Didn't Elon convince a bunch of people to buy a car with zero functional buttons or knobs? Wasnt he just Some Guy? My point here is that a competent marketer might be able to do more than “LOL THIS CRAPCAN IS UH REALLY TOUGH”.
Consumer product preferences among elite buyers can turn on a dime. I'm not saying I know how to make it happen. But someone out there probably does.
You're probably right and it's academic anyway. Nevertheless, both the 240D and Model S made their bones via marketing, even if the product itself was compelling.
I also can't help but notice the considerable interest in the IMEOS Grenadier, which is as vulnerable to your scorn as this proposed vehicle and has many of the same ideas behind it.
You'd be pretty confident that the diesel taxi would last a generation. And that odds were 50/50 your kids would be picking up _their_ newborns from the hospital in it.
There are still W123s doing taxi service in the middle east. Lincolns, not so much.
Sad, but the DBAG of the 1945-1999 is not the MBUSA of today.
I like the idea of an affordable, long-lasting, repairable vehicle. However, I don't think that selling it to rich people would work.
We've hired quite a few recent university graduates with undergraduate and graduate degrees. They all drive Corollas, and when some had to replace their Corolla, they bought another Corolla. Why? Because they don't care about cars, they just want something cheap that will last. Did I mention that they are all young men? I think that is the target audience, at least to begin with.
As a Gen X-er who has NEVER owned any SUV, much less a Ford, and has never financed a car over a 72 or 84 month term, I would also line up for one.
i think you might be onto something but i was of the opinion that jack presented these people as lolcows to be mocked and not legitimate sources of grievances
Here's the problem with modern social media -- genuine concerns, information, and caveat-emptor stuff is often overwhelmed by a tidal wave of manufactured consent. If nobody periodically calls Casey out, the number of victims will increase.
I mean I guess that simple car sounds OK, but why wouldn’t you go back X years (5? 7? I dunno) until the most recent Civic/Accord/Corolla/Camry/etc vintage of your choosing and buy that? When was the last NA Civic Si? Or similar? Why is this unknown thing better than that?
Not to mention what people are *charging* for a 2008 Toyota Corolla, on that reputation. It’s the sort of car that is sought-after and so comfortably outside of a lot of people’s cash means…but yet, they couldn’t get decent or any financing on it, either, because of how old it is.
On top of that, COVID pricing means that the shit costs 25-30% more than it would have in 2019, year-for-year.
The best solution is probably to find the sorts of cars that are reliable, but that aren’t sought-after. The 2010-2012 4-cylinder Fusion, in particular, is a robust car, and I’d argue it’s more pleasant to look at and to drive than the contemporary Camry. A 3800-powered Buick is another solution. I found my cousin a very tony 2008 Buick Lucerne CXL with that engine earlier this year, for $3,000. And everything worked on it, too.
Still, the fact is that anything can happen with any 150,000+ mile car. And cars in general are just expensive. You really are risking a lot buying an old car, even a Corolla.
Paying up for an old car is like the yield curve inverting. It just shows how messed up the new car market is.
Every time I have to put money into my 17 year old 3 Series, I just remind myself that that the inline-6 is not a turbo 4, and that I don’t have car payments.
IMO at this age a 2012 era Camry is a nicer car to drive than a 2012 Fusion. The Toyotas simply wear better. Now, the ford 2.5 duratec is a soldier, the 6F35 transmission *can* go the distance tho they’re a tad hit or miss. But those Flat Rock built cars have a bad tendency to rot out rocker panels, and in general at this age the Toyotas still drive within spitting distance of how they did when new, the Fords less so IMO.
I'm not sure why we drew the distinction at 2012. You could still get a 2.5 L Duratec Fusion for a long time after that. The last car was really nice. Hermosillo or not. I've driven all of them except the Sport, sadly. I very well might take one over a Camry, especially at the likely discount.
Very good point. The 2013+ cars definitely seem to be more corrosion resistant, and one of them with the 2.5 seems like a fairly safe bet. I personally still prefer a Camry for the seating position and less bulky feel (and physically lighter). I've only rented an early 1.6EB car (drove well, didn't like the motor) and a few later production basic spec Hybrids (felt like absolute road crushing tanks to drive).
if i understood the issues with rubber and plastic parts when i bought my '93 vw, i probably wouldn't have bought it. people charging $100 for random bezels when you can find them on ebay is killing me. i've learned to be less of a purist. one of my best moves was to glue a toothpick in to replace my broken speedometer needle.
I'm walking around on Cape Cod this week, which is one of the whitest places on Planet Earth, and will testify that BLM flags still adorn many houses of worship here. May even outnumber actual black people on the Cape.
My Juneteenth research led me to the realization that it wasn't even the day, cause all the *cough* northern slaves weren't freed till the 13th amendment was ratified on Dec 6th of the same year, 1865.
I forget sometimes that my readers have many and diverse talents, skills, and careers that in no way include selling or buying used cars.
The #1 concern I heard expressed about used cars during my sales career, and I mean by a considerable margin, is whether someone had defecated or vomited in the car. #2 was basically "was it ever crashed" but that was a distant second. Hell it wasn't even used cars all the time. I had an Infiniti customer demand a J30 with 5 miles on the clock instead of one with 35 miles because "I'm not paying for someone to fart in my car."
You seem to have been ALSO entertaining buyers that are obsessed with what goes in and out of people. I'd be interested in a poll about this, since this sounds like a very biased sample set.
Some never-titled cars have stories, too. I once bought a brand-new Tiguan that turned out to have been crashed and repaired without disclosure. You can imagine what a wake-up call *that* was.
There's a Detroit area family that owns a Mercury convertible that was one of the cars used to transport people through the Disney-designed Ford pavilion at the '64-'65 NY World's Fair. The patriarch of the family was a technician working at Ford's engineering department and bought the car off of the surplus lot. He bought it because it was a fully loaded fullsize Merc ragtop at a discount. His coworkers thought he was nuts because of "all the asses that sat in that car".
My 1985 Fiero's passenger seat was purportedly sat in by Amanda Peterson (RIP) from the film Can't Buy Me Love. I jokingly said I was going to charge people to sniff the seat and thought about using it as a come on when I sold it. The guy who bought it didn't speak English so I think it would have been lost on him.
It absolutely is, and ironically if someone uses dude wipes they're less likely to leave behind the residue that Jack's 'customers' are concerned about..
Pshaw; this is far less extreme than the Dude Wipes thing (which itself is not totally without merit).
He's still a pretty safe distance from Gandhi territory:
Nor, frankly, did I expect to see Gandhi giving daily enemas to all the young girls in his ashrams (his daily greeting was, “Have you had a good bowel movement this morning, sisters?”), nor see the girls giving him his daily enema. Although Gandhi seems to have written less about home rule for India than he did about enemas, and excrement, and latrine cleaning (“The bathroom is a temple. It should be so clean and inviting that anyone would enjoy eating there”), I confess such scenes might pose problems for a Western director.
“Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.....It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”
– Mahatma Gandhi, June 1946, in an interview with his biographer Louis Fischer.
I’d argue you need to go back to around the early-mid 90s to get to the overbuilt good stuff. Before the low tension piston rings, spindly timing chains, and ideally even aluminum blocks. Think Volvo 240: sturdy engine block and simplicity baked in from the 70s, but with the benefit of fuel injection and more robust rustproofing. Mid 90s Camry (aluminum block tho), Buicks with 3800 motors.
I love a square G-Shock (my daily is a GW-5000) but profit margins on the high end square has to approach infinity. I'd be surprised if the indented BOM, including packaging, had over 30 parts. Assembly line of 5 stations with a takt time of 2 minutes and one can call it a day.
They've made the cases much more complex than the "Full Metal" versions, for what it's worth, and supposedly there's quite a bit of hand polishing included.
I look forward to their hot take on Biden's 1967 Corvette Stingray which he "showered with as much love as he did on daughter Ashley..." Yeah I went there.
emissions-wise i've long wondered what a line of various catalysts in the exhaust system would do toward meeting regulations. they might have to be replaced from time to time...heh heh...but they're easily accessible nonmoving parts. or is everything mileage-oriented--at least for the next several months?
Legislators don't actually legislate any more, they just vote the way their party leader instructs them on 5,000+ page giant cram-down bills that lobbyists wrote and no one has actually read. The massive bureaucracies make the actual rules with no regard to how they affect the rest of us.
Is the main cat or the pre-cats more effective? Put on headers that replace the pre-cats, leaving the main cat alone? Or put on a fast-cat to replace the main cat and leave the stock headers alone?
The first cat the gas encounters when exiting the cylinder is always the 'main' cat and it has to do the majority of the conversion by regulation. Depending on what the goals are, if you want cleaner emissions you leave the upstream one in, if you want reduced restriction you leave the downstream one in.
The upstream one is generally doing about 70-80% of the work to meet standards, as it gets warmed up quickly on cold starts where 95% of modern engine emissions come from.
