MotoGP was in Portugal for the penultimate round this past weekend.
Let us begin with the sob story: Joan Mir, who has been qualifying well of late, placed into Q2 and even up into 7th on the grid. This former champion by way of consistency has suffered dozens (maybe over a hundred) falls and failures with his time at Honda. Nevertheless, it seems his efforts and sticktuitivenes are being rewarded as Honda's bike comes back to form. Or it would except he had two mechanicals for a double DNF weekend and the likelihood that Honda keeps it's standings with maximum development concessions.
Up front were Bez bouncing back from Sepang in pole position, Pedro Acosta in 2nd' and Fabulous Fabio Q in third. How Fabio puts the Yamaha up there in qualifying is a testament to his talent. Bagnaia qualified fourth and is finally looking more stable performance wise, Alex Marquez fifth after a Q2 crash, and Johann Zarco sixth.
In the sprint Alex made a good launch and went toe to toe with Acosta for a while before passing him and chasing after Bez. He would catch and pass the Aprilia star. Bez and Acosta fought it out with Acosta gaining the upper hand and all three podium finishers being within one second of one another.
In the race Bez' pace was unmatched and he scampered away to a healthy three second lead to secure the win. Alex held off Acosta who displayed phenomenal late race pace, but a little too late, to take second.
Bagnaia crashed out of the race in fourth place, which is, as he said, "Better than crashing out in the back of the pack."
Nicolo Bulega, from WorldSBK, was on Marc's Ducati and looked solid in spite of having barely any laps on the bike. He was certainly better than rookie disaster Somkiat Chantra who is bumping down to WSBK next year.
Pedro Acosta only has one more round this year to make his debut win after being much hyped in his rookie year. Fermin Aldegeur, admittedly on a Ducati, beat him to the punch as a rookie which must not he great for Pedro to witness.
2025 MotoGP comes to a close this weekend in Balenthia Thpain. Jorge Martin is slated to ride, but Marc Marquez will miss out. Vinales will make Valencia after his long shoulder injury recovery.
2026' season starts next week with the Valencia test which Marc will miss out on.
Missing the test plays into Marc's hands. Since he's missed enough races he's entitled to a "make-up" test day, and he'll get the GP26 after the team has good data from the other riders.
I'd like to see him win one more championship, then retire.
I had gone back and watched from 2013 on and Marc was just spectacular to watch. Easy contender for GOAT.
The make up test I did not know about. Hard to believe the 26 will have huge changes (especially with the reduced engine size, ride height device, and aero changes for 27 on the horizon) but 24->25 was bad for everyone who liked the 24s and the 24s have looked great all year.
You start by having a long and troubled relationship with a Paris-born Eurasian high-end prostitute who counts the world's finest writers and raconteurs among the distinguished list of her international customers. Then, in a regrettable but ultimately profitable misunderstanding, you draw a Manurhin-stamped alloy-framed P-38 against the man you think is her pimp but is actually her faithful and loving brother, who started running watches into Laos and Cambodia during the worst of the Khmer Rouge's purges and consequently lost an eye to a vicious struggle session.
Actually, it was a recommendation off Reddit. If you want the contact details I'll send them to you.
"Well, one hires ex-Soviet soldiers to drive one blindfolded into Asia Minor with an attache case full of hundreds and three cases of Grey Goose, to meet with a Ukrainian Air Force general. Afterward, his guys disassemble the plane so you can sneak it past a Tadjik warlord in truck-sized crates marked "Air Conditioner Parts."
"You start by having a long and troubled relationship with a Paris-born Eurasian high-end prostitute who counts the world's finest writers and raconteurs among the distinguished list of her international customers. Then, in a regrettable but ultimately profitable misunderstanding, you draw a Manurhin-stamped alloy-framed P-38 against the man you think is her pimp but is actually her faithful and loving brother, who started running watches into Laos and Cambodia during the worst of the Khmer Rouge's purges and consequently lost an eye to a vicious struggle session."
Thank God, I was worried there for a moment that this might be a difficult pursuit.
1. Yay, more Wednesday jokes written by me (I think, anyway):
"Are the Bee Gees really 'Stayin' Alive' if two out of the three are deceased?"
"Radiators and other engine cooling system components designed and made by women do an astounding job of retaining water."
"Goodyear wiper blades aren't cheap or horrible, they're simply the victim of a vicious smear campaign."
2. I'm fairly certain that Max Verstappen is talented to the point where he could get fairly close to the podium while starting from dead last on an E-bike...but only if that E-bike's DRS is enabled.
3. In regards to the new Audi S5 Clearly-Not-A-Fucking-Coupe, wait, hold on, pull the E-brake: I was going to wax poetically about how the Audi S5 This-Is-Why-You-Don't-Hire-Psychopaths-To-Run-Your-Company was dumber than packing 77,000 spontaneously-combusting bales of hay into an uninsured, World War 2 dirigible hanger (Hangar A, 1993, Tillamook Oregon), but then a question rose slowly out of the crypt like Star Trek hopefully emerging from the run-through-the-wringer, Kelvin-based timeline:
Does anyone even really care anymore that the only astounding engineering Audi is in the business of engaging in these days is the clever engineering of their own demise?
4. In regards to the Waymo KitKat murder: Autonomous vehicles are designed by psychopaths, for psychopaths, and funded by psychopaths. I seem to recall one of the leading autonomous car proponents noting that something like a hundred million or billion had been spent on this technology, only for him to ask, "where did all the money go?".
5. In regards to Dieselgate V3.0 (or wherever we're at now), I have been involved with a few different industries over the years, automotive and big rig included, and after having a few discussions with diesel folks over the years, I'm loudly curious if the defective particular scrubber setups on the pickups aren't more of a fuel refining problem than they are an equipment issue, in that the fuel quality is wildly inconsistent. Beyond that, a question pops up: In a society that is as (laughably) advanced as ours is now, if diesel fuel really is the particulate-spewing, thrilling fuel of yesteryear, do we even really need diesel? Or do we need to look at cleaner refining technology?
On a side note, in regards to the original Dieselgate with VW and Audi, I spent a brief time working in a VW dealership parts department back in early-mid 2017, and before the parts manager had yet another one of his well-documented-but-blatantly-ignored-by-corporate bi-polar episodes and I walked out, we were at the tail end of Dieselgate, and at the beginning of the VW buyback program.
(so much for the comment speed run...)
We had about 18 or 19 TDI stop-sale cars still on the lot around February 2017, VW had removed a few dozen others of these stop-sale cars before that in January. The buyback began, and since the parts department desk was about two feet from the customer buyback program staging area (of course they didn't stack these people up in the freaking showroom), I got to relive what it was like for returning Vietnam veterans when protesters were calling them "baby murderers" and many other fascinating slurs, because that's among the many names I was called by the TDI religious sycophants who had just discovered that their virtue signaling worship of TDI had all been a lie, and by God, it must have been entirely that one f***ing parts guy's fault that our TDI's were simply flawed mechanical products churned out on an assembly line...just like everyone else's cars.
When VW and da' Feds worked out whatever agreement they worked out for VW to redeem themselves and fix the remaining TDI cars to allow them to be sold again, it was my job to gather and assemble refurbish kits for all of the remaining TDI stop-sale cars on our lot.
On a side note, under no circumstances were we supposed to be driving these cars off the lot, but during a two-day parking lot reseal, I was among many other VW employees who were driving these stop-sale cars back and forth between lots in order to shuffle them out of the way of the lot resealing process. I heard that might have been illegal.
At any rate, technicians had been going out once a month and sort of taking the TDI dog cars for a walk, in that they got a 30-minute idle time, they made sure most everything worked, was cycled through, etc, etc.
Here was (approximately) what I assembled for each car:
1. All filters (cabin, air, fuel, oil, part of an oil change)
2. Brake pads and rotors if necessary
3. Battery if necessary (based on testing for each car)
4. Refill on DEF fluid(if necessary)
5. A replacement, updated dealer window sticker
6. A reflash of the PCM
...and that was about it.
Do you notice anything missing from that list of parts, in regards to what you might be thinking that might be necessary in regards to making all of these supposedly gross polluters legal to terrorize America's highways and byways again?
I looked at the new window stickers, and then compared them to the old ones. The new stickers had one less mpg both city and highway.
Given the insanity I had seen from the buyback customers, and having been insulted and called every name in the book by these same people, I was kinda loudly curious as to what the hell was going on with these cars to begin with. After asking a lot of questions over those first five months of 2017, I noted something fascinating:
Nobody was mentioning just how "dirty" these cars were from a testing scale, in other words, how dirty was "dirty"?
