Non sequitur: I'm about halfway through "Sunday Driver" by Brock Yates and it's a pretty good read. The Adobe file says 280 pages so it's reasonably breezy.
As of five minutes ago, it's still listed at Anna's Archive. Enjoy.
His account of injuries incurred at Ontario Motor Speedway differ from Yates' book. I'm not calling anybody a liar, but stuntmen never tell anybody just how often they end up in emergency rooms.
There are also videos of his appearance on "THRILLSEEKERS!" (with CHUCK CONNORS!) on YouTube.
- If anybody is wondering what Masten Gregory's "drawl" sounded like, archive.org has the CBS network coverage of the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix. They interview him briefly about fourteen minutes in where he discusses the new 1.5 litre formula.
- Yates' instructor at the Bondurant school, Warren Wilbur Shaw Jr., still seems to be kicking around and actually involved in history projects at IMS.
- If you go out to the YouTubes and look for "Bob Bondurant Playlist", you will find vintage footage of the school at OMS. This includes the ambulance which may be the facility unit that hauled off Swede Savage after his big wreck in the Questor Grand Prix.
- Finally, Dan Gurney was inspired to take that infamous road trip with Brock Yates after reading a specific Ayn Rand essay: "THE MORATORIUM ON BRAINS"
She used this title for:
a) A chapter in Atlas Shrugged.
b) A recorded lecture in Boston she gave at The Ford Hall Forum.
c) A two part essay in the newsletter that her organization sent out weekly to subscribers.
The essay is available at Anna's Archive listed as "The Ayn Rand Letter (October 1971 to January 1972)".
The dates in the letter line up nicely with Gurney jumping on the plane to New York to drive the Ferrari.
So, there you go, some glistening nuggets to admire in the light.
I have the opportunity to purchase a 1979 Trans Am 400 4-Speed with 14,000 miles for the princely sum of $50,000.
Or
A 2006 Viper Cooper Head for the same with 14,000 miles.
My question is: why are 2006 Viper Cooper Heads $50k and I have checked and 2008 Viperx selling for $80-$90,000 the cars look identical. Why the significant price difference for similar mileage cars?
Note: a 79 TA in 1979 was approximately $10,000 which equates to $46,000 in today’s dollars so the $50k for the TA is about what it was new.
even if that trans am is mint its still been sitting for a very long time and the moment you need to do any work on it (which could be soon and wont be cheap) the cost to own is going to blow past the 50k mark and those 4000 miles wont matter much
personally i think the better choice is to find a decent one with more miles on it for much less and then budget for an engine overhaul at some point
The 2006-era car is widely considered the least compelling Viper. It had 500 horsepower and they didn't all feel like they were on the job. When they put variable valve timing in the thing, it really picked up. But the Copperheads are lovely.
I read your article on one of the last Vipers built your friend from Australia purchased and could not take it home. I was just wondering why the Copperheads were $30-$40,000 less expensive then the next years model but 500 hp seems significant. The TA is a time capsule and its value is in originality and low miles. I am sure every soft part under the hood would need addressed. It has site in a collection for 30 years and driver 6-7 times a year. I like the Copperhead for the color but I wonder what the after market support is for a low production muscle car. Everyone is corded they make everything for Firebirds/Cameros so parts are not a problem.
The late 1970's is considered to be something like "flyover country" in the product lifespan of the Trans-Am. There is a bright spot for the Bandit years, but nobody cared by the time Smokey and the Bandit II came out.
That of course changed when Knight Rider showed up a few years later...but once again, is this for investment or driving? $50K is mildly insane for a '79 Trans-Am.
I guess the questions is whether you want to drive your next purchase or just look at?
Those TAs are great looking cars, but they’re not great to drive. I’ve ALWAYS wanted one. What stopped me was actually driving one and realizing that what I really wanted was a restomodded one with an LS, 6-speed, modern brakes, etc.
The Viper is probably better to drive. I’d advise sitting in it though. No idea what Gen 3 cars are like but I went to look at a Gen 2 and my knees were in the dashboard. This dashed my childhood dreams of GTS ownership. YMMV here.
I'm having trouble remembering any 2nd gen that didn't sound like it had metal hands clapping whenever a door was slammed shut, and the stock versions of those cars were fairly terrible to drive. Even a 3rd-gen, 5.0 5-speed was an incredible improvement over the 2nd-gen cars.
I'm gonna be the divergent one and suggest the T/A is the better choice.
Firstly, I will cop to being a muscle car nerd. I just like that entire genre because they do a great job of combining aesthetic and reasonable performance.
2ndly, I will relate that the TA is a cooler car than the Viper Copperhead. With the engine turned dash panel, the very rare Hurst shifted 4 speed, and the somewhat flat seats with either pleather or leather, and maybe the t-top option, it's a very engaging and satisfying car to drive and/or just sit in and admire. The 79-81 models are peak American Musclecar in my opinion because of the Fibonacci ratios in the fenders, doors, and quarters trimmed out with ground effects and spoilers, scoops, extractors, and paint/graphics options. It is bombastic in the best ways.
3rdly, the Viper is already beginning to vanish in the aftermarket that services regular parts instead of race stuff. You'll have a car you have to search parts for in ways the F-bodies won't for the next 2 decades, probably. This makes the T/A a keeper, imo. It is at least a longer term car you can embrace instead of a track grenade you'll play hot potato with. As someone who deals with the aftermarket for Mustang and Camaro/T/A, the GM crowd are blessed with oddly higher quality reproductions, so your replacements can be had but they're also good replacements instead of cheap Temu quality. Good for keeping a car on the road instead of being a garage potato.
4rdly, the T/A is a better occasion car and a better all occasions car. If your niece gets married and wants a cool car to drive off in, the 4 speed T/A is really a great way to do that. If you want to do Power Tour or Americruise or maybe just go solo down Route 66, the T/A is suited for that. Get caught in the rain or snow? It won't bite you like a Viper will.
5thly, if you decide to part with the T/A for whatever reason- a financial pickle, just tired of it, whatever, you can sell a 4 speed original 400 car in about 30 minutes. People routinely park Vipers in the classifieds and wait, wait, wait for someone to come along looking for that Viper with that color, options package, track farkles, whatever. So, it's much less of a commitment to own a 4 speed T/A.
Viper parts are hard to come by, Pontiac parts are plentiful, Vipers sit while trying to sell, Trans Ams are easier to part with and you won't overheat in your post box of an interior like in the Viper, the Trans Am will be cool and easier to get out of.
You will look like a berk in a Viper, a true mid-life crisis that is going to Walgreens to pick-up a 6 pack of Cialis, the Trans Am already has the woman beside you massaging your leg.
You're both right in a lot of ways. I'm biased because I can make genuine backroad pace in a Copperhead that I couldn't come close to touching in a final 2nd-gen F-body. But you're both right.
I would also add that people who have been driving traction control and/or abs equipped performance cars on the street for the last 20 or so years forget just how quickly you can loop a powerful car on leaf springs or a flexy 4 link GM suspension. Movie star Eric Bana planted his Ford Falcon (ozzie not yank) into a Banyan tree because "600 horsepower on leaf springs is a bad idea" He wrecked three corners of a classic he'd owned since he was a teen trying to be a rally racer.
So, having a car that's not equipped with nannies is a different experience than being bailed out by a cpu if you go past the limit. If you're a regular track driver and you understand where the limits are on a well sorted car, or how to adjust them on a poorly sorted car, you can experience a primitive car like the T/A at a different level. For most people, these cars will bite if you boost the ponies and don't do the driver mod. So, the lower power is safer and more fun to stab and steer.
I have seen that one but it’s a little to much, not going to come down 15 large. Here is the one I have been looking at it has a few mor miles and that silver interior has not aged well in people avoid it.
The silver one is a great low maintenance and worry free colorway, has t-tops, and has the fetching light blue leather interior. Automatic is less rare. But it's still ultra low miles with only 13k on the clock. The engine is an Oldsmobile 403 inch, not a Pontiac 400. It's a low compression and middling torque beast. But it has the shaker hood and a functional air scoop operated by vacuum signal coordinated with foot on floor effort.
With the t-tops out on a sunny day, you can hear the Quadrajet secondaries open as it tries to suck small birds in to the intake tract.
Arguing about how it's not fast is like saying Sydney Sweeney would get smoked in the 100 meter event by a D1 track star from Latvia. It's slower than a v6 Camry. But it's hot.
If the seats are degraded, be aware the cost to recover the leather (and redo the foam inserts, etc. as needed) is costly. If you can live with any seat damage, you'll save yourself probably 2500 or so in upholstery work. If it's going to eat at you, figure that in to your overall costs. To be specific, it looks like this is a 10th anniversary car, which has some specific parts that include the seat upholstery that set it apart from a standard T/A of the same year.
It's a story for another day, but it was a ride I took in the backseat of a '75 TA with a leaned on 400/4-sp as a 13 y/o kid that started me on my life's trajectory, so I've got a soft spot for everything about them -- screaming chicken on the hood and all. My first car was a '68 Firebird with a 326/powerglide I bought as a 15 y/o punk from a St. Louis city cop who'd got it for a couple hundred bucks from the impound yard. I'd agree with all of this except for 2 things:
1) More is more. A V10 is more than a V8. A 5-speed is more than a 4 speed. HP wise, it's not even close. More is more and a Viper has a LOT more.
2) Every pot's got a lid, but I think the TA stopped being awesome-looking when they went to the quad headlights in '77, and the very, very, (VERY) long beak redesigned models in '79-'81 just looked silly. If you were a hick-town, white-trash, wannabe boy-racer out of the prairie in the late 70s (and I was), you stopped caring. You could watch the "performance Pontiac" (of John DeLorean) become the "pathetic Pontiac" (of plastic cladding) in real time from 1977 onward. Every iteration of it looked worse -- more cartoonish, more plasticky.
The other thing: what exactly does one do with a car 46 y/o with 4000 mi.? If you drive it, it won't have 14,000 mi., so the extra boot you paid for it is flushed away with every mile. If you keep it in its own hermetically sealed bubble, you'll have the worlds most plasticky collector car: undrivable, and sitting there rusting.
So... I do not agree, but we can agree to disagree. Again, it is my belief that peak-civilization occurred somewhere between Y2K and 2010. The Viper hits the bullseye.
1. Is this for investment purposes? If not, and you're looking for a great driver, given the wide parameters you've put in place, there are soooo many superior options out there between 1979 and 2006 alone, even sticking with the Pontiac T/A, just going with a later WS6-optioned car (3rd or 4th gen), or even going all the way up to a SS/1LE 6th-gen Camaro might be an option if you're really wanting to stick with a GM product.
Having grown up in an era where 2nd-gen F-bodies were practically...and often literally...falling out of trees (I have at least four verifiable stories of 2nd-gens crashing into trees) for giveaway prices, and having driven, worked on, and modified quite a few (I only owned one, a 1976 Rally Sport Camaro with a manual and an inline 6, I almost miss the thing occasionally), that's an evolutionary step backward on something of a galactic scale, this is 1970's General Motors we're talking about, only eclipsed by the hold-my-beer, even-worse 1980's General Motors. If I'm spending fifty large on a 2nd-gen, it had better be resto-modded with the best (not necessarily the fastest) equipment available, or it needs to be one of the more-rare cars (once again, WS6 option also works) like a 1970-1/2 Z28 (if in decent shape), or one of the early 455 S/D cars.
That '79 is going to be, at best, a museum piece, I just can't see spending $50K on any 2nd-gen unless it's some rare oddity, and you didn't mention if this was a WS6 car (should be a rear disc brake setup if it is) or if it has the 400 or Olds 403 in there.
And to be honest with you, from an investor standpoint, give it another five or ten years, when the Boomer folks who worshiped these cars are almost all entirely gone, I suspect it will be a bit difficult to unload one of these cars for even half that money, I'm already seeing quite a few for sale through various outlets that are sitting and rotting in seller garages for half or less that price. I've got an attachment for the 4-eyed Birds and T/A's as it is (my dad ran one as a funny car body briefly), and I love that the WS6 option eventually put 4-wheel disc brakes under these cars (I think '79 was the first year for that), but in the end, they're sort of meh on the evolutionary scale.
2. The Viper? It's not aging well. A lot of replacement parts have disappeared (I used to work for a guy who owned two, and I was often given the thankless task of trying to find parts for these things), and I was never really all that impressed with Vipers in the first place. I couldn't ever wedge myself into one of these things, and the guy I worked for even hated driving the things as well, but wouldn't part with them for love or money.
3. In the end, from an investment standpoint, I think that both of these options aren't the greatest choices, in that they're niche mutants from largely forgotten times, and they also aren't from the 1950/s1960's, don't have "Ferrari" or "Porsche" on their trunks, and aren't low points or mid points during their manufacturing lifespan.