I 'like' how you decide randomly you're going to shit on some particular driver and suck another one off and just stick to it, with no data to back it up. I'm no DeVries fan, but he isn't a complete idiot. Also the rumormill has a lot of BoP shenanigans and leniency towards Ferrari to allow 'competition'. Also the race was more like 24 hrs of safety cars, so there is that.
Johnny Lieberman: what a Johnny Lieberman thing to say.... completely retarded, without ANY thought.
If anyone wants to know of a shop exactly like the one Casey is Pusching but is real in the metro Chicago area, let me know, I have a good friend who's really the best in business.
I read the Paul Walker thing, it was mostly clickbait, and intended to get responses, much like your opinions on who should drive what in top levels of racing.
Watches: LOL.
The car: I would argue this car exists, the last gen avalon, and the current camry are very very close to meeting these requirements as is.
"I'm no DeVries fan, but he isn't a complete idiot."
Who's at fault for the wreck? I judge it as 60% Lexus (shouldn't brake at corner entry for any reason) and 40% de Vries (making big assumptions about what the slower traffic is about to do)
I'm sure the singular data point thats enough for you to make your mind up will also be used by Toyota for future driver decisions, since they're the ones hiring and firing.
Is it not the responsibility of the faster car in a higher class to execute the pass safely?
0-The faster car is the one passing
1-The faster car is behind and can more easily anticipate the trajectory of the slower car
2-The faster car - in this case a hypercar - will be driven by a platinum-rated factory driver, whereas the GT3 cars had at least one amateur (or “amateur”) driver under the new class ranking; the hypercar driver usually wouldn’t know who was driving the GT3 car
"Is it not the responsibility of the faster car in a higher class to execute the pass safely?"
Rob Kauffman? IS THAT YOU?
To answer your question: yes, but.
Yes, but you can't do anything that is unpredictable and irrational. Hitting your brakes at corner exit is kind of like swerving across the track for no reason. The car that is passing you cannot account for every eventuality.
That being said, de Vries didn't even TRY to miss the Lexus, it was like he thought he was in a slot car.
Rob Kauffman held the record for causing the longest safety car in Le Mans history, until this year (4+ hours caused by rain).
Part of the platinum driver’s skill set (or even someone driving an LMP2, whether pro or am) is working traffic effectively - knowing pitfalls, typical mistake areas, leaving room for avoiding action.
If (or when, because it happens every year) an am driver does something ill-advised and collides with another car (in class or faster), he dusts himself off and moves on with his life. It’s a much bigger deal for a top class driver competing for an overall win at Le Mans (or elsewhere) to make a major mistake.
Well, sure -- but again, there's only so much you can anticipate and still make pace. Platinum drivers are just human beings, the same as the rest of us. Their reflexes are no better and their ability to predict the future is often no better.
I'm absolutely suffused by envy watching Alonso run that Toyota. What a joy. It is to my Radical SR8 as the SR8 is to an American Iron Mustang.
What was the BOP in favor of Ferrari this year? There was an argument about it last year (it was changed very late in a move that might have favored Ferrari at Toyota’s expense) … but why did it favor Toyota in the first place?
BOP is all sleight of hand, and it’s based primarily on one-lap performance on a dry track, with separate inputs impacting stint length (e.g., size of fuel tank, fuel fill rate, etc.)
They had successfully sand bagged their way with the much higher top speeds, likely to do with the ability to confirm aero BoP. Admittedly this is speculation.
Agree with you on the rest. The penalty for spinning out a competitor was clearly a joke.
The late penalty (which came ~45 minutes after the incident IIRC; I had been awake for 24+ hours at the time) was pretty farcical.
However, the penalty against the privateer Ferrari in Kubica’s hands (for avoidable contact with the Dries Vanthoor-driven BMW LMDh) was ridiculous. The BMW was a lap down and had been shown blue flags. They were not racing each other.
"...Sorry, but every man in his 30s dating a teenager is a predator, full stop…"
Beginning ANY statement with "I'm sorry but..." is the lowest kind of passive-aggressive horseshit. "I want to say something bold & dynamic, but I don't want anyone getting angry at me."
What makes it worse is that it's a verbal tic at this point, and it immediately renders whatever follows it null & void.
Country club. We can only shoot Nov/Dec until March as a result. Thinking of joining Northbrook Gun Club in addition; apparently like $700/yr to be a member? Maybe a $500 initiation fee? Not close to you though. Apparently there’s Aurora sportsman’s club but that’s nowhere near me.
I had my daughter out shooting a very little this year, she’s turning 12 in a couple weeks. She has low upper body strength, so she had a hard time with a full size rifle. I had her on a 20ga (too much) and a .410 (went OK) but they were all small adult sizes and she couldn’t hold them well. A buddy bought a youth .410 that I haven’t had a chance to get her on yet. I had her shooting .22 this winter, she loved that, tried to move her to .223 but was way louder and she was scared of the noise. Just as well, I don’t need her telling kids at school she was shooting an AR.
BTW, drop me a line if you want to discuss more, my username +22 at the end, gmail
Some of the guys I shoot with locally shoot at Northbrook so I have an in there with them. I’ve also heard it’s the kind of place where if you show up with a $2500 gun it’s kinda like “what’s wrong with you?” I’m not really looking for that. I’ve shot at Medinah and it’s the same sort of pissing match. The guys I shoot with at my local don’t give a shit and we like to drink bourbon and rip on each other after a round, not whip out our wallets to see who can buy the most scrollwork on their gun.
There’s a club in Kenosha County (Kenosha County Gun Club??) that has 100yd and 200yd rifle ranges that I go to sometimes to sight in a new rifle. But that’s too far for frequent stuff. Northbrook is maybe 45 min from me, my wife already gets pissed when I go hang out at our club 5 min away for 2-3-4 hours every weekend day to shoot skeet, now I add 1.5hrs to that, and do it year round? Yikes.
I was commenting on an annoying linguistic phenomenon, but people who act like men finding YOUNG (18-25) women the most desirable, as opposed to Over 30 or "Mature," is obviously smoking the good shit.
I'm not saying women past Christmas Cake can't be hot. A lot of them are. A lot of them are also suet poured into clothing. My point is that the MOST physically-desirable women are between ages 18-25. It's just nature.
"You are about to be forced to spend a year with a woman. You can specify ONE statistic or feature; the rest will be up to random chance. Now tell me you're going to pick anything but age."
Years ago I was sitting in Iwan Ries (the old cigar club in The Loop).
A former member popped in - I didn’t know the guy, he was before my time. As he’s chatting with the guys he knows, one of them remarks on the way he’s dressed (casually).
“Oh, Paul, what happened to the Purple Label suits?”
“Ha, well … we sold the business so I don’t have to dress up any more. I’ve been spending most of my time in Naples. Plus, I’m sort of burned out on Ralph Lauren now.”
“Oh really, why?”
“Well … my salesman passed away.”
“Oh that’s awful, what happened to him?? He was young.”
I know a few gay dudes who use it all the time -- but it's meant to be a self-aware catty phrase. If you're using it unironically, as Woodard is, you're a few laps off the pace.
Alright, seriously FUKKOFF for putting me in a position to read this nerd's Reddit comments.
"Yeah, COVID slowed my divorce to the point where the paperwork didn't officially go through for years. In that time, I had several relationships, and I'm sure she did, too. We broke up when we broke up, and sure, the paperwork hadn't gone through yet, but it wouldn't have mattered if she'd hopped on Tinder and hooked up with a new guy the night I moved out. We weren't together anymore."
I have as well, but they're also using it in a passive-aggressive fashion. In all fairness, this IS Seattle, and passive aggressive horseshit is the norm in PNW cities.
Yeah I'll take "sorry, but" over "full stop". They are always saying You'd Better Not Argue With Me, and it's always something that can definitely be argued.
I look forward to Jalopnik's takedown of Leonardo DiCaprio's dating habits. Presumably they'll call him worse...you know, if they had the balls to go after anyone who wasn't a decade gone. I would pay serious money to see the Code Duello revived and made the law of the land.
On watches, I’m really tempted to ditch my Apple Watch Ultra for another Citizen. I had an EcoDrive that lasted me 10-12+ years of daily wear and never missed a beat until the internal battery/capacitor died. I have a nice Shinola with leather strap for dress clothes, but I kinda miss a decent heavy metal sports watch for all occasions. They have a nice Promaster Dive Automatic with green face and bezel, or a non-automatic with blue. I like the green more but not sure I want to deal with an automatic. I like the idea of just one decent quality thing I can have and wear for the next 10+ years and not have to think about.
Similarly thinking about dumping the Apple Watch Ultra, but for different reasons: I feel the same way about it as I do about my refrigerator, which is no good for an accessory that should represent a piece of who you are
The Lorier watches seem cool? Maybe I can go Full Miami with a gold metal square G-Shock? I do not care for the Swatch Group's Sloan ladder
I had a citizen eco from at least 10 years ago. Still keeps accurate time even though the steel strap is wearing down. Got the eco drive dive watch titanium recently because it reminded me of my 80’s Zodiac Sea Wolf (lost in time). Looks good relatively inexpensive. Expect it to last another 10 or so
in your price range, the best place to research is longislandwatch. i'm not giving a thumbs up or down to the islander house brand but the site is the best catalog out there for sub $1k sports watches. the owner has serious watch ocd.
