidens infrastructre bill, supported by douchbag republicans.
there si so much more crap being mandated on our cars though 20230 you'd freak out, and none of it widely published. By the time consumers hate it it will be too late.
As for the grenadier, thats all euro mandated stuff, that theyre too stupid to have an permeant off switch in the USa is mind boggling. But Euros think were all like then, thats why the German car industry is as good as dead unless they wise up.
DOt and BHTSA are looking n to harmonize our rules with the Euros, well the manufactures are pushing it for obvious cost saving reasons plus insurance companies. Look up intelligent speed control.
That's the reason I bought my X5 back in 2021. It does ZERO of these things. My wife's 2023 230e blinks when you go over the speed limit, my mom's 2025 230e blinks and beeps. That thing drives me nuts!! Worst thing that happened to cars were the idiotic EV mandates, second worst thing is that blinking and beeping nonsense...
Possibly even worse than the Horse-powered new Lotus, word on the street is that they are pulling the Toyota V6/Manual and AMG 4cyl/DSG powertrains from the Emira and replacing them with just a V6 Horse engine and a, wait for it, 4spd automatic. I can’t imagine how they think they’ll sell any of these with a 4spd auto. It’s incredibly laughable.
Maybe it sounded better in the original Mandarin
With six you get eggroll.
How do you say “Gin & Tonic” in that language?
No fortune cookie?
The only 4-speed automatics I like and want are in '90s and '00s domestic full size trucks because that's all the world ever needed from them, not some 21,000 speed gear-hunting Nervous Nelly of a beta-brained shift machine that fumbles the proverbial ball that the hoss alpha engine gives it. When it comes to cars, yeah, 6-speed manual or 6+ speed auto with DSG capabilities to bring out maximum engagement and driving efficiency.
Six-speed stick or four-speed slushbox.
Box checked. Time to move on.
Wow. Looks like my dentist's Colin Chapman edition Emira is about to appreciate in a big way.
You forgot that said 4 speed autobox will have an electric motor integrated and of course a battery. the emira is going near on 600hpo hybrid, prob gain few hundred lbs. But from the chiese perspective it will have better metrics, which is all they understand in a performance car.
Apparently it will be like a truck gearbox, with a high and a low, so effectively an 8 speed. Don’t care. I can’t imagine wanting an automatic Lotus unless I was actually missing a leg.
I used toi hate the auto box ide till I got eh guila. Well lest say a fast shifting paddle box with good paddles, for traffic and everyday use is great, if also love paddles in my track car. For recreational driving its stick all the way, along with great steering and a firm modulatable by pressure brake pedal. Id also throw in a NA motor.
A hybrid done right can give throttle response like a na motor and still have the turbo high hp. But the truth is you're adding much weight and complexity to get there, which negates the point. Id way ratter loose 200lbs(sub 3000lbs emira) than gain 200lbs(3400lbs + emira) and have just a turbo v6 with slight lag lower down.
Lotus is lost till the Chinese bail and someone else buys it.
Hmmm, they must have discovered a warehouse full of surplus GM 4 spds from the 90s.
Hey I was in NYC today, the part I was in (Macys on 34 area) must have missed the Fisker memo, would have loved to see them! I did use it as an excuse to get the last Moonswatch Earth Phase they had at the Grand Central location. Huge contrast from the last time I was there a few years ago and couldn’t get anything, anywhere! The clerk was talking about the new AP pocket watch, apparently the skinny is AP insisted on that exact form factor for the partnership to happen. As the owner of a very nice victorinox pocket watch I won off a Marlboro swag truck in Key West during college (that’s a story…), most of those will sit in a box… it’s tough to pull off the look, but maybe swatch will be the one to make it happen.
I literally just put a battery in my marlborro pocket watch! I don’t remember when I acquired it , or how long it has been locked up in a drawer, but it came back to life.
Ha that’s wild! I just pull it out occasionally, put a new battery it, let the kids play with it a bit (zero context for them, fun to see them figure it out), then right back in the box!
I would be much more impressed if you and Joe had one of these. https://xcancel.com/CigsMake/status/2049097547407372799#m
😂🤣🤣
When Lotus announced they were going all electric, my only response was to shrug and think, "Oh well, they were always a fringe player anyhow. If they want to immolate, then there's no faster way to do it".
I always thought it odd that it would be LOTUS (of all the boutique car makers) who would decide to go all in on super-complex, heavy, numb transportation pods. "Simplify, and add lightness" is pretty incompatible with the entire BEV shtick
... and now, Lotus punts their eventual demise down the road a couple of years. Pity, that -- the Emira looked kinda' tasty.
"Lotus is back with its traditional mix of hybrid power, an engine by “Horse”, and a CEO named after an Amazon USB charger brand" was one of the more hilarious lines recently written. Well played, sir -- well played indeed.
Remember Geely bought them. The og Lotus is GONE.
30 years: "In 1996, a majority share in Lotus was sold to Malaysian car company Proton." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Cars
Yeah...that resulted in the 2006 Lotus Europa...a car so bad that Top Gear UK threw away all their expensively shot footage of it because it was, in the words of Clarkson, "so dreary". Proton planned to produce it in Malaysia to keep the price down but never did. Less than 500 were made in total.
Sounds similar to the Geely/Horse plan for Lotus.
I remember, all right. Every time I look at the product, I can't forget.
The chiese don't understand performance cars. I mean how many captains of the chiese auto industry even grew up when you could own a car in china. There is no driving culture per se, and their version of performance is better metrics, their best version of a car is a numbering lap record or something. They also love wall to wall screens in cars.
Geely bought lotus so they could slap a lotus badge on whatever 1000hp ev suv and be like porche.
Now were also getting a hybrid v6 emira, so its for sure not going to weigh less.
the head of lotus said they discovered that performance car consumers preferer the noise and vibration of ice to the superior effortless smooth power of an ev. To say they dotn get it is an understatement.
USA is the bulk of their sales and that been primarily v6 manual emira, so how a hybrid 4 speed at fits in I dunno.
I had always hoped lotus woudl have been bought by Honda or even Toyots, they coudl have done great things.
Lotus/Honda or Lotus/MAZDA would have been astounding.
Yeah; not Toyota, but Mazda or Honda.
I think that might be stacking competencies. It isn't obvious that Mazda needs anything from Lotus to make the product they want to make, same for Honda.
Lotus needs an over-confident billionaire, one man's vision of something (I nominate me), and a willingness to take loses until customers find them. Expertise/outside bran equity can come from many places.
Very true.
Still, it would have been nicer in my fantasy world if Lotus HAD sold to one or the other, rather than where they ended up.