If you get bored, look at an exploded parts view of any then-era TDI car, you're going to see a hell of a lot of emissions equipment. Remember, none of the equipment was replaced to make those cars legal for sale again, the equipment wasn't the problem.
Remember my mentioning the PCM reflash that the technicians did as part of the stop-sale-car refresh? That was the original issue, with VW/Audi/Motorola (or whoever did the original tuning), and the dual-tune setup, which triggered the 'clean' tune when the OBD II lead was plugged into the car, and went back to "efficient" when it was unplugged.
I'm recalling a couple of visiting engineers I spoke with around March 2017, one of them joked that VW was somewhat terrified of the customer base it had created, in turning Volkswagen into something of a virtue-signaling religion (for a mass-produced automobile), and that sales were already dropping like a rock. By May, the numbers were around 66% from 2016 to 2017.
One thing that was mentioned, VW was paranoid about their mileage numbers. There was apparently another goalpost-shifting of the emission standards, which VW could meet, but then the cars ran like shit and got worse mileage. One of the last public engagements of old VAG CEO Martin Winterkorn was during an annual corporate party they hold, and instead of giving the typical ra-ra speeches, he pointed out how VW was in danger of being destroyed by the ridiculous emissions goalpost shifting, stating that it was costing VAG something like a hundred million dollars for each gram of CO2 removed from their cars, and Dieselgate happened right around this time, with the two tunes: Emissions testing, and mileage, the new tune (IIRC) was simply that the "efficiency" tune was deleted, hence the new window stickers.
What I think happened: VW was going to be destroyed by the virtue-signaling religious faithful of the Church of TDI if there was any sort of a mileage drop, and all of this company-destroying bullshit was likely due to paranoia about losing 1mpg.
And if it hadn't been for those meddling Californians, VW would have gotten away with it, too!
(Twirls mustache angrily in defeat)
What I don't recall happening with the VW TDI system were the plugged catalyst issues/EGR coolers/related disasters that plague many of the diesel pickups, almost as if VW had designed a pretty damn good system, other than with the PDF system, those cars stank up the shop when pulled in. It was also trippy to see the 5.0 TT V10's and related switchgear/transfer case removed from a Touareg, it reminded me of the 30mm cannon that ran the length of an A-10 Warthog, no way in hell that engine/trans combo fits into a Touareg...
Among the many trippy things that occurred during that time was that we were taking in nine TDI buybacks a week (one hauler a week), and I was told to go through all the cars to see if anything of value was left behind. There was a Beetle convertible that was owned by the most despised property management company in the area, and for whatever reason, the idiot business owner that turned it in accidentally left around $840 in quarters in the trunk. She never came back to ask about it, and I might have accidentally forgot to mention anything about it to my management.
We got loads of barely used dealer add-on upgrade parts, custom wheels, new tires in some cases, new snow tires in others (Nokian studded good stuff), and one of the techs even got a swanky new aftermarket exhaust system and CAI for his TDI.
It was fairly hilarious...and also sad...to also see what was being bought back by VW. We got worn-out turds that had actually been towed in to be bought back, but we also got back nearly brand-new cars, and in the case of the TDI Beetle, we were also treated (or at least I thought it was fascinating, anyway) to see the now-forgotten Beetle's incredible color palette (both interior and exterior), my favorite being a solid knockoff of one of the old Levi Strauss-option AMC Gremlins, the convertible top and upholstery all looked like blue denim, along with matching exterior paint and interior plastic. If they had made an AWD version of that car with the manual 6-speed and the 2.5L 5-cylinder, I'd probably have four of five of the things in the driveway, in various different colors.
It was all such a galactic fucking waste of resources.
There was one incredibly nice, older lady who was one of the buyback "victims", she just started talking to me about her Golf wagon, she was madly in love with the thing, and didn't want to turn it in. I mentioned that I had nothing to do with the buyback program, didn't know any of the particulars, but also didn't know about whether or not it was a forced program, if I loved my car and didn't want to sell the thing, then I wouldn't sell the thing.
For that act of kindness, I was nearly fired by the bi-polar Boomer parts manager, for merely speaking to that lady, who was the one who started the conversation, with the policy being something I hadn't heard of up until that exact moment. I said, "okay", he looked even more pissed off/passive aggressive, and then followed up with, "when exactly did you pull me aside and instruct me on what to do and not to do with these buyback people?"
He was pretty much the final straw for my never wanting to work for a dealer ever again, he behaved like the mother from "A Child Called It", and burned through four delivery drivers during my five months of employment, he emotionally destroyed all of them with verbal abuse, and would even take a half-hour break to randomly call his daughter from his office and shout at her over the phone, offering such positive self-esteem boosters such as, "GO FUCKING KILL YOURSELF!" and "YOUR MOTHER SHOULD HAVE ABORTED YOU!" (my wife got one call on her camera phone while she stopped by to drop off something for me), along with other similar positive child-rearing affirmations. Great guy to work for, especially when he turned on me and began doing that to me in early May.
Naturally he's still the parts manager there, having burned through twenty-something-plus employees since I was there.
The only thing that was more ridiculous...and eventually more terrifying...than the TDI clusterfuck was the technician training course module collection for the 325-volt EV Golf that had just come out. In particular was the "This Product Will Kill You" section, where the battery itself was so toxic, if you're electrocuted by the car, if the shock doesn't kill you, the toxins from the battery will, and it kept stressing just how horrible your death would be if you were to die AND OH BY THE WAY DID WE MENTION THE HORRIBLE DEATH THING? In essence, the training module didn't offer any sort of hope, you're freaking doomed no matter what you do if you're electrocuted. Not only that, but an entire bay would have to be devoted entirely to the EV Golf if you became a designated repair dealership.
I think you captured the "sides" of VW TDI enthusiasts perfectly.
You had that rabid Prius/Subaru type bunch who thought they were saving the world, and then the types like the lady who just loved the car. That second group also included some Euro enthusiasts, and are typically a bit more normal.
My wife and father-in-law fell into the second group - they had an A3 TDI hatchthat they loved as a highway car (my wife was in college) that they never wanted to get rid of. However the buy back offer was WILD and they basically got an A3 etron hatch plus a check, which made my FIL happy but wife not so much. That etron was forever compared to the TDI and never measured up - we called it the shitbox. In the end it lived up to the name after a warranty replacement battery, and a new AC system after under 25k miles in 5 years, Miami weather wasn't kind to it.
"You had that rabid Prius/Subaru type bunch who thought they were saving the world"
I'd like to think that the insufferable, virtue-signaling group that worshiped the TDI golden calf were the not-so-ancient genetic predecessors of the insufferable, virtue-signaling Tesla owners group of today, if they're not the same people. It's the same ludicrous script, a group of self indulgent folks who think that gathering around a basic, mass-produced automotive product is somehow the latest replacement Jesus Christ, and this stark, barren, soulless, perpetual-urethane-surgical-mask-wearing testament to what it would look like if the Amish had designed a battery-powered car became simply one of the latest virtue-signaling fads for easily impressionable idiots, whose only original thought is which shade of weathered vomit they should get their new Tesla painted.
The lady I mentioned, yeah, she was one of the nicest people I had ever encountered, and was completely unprepared for the idiotic, destructive, and insanely wasteful wave of political and legal chaos brought about by players behind the scenes (who never get to see this part of their dastardly work), even though I do come across as one of the worst jerks who ever lived, I do actually get a bit teary-eyed after listening to a particularly beautiful symphony piece, a sad movie with a happy ending (okay, the first ten minutes of "UP" is one of the saddest things I've ever seen, you either understand it or you don't), or after reading of my absolutely terrible short stories (I'm sad because of the realization that something this badly-written, terrible to the point of wanting to stone one's own eyes out after reading it, is rare in the literary world) and this lady looked like someone just ran over one of her children, standing by herself in the buyback cattle staging area.
It was almost like watching a funeral with only one attendee, almost as if it were a real-life version of the closing minutes of "Death of a Salesman", but unlike Dustin Hoffman in the movie version, you actually feel bad for whoever died. My first reaction was simply to try to hug the lady.
This was the ridiculously shitty thing about this whole TDI experience, especially for older people, ripping something important away from/forcing unnecessary major changes to an elderly person (or in the other case, screwing with them through what was being presented in the press as being a mass fraud, laughably leaving out the part where insane government overreach was the actual villain of the piece) is actually considered to be a form of abuse in some A.P.S. circles (Adult Protective Services, that three-letter agency has been my life for the last six years of employment, thankfully now gone), with the basic idea is that making excessive changes to the daily life of an elderly individual (if they're in an assisted living facility or worse) is seriously frowned upon and is a potential abuse tag.
And depending on which state you live in, screwing around with A.P.S. is really not a good idea. Did this fall under direct abuse? No, but it was heavily starting to lean that way, given how upset/batshit some of the older TDI-aggrieved were.