The path to a simple, cheap and mostly reliable car was made by Fiat and Renault back in the 60s. They licensed their basic last-gen sedans to Third World and Soviet and other Eastern European countries, sold them the tooling and dies and off they went. I remember being in Turkey in the early 2000s riding around in 1970s Fiats called whatever else in Istanbul.
Given that we appear to be approaching Third World status*, maybe it's time for us to get the old Panda!
* yes, I know that "First World" and "Third World" were originally meant to indicate alignment with Communism, in which case maybe we're heading towards Second World.
I have an unhealthy interest in the 1st FIAT Uno and something like that - squared off for efficiency, utilitarian interior in non-drab fabrics, 1 obligatory screen for backup camera and CarPlay - could work.
But it’d be >$10k more OOTD than a Versa S, which would feel like a Maybach in comparison. I think a lot would have to change culturally for this kind of car to thrive. Like a 1960s-level counter-culture sea change that makes anti-consumerism chic again. I mean, we’re basically arguing for a return of the original Beetle (of sorts).
I totally agree... but I think people make different choices out of despair than a vague sense of positive revolution. Even though the VW vibe was framed as a rejection of post-WWII consumerism, it was still framed as a "positive" rejection.
It might be all be moot though. This car needs massive scale to succeed - not just for sales, but to create the installed base for long-term support and viability beyond major metros. It's a "belief car" that has to sustain that belief for a decade-or-more, and it's almost impossible to create wide shared beliefs now, esp. for young people. And, of course, this all pre-supposes that young people care about mobility, or identify with cars, as much as we did.
My gut tells me the most successful version would be a cheap, customizable EV. Maybe the domestic play is a version of a knock-down kit: the skateboard comes from China or Vietnam, but everything else gets fitted here. You can get the skateboard in different sizes and capacities, Google Auto (or some equivalent) for a common OS, and some new US OEMs create a selection of body shells. Hell, let's start one called Fisher lol.
The tech would be upgradeable, though if you currently don't like the blank buttons on your dash spotlighting all the things you didn't pay for, just wait until you see the front fascia version of that. But then you can also justify the ugly crap we already accept, like sticking a tablet on the dash, since it'll be a plug-and-play upgrade.
I'm basically pitching the opposite of the original thought experiment. I guess my hunch is that you can't sell many people on buying "durability and longevity" over "convenience" because the latter is an immediate benefit, while the former is long-term and speculative. But if the longevity is tied to continual improvements, maybe enough people would be interested. In my mind, this conceit is easier to execute with an EV and the adjacent consumer tech, but I would absolutely love to be proven wrong.
Despite appearances, the Soviets did some thorough re-engineering of those 124s. Most notably reinforcing/thickening a lot of the sheetmetal, as early 124 test mules were literally torn to pieces during Soviet durability testing on bad roads. Also, oddly enough, the Lada 2101 got an OHC valvetrain first, ahead of its OHV Fiat 124 donor.
The Soviets' own Moskvitch 412 was arguably the better fit for local roads, engineered from the ground up for their conditions, with a zesty 75hp OHC 1.5L slant 4 (inspired by, but not a copy of the BMW 1500 of that time).
The Endura needs to take a styling lesson from the new Prius. Make some compromises in usability for the sake of great styling. And the Prius has the stealth wealth market pegged.
Sounds like Toyota should replace Nyck De Vries with a better driver. I’m thinking Ace Himself, Casey Putsch fits that bill perfectly. His addition to the Toyota GR HyperCar squad would more than guarantee multiple LeMan’s trophies and World Championships.
Kidding.
As far as Jalopnik is concerned the Paul Walker article struck a near identical tone to a recent article from their sister site, the equally deplorable AV Club about comedian Shane Gillis appearing on Hot Ones instead of the race shifting Ariana Grande. Shane’s crime is of course the unforgivable sin of attempting an impression of a Chinese person on a podcast back in 2019 and worse yet despite this transgression he’s managed to become one of the most successful comedians working today. https://www.avclub.com/shane-gillis-hot-ones-ariana-grande-sean-evans-1851538169
"Plain old windshield with no integrated electronics or antennae."
yeah, I'd forgotten this, it is a BIG DEAL. I can get windshields for my racing Accord installed for $250 net. My street Accord, which needs its camera bullshit? Four times that.
I am very excited for my new Jeep’s windshield with integrated antenna AND mandatory cameras for radar cruise. There’s a reason I keep a $100 deductible on that vehicle (no free glass coverage with USAA in IL)
I think just like how big business demolished even mid-size retailers in the Great Takening aka Pandemic, the automakers would come up with some kind of unmeetable "safety" mandate that would put an end to this pipe dream.
I had to replace the windshield in my Focus ST out of my own pocket, because according to State Farm, I hadn't checked the "Windshield Replacement" box on my policy.
Did they delete some of that with the refresh? My '17 6-6 only has the cable running power to the auto-dimming mirror. Even the photosensor for the auto-lights seems to be on the dash, since the lights and LED fans kick on when I have the sunshade up.
Not much of a qualifier. Well over a decade now everyone still seems to think that making user-friendly, and usable touch screen interfaces is easy. Hell, no one seems to be able to make usable GUIs on regular PCs, never mind the touch screens. Gah!
You put ANY touch screen in that thing, and I will steal as many fully loaded B-52s as it takes to bomb the place where these are made into nonexistence.
Well, see, the money ($250 million and up, in this case) would mostly be used to bribe the fed to change various "mandates." Of course, at least 10% of that would be held back "for the big guy."
What was seen as digital, clean, and "lifeless" 20 years ago is now seen as charmingly retro judging by the young people I see today with point-and-shoots from that era, and camcorder footage.
IndyCar got a new TV deal with Fox. All races will be on broadcast Fox, and IndyCar allegedly doubled their money on their new TV deal from what NBC paid IndyCar. Practice and qualifying as well as Indy NXT will be on FS1 and FS2. https://www.indycar.com/news/2024/06/06-13-fox-2025schedules
The US carmakers hold a power that they neglect to use because of weak, fearful management.
They should tell Big Government, specifically the EPA and the Safety Nazis, “Cars are clean enough, cars are safe enough. We are done following the arbitrary and unlawful rules you issue to justify your unneeded existence. We will follow only common sense logical rules going forward. If you don’t like what we are going to do, then YOU explain to the American people why WE had to layoff the majority of our workers. The layoffs are on YOU because of your insane rules that are bankrupting us.”
All industries victimized by Big Government should band together and follow this strategy.
The automakers absolutely have the power to tell the feds to stuff it, IF they all band together on it.
States are in the same position with the feds. More and more states rights are being taken away by the feds, yet most of the state governments generally just roll over and take it. Alaska is in a number of lawsuits with the feds concerning access to land for mineral and oil/gas development. Feds keep blocking everything, and the current administration has doubled down on that stance, even to the extent of illegal actions against the state. I’m starting to see a shift away from rolling over, the Stare government is starting to push back pretty heavily.
Agreed. Next time California introduces another illegal pollution mandate for cars, the car manufacturers should just call their bluff and say “Fine, we’ll just stop selling new cars in your state, and no longer supply any parts for the cars we’ve already sold. Here’s how many people will lose their jobs. Have at it”.
FAFO and GFY really need to be the stock responses to feeble minded politicians and big government NPCs. Constantly point out to them how weak and powerless they really are.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately. And I've come to realize that I would not at all be surprised if it is actually the US car makers who are silently/secretly lobbying the fed behind the scenes for the mandatory transition to EVs.
Why?
Well, with the gasoline/diesel engines, they cannot sufficiently "lock them down." People can work on them, repair/maintain them, and keep them going for a long time. They cannot force you to upgrade/replace on their whim. I mean, even the gasoline/diesel crap that is sold today, if carefully maintained could last 10, maybe 15 years. Not so the EVs. Simple command, and your EV reports that your battery needs replacing at $10k - $15k a pop. Bzzzzt! Time to buy a new one. If they encrypt it, no easy way to get in there to verify any of it. Warranty? Oh, they'll claim you voided it by digging up some "driving event" from the on-board recording device, which exists primarily to ensure "performance and reliability of the product," of course.
Bonuses all-around for the C-suite, and happy shareholders. Screwed customers, but hey, who cares about the customers, right?
like evs they can be made to operate if you replace the pcm with something else off the shelf
i dont like evs but im also of the opinion that its harder to keep ice running given how many critical parts there are that in some cases cant be manufactured easily
also theres already a lot of encryption going on in some ice vehicles already
you can run them off a high level ots ecu but calibrating it to the same standard and more importantly integrating it with the rest of the electronics is the hard part
I think it'd be a lot cheaper to replace an encrypted ECU with an unencrypted one, than it would be to replace a battery in an EV/hybrid.
