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Mar 14
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Because GM values individual cust... HAHAHA I CAN'T GO ON

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Twenty years ago my friends and I used to make cracks about if the NSA was listening to our cell phones the least they could do is provide us transcripts so we we could use them. Of course the only thing that Orwell got wrong was not predicting that Big Brother would be private corporations rather than the government.

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You sure he got that wrong? Orwell never wrote about HOW the tech was invented.

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Yeah but he presumably had driven enough Lucas equipped cars to have very few suspicions in the direction of private enterprise.

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Reminds me of a joke my father would tell:

Do you know why the British never built a television? Because they couldn't find a way to make it leak oil.

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There's a great sticker I keep meaning to buy that says "DANGER: MADE IN ENGLAND."

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Interestingly, at least to me, Onstar recently offered me an option to get driving tips. Ways to be a “better driver”. Speed, acceleration, hard braking, etc. I DID NOT sign up. Their disclosures, which I actually read, didn’t make me feel comfortable about what would be done with my data. And it’s not a matter of me worrying about how I’m driving. The Caddy is super competent at speed, but it never encourages you to drive fast. So I’m sure anyone reading my driving transcript would be content with what they found. But, no one needs to be reading that. GM of late makes it harder and harder to be a fan.

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Combine that with he whole “we’re going to take away CarPlay/Android Auto and replace it with our own proprietary system that will suck 400% more but also allow us to charge you for bullshit you already get for free on your phone” and GM can go DIAF.

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I didn’t know they were adding that bonus. I’ll have to look into it.

Mine is a hackable 2016, so maybe some of the worst stuff can be shut off? That being said, I think the whole Onstar system is pretty cool. But the data should be mine. From what I understand, I own the car after all…

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It’s EV only, for now. The real reason is to chase recurring revenue (lol, who is going to subscribe to their shit) and to monetize customer data that Apple and Google get now.

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Wow. That’s brutal. Nice move, GM. And I was kinda liking the Lyriq, in a sadly and totally asexual way. But, it didn’t look bad, and it actually fits all 6’4 of me, which is unusual in the world of combovers.

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Wow. Just wow. Looks like they’ve released an early beta. I’ve always been a bit of a tech gambler, so let me know when the release candidate is ready.

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Of course the toadys at C/D give it a 9/10.

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I borrowed a Lyriq for an extended test drive, and it had visibly crooked door panels. The charging port—a convoluted, power-opening thing that didn’t need to exist—also broke.

I wasn’t impressed.

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“If a boot the car in safe mode…” WTF the future is stupid.

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The EVs are asexual. No personality. It doesn't matter how much torque they have.

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I wonder if your typical EV customer is more open to subscriptions.

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Bugmen LOVE subscriptions. God only knows why.

I despise subscriptions. In a perfect world I'd sell ACF as one book a year.

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the comments section would be horrible if we had to mail every one in

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Subscriptions are great because they garner the highest multiples.

Subscription = software, in the eyes of many investors.

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Didn't the volt also harvest data?

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Yeah, but how are you gonna get busted for "inappropriate acceleration" in a Volt?

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It's getting harder to separate the art of the smart, hardworking underlings over there from the stupidity of their superiors. While the former is pushing out modern E39 M5s and 458s, the latter is out there giving delusional interviews about transitioning the firm into driverless electric tech and subscription services (read: taking the wheel out of our hands, giving away all competitive advantage, and actively working towards the worst possible future.)

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As a volvo tech I'm utterly shocked at the dismissive attitude of our management. When I queried about how they expect to out sell Tesla with a tiny range challenged CUV, all I got was "because it's a Volvo", to which I replied what does that mean. I never seen a suits mouth open and close rapidly without saying a word before he shuffled off to a meeting. I'm appalled that being an Auto manufacturer nowadays is akin to being an outcast. WTF

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According to my GM dealer buddy, his dealers across the mid south are livid about this pivot from ACP and AA. Said buddy has also been told by upper management that studies are showing people spend too much time interacting with their vehicles interfaces and GMs software will save lives :eyeroll:

No, people are going to go back to those cheap Amazon phone mounts on the dash to use proven, simple to use, software.

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I'm guessing that not one of those tips is, "In these circumstances, firewall the throttle and steer around the crash occurring directly in front of you."

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The gutless porker still weighs less than the Ford. Or apparently some people's mothers.

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The Porsche/Audi EVs are quite light for electric pigs. May also be why people complain about the range, but as an around town golf cart who cares!