This is what I was seeing from TDI owners who staged in front of the parts counter, they were in a rage, they were confused, they were sad, (and some were actually pretty happy for obvious reasons) the car they were turning in was either just a soulless mode of transportation, something to beat on, or in the case of this lady, a 40k-mile, trusted companion that got great mileage, she could drive it anywhere, and naturally, since it was a regular FWD Golf wagon, a low entry point for her older dog that couldn't jump very well into a larger/higher vehicle...and why exactly does she have to get rid of it?
As I mentioned above, even I'm a bit player in the second group, a bit weird, except I can't decide whether to stick with my primitive American garbage fleet, or do what I really want to do, go German because the Japanese don't know how to design a proper f***ing car seat, with me being convinced that the torture artists that were selected to design these seats were direct descendants of the same clearly-ergonomic-centered folks who were the polite, considerate mid-level managers who were instrumental in running that obviously misunderstood "Bataan Death March".
To that end, yeah, I'm madly in love with German machinery, in spite of the fact that no German car manufacturer in existence right now is actually wanting to build a car...and for all intents and purposes, hasn't built for at least a decade or more...that anyone with an IQ over room temp is wanting to buy as a car to enjoy driving...me included.
Yeah, I'm thinking that "botched" is somehow both the rallying cry of VAG and at the same time is completely inadequate for the multi-bazillion-dollar, gleefully self-inflicted, John Cleese/Fawlty Towers-level of metaphorical car thrashing that VAG received at the hands of sniveling, corporate-level cowards who really should have just explained what happened, why it happened, and who was ultimately responsible. But since the corporate types and government are in bed together, we get...a cheesy, B-movie, global auto manufacturer-themed Soylent Green, where the manufacturer is eating itself, with a grizzly Charleton Heston shouting, "Soylent Green is Volkswagen! SOYLENT GREEN IS VOLKSWAGEN!".
If I remember correctly, it was the meddling West Virginians, not the Californians, as it was students of WVU that were doing road emissions testing and finding numbers that did not agree with the published VW numbers and were very much different from the EPA standards.
If I'm recalling this correctly, the testing was done in California using remote sensors/photo radar on freeway on-ramps. I couldn't remember which outfit was actually doing the testing, and it was too much of a soul-draining process to wearily venture through Google and go back to the thrilling days of TDI yesteryear.
The general idea was this: A dirty TDI, obviously driven by a sociopathic puppy murderer, (or at least driven by a terrible human being who didn't go "awwww!" while watching FB reel videos of adorable puppies frolicking in various environments or accidentally falling off of a low couch) would trigger a potential violation, the remote sensor/photo radar thingie would take a picture of the offending vehicle, the vehicle's owner would get a notice sent to the home of the vehicle owner, requiring them to bring the offending TDI vehicle and the browser history/smartphone puppy video watching history and submit for emissions testing/puppy video watching investigation.
This is where the trouble began.
The offending vehicle would arrive, they plugged into the ODB 2 port, began the test, and emissions came out just fine. They were puzzled, but couldn't do anything else so they concluded the vehicle testing, tagged the ear of the TDI's owner, and then released the TDI and its owner's puppy video watching history back into the wild.
I think this happened three times total (I'm operating straight from memory here), a 2nd car came in, the same thing happened, the vehicle and that owner's puppy video watching history was also then released, and then the 3rd car came in and tested beautifully. It was only then that someone came up with the bright idea of testing the car without it being plugged in (this TDI owner didn't like puppy videos, so that clearly prompted a larger investigation), and that's when everything kinda went to hell in a puppy basket.
So to that end, I take back my offending Cali inhabitant comment, but only 25% of it (I couldn't remember which outfit did the emissions testing, whoops), because California allowed for it to happen, and also because Californians...who also probably watch a lot of puppy videos.
My personal are the Transporter owners. Having worked on and driven a lot of these terrifying-to-drive vehicles, I've yet to have anyone adequately explain "why" those things, and this is coming from a guy who sees logical sense in owning an Iron-Curtain-era Lada Riva.
I don't know if the word "primitive" is the best way to describe a Transporter.
It doesn't really turn (it wallows), it doesn't stop, it doesn't go, your face is the crumple zone if there's a collision, they're rust buckets, I've never been in one that anything resembling a working heater...or electrical for that matter...and they're insanely expensive just to buy one, never mind what you'll spend on getting one to simply track in a straight line for more than five feet.
There is zero logical reason to own one, the only thing they do somewhat functionally well is that they're something of a decent moving pop-up camper/tent that's always stuck in the "up" position, the Transporter's sheetmetal shares the approximate tensile strength of tent fabric. and has the resulting aero as a result (lane changes from crosswinds, headwinds, tailwinds, pretty much any wind that's stronger than 0.000004 mph will upset it) of said pop-up camper/tent.
It's entirely a nostalgia buy, everybody's Boomer mom or dad supposedly went to Woodstock in one and collected any number of terrifying sexually transmitted diseases along the way, and they really couldn't even be given away at the time they were really popular, I vaguely recall at least six or seven stories of these things being purchased for less than $100 during the late 1960's/early 1970's, they were even that terrible then.
That being said, there's absolutely nothing on the road today that looks anything like a VW Transporter (especially the variant with approximately 791 windows), and they're actually not that terrible looking as well.
Rebuilders are picking up these things in the most appalling condition, literally falling apart (I seem to recall that a factory Porsche team transporter was found recently, and it was not much more than a few sheets of questionably-connected sheet metal), and completed/restored versions are selling for stupid money, with even-more-rare variants (the trucks) usually going for more. A lot of guys have spent small...and large...fortunes in trying to get them to behave nicer, and I've driven a few that were almost tolerable to drive, but in the end, it's sort of like the 911, you don't buy one because they drive like most everything else.
Beyond that, you simply won't know what it's like until you drive one, there are hints of the VW Beetle in there, but because of driver placement and the giant-stick-in-the-bowl-of-mayonnaise shifter, it's also almost entirely different, it really doesn't behave like any other vehicle I've driven, it's just...wow with the vehicle dynamics, and not in a good way, unless you've never driven anything else in your life, and even then, it's still a 2 out of 4 stars in comparison to all the other cars you've never driven.
You don't buy these for any sort of purposeful use, they're too expensive to be much of anything other than literally a hobby-only vehicle (I think the CEO of GoPro had his stolen once or twice), but if you're wanting something fairly unique, and can find one for less than the price of a house, have some fun and then flip it.
I don't know if I'd call it "informative", lol, as your inquiry results may vary, and I've held a grudge for decades against those beasts, as one of them killed my father once.
Dad eventually recovered unfortunately, and he also hated Transporters for many years after his death.
Also, when I search “Volkswagen Transporter” on BaT, loads of different generations come up, from original, to type 2, to T3 (“Doka”) to T4 (90s) and appears VW continues to market this nameplate, at least in Europe.
Do the above assessments apply to all generations, or just type one & two, or just one through three, or???
Having had some dealings with VW throughout the years, I just sort of bunch everything together as "Transporter" all the way through the T4. Yes, it's intellectually lazy on my part, but the last time I checked, I'm not being compensated to put any effort into getting more specific on which particular generation of Transporter engineering atrocity I am currently offending.
For that I would normally apologize, except for the fact that I've been held up on two-lane highways several times over the last several years by idiots driving these things at 20mph under the speed limit (apparently they simply explode and devastate/vaporize everything within an 80-mile radius if they travel at a speed of 46mph or faster), and I've kind of had enough of that foolishness for a lifetime, especially when there are numerous slow-moving-vehicle turnouts along the route.
These beasts sort of limp along into the 1990's or so, and then the real horror begins: The Eurovan/Urinalvan.
I really miss our manual TDI Sportwagen with its giant sunroof. It was too small for us but it was really fun to drive and obviously got great gas mileage.
I sold out and took the money (made money on that car and greatly respected VW for their emissions trickery and fair buyout). I’d consider buying another one as a commuter.
Let’s put the blame on KitKat’s death where it belongs. Namely, the owner who recklessly let the cat wander all over an area with busy streets. It’s a miracle he lasted this long.
The speed limit on 16th right there is 20 (twenty) miles per hour. KitKat has been wandering the streets for nine years and living as a bodega cat for six of those years. Cats run at 30mph. They're not at risk from any human who is obeying the law on that street. This isn't like letting your cat run wild in the Chicago Loop :)
We will never get an accurate report of what really happened because everybody’s got an agenda. But there are reports that the cat darted in front of the vehicle. KitKat no doubt used up all of his 9 lives and then some.
