OTCarShoppingTalk: I sold the Land Cruiser (yay), but now face the task of (eventually) replacing it. Right now I'm testing out half sharing the wife's Prius, half driving the '77 Econoline. I foresee a future event that unfolds more or less like: 'I can't do XYZ with the van, and the wife's out driving her Prius.' That leaves the single option of my motorcycle, which is a bit more limiting.
I wanted to find a decent used Durango 5.7 Hemi/AWD but they are thin on the ground for my cheap ass budget. Their are V6's galore, but 'I could've had a Hemi' FOMO is real. Right now, a cheap-o '14 Citadel AWD w/ ~150k is at a small dealer lot not too far from me, I found records indicating 2 owners, then a fleet ownership, then sold at auction just last month. Maintenance records only go back to 76k, but it seems it did get regular maintenance and a 'driveline service' @ ~123k. Last time I bought from a small dealer was a long time ago, and the car was a buyer's remorse special, meaning it had literally no miles on it. Part of me wants to go and at least drive it and look under the hood etc. The other part of me thinks it's a waste of time.
I'm trying to save most of the cash from selling the LC, and this spec Durango is nearly impossible to find for peanuts, so maybe I need to give up on the dream above.
It's unfortunately random. Poor maintenance might guarantee problems but I've also read of people doing 3k mile oil changes who still have to replace cams well before 100k miles.
Plenty of hemis tick tick tick their entire lives and only meet their end when the vessel they inhabit becomes scrap metal after colliding with a concrete wall at 120mph. The tick doesn't necessarily mean the cam is going or there's anything else wrong with the engine. Sometimes it is a problem, but usually, "yeah it just does that."
You’re thinking about this backwards me thinks. There’s a huge delta between what can be achieved with a Durango and a Prius but you have the econoline- I think you should go find a nice cheap but cheerful hatch (non GTI golf, spark, rolla, whatever the Korean option is) and just beat the snot out of it.
Everyone I know who has a Kia Soul does that. I ended up with a 100k mile RENTAL in the DR a few years ago and I was surprised how well it had held up. I mean, it was definitely a 100k DR rental lol but everything worked, minimal squeaks, and got 30mpg without trying.
A fraternity brother of mine, sold his SRT-4 Neon to buy a first model year Kia Soul and a R6, he "hit a deer" on the R6 a few months into ownership and was left with just the Soul, all things considered it wasn't a terrible car, and his limp went away eventually.
I had an '07 GT hatchback from 2015 to 2020. It was a nice enough car and, had I not replaced it with a significantly newer CX-5, I probably could have put new tires on it and still be driving it. It did have some tailgate and quarterpanel rust and like 130-150,000 miles on it, but it lived outside in the UP and never failed to start and all the buttons still worked.
I think you're likely to overpay for one as they have gained cult status, but if you can find a decent one that hasnt been used up and the price is right, its a great idea. as with almost everything in life, it all comes down to a matter of valuation.
One of them I found has a lift kit and some foo foo overlanding junk on it. I didn't now that was a thing with these, internet search found a bunch of people doing this.
Don't limit yourself to the Hemi, the Pentastar is much more pleasant to operate and use on the road. Sometimes you just want the engine to go away, and the Hemi never does. It is always in the car with you, blub blub blubbing and droning along. You will feel its heft every time you turn a corner. You will feel it lurch in its mounts when you just want to inch forward. You will feel the schitzophrenic jagged spiral firing order, compared to the Pentastar's balanced linear delivery. Hemi farts its way to 5200 RPM, Pentastar vrooms its way to 6500. Sandpaper vs a knife. No, you can't upgrade the exhaust, why would you want to do that?
Ouch bro! -signed, the 4 Hemis I've owned and loved
Agreed on the pentastar exhaust thing, the intake noise is absolutely where it's at for them. If you wanna tow stuff though, there's no substitute for 400ftlbs of torque. Not to mention the stronger 8sp behind Hemis. The only dead 8sp I saw while working in the dealer shop was a v6 Ram that probably was used to tow 5.7 sized loads too often.
The Hemi is a truck engine, not surprised its good at that. It's lurchy character and delayed throttle response (gently put the gas pedal down) is similar to Uhaul trucks I've driven. Never dealt with the ZF 8sp but it has a great reputation. I got my 18 inch wheels and Continental TrueContacts installed finally, the ride is drastically improved, no longer rough and rattley and punishing, no more wincing at upcoming obtstacles, don't always need to swerve (last winter did a number, and the roads being worked on aren't much better) but still notably flatter around corners than the old car. I did the research, and it turns out after 2019 everything above the SXT has the Super Track Pack, maybe I'll get the SXT shocks in the future, but I'm enjoying it now, I'm in no hurry. However If I was Jay Leno I would commission a Gladiator manual powertrain swap into an SXT.
Stupid cost cutting moves that cost people their lives or huge money.
Examples include Kia’s lack of anti-theft chip in their car keys, GM’s fake part number change for ignition key shutoff that killed drivers, Takata airbag inflator parts, Toyota “Floormat” runaway acceleration et al.
I’m not saying that the thieves aren’t responsible for thievery, I’m just saying that Hyundai/Killed In Action omitted a basic function in the name of profit that made people’s lives harder.
A basic anti-theft chip in an old fashioned car key has been a staple of the car business since at least the 90’s.
Agree that it was a bone-headed choice that must have cost them several times in recalls and settlements whatever the initial savings were.
But I bristled at the various state attorneys general that sued for negligence and cast H/K as the bad guys rather than the teenaged punk perpetrators.
Their voting record as a whole indicates otherwise. The hispanic 'natural conservatives' that the mainline GOP has been salivating over for decades never materialized. The Cuban diaspora was a one and done. Each individual group is of course very ethnocentric.
Immigrants overwhelmingly choose the US over their home country for what I'd call the "Reagan Vision" of the American dream: peace, security, opportunity, homeownership, live and let live.
Obv, there's a lot of daylight bw that Vision and the Reality, and even what RR himself truly believed.
nah as long as 40% Hispanics and black me vote republican that demographic time bomb wont hit. the reality is republicans could get +50% Hispanics and a lot more black votes too.
"When I became a mom, every cell in my body became biologically hard-wired to 'secure the existence of our people and a future for (my) white children;' if that makes me 'hard right,' like, whatever. Another lemon square?"
There is that thing about coaching women, they listen and execute, also tend not to be suicidal. hard to say what's worse the teenage male who si yet to have his foirst shunt, or the "retired" 65 yo in a vette porche etc who lacks innate talent/feel behind the well but was "sucessful" so thinks he knows what he is doing.
If you're going to be sitting in the right seat, hard to beat a female student.
It is depressing how many people seem to be taking Casey Putz seriously as a gubernatorial candidate and don’t see him as the scumbag grifter that he is. Maybe this whole beer hall thing is him having a good laugh at how he has been able to sucker so many people with his campaign while sucking up as much campaign money as he can.