Granted I'd only think of one to commute or roll around Miami, but it would be a Polestar2 on a cheap lease, never a 70k+ Audi or Porsche

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Polestar2 gives me strong 2012 Dodge Avenger vibes. And in no way is that complimentary.

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It's a little tall, but as a former Volvo owner, I see it more as an S60 hatch. It's basically a lift back XC40 with a lower body

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You just put into words what I’d been trying to verbalize for the last three years. Yes, the proportions are very Dodge Avenger. Thank you.

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What weighs more, the Porsche or Jonny + his wife + her boyfriend(s)?

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I've met Mrs. Jonny, she's not overweight, which is admirable. And I think Jonny is losing weight himself. If you wanna beat a stock LEAF up Pikes Peak, every pound counts!

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Just won’t let that stellar drive up Pikes Peak go, at least he beat the stock Leaf in his factory prepped 1/4 million Porche, therefore he did not have to deep throat a Mossbueg… 😆😆😆

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I assure you that losing any sort of competition, let alone a motorsports competition, matters not one bit to him. Rarely have I have met a man with so little of the masculine compunction to WIN. At the age of eight my son was a fiercer racer than Jonny or any of his cohort.

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I don't know exactly how much courage I'd be able to muster in an actual race (racecars cost money, after all), but I do know with absolute certainty that I wouldn't want to lose.

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I'd be terrified of binning it and being on the hook for a large six-figure sum, or at least destroying something that the Porsche guys worked hard to prep to race.

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CompelledCompunction

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I don’t think it’s a “problem” that he was/is slow in that car, but it’s the fact that he won’t shut up about all the simulations he went through, all the details of the road that only a true racer would notice and know AND YET HES STILL SLOWER THAN A LEAF.

But to be fair he seems to talk about everything in the same manner I mean just look at his weight loss journey… he somehow makes it more annoying than that comment Sherman made here how we all need to wear three piece suits when we leave the house just in case we meet potential clients

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sherman speaks from experience

johnny speaks from his asshole

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Everything you need to know about Jonny can be summed up in one sentence: prior to writing about cars, he was deeply involved in craft beer.

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Craft beer guys are definitely worse than sourdough bread girls.

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I actually like sourdough bread.

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I live in craft beer mecca. I'm surrounded by these nerds on all sides!

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its all coming together now

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When you said 'gutless porker', at first I thought you were talking about someone who, er, crashed a pace car...

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Interesting points about who is/isn't dialed back at Mercedes. Definitely would not put it past Toto to dial Lewis back given how the departure apparently went down. We likely won't know for sure until we see how Lewis drives next year, but maybe it is a combination of (a) dialing down, (b) lack of effort from Lewis (not something he hasn't done before), and (c) his age catching up to him?

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I think it's B and C, maybe even mental apathy more than age. But I do agree with Jack that they're letting George go more now that Lewis is clearly a lame duck which just increases the gap

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I was looking at F1 records for winning last weekend and Hamilton is so far out in front of everyone else in race wins it makes me wonder if the whole thing is getting old to him. What else does he have left to accomplish?

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become relevant again

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He's doing a real bang-up job of it.

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Cash more and more bigger cheques. He’s gotta be eyeing T.Brady’s recent commentator contract.

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I don't think Toto would do A, and I don't think he would have with George last year accept maybe a split strategy because of reliability data. No way he we do anything to jeopardize a single constructors point.

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Heavy sedans aren't race cars, no matter how many angry pixies you stuff them with. GM sucks a way bigger wang than I thought, but I'm not surprised. Anywaaay,

Big changes coming to Formula Drift this year! Fortunately, I was able to listen to the latest 2hr long “Outerzone” podcast episode, where FD co-founder and solo-president Ryan Sage lays it all out. The tl;dr if you don’t want all the details is as follows: single run qualifying is no more. Instead, the top 16 or 24 drivers (based on previous round’s result and how many show up to the next one) will be locked into the main Top 32 bracket. The rest of the entrants (44 this year) will battle through their own Top 16 or 32 to fill the remaining 8 or 16 spots in the main with no bye-runs. Round 1 will use the 2023 points results for the “locked in” 16 or 24. This means that if all 44 drivers show up, 20 of them will battle to populate the bottom 16 main spots. The goal is to provide more action for the audience, provide incentive for driver improvement, and lower tire consumption overall. Also of note, is the addition of 2023 Drift Master’s European Championship, uh, champion, Conor Shanahan! He isn’t running all 8 rounds of FD, but it will still be interesting to see how he does over here after dominating in Europe. Those are the highlights, and you can feel how you will about them. Keep reading for nitty-gritty and opinions if you’d like!