If I had fifty large to blow on a toy, I could probably think of a dozen different cars to buy with that, including picking up a ridiculous Porsche Cayman S for less than $50K and then spending the rest on replacing some of the stupid things that Porsche went cheap on, picking up one of those SS-1LE Camaros I spoke of, a decent M3 of some kind, or drifting though my shortlist of oddball cars that I think I always wanted, but would probably despise within minutes of buying it, just like everything else I have already own or currently own.
It's definitely difficult if you remember the 2nd gens being dirt cheap to accept they bring real money now for the limited editions like this one.
Also, having seen enough restomods, I would never ever spend 50k on one. Most of them are poorly slapped together and need to be disassembled and properly reassembled.
A low miles limited edition is a way better deal than a restomod.
Whether or not there are better places to spend money is up to Lynn. These are the two choices being presented.
Driver quality Trans Ams look like they’re ~half as much. I’d do that. Why light $25k on fire by adding miles to a no miles car, unless you aren’t going to drive it? And if you aren’t going to drive it, what’s the point?
Those things have an uncanny ability to amplify the worst aspects of seventies and eighties American cars: squeaks, rattles, leaks, wind noise, structural rigidity issues, excess mass, excessively high centres of gravity, crash safety and so on.
They piss on the leg of every aspect of the car in one way or another and literally when it rains.
As for objective differences in performance, perhaps we should all consider an essential concept: Fun is not a number.
Arre you buying to Drive, or cruise investment show. The TA is fun in a way but theyre were not built to high quality and by modern standards pretty slow, but they are tremendous fun.
The viper, its an acquired taste but in a different performance orbit to the TA. If you already have a fast fun car for driving, and or you just want something to cruise in the TA is the way to go, and with that low mileage is a good price and will a appreciate if you don't add too many miles. However as others have said a 40 yo car is going to have old hoses worn bushings brakes that need love etc, unless that's all been done..
0. There’s NO WAY IN HELL I’m dropping $50k on the later Endura bumper - 4 hole TAs. This really shouldn’t be confused with the ownership of an earlier pre facelift 77. Yes, THOSE cars are very easily bought and sold. Trans Ams are very fickle in the exact year you pick for overall value. Just one year makes a big difference as there are too many production nuances.
1. I think the TA is currently at peak value. I don’t know your age but the prices on those are propped up by a waning generation vs an up and coming enthusiast market.
2. Paying premium for low mile cars is very catch 22. You feel guilty using it if you want to maintain that high dollar value. I just snagged a 18k mile 02 WS6 and am finding the same dilemma
3. Like the TA, years matter ALOT for a Viper. You absolutely cannot compare one with a Gen2. Aside from having a v10 they are two totally different cars. A Gen3 is more or less akin to the ownership of a 10 cylinder C6 Corvette. That is the standard of quality control and civility. Sure, they can bite but so can vette.
4. All Gen3 vipers hold low values. They will probably continue to hold low values. They are arguably the ugliest. They are quantifiably the slowest. They ALSO are known for grenading the rear ends and having an impossibility to get parts for to fix them. Comically like the early c6 parallel.
5. The Copperhead is cool and probably the best bought Gen3. It is numbered and spices up the looks. It’s still missing the later hoods, updates, roof options and mechanicals of the later cars. I was trying to snag an R title one for low 30s at one point just ‘because’, but the desire didn’t hang around long.
6. They are still strong performers as a whole and can be modified to really make some power / handle just like any other. I don’t believe they are near as hard to get specific parts for in the event of an accident like a Gen1 or 2 vehicle. Headlights are not $10k for a nice pair. The early cars had a high attrition rate of accidents, lower production numbers and more exotic construction ala clamshell hoods. Even new, they only had a limited supply of headlights etc.
7. I will agree that an F body is an easier car to live with. It’s a tame cruiser. That’s always fun. V8 noises are better. I’ll die on the hill despite the noises my Gen2 is capable of making. The Viper is geared long. They need pushed to feel exciting. They need wound up to make the noises - camming a car and doing a gear swap would change my mind a little but that’s a different argument.
I like crusing my v8 cars. I would rather tool around in my stock ws6 and doubly so in my modified 03 Cobra. All of which garnish attention so I wouldn’t weigh too heavily on how you are perceived.
A gen 1 or 2 does NOT have the curb appeal of a 3. Chances are you will blend in with c6 corvettes. 80% of the public will think you are driving a Corvette anyhow. Expect waves from passing ones and confusing looks as you meet eyes.
8. You can put people in a Trans Am if you have kids. Viper is a one trick pony. I also think it’s worth noting that the convertible top is mechanically operated and only done so when parked and the trunk is open.
9. For my $50k I’d buy an earlier TA or a primo low mile Gen3 for like $35k and go buy myself a driver quality bird to bomb around in with the change. I don’t think you’ll ever lose money on either that way.
Also I wouldn’t give a second thought about rain or snow comments with a Viper. With good modern rubber they are pussy cats if you have the loud pedal control past the age of a 16yr old. I’ve been in plenty of rain and even drove home in standing snow / slush from a freak early spring storm. I’d be more worried for water intrusions.
For hard performance metrics, you would need a full on pro touring / ultimate street car style build to make pace with a stock Gen3 at anything past a straight line.
This new light truck made in Toledo- will it be a clone of the Gladiator? They already announced a Gladiator 392 is coming, so maybe they want/need more volume and will make a Dodge, I mean Ram, Dakota 392.
the RAM spinoff never made sense to me. They're walking back the Wagoneer as a discrete brand and calling it what I presume is what everyone else has been all along, the Jeep Wagoneer.
The only reason for spinning off Ram is either so you can kill off Dodge or else you see it as a damaged brand and doesn’t have enough status to sell high dollar—and more importantly to Stellantis (ask your doctor of Stellantis is right for you) high margin vehicles.
It seemed like spin-off/cash-out prep in case - either through M&A or bankruptcy - they had to chop apart their business, separating their "high value" assets (RAM and Jeep) vs the rest.
Ofc, FCA didn't realize at the time that so long as you put V8's in a Dodge, it tended to sell better than some low-rent SUV meant for Brazil or Albania being branded as a Jeep.
Ford seems kinda interested in the same for Bronco, seeing as there aren't any blue oval logos anywhere.
If they could somehow fuck up the EV with an industrial tinged Isuzu turbo diesel, that would be the greatest fuck up possible. They're used to drilling holes in the hull, so it would be very entertaining to watch them drill a diesel into an intended EV project as a sort of idiot savant move.
A small diesel would really be the ideal power for a range generator, but it looks like they're going with the old Volt idea of a small NA gas 4cyl that only charges the batteries. Ram is going to use the Pentastar v6 to charge batteries, AND directly send juice to the motors.
Scout is supposedly doing a gas range extended version as well, which in theory will compete with Ram's REV 1500. I'd be curious to borrow either truck for a drift weekend followed by a week of commuting, and then considering if it would be worth a lease.
While the range extenders sound good in theory, I don’t have any faith in any automaker to master such complexity.
I do like the looks of the Scout.
My Dad worked for International Harvester’s steel mill in Chicago, and I remember when he was offered a healthy discount on a Scout in the 1960s. He didn’t buy one because he thought it would rust out faster in Chicago winters than his Chevy Impalas would. He was right!
I'd say the Chevy Volt/ELR mastered it pretty well. I put a few hundred miles on a 2017 Volt at my old job, and I thought it was a great car! Even when the battery died after 35 miles (I drove it harder than a "regular" person), the dashboard told me I still had a couple hundred gas powered miles left, and it got 35mpg even with me trying to wring its neck. The Ram REV in particular will have a much larger gas tank AND batteries than the Volt, so it's range will be far greater; they're touting 690 total at the moment, and even if we only see 58% of that, 400 miles is more than a lot of full ICE vehicles. My wife's Compass MIGHT make 300mi on a tank, and my Charger would squeeze out 450mi on an pure highway trip with the cruise set to 80mph.
Plus, it's generator is run the 3.6l Pentastar engine, which can crank out plenty more watts than the little 1.5l in the Gen 2 Volt to keep the E-motors fed when your foot demands it. 650hp, 610ftlbs, and a 14,000lb tow rating, AND -probably- the same towing range or better than my old Hemi powered 1500 with a 30 gallon gas tank that got 11mpg when towing. I wouldn't dare go further than 290-300mi while towing with the Hemi. If the REV can comfortably reach 400mi while towing, it would be like giving that old Hemi roughly an extra 7 gallons of gas. The REV theoretically could run the wife and I to work on pure electrons all week (especially if charged overnight at home or at work during my shift), and the gas tank would still let us take it cross-country with or without a trailer as if it were any old pickup. You can keep running it on gas after the batteries are dead, and get better MPG while doing so. It also has vehicle to home power, and while I may not rely on that in real home emergencies, it would be handy while camping or at the track. It'll have an 8 year 100k mile powertrain/bettery warranty. They also aren't locking it behind the super-luxe Tungsten trim. One will be able to order a REV Tradesman as well, which is the one I'd have, but I'm not surprised to see it's not exactly advertised that way. All the marketing is based on the $100k+ Tungsten, which does make sense as that has more "wow factor" to sway people away from other 100k vehicles. Car and Driver estimated the Tradesmen will start around 60k, and yes that is a lot, but you can't touch a v8 crew cab from anyone under 55k anyway, so why not get a more versatile powertrain? Mind, I'm suggesting that as someone who currently drives a rusty $3,000 '00 Silverado 2500 and stuffed a Ram Hemi into a tiny old Dakota. I love V8s and "right-sized" trucks. But I can still see the benefits of a gas range extended electric truck.
The Scout Terra looks good and has a cool interior but it won't have the range or capability of the Ram. Scout is claiming 500 total miles with an NA 4cyl gas engine as the generator power, which only charges the batteries instead of also powering the motors the way Ram can with its v6. The Terra only has a 10k tow rating. However, Scout claims 0-60 in 3.5sec and Ram's is 4.5sec, so it's possible Scout has more powerful E motors or a higher discharge rate, is a smaller/lighter truck, and/or doesn't have the cooling capacity for hard towing despite being quicker.
It's possible I'd like the size and quickness of the scout better for daily use, but I think the Ram will be a more capable truck when it comes to working. That is why I would be interested in using both of them, and it may end with me saying "fuck it" and hating them both as well, but I think that would be unlikely. In any event, the rust bucket Cheby would stick around because it's paid for and as trusty as a mule. It even rides like one!
The Ram spinoff makes perfect sense if you've ever been in front of one on the road. Ain't no way for them to Dodge you with that little stopping distance.... :o
We are reliably assured that any investment in the USA will always be somewhere between performative and outright kayfabe so... if Ferrari sells 5000 cars a year in the states, and their tariff load can be reduced by $20,000 each, it would balance out in just... 130 years!
Sir, you lampooned “analysts” above. One wonders why, when…
…Ferrari trades at a substantial MULTIPLE of revenue, EBITDA, and earnings. So it would not take 130 years for shareholders - the only people who really matter in Ferrariland - to benefit.
I’ve done plenty of multiple arbitrage myself; nice move for a bank to classify Onlyfans “interest” savings as fee income (high multiple) rather than credit intermediation (low multiple).
The only problem with the scenario where a $13B spend results in >$13B of "value" is... where do you get the $13B in the first place, and how do you pay it back?
Lots of ways. Elkann has a vast portfolio of interests, and the least sexy, worst performing, and most capital intensive is Stellantis. I’m sure he’d love to be rid of it to focus on Ferrari, tech, fashion, and pharma.
The Eye-ties have a notoriously nationalistic connection to their transport nameplates. I lost count of how many times Guzzi has been bailed out by "Italian Gelato Magnate #4" or whatever. It's possible that while Meloni is serving cultural knuckle sandwiches to the left the government could offer nameplates special incentives ala GM and the FedGov.
That SPQR stuff is getting pretty spicy over there in bootlandia.
Not just Italian nationalism, but an idea of a return to unified "Roman" status where Italians are seeing themselves as descendants of a great Empire. SPQR= Senate and People of Rome. So, not the Mussolini thing. Just a reviving sense of national identity and nation under the ideals that birthed and made great Western Civilization. Necessary pruning of the greatest Imperial hits, naturally.
They're not spending 13B, thats a headline filled with at best intent.
My read is tariffs are here to stay no government gives up taxes, so Stellantis is figuring they may manufacture a broad range over tie in the USA. Meanwhile as Sherman implies there is probably all sorts of side deals with the current admin to make it all look good.
Interesting to see if Stellantis survives its way more dysfunctional than GM. Maybe there is a play to spin off the US brands
Sherman is that really you??? The ACF community had set out a search and rescue operation to find you as your insightful, well reasoned, anti literate commentary had been missing not to mention Ronnie had been searching in circles for a new foil as he was sure you had fallen into a literary abyss.
Thank you for the Jedi brain post - that wraps up things my friends and I have been saying for years into a neat package. I’m always jealous of your racing stuff - I think my wife would absolutely love doing it, but north Jersey is not exactly a mecca of autosports, and the membership at Monticello is a bit out of my price range.