And wouldn’t the response by the robo taxi be quicker than a human in applying the brakes? I didn’t follow the story closely but I thought the criticism mostly was that the taxi didn’t stop.
We volunteered at a Chicago no kill shelter for almost a decade and saw what can happen to cats when they are outdoors. From nothing good all the way to horrific, either accidentally or on purpose which makes one take a very dim view of humanity sometimes.
I specifically exclude you from any criticism here. You do what you can and even more than that. I admire you for it.
I think the facts are you have them are correct. And I think a human taxi driver would have been no less likely to harm Kitkat in that circumstance. That being said, one of the conditions to call a car "autonomous" is that it be able to make some basic decisions and judgments about what to do in these situations. I don't think Waymo has cleared the bar for this and I think a child would be at just as much risk.
"And wouldn’t the response by the robo taxi be quicker than a human in applying the brakes? I didn’t follow the story closely but I thought the criticism mostly was that the taxi didn’t stop."
Remembering the classic tenet of computer programming, in regards to "garbage in, garbage out", given how people either love or hate cats, it might be entirely possible that a Waymo programmer had a cat allergy.
See also: Uh, wasn't there an issue in Australia where autonomous Volvo prototypes kept drilling kangaroos, it simply couldn't process what to do if something like that ran across the road? Given how far we really haven't gone in regards to advancing autonomous driving technology (we're barely at "driving an established route"), while I'm upset about losing any animal to anything other than sheer old age, I'm curious if this is simply an issue with a technology that isn't really compatible with the environment it's been placed in.
On a side note, I'm typing this while also scooping some asshole 800-pound Maine Coon cat off of my freaking keyboard for the 50th time or so while trying to type in here.
I would have thought that Volvo would have created a kangaroo airbag to deploy right before the kangaroo bounced off the front of the autonomous car and rocketed/landed a couple of miles away, in relative safety, away from the self-driving Volvo.
Well cats are not exactly easy to control. I blame Waymo. There is no reason for an autonomous car to hit a cat. The programmers probably hate cats or just don’t care. I commute in my Tesla almost entirely on FSD and it is very aware of critters. The other morning it saw a coyote run across the road in the dark before I did and slowed for it. It also navigates deer very well and even waits for them to get their shit sorted out.
Oh I agree cats are not easy to control. We’ve independently rescued over a dozen in 40 years. With very limited exceptions, none have ever made a break for it to go back outside even ones that clearly grew up in the streets.
Down here it’s full on carnage on the roads as far as wildlife. In just a few miles the last couple of weeks there were two dead deer - one headless - as well as assorted armadillos, skunks, squirrels, and possums. Oddly enough, very rarely a cat and never a dog.
"The programmers probably hate cats or just don’t care." I went this route as well, but was trying to spare the feelings of any programmers present...oh, wait, that's if they have any...
It's totally a driver culture thing too. We produce truly horrible drivers.
Drive around Greece and - despite their rep - they're generally very situation-aware (maybe it's the manuals?) and they slow to avoid the MILLIONS of meandering cats as if they were their own children.
(I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall during the lengthy, possibly-one-sided conversation between KitKat's owner and the fascinatingly-disinterested KitKat about the dangers of roaming the streets with Waymos on the loose)
Wife has a diesel to haul horses. Threw an emissions code, I cleared it. Then it threw a code and shut down dead on the freeway at 75 mph. No trailer that time; but would have been terrible with a full trailer 100 miles south of Ely or negotiating the Grapevine. So: OEM decided that liability for EPA violations>greater than liability to aggrieved widowers. Decision: Rip all that shit out. Fuck them and, unfortunately (I do feel a twinge of remorse as I bury the throttle and emit a snort of carcinogens for your kids to enjoy) fuck you, too.
You should see the tarded comments ont he drive, they think he should have got more time, and the pardon was bad because orange man bad.
the fact is stupid laws will be disobeyed, smoking weed as an example. Its a punitive government that puts peopel in prison for stupid shit. But then we the USA with 55 of the world population arguably ahs 50% of the world's prison population.
is there another country that has this many people committing crimes and also getting persecuted for it? i think jack or someone else here mentioned that the people getting locked up for weed werent just in there for that
There are well past tense were countrie with less crime for which people did not het locked up for anything and everything. Its past tense now because most of those countries went full woke
Many of them were violent offenses plead down to possession, and suchlike.
Very very VERY few people in coastal states at least are "in" for weed alone, and if they were it would either be a) a lot of weed, ie drug dealing, ie a death penalty offense in a sane country such as Singapore, or b) a repeat offender being technically locked up for many prior offenses.
[NB this is not to bootlick, cops are basically schoolteachers with guns; think of the average schoolteacher's ideology and conception of the world. A cop would read the average post here and see if there was any technicality to arrest the poster on.]
"You should see the tarded comments ont he drive, they think he should have got more time, and the pardon was bad because orange man bad."
That is something I am repeatedly fascinated about: The obnoxious socialist/communist types that swarm all over The Drive/Jalopnik and related outlets. Do these people even own a car?
Well they do recommend not turning off adas on your honda passport because "its there for a reason" so no they don't know how to drive or care. Or maybe its just that the $ is sin shilling fake offroad mom mobiles.
The most egregious is autoblog. That appears to be an ev apologist site. Their famous headlines were things like "ev sales grow 50%," yeah from 10-15 then.
They had an article about someone bringing in their mini for a free alignment when the techs discover the wheel bolts are so loose the wheel is about to fall off. Autoblog foes on to say the owner was not a trained expert so didn't know.
The internet seems to have destroyed the enthusiast magazine or site. Even in the UK the old classic cars magazine are I think just shills for old car dealers now. well maybe they always were but the link is now very direct, and there is evo, who alas find that besides the Gt3 and Gt4rs, alpine 110 and occasional McLaren Aston all new cars are ugly turds so not much to get excited about or test.
Seems like if you have 5000k to 1 mill there are all these reborn reimagined old classics to being built, because new cars suck.
i remember when my father told me he advertised something in old autos recently. he actually paid $15 to have tiny ad possibly be read by a fraction of the 30k total nationwide subscribers.
print media is pretty dead and bat or even facebook marketplace is vastly better
I've seen some absolutely vile comments made about this gentleman just because he broke emissions laws. These exact same people are super totally cool with killing babies in the womb though.
It's not going to be that big a step for the left to say "you broke a law... time to string you up". They're also going to be the ones throwing rocks through your windows before they do it while police watch.
Sadly, I'm to a point where I believe the right should wield power heavily while it can. There is NO WAY the left wont use it. They're use to pressing the button every chance they get.. and they've had 100 years of pressing that button.
While I wish there was a good middle with moderation, it just doesn't exist. Even the libertarian party became a bunch of retards.
i was just about to say that at least he wouldnt be on the epstein list but then i realized that hes a libertarian so he probably has his own gay opinions on the age of consent already
I used to gym with a DadBro who bragged he could leg press 10 plates. I watched him get his knees into his teeth with it fully loaded and then push his patellae away with his dick beaters.
I called him for cheating his lift and he full on clutched all of his pearls. "I'm just giving it a little push. It's too hard at the bottom."
I've never been able to squat real weight. I hired a personal trainer and everything back in the day "Somethings wrongs with your hips" Now my knees fucked and I have a proper excuse
This doesn't make sense to me. When I could squat something, I tried to do the same weight in a hotel gym with only a smith machine, no rack or power cage. I could not do it because of the forced-straight barpath.
Aside from being stupid, is it supposed to be easier or harder to squat same weight with all the horizontal help?
It's flawed question because if you put the same weight in plates on both, they don't actually provide the same weight in hand or on your back. The Smith machine bar does not equal 45 lbs of resistance.
In your experience, you simply weren't practiced in that movement so it was more difficult that day. A month of practice and you'd be crushing "more" weight on the machine.
smith squatting is great for people who cant do traditional squats but want to build squat like strength. smith squatting is really bad for people who like to brag. a 405 smith squat, even at full ROM, is remarkably poor for an adult male.
ive got no issues at all with machine exercises - hell, cable day is my favorite day - but you need to understand its apples to oranges with free weights.
Funny that first comment in your article mentioned “Muscle Mustangs and Fast Fords”. I had a guy at SEMA ask me if I would write an article about his truck - maybe for MMFF (as we used to call it) and I had to inform him that magazine died decades? ago. Oddly enough, I was surfing around the other night and came across Jim Campisano - longtime MMFF el Jefe. He now writes for a website called Street Muscle, it appears and the article I read was about Chevy stuff - gasp….for some reason we’re both a lot more gray than we were in the magazine’s heyday.