Drifting competitions are done via “battles,” where 2 drivers tandem drift the course, then switch positions (lead/chase) and go again. Lead drivers need to run a line assigned by the 3 judges, fill all outer zones, and hit all inner clips. Lead drivers also need to have a high degree of drift angle, lots of flare on transitions, and have a run that is actually chaseable. If the lead driver does a shitty lead with many corrections and mistakes, it becomes difficult or impossible for the chase driver to do his job. Speaking of the chase driver, his job is to mimic the lead car. Chase drivers need to follow the lead’s line, angle, anticipate the transitions, and keep as close “proximity” to the lead car as possible (also called “penetration” if you want a laugh). The judges then decide who did the best in each position. If no decision can be made, either because each driver was perfect or because they both sucked, a “one more time” is called, and the drivers go back for fresh tires and run again. The main competition starts with 32 drivers and eventually results in one winner. Championship points are awarded based on which level of the bracket a driver makes it to, with 100 points going to the winner. For 19 years, the Top 32 was entirely filled out by solo qualifying runs, where the driver’s goal is to run their best “lead” run possible for a score out of 100. They had 2 laps back-to-back and the highest score of the 2 was what they took. During that time, the number 1 qualifier for a round got 3 bonus points for the championship. For 2023, this changed slightly. Number 1 still got 3 points, but all drivers only got ONE lap to qualify- initially. If a driver ran a complete lap and got a score, that was their score. Failure to make a complete run on the qualifying lap would allow them to run again, but with the highest possible position now being 25th. This was often referred to as the “not-so-great-eight” by announcer Jared DeAnda. The bottom 8 drivers were those who simply could not earn a high enough score on their first lap, and drivers who did not complete their first lap at all due to either a mistake, or a mechanical issue. The goal of this was to eliminate 1 or 2 drivers as they had 33-34 entrants in 2023, but this resulted in some very wonky top 32 battles, and played with the championship points in interesting ways. Some top drivers who suffered mechanical problems qualified poorly, and battled another top driver immediately which is not “supposed” to happen. Things are much different this year.

In 2024, qualifying will also be done via BATTLES! There are 2 ways this goes down depending on how many of the 44 Pro1 drivers or 48 ProSpec drivers enter a given round. For rounds with 33-40 entrants, the top 24 drivers are locked into the Main Top 32 bracket. 25th-32nd and the rest will be placed into a top 16 qualifying bracket, modified by a random number system to keep this bracket mixed up, and battle for the bottom 8 spots in the Main Top 32 bracket. For rounds with 41 or more entrants the system is similar, but only the highest 16 drivers are locked in, and up to 20 drivers have to battle it out to fill in the bottom 16 spots instead of 8. There are many interesting results of this massive format change. From the driver’s perspective, you have more opportunities to learn by doing more battles at every event. You use fewer tires; one solo qual lap would burn an entire pair, battles are 2 laps. You are also able to provide more value for your sponsors because you’re now featured in more actual competition over the weekend. I think the biggest thing a driver should be thinking about is the fact they know exactly who their first battle will be weeks ahead of time. The bracket for Long Beach is set right now, and the event doesn’t happen until April 13th. This is important for drivers to think about because they can find footage of their opponent and study it over and over to develop a strategy. From the audience perspective, this is exciting because the solo-runs were boring and the whole of qualifying was often tedious to watch (almost as tedious as this is to read, maybe). Instead of watching 5 drivers flounder for every 1 exciting run, we get to watch tandem battles all the way through! I expect this to really separate the wheat from the proverival chaff as well. The stakes are higher and the implications are greater, so the drivers will have to give their full effort from the very start.

As I said earlier, the season doesn’t start for another month, so I may not have updates again until the week before, where I summarize the finale of 2023 and paint a picture for the beginning of 2024. I may not be able to watch some of these events live, but I will catch up and bring the results and drama here to ACF every Wednesday once we’re rolling!

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Wouldn't it be easier to just see who can make it all the way down Manhattan first?

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Now that you mention it, the NHRA should consider running some street events too.

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Street Outlaws!!! Tonight after Amish Mafia

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You could do street drag racing without the fake drama and false pretense of illegality. It would be cool enough to see Clay Millican run down "xy road" in "ab city" anyway.

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Amish Mafia was unintentionally hilarious. Levi vs. Merlin. Classic.

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i'd watch soccer before i'd watch drift. it takes talent. so does fly fishing

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If I'm honest, that's how I feel about F1. I'm not asking you to watch drifting, no one has asked me to watch F1; or soccer, or fly-fishing.