Hope springs eternal. The other two choices are suicide. At least if you vote for Casey, you won't feel quite so stupid when the totalitarian levels your land for her renewable energy backers or the Indian turns Ohio into India.
I think It’s no accident that he’s walked straight in to not one but two nazi gaffes…someone clever out there has been having a great time tricking his team in to oblivion
"The Patek Philippe Aquanaut is made in Switzerland of locally sourced parts." It is not. It is about 40% chinese parts in all Swiss watches. I was a buyer for luxury retailer and I know this for a fact.
I don’t think I need to feel bad about buying inexpensive homages to fancy euro watches just on the merits of the European watch community using China for parts manufacturing…
Speaking of "making watches," if you haven't already done so, Read LONGITUDE by Dava Sobel. It relates the story of a man devoted to creating an accurate clock and pursuing the prize offered for such a device, in order to aid sailors to determine their longitude at sea.
I've read it twice. The movie adaptation with Michael Gambon is also very good. It turns out there's an illustrated version of the book, which I just ordered from Abe Books.
It's hard to describe just how brilliant John Harrison was. Besides his technical skills, the many inventions he had to create to see his idea to fruition, his basic idea of determining a ship's longitude was the definition of simple and elegant. Determining latitude was fairly simple, based on measuring the angle of the sun or North Star (in the northern hemisphere) above the horizon. Longitude was much harder, and it seemed as though the politically connected astronomers of the Royal Society tried to make it even harder.
Harrison's insight was simple, but brilliant. No matter where you are on earth, the sun is at its apogee at noon, local time. If you have an accurate enough timekeeping device set to noon at the Greenwich observatory in England, every hour of difference from local noon to Greenwich noon works out to 15 degrees of longitude. 15 x 24 = 360.
There are so many things to learn from Harrison's story. His determination, his son's loyalty, how science can be corrupted by politics, how connected people screw the little guy.
Many thanks for your most informed response. Also, if I remember correctly, they tried to screw him out of the cash prize, which was quite substantial and which he had clearly won.
It was more a statement of how much crap America buys from China, that is poorly made, but looking at the watches, they don’t look or feel poorly made.
True. But watches haven’t changed that much and their manufacturing is the same. I bet, outside of the price of gold, the any patek probably costs no more than $3k to make with the same finishing. Maybe less.
This is worth a separate discussion but there are several brands that are fully integrated vertically in CH and give tours to prove it. Patek is one of them. Only raw materials and glass are sourced from outside Geneva. That is their public and documented claim.
This is simply untrue. They may claim that, but you can look at various international shipping manifests and see manicuring centers shipping directly to Patek. It doesn’t behove them to make everything in Switzerland. Rolex. Vacheron, all of them have Chinese parts.
Not really. At the end of the day, costs are a real thing and they still get parts from China. Grand Seikos problem is that their watches have no complications. A dial can only get you so far. I find them to be pretty meh. Not so long ago JLC used to make movements for patek.
This is simply untrue. And I know it for a fact, because I work for a Swiss watch company (in procurement, of all departments). There is an Asian supplier that is used by some manufacturers for sapphire glas, but that‘s it.
It's no secret that the "Swiss Made" moniker allows for an alarming amount of foreign production. That does not mean that all Swiss watches contain "about 40% chinese parts."
ok, who is going to come over and clean up the vomit on my keyboard and desk resulting from those Scotty photos? we need WARNINGs before scrolling thru such!
I've worn all of them, I still don't get the fuss. Now if I were in the business of showing off to pricks, I'd have a gold nautilus with a moon phase, no problem. I prefer Pateks more complicated pieces, but they're still kind of ugly to me. Hence my German (albeit small) watch collection.
I also should been more clear. I'll take my PVD in low friction DLC (usually black or gray) over anything gold too!
I don't care for the physical properties of gold for anything that has to perform even a basic function. Intend to be hard on things at the wrong time.
No one with an IQ above room temperature thinks Casey Putch is anything other than a spoiled D-Bag with delusions of grandeur that border on schizophrenic…right?…right??
He may be an insane moron, but at least he's OUR insane moron, rather than a foreign agent who is OUTSPOKEN about his animus against the people of Ohio and the US.
I'm surprised that anyone with an IQ above room temperature thinks that a spoiled D-Bag with delusions of grandeur that border on schizophrenic isn't preferrable to the other two choices.
Baruth, this one paragraph "news" entry cracks me up. Quick! Semi feral cats living in an Oregon vagabond encampment need to be trapped and put in houses!!! Think of the homeless house cat!!
Nah, that's some nonsense from south of the border. Most Michigan fans (do national collegiate championships mean anything in the transfer portal / NIL age?) have no problem calling the second tier school in Columbus "Ohio State". You can park a car with Ohio plates in Ann Arbor and nobody will bother it. I wouldn't park a car with Michigan plates on High Street in Columbus.
True story. I once drove to Lima, Ohio to buy a PeeWee Les Paul. It's a kid-sized little guitar. An adult son was helping his dad, who had some kind of chronic respiratory disease, sell off his guitar collection. Before I walked in their house, from the banners and flags outside I knew they were OSU fans. The den was literally a shrine to Woody Hayes, with a lifesize bronze bust of the man in a place of honor. We had agreed on $100 the guitar, a fair price, but I said, "I'll pay you $150 if you sing The Victors." They turned me down.
"Let me get one thing straight for everyone: there is only one company that deserves the name Alembic, and it’s the guys who make Stanley Clarke’s bass."
The first Alembic bass was made for Jack Casady. Phil Lesh got #8, aka "Mission Control" which was set up for four channels and had all sorts of onboard electronics.
People like to poke fun at the Dead scene but the Grateful Dead and Owsley had a lot to do with making live amplified music actually sound good, the whole signal chain from the instruments to the PA. Owsley was the guy who put Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner, and Bob Matthews together in a back room at the Dead's rehearsal space in Novato to create Alembic. He likely also put up the money.
Speaking of which, on April 22, the Julien's auction house sale of Dead related stuff, including some of the McIntosh 2300 power amps used in the Wall of Sound. There's a small practice amp that belonged to Garcia that I considered bidding upon, but in online bidding it's already above the estimate.
From Grok: Phil Spector's Wall of Sound was his revolutionary 1960s recording technique that layered dozens of instruments (often doubled or tripled, including guitars, pianos, drums, horns, and strings played by the Wrecking Crew session musicians) along with heavy reverb and echo in mono mixes to create a dense, orchestral, immersive "symphonic" wall of sound for pop records.
The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound was a massive PA system that almost bankrupted the band. It weighed 70 tons and was three stories tall. 604 speakers total (typically described as 586 JBL speakers + 54 Electro-Voice tweeters) and 48 McIntosh MC-2300 amplifiers (600 watts each), delivering a total of 28,800 watts of continuous RMS power.
When they played Watkins Glen in front of 600,000 people, they used digital delay units to time-align the sound coming out of the satellite speakers in the crowd so no matter how far you were from the stage, you got coherent sound, not an echoed mess.