I recently discovered that a mere five magazines worth of MM&FF issues from the War-and-Peace-thick, early-2000's-era, every-5.0 parts-advertiser-on-this-planet-and-nine-others, murdering-of-a-million-trees-to-print-next-month's-issue, when it's stacked together and sewn into a harness, makes for an incredible set of body armor that stops everything up to a .460 S&W Magnum.
They're using experimental Martha Stewart "Living" magazine-based body armor in that movie, she's actually in that film and plays herself as she enters into the armaments manufacturing industry.
Not cheap but their soaps are actually pretty good. Really rich lather that feels good on my skin. Since a lot of their marketing and branding is focused on Christmas gift sales, you can often find stuff marked down in the spring.
First there are spotter bars, *but even if spotter bars didnt exist* - if you are smart and do not put collars on the bar, you can shrug-of-shame yourself out of probably anything 245 or lighter. (YES, the bar "whips" when you get into heavier weight - part of the fun)
Why people put collars on heavy bench bars with no spotter is beyond me. At least kill yourself in a non-retarded way
smith machine benching when dumbbells are LITERALLY RIGHT THERE is the definition of lazy ego lifting. you gain a tremendous amount of secondary strength just hauling the weights over to your bench, let alone the act of balancing them as you lift. put your legs up and do em one at a time with the other suspended and now you are really cooking with gas!!!
At the very least, the latter are in situationships with the former where both of them spend a lot of time talking about restaurant food and/or trying to get the other person to top.
Oh, man. Hammer, meet nail, on the Audi assessment. That 2009 S5 (and moar, the RS5) was one of the best street cars I've ever driven on the track. Swoon...
I was behind a new A5 in traffic yesterday, it looks slightly better in person but should still be a Jetta not an Audi. The last gen was so clean and refined, now they all look cut rate. The only new Audi that looks good is the eTron in S or RS guise. It's a better looking Taycan but it's sadly electric and $100k+
dont look now, but nice V8 S5s are getting pricey. that being said, the s/c 6 was faster, more reliable, sounded pretty good, and had crazy tuning potential.
One of my sons works primarily on German vehicles, the 4.2 is not one of his shop's favorite engines to work on, and if anything, they'd rather the owner take their timing set replacement jobs somewhere else.
There had to be a reason one of my (loaded) former clients traded his impossibly well-specced RS5 for a (can't recall) 997 or 991 Carrera GTS.
I wouldn't do the same myself, but there's no doubt he had his reasons.
PS as a twotonic teuton, really the S5s and RS5s are begging for an engine swap to something that works at the level they were designed for. "God grant me the heft of wallet, romance of outlook, and lack of financial foresight to attempt to swap a modern Audi with a reliable modern V8 and accompanying transmission"
It’s why I could never bring myself to buy one, quite honestly, as much as I’d like one. Damn my sensibilities….
I think the B7 cars make sense to try a LSx swap- and I’m sure the kits are out there- but IMHO the B8 cars are never going to look “classic” enough to be worth the squeeze.
Here’s the kicker a dealer literally asked $3,800 to replace TPMS sensors. Thought better of it went down to $1,600. Needless to say got them done elsewhere for $400. The dealers are a tough bunch
If you don’t mind sharing, how was your ownership experience, from what mileage to what mileage, and what advice (other than just “don’t) would you give someone covering their eyes and considering?
The only autonomous driving that might interest me is keeping me from getting killed when driving tired on an interstate. The only time that I drive when actually impaired is when I'm falling asleep on the road.
Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.
Everyone raves about Samuel L. Jackson's blistering performance in the apartment that ends in the Ezekiel 25:17 monologue. But for my money, Walken's monologue is the best dialogue in the entire film. The pacing, the voicing, the way his tone and delivery changes with part of the story, and of course his mannerisms - from how he holds his hat and appears nervous as he's introduced to Butch, to how he handles the watch, to how he hands it over as he says "and now, little man, I give it to you" - is a masterclass in acting. (and, honestly, direction and editing - the scene was assembled from 14 takes)
I should amend that - Tarantino shot 14 takes. I am not sure all 14 were stitched into the final scene. Tarantino wanted to do it all in one take, but later realized he wanted a slightly different feel for each part of the story - World War I, World War II, and Vietnam - and for the reaction shots, so each take was tailored in a slightly different way. I don't know if that applied to the actors or only the filming. that said, the beauty of it is comes across as one take.
to see three examples of absolutely masterful use of a single long take, check out:
1. the long tracking shot of Henry and Karen entering the Copacabana in Goodfellas (just under three minutes)
2. the opening scene of The Player by Robert Altman (a four minute tracking shot in which one of the main characters is explaining Orson Welles' masterful use of the technique in Touch of Evil as he walks through the parking lot of a film studio)
3. the stunning POV car ambush scene in Children of Men (at 5 minutes long, the best example in a film with no shortage of impressive long takes).
Caught that and LOLed, but have listened to that album (one of the best of all time; ZERO filler there) so many times I can't always tell which track is by whom, though I may know the words by memory
MotoGP was in Portugal for the penultimate round this past weekend.
Let us begin with the sob story: Joan Mir, who has been qualifying well of late, placed into Q2 and even up into 7th on the grid. This former champion by way of consistency has suffered dozens (maybe over a hundred) falls and failures with his time at Honda. Nevertheless, it seems his efforts and sticktuitivenes are being rewarded as Honda's bike comes back to form. Or it would except he had two mechanicals for a double DNF weekend and the likelihood that Honda keeps it's standings with maximum development concessions.
Up front were Bez bouncing back from Sepang in pole position, Pedro Acosta in 2nd' and Fabulous Fabio Q in third. How Fabio puts the Yamaha up there in qualifying is a testament to his talent. Bagnaia qualified fourth and is finally looking more stable performance wise, Alex Marquez fifth after a Q2 crash, and Johann Zarco sixth.
In the sprint Alex made a good launch and went toe to toe with Acosta for a while before passing him and chasing after Bez. He would catch and pass the Aprilia star. Bez and Acosta fought it out with Acosta gaining the upper hand and all three podium finishers being within one second of one another.
In the race Bez' pace was unmatched and he scampered away to a healthy three second lead to secure the win. Alex held off Acosta who displayed phenomenal late race pace, but a little too late, to take second.
Bagnaia crashed out of the race in fourth place, which is, as he said, "Better than crashing out in the back of the pack."
Nicolo Bulega, from WorldSBK, was on Marc's Ducati and looked solid in spite of having barely any laps on the bike. He was certainly better than rookie disaster Somkiat Chantra who is bumping down to WSBK next year.
Pedro Acosta only has one more round this year to make his debut win after being much hyped in his rookie year. Fermin Aldegeur, admittedly on a Ducati, beat him to the punch as a rookie which must not he great for Pedro to witness.
2025 MotoGP comes to a close this weekend in Balenthia Thpain. Jorge Martin is slated to ride, but Marc Marquez will miss out. Vinales will make Valencia after his long shoulder injury recovery.
2026' season starts next week with the Valencia test which Marc will miss out on.
Missing the test plays into Marc's hands. Since he's missed enough races he's entitled to a "make-up" test day, and he'll get the GP26 after the team has good data from the other riders.
I'd like to see him win one more championship, then retire.
I had gone back and watched from 2013 on and Marc was just spectacular to watch. Easy contender for GOAT.
The make up test I did not know about. Hard to believe the 26 will have huge changes (especially with the reduced engine size, ride height device, and aero changes for 27 on the horizon) but 24->25 was bad for everyone who liked the 24s and the 24s have looked great all year.
He truly is something special - even more than a generational talent.
It seems the '25 took a turn for the worse, I'm betting the '26 will turn back towards the '24.
Amazing GS. I might have it polished, or just have the face cleaned up. How does one get an introduction to trustworthy Vietnamese watch brokers?
You start by having a long and troubled relationship with a Paris-born Eurasian high-end prostitute who counts the world's finest writers and raconteurs among the distinguished list of her international customers. Then, in a regrettable but ultimately profitable misunderstanding, you draw a Manurhin-stamped alloy-framed P-38 against the man you think is her pimp but is actually her faithful and loving brother, who started running watches into Laos and Cambodia during the worst of the Khmer Rouge's purges and consequently lost an eye to a vicious struggle session.
Actually, it was a recommendation off Reddit. If you want the contact details I'll send them to you.
"Just how does one acquire a MiG-29?"
"Well, one hires ex-Soviet soldiers to drive one blindfolded into Asia Minor with an attache case full of hundreds and three cases of Grey Goose, to meet with a Ukrainian Air Force general. Afterward, his guys disassemble the plane so you can sneak it past a Tadjik warlord in truck-sized crates marked "Air Conditioner Parts."
This but he throws you into Reactor 4 because you brought Grey Goose.