After wasting time and money at moticello, realized after loading up car etc, for the effort of getting there its just a few hours longer to get to the Glenn where I can run for days. Plus my Track buddies would never set foot in Monticello, sorta doucheland.
The thing about motor clubs is it limts your time and desire to run other track's, most of the drivers are not that great, and they have near unlimited budgets, the exact opposite of the true track rat.
The real upside for me was a home track allows you to adjust and hone the car, and if you got into Monticello early enough the membership could eventually be sold for a small profit. Alas my wife has used those funds for domestic purposes, but some has been retained for a harrop intercooled supercharger for the exige v6.
1) Despite amicus curiae briefs from Atlantic Legal Foundation, Landmark Legal Foundation, Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, and a group of legislators (Sen. Cruz, Sen. Blackburn, Sen. Budd, Sen. Banks, Sen. Lee, Sen. Schmitt, Rep. Babin, Rep. Gooden, Rep. Nehls), certiorari DENIED in a case challenging the illegal OPT and H-4EAD work visas. https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/DocketFiles/html/Public/24-923.html
Ah, H-1B. I met a fella from India who's in his early twenties, last weekend. He completed his undergraduate degree while in India, and moved here a couple of years ago to complete his Master's, both in Computer Science, with a focus on machine learning. While he was in school, he was being paid under the table by his uncle to work the front desk at a hotel overnight, to the tune of $8 an hour.
Now that he's got his degree, he's being sponsored by a company based here in the US and is working for them under a W2 contract as a developer. I asked him if they were paying him well, and he said they were. So well, he's making $23 an hour. $23 an hour, before taxes! For someone with a master's degree in CompSci! If that's not exploitation, I don't know what is. Exploitation of him for being paid so little, and exploitation of the system, for not having to pay an American a wage commensurate with that level of education. He didn't say which company it was, but merely that it was "big."
I'm not saying he's lying, but I live in the low cost of living south and know that Masters H1Bs in CompSci here are starting out at about 70-80k. Several companies here even under the previous admin were getting fined for not paying enough. Companies do underpay especially for starting positions relative to Bachelor's because as I understand it, The DOL has a wide range of wages to work with. What this means is undergrads get left out of jobs because they can pay an H1B the same rate as a masters.
What's most concerning is that so many departments in so many "critical infrastructure" companies (banks, semiconductors as above) are controlled by CCP members and citizens of 2 Indian states:
No, not “reformed”. Blown up completely and after some time recreated where/if it makes sense for the American population, not the corporate oligarchy.
In the fall of 'white man civilization', assuming she hadn't been stabbed in the neck on the subway, that vapid dipshit would be the concubine of some warlord (and be happy for it) until which time he got bored of her and handed her over to his grunts to run a train on. From which wounds she would gracelessly expire of sepsis in a trash heap. The End. Roll credits.
/Our heroine wakes up in a cold sweat from the trash heap dream, rolls over to fellate the man who keeps her warm, fed and with functioning indoor plumbing. Scenes of the warlord play in her head, or maybe a sparkly vampire or a minotaur.
I might point out that white Christian men spent five centuries traveling the globe, hauling the rest of mankind out of the mud and into the light of civilization, making possible the abundance that allows them to complain about stupid shit.
Oh, yes, and by "we" you mean the Egyptians. (Latin script was an evolution of Etruscan script, which itself was a version of Phoenician script, which came from Egyptian hieroglyphics.)
Since you used four zeros in your answer, would you like to also discuss the invention of the zero? ;)
If you look at the countries where the globalists have already eradicated white men, you will see that the natives quickly stop using the white man's inventions.
What some people don’t understand: if you’re a female of average size and appearance, if you’re not wearing much in the way of clothing, guys are hard-wired to sneak a peek! If one of us leers, or catcalls, or makes an inappropriate comment, that’s different! And rude!
Jack, thanks for your excellent writing, and thank you for not banning me from your site, something that happened recently when I made the mistake of commenting on a leftist blog. Evidently, the guy is open, but not open to criticism or different leaning comments. But you seem to handle the situation pretty well With your comment section. Anyway, really enjoy your ideas, especially the idea of Jedi brain.
Well, the guy I’m talking about had a extremely popular YouTube station called blue-collar logic. He was claiming that he wanted to start over, with a “real good-faith discussion”. Guess you can’t believe what some people say.
Never seen the YouTube channel, but sounds like "if you disagree with me (by holding a position which was taken as self-evident by all previous civilizations), I will grab you by the collar until you turn blue" logic.
Hey, Jack, congrats to you and your family for your various successes "at speed."
We, you and I do have something in common. Previously I mentioned I have no interest in automobile racing. We have both done bagels. Were you actually in the business, baking bagels for sale?
I made them at home for friends and family. They were very good and I was not "snotty" about the water we used (see New York bagel bakers).
Final thought: PLANET OF THE APES must champion chimps, right? Why wasn't Jane Goodall featured in at least one of those films?
"Final thought: PLANET OF THE APES must champion chimps, right? Why wasn't Jane Goodall featured in at least one of those films?"
I'm thinking that nobody thought to ask to see if she would have been interested, as I'm recalling the Gary Larson/The Far Side cartoon (according to him, anyway) where he poked fun at her ("that Jane Goodall Tramp"), everyone who worked around Goodall lost their minds, and she couldn't understand why they lost their sh!t, she thought it was hilarious.
Having heard her speak in person, also not entirely convinced that she would have pulled off a guest-starring spot, although it would have been freaking awesome to have given her a minor walk-on role while in the skin.
My high school lit teacher, my #1 teacher, IMHO, was an early “Far Side” fan! (Also “A Christmas Story!”) Thank you, Mrs. Viv Hutchisson, for the influences on my sense of humor!
That one is up there, though! Along with “The real reason dinosaurs became extinct!”
I second "Midvale School for the Gifted"! My wife and I just celebrated 36 years of marriage and she still busts that one out on me (only when I need/deserve it)!
Well, they had chimps, gorillas and orangutans. I read that during breaks in the filming, the actors would hang out with others in the same makeup and exclude the others. That'd be fertile ground for some psych student to research
You referenced the NYTimes…their record is intact of getting everything wrong. It would be fascinating to know if their writers are really this stupid or are they simply giving the editors the manure they want. Perhaps both are true.
"It would be fascinating to know if their writers are really this stupid or are they simply giving the editors the manure they want."
For whatever reason, my spouse insists on listening to NPR, and the NYT's "The Daily" radio show where we get to hear the totally-not-one-sided-at-all-no-just-ask-me Rachel Abrams and various other faux-journalists who failed at hiding their overeducated, Cali Valley Girl speech patterns. I have no idea why my spouse listens to these people, it's journalism of the lowest order (hey, maybe there was an actual reason for that spending cut?), it's all emotional rabble rousing, and I spend most of my time shouting at the radio whenever these squeaky-teenaged-sounding psychopaths are on the air.
I find myself unable to listen to their drivel (and I've tried), but I generally sound like someone with Tourette's Syndrome after a couple of minutes. I read the Sunday NY Timnes just to torture myself. Their narrative has gotten so tired that even they must be exhausted pushing it. The ploy is simple...they take one example of any situation, and extrapolate it out to be the norm. Decades ago, it truly was the "paper of record". Today...it's the paper for the bottom of your parrot's cage.
My favorite thing about NPR is their afternoon show named “All Things Considered”, because they only consider the same 5 things over and over: illegals, trans, Palestinians, LGTBTBBQs, and Nazis.
It is fun to hear them twist any story, no matter how far away it is in relation to their 5 subjects, back to their required 5 subjects.
One of their stories could start with a bagel shop, but by the end 1-5 of their 5 required subjects will be mentioned.
I consume a lot of right wing media (bc I already know how my side thinks), and it seems they're focused on the same 5 things too, mostly.
We want a media that's essentially investigative and skeptical, and its biggest failing over the years has been being less so with the Dems, while also over-relying on data but under-engaging with the people affected by it.
But I just don't see that self-reflection in right-wing media. Relevant to the trans-wringing in the thread below, Bari can't even issue a retraction for the Free Press' huge "trans whistleblower" piece in MO after it couldn't stand up to basic fact checking. And now she's in charge of CBS News.
And the WH has banned reporters from asking for information that hasn't been already pre-authorized by DoD... which is literally a definition of propaganda. All the while cosplaying the plot from Clear and Present Danger in Venezuela.
...and maybe slipping a soldier or two into Gaza later.
Agreed, that why I don’t follow right wing shows either. Fox is unlistenable to me, for example, no different than CNN is.
Remember those Girls Gone Wild videos on late night commercials from decades ago? That’s what our political media is now. The right is Dems Gone Wild and the left is R’s Gone Wild. No thanks to either, but I’m not the target market anyway.
They’re both going for the lowest info voter so it holds no interest for me, along with the hair-on-fire news cycle BS.
My filters for all news and information are:
-What’s the macro view on a story? Stories with an intentional number of minute details are there to obfuscate, because there’s always a detail to support a position on either side, or worse, to intentionally confuse.
-An important feature of the macro view is asking “Cui bono?” Who benefits? Too much detail or force fed information is meant to disguise who benefits. You really need to know who benefits to understand information. Plus “cui bono” also applies to who is presenting the information.
-What is the dog that’s not barking? Or Bastiat’s version: “What is seen and what is not seen?” What does the information that’s being presented want you to look at, but more importantly **what does it NOT want you to look at**? Misdirection is a primary tool of operators, and you mustn’t fall for it.
When you apply these filters to any information, you see the game that’s being played by either side, and once you know the game it’s easier to see the truth.
Note that my filters are not political, just general tools to apply to any information or situation.
"An important feature of the macro view is asking “Cui bono?”
100%
If this WH wanted to flex its Constitution-allergic executive authority in a way that most Americans would appreciate, it would revisit or repeal Section 230.
It (very) nominally still protects free speech online, but it now primarily shields tech from liability when pushing * algorithmic * speech ahead of community speech. And by participating in this circle-jerk of opinion reinforcement, tech gets to monetize our attention and advertisers to get micro-target the thinnest slices of identity politics.
Scratch that. BRAND politics, bc ... duh.
They say politics flows downstream from culture, but culture flows downstream from Kapital.
Behind every clip of stupid rhetoric on either side, someone is making a buck.
Both sides are guilty of essentially ignoring the #1 story of our times: the Bharat War of Colonization. Almost as though they are INTENTIONALLY distracting from it because the Davos/WEF types support it.
One right-wing source has a 64-page magazine issue about it for October, but even they don't get the terminology right: https://go.wnd.com/outsourcedamerica/
It’s the only station that I can pick up consistently in the car as I go up and down the mountains here in NC.
Like you, I love to hear them twist themselves around with their pretzel logic to end up with a woke ending. It’s entertaining and hilarious! I wonder if at this point it’s just a reflex for them?
I also love how all the female announcers have these weird affected mousy voices that are totally unpleasant to listen to. Like they’re hired just for their annoying voices.
On the semi serious side, I do like the brief crazy-left updates they provide to see what they’re talking about.
It’s almost hard to believe that they can keep up their delusional takes for many more years without getting committed to the loony bin.
Unfortunately, the vocal fry is just a generational thing. You get the same intonations from younger reporters on the right... just when they're not yelling.
The seams are starting to show around age and inexperience. I noticed this most during post-COVID recovery, where the non-halo NYT econ reporters were writing as if they'd never lived through a recession before... because they hadn't. There were many things about the recovery that could've been reported better had the team lived through - and reported on - the post-2008 crash.
And while it is obvious gospel here at ACF, when I once mentioned in passing to a NYT econ reporter (friend of a friend) that DEALERS were the OEM's customers, not us, he just stared at me like I was talking about particle physics.
Back in the day, many NYT reporters came from those industries. William Cohan was at Lazard and Merrill. William Langewiesche was a pilot. Liz Rosenthal worked in the ER. Do any news outlets even have an auto-veteran journalist?
I have subscribed to The Ankler in the past (just out of curiosity), but I don’t work in Hollywood. I do have a very good friend who reads it - he was a co-founder of Regal Cinemas and led the sale to KKR way back when.
He is a small / solo VC now but still has interests in theater businesses in developing markets where they remain popular.
Puck is buying Airmail; Jon Kelly got his start under Graydon, recall. I’d much rather read Puck than The Free Press; one wonders what The Free Press will cover now that Kushner has delivered peace in the Middle East?
"I'm going to rent one of those piano-throwing trebuchets to casually toss him several hundred feet into the air in an attempt to try to capture some of those swanky drone shots!"
1. "Someday they’ll find five hundred hours of music D'Angelo decided not to release, and it will all be fantastic."