One could probably even make a decent business of doing so.
The gasoline/diesel engines do have many parts -- but their function and purpose are well-known. And these parts can be made by many machine shops. You want to replace an LCD instrument panel in your car? Good luck to you. Even the OEM can be a pain the a$$, especially if encryption is involved.
Can you reverse-engineer electronics. Yep. "It is definitely possible. It will take a research team of 150, and 10 years, but it can definitely be done." And then you would have *one* reverse-engineered piece of electronics. Meanwhile, the number of unique pieces of electronic equipment will be skyrocketing.
The reason why gasoline/diesel components will be always be easier to replace is because they deal with physics. And physics won't change.
In the world of electronic components; however, greed and human flaw rule, and this will always produce shifting quicksand.
To your point, it’s very curious how GM in particular is so against hybrids, even though they had a good platform in the Volt. Being pro EV but anti hybrid is an extreme leftist Green position. GM’s management should be called out for it. The CEO and the Board are supposed to be forward thinking, but they’re just shills for the Green movement. Of course, GM knows that if they fail they’ll get another government bailout.
I hear ya. After all, a hybrid can run with a battery, but an EV cannot. Depending on a hybrid, this could be various degrees of difficult, but it is still a lot easier than with a pure EV.
Please understand, I'm not promoting a conspiracy theory. I simply stated that I would not at all be surprised if this were the case. The car manufacturers get to *appear* as "good guys" by "fighting the fed", while behind the scenes they are actually lobbying for EVs. Again, simply stating that I would not at all be surprised by this.
Agree with you on the conspiracy theory, but when something obviously doesn’t make sense, like GM and EVs, I get interested. Someone needs to ask Mary Barra why Toyota was right on hybrids and she was wrong. Seems to be a multi-billion dollar mistake. That she was still rewarded millions for.
Companies lobby FOR regulation because they're hoping they can influence the regulations being written in such a way that will give them a advantage over competitors. Groups of companies lobby FOR regulation as a way to keep new competitors out.
The only reason Tesla had a chance is because GM/FORD/etc thought it was impossible for anyone to make a successful EV and ignored Tesla until it was too late. They won't make that mistake again... at least on EVs.
As much as *I* personally would be willing to do a John Galt in the face of government regulation, a public company cannot -- they have a legal responsibility to the shareholders and one of those responsibilities is to stay in business.
I’m not saying to ignore all safety and emissions rules, just refuse to follow any arbitrary and ridiculous ones, like pedestrian safe front end designs. 100% safety cannot be achieved, so why waste money on it? It will be up to each manufacturer to update and/or improve their cars as they see fit. The market will take care of this. Remember, it was Big Government who killed lots of people with the CAFE rules and the first airbags.
My dad had a 4 DR 86 DX, I had a 87 4 DR LX, my sister had a 88 4 DR LX. All with 5 speeds.
I think it was because I had a 81 Accord 4 DR and they similar vintage Subarus. Man those Subarus were POS. Didn't stop my sis from buying an Outback though in 2015.
I drove my friend's parents' new '92 Accord EX. Loved that thing, despite the automatic. That car went on to cover over 300,000 hard miles, and my friend sold it for $2,600 about eight years ago (IIRC). I was upset at him for not giving a chance to buy it.
I'm old enough to remember when people paid twice the cost of a new Lincoln to own a 48hp diesel taxi. What's changed?
Didn't Elon convince a bunch of people to buy a car with zero functional buttons or knobs? Wasnt he just Some Guy? My point here is that a competent marketer might be able to do more than “LOL THIS CRAPCAN IS UH REALLY TOUGH”.
Consumer product preferences among elite buyers can turn on a dime. I'm not saying I know how to make it happen. But someone out there probably does.
i have an unironic interest in a fully electric rock crawler possibly based off a jeep
Jeep Recon EV is supposedly coming in next year or two. Just bring a dump truck of cash to the dealer. :)
You're probably right and it's academic anyway. Nevertheless, both the 240D and Model S made their bones via marketing, even if the product itself was compelling.
I also can't help but notice the considerable interest in the IMEOS Grenadier, which is as vulnerable to your scorn as this proposed vehicle and has many of the same ideas behind it.
There is a reason that the Morris Minor Traveller died, after all!
“A car marketed on its hair shirt virtues and built by Some Guy is not remotely the same thing.”
🤣🤣🤣 Alan wins today’s thread.
Womyn. CAFE. Cheap money.
You'd be pretty confident that the diesel taxi would last a generation. And that odds were 50/50 your kids would be picking up _their_ newborns from the hospital in it.
There are still W123s doing taxi service in the middle east. Lincolns, not so much.
Sad, but the DBAG of the 1945-1999 is not the MBUSA of today.
Agreed. And it wasn't like they didn't break --- but in general the bones of the thing were durable.
I like the idea of an affordable, long-lasting, repairable vehicle. However, I don't think that selling it to rich people would work.
We've hired quite a few recent university graduates with undergraduate and graduate degrees. They all drive Corollas, and when some had to replace their Corolla, they bought another Corolla. Why? Because they don't care about cars, they just want something cheap that will last. Did I mention that they are all young men? I think that is the target audience, at least to begin with.
As a Gen X-er who has NEVER owned any SUV, much less a Ford, and has never financed a car over a 72 or 84 month term, I would also line up for one.
I was thinking about re-popping that today, but I don't want to beat this drum TOO much.
i think you might be onto something but i was of the opinion that jack presented these people as lolcows to be mocked and not legitimate sources of grievances
It's
50% "I Can't Believe He's Still Doing This"
and
50% "Be Aware And Cautious".
Here's the problem with modern social media -- genuine concerns, information, and caveat-emptor stuff is often overwhelmed by a tidal wave of manufactured consent. If nobody periodically calls Casey out, the number of victims will increase.
Keep calling out this Casey Putz asshole whenever necessary.
The guy is a con artist and it’s entertaining to see him called out on his BS
Grifters need to be called out. Besides, it’s entertaining.
Didn’t hear of him getting bunted from his racing snail-bote into Lake Erie a couple weeks ago. Confirmed!
Tsk, tsk!
To read his recap you'd think he won the America's Cup instead of being the last running boat in a local regatta.
Wouldn't it be easier to maintain a static web page with a list of assholes to avoid, with the latest reasons to do so?
I don't follow any social media, so this is rare entertainment for me. But it must be costing you a lot in many ways.
It's certainly costing me a couple of bucks, which is fine.
What exactly is manufactured consent? Is that like the terms and conditions box you have to click before you buy something online?
It's when you use control of a platform to create the appearance of agreement.
DO YOU WANT CAT ARTICLES FOUR TIMES A WEEK?!
YES! See avatar. 😂
#MeToo
Well, there's one coming up!
I take regular breaks from X dot Com and don't feel obligated to always post here which is the other online circle I am most active in.
All this to say: it's the internet, you can turn the screen off and take a break.
I mean I guess that simple car sounds OK, but why wouldn’t you go back X years (5? 7? I dunno) until the most recent Civic/Accord/Corolla/Camry/etc vintage of your choosing and buy that? When was the last NA Civic Si? Or similar? Why is this unknown thing better than that?
You’re right, and I like the fact that there are near perfect low mile desirable and affordable cars available, but some people want a new car.
There's also the fact that a 2008 Corolla is chock-full of rubber and plastic parts that are already through a significant percentage of their lives.
Every time I see someone drooling over an older JDM car, this is what I think also. Every rubber component is ancient on these cars.
gotta love the guys who track their cars with 3k coilovers and 30 year old bushings
BC racing coilovers are $1200
theyre okay if theres no existing off the shelf option available but revalved bilsteins with threaded sleeves can be made to work very well
i have no interest in them personally and this isnt a strike against people who cant justify spending more on a set of coilovers
my mechanic has flat out refused to touch the 30 year old bushings on my van.
i would too
bushings suck to replace
Not to mention what people are *charging* for a 2008 Toyota Corolla, on that reputation. It’s the sort of car that is sought-after and so comfortably outside of a lot of people’s cash means…but yet, they couldn’t get decent or any financing on it, either, because of how old it is.
On top of that, COVID pricing means that the shit costs 25-30% more than it would have in 2019, year-for-year.
The best solution is probably to find the sorts of cars that are reliable, but that aren’t sought-after. The 2010-2012 4-cylinder Fusion, in particular, is a robust car, and I’d argue it’s more pleasant to look at and to drive than the contemporary Camry. A 3800-powered Buick is another solution. I found my cousin a very tony 2008 Buick Lucerne CXL with that engine earlier this year, for $3,000. And everything worked on it, too.
Still, the fact is that anything can happen with any 150,000+ mile car. And cars in general are just expensive. You really are risking a lot buying an old car, even a Corolla.
Paying up for an old car is like the yield curve inverting. It just shows how messed up the new car market is.
Every time I have to put money into my 17 year old 3 Series, I just remind myself that that the inline-6 is not a turbo 4, and that I don’t have car payments.