From the very beginning much of Putsch's campaigning has been in the ridiculously over saturated market of microbreweries. I just assumed some politico convinced him it would be fun and trendy but knowing the Nazi trigger could be pulled should our boy actually get some traction. Here it is with early voting started yesterday and the trigger had just been pulled. It's hard to go full Nazi though while quaffing Peant Butter Banana Stout.
He's got my vote, just for shits and giggles, not like he has any sort of chance. I'll be taking a pass on November's election.
The United States doesn’t really have a watch manufacturing base, like Japan or Europe, there are a handful of what I consider luxury watch makers in the States, and then there is China, who is coming into its own watch making business, the Sea-Gull st19 movements are pure art,so my question is, how egregious is it to buy watches that are Chinese manufactured, especially when they are practically giving away their labor, these watches had they been manufactured in Japan would be multiples more expensive than Seiko, and a lot of these watches are using Japan made (speculative) movements, very few are actually counterfeit.
Sad to report... on my forced march to the wine shop... I used to pass past the showroom of the Speidel watch bands (and third-party) watches. They are the descendants of the mid-19th-c. German company that invented "Gold-Plated (jewelry) Chains" (a long story, that!).
Boils down to Vaughn Gittin JR accusing Car And Driver of a) writing with AI and b) not “understanding” the purpose of the $110k RTR Spec 3.
Worth a read. It’s rare and, frankly, unbecoming for the CEO of a company to go into a comment section and toss around accusations. Perhaps they should have made their car faster than one that cost $60k less instead?
Elana may be a "real and wonderful person", but she couldn't write her way out of a paper bag, so... I guess we know how well Thomas Hundal writes by extension.
I don't frequent "The Autopian", so I'll need to take your word for it
... but based solely on the linked article, there's nothing to make me want to read more. The "inside ball" various websites feel important to put up in response to things happening on other websites or with other autojournalists doesn't interest me in the slightest.
The only things worse are the political statements "The Drive", etc. feel are super-important to share, and breathless shilling for anything Chinese or electric.
That’s fair. I have no stake in the site, but this article I linked isn’t representative of much of what they post either tbh
By and large, and especially considering their competition, they do a good job of putting out interesting content and presenting it in a (relatively) balanced way.
I’d strongly recommend reading anything and everything that Adrian Clarke writes. I’d also say Ms Mercedes Streeter does some really good work in her longer, research-based articles.
For street use. Taking a car people buy for street use and using street tires to test it on a track is disingenuous at best. Who cares what 0-60 and quarter mile times are on day to day driving. The article reads like a press release. There's nothing there.
And they (to the best of my memory) always use OEM rubber for their tests to make them as consistent and fair as possible, whether they are testing a Kia K4 or a $110k Mustang.
And the answer to “who cares about 0-60 and 1/4 mile times” is the exact people who would be buying an 800hp Mustang lol.
Arguing about times in a a parking lot is what muscle cars and hyper cars are for!
Vaughn Gittin may be the head of his company, but he's still a driver. It was a HUGE deal that Ford decided to make an RTR package. The only other person to get a package in recent memory was Shelby... which isn't going to come back due to the estate greed. I think I'd also be slightly offended that my car would be compared to the cheaper version when it is clear the car is meant to do different things. (Think blasting sideways at highly illegal speeds into turn 1 at VIR.)
The commentors there are trying to white knight so hard, going so far as to put her writing through "ai filters" and such.
Two things can be true at once:
1. Vaughn was slightly unprofessional, but the AI accusation we were told was supposed to make people's jobs easier. Why be offended?
2. Her writing is generic enough that it could easily be CONFUSED for AI.
Look, I've worked with Vaughn before on Brocky(his Bronco offroader). I heard of him long before I had ever worked with him. Her? Yeah, never heard of her despite her being a "senior editor". Might mean nothing, but one has more of a reputation than the other.
The good news on this is that the person who would spend 110k on a Spec 3 (idiots like me but not broke) would not care at all what Car and Driver would think of the car.
I really hope Ford doesn't get goaded into making a single statement on this.
Elana Scherr has been around, and was writing(ish) for another Hearst car magazine (Hot Rod) before moving over to C&D.
She’s no Hemingway.
The autopress was once the home of more than its share of top shelf writing, and C&D stood at the peak. This has not been the case in over a decade, the slide beginning under Eddie Alterman and accelerated into a full-on swan dive under Sharon Silke Carty. The new guy is an improvement, which is saying absolutely nothing. I’m not sure any editor in chief at C&D has even owned a car since Csaba Csere, and I doubt that some of the current girl-carz writers even hold a valid license. Hearst is actively urinating on the enthusiast base with their staff.
The former Petersen Publications rags (Hot Rod, et al) were never a part of that tradition, and wrote at approximately the 6th grade level.
I gather from her writing that Ms Scherr at least owns some cars and apparently works on some of them (*with her husband), which makes her the next likely editor in chief, given that she was born with the appropriate plumbing to head up a Hearst Lifestyle Brand.
What she can’t do is write at a level beyond her roots at Hot Rod. AI is 100% believable.
"I’m not sure any editor in chief at C&D has even owned a car since Csaba Csere, and I doubt that some of the current girl-carz writers even hold a valid license. " assuming this is true, which is likely, it is completely beyond pathetic.
99% of the people buying mustangs buy them because they
1. Sound good
2. Look good
"Even in a veiled manner, suggesting that generative AI was used to write an article is a serious allegation, and one that would need to be backed up with substantiative proof"
AI slop is everywhere. I almost guarantee one of the car magazines is doing it. "Need substantive proof" oh, fuck off. Dorky Editors simping for an ugly, middle aged, mediocrity is the story here.
The burden of proof is not on the accuser when the prose is vapid enough that AI authorship is plausible. If it reads like AI, suggesting that it might, in point of fact, BE AI is 100% inbounds.
The main problem here is the straight up DEI nonsense that infects car rags in 2026. Ms Scherr could let chatgpt write every article she puts up, admit it freely, and STILL keep her job because having a woman on the masthead overrides EVERY other consideration.
Sharon Silke Carty proved that beyond any possible dispute.
Vaughn seems closer to a dirtbag carguy than a "CEO" type, even if he is the CEO of RTR. His comments seemed fair, although ill-advised, especially the needless AI dig.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention, KoR, you da man.
Personally, I haven't driven either a new Mustang GT nor an RTR Mustang of any sort, but I'm inclined to come down on the side of the man who built the car, since he's been demonstrating for years that he knows what he's talking about. Yeah, it's a bad look for him to hop in the comments and start talking shit like a neckbearded spergeloid, but he's probably right.
Id say if you cant stop or avoid spinning the tires you're going slower. Why it handlded worse is a question.
iw as thinking with all that Hp is probably way faster in 4th down the back straight of any decent sized track than a Gt.
But the article does beg the question. i see these tuner cars, and maybe thye make hp on street, but on track are they ever tested, do they actually hold up, prob not.