I am reminded of Prince's entire published music catalog, and my attempt to slog my way through it, hoping to find another Purple Rain in the mix somewhere, and coming away from the experience with the distinct feeling of "now there's a month's worth of lifespan I'll never get back". And apparently Prince...along with Eddie Van Halen...have bazillions of unreleased albums just tucked away (there's also apparently an entire Duran Duran album buried...was supposed to come out after "Astronaut"), waiting to be dumped, I mean unleashed, I mean released to the public someday. Given Kevin Smith's assessment of Prince (there's a mildly hilarious story about Smith being selected to do a documentary out there), yeah, methinks that anyone who claims to be hiding thirty albums or more worth of content needs to be taken in the same context of "plague rats, avoid".
2. "It’s very easy to demonize people or groups you’ve never met or barely know."
If you're particularly good at it, there is potential for fun and profit.
3. "We can close by noting that Jedi Brain and Avatar Brain are both, at their root, comforting theories of mind. After all, if defeating evil is as simple as blowing up one space station, then it’s possible, right? And if white men really are the source of all the world’s evil, well, aren’t they vastly outnumbered by the good guys? If only reality were as simple as an animated film… or even as simple as our favorite non-animated films."
I am unsure if these two groups are poster children for Dunning-Kruger (or at least my understanding of DK, anyway), or are felony-level data cherry pickers, or are a combination of both. It's mildly terrifying as to how seriously these people are convinced by the blatherings they emit.
4. In regards to Stellantis and reinvesting in 'Murica, that's great and everything, but nobody in their right mind (in my isolated universe, anyway) wants to own anything built by them, nor wants to work in any of their dealerships. Given the most recent gaffe by Stellantis ("Our Jeeps are made out of Legos, because they're always becoming bricks!"), yeah, at some point this mighty, blundering cruise vessel known as the U.S.S. Internet Connectivity needs to make its final port of call to the Gadani Ship Scrapyard and be scrapped once and for all. And don't even get me started on the engineering rush to the bottom of the other 'Murican truckmakers.
5. "Atari Finally Buried Each And Every One Of Those F**kin’ “E.T.” Cartridges In A Landfill, Won’t Make Any More Of Them; Analysts Surprised To See The Stock Rise"
An odd side note: I worked with someone some years ago who claimed to be one of the head shipping guys at Atari, he had some Polaroids, spoke of amazing Friday parties, and also mentioned a Faraday cage in which some engineers worked and developed a lot of the standup Arcade games that Atari was famous for (of which random people were pulled in to test).
Much hay was made over Ernest Cline's 2014 discovery of the ET games (and others) in a New Mexico landfill (by the way, his books are absolutely terrible, if you find a copy of "Ready Player None", burn it), but the friend laughed about it when I showed him the link to this story, and he finally responded with, "but what about the site in Ireland?"
Pardon?
"Yeah, I helped set up equal-sized shipments for two dump sites, one in New Mexico and one in Ireland."
Okay, why Ireland?
"F*** if I know? Atari was actually dying after they screwed up the 2600 Pac-Man release, ET was simply the last little nudge over the edge. From what I remember, an assload of ET games went to New Mexico, but we shipped just about as many to Ireland. Have you ever tried to ship a million or so game cartridges anywhere in a hurry? We were just trying to find places out of the way to dump all of this crap."
He's sticking to the story about there being a site in Ireland.
I was guessing the DeLorean factory in Belfast, given the absolute state of Belfast in that era even before Thatcher's veto of government support, but apparently it's a thriving "industrial estate:"
I'm thinking that given the state of Ireland at the time, if this Irish burial actually happened, kind of surprised that it wouldn't have generated a lot of positive press for that country, "this is the best thing to happen to Ireland in at least a century, not just any country is allowed the prestige of surreptitiously burying a lot of unwanted plastic home video gaming system cartridges and then sealing off the lot in concrete for a rapidly devolving American company!" They could have made a big to-do about the whole thing, and then gathered all 741 still-living Irish male actors with the last name of "Byrne" together to dedicate the site.
Could have something to do with how tech companies in the 90’s ran all of their ROW revenue through a company in the Republic of Ireland because of that country’s generous tax laws to get tech companies to locate operations there.
1. I just popped into dear old malfunctioning Google to try to put "Atari, Ireland" into the search bar, came back as "urban legend".
2. The guy who told me this wasn't exactly the type of expressive, creative type of guy who was voted "Most Likely To Come Up With A Completely BullshIt Story About The Last Days Of Atari" during his senior year of high school, so I'm almost sort of possibly likely to maybe perhaps somewhat kinda believe the guy.
3. I'm thinking that Ernest Cline probably knows where the Ireland site is (if it even exists), but given that maybe four people recognized who he was in New Mexico in 2014, I'm not sure he would be able to handle the shock of that massive number of fans who can recognize him being reduced down to only two or three, so we're not likely to ever discover the location of that cache.
This is the funny thing about this Atari story: We tell everyone and their third cousin where we bury radioactive waste, but we desperately try to hide nearly a million Atari cartridges from the view of prying eyes.
DeNiro is just an actor. You cant expect anything of them. Steve McQueen was right; it's a profession for sissies and drama queens.
I do find it amusing that he never, and I mean not one time, had a half decent looking girlfriend. The average assistant manager at Wendy's has a hotter chick than De Niro ever did.
That's the funny thing with De Niro, the moment he decides that he's more than an actor and goes off script, most everyone who sees him recoils in horror and says this:
DeNiro is one of those guys who I don’t ever want to listen to unless someone else has written his words for him. Whenever he tries to write his own material he sounds unhinged.
We started Enterprise as our new family show about a month ago. We should be wrapping up season one next week. It is my first time through since broadcast and I KNOW it gets better after season 1.
The surprising thing is that it is pretty OK from the get go. It is modern enough, they only take about 5 episodes to figure out stuff that absolutely doesn't work, unlike TNG which took 2 seasons, and it isn't weighed down by too much canon. I think my daughter will enjoy TNG a lot more having Enterprise as her introduction.
All of it is a comedown after finishing the Battlestar reboot, and she has enjoyed Stargate since before it was even reasonably appropriate.
Personally, I LIKED the way Galactica ended, but I wouldn't call it a family show if we're including kids. Stargate, yeah, absolutely. It's nice to see a sci-fi show where America is not only still around, it's one of the heroes.
The fourth and final season of Enterprise was really good. Several really good multi-part story arcs that showed if they were allowed to go further they'd have made some more great stuff. BUT do not watch the final episode. The penultimate episode serves as a fine series finale. The final episode aired was atrocious and everyone involved wishes they could take it back. We will never watch it again.
Non sequitur: I'm about halfway through "Sunday Driver" by Brock Yates and it's a pretty good read. The Adobe file says 280 pages so it's reasonably breezy.
As of five minutes ago, it's still listed at Anna's Archive. Enjoy.
This is just some extra flotsam & jetsam related to the book, in case anybody is interested.
- There's an article about Lee "Ironman" Irons at the Blacktop Magazine website:
https://blacktopmagazine.com/cycle-stunt-legend-lee-ironman-irons/
His account of injuries incurred at Ontario Motor Speedway differ from Yates' book. I'm not calling anybody a liar, but stuntmen never tell anybody just how often they end up in emergency rooms.
There are also videos of his appearance on "THRILLSEEKERS!" (with CHUCK CONNORS!) on YouTube.
- If anybody is wondering what Masten Gregory's "drawl" sounded like, archive.org has the CBS network coverage of the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix. They interview him briefly about fourteen minutes in where he discusses the new 1.5 litre formula.
- Yates' instructor at the Bondurant school, Warren Wilbur Shaw Jr., still seems to be kicking around and actually involved in history projects at IMS.
- If you go out to the YouTubes and look for "Bob Bondurant Playlist", you will find vintage footage of the school at OMS. This includes the ambulance which may be the facility unit that hauled off Swede Savage after his big wreck in the Questor Grand Prix.
- Finally, Dan Gurney was inspired to take that infamous road trip with Brock Yates after reading a specific Ayn Rand essay: "THE MORATORIUM ON BRAINS"
She used this title for:
a) A chapter in Atlas Shrugged.
b) A recorded lecture in Boston she gave at The Ford Hall Forum.
c) A two part essay in the newsletter that her organization sent out weekly to subscribers.
The essay is available at Anna's Archive listed as "The Ayn Rand Letter (October 1971 to January 1972)".
The dates in the letter line up nicely with Gurney jumping on the plane to New York to drive the Ferrari.
So, there you go, some glistening nuggets to admire in the light.
Question for the learned ACF Community:
I have the opportunity to purchase a 1979 Trans Am 400 4-Speed with 14,000 miles for the princely sum of $50,000.
Or
A 2006 Viper Cooper Head for the same with 14,000 miles.
My question is: why are 2006 Viper Cooper Heads $50k and I have checked and 2008 Viperx selling for $80-$90,000 the cars look identical. Why the significant price difference for similar mileage cars?
Note: a 79 TA in 1979 was approximately $10,000 which equates to $46,000 in today’s dollars so the $50k for the TA is about what it was new.
You mean a 2005 Copperhead like this: https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2005-dodge-viper-srt-10-roadster-31/ ?
‘79 TA has smog choked low hp, plus even with low miles will need a lot of refurbishing.
even if that trans am is mint its still been sitting for a very long time and the moment you need to do any work on it (which could be soon and wont be cheap) the cost to own is going to blow past the 50k mark and those 4000 miles wont matter much
personally i think the better choice is to find a decent one with more miles on it for much less and then budget for an engine overhaul at some point
vipers are always cool though
You'll enjoy the Copperhead a lot more.
The 2006-era car is widely considered the least compelling Viper. It had 500 horsepower and they didn't all feel like they were on the job. When they put variable valve timing in the thing, it really picked up. But the Copperheads are lovely.
I read your article on one of the last Vipers built your friend from Australia purchased and could not take it home. I was just wondering why the Copperheads were $30-$40,000 less expensive then the next years model but 500 hp seems significant. The TA is a time capsule and its value is in originality and low miles. I am sure every soft part under the hood would need addressed. It has site in a collection for 30 years and driver 6-7 times a year. I like the Copperhead for the color but I wonder what the after market support is for a low production muscle car. Everyone is corded they make everything for Firebirds/Cameros so parts are not a problem.
The late 1970's is considered to be something like "flyover country" in the product lifespan of the Trans-Am. There is a bright spot for the Bandit years, but nobody cared by the time Smokey and the Bandit II came out.
That of course changed when Knight Rider showed up a few years later...but once again, is this for investment or driving? $50K is mildly insane for a '79 Trans-Am.
Viper!
I guess the questions is whether you want to drive your next purchase or just look at?
Those TAs are great looking cars, but they’re not great to drive. I’ve ALWAYS wanted one. What stopped me was actually driving one and realizing that what I really wanted was a restomodded one with an LS, 6-speed, modern brakes, etc.
The Viper is probably better to drive. I’d advise sitting in it though. No idea what Gen 3 cars are like but I went to look at a Gen 2 and my knees were in the dashboard. This dashed my childhood dreams of GTS ownership. YMMV here.
☝️
This.
I'm having trouble remembering any 2nd gen that didn't sound like it had metal hands clapping whenever a door was slammed shut, and the stock versions of those cars were fairly terrible to drive. Even a 3rd-gen, 5.0 5-speed was an incredible improvement over the 2nd-gen cars.
To fit in the Viper? To quote Sir Mix-A-Lot:
"Only if she five-three"
I'm gonna be the divergent one and suggest the T/A is the better choice.
Firstly, I will cop to being a muscle car nerd. I just like that entire genre because they do a great job of combining aesthetic and reasonable performance.
2ndly, I will relate that the TA is a cooler car than the Viper Copperhead. With the engine turned dash panel, the very rare Hurst shifted 4 speed, and the somewhat flat seats with either pleather or leather, and maybe the t-top option, it's a very engaging and satisfying car to drive and/or just sit in and admire. The 79-81 models are peak American Musclecar in my opinion because of the Fibonacci ratios in the fenders, doors, and quarters trimmed out with ground effects and spoilers, scoops, extractors, and paint/graphics options. It is bombastic in the best ways.
3rdly, the Viper is already beginning to vanish in the aftermarket that services regular parts instead of race stuff. You'll have a car you have to search parts for in ways the F-bodies won't for the next 2 decades, probably. This makes the T/A a keeper, imo. It is at least a longer term car you can embrace instead of a track grenade you'll play hot potato with. As someone who deals with the aftermarket for Mustang and Camaro/T/A, the GM crowd are blessed with oddly higher quality reproductions, so your replacements can be had but they're also good replacements instead of cheap Temu quality. Good for keeping a car on the road instead of being a garage potato.
4rdly, the T/A is a better occasion car and a better all occasions car. If your niece gets married and wants a cool car to drive off in, the 4 speed T/A is really a great way to do that. If you want to do Power Tour or Americruise or maybe just go solo down Route 66, the T/A is suited for that. Get caught in the rain or snow? It won't bite you like a Viper will.
5thly, if you decide to part with the T/A for whatever reason- a financial pickle, just tired of it, whatever, you can sell a 4 speed original 400 car in about 30 minutes. People routinely park Vipers in the classifieds and wait, wait, wait for someone to come along looking for that Viper with that color, options package, track farkles, whatever. So, it's much less of a commitment to own a 4 speed T/A.