Sincerely, Chopin snob.
Prairie
Tito's
Ketel One
Snow Queen
but I will drink Goose in a pinch.
I don't know liquor.
Other than that Night Train's a mean wine.
It is sad that Tito's has nothing to do with Yugoslavia. I had to look it up because, like Ice Age, I know nothing about liquor.
Any vodka over 24.99 is virtually identical and everyone else is lying.
I know, de gustibus non disputandum est, but who cares about different vodkas and why? Scotch or bourbon, sure.
I drink it straight, and there's a big difference between brands.
what does the composer have to do with anything
It’s a brand of Vodka. IMO, the best vodka.
They found me, i cant believe they found me
Who?
The Libyans!
Those fat chicks with the blue hair, waving the rainbow flags?
No, those are drag queen family hour LIBRARIANS.
Reminds me of the time I disassembled a brand new KX250 and packed it into 3 boxes labeled "motorcycle parts" so it could be shipped to Saudi Arabia.
nah i want to hang out with the first guy now
"You start by having a long and troubled relationship with a Paris-born Eurasian high-end prostitute who counts the world's finest writers and raconteurs among the distinguished list of her international customers. Then, in a regrettable but ultimately profitable misunderstanding, you draw a Manurhin-stamped alloy-framed P-38 against the man you think is her pimp but is actually her faithful and loving brother, who started running watches into Laos and Cambodia during the worst of the Khmer Rouge's purges and consequently lost an eye to a vicious struggle session."
Thank God, I was worried there for a moment that this might be a difficult pursuit.
Talking to someone on reddit sounds worse
I’d rather lose an eye to a Cambodian warlord than read reddit
Oh yeah? Well, I'd rather lose BOTH eyes to a Cambodian warlord than read Reddit!
That would solve the problem
there was a alloy-framed p38? i had an unused reg'lar one off a luftwaffe staffer, until...
I once owned a Manurhin P-1, which is an alloy P-38:
https://www.lugerforums.com/threads/cold-war-relic-%E2%80%9Cmanurhin%E2%80%9D-walther-p1.123598/
We still need the story that led to your piece being removed from evidence never to be seen again.
It does *not* start with a Eurasian prostitute, I'll say that much now!
It may not start with her, but I'll simply note that you didn't say she wasn't involved.
Ouch! 😬
Pretty good fiction. Thx.
I would like them please, also the polishy guy.
COMMENT SPEED RUN!
1. Yay, more Wednesday jokes written by me (I think, anyway):
"Are the Bee Gees really 'Stayin' Alive' if two out of the three are deceased?"
"Radiators and other engine cooling system components designed and made by women do an astounding job of retaining water."
"Goodyear wiper blades aren't cheap or horrible, they're simply the victim of a vicious smear campaign."
2. I'm fairly certain that Max Verstappen is talented to the point where he could get fairly close to the podium while starting from dead last on an E-bike...but only if that E-bike's DRS is enabled.
3. In regards to the new Audi S5 Clearly-Not-A-Fucking-Coupe, wait, hold on, pull the E-brake: I was going to wax poetically about how the Audi S5 This-Is-Why-You-Don't-Hire-Psychopaths-To-Run-Your-Company was dumber than packing 77,000 spontaneously-combusting bales of hay into an uninsured, World War 2 dirigible hanger (Hangar A, 1993, Tillamook Oregon), but then a question rose slowly out of the crypt like Star Trek hopefully emerging from the run-through-the-wringer, Kelvin-based timeline:
Does anyone even really care anymore that the only astounding engineering Audi is in the business of engaging in these days is the clever engineering of their own demise?
4. In regards to the Waymo KitKat murder: Autonomous vehicles are designed by psychopaths, for psychopaths, and funded by psychopaths. I seem to recall one of the leading autonomous car proponents noting that something like a hundred million or billion had been spent on this technology, only for him to ask, "where did all the money go?".
5. In regards to Dieselgate V3.0 (or wherever we're at now), I have been involved with a few different industries over the years, automotive and big rig included, and after having a few discussions with diesel folks over the years, I'm loudly curious if the defective particular scrubber setups on the pickups aren't more of a fuel refining problem than they are an equipment issue, in that the fuel quality is wildly inconsistent. Beyond that, a question pops up: In a society that is as (laughably) advanced as ours is now, if diesel fuel really is the particulate-spewing, thrilling fuel of yesteryear, do we even really need diesel? Or do we need to look at cleaner refining technology?
On a side note, in regards to the original Dieselgate with VW and Audi, I spent a brief time working in a VW dealership parts department back in early-mid 2017, and before the parts manager had yet another one of his well-documented-but-blatantly-ignored-by-corporate bi-polar episodes and I walked out, we were at the tail end of Dieselgate, and at the beginning of the VW buyback program.
(so much for the comment speed run...)
We had about 18 or 19 TDI stop-sale cars still on the lot around February 2017, VW had removed a few dozen others of these stop-sale cars before that in January. The buyback began, and since the parts department desk was about two feet from the customer buyback program staging area (of course they didn't stack these people up in the freaking showroom), I got to relive what it was like for returning Vietnam veterans when protesters were calling them "baby murderers" and many other fascinating slurs, because that's among the many names I was called by the TDI religious sycophants who had just discovered that their virtue signaling worship of TDI had all been a lie, and by God, it must have been entirely that one f***ing parts guy's fault that our TDI's were simply flawed mechanical products churned out on an assembly line...just like everyone else's cars.
When VW and da' Feds worked out whatever agreement they worked out for VW to redeem themselves and fix the remaining TDI cars to allow them to be sold again, it was my job to gather and assemble refurbish kits for all of the remaining TDI stop-sale cars on our lot.
On a side note, under no circumstances were we supposed to be driving these cars off the lot, but during a two-day parking lot reseal, I was among many other VW employees who were driving these stop-sale cars back and forth between lots in order to shuffle them out of the way of the lot resealing process. I heard that might have been illegal.
At any rate, technicians had been going out once a month and sort of taking the TDI dog cars for a walk, in that they got a 30-minute idle time, they made sure most everything worked, was cycled through, etc, etc.
Here was (approximately) what I assembled for each car:
1. All filters (cabin, air, fuel, oil, part of an oil change)
2. Brake pads and rotors if necessary
3. Battery if necessary (based on testing for each car)
4. Refill on DEF fluid(if necessary)
5. A replacement, updated dealer window sticker
6. A reflash of the PCM
...and that was about it.
Do you notice anything missing from that list of parts, in regards to what you might be thinking that might be necessary in regards to making all of these supposedly gross polluters legal to terrorize America's highways and byways again?
I looked at the new window stickers, and then compared them to the old ones. The new stickers had one less mpg both city and highway.
Given the insanity I had seen from the buyback customers, and having been insulted and called every name in the book by these same people, I was kinda loudly curious as to what the hell was going on with these cars to begin with. After asking a lot of questions over those first five months of 2017, I noted something fascinating:
Nobody was mentioning just how "dirty" these cars were from a testing scale, in other words, how dirty was "dirty"?
If you get bored, look at an exploded parts view of any then-era TDI car, you're going to see a hell of a lot of emissions equipment. Remember, none of the equipment was replaced to make those cars legal for sale again, the equipment wasn't the problem.
Remember my mentioning the PCM reflash that the technicians did as part of the stop-sale-car refresh? That was the original issue, with VW/Audi/Motorola (or whoever did the original tuning), and the dual-tune setup, which triggered the 'clean' tune when the OBD II lead was plugged into the car, and went back to "efficient" when it was unplugged.
I'm recalling a couple of visiting engineers I spoke with around March 2017, one of them joked that VW was somewhat terrified of the customer base it had created, in turning Volkswagen into something of a virtue-signaling religion (for a mass-produced automobile), and that sales were already dropping like a rock. By May, the numbers were around 66% from 2016 to 2017.
One thing that was mentioned, VW was paranoid about their mileage numbers. There was apparently another goalpost-shifting of the emission standards, which VW could meet, but then the cars ran like shit and got worse mileage. One of the last public engagements of old VAG CEO Martin Winterkorn was during an annual corporate party they hold, and instead of giving the typical ra-ra speeches, he pointed out how VW was in danger of being destroyed by the ridiculous emissions goalpost shifting, stating that it was costing VAG something like a hundred million dollars for each gram of CO2 removed from their cars, and Dieselgate happened right around this time, with the two tunes: Emissions testing, and mileage, the new tune (IIRC) was simply that the "efficiency" tune was deleted, hence the new window stickers.
What I think happened: VW was going to be destroyed by the virtue-signaling religious faithful of the Church of TDI if there was any sort of a mileage drop, and all of this company-destroying bullshit was likely due to paranoia about losing 1mpg.
Oh well, it's all I have time for right now. Yay.
Great comment(s). I love the inside scoop of this epic clusterfuck.
And if it hadn't been for those meddling Californians, VW would have gotten away with it, too!
(Twirls mustache angrily in defeat)
What I don't recall happening with the VW TDI system were the plugged catalyst issues/EGR coolers/related disasters that plague many of the diesel pickups, almost as if VW had designed a pretty damn good system, other than with the PDF system, those cars stank up the shop when pulled in. It was also trippy to see the 5.0 TT V10's and related switchgear/transfer case removed from a Touareg, it reminded me of the 30mm cannon that ran the length of an A-10 Warthog, no way in hell that engine/trans combo fits into a Touareg...
Among the many trippy things that occurred during that time was that we were taking in nine TDI buybacks a week (one hauler a week), and I was told to go through all the cars to see if anything of value was left behind. There was a Beetle convertible that was owned by the most despised property management company in the area, and for whatever reason, the idiot business owner that turned it in accidentally left around $840 in quarters in the trunk. She never came back to ask about it, and I might have accidentally forgot to mention anything about it to my management.
We got loads of barely used dealer add-on upgrade parts, custom wheels, new tires in some cases, new snow tires in others (Nokian studded good stuff), and one of the techs even got a swanky new aftermarket exhaust system and CAI for his TDI.
It was fairly hilarious...and also sad...to also see what was being bought back by VW. We got worn-out turds that had actually been towed in to be bought back, but we also got back nearly brand-new cars, and in the case of the TDI Beetle, we were also treated (or at least I thought it was fascinating, anyway) to see the now-forgotten Beetle's incredible color palette (both interior and exterior), my favorite being a solid knockoff of one of the old Levi Strauss-option AMC Gremlins, the convertible top and upholstery all looked like blue denim, along with matching exterior paint and interior plastic. If they had made an AWD version of that car with the manual 6-speed and the 2.5L 5-cylinder, I'd probably have four of five of the things in the driveway, in various different colors.
It was all such a galactic fucking waste of resources.
There was one incredibly nice, older lady who was one of the buyback "victims", she just started talking to me about her Golf wagon, she was madly in love with the thing, and didn't want to turn it in. I mentioned that I had nothing to do with the buyback program, didn't know any of the particulars, but also didn't know about whether or not it was a forced program, if I loved my car and didn't want to sell the thing, then I wouldn't sell the thing.
For that act of kindness, I was nearly fired by the bi-polar Boomer parts manager, for merely speaking to that lady, who was the one who started the conversation, with the policy being something I hadn't heard of up until that exact moment. I said, "okay", he looked even more pissed off/passive aggressive, and then followed up with, "when exactly did you pull me aside and instruct me on what to do and not to do with these buyback people?"
He was pretty much the final straw for my never wanting to work for a dealer ever again, he behaved like the mother from "A Child Called It", and burned through four delivery drivers during my five months of employment, he emotionally destroyed all of them with verbal abuse, and would even take a half-hour break to randomly call his daughter from his office and shout at her over the phone, offering such positive self-esteem boosters such as, "GO FUCKING KILL YOURSELF!" and "YOUR MOTHER SHOULD HAVE ABORTED YOU!" (my wife got one call on her camera phone while she stopped by to drop off something for me), along with other similar positive child-rearing affirmations. Great guy to work for, especially when he turned on me and began doing that to me in early May.
Naturally he's still the parts manager there, having burned through twenty-something-plus employees since I was there.
The only thing that was more ridiculous...and eventually more terrifying...than the TDI clusterfuck was the technician training course module collection for the 325-volt EV Golf that had just come out. In particular was the "This Product Will Kill You" section, where the battery itself was so toxic, if you're electrocuted by the car, if the shock doesn't kill you, the toxins from the battery will, and it kept stressing just how horrible your death would be if you were to die AND OH BY THE WAY DID WE MENTION THE HORRIBLE DEATH THING? In essence, the training module didn't offer any sort of hope, you're freaking doomed no matter what you do if you're electrocuted. Not only that, but an entire bay would have to be devoted entirely to the EV Golf if you became a designated repair dealership.
I think you captured the "sides" of VW TDI enthusiasts perfectly.
You had that rabid Prius/Subaru type bunch who thought they were saving the world, and then the types like the lady who just loved the car. That second group also included some Euro enthusiasts, and are typically a bit more normal.
My wife and father-in-law fell into the second group - they had an A3 TDI hatchthat they loved as a highway car (my wife was in college) that they never wanted to get rid of. However the buy back offer was WILD and they basically got an A3 etron hatch plus a check, which made my FIL happy but wife not so much. That etron was forever compared to the TDI and never measured up - we called it the shitbox. In the end it lived up to the name after a warranty replacement battery, and a new AC system after under 25k miles in 5 years, Miami weather wasn't kind to it.
"You had that rabid Prius/Subaru type bunch who thought they were saving the world"
I'd like to think that the insufferable, virtue-signaling group that worshiped the TDI golden calf were the not-so-ancient genetic predecessors of the insufferable, virtue-signaling Tesla owners group of today, if they're not the same people. It's the same ludicrous script, a group of self indulgent folks who think that gathering around a basic, mass-produced automotive product is somehow the latest replacement Jesus Christ, and this stark, barren, soulless, perpetual-urethane-surgical-mask-wearing testament to what it would look like if the Amish had designed a battery-powered car became simply one of the latest virtue-signaling fads for easily impressionable idiots, whose only original thought is which shade of weathered vomit they should get their new Tesla painted.
The lady I mentioned, yeah, she was one of the nicest people I had ever encountered, and was completely unprepared for the idiotic, destructive, and insanely wasteful wave of political and legal chaos brought about by players behind the scenes (who never get to see this part of their dastardly work), even though I do come across as one of the worst jerks who ever lived, I do actually get a bit teary-eyed after listening to a particularly beautiful symphony piece, a sad movie with a happy ending (okay, the first ten minutes of "UP" is one of the saddest things I've ever seen, you either understand it or you don't), or after reading of my absolutely terrible short stories (I'm sad because of the realization that something this badly-written, terrible to the point of wanting to stone one's own eyes out after reading it, is rare in the literary world) and this lady looked like someone just ran over one of her children, standing by herself in the buyback cattle staging area.
It was almost like watching a funeral with only one attendee, almost as if it were a real-life version of the closing minutes of "Death of a Salesman", but unlike Dustin Hoffman in the movie version, you actually feel bad for whoever died. My first reaction was simply to try to hug the lady.
This was the ridiculously shitty thing about this whole TDI experience, especially for older people, ripping something important away from/forcing unnecessary major changes to an elderly person (or in the other case, screwing with them through what was being presented in the press as being a mass fraud, laughably leaving out the part where insane government overreach was the actual villain of the piece) is actually considered to be a form of abuse in some A.P.S. circles (Adult Protective Services, that three-letter agency has been my life for the last six years of employment, thankfully now gone), with the basic idea is that making excessive changes to the daily life of an elderly individual (if they're in an assisted living facility or worse) is seriously frowned upon and is a potential abuse tag.
And depending on which state you live in, screwing around with A.P.S. is really not a good idea. Did this fall under direct abuse? No, but it was heavily starting to lean that way, given how upset/batshit some of the older TDI-aggrieved were.
This is what I was seeing from TDI owners who staged in front of the parts counter, they were in a rage, they were confused, they were sad, (and some were actually pretty happy for obvious reasons) the car they were turning in was either just a soulless mode of transportation, something to beat on, or in the case of this lady, a 40k-mile, trusted companion that got great mileage, she could drive it anywhere, and naturally, since it was a regular FWD Golf wagon, a low entry point for her older dog that couldn't jump very well into a larger/higher vehicle...and why exactly does she have to get rid of it?
As I mentioned above, even I'm a bit player in the second group, a bit weird, except I can't decide whether to stick with my primitive American garbage fleet, or do what I really want to do, go German because the Japanese don't know how to design a proper f***ing car seat, with me being convinced that the torture artists that were selected to design these seats were direct descendants of the same clearly-ergonomic-centered folks who were the polite, considerate mid-level managers who were instrumental in running that obviously misunderstood "Bataan Death March".
To that end, yeah, I'm madly in love with German machinery, in spite of the fact that no German car manufacturer in existence right now is actually wanting to build a car...and for all intents and purposes, hasn't built for at least a decade or more...that anyone with an IQ over room temp is wanting to buy as a car to enjoy driving...me included.
Imagine the goodwill generated if VAG had instead just given them new gasser TSIs instead.