Id say hes not too bright then sending a car with those tires to a test and then compounding by comlainig about the author.. Wonder what it would do with Cup R.
I also wonder whether a blown coyote will really hold up on track. The Gt500 and now dark hose sc uses a motor with quite different internals to maintain power robustness, oiling etc. I wonder how the trans holds up with all that power. They dont use a manual in a Gt500 or sc for a reason.
in all fairness Id like to see what this car can do on a road course with appropriate tires, and for that matter what its laptimes look like by lap 5 and 7 plus saya 10 lap average, but then id like to see the same test for most any street car with "track' pretensions.
OTCarShoppingTalk: I sold the Land Cruiser (yay), but now face the task of (eventually) replacing it. Right now I'm testing out half sharing the wife's Prius, half driving the '77 Econoline. I foresee a future event that unfolds more or less like: 'I can't do XYZ with the van, and the wife's out driving her Prius.' That leaves the single option of my motorcycle, which is a bit more limiting.
I wanted to find a decent used Durango 5.7 Hemi/AWD but they are thin on the ground for my cheap ass budget. Their are V6's galore, but 'I could've had a Hemi' FOMO is real. Right now, a cheap-o '14 Citadel AWD w/ ~150k is at a small dealer lot not too far from me, I found records indicating 2 owners, then a fleet ownership, then sold at auction just last month. Maintenance records only go back to 76k, but it seems it did get regular maintenance and a 'driveline service' @ ~123k. Last time I bought from a small dealer was a long time ago, and the car was a buyer's remorse special, meaning it had literally no miles on it. Part of me wants to go and at least drive it and look under the hood etc. The other part of me thinks it's a waste of time.
I'm trying to save most of the cash from selling the LC, and this spec Durango is nearly impossible to find for peanuts, so maybe I need to give up on the dream above.
Hemi FOMO is real, but I did just get ~27mpg on a 1300 mile trip with the 3.6 in my Grand Cherokee.
It’s an uninteresting engine, but it’s not a bad one.
If you get a good one, they last too.
Lots of examples with 250k + miles on them, yeah
Also lots of examples that have blown up at like 60k miles.
Such is the nature of MOPAR.
I swear to God, every MOPAR purchase is like "do I like the odds? how about the size of the bet?"
It's unfortunately random. Poor maintenance might guarantee problems but I've also read of people doing 3k mile oil changes who still have to replace cams well before 100k miles.
For which the sign is the infamous “HEMI tick?”
I was thinking pentastar cause that’s what kor has but also that
Plenty of hemis tick tick tick their entire lives and only meet their end when the vessel they inhabit becomes scrap metal after colliding with a concrete wall at 120mph. The tick doesn't necessarily mean the cam is going or there's anything else wrong with the engine. Sometimes it is a problem, but usually, "yeah it just does that."
my thoughts exactly.
What model Land Cruiser was it?
200 series
What made you happy about letting it go?
Austere times, plus it was complete over kill for what it was being used for.
But, but... it's an investment!
Love mine in LX 570 form, but it's just a tractor. I'll keep it forever; it has its virtues, but it's just a Toyota.
I Come in Prace, your prayers have been answered by the Dodge Boys as in lookie here: HEMI, AWD, 0 percent interest. MSRP starting under $40,000…
https://www.dodge.com/durango.html
I see the Hemi starting at $44k but it's really not an outrageous premium.
I kind of want a purple one. At least they make them in Colors
I think that is a "limited" edition Hellcat. I would agree that Hellraisin should be a regular run color.
Well that's too bad. Now I'm not going to spend 90k instead of me not spending 50k
I thought my car was just plain silver, but the build sheet lists a $95 option for Triple Nickel. Ha!
omg... a '77 Econoline - a retired Purolator delivery van - was the first vehicle I was allowed to drive solo.
It explains why I rarely went on dates. No parent is gonna let their daughter date a kid with a van.
also, obligatory "Miata is always the answer" answer
Kids, dog etc. say 'nope'
busfare for the kids, longer walks for the dog, Miata for you!
I know someone selling an LS swapped NA. Engine from a GTO. Very good car mechanically but a little rough cosmetically.
What do they want for it?
I don't know the exact number but probably around $20k.
cheaper than building one and that sounds like a decent price
I think you would struggle to replicate it for less. Definitely couldn’t get a certified gm tech to do it.
How can we find out more?
Direct message me. I could give you a number or email.
You know what is a perfect landrover replacement?
Thats right! A 2013 triumph street triple!
Stiata! Street triple is always the answer
You’re thinking about this backwards me thinks. There’s a huge delta between what can be achieved with a Durango and a Prius but you have the econoline- I think you should go find a nice cheap but cheerful hatch (non GTI golf, spark, rolla, whatever the Korean option is) and just beat the snot out of it.
this is a good answer.
Everyone I know who has a Kia Soul does that. I ended up with a 100k mile RENTAL in the DR a few years ago and I was surprised how well it had held up. I mean, it was definitely a 100k DR rental lol but everything worked, minimal squeaks, and got 30mpg without trying.
I recommend a Soul to every person on a budget that just needs A Car
Can find one with a full CPO warranty for under $15k usually
Always was a fun car to drive.
A fraternity brother of mine, sold his SRT-4 Neon to buy a first model year Kia Soul and a R6, he "hit a deer" on the R6 a few months into ownership and was left with just the Soul, all things considered it wasn't a terrible car, and his limp went away eventually.
How are mid aughties Mazda 3's holding up? Those are not hard to find.
I had an '07 GT hatchback from 2015 to 2020. It was a nice enough car and, had I not replaced it with a significantly newer CX-5, I probably could have put new tires on it and still be driving it. It did have some tailgate and quarterpanel rust and like 130-150,000 miles on it, but it lived outside in the UP and never failed to start and all the buttons still worked.
My 07 MS3 had an 02 sensor go bad and that was it. I fucked up the wheels and the suspension doing something stupid but that wasn't the cars fault.
Thoughts on a Honda Element? Specifically the AWD
I think you're likely to overpay for one as they have gained cult status, but if you can find a decent one that hasnt been used up and the price is right, its a great idea. as with almost everything in life, it all comes down to a matter of valuation.
There can’t be that many decent ones left, and the ones that are will command a huge premium.
One of them I found has a lift kit and some foo foo overlanding junk on it. I didn't now that was a thing with these, internet search found a bunch of people doing this.
Good God, WHY??!!
Don't limit yourself to the Hemi, the Pentastar is much more pleasant to operate and use on the road. Sometimes you just want the engine to go away, and the Hemi never does. It is always in the car with you, blub blub blubbing and droning along. You will feel its heft every time you turn a corner. You will feel it lurch in its mounts when you just want to inch forward. You will feel the schitzophrenic jagged spiral firing order, compared to the Pentastar's balanced linear delivery. Hemi farts its way to 5200 RPM, Pentastar vrooms its way to 6500. Sandpaper vs a knife. No, you can't upgrade the exhaust, why would you want to do that?
Ouch bro! -signed, the 4 Hemis I've owned and loved
Agreed on the pentastar exhaust thing, the intake noise is absolutely where it's at for them. If you wanna tow stuff though, there's no substitute for 400ftlbs of torque. Not to mention the stronger 8sp behind Hemis. The only dead 8sp I saw while working in the dealer shop was a v6 Ram that probably was used to tow 5.7 sized loads too often.
The Hemi is a truck engine, not surprised its good at that. It's lurchy character and delayed throttle response (gently put the gas pedal down) is similar to Uhaul trucks I've driven. Never dealt with the ZF 8sp but it has a great reputation. I got my 18 inch wheels and Continental TrueContacts installed finally, the ride is drastically improved, no longer rough and rattley and punishing, no more wincing at upcoming obtstacles, don't always need to swerve (last winter did a number, and the roads being worked on aren't much better) but still notably flatter around corners than the old car. I did the research, and it turns out after 2019 everything above the SXT has the Super Track Pack, maybe I'll get the SXT shocks in the future, but I'm enjoying it now, I'm in no hurry. However If I was Jay Leno I would commission a Gladiator manual powertrain swap into an SXT.
Car Biz discussion topic:
Stupid cost cutting moves that cost people their lives or huge money.
Examples include Kia’s lack of anti-theft chip in their car keys, GM’s fake part number change for ignition key shutoff that killed drivers, Takata airbag inflator parts, Toyota “Floormat” runaway acceleration et al.
it all leads back to "got to make this quarter's numbers"
Cuz CALpers and other public employee pensions needs the line to go up.
'If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.'
“We do NOT talk about Fight Club”
I thought Ford did that with the Pintos, as well.
The stickers for “make sure the fucking car is in ‘Park’” are the same type of thing—they got away with that one!
I'm no fan of Hyundai/Kia, but the notion that they should be held liable for car thefts because they omitted engine immobilizers boils my blood.
I’m not saying that the thieves aren’t responsible for thievery, I’m just saying that Hyundai/Killed In Action omitted a basic function in the name of profit that made people’s lives harder.
A basic anti-theft chip in an old fashioned car key has been a staple of the car business since at least the 90’s.
Agree that it was a bone-headed choice that must have cost them several times in recalls and settlements whatever the initial savings were.
But I bristled at the various state attorneys general that sued for negligence and cast H/K as the bad guys rather than the teenaged punk perpetrators.
I agree with that.
Full disclosure: I am Asian and migrated to the US in my teens and will be hitting the half century mark this month.
Why is it that everything I hate about the US right now I can point to the leftist progressive female, who is almost always, white???
about half of white women are conservative compared to nearly all nonwhite women who are liberal
its not the whites
Good point, but I assume that the white women contribute a disproportionate amount of money and brainpower.
But the problem is that those 50% still cancel out their husband's votes...
voting demographics is basically whites vs everyone else
only about a few more decades at most before electing a republican president becomes essentially impossible
Many minorities are way more conservative than you think. Add in that the dems are doubling down on woke, I wouldn’t count the GOP out yet.
Their voting record as a whole indicates otherwise. The hispanic 'natural conservatives' that the mainline GOP has been salivating over for decades never materialized. The Cuban diaspora was a one and done. Each individual group is of course very ethnocentric.
Immigrants overwhelmingly choose the US over their home country for what I'd call the "Reagan Vision" of the American dream: peace, security, opportunity, homeownership, live and let live.
Obv, there's a lot of daylight bw that Vision and the Reality, and even what RR himself truly believed.
My Sikh friends are to my right. And I love it.
nah as long as 40% Hispanics and black me vote republican that demographic time bomb wont hit. the reality is republicans could get +50% Hispanics and a lot more black votes too.
It's more the AWFLs, both the young ones and the spinsters. The married ones are most likely to vote with their husbands.
My, what I assume was once liberal, wife has gone harder right than I have since having kids.
"When I became a mom, every cell in my body became biologically hard-wired to 'secure the existence of our people and a future for (my) white children;' if that makes me 'hard right,' like, whatever. Another lemon square?"
Who has the Nick Land tweet "Never be so racist that you forget liberal white women are the worst people on planet earth"?
Because they are the ones ruining lots of stuff
An asian trackday coach? She might be an asshole bigot but she's not suicidal!
I apologize in advance for this. Yuki is available.
That, my friend... was hilarious.
sushi tunoda making a few bucks on the side
gotta resist the urge to throw harpoons at her though
laughing at the Yuki joke even though I love Yuki.
I like yuki too but you gotta take them when theyre available.
There is that thing about coaching women, they listen and execute, also tend not to be suicidal. hard to say what's worse the teenage male who si yet to have his foirst shunt, or the "retired" 65 yo in a vette porche etc who lacks innate talent/feel behind the well but was "sucessful" so thinks he knows what he is doing.
If you're going to be sitting in the right seat, hard to beat a female student.
It's the retired guy.
The worst part about Casey’s Putsch is that most people won’t even know the significance until it’s spelled out for them
You been reading my mail!!!
It is depressing how many people seem to be taking Casey Putz seriously as a gubernatorial candidate and don’t see him as the scumbag grifter that he is. Maybe this whole beer hall thing is him having a good laugh at how he has been able to sucker so many people with his campaign while sucking up as much campaign money as he can.
Hope springs eternal. The other two choices are suicide. At least if you vote for Casey, you won't feel quite so stupid when the totalitarian levels your land for her renewable energy backers or the Indian turns Ohio into India.
One mush question how all the choices are so lame, what is it about the Midwest these days.
I think It’s no accident that he’s walked straight in to not one but two nazi gaffes…someone clever out there has been having a great time tricking his team in to oblivion
You are right. My wife had never heard of that event.
"The Patek Philippe Aquanaut is made in Switzerland of locally sourced parts." It is not. It is about 40% chinese parts in all Swiss watches. I was a buyer for luxury retailer and I know this for a fact.
I don’t think I need to feel bad about buying inexpensive homages to fancy euro watches just on the merits of the European watch community using China for parts manufacturing…
No one is saying you should? Just that Swiss watches aren’t all that Swiss.
The Swiss learned how to make watches from the Americans.
Speaking of "making watches," if you haven't already done so, Read LONGITUDE by Dava Sobel. It relates the story of a man devoted to creating an accurate clock and pursuing the prize offered for such a device, in order to aid sailors to determine their longitude at sea.
It’s a great book!
I've read it twice. The movie adaptation with Michael Gambon is also very good. It turns out there's an illustrated version of the book, which I just ordered from Abe Books.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHvt48S9l4w
It's hard to describe just how brilliant John Harrison was. Besides his technical skills, the many inventions he had to create to see his idea to fruition, his basic idea of determining a ship's longitude was the definition of simple and elegant. Determining latitude was fairly simple, based on measuring the angle of the sun or North Star (in the northern hemisphere) above the horizon. Longitude was much harder, and it seemed as though the politically connected astronomers of the Royal Society tried to make it even harder.
Harrison's insight was simple, but brilliant. No matter where you are on earth, the sun is at its apogee at noon, local time. If you have an accurate enough timekeeping device set to noon at the Greenwich observatory in England, every hour of difference from local noon to Greenwich noon works out to 15 degrees of longitude. 15 x 24 = 360.
There are so many things to learn from Harrison's story. His determination, his son's loyalty, how science can be corrupted by politics, how connected people screw the little guy.
Many thanks for your most informed response. Also, if I remember correctly, they tried to screw him out of the cash prize, which was quite substantial and which he had clearly won.
"how science can be corrupted by politics, how connected people screw the little guy."
Same as it has always been apparently
Seconded. Great book.
Too bad the eccentric Englishmen are no longer a thing.
True. The US at one point was the leading watch manufacturing center.
It was more a statement of how much crap America buys from China, that is poorly made, but looking at the watches, they don’t look or feel poorly made.
True. But watches haven’t changed that much and their manufacturing is the same. I bet, outside of the price of gold, the any patek probably costs no more than $3k to make with the same finishing. Maybe less.
the lonville is totally swiss, reptile band and all.
Sure since they make 18 of them, not 50 to 60 thousand like Patek or 1 million plus like Rolex. Come on dude.
Also reptile cannot be from Europe, so sure.
This is worth a separate discussion but there are several brands that are fully integrated vertically in CH and give tours to prove it. Patek is one of them. Only raw materials and glass are sourced from outside Geneva. That is their public and documented claim.
Now, Tissot and Tag...
This is simply untrue. They may claim that, but you can look at various international shipping manifests and see manicuring centers shipping directly to Patek. It doesn’t behove them to make everything in Switzerland. Rolex. Vacheron, all of them have Chinese parts.
ARTICLE REQUESTED (and I'm not even a watch guy)
No article really needed, it's not that interesting.
^^ in other words, he heard this from a buddy, and has no actual proof.
Which leads to the next question: is a Grand Seiko entirely made in Japan? Probably not, but I can see the Japanese being a little fussier about it.
Not really. At the end of the day, costs are a real thing and they still get parts from China. Grand Seikos problem is that their watches have no complications. A dial can only get you so far. I find them to be pretty meh. Not so long ago JLC used to make movements for patek.
This is simply untrue. And I know it for a fact, because I work for a Swiss watch company (in procurement, of all departments). There is an Asian supplier that is used by some manufacturers for sapphire glas, but that‘s it.
Their jewelry on the other hand, not Chinese. In fact, one of the best is in the US.
It's no secret that the "Swiss Made" moniker allows for an alarming amount of foreign production. That does not mean that all Swiss watches contain "about 40% chinese parts."
Yeah but marketing.
ok, who is going to come over and clean up the vomit on my keyboard and desk resulting from those Scotty photos? we need WARNINGs before scrolling thru such!
that watch, in both $27k (seriously?!?) and $109 versions, is ugly. sorry.
Brown doesn’t help. But the aquanaut and the nautilus seem the same to me. I don’t think any patek watch looks all that great tbh.
That's kind of my point! If you just look at the thing you would never know how great it is to wear.
I've worn all of them, I still don't get the fuss. Now if I were in the business of showing off to pricks, I'd have a gold nautilus with a moon phase, no problem. I prefer Pateks more complicated pieces, but they're still kind of ugly to me. Hence my German (albeit small) watch collection.
PVD/stainless > gold
Fight me.
Titanium over steel, steel over gold, gold over everything else not previously mentioned.
PVD is a process, not a color.
Correct, and of I want something gold colored I would rather have PVD coated stainless.
Apologies, I misread what you intended in the first reply then.
I also should been more clear. I'll take my PVD in low friction DLC (usually black or gray) over anything gold too!
I don't care for the physical properties of gold for anything that has to perform even a basic function. Intend to be hard on things at the wrong time.
No one with an IQ above room temperature thinks Casey Putch is anything other than a spoiled D-Bag with delusions of grandeur that border on schizophrenic…right?…right??
you are insulting people with room temp IQs
Hoping next month I can pick up a discounted Putsch for Governor hat or t-shirt to wear should our chief scribe host another First Principles.
Maybe I can find some Casey Putsch Indycar merch to wear
It’s in the 2026 Speedgear Spring Catalog between The Steve McQueen Collection and the Auto Art bathroom fixtures.
He may be an insane moron, but at least he's OUR insane moron, rather than a foreign agent who is OUTSPOKEN about his animus against the people of Ohio and the US.
The tragedy is that it got to this point.
I'm surprised that anyone with an IQ above room temperature thinks that a spoiled D-Bag with delusions of grandeur that border on schizophrenic isn't preferrable to the other two choices.
So, presidential material.
well at least hes not 80 years old
https://idahonews.com/news/local/rescue-group-urgently-seeks-help-to-save-cats-from-ontario-encampment-sweep
Baruth, this one paragraph "news" entry cracks me up. Quick! Semi feral cats living in an Oregon vagabond encampment need to be trapped and put in houses!!! Think of the homeless house cat!!
I bet the homeless people are feeding them... so when the encampment goes, they'll be hungry. But yeah this seems oddly urgent for no reason.
I'll say it again, write in J. Baruth for Ohio guvnor!
Isn't Jim Tressel a former coach of athletic teams?
Yes, of a school which shall not be mentioned.
What do you have against Youngstown State?
Gang affiliation obviously
They are in the “who cares” category with MSU.
It needs to be mentioned, because it is one of the nation's largest universities and something just happened there which is highly concerning and also illustrative of what is happening in so many universities, corporations, city councils, and medical residency programs (note that the number of residency slots was capped by Congress in 1997, so each foreign resident is a 1:1 displacement of a citizen: https://x.com/MaryBowdenMD/status/2037514903330676838 , https://x.com/MaryBowdenMD/status/2039074211013042564 , https://x.com/marybowdenmd/status/2037905486020747410 , https://x.com/MaryBowdenMD/status/2038669980804280705 )
In March, a new president was installed in a very brief, very secretive, and very closed manner, which received criticism from many stakeholders including the local chapter of the AAUP, alumni, and concerned citizens: (https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2026/03/18/ohio-state-president-ravi-bellamkonda-ted-carter-trustees/89198862007/ , https://www.wosu.org/politics-government/2026-03-12/ohio-state-university-hires-ravi-bellamkonda-as-next-president-without-wider-candidate-search, https://www.wosu.org/politics-government/2026-03-17/ohio-state-faculty-reaction-remains-mixed-at-bellamkondas-appointment-as-president )
I searched in vain for a photo of the the wife of outoing president Ted Carter (Vice Adm. USN-Ret.), but the press release (https://news.osu.edu/ravi-v-bellamkonda-appointed-18th-president-of-the-ohio-state-university/) prominently featured the {Beautiful First Couple}, in order to emphasize what happened: https://content.presspage.com/uploads/2170/88688672-8ec8-414a-a254-9872e31bc51a/1920_ohiostatepresidentraviv.bellamkondaandhiswifedr.lalitakaligotla.jpg?x=1773336449953
Just DAYS after the installation of {Bellamkonda}, {Vivek Ramaswamy} said that Ohio has "too many" colleges & universities and called for consolidation (if he closes enough universities, then his view that Americans are "unskilled" will become true!): https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/03/19/vivek-ramaswamy-said-ohio-colleges-universities-need-to-be-consolidated-we-have-too-many-of-them/
Subcontinentals are the best in the world at what they do; The Future is Frisco: https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2040998821216600208
Nah, that's some nonsense from south of the border. Most Michigan fans (do national collegiate championships mean anything in the transfer portal / NIL age?) have no problem calling the second tier school in Columbus "Ohio State". You can park a car with Ohio plates in Ann Arbor and nobody will bother it. I wouldn't park a car with Michigan plates on High Street in Columbus.
True story. I once drove to Lima, Ohio to buy a PeeWee Les Paul. It's a kid-sized little guitar. An adult son was helping his dad, who had some kind of chronic respiratory disease, sell off his guitar collection. Before I walked in their house, from the banners and flags outside I knew they were OSU fans. The den was literally a shrine to Woody Hayes, with a lifesize bronze bust of the man in a place of honor. We had agreed on $100 the guitar, a fair price, but I said, "I'll pay you $150 if you sing The Victors." They turned me down.
OSU folks do love it when you refer to their school as "AN Ohio State University."
"Let me get one thing straight for everyone: there is only one company that deserves the name Alembic, and it’s the guys who make Stanley Clarke’s bass."
The first Alembic bass was made for Jack Casady. Phil Lesh got #8, aka "Mission Control" which was set up for four channels and had all sorts of onboard electronics.
People like to poke fun at the Dead scene but the Grateful Dead and Owsley had a lot to do with making live amplified music actually sound good, the whole signal chain from the instruments to the PA. Owsley was the guy who put Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner, and Bob Matthews together in a back room at the Dead's rehearsal space in Novato to create Alembic. He likely also put up the money.
Speaking of which, on April 22, the Julien's auction house sale of Dead related stuff, including some of the McIntosh 2300 power amps used in the Wall of Sound. There's a small practice amp that belonged to Garcia that I considered bidding upon, but in online bidding it's already above the estimate.
https://www.juliensauctions.com/en/items/2208332/jerry-garcia-owned-and-stage-played-joan-baez-friends-gallien-krueger-250ml-warm-up-guitar-amplifier
Isn't the "Wall of Sound" associated with the late convicted murderer Phil Spector not the Dead?
That's a different Wall of Sound.
From Grok: Phil Spector's Wall of Sound was his revolutionary 1960s recording technique that layered dozens of instruments (often doubled or tripled, including guitars, pianos, drums, horns, and strings played by the Wrecking Crew session musicians) along with heavy reverb and echo in mono mixes to create a dense, orchestral, immersive "symphonic" wall of sound for pop records.
The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound was a massive PA system that almost bankrupted the band. It weighed 70 tons and was three stories tall. 604 speakers total (typically described as 586 JBL speakers + 54 Electro-Voice tweeters) and 48 McIntosh MC-2300 amplifiers (600 watts each), delivering a total of 28,800 watts of continuous RMS power.
https://www.mcintoshlabs.com/about/news/mcintosh-and-the-grateful-deads-wall-of-sound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmZT4Wl2jSA
There's a guy who has made 1:6, 1:4, and 1;2 scale working replicas of the Wall of Sound.
https://www.mixonline.com/live-sound/live-gear/bringing-the-grateful-deads-wall-of-sound-back-to-life
holy shit thats a lot of juice
probably sounded mental
When they played Watkins Glen in front of 600,000 people, they used digital delay units to time-align the sound coming out of the satellite speakers in the crowd so no matter how far you were from the stage, you got coherent sound, not an echoed mess.
well thats pretty clever
The Dead had some serious brains in the band when it came to Electronics.
Different Wall! And Coltrane had the Sheets of Sound.
Is hip hop sheeits of sound?
skrrrts of sound
Mud Huts of Sound
Yes sir it is.
The use of "of" of late has made me sick of "of" of course!
From the very beginning much of Putsch's campaigning has been in the ridiculously over saturated market of microbreweries. I just assumed some politico convinced him it would be fun and trendy but knowing the Nazi trigger could be pulled should our boy actually get some traction. Here it is with early voting started yesterday and the trigger had just been pulled. It's hard to go full Nazi though while quaffing Peant Butter Banana Stout.
He's got my vote, just for shits and giggles, not like he has any sort of chance. I'll be taking a pass on November's election.
I ran a micro-brewery, in our kitchen. I was devoted to making the world a better place one five gallon batch at a time.
I hope you will vote, because every vote sends a message to any future GOP that may try something similar (see https://www.avoidablecontact.com/p/wednesday-ort-beer-hall-putsch-scottys/comment/240468885 )
One third of Michigan's RNC delegation is literally a consigliere in the Subcontinental Mafia (ITServe); search for "Hima" here: https://gop.com/about-our-party/rnc-members/
The United States doesn’t really have a watch manufacturing base, like Japan or Europe, there are a handful of what I consider luxury watch makers in the States, and then there is China, who is coming into its own watch making business, the Sea-Gull st19 movements are pure art,so my question is, how egregious is it to buy watches that are Chinese manufactured, especially when they are practically giving away their labor, these watches had they been manufactured in Japan would be multiples more expensive than Seiko, and a lot of these watches are using Japan made (speculative) movements, very few are actually counterfeit.
Sad to report... on my forced march to the wine shop... I used to pass past the showroom of the Speidel watch bands (and third-party) watches. They are the descendants of the mid-19th-c. German company that invented "Gold-Plated (jewelry) Chains" (a long story, that!).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speidel#
70 or so years ago, Speidel was one of the largest employers in Rhode Island. I gather they had prospered on wartime contracts.
I just walked past, and the building is for sale; any and all reasonable offers considered.
In my youth, Speidel was a local sponsor of the "College Bowl" Quiz TV show.
The most amazing climax of which, I will now share with you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki8LojXY2NE
My dad had some spiedel watch bands.
So did mine. They're pretty comfortable.
Speaking of The Autopian, interesting article here:
https://www.theautopian.com/vaughn-gittin-jr-baselessly-suggests-that-car-and-driver-is-using-ai-after-slightly-negative-review-of-his-spec-3-mustang/
Boils down to Vaughn Gittin JR accusing Car And Driver of a) writing with AI and b) not “understanding” the purpose of the $110k RTR Spec 3.
Worth a read. It’s rare and, frankly, unbecoming for the CEO of a company to go into a comment section and toss around accusations. Perhaps they should have made their car faster than one that cost $60k less instead?
From the article (which I read):
"[𝘌𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘦: 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘴. 𝘌𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯, 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘷𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘺 𝘶𝘯𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘥𝘶𝘮𝘣. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘧𝘵 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯. 𝘎𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯 𝘑𝘳. 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘥. – 𝘔𝘏]"
Elana may be a "real and wonderful person", but she couldn't write her way out of a paper bag, so... I guess we know how well Thomas Hundal writes by extension.
The Autopian is the best current automotive blog.
They are also kind and deferential to a fault.
I don't frequent "The Autopian", so I'll need to take your word for it
... but based solely on the linked article, there's nothing to make me want to read more. The "inside ball" various websites feel important to put up in response to things happening on other websites or with other autojournalists doesn't interest me in the slightest.
The only things worse are the political statements "The Drive", etc. feel are super-important to share, and breathless shilling for anything Chinese or electric.
That’s fair. I have no stake in the site, but this article I linked isn’t representative of much of what they post either tbh
By and large, and especially considering their competition, they do a good job of putting out interesting content and presenting it in a (relatively) balanced way.
I’d strongly recommend reading anything and everything that Adrian Clarke writes. I’d also say Ms Mercedes Streeter does some really good work in her longer, research-based articles.
"𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘧𝘵 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯"
chat gpt has been out for more than 5 years at this point though
I love the idea of accusing automotive “writers” of being AI generated. That is genius.
I’m here for it. CEOs should be calling out lazy auto writing publicly.
Honestly, it does read like AI. Imagine taking an 800 hp car to the drag strip and not putting slicks on it.
They were testing it on the tire RTR sent it with. Seems like the most appropriate thing to do tbh
For street use. Taking a car people buy for street use and using street tires to test it on a track is disingenuous at best. Who cares what 0-60 and quarter mile times are on day to day driving. The article reads like a press release. There's nothing there.
That’s how all C&D test articles read though.
And they (to the best of my memory) always use OEM rubber for their tests to make them as consistent and fair as possible, whether they are testing a Kia K4 or a $110k Mustang.
And the answer to “who cares about 0-60 and 1/4 mile times” is the exact people who would be buying an 800hp Mustang lol.
Arguing about times in a a parking lot is what muscle cars and hyper cars are for!
Those people are changing the tires!
I haven't read C&D in a long time but it wasn't always like that.
Vaughn Gittin may be the head of his company, but he's still a driver. It was a HUGE deal that Ford decided to make an RTR package. The only other person to get a package in recent memory was Shelby... which isn't going to come back due to the estate greed. I think I'd also be slightly offended that my car would be compared to the cheaper version when it is clear the car is meant to do different things. (Think blasting sideways at highly illegal speeds into turn 1 at VIR.)
The commentors there are trying to white knight so hard, going so far as to put her writing through "ai filters" and such.
Two things can be true at once:
1. Vaughn was slightly unprofessional, but the AI accusation we were told was supposed to make people's jobs easier. Why be offended?
2. Her writing is generic enough that it could easily be CONFUSED for AI.
Look, I've worked with Vaughn before on Brocky(his Bronco offroader). I heard of him long before I had ever worked with him. Her? Yeah, never heard of her despite her being a "senior editor". Might mean nothing, but one has more of a reputation than the other.
The good news on this is that the person who would spend 110k on a Spec 3 (idiots like me but not broke) would not care at all what Car and Driver would think of the car.
I really hope Ford doesn't get goaded into making a single statement on this.
Elana Scherr has been around, and was writing(ish) for another Hearst car magazine (Hot Rod) before moving over to C&D.
She’s no Hemingway.
The autopress was once the home of more than its share of top shelf writing, and C&D stood at the peak. This has not been the case in over a decade, the slide beginning under Eddie Alterman and accelerated into a full-on swan dive under Sharon Silke Carty. The new guy is an improvement, which is saying absolutely nothing. I’m not sure any editor in chief at C&D has even owned a car since Csaba Csere, and I doubt that some of the current girl-carz writers even hold a valid license. Hearst is actively urinating on the enthusiast base with their staff.
The former Petersen Publications rags (Hot Rod, et al) were never a part of that tradition, and wrote at approximately the 6th grade level.
I gather from her writing that Ms Scherr at least owns some cars and apparently works on some of them (*with her husband), which makes her the next likely editor in chief, given that she was born with the appropriate plumbing to head up a Hearst Lifestyle Brand.
What she can’t do is write at a level beyond her roots at Hot Rod. AI is 100% believable.
"I’m not sure any editor in chief at C&D has even owned a car since Csaba Csere, and I doubt that some of the current girl-carz writers even hold a valid license. " assuming this is true, which is likely, it is completely beyond pathetic.
99% of the people buying mustangs buy them because they
1. Sound good
2. Look good
"Even in a veiled manner, suggesting that generative AI was used to write an article is a serious allegation, and one that would need to be backed up with substantiative proof"
AI slop is everywhere. I almost guarantee one of the car magazines is doing it. "Need substantive proof" oh, fuck off. Dorky Editors simping for an ugly, middle aged, mediocrity is the story here.
The burden of proof is not on the accuser when the prose is vapid enough that AI authorship is plausible. If it reads like AI, suggesting that it might, in point of fact, BE AI is 100% inbounds.
The main problem here is the straight up DEI nonsense that infects car rags in 2026. Ms Scherr could let chatgpt write every article she puts up, admit it freely, and STILL keep her job because having a woman on the masthead overrides EVERY other consideration.
Sharon Silke Carty proved that beyond any possible dispute.
Vaughn seems closer to a dirtbag carguy than a "CEO" type, even if he is the CEO of RTR. His comments seemed fair, although ill-advised, especially the needless AI dig.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention, KoR, you da man.
Personally, I haven't driven either a new Mustang GT nor an RTR Mustang of any sort, but I'm inclined to come down on the side of the man who built the car, since he's been demonstrating for years that he knows what he's talking about. Yeah, it's a bad look for him to hop in the comments and start talking shit like a neckbearded spergeloid, but he's probably right.
Id say if you cant stop or avoid spinning the tires you're going slower. Why it handlded worse is a question.
iw as thinking with all that Hp is probably way faster in 4th down the back straight of any decent sized track than a Gt.
But the article does beg the question. i see these tuner cars, and maybe thye make hp on street, but on track are they ever tested, do they actually hold up, prob not.
So for this car specifically, apparently the tires are mostly the culprit.
It’s on Nittos that were designed in like 2015 instead of a stock Mustang’s Michelins.
The reason being, go figure, Vaughn Gittin has a sponsorship with Nitto.
Id say hes not too bright then sending a car with those tires to a test and then compounding by comlainig about the author.. Wonder what it would do with Cup R.
I also wonder whether a blown coyote will really hold up on track. The Gt500 and now dark hose sc uses a motor with quite different internals to maintain power robustness, oiling etc. I wonder how the trans holds up with all that power. They dont use a manual in a Gt500 or sc for a reason.
in all fairness Id like to see what this car can do on a road course with appropriate tires, and for that matter what its laptimes look like by lap 5 and 7 plus saya 10 lap average, but then id like to see the same test for most any street car with "track' pretensions.