This is right on the money
Viper parts are hard to come by, Pontiac parts are plentiful, Vipers sit while trying to sell, Trans Ams are easier to part with and you won't overheat in your post box of an interior like in the Viper, the Trans Am will be cool and easier to get out of.
You will look like a berk in a Viper, a true mid-life crisis that is going to Walgreens to pick-up a 6 pack of Cialis, the Trans Am already has the woman beside you massaging your leg.
You're both right in a lot of ways. I'm biased because I can make genuine backroad pace in a Copperhead that I couldn't come close to touching in a final 2nd-gen F-body. But you're both right.
Here is the TA
https://www.orlandoclassiccars.net/vehicles/1364/1979-pontiac-trans-am
Cool site, lots of nice looking cars there
Are some of the prices out of line for a couple of those? $26,900 for a 2008 Grand Marquis seems a little steep, even if it’s only got 8k.
the ta wont bite you becuase it doesnt have any teeth
Yes. They are not fast by modern standards. But they're a fun classic.
I would also add that people who have been driving traction control and/or abs equipped performance cars on the street for the last 20 or so years forget just how quickly you can loop a powerful car on leaf springs or a flexy 4 link GM suspension. Movie star Eric Bana planted his Ford Falcon (ozzie not yank) into a Banyan tree because "600 horsepower on leaf springs is a bad idea" He wrecked three corners of a classic he'd owned since he was a teen trying to be a rally racer.
So, having a car that's not equipped with nannies is a different experience than being bailed out by a cpu if you go past the limit. If you're a regular track driver and you understand where the limits are on a well sorted car, or how to adjust them on a poorly sorted car, you can experience a primitive car like the T/A at a different level. For most people, these cars will bite if you boost the ponies and don't do the driver mod. So, the lower power is safer and more fun to stab and steer.
here is the TA
https://www.orlandoclassiccars.net/vehicles/1364/1979-pontiac-trans-am
There is a low miles 400/4 speed car in that same field of auction vehicles, if you want a rare blue chip model for an investment.
9k miles and dark blue 79'.
https://www.orlandoclassiccars.net/vehicles/1321/1979-pontiac-trans-am
I have seen that one but it’s a little to much, not going to come down 15 large. Here is the one I have been looking at it has a few mor miles and that silver interior has not aged well in people avoid it.
https://www.orlandoclassiccars.net/vehicles/1364/1979-pontiac-trans-am
The silver one is a great low maintenance and worry free colorway, has t-tops, and has the fetching light blue leather interior. Automatic is less rare. But it's still ultra low miles with only 13k on the clock. The engine is an Oldsmobile 403 inch, not a Pontiac 400. It's a low compression and middling torque beast. But it has the shaker hood and a functional air scoop operated by vacuum signal coordinated with foot on floor effort.
With the t-tops out on a sunny day, you can hear the Quadrajet secondaries open as it tries to suck small birds in to the intake tract.
Arguing about how it's not fast is like saying Sydney Sweeney would get smoked in the 100 meter event by a D1 track star from Latvia. It's slower than a v6 Camry. But it's hot.
If the seats are degraded, be aware the cost to recover the leather (and redo the foam inserts, etc. as needed) is costly. If you can live with any seat damage, you'll save yourself probably 2500 or so in upholstery work. If it's going to eat at you, figure that in to your overall costs. To be specific, it looks like this is a 10th anniversary car, which has some specific parts that include the seat upholstery that set it apart from a standard T/A of the same year.
It's a story for another day, but it was a ride I took in the backseat of a '75 TA with a leaned on 400/4-sp as a 13 y/o kid that started me on my life's trajectory, so I've got a soft spot for everything about them -- screaming chicken on the hood and all. My first car was a '68 Firebird with a 326/powerglide I bought as a 15 y/o punk from a St. Louis city cop who'd got it for a couple hundred bucks from the impound yard. I'd agree with all of this except for 2 things:
1) More is more. A V10 is more than a V8. A 5-speed is more than a 4 speed. HP wise, it's not even close. More is more and a Viper has a LOT more.
2) Every pot's got a lid, but I think the TA stopped being awesome-looking when they went to the quad headlights in '77, and the very, very, (VERY) long beak redesigned models in '79-'81 just looked silly. If you were a hick-town, white-trash, wannabe boy-racer out of the prairie in the late 70s (and I was), you stopped caring. You could watch the "performance Pontiac" (of John DeLorean) become the "pathetic Pontiac" (of plastic cladding) in real time from 1977 onward. Every iteration of it looked worse -- more cartoonish, more plasticky.
The other thing: what exactly does one do with a car 46 y/o with 4000 mi.? If you drive it, it won't have 14,000 mi., so the extra boot you paid for it is flushed away with every mile. If you keep it in its own hermetically sealed bubble, you'll have the worlds most plasticky collector car: undrivable, and sitting there rusting.
So... I do not agree, but we can agree to disagree. Again, it is my belief that peak-civilization occurred somewhere between Y2K and 2010. The Viper hits the bullseye.
I agree re ‘birds; I've said it before, to me peak Firebird are 73-74 Formula. TAs are too overdone and common.
TA’s might be common online, but they’re definitely not common when you’re driving around in one.
I’m with Andrew. The TA is a classic
Much easier to enjoy the TA and then sell it after you get your fill, than trying to sell the Viper some day.
The Viper will obviously drive better, but I would much rather look at the TA in my garage.
This
1. Is this for investment purposes? If not, and you're looking for a great driver, given the wide parameters you've put in place, there are soooo many superior options out there between 1979 and 2006 alone, even sticking with the Pontiac T/A, just going with a later WS6-optioned car (3rd or 4th gen), or even going all the way up to a SS/1LE 6th-gen Camaro might be an option if you're really wanting to stick with a GM product.
Having grown up in an era where 2nd-gen F-bodies were practically...and often literally...falling out of trees (I have at least four verifiable stories of 2nd-gens crashing into trees) for giveaway prices, and having driven, worked on, and modified quite a few (I only owned one, a 1976 Rally Sport Camaro with a manual and an inline 6, I almost miss the thing occasionally), that's an evolutionary step backward on something of a galactic scale, this is 1970's General Motors we're talking about, only eclipsed by the hold-my-beer, even-worse 1980's General Motors. If I'm spending fifty large on a 2nd-gen, it had better be resto-modded with the best (not necessarily the fastest) equipment available, or it needs to be one of the more-rare cars (once again, WS6 option also works) like a 1970-1/2 Z28 (if in decent shape), or one of the early 455 S/D cars.
That '79 is going to be, at best, a museum piece, I just can't see spending $50K on any 2nd-gen unless it's some rare oddity, and you didn't mention if this was a WS6 car (should be a rear disc brake setup if it is) or if it has the 400 or Olds 403 in there.
And to be honest with you, from an investor standpoint, give it another five or ten years, when the Boomer folks who worshiped these cars are almost all entirely gone, I suspect it will be a bit difficult to unload one of these cars for even half that money, I'm already seeing quite a few for sale through various outlets that are sitting and rotting in seller garages for half or less that price. I've got an attachment for the 4-eyed Birds and T/A's as it is (my dad ran one as a funny car body briefly), and I love that the WS6 option eventually put 4-wheel disc brakes under these cars (I think '79 was the first year for that), but in the end, they're sort of meh on the evolutionary scale.
2. The Viper? It's not aging well. A lot of replacement parts have disappeared (I used to work for a guy who owned two, and I was often given the thankless task of trying to find parts for these things), and I was never really all that impressed with Vipers in the first place. I couldn't ever wedge myself into one of these things, and the guy I worked for even hated driving the things as well, but wouldn't part with them for love or money.
3. In the end, from an investment standpoint, I think that both of these options aren't the greatest choices, in that they're niche mutants from largely forgotten times, and they also aren't from the 1950/s1960's, don't have "Ferrari" or "Porsche" on their trunks, and aren't low points or mid points during their manufacturing lifespan.
If I had fifty large to blow on a toy, I could probably think of a dozen different cars to buy with that, including picking up a ridiculous Porsche Cayman S for less than $50K and then spending the rest on replacing some of the stupid things that Porsche went cheap on, picking up one of those SS-1LE Camaros I spoke of, a decent M3 of some kind, or drifting though my shortlist of oddball cars that I think I always wanted, but would probably despise within minutes of buying it, just like everything else I have already own or currently own.
Here is the Viper
https://www.survivor-cars.com/vehicles/1347/2005-dodge-viper-srt-10-copperhead-edition
Here is the TA
https://www.orlandoclassiccars.net/vehicles/1364/1979-pontiac-trans-am
It's definitely difficult if you remember the 2nd gens being dirt cheap to accept they bring real money now for the limited editions like this one.
Also, having seen enough restomods, I would never ever spend 50k on one. Most of them are poorly slapped together and need to be disassembled and properly reassembled.
A low miles limited edition is a way better deal than a restomod.
Whether or not there are better places to spend money is up to Lynn. These are the two choices being presented.
Driver quality Trans Ams look like they’re ~half as much. I’d do that. Why light $25k on fire by adding miles to a no miles car, unless you aren’t going to drive it? And if you aren’t going to drive it, what’s the point?
Here’s the TA
https://www.orlandoclassiccars.net/vehicles/1364/1979-pontiac-trans-am
That's a beautiful car.
It is pretty. 50k is a lot of money! *
*Im poor again.
You can drive the TA another 10k miles and it won’t appreciably affect the price.
T-tops are the kiss of death.
Those things have an uncanny ability to amplify the worst aspects of seventies and eighties American cars: squeaks, rattles, leaks, wind noise, structural rigidity issues, excess mass, excessively high centres of gravity, crash safety and so on.
They piss on the leg of every aspect of the car in one way or another and literally when it rains.
As for objective differences in performance, perhaps we should all consider an essential concept: Fun is not a number.
But I'm not telling you who to marry.
Buy what you want and good luck.
thats what im saying
Arre you buying to Drive, or cruise investment show. The TA is fun in a way but theyre were not built to high quality and by modern standards pretty slow, but they are tremendous fun.
The viper, its an acquired taste but in a different performance orbit to the TA. If you already have a fast fun car for driving, and or you just want something to cruise in the TA is the way to go, and with that low mileage is a good price and will a appreciate if you don't add too many miles. However as others have said a 40 yo car is going to have old hoses worn bushings brakes that need love etc, unless that's all been done..
Going to give my potentially unwanted $.02
0. There’s NO WAY IN HELL I’m dropping $50k on the later Endura bumper - 4 hole TAs. This really shouldn’t be confused with the ownership of an earlier pre facelift 77. Yes, THOSE cars are very easily bought and sold. Trans Ams are very fickle in the exact year you pick for overall value. Just one year makes a big difference as there are too many production nuances.
1. I think the TA is currently at peak value. I don’t know your age but the prices on those are propped up by a waning generation vs an up and coming enthusiast market.
2. Paying premium for low mile cars is very catch 22. You feel guilty using it if you want to maintain that high dollar value. I just snagged a 18k mile 02 WS6 and am finding the same dilemma
3. Like the TA, years matter ALOT for a Viper. You absolutely cannot compare one with a Gen2. Aside from having a v10 they are two totally different cars. A Gen3 is more or less akin to the ownership of a 10 cylinder C6 Corvette. That is the standard of quality control and civility. Sure, they can bite but so can vette.
4. All Gen3 vipers hold low values. They will probably continue to hold low values. They are arguably the ugliest. They are quantifiably the slowest. They ALSO are known for grenading the rear ends and having an impossibility to get parts for to fix them. Comically like the early c6 parallel.
5. The Copperhead is cool and probably the best bought Gen3. It is numbered and spices up the looks. It’s still missing the later hoods, updates, roof options and mechanicals of the later cars. I was trying to snag an R title one for low 30s at one point just ‘because’, but the desire didn’t hang around long.
6. They are still strong performers as a whole and can be modified to really make some power / handle just like any other. I don’t believe they are near as hard to get specific parts for in the event of an accident like a Gen1 or 2 vehicle. Headlights are not $10k for a nice pair. The early cars had a high attrition rate of accidents, lower production numbers and more exotic construction ala clamshell hoods. Even new, they only had a limited supply of headlights etc.
7. I will agree that an F body is an easier car to live with. It’s a tame cruiser. That’s always fun. V8 noises are better. I’ll die on the hill despite the noises my Gen2 is capable of making. The Viper is geared long. They need pushed to feel exciting. They need wound up to make the noises - camming a car and doing a gear swap would change my mind a little but that’s a different argument.
I like crusing my v8 cars. I would rather tool around in my stock ws6 and doubly so in my modified 03 Cobra. All of which garnish attention so I wouldn’t weigh too heavily on how you are perceived.