Ditto my 1999 GS300!
IMO at this age a 2012 era Camry is a nicer car to drive than a 2012 Fusion. The Toyotas simply wear better. Now, the ford 2.5 duratec is a soldier, the 6F35 transmission *can* go the distance tho they’re a tad hit or miss. But those Flat Rock built cars have a bad tendency to rot out rocker panels, and in general at this age the Toyotas still drive within spitting distance of how they did when new, the Fords less so IMO.
I'm not sure why we drew the distinction at 2012. You could still get a 2.5 L Duratec Fusion for a long time after that. The last car was really nice. Hermosillo or not. I've driven all of them except the Sport, sadly. I very well might take one over a Camry, especially at the likely discount.
Very good point. The 2013+ cars definitely seem to be more corrosion resistant, and one of them with the 2.5 seems like a fairly safe bet. I personally still prefer a Camry for the seating position and less bulky feel (and physically lighter). I've only rented an early 1.6EB car (drove well, didn't like the motor) and a few later production basic spec Hybrids (felt like absolute road crushing tanks to drive).
if i understood the issues with rubber and plastic parts when i bought my '93 vw, i probably wouldn't have bought it. people charging $100 for random bezels when you can find them on ebay is killing me. i've learned to be less of a purist. one of my best moves was to glue a toothpick in to replace my broken speedometer needle.
Now that's a characterful fix!
Same reason people will buy new Dickies at Wal-Mart instead of going to the thrift store and choosing the "least farted" pre-owned pants on sale.
This is the most unhinged comparison ever. Full marks for a non-sequitur.
Nothing better than funny weird shit happening in the background, completely unnoticed by the characters.
Am I the only one who didn’t start drinking early? Thoroughly confused.
This being the fictional holiday of Juneteenth, I couldn't find a liquor store that wasn't engulfed in celebratory, Mostly Peaceful flames.
I'm walking around on Cape Cod this week, which is one of the whitest places on Planet Earth, and will testify that BLM flags still adorn many houses of worship here. May even outnumber actual black people on the Cape.
My Juneteenth research led me to the realization that it wasn't even the day, cause all the *cough* northern slaves weren't freed till the 13th amendment was ratified on Dec 6th of the same year, 1865.
Does this mean you'd be willing to go to a used car lot and sniff every seat on sale?
Why? What is this obsession you have with people's rear ends and what goes in and out of them that you have to drag that into every metaphor?
I forget sometimes that my readers have many and diverse talents, skills, and careers that in no way include selling or buying used cars.
The #1 concern I heard expressed about used cars during my sales career, and I mean by a considerable margin, is whether someone had defecated or vomited in the car. #2 was basically "was it ever crashed" but that was a distant second. Hell it wasn't even used cars all the time. I had an Infiniti customer demand a J30 with 5 miles on the clock instead of one with 35 miles because "I'm not paying for someone to fart in my car."
You seem to have been ALSO entertaining buyers that are obsessed with what goes in and out of people. I'd be interested in a poll about this, since this sounds like a very biased sample set.
Some never-titled cars have stories, too. I once bought a brand-new Tiguan that turned out to have been crashed and repaired without disclosure. You can imagine what a wake-up call *that* was.
There's a Detroit area family that owns a Mercury convertible that was one of the cars used to transport people through the Disney-designed Ford pavilion at the '64-'65 NY World's Fair. The patriarch of the family was a technician working at Ford's engineering department and bought the car off of the surplus lot. He bought it because it was a fully loaded fullsize Merc ragtop at a discount. His coworkers thought he was nuts because of "all the asses that sat in that car".
https://allears.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/fms2-700x463.jpg
My 1985 Fiero's passenger seat was purportedly sat in by Amanda Peterson (RIP) from the film Can't Buy Me Love. I jokingly said I was going to charge people to sniff the seat and thought about using it as a come on when I sold it. The guy who bought it didn't speak English so I think it would have been lost on him.
A former boss always said that he bought new cars cause he didn't want anyone else's farts in the seats.
You can't get swamp ass out of the upholstery. You just can't.
As much as I have no desire to, you can. But you can always replace a seat.
I'd walk away from a car where it smelled like someone had voided themselves, but I've yet to come across one like that... Shrugs
I'd argue it's harder to get the smell of smoke out without replacing just about everything.
its the dude wipe thing again
It absolutely is, and ironically if someone uses dude wipes they're less likely to leave behind the residue that Jack's 'customers' are concerned about..
Pshaw; this is far less extreme than the Dude Wipes thing (which itself is not totally without merit).
He's still a pretty safe distance from Gandhi territory:
Nor, frankly, did I expect to see Gandhi giving daily enemas to all the young girls in his ashrams (his daily greeting was, “Have you had a good bowel movement this morning, sisters?”), nor see the girls giving him his daily enema. Although Gandhi seems to have written less about home rule for India than he did about enemas, and excrement, and latrine cleaning (“The bathroom is a temple. It should be so clean and inviting that anyone would enjoy eating there”), I confess such scenes might pose problems for a Western director.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/richard-grenier/the-gandhi-nobody-knows/
man what
“Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.....It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”
– Mahatma Gandhi, June 1946, in an interview with his biographer Louis Fischer.
The arc of Gandhi from "vicious soldier" to "manipulative visionary" to "bobs and vagene" was truly epic.
We've got seeping sewage, Greek and the ass wipe thing again. This place is having a bit of planetary wobble.
I'll take a '99, please.
I’d argue you need to go back to around the early-mid 90s to get to the overbuilt good stuff. Before the low tension piston rings, spindly timing chains, and ideally even aluminum blocks. Think Volvo 240: sturdy engine block and simplicity baked in from the 70s, but with the benefit of fuel injection and more robust rustproofing. Mid 90s Camry (aluminum block tho), Buicks with 3800 motors.
Perhaps the Volvo 360 GLT/GLE is the answer. Transaxle, 240 engine in a subcompact, sturdy body.
If you need more protection and are willing to spend a little more, the 2026 Endurex has you covered.
Need to label it with PROTECTION, just like a G Shock.
I love a square G-Shock (my daily is a GW-5000) but profit margins on the high end square has to approach infinity. I'd be surprised if the indented BOM, including packaging, had over 30 parts. Assembly line of 5 stations with a takt time of 2 minutes and one can call it a day.
They've made the cases much more complex than the "Full Metal" versions, for what it's worth, and supposedly there's quite a bit of hand polishing included.
Re Jalopnik's Paul Walker Camaro piece:
I look forward to their hot take on Biden's 1967 Corvette Stingray which he "showered with as much love as he did on daughter Ashley..." Yeah I went there.
imagine if the trunk was where hunter stored all of his coke and illegal porn
Alongside the banker’s boxes chock full of classified documents on the garage floor next to said ‘Vette.
And the diary is real.
"Yeah, but........."
emissions-wise i've long wondered what a line of various catalysts in the exhaust system would do toward meeting regulations. they might have to be replaced from time to time...heh heh...but they're easily accessible nonmoving parts. or is everything mileage-oriented--at least for the next several months?
They don't work unless they're at the right temps, and getting the later ones in the pipe to get warm without cooking the front ones is the challenge.
Using two is Howard Hughes-level paranoid, anyway.
Every production car today has two, at least.
Cause we GOTTA CHASE FRACTIONS!!!
Blame your legislators, vote harder, etc...
Yeah, right. That works great. Do you have a Plan B?
Legislators don't actually legislate any more, they just vote the way their party leader instructs them on 5,000+ page giant cram-down bills that lobbyists wrote and no one has actually read. The massive bureaucracies make the actual rules with no regard to how they affect the rest of us.
Is the main cat or the pre-cats more effective? Put on headers that replace the pre-cats, leaving the main cat alone? Or put on a fast-cat to replace the main cat and leave the stock headers alone?
The first cat the gas encounters when exiting the cylinder is always the 'main' cat and it has to do the majority of the conversion by regulation. Depending on what the goals are, if you want cleaner emissions you leave the upstream one in, if you want reduced restriction you leave the downstream one in.
The upstream one is generally doing about 70-80% of the work to meet standards, as it gets warmed up quickly on cold starts where 95% of modern engine emissions come from.
I 'like' how you decide randomly you're going to shit on some particular driver and suck another one off and just stick to it, with no data to back it up. I'm no DeVries fan, but he isn't a complete idiot. Also the rumormill has a lot of BoP shenanigans and leniency towards Ferrari to allow 'competition'. Also the race was more like 24 hrs of safety cars, so there is that.
Johnny Lieberman: what a Johnny Lieberman thing to say.... completely retarded, without ANY thought.
If anyone wants to know of a shop exactly like the one Casey is Pusching but is real in the metro Chicago area, let me know, I have a good friend who's really the best in business.
I read the Paul Walker thing, it was mostly clickbait, and intended to get responses, much like your opinions on who should drive what in top levels of racing.
Watches: LOL.
The car: I would argue this car exists, the last gen avalon, and the current camry are very very close to meeting these requirements as is.