Yeah, I'm thinking that "botched" is somehow both the rallying cry of VAG and at the same time is completely inadequate for the multi-bazillion-dollar, gleefully self-inflicted, John Cleese/Fawlty Towers-level of metaphorical car thrashing that VAG received at the hands of sniveling, corporate-level cowards who really should have just explained what happened, why it happened, and who was ultimately responsible. But since the corporate types and government are in bed together, we get...a cheesy, B-movie, global auto manufacturer-themed Soylent Green, where the manufacturer is eating itself, with a grizzly Charleton Heston shouting, "Soylent Green is Volkswagen! SOYLENT GREEN IS VOLKSWAGEN!".
If I remember correctly, it was the meddling West Virginians, not the Californians, as it was students of WVU that were doing road emissions testing and finding numbers that did not agree with the published VW numbers and were very much different from the EPA standards.
Correct
If I'm recalling this correctly, the testing was done in California using remote sensors/photo radar on freeway on-ramps. I couldn't remember which outfit was actually doing the testing, and it was too much of a soul-draining process to wearily venture through Google and go back to the thrilling days of TDI yesteryear.
The general idea was this: A dirty TDI, obviously driven by a sociopathic puppy murderer, (or at least driven by a terrible human being who didn't go "awwww!" while watching FB reel videos of adorable puppies frolicking in various environments or accidentally falling off of a low couch) would trigger a potential violation, the remote sensor/photo radar thingie would take a picture of the offending vehicle, the vehicle's owner would get a notice sent to the home of the vehicle owner, requiring them to bring the offending TDI vehicle and the browser history/smartphone puppy video watching history and submit for emissions testing/puppy video watching investigation.
This is where the trouble began.
The offending vehicle would arrive, they plugged into the ODB 2 port, began the test, and emissions came out just fine. They were puzzled, but couldn't do anything else so they concluded the vehicle testing, tagged the ear of the TDI's owner, and then released the TDI and its owner's puppy video watching history back into the wild.
I think this happened three times total (I'm operating straight from memory here), a 2nd car came in, the same thing happened, the vehicle and that owner's puppy video watching history was also then released, and then the 3rd car came in and tested beautifully. It was only then that someone came up with the bright idea of testing the car without it being plugged in (this TDI owner didn't like puppy videos, so that clearly prompted a larger investigation), and that's when everything kinda went to hell in a puppy basket.
So to that end, I take back my offending Cali inhabitant comment, but only 25% of it (I couldn't remember which outfit did the emissions testing, whoops), because California allowed for it to happen, and also because Californians...who also probably watch a lot of puppy videos.
As if it hadn’t been mentioned or insinuated enough; late model VW people are FUCKING WEIRD.
Quite the insufferable group of enthusiasts. I guess who else would have h20i and weird euro stance lifestyle.
My original prediction 20 years ago for the replacement of the stereotypical Camaro on blocks for the 21st century was the Volkswagen Jetta.
Now it's the Nissan Altima.
My personal are the Transporter owners. Having worked on and driven a lot of these terrifying-to-drive vehicles, I've yet to have anyone adequately explain "why" those things, and this is coming from a guy who sees logical sense in owning an Iron-Curtain-era Lada Riva.
knowing nothing about them at all... what's the issue? Some have seatbelts for 4-plus passengers and a truck bed. Useful support vehicle.
Or just to shitty to be thought of as such?
I don't know if the word "primitive" is the best way to describe a Transporter.
It doesn't really turn (it wallows), it doesn't stop, it doesn't go, your face is the crumple zone if there's a collision, they're rust buckets, I've never been in one that anything resembling a working heater...or electrical for that matter...and they're insanely expensive just to buy one, never mind what you'll spend on getting one to simply track in a straight line for more than five feet.
There is zero logical reason to own one, the only thing they do somewhat functionally well is that they're something of a decent moving pop-up camper/tent that's always stuck in the "up" position, the Transporter's sheetmetal shares the approximate tensile strength of tent fabric. and has the resulting aero as a result (lane changes from crosswinds, headwinds, tailwinds, pretty much any wind that's stronger than 0.000004 mph will upset it) of said pop-up camper/tent.
It's entirely a nostalgia buy, everybody's Boomer mom or dad supposedly went to Woodstock in one and collected any number of terrifying sexually transmitted diseases along the way, and they really couldn't even be given away at the time they were really popular, I vaguely recall at least six or seven stories of these things being purchased for less than $100 during the late 1960's/early 1970's, they were even that terrible then.
That being said, there's absolutely nothing on the road today that looks anything like a VW Transporter (especially the variant with approximately 791 windows), and they're actually not that terrible looking as well.
Rebuilders are picking up these things in the most appalling condition, literally falling apart (I seem to recall that a factory Porsche team transporter was found recently, and it was not much more than a few sheets of questionably-connected sheet metal), and completed/restored versions are selling for stupid money, with even-more-rare variants (the trucks) usually going for more. A lot of guys have spent small...and large...fortunes in trying to get them to behave nicer, and I've driven a few that were almost tolerable to drive, but in the end, it's sort of like the 911, you don't buy one because they drive like most everything else.
Beyond that, you simply won't know what it's like until you drive one, there are hints of the VW Beetle in there, but because of driver placement and the giant-stick-in-the-bowl-of-mayonnaise shifter, it's also almost entirely different, it really doesn't behave like any other vehicle I've driven, it's just...wow with the vehicle dynamics, and not in a good way, unless you've never driven anything else in your life, and even then, it's still a 2 out of 4 stars in comparison to all the other cars you've never driven.
You don't buy these for any sort of purposeful use, they're too expensive to be much of anything other than literally a hobby-only vehicle (I think the CEO of GoPro had his stolen once or twice), but if you're wanting something fairly unique, and can find one for less than the price of a house, have some fun and then flip it.
Thank you for this highly informative response. I had always wondered!
I don't know if I'd call it "informative", lol, as your inquiry results may vary, and I've held a grudge for decades against those beasts, as one of them killed my father once.
Dad eventually recovered unfortunately, and he also hated Transporters for many years after his death.
Also, when I search “Volkswagen Transporter” on BaT, loads of different generations come up, from original, to type 2, to T3 (“Doka”) to T4 (90s) and appears VW continues to market this nameplate, at least in Europe.
Do the above assessments apply to all generations, or just type one & two, or just one through three, or???
Having had some dealings with VW throughout the years, I just sort of bunch everything together as "Transporter" all the way through the T4. Yes, it's intellectually lazy on my part, but the last time I checked, I'm not being compensated to put any effort into getting more specific on which particular generation of Transporter engineering atrocity I am currently offending.
For that I would normally apologize, except for the fact that I've been held up on two-lane highways several times over the last several years by idiots driving these things at 20mph under the speed limit (apparently they simply explode and devastate/vaporize everything within an 80-mile radius if they travel at a speed of 46mph or faster), and I've kind of had enough of that foolishness for a lifetime, especially when there are numerous slow-moving-vehicle turnouts along the route.
These beasts sort of limp along into the 1990's or so, and then the real horror begins: The Eurovan/Urinalvan.
didn't H20i get banned by OceanShitty MD ?
That's a wild thing to have happen. It's the event equivalent of getting kicked out of the strip club buffet
They DID!
People who would have preferred to buy a Peugeot, Saab or a Citroen now have to buy Volkswagens.
I really miss our manual TDI Sportwagen with its giant sunroof. It was too small for us but it was really fun to drive and obviously got great gas mileage.
I sold out and took the money (made money on that car and greatly respected VW for their emissions trickery and fair buyout). I’d consider buying another one as a commuter.
Let’s put the blame on KitKat’s death where it belongs. Namely, the owner who recklessly let the cat wander all over an area with busy streets. It’s a miracle he lasted this long.
The speed limit on 16th right there is 20 (twenty) miles per hour. KitKat has been wandering the streets for nine years and living as a bodega cat for six of those years. Cats run at 30mph. They're not at risk from any human who is obeying the law on that street. This isn't like letting your cat run wild in the Chicago Loop :)
We will never get an accurate report of what really happened because everybody’s got an agenda. But there are reports that the cat darted in front of the vehicle. KitKat no doubt used up all of his 9 lives and then some.
And wouldn’t the response by the robo taxi be quicker than a human in applying the brakes? I didn’t follow the story closely but I thought the criticism mostly was that the taxi didn’t stop.
We volunteered at a Chicago no kill shelter for almost a decade and saw what can happen to cats when they are outdoors. From nothing good all the way to horrific, either accidentally or on purpose which makes one take a very dim view of humanity sometimes.
I specifically exclude you from any criticism here. You do what you can and even more than that. I admire you for it.
I think the facts are you have them are correct. And I think a human taxi driver would have been no less likely to harm Kitkat in that circumstance. That being said, one of the conditions to call a