A gen 1 or 2 does NOT have the curb appeal of a 3. Chances are you will blend in with c6 corvettes. 80% of the public will think you are driving a Corvette anyhow. Expect waves from passing ones and confusing looks as you meet eyes.
8. You can put people in a Trans Am if you have kids. Viper is a one trick pony. I also think it’s worth noting that the convertible top is mechanically operated and only done so when parked and the trunk is open.
9. For my $50k I’d buy an earlier TA or a primo low mile Gen3 for like $35k and go buy myself a driver quality bird to bomb around in with the change. I don’t think you’ll ever lose money on either that way.
Also I wouldn’t give a second thought about rain or snow comments with a Viper. With good modern rubber they are pussy cats if you have the loud pedal control past the age of a 16yr old. I’ve been in plenty of rain and even drove home in standing snow / slush from a freak early spring storm. I’d be more worried for water intrusions.
For hard performance metrics, you would need a full on pro touring / ultimate street car style build to make pace with a stock Gen3 at anything past a straight line.
Firsties?
See also: Stellantis Bricks
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/10/software-update-bricks-some-jeep-4xe-hybrids-over-the-weekend/
Covered on Sunday! The news is here first!
I wanted to get in a Lego joke but forgot about it.
Sometimes the timing isn't right and something doesn't work out so you just have to lego.
Of my eggo!
This new light truck made in Toledo- will it be a clone of the Gladiator? They already announced a Gladiator 392 is coming, so maybe they want/need more volume and will make a Dodge, I mean Ram, Dakota 392.
the RAM spinoff never made sense to me. They're walking back the Wagoneer as a discrete brand and calling it what I presume is what everyone else has been all along, the Jeep Wagoneer.
The only reason for spinning off Ram is either so you can kill off Dodge or else you see it as a damaged brand and doesn’t have enough status to sell high dollar—and more importantly to Stellantis (ask your doctor of Stellantis is right for you) high margin vehicles.
It seemed like spin-off/cash-out prep in case - either through M&A or bankruptcy - they had to chop apart their business, separating their "high value" assets (RAM and Jeep) vs the rest.
Ofc, FCA didn't realize at the time that so long as you put V8's in a Dodge, it tended to sell better than some low-rent SUV meant for Brazil or Albania being branded as a Jeep.
Ford seems kinda interested in the same for Bronco, seeing as there aren't any blue oval logos anywhere.
Bronco could be a separate brand very easily. The strong sales of the "Diet Bronco" suggest it.
VW could be selling 200,000 Scouts as easy as falling out of bed right now if they hadn't insisted on making them golf carts.
They'll never do it because they've decided to make Hummer an all-EV brand but the Hummer HX concept from 2008 would let GM compete in that sector.
They will find a way to fuck up scout.
The number of ex GM folks there pretty much mandates it
If they could somehow fuck up the EV with an industrial tinged Isuzu turbo diesel, that would be the greatest fuck up possible. They're used to drilling holes in the hull, so it would be very entertaining to watch them drill a diesel into an intended EV project as a sort of idiot savant move.
A small diesel would really be the ideal power for a range generator, but it looks like they're going with the old Volt idea of a small NA gas 4cyl that only charges the batteries. Ram is going to use the Pentastar v6 to charge batteries, AND directly send juice to the motors.
Seems to be a common automaker theme these days!
Who can screw it up the most?
Hard to top GM, though.
Scout is supposedly doing a gas range extended version as well, which in theory will compete with Ram's REV 1500. I'd be curious to borrow either truck for a drift weekend followed by a week of commuting, and then considering if it would be worth a lease.
While the range extenders sound good in theory, I don’t have any faith in any automaker to master such complexity.
I do like the looks of the Scout.
My Dad worked for International Harvester’s steel mill in Chicago, and I remember when he was offered a healthy discount on a Scout in the 1960s. He didn’t buy one because he thought it would rust out faster in Chicago winters than his Chevy Impalas would. He was right!
I'd say the Chevy Volt/ELR mastered it pretty well. I put a few hundred miles on a 2017 Volt at my old job, and I thought it was a great car! Even when the battery died after 35 miles (I drove it harder than a "regular" person), the dashboard told me I still had a couple hundred gas powered miles left, and it got 35mpg even with me trying to wring its neck. The Ram REV in particular will have a much larger gas tank AND batteries than the Volt, so it's range will be far greater; they're touting 690 total at the moment, and even if we only see 58% of that, 400 miles is more than a lot of full ICE vehicles. My wife's Compass MIGHT make 300mi on a tank, and my Charger would squeeze out 450mi on an pure highway trip with the cruise set to 80mph.
Plus, it's generator is run the 3.6l Pentastar engine, which can crank out plenty more watts than the little 1.5l in the Gen 2 Volt to keep the E-motors fed when your foot demands it. 650hp, 610ftlbs, and a 14,000lb tow rating, AND -probably- the same towing range or better than my old Hemi powered 1500 with a 30 gallon gas tank that got 11mpg when towing. I wouldn't dare go further than 290-300mi while towing with the Hemi. If the REV can comfortably reach 400mi while towing, it would be like giving that old Hemi roughly an extra 7 gallons of gas. The REV theoretically could run the wife and I to work on pure electrons all week (especially if charged overnight at home or at work during my shift), and the gas tank would still let us take it cross-country with or without a trailer as if it were any old pickup. You can keep running it on gas after the batteries are dead, and get better MPG while doing so. It also has vehicle to home power, and while I may not rely on that in real home emergencies, it would be handy while camping or at the track. It'll have an 8 year 100k mile powertrain/bettery warranty. They also aren't locking it behind the super-luxe Tungsten trim. One will be able to order a REV Tradesman as well, which is the one I'd have, but I'm not surprised to see it's not exactly advertised that way. All the marketing is based on the $100k+ Tungsten, which does make sense as that has more "wow factor" to sway people away from other 100k vehicles. Car and Driver estimated the Tradesmen will start around 60k, and yes that is a lot, but you can't touch a v8 crew cab from anyone under 55k anyway, so why not get a more versatile powertrain? Mind, I'm suggesting that as someone who currently drives a rusty $3,000 '00 Silverado 2500 and stuffed a Ram Hemi into a tiny old Dakota. I love V8s and "right-sized" trucks. But I can still see the benefits of a gas range extended electric truck.
The Scout Terra looks good and has a cool interior but it won't have the range or capability of the Ram. Scout is claiming 500 total miles with an NA 4cyl gas engine as the generator power, which only charges the batteries instead of also powering the motors the way Ram can with its v6. The Terra only has a 10k tow rating. However, Scout claims 0-60 in 3.5sec and Ram's is 4.5sec, so it's possible Scout has more powerful E motors or a higher discharge rate, is a smaller/lighter truck, and/or doesn't have the cooling capacity for hard towing despite being quicker.
It's possible I'd like the size and quickness of the scout better for daily use, but I think the Ram will be a more capable truck when it comes to working. That is why I would be interested in using both of them, and it may end with me saying "fuck it" and hating them both as well, but I think that would be unlikely. In any event, the rust bucket Cheby would stick around because it's paid for and as trusty as a mule. It even rides like one!
The Ram spinoff makes perfect sense if you've ever been in front of one on the road. Ain't no way for them to Dodge you with that little stopping distance.... :o
Clever
I wonder what sort of deal Elkann has going with Agent Orange re: Stellantis. Maybe he’ll get some tariff relief on his cash cow in exchange?
We are reliably assured that any investment in the USA will always be somewhere between performative and outright kayfabe so... if Ferrari sells 5000 cars a year in the states, and their tariff load can be reduced by $20,000 each, it would balance out in just... 130 years!
Sir, you lampooned “analysts” above. One wonders why, when…
…Ferrari trades at a substantial MULTIPLE of revenue, EBITDA, and earnings. So it would not take 130 years for shareholders - the only people who really matter in Ferrariland - to benefit.
I’ve done plenty of multiple arbitrage myself; nice move for a bank to classify Onlyfans “interest” savings as fee income (high multiple) rather than credit intermediation (low multiple).
The only problem with the scenario where a $13B spend results in >$13B of "value" is... where do you get the $13B in the first place, and how do you pay it back?
Silly, Jack... questions like this are for us poors!
print 13b
-Cash flow from operations?
-Follow on offering(s)?
-Bank debt?
-Private credit?
Lots of ways. Elkann has a vast portfolio of interests, and the least sexy, worst performing, and most capital intensive is Stellantis. I’m sure he’d love to be rid of it to focus on Ferrari, tech, fashion, and pharma.
100% - he wants to be Arnault, but with Ferrari.
Arnault is a self-made man, whereas Elkann is a nepo.
The Eye-ties have a notoriously nationalistic connection to their transport nameplates. I lost count of how many times Guzzi has been bailed out by "Italian Gelato Magnate #4" or whatever. It's possible that while Meloni is serving cultural knuckle sandwiches to the left the government could offer nameplates special incentives ala GM and the FedGov.
That SPQR stuff is getting pretty spicy over there in bootlandia.
"That SPQR stuff is getting pretty spicy over there in bootlandia."
Could you unpack that a little?
Not just Italian nationalism, but an idea of a return to unified "Roman" status where Italians are seeing themselves as descendants of a great Empire. SPQR= Senate and People of Rome. So, not the Mussolini thing. Just a reviving sense of national identity and nation under the ideals that birthed and made great Western Civilization. Necessary pruning of the greatest Imperial hits, naturally.
Rispetto il prodotto italico
Secondo te sto male
Viva la vita
Debbraia è spalancata
They're not spending 13B, thats a headline filled with at best intent.
My read is tariffs are here to stay no government gives up taxes, so Stellantis is figuring they may manufacture a broad range over tie in the USA. Meanwhile as Sherman implies there is probably all sorts of side deals with the current admin to make it all look good.
Interesting to see if Stellantis survives its way more dysfunctional than GM. Maybe there is a play to spin off the US brands
Sherman is that really you??? The ACF community had set out a search and rescue operation to find you as your insightful, well reasoned, anti literate commentary had been missing not to mention Ronnie had been searching in circles for a new foil as he was sure you had fallen into a literary abyss.
Thank you for the Jedi brain post - that wraps up things my friends and I have been saying for years into a neat package. I’m always jealous of your racing stuff - I think my wife would absolutely love doing it, but north Jersey is not exactly a mecca of autosports, and the membership at Monticello is a bit out of my price range.
Your money would be better spent driving to Watkins Glen than joining Monticello. But thats a trip!
If you need to buy a tow vehicle anyway:
https://www.c-130hercules.net/index.php?/forums/topic/13059-operational-c-130-for-sale/
"IS THIS STILL AVAILABLE?"
He’d need an MEL, plus it’s probably not single-pilot certified!
After wasting time and money at moticello, realized after loading up car etc, for the effort of getting there its just a few hours longer to get to the Glenn where I can run for days. Plus my Track buddies would never set foot in Monticello, sorta doucheland.
The thing about motor clubs is it limts your time and desire to run other track's, most of the drivers are not that great, and they have near unlimited budgets, the exact opposite of the true track rat.
The real upside for me was a home track allows you to adjust and hone the car, and if you got into Monticello early enough the membership could eventually be sold for a small profit. Alas my wife has used those funds for domestic purposes, but some has been retained for a harrop intercooled supercharger for the exige v6.
IMo the Glenn is where its at.
1) Despite amicus curiae briefs from Atlantic Legal Foundation, Landmark Legal Foundation, Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, and a group of legislators (Sen. Cruz, Sen. Blackburn, Sen. Budd, Sen. Banks, Sen. Lee, Sen. Schmitt, Rep. Babin, Rep. Gooden, Rep. Nehls), certiorari DENIED in a case challenging the illegal OPT and H-4EAD work visas. https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/DocketFiles/html/Public/24-923.html
2) For once, YOU can make an official comment on the tepid reforms proposed to the H-1B visa lottery here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/24/2025-18473/weighted-selection-process-for-registrants-and-petitioners-seeking-to-file-cap-subject-h-1b
3) More and more non-engineers are taking an interest in the program lately.
A long-term history (neglecting the 1993 "60 Minutes" exposé) by a psychology major: https://youtu.be/VEA7vQKJ8aQ
A recruiter who realizes "It's worse than I thought": https://youtu.be/NpsD7tMxckg
Ah, H-1B. I met a fella from India who's in his early twenties, last weekend. He completed his undergraduate degree while in India, and moved here a couple of years ago to complete his Master's, both in Computer Science, with a focus on machine learning. While he was in school, he was being paid under the table by his uncle to work the front desk at a hotel overnight, to the tune of $8 an hour.
Now that he's got his degree, he's being sponsored by a company based here in the US and is working for them under a W2 contract as a developer. I asked him if they were paying him well, and he said they were. So well, he's making $23 an hour. $23 an hour, before taxes! For someone with a master's degree in CompSci! If that's not exploitation, I don't know what is. Exploitation of him for being paid so little, and exploitation of the system, for not having to pay an American a wage commensurate with that level of education. He didn't say which company it was, but merely that it was "big."