"I'm no DeVries fan, but he isn't a complete idiot."
Who's at fault for the wreck? I judge it as 60% Lexus (shouldn't brake at corner entry for any reason) and 40% de Vries (making big assumptions about what the slower traffic is about to do)
So if one makes a mistake they have disappointed the infallible Jack Baruth?
Well, in this case I think he disappointed Toyota. As noted above, I didn't watch the race.
I'm sure the singular data point thats enough for you to make your mind up will also be used by Toyota for future driver decisions, since they're the ones hiring and firing.
Is it not the responsibility of the faster car in a higher class to execute the pass safely?
0-The faster car is the one passing
1-The faster car is behind and can more easily anticipate the trajectory of the slower car
2-The faster car - in this case a hypercar - will be driven by a platinum-rated factory driver, whereas the GT3 cars had at least one amateur (or “amateur”) driver under the new class ranking; the hypercar driver usually wouldn’t know who was driving the GT3 car
"Is it not the responsibility of the faster car in a higher class to execute the pass safely?"
Rob Kauffman? IS THAT YOU?
To answer your question: yes, but.
Yes, but you can't do anything that is unpredictable and irrational. Hitting your brakes at corner exit is kind of like swerving across the track for no reason. The car that is passing you cannot account for every eventuality.
That being said, de Vries didn't even TRY to miss the Lexus, it was like he thought he was in a slot car.
Rob Kauffman held the record for causing the longest safety car in Le Mans history, until this year (4+ hours caused by rain).
Part of the platinum driver’s skill set (or even someone driving an LMP2, whether pro or am) is working traffic effectively - knowing pitfalls, typical mistake areas, leaving room for avoiding action.
If (or when, because it happens every year) an am driver does something ill-advised and collides with another car (in class or faster), he dusts himself off and moves on with his life. It’s a much bigger deal for a top class driver competing for an overall win at Le Mans (or elsewhere) to make a major mistake.
Here’s Fernando working traffic beautifully in 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-u11o65c5k
And here’s Earl Bamber getting it wrong at Spa recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vk9Vdsculw
Well, sure -- but again, there's only so much you can anticipate and still make pace. Platinum drivers are just human beings, the same as the rest of us. Their reflexes are no better and their ability to predict the future is often no better.
I'm absolutely suffused by envy watching Alonso run that Toyota. What a joy. It is to my Radical SR8 as the SR8 is to an American Iron Mustang.
Notice how much faster that LMP1 looks than the porky pig “Hypercars” are. About 10 seconds a lap delta between the pole times.
This clip is actually better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN2crFgG-II
Wait.
What was the BOP in favor of Ferrari this year? There was an argument about it last year (it was changed very late in a move that might have favored Ferrari at Toyota’s expense) … but why did it favor Toyota in the first place?
BOP is all sleight of hand, and it’s based primarily on one-lap performance on a dry track, with separate inputs impacting stint length (e.g., size of fuel tank, fuel fill rate, etc.)
They had successfully sand bagged their way with the much higher top speeds, likely to do with the ability to confirm aero BoP. Admittedly this is speculation.
Agree with you on the rest. The penalty for spinning out a competitor was clearly a joke.
The late penalty (which came ~45 minutes after the incident IIRC; I had been awake for 24+ hours at the time) was pretty farcical.
However, the penalty against the privateer Ferrari in Kubica’s hands (for avoidable contact with the Dries Vanthoor-driven BMW LMDh) was ridiculous. The BMW was a lap down and had been shown blue flags. They were not racing each other.
Your speculation is no different than Jack's de Vries speculation. Doesn't make either of you correct or wrong. It's just your opinion.
Except I admitted it was based on rumor in the post itself, and I have access to some inside baseball...
"...Sorry, but every man in his 30s dating a teenager is a predator, full stop…"
Beginning ANY statement with "I'm sorry but..." is the lowest kind of passive-aggressive horseshit. "I want to say something bold & dynamic, but I don't want anyone getting angry at me."
What makes it worse is that it's a verbal tic at this point, and it immediately renders whatever follows it null & void.
Britney is 2 months older than me so it has been age appropriate for me to j/o to her pics my entire life. And I ain’t stopping yet!
But I might mix in the mental images of the blonde lifeguard today who was coaching my kid’s swim team today. Wow. She looked 18…ish.
no lets continue to bother her and watch her mental freefall
Country club. We can only shoot Nov/Dec until March as a result. Thinking of joining Northbrook Gun Club in addition; apparently like $700/yr to be a member? Maybe a $500 initiation fee? Not close to you though. Apparently there’s Aurora sportsman’s club but that’s nowhere near me.
I had my daughter out shooting a very little this year, she’s turning 12 in a couple weeks. She has low upper body strength, so she had a hard time with a full size rifle. I had her on a 20ga (too much) and a .410 (went OK) but they were all small adult sizes and she couldn’t hold them well. A buddy bought a youth .410 that I haven’t had a chance to get her on yet. I had her shooting .22 this winter, she loved that, tried to move her to .223 but was way louder and she was scared of the noise. Just as well, I don’t need her telling kids at school she was shooting an AR.
BTW, drop me a line if you want to discuss more, my username +22 at the end, gmail
Some of the guys I shoot with locally shoot at Northbrook so I have an in there with them. I’ve also heard it’s the kind of place where if you show up with a $2500 gun it’s kinda like “what’s wrong with you?” I’m not really looking for that. I’ve shot at Medinah and it’s the same sort of pissing match. The guys I shoot with at my local don’t give a shit and we like to drink bourbon and rip on each other after a round, not whip out our wallets to see who can buy the most scrollwork on their gun.
Aurora member here, and yes it's far from DuPage county. I'd say our shotgun ranges are pretty good, but not Northbrook good.
Pistol, rifle, etc. are the main attractions, and we've done a ton of capital improvements in the past 5 years.
I cannot recall the name offhand, but there is a gun club in southern Wisconsin that several of my Chicago buddies frequented.
There’s a club in Kenosha County (Kenosha County Gun Club??) that has 100yd and 200yd rifle ranges that I go to sometimes to sight in a new rifle. But that’s too far for frequent stuff. Northbrook is maybe 45 min from me, my wife already gets pissed when I go hang out at our club 5 min away for 2-3-4 hours every weekend day to shoot skeet, now I add 1.5hrs to that, and do it year round? Yikes.
I was commenting on an annoying linguistic phenomenon, but people who act like men finding YOUNG (18-25) women the most desirable, as opposed to Over 30 or "Mature," is obviously smoking the good shit.
I'm not saying women past Christmas Cake can't be hot. A lot of them are. A lot of them are also suet poured into clothing. My point is that the MOST physically-desirable women are between ages 18-25. It's just nature.
I read something awhile ago that stuck with me:
"You are about to be forced to spend a year with a woman. You can specify ONE statistic or feature; the rest will be up to random chance. Now tell me you're going to pick anything but age."
pre ozempic I'd say BMI
To be fair, he's paid to say nice things.
You live in Chicago(land), so “till they get fat” is merely a waiting game 😂
I got fat(ter) living there for sure.
“Every girl eventually grows into her tits” -wise man
many significantly outgrow them :(
They just grow new ones in back.
Just saw this today.
https://babylonbee.com/news/sad-chicago-has-no-one-to-award-reparations-to-because-everyone-got-murdered
Years ago I was sitting in Iwan Ries (the old cigar club in The Loop).
A former member popped in - I didn’t know the guy, he was before my time. As he’s chatting with the guys he knows, one of them remarks on the way he’s dressed (casually).
“Oh, Paul, what happened to the Purple Label suits?”
“Ha, well … we sold the business so I don’t have to dress up any more. I’ve been spending most of my time in Naples. Plus, I’m sort of burned out on Ralph Lauren now.”
“Oh really, why?”
“Well … my salesman passed away.”
“Oh that’s awful, what happened to him?? He was young.”
“Oh! He got murdered.”
I know a few gay dudes who use it all the time -- but it's meant to be a self-aware catty phrase. If you're using it unironically, as Woodard is, you're a few laps off the pace.
Woodard is a mega dork whose marriage was quickly memory holed.
He is the ne plus ultra exemplar of the stereotypical “Woke Wheels” persona - see his post in this thread!
https://new.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/ihb9qz/is_woke_wheels_on_instagram_satire/
Alright, seriously FUKKOFF for putting me in a position to read this nerd's Reddit comments.
"Yeah, COVID slowed my divorce to the point where the paperwork didn't officially go through for years. In that time, I had several relationships, and I'm sure she did, too. We broke up when we broke up, and sure, the paperwork hadn't gone through yet, but it wouldn't have mattered if she'd hopped on Tinder and hooked up with a new guy the night I moved out. We weren't together anymore."
Several relationships. With women?
Sorry, it's pure Woodard
aint no fuckin way
Is this the first Woke Wheels mention on ACF? I think it might be.
I have as well, but they're also using it in a passive-aggressive fashion. In all fairness, this IS Seattle, and passive aggressive horseshit is the norm in PNW cities.