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That's a lot of words to bother typing in a comment section. Maybe start your own blog and build a following?

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Not a bad idea! In the future these will be much shorter, so I'm not sure it would be sustainable for just FD. Maybe I could use it for other things as well! I had a lot I wanted to say for background and context this week, so I typed this all in a Google doc on a computer during some free time, and then just copy/pasted it here when the post went up.

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Like Silentsod's Moto updates and Sherman's everything else updates I thought your info was cool. Honestly I would rather read about racing and maybe watch the vehicles getting prepped than watch more than a few minutes of any kind of racing, on tv at least.

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Guest post!

good chance to add pics and video links as well

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Damn son, that could verge on indulgent! I don't think it would be appropriate for me to have entire guest posts about FD here, though. I should start my own blog and do full length recaps, but for ACF comments a brief summary of highlights and final standings is plenty.

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After reading Jonny’s press release rewrite, I would like to let slip that he is a useful idiot AND a useless idiot.

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how about just an idiot

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Calling Johnny an idiot makes idiots look bad

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Every time something comes out about how terrible modern cars are, like delivering your telemetry straight to your insurance company, I can hear my S2000 get more valuable. At least I feel happier about it.

That being said, I filled out an app with both American Collector and The Hag That Shall Not Be Named, and both spit back the same-ish number, $750/yr for stated value of $25k (probably slightly optimistic but not outrageous). Which is almost 2x what I pay USAA for regular insurance on it now. In the spirit of the Open thread, can someone either A) sell me on why I should double up the price to insure a Honda with chipped paint and 120k miles that’s old enough to drink, or B) reassure me that I should just save my $400/year (about 2 Direzzas shipped and mounted) and USAA will likely more or less make me whole should the unthinkable happen to my really pretty mainstream old used car anyways. Unfortunately neither option will likely stop the 4-5 spam calls I’m now getting a week from each company.

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Use the savings to buy a Personal Umbrella Policy, which everyone should have. You can get $1mm in coverage on top of all your other policies for $300 or so a year. A must in this litigious world.

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Check and check. I got one of those years ago when I had a rental house. Exact coverage and basically same cost as you said. Also have a valuable personal property policy for my wife’s jewelry.

Forgot to mention, the other impetus for looking into this is I will ideally, theoretically, in the next 12 months have a vintage motorcycle I will also need to insure. Not sure USAA will want a piece of that one too. Just liability, I’ll only have like $3500 into the thing.

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Good man. I’m going to sell my old Corvette this year so then I’ll be done with Traverse City forever. I, too, only have liability on my 2007 3 Series wagon. Cheap insurance is the best part about old cars you don’t really care about. When I moved from IL to NC my car insurance dropped by two thirds.

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How old is your Corvette? and also fuck TC I hate that place.

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Silver 1965 coupe with the 350 hp L79.

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c2 supremacy

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If you can insure with USAA, do so. They're the best choice and always will be unless you're trying to insure a Delahaye or Patent Motorwagen.

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I’m with them now. Their auto coverage is good but their homeowners coverage is atrocious, like $4k to insure my home in no-natural-disasters IL.

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We had an earthquake 13 years ago!

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Get back to me when an earthquake tips over Pritzker’s Sub Zero on him as he’s reaching inside for a turkey leg.

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Typical Illinois. You’re obviously subsidizing someone else with that ridiculous rate.

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They seem to have some issue with those of us in MI.

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USAA won't do motorcycles anymore. They will shuffle you over to Progressive.

Check Grundy for the S2000. I pay lees than that for my 83 911 with an agreed value of $65K.

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I have a $5MM umbrella - money well spent.

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DEAR GOD. FIRST THE WATCHES AND NOW YOUR BUYING BLING UMBRELLAS!

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I own one umbrella, which i bought from the former J. Press store on Madison Avenue during a rainstorm in NYC.

I have had it for over a decade, and I still use it frequently.

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I have multiple umbrellas, which I got for free at auto show media previews from companies like Rain-X and State Farm. Not as nicely made as your J. Press, I'm quite sure, but better than those cheap single-use bumbershoots sold on NYC sidewalks during rainstorms.

I typically keep one in the car. It's not as fancy as the umbrella Rolls-Royce puts, spring-loaded, in their door jams, but it keeps me dry. That gives me an idea, next year, if I'm fortunate to still be around to cover the Detroit Autorama, I'm going to suggest to some custom builders that they take a look at stuff like the R-R umbrella and the special compartment for a set of golf clubs one can find on cars from the '30s.

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