I agree, the system needs reforming.
I'm not saying he's lying, but I live in the low cost of living south and know that Masters H1Bs in CompSci here are starting out at about 70-80k. Several companies here even under the previous admin were getting fined for not paying enough. Companies do underpay especially for starting positions relative to Bachelor's because as I understand it, The DOL has a wide range of wages to work with. What this means is undergrads get left out of jobs because they can pay an H1B the same rate as a masters.
Americans also get left out of jobs because employers can get an "OPT" on a *student* visa so both sides get to avoid FICA taxes.
This aside from the fact that a substantial amount of "American" jobs are controlled by various divisions of the "H-1B Mafia" or "Bharat Cartel":
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/real-hiring-criteria-is-are-you-telugu-indian-redditors-take-on-h-1b-goes-viral/articleshow/124461260.cms
What's most concerning is that so many departments in so many "critical infrastructure" companies (banks, semiconductors as above) are controlled by CCP members and citizens of 2 Indian states:
https://cis.org/North/H1B-Hiring-Bias-within-Bias-Discrimination-within-Discrimination
No, not “reformed”. Blown up completely and after some time recreated where/if it makes sense for the American population, not the corporate oligarchy.
It doesn’t make sense for that to be recreated anywhere, especially if you can’t understand a fucking word they say!
I didn’t mean recreate the same visa mess we have now. And meant blow up the entire visa system, not just H-1B.
In the fall of 'white man civilization', assuming she hadn't been stabbed in the neck on the subway, that vapid dipshit would be the concubine of some warlord (and be happy for it) until which time he got bored of her and handed her over to his grunts to run a train on. From which wounds she would gracelessly expire of sepsis in a trash heap. The End. Roll credits.
that vapid dipshit would be the concubine of some warlord
I suspect the 21st century version of this is happening.
"I will come over and sleep with you 3-4 nights a week but we are not dating*"**
*Guys it is cruel to do this and you shouldn't do this
**If you do this, you will also end up with 4 daughters
*director's cut, deleted scene, before credits*
/Our heroine wakes up in a cold sweat from the trash heap dream, rolls over to fellate the man who keeps her warm, fed and with functioning indoor plumbing. Scenes of the warlord play in her head, or maybe a sparkly vampire or a minotaur.
I was waiting for the minotaur's return!
Only if they’re hung like a horse, of course! 😂😂
protip: this only works if youre a high value guy
Karma's a bitch.
Why would parents name their daughter Karma?!
I might point out that white Christian men spent five centuries traveling the globe, hauling the rest of mankind out of the mud and into the light of civilization, making possible the abundance that allows them to complain about stupid shit.
Fine. Next time build it yourself.
Further, stop using everything we invented right effing now!
By “we” I mean Western Civilization.
And by "invented" you mean "stole from the Chinese and made better use of it," like gunpowder and the printing press. :)
yeah
we invented it into something better and more useful so its ours now
like how johnny cash did a cover of hurt and now its his song
I hate that Rick Rubin shit.
Ah, but WE invented a proper language that doesn't need a 10,000-key keyboard.
Oh, yes, and by "we" you mean the Egyptians. (Latin script was an evolution of Etruscan script, which itself was a version of Phoenician script, which came from Egyptian hieroglyphics.)
Since you used four zeros in your answer, would you like to also discuss the invention of the zero? ;)
we wuz etruscans an sheit
https://youtu.be/LhkkChqZhgk?si=jJDSSqy0Ye-KC9rV
All those great inventions, yet no one wants to live in those places. Seems like they peaked way too soon.
Oh well, back to modern civilization.
If you look at the countries where the globalists have already eradicated white men, you will see that the natives quickly stop using the white man's inventions.
retvrn to monke
I encourage anyone who hates my tribe to stop using our stuff.
white mans burden turned into white mans fatigue
Yeah, pretty much.
Teddy Roosevelt would have been aghast at what this country turned into.
Woodrow Wilson would love it
Roosevelt would sucker-punch the big guy who tried to make him buy the whole bar a round.
How does that white, anti-white imbecile feel about her dad? And, he must be really proud!
And by the way, empathy isn’t the only tool in the toolbox.
I only read the comments from the pictures with her showing cleavage. Seemed deranged.
If you’re white, those cleavage shots were not for you! How dare you!!!!
raping her with my eyes i guess
What some people don’t understand: if you’re a female of average size and appearance, if you’re not wearing much in the way of clothing, guys are hard-wired to sneak a peek! If one of us leers, or catcalls, or makes an inappropriate comment, that’s different! And rude!
If you're oogling it, it's for you!
The Last Psychiatrist, paraphrased
Jack, thanks for your excellent writing, and thank you for not banning me from your site, something that happened recently when I made the mistake of commenting on a leftist blog. Evidently, the guy is open, but not open to criticism or different leaning comments. But you seem to handle the situation pretty well With your comment section. Anyway, really enjoy your ideas, especially the idea of Jedi brain.
I have never banned a commenter who was something besides an anonymous spam account, and hope to never do so.
Especially not someone who pays!
You even kept me after I sperged out over the Peter Watts book and killed the book club.
That was an idea worth killing anyways.
The book club is NOT dead!
"not open to criticism or different leaning comments"
wow thats incredible
im only learning this now
I know, right?!
See: Charlie Kirk!
Well, the guy I’m talking about had a extremely popular YouTube station called blue-collar logic. He was claiming that he wanted to start over, with a “real good-faith discussion”. Guess you can’t believe what some people say.
Never seen the YouTube channel, but sounds like "if you disagree with me (by holding a position which was taken as self-evident by all previous civilizations), I will grab you by the collar until you turn blue" logic.
Hey, Jack, congrats to you and your family for your various successes "at speed."
We, you and I do have something in common. Previously I mentioned I have no interest in automobile racing. We have both done bagels. Were you actually in the business, baking bagels for sale?
I made them at home for friends and family. They were very good and I was not "snotty" about the water we used (see New York bagel bakers).
Final thought: PLANET OF THE APES must champion chimps, right? Why wasn't Jane Goodall featured in at least one of those films?
"Final thought: PLANET OF THE APES must champion chimps, right? Why wasn't Jane Goodall featured in at least one of those films?"
I'm thinking that nobody thought to ask to see if she would have been interested, as I'm recalling the Gary Larson/The Far Side cartoon (according to him, anyway) where he poked fun at her ("that Jane Goodall Tramp"), everyone who worked around Goodall lost their minds, and she couldn't understand why they lost their sh!t, she thought it was hilarious.
Having heard her speak in person, also not entirely convinced that she would have pulled off a guest-starring spot, although it would have been freaking awesome to have given her a minor walk-on role while in the skin.
THIS is the greatest Far Side cartoon of all time:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/very-funny-stuff-in-2025--14003448837036577/
the cow tools one might be his most famous comic becuase it was complete ass
Nope! “Midvale School for the Gifted!”
My high school lit teacher, my #1 teacher, IMHO, was an early “Far Side” fan! (Also “A Christmas Story!”) Thank you, Mrs. Viv Hutchisson, for the influences on my sense of humor!
That one is up there, though! Along with “The real reason dinosaurs became extinct!”
I second "Midvale School for the Gifted"! My wife and I just celebrated 36 years of marriage and she still busts that one out on me (only when I need/deserve it)!
I say it to myself whenever I try to go through a door the wrong way! 😂😂
She advocated for the death of 95% of humanity.
shouldve led by example
Would she do that just when the chimps were down? 😂😂
Ouch!
😁 Rumour has it that "bagel company" is an euphemism for a former employer with whom Jack reached a confidential settlement.
Another rumour is that Jack was the scab who replaced the striking Kramer.
https://media1.tenor.com/m/DtoyvmmQ71EAAAAd/kramer-seinfeld.gif
Both of these could be equally true!
So there was a Festivus dinner involved as well!
There has certainly been an airing of grievances!
Is jacks subtle way of telling us he is actually jewish. Lets get The conspiracies going
You could have made this into a top gear stig intro with a "some say..."
Well, they had chimps, gorillas and orangutans. I read that during breaks in the filming, the actors would hang out with others in the same makeup and exclude the others. That'd be fertile ground for some psych student to research
monkey racism
someone could make that phrase even more racist but im not going to bother
Those damn red-shanked doucs have always held themselves superior to the rest of the simian world. It's time to bring them down a peg or two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-shanked_douc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cycZPTQgERk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMHJDsfLcA
You referenced the NYTimes…their record is intact of getting everything wrong. It would be fascinating to know if their writers are really this stupid or are they simply giving the editors the manure they want. Perhaps both are true.
"It would be fascinating to know if their writers are really this stupid or are they simply giving the editors the manure they want."
For whatever reason, my spouse insists on listening to NPR, and the NYT's "The Daily" radio show where we get to hear the totally-not-one-sided-at-all-no-just-ask-me Rachel Abrams and various other faux-journalists who failed at hiding their overeducated, Cali Valley Girl speech patterns. I have no idea why my spouse listens to these people, it's journalism of the lowest order (hey, maybe there was an actual reason for that spending cut?), it's all emotional rabble rousing, and I spend most of my time shouting at the radio whenever these squeaky-teenaged-sounding psychopaths are on the air.
These folks are the real-deal acolytes.
I find myself unable to listen to their drivel (and I've tried), but I generally sound like someone with Tourette's Syndrome after a couple of minutes. I read the Sunday NY Timnes just to torture myself. Their narrative has gotten so tired that even they must be exhausted pushing it. The ploy is simple...they take one example of any situation, and extrapolate it out to be the norm. Decades ago, it truly was the "paper of record". Today...it's the paper for the bottom of your parrot's cage.
My favorite thing about NPR is their afternoon show named “All Things Considered”, because they only consider the same 5 things over and over: illegals, trans, Palestinians, LGTBTBBQs, and Nazis.
It is fun to hear them twist any story, no matter how far away it is in relation to their 5 subjects, back to their required 5 subjects.
One of their stories could start with a bagel shop, but by the end 1-5 of their 5 required subjects will be mentioned.
LGBTBBQ?
Brown your meat without cooking it!
I always add BBQ to LGBT.
I just tell people that’s what the “+” stands for!
Not sure if youre a bears fan or not but people have been calling caleb lgbtqb and i cant stop laughing at it
long ago i invented a bltg sandwich: blt with guac.
actually the + stands for hiv positive
which they are
Not to be confused with BLT sandwiches
You mean the bagel shop that refused to make a bagel in the image trans swimmer?
And just by chance he/she is an illegal queer Palestinian who hates Nazis!
It's female swimmer that previously was a male swimmer prior to being a female swimmer while supporting "Gays for Hamas".
Its All Things Considered Except for Any Other Point of View.
I mean... yes, but it's just the news cycle.
I consume a lot of right wing media (bc I already know how my side thinks), and it seems they're focused on the same 5 things too, mostly.
We want a media that's essentially investigative and skeptical, and its biggest failing over the years has been being less so with the Dems, while also over-relying on data but under-engaging with the people affected by it.
But I just don't see that self-reflection in right-wing media. Relevant to the trans-wringing in the thread below, Bari can't even issue a retraction for the Free Press' huge "trans whistleblower" piece in MO after it couldn't stand up to basic fact checking. And now she's in charge of CBS News.
And the WH has banned reporters from asking for information that hasn't been already pre-authorized by DoD... which is literally a definition of propaganda. All the while cosplaying the plot from Clear and Present Danger in Venezuela.
...and maybe slipping a soldier or two into Gaza later.
Agreed, that why I don’t follow right wing shows either. Fox is unlistenable to me, for example, no different than CNN is.
Remember those Girls Gone Wild videos on late night commercials from decades ago? That’s what our political media is now. The right is Dems Gone Wild and the left is R’s Gone Wild. No thanks to either, but I’m not the target market anyway.
They’re both going for the lowest info voter so it holds no interest for me, along with the hair-on-fire news cycle BS.
My filters for all news and information are:
-What’s the macro view on a story? Stories with an intentional number of minute details are there to obfuscate, because there’s always a detail to support a position on either side, or worse, to intentionally confuse.
-An important feature of the macro view is asking “Cui bono?” Who benefits? Too much detail or force fed information is meant to disguise who benefits. You really need to know who benefits to understand information. Plus “cui bono” also applies to who is presenting the information.
-What is the dog that’s not barking? Or Bastiat’s version: “What is seen and what is not seen?” What does the information that’s being presented want you to look at, but more importantly **what does it NOT want you to look at**? Misdirection is a primary tool of operators, and you mustn’t fall for it.
When you apply these filters to any information, you see the game that’s being played by either side, and once you know the game it’s easier to see the truth.
Note that my filters are not political, just general tools to apply to any information or situation.
"An important feature of the macro view is asking “Cui bono?”
100%
If this WH wanted to flex its Constitution-allergic executive authority in a way that most Americans would appreciate, it would revisit or repeal Section 230.