"Full stop" is worse. I am making an argument, but I will not backup my argument with reasoning.
Yeah I'll take "sorry, but" over "full stop". They are always saying You'd Better Not Argue With Me, and it's always something that can definitely be argued.
I look forward to Jalopnik's takedown of Leonardo DiCaprio's dating habits. Presumably they'll call him worse...you know, if they had the balls to go after anyone who wasn't a decade gone. I would pay serious money to see the Code Duello revived and made the law of the land.
On watches, I’m really tempted to ditch my Apple Watch Ultra for another Citizen. I had an EcoDrive that lasted me 10-12+ years of daily wear and never missed a beat until the internal battery/capacitor died. I have a nice Shinola with leather strap for dress clothes, but I kinda miss a decent heavy metal sports watch for all occasions. They have a nice Promaster Dive Automatic with green face and bezel, or a non-automatic with blue. I like the green more but not sure I want to deal with an automatic. I like the idea of just one decent quality thing I can have and wear for the next 10+ years and not have to think about.
Similarly thinking about dumping the Apple Watch Ultra, but for different reasons: I feel the same way about it as I do about my refrigerator, which is no good for an accessory that should represent a piece of who you are
The Lorier watches seem cool? Maybe I can go Full Miami with a gold metal square G-Shock? I do not care for the Swatch Group's Sloan ladder
I had a citizen eco from at least 10 years ago. Still keeps accurate time even though the steel strap is wearing down. Got the eco drive dive watch titanium recently because it reminded me of my 80’s Zodiac Sea Wolf (lost in time). Looks good relatively inexpensive. Expect it to last another 10 or so
in your price range, the best place to research is longislandwatch. i'm not giving a thumbs up or down to the islander house brand but the site is the best catalog out there for sub $1k sports watches. the owner has serious watch ocd.
p.s. an apple watch is not a watch
The path to a simple, cheap and mostly reliable car was made by Fiat and Renault back in the 60s. They licensed their basic last-gen sedans to Third World and Soviet and other Eastern European countries, sold them the tooling and dies and off they went. I remember being in Turkey in the early 2000s riding around in 1970s Fiats called whatever else in Istanbul.
Given that we appear to be approaching Third World status*, maybe it's time for us to get the old Panda!
* yes, I know that "First World" and "Third World" were originally meant to indicate alignment with Communism, in which case maybe we're heading towards Second World.
I have an unhealthy interest in the 1st FIAT Uno and something like that - squared off for efficiency, utilitarian interior in non-drab fabrics, 1 obligatory screen for backup camera and CarPlay - could work.
But it’d be >$10k more OOTD than a Versa S, which would feel like a Maybach in comparison. I think a lot would have to change culturally for this kind of car to thrive. Like a 1960s-level counter-culture sea change that makes anti-consumerism chic again. I mean, we’re basically arguing for a return of the original Beetle (of sorts).
"Like a 1960s-level counter-culture sea change that makes anti-consumerism chic again"
Honestly, I think we're on the cusp of this, as homes, cars, etc are increasingly simply out of reach for many people in this country.
I totally agree... but I think people make different choices out of despair than a vague sense of positive revolution. Even though the VW vibe was framed as a rejection of post-WWII consumerism, it was still framed as a "positive" rejection.
It might be all be moot though. This car needs massive scale to succeed - not just for sales, but to create the installed base for long-term support and viability beyond major metros. It's a "belief car" that has to sustain that belief for a decade-or-more, and it's almost impossible to create wide shared beliefs now, esp. for young people. And, of course, this all pre-supposes that young people care about mobility, or identify with cars, as much as we did.
My gut tells me the most successful version would be a cheap, customizable EV. Maybe the domestic play is a version of a knock-down kit: the skateboard comes from China or Vietnam, but everything else gets fitted here. You can get the skateboard in different sizes and capacities, Google Auto (or some equivalent) for a common OS, and some new US OEMs create a selection of body shells. Hell, let's start one called Fisher lol.
The tech would be upgradeable, though if you currently don't like the blank buttons on your dash spotlighting all the things you didn't pay for, just wait until you see the front fascia version of that. But then you can also justify the ugly crap we already accept, like sticking a tablet on the dash, since it'll be a plug-and-play upgrade.
I'm basically pitching the opposite of the original thought experiment. I guess my hunch is that you can't sell many people on buying "durability and longevity" over "convenience" because the latter is an immediate benefit, while the former is long-term and speculative. But if the longevity is tied to continual improvements, maybe enough people would be interested. In my mind, this conceit is easier to execute with an EV and the adjacent consumer tech, but I would absolutely love to be proven wrong.
Despite appearances, the Soviets did some thorough re-engineering of those 124s. Most notably reinforcing/thickening a lot of the sheetmetal, as early 124 test mules were literally torn to pieces during Soviet durability testing on bad roads. Also, oddly enough, the Lada 2101 got an OHC valvetrain first, ahead of its OHV Fiat 124 donor.
The Soviets' own Moskvitch 412 was arguably the better fit for local roads, engineered from the ground up for their conditions, with a zesty 75hp OHC 1.5L slant 4 (inspired by, but not a copy of the BMW 1500 of that time).
The Endura needs to take a styling lesson from the new Prius. Make some compromises in usability for the sake of great styling. And the Prius has the stealth wealth market pegged.
Some designer once said that it doesn’t cost any more to make a car look good
I wish he had told that to the current BMW designers.
Yeah
Sounds like Toyota should replace Nyck De Vries with a better driver. I’m thinking Ace Himself, Casey Putsch fits that bill perfectly. His addition to the Toyota GR HyperCar squad would more than guarantee multiple LeMan’s trophies and World Championships.
Kidding.
As far as Jalopnik is concerned the Paul Walker article struck a near identical tone to a recent article from their sister site, the equally deplorable AV Club about comedian Shane Gillis appearing on Hot Ones instead of the race shifting Ariana Grande. Shane’s crime is of course the unforgivable sin of attempting an impression of a Chinese person on a podcast back in 2019 and worse yet despite this transgression he’s managed to become one of the most successful comedians working today. https://www.avclub.com/shane-gillis-hot-ones-ariana-grande-sean-evans-1851538169
"Ariana Grande used to look like The Little Mermaid. Now she looks like The Little Mermaid."
ariana did the what would she look like if she was black or chinese before it was a meme
"Basic sedan and/or wagon form factor, about 175 inches long
Room for a quartet of adults
At least 120 horsepower, 140 preferred, against a curb weight of sub-3000
Simple, high-quality interior
Screws and fasteners designed for repeat disassembly over time
Serviceability is the focus, so if a little more size or weight is required to make that happen, so be it
It should pull its own codes, offer maintenance suggestions, and so on."
I would add a few to this frankly very good list:
NA iron engine with electronics that can live happily on VatoZone-grade replacement parts.
No plastic anywhere on the engine.
Manual transmission with a nice, thick clutch disc for long life.
Plain old windshield with no integrated electronics or antennae.
Cable throttle.
Mechanical hand brake.
And last but certainly not least: NO FUCKING TOUCHSCREENS!
"Plain old windshield with no integrated electronics or antennae."
yeah, I'd forgotten this, it is a BIG DEAL. I can get windshields for my racing Accord installed for $250 net. My street Accord, which needs its camera bullshit? Four times that.
I am very excited for my new Jeep’s windshield with integrated antenna AND mandatory cameras for radar cruise. There’s a reason I keep a $100 deductible on that vehicle (no free glass coverage with USAA in IL)
I think just like how big business demolished even mid-size retailers in the Great Takening aka Pandemic, the automakers would come up with some kind of unmeetable "safety" mandate that would put an end to this pipe dream.
You'd have to put Hunter Biden on the board of directors or something like that.
More seriously, making Miss Ocasio-Cortez the CDO would make you bulletproof.
🤢
I had to replace the windshield in my Focus ST out of my own pocket, because according to State Farm, I hadn't checked the "Windshield Replacement" box on my policy.
$600, that cost me.
my buddy who bought my old white miata replaced his for 170cad installed
blew my mind as i was expecting a bill like yours
Did they delete some of that with the refresh? My '17 6-6 only has the cable running power to the auto-dimming mirror. Even the photosensor for the auto-lights seems to be on the dash, since the lights and LED fans kick on when I have the sunshade up.
Entirely possible. On my car it's the LCW that requires the extra fanciness.
and not any regular Touchscreens either!
Just the FUCKING ones.
Not much of a qualifier. Well over a decade now everyone still seems to think that making user-friendly, and usable touch screen interfaces is easy. Hell, no one seems to be able to make usable GUIs on regular PCs, never mind the touch screens. Gah!
You put ANY touch screen in that thing, and I will steal as many fully loaded B-52s as it takes to bomb the place where these are made into nonexistence.
So what do you do about the fed-mandated rear view camera?
That's the real problem with the suggestion, to get a new vehicle DOT certified while maintaining your specs would be next to impossible.