It (very) nominally still protects free speech online, but it now primarily shields tech from liability when pushing * algorithmic * speech ahead of community speech. And by participating in this circle-jerk of opinion reinforcement, tech gets to monetize our attention and advertisers to get micro-target the thinnest slices of identity politics.
Scratch that. BRAND politics, bc ... duh.
They say politics flows downstream from culture, but culture flows downstream from Kapital.
Behind every clip of stupid rhetoric on either side, someone is making a buck.
Both sides are guilty of essentially ignoring the #1 story of our times: the Bharat War of Colonization. Almost as though they are INTENTIONALLY distracting from it because the Davos/WEF types support it.
Thanks to Donkey Konger for pointing out the essential resource at: https://x.com/WokeCapital/ https://xcancel.com/WokeCapital/
One right-wing source has a 64-page magazine issue about it for October, but even they don't get the terminology right: https://go.wnd.com/outsourcedamerica/
I'm still surprised that Bloomberg - yes, Bloomberg! - did this series and it still got no pickup.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-h1b-visa-middlemen-cheap-labor-for-us-banks
I often listen to NPR in my car and yell out "Bingo!" if they hit all five things while I'm listening.
It’s the only station that I can pick up consistently in the car as I go up and down the mountains here in NC.
Like you, I love to hear them twist themselves around with their pretzel logic to end up with a woke ending. It’s entertaining and hilarious! I wonder if at this point it’s just a reflex for them?
I also love how all the female announcers have these weird affected mousy voices that are totally unpleasant to listen to. Like they’re hired just for their annoying voices.
On the semi serious side, I do like the brief crazy-left updates they provide to see what they’re talking about.
It’s almost hard to believe that they can keep up their delusional takes for many more years without getting committed to the loony bin.
That's LGBTGIFBBQBLT, Ataraxis. Get it right, man.
I could give your household some superior podcast recommendations.
I usually insist on listening to the podcast "Imagine If The Radio Were Broken".
"Cali Valley Girl speech patterns"
Unfortunately, the vocal fry is just a generational thing. You get the same intonations from younger reporters on the right... just when they're not yelling.
Two things can be true.
The seams are starting to show around age and inexperience. I noticed this most during post-COVID recovery, where the non-halo NYT econ reporters were writing as if they'd never lived through a recession before... because they hadn't. There were many things about the recovery that could've been reported better had the team lived through - and reported on - the post-2008 crash.
And while it is obvious gospel here at ACF, when I once mentioned in passing to a NYT econ reporter (friend of a friend) that DEALERS were the OEM's customers, not us, he just stared at me like I was talking about particle physics.
Back in the day, many NYT reporters came from those industries. William Cohan was at Lazard and Merrill. William Langewiesche was a pilot. Liz Rosenthal worked in the ER. Do any news outlets even have an auto-veteran journalist?
Bill Cohan is still writing:
Puck
FT (occasionally)
Air Mail
Of the 3, I like Air Mail most because it's so unironically Lifestyles of the White Lotus. I read it as satire, even if that's not the intent.
I like Puck quite a bit. Lauren Sherman is a tremendous Fashion Business journalist, and I also enjoy Dylan Byers, Matt Belloni, etc.
Are they making any money yet? Last I heard, it was barely even.
I like Belloni too, but find the Ankler a bit more on-point for very insider stuff.
I have subscribed to The Ankler in the past (just out of curiosity), but I don’t work in Hollywood. I do have a very good friend who reads it - he was a co-founder of Regal Cinemas and led the sale to KKR way back when.
He is a small / solo VC now but still has interests in theater businesses in developing markets where they remain popular.
Puck is buying Airmail; Jon Kelly got his start under Graydon, recall. I’d much rather read Puck than The Free Press; one wonders what The Free Press will cover now that Kushner has delivered peace in the Middle East?
I'll add this since Jack didn't; The Commander's photography is improving also.
Thank you. MidOhio is a tough gig for him because he is 16 years old and can't go to the fence. Everything you see here is 200 to 400mm zoom.
"I'm going to rent one of those piano-throwing trebuchets to casually toss him several hundred feet into the air in an attempt to try to capture some of those swanky drone shots!"
who needs a drone when you have a bell ranger and a child on a rope
(Prays to God Almighty that the rope is a bungee cord and the kid has to engage in slow-motion, Matrix-style dodges of rotor blades on the upbounces)
1. "Someday they’ll find five hundred hours of music D'Angelo decided not to release, and it will all be fantastic."
I am reminded of Prince's entire published music catalog, and my attempt to slog my way through it, hoping to find another Purple Rain in the mix somewhere, and coming away from the experience with the distinct feeling of "now there's a month's worth of lifespan I'll never get back". And apparently Prince...along with Eddie Van Halen...have bazillions of unreleased albums just tucked away (there's also apparently an entire Duran Duran album buried...was supposed to come out after "Astronaut"), waiting to be dumped, I mean unleashed, I mean released to the public someday. Given Kevin Smith's assessment of Prince (there's a mildly hilarious story about Smith being selected to do a documentary out there), yeah, methinks that anyone who claims to be hiding thirty albums or more worth of content needs to be taken in the same context of "plague rats, avoid".
2. "It’s very easy to demonize people or groups you’ve never met or barely know."
If you're particularly good at it, there is potential for fun and profit.
3. "We can close by noting that Jedi Brain and Avatar Brain are both, at their root, comforting theories of mind. After all, if defeating evil is as simple as blowing up one space station, then it’s possible, right? And if white men really are the source of all the world’s evil, well, aren’t they vastly outnumbered by the good guys? If only reality were as simple as an animated film… or even as simple as our favorite non-animated films."
I am unsure if these two groups are poster children for Dunning-Kruger (or at least my understanding of DK, anyway), or are felony-level data cherry pickers, or are a combination of both. It's mildly terrifying as to how seriously these people are convinced by the blatherings they emit.
4. In regards to Stellantis and reinvesting in 'Murica, that's great and everything, but nobody in their right mind (in my isolated universe, anyway) wants to own anything built by them, nor wants to work in any of their dealerships. Given the most recent gaffe by Stellantis ("Our Jeeps are made out of Legos, because they're always becoming bricks!"), yeah, at some point this mighty, blundering cruise vessel known as the U.S.S. Internet Connectivity needs to make its final port of call to the Gadani Ship Scrapyard and be scrapped once and for all. And don't even get me started on the engineering rush to the bottom of the other 'Murican truckmakers.
5. "Atari Finally Buried Each And Every One Of Those F**kin’ “E.T.” Cartridges In A Landfill, Won’t Make Any More Of Them; Analysts Surprised To See The Stock Rise"
An odd side note: I worked with someone some years ago who claimed to be one of the head shipping guys at Atari, he had some Polaroids, spoke of amazing Friday parties, and also mentioned a Faraday cage in which some engineers worked and developed a lot of the standup Arcade games that Atari was famous for (of which random people were pulled in to test).
Much hay was made over Ernest Cline's 2014 discovery of the ET games (and others) in a New Mexico landfill (by the way, his books are absolutely terrible, if you find a copy of "Ready Player None", burn it), but the friend laughed about it when I showed him the link to this story, and he finally responded with, "but what about the site in Ireland?"
Pardon?
"Yeah, I helped set up equal-sized shipments for two dump sites, one in New Mexico and one in Ireland."
Okay, why Ireland?
"F*** if I know? Atari was actually dying after they screwed up the 2600 Pac-Man release, ET was simply the last little nudge over the edge. From what I remember, an assload of ET games went to New Mexico, but we shipped just about as many to Ireland. Have you ever tried to ship a million or so game cartridges anywhere in a hurry? We were just trying to find places out of the way to dump all of this crap."
He's sticking to the story about there being a site in Ireland.
I was guessing the DeLorean factory in Belfast, given the absolute state of Belfast in that era even before Thatcher's veto of government support, but apparently it's a thriving "industrial estate:"
https://www.thetimes.com/world/ireland-world/article/thatcher-blocked-plans-to-save-delorean-plant-lz98pjq9gmk
https://www.irelandbeforeyoudie.com/the-delorean-factory-belfast-history-location-and-key-facts/
I'm thinking that given the state of Ireland at the time, if this Irish burial actually happened, kind of surprised that it wouldn't have generated a lot of positive press for that country, "this is the best thing to happen to Ireland in at least a century, not just any country is allowed the prestige of surreptitiously burying a lot of unwanted plastic home video gaming system cartridges and then sealing off the lot in concrete for a rapidly devolving American company!" They could have made a big to-do about the whole thing, and then gathered all 741 still-living Irish male actors with the last name of "Byrne" together to dedicate the site.
(Pleasant sigh)
Could have something to do with how tech companies in the 90’s ran all of their ROW revenue through a company in the Republic of Ireland because of that country’s generous tax laws to get tech companies to locate operations there.
1. I just popped into dear old malfunctioning Google to try to put "Atari, Ireland" into the search bar, came back as "urban legend".
2. The guy who told me this wasn't exactly the type of expressive, creative type of guy who was voted "Most Likely To Come Up With A Completely BullshIt Story About The Last Days Of Atari" during his senior year of high school, so I'm almost sort of possibly likely to maybe perhaps somewhat kinda believe the guy.
3. I'm thinking that Ernest Cline probably knows where the Ireland site is (if it even exists), but given that maybe four people recognized who he was in New Mexico in 2014, I'm not sure he would be able to handle the shock of that massive number of fans who can recognize him being reduced down to only two or three, so we're not likely to ever discover the location of that cache.
This is the funny thing about this Atari story: We tell everyone and their third cousin where we bury radioactive waste, but we desperately try to hide nearly a million Atari cartridges from the view of prying eyes.
What was fucked about the Pac-Man release on the 2600 system? I don’t recall.
0. I always thought Gene Roddenberry did a much better job of tying in politics into a TV show.
1. Speaking of which, the new Star Trek Academy looks terrible. It looks girl boss driven.
2. I never thought the first Avatar was that good as it was just Fern Gully. The second one was even worse.
3. Heat is probably my favorite movie. It's sad where DeNiro has gone. I can't watch anything new of his.
DeNiro is just an actor. You cant expect anything of them. Steve McQueen was right; it's a profession for sissies and drama queens.
I do find it amusing that he never, and I mean not one time, had a half decent looking girlfriend. The average assistant manager at Wendy's has a hotter chick than De Niro ever did.
That’s cause the wendys guy is fucking teenagers. At least when i was ateen. He is probably banging abuelas now
That's the funny thing with De Niro, the moment he decides that he's more than an actor and goes off script, most everyone who sees him recoils in horror and says this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av1przlCavA
DeNiro is one of those guys who I don’t ever want to listen to unless someone else has written his words for him. Whenever he tries to write his own material he sounds unhinged.
Actor minus script = incoherence.
The first avatar was cool for is time. Pretty 3d hige screen! I turned the second off after twenty minutes
Star Trek's last hurrah was "Enterprise."
And I don't know who said, "Hey, you know what 'Star Trek' needs? Deconstructive comic relief! We'll call it 'Lower Decks!'" bu he was an idiot.
I was mostly okay with Lower Decks until the start of the fifth season, and then the whole thing went "Discovery"-style horribly awry.
I still haven't gotten through the first season of "Enterprise", I just can't wrap my mind around the concept of Scott Bakula.
We started Enterprise as our new family show about a month ago. We should be wrapping up season one next week. It is my first time through since broadcast and I KNOW it gets better after season 1.
The surprising thing is that it is pretty OK from the get go. It is modern enough, they only take about 5 episodes to figure out stuff that absolutely doesn't work, unlike TNG which took 2 seasons, and it isn't weighed down by too much canon. I think my daughter will enjoy TNG a lot more having Enterprise as her introduction.
All of it is a comedown after finishing the Battlestar reboot, and she has enjoyed Stargate since before it was even reasonably appropriate.
The 90s was Golden Age Trek.
Personally, I LIKED the way Galactica ended, but I wouldn't call it a family show if we're including kids. Stargate, yeah, absolutely. It's nice to see a sci-fi show where America is not only still around, it's one of the heroes.
I think the end of Galactica was fantastic. I appreciate how they had written themselves into a corner a bit and they just left some things a mystery.
"You know it doesn't like that name."
All solid fare. We did something similar about 20 years ago when the shows were newer, I'm kinda curious how they would stand up today.
The fourth and final season of Enterprise was really good. Several really good multi-part story arcs that showed if they were allowed to go further they'd have made some more great stuff. BUT do not watch the final episode. The penultimate episode serves as a fine series finale. The final episode aired was atrocious and everyone involved wishes they could take it back. We will never watch it again.
Sort of like the “Seinfeld” finale!
The appearance by the Soup Nazi was the only saving grace!
When the original Avatar came out, I insisted on calling it 'best FernGully remake ever!' A few people got genuinely upset about it.
I may think Uncle Sam's Misguided Children is a cult that's high on its own bullshit, but James Cameron HATES them.
Nah, USMC is filled with killers, and always has been. I mean that as a compliment.