Guess it'll have to wait until after Civil War 2.
Coming November, 2024.
Well, see, the money ($250 million and up, in this case) would mostly be used to bribe the fed to change various "mandates." Of course, at least 10% of that would be held back "for the big guy."
Put it in the rear view mirror, GM style?
You design the car with decent visibility and at a normal height and get rid of it.
But how much of all of this is the NTSB's fault? Don't they mandate three quarters of the stuff we wanna take off?
Yes.
What was seen as digital, clean, and "lifeless" 20 years ago is now seen as charmingly retro judging by the young people I see today with point-and-shoots from that era, and camcorder footage.
Your local dealer might be crippled right now due to CDK getting hit by a ransomware attack: https://www.autonews.com/retail/cdk-cyberattack-shuts-down-most-systems-nationwide
IndyCar got a new TV deal with Fox. All races will be on broadcast Fox, and IndyCar allegedly doubled their money on their new TV deal from what NBC paid IndyCar. Practice and qualifying as well as Indy NXT will be on FS1 and FS2. https://www.indycar.com/news/2024/06/06-13-fox-2025schedules
Car dealers crippled by trash cloud software? My heart weeps!
Will be interesting to see what the viewership is like for IndyCar on Fox, but at least this means you can see it at the local bar.
I saw an ad today pushing AI for car dealerships.
Dealer principals can be reliably sold on a lot of techy-sounding stuff, because they are both terrified of tech and fascinated by it.
NBC is out, then, as the broadcast network for the 500?
While your Enduro car description sort of sounds like the original MIni,
Please bring back the 1988 Accord LXi 5sp in 3dr hatch and wagon versions. And tell the regulators to go pound sand re the pedestrian impact rules.
The US carmakers hold a power that they neglect to use because of weak, fearful management.
They should tell Big Government, specifically the EPA and the Safety Nazis, “Cars are clean enough, cars are safe enough. We are done following the arbitrary and unlawful rules you issue to justify your unneeded existence. We will follow only common sense logical rules going forward. If you don’t like what we are going to do, then YOU explain to the American people why WE had to layoff the majority of our workers. The layoffs are on YOU because of your insane rules that are bankrupting us.”
All industries victimized by Big Government should band together and follow this strategy.
The automakers absolutely have the power to tell the feds to stuff it, IF they all band together on it.
States are in the same position with the feds. More and more states rights are being taken away by the feds, yet most of the state governments generally just roll over and take it. Alaska is in a number of lawsuits with the feds concerning access to land for mineral and oil/gas development. Feds keep blocking everything, and the current administration has doubled down on that stance, even to the extent of illegal actions against the state. I’m starting to see a shift away from rolling over, the Stare government is starting to push back pretty heavily.
Agreed. Next time California introduces another illegal pollution mandate for cars, the car manufacturers should just call their bluff and say “Fine, we’ll just stop selling new cars in your state, and no longer supply any parts for the cars we’ve already sold. Here’s how many people will lose their jobs. Have at it”.
FAFO and GFY really need to be the stock responses to feeble minded politicians and big government NPCs. Constantly point out to them how weak and powerless they really are.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately. And I've come to realize that I would not at all be surprised if it is actually the US car makers who are silently/secretly lobbying the fed behind the scenes for the mandatory transition to EVs.
Why?
Well, with the gasoline/diesel engines, they cannot sufficiently "lock them down." People can work on them, repair/maintain them, and keep them going for a long time. They cannot force you to upgrade/replace on their whim. I mean, even the gasoline/diesel crap that is sold today, if carefully maintained could last 10, maybe 15 years. Not so the EVs. Simple command, and your EV reports that your battery needs replacing at $10k - $15k a pop. Bzzzzt! Time to buy a new one. If they encrypt it, no easy way to get in there to verify any of it. Warranty? Oh, they'll claim you voided it by digging up some "driving event" from the on-board recording device, which exists primarily to ensure "performance and reliability of the product," of course.
Bonuses all-around for the C-suite, and happy shareholders. Screwed customers, but hey, who cares about the customers, right?
they can totally lock down ic engines
like evs they can be made to operate if you replace the pcm with something else off the shelf
i dont like evs but im also of the opinion that its harder to keep ice running given how many critical parts there are that in some cases cant be manufactured easily
also theres already a lot of encryption going on in some ice vehicles already
Seems like it’s the new complicated ICE engines, a product of government meddling, that are the problem.
you can run them off a high level ots ecu but calibrating it to the same standard and more importantly integrating it with the rest of the electronics is the hard part
I think it'd be a lot cheaper to replace an encrypted ECU with an unencrypted one, than it would be to replace a battery in an EV/hybrid.
One could probably even make a decent business of doing so.
The gasoline/diesel engines do have many parts -- but their function and purpose are well-known. And these parts can be made by many machine shops. You want to replace an LCD instrument panel in your car? Good luck to you. Even the OEM can be a pain the a$$, especially if encryption is involved.
Can you reverse-engineer electronics. Yep. "It is definitely possible. It will take a research team of 150, and 10 years, but it can definitely be done." And then you would have *one* reverse-engineered piece of electronics. Meanwhile, the number of unique pieces of electronic equipment will be skyrocketing.
The reason why gasoline/diesel components will be always be easier to replace is because they deal with physics. And physics won't change.
In the world of electronic components; however, greed and human flaw rule, and this will always produce shifting quicksand.
ev batteries are going to be expensive as hell no question about that
but some of the componentry is going to require dedicated machinery like valve springs and piston rings and the various seals in the engine
in any case these technologies are pervasive and i dont like the government
To your point, it’s very curious how GM in particular is so against hybrids, even though they had a good platform in the Volt. Being pro EV but anti hybrid is an extreme leftist Green position. GM’s management should be called out for it. The CEO and the Board are supposed to be forward thinking, but they’re just shills for the Green movement. Of course, GM knows that if they fail they’ll get another government bailout.
I hear ya. After all, a hybrid can run with a battery, but an EV cannot. Depending on a hybrid, this could be various degrees of difficult, but it is still a lot easier than with a pure EV.
Please understand, I'm not promoting a conspiracy theory. I simply stated that I would not at all be surprised if this were the case. The car manufacturers get to *appear* as "good guys" by "fighting the fed", while behind the scenes they are actually lobbying for EVs. Again, simply stating that I would not at all be surprised by this.
Hybrids use way less rare minerals, too.
Agree with you on the conspiracy theory, but when something obviously doesn’t make sense, like GM and EVs, I get interested. Someone needs to ask Mary Barra why Toyota was right on hybrids and she was wrong. Seems to be a multi-billion dollar mistake. That she was still rewarded millions for.
Because Mary Barra works for the US congress, not the shareholders.
Companies lobby FOR regulation because they're hoping they can influence the regulations being written in such a way that will give them a advantage over competitors. Groups of companies lobby FOR regulation as a way to keep new competitors out.
The only reason Tesla had a chance is because GM/FORD/etc thought it was impossible for anyone to make a successful EV and ignored Tesla until it was too late. They won't make that mistake again... at least on EVs.
As much as *I* personally would be willing to do a John Galt in the face of government regulation, a public company cannot -- they have a legal responsibility to the shareholders and one of those responsibilities is to stay in business.
But they can reduce operations. The auto manufacturer are on the road to ruin anyway with EVs.
ignoring crash regs are fine until youre on the road in a hoard of tards who absolutely shouldnt be there
I’m not saying to ignore all safety and emissions rules, just refuse to follow any arbitrary and ridiculous ones, like pedestrian safe front end designs. 100% safety cannot be achieved, so why waste money on it? It will be up to each manufacturer to update and/or improve their cars as they see fit. The market will take care of this. Remember, it was Big Government who killed lots of people with the CAFE rules and the first airbags.
im on board with that
the emissions nonsense is a big reason why engines are so expensive now
I just want V8’s back.
I would make the right to buy and own a V8 the 28th Amendment.
that sounds so american im shocked it doesnt exist already
This is why I’m not liking the New America. I want the old one back. Or at least a good resto-mod version.
My feelings on “pedestrian safety” can best be explained through the exchange in Happy Gilmore:
“You just hit that guy!”
“He shouldn’t have been standing there.”
Valid point. However, no amount of crash protection can save you from the "hoard of tards who absolutely shouldn't be there."
We already have that, it’s called Maryland
My dad had a 4 DR 86 DX, I had a 87 4 DR LX, my sister had a 88 4 DR LX. All with 5 speeds.
I think it was because I had a 81 Accord 4 DR and they similar vintage Subarus. Man those Subarus were POS. Didn't stop my sis from buying an Outback though in 2015.
I drove my friend's parents' new '92 Accord EX. Loved that thing, despite the automatic. That car went on to cover over 300,000 hard miles, and my friend sold it for $2,600 about eight years ago (IIRC). I was upset at him for not giving a chance to buy it.
"1988 Accord LXi 5sp in 3dr hatch and wagon versions."
Impeccable taste. I geek out over the Accord 3G "Aerodecks" the rest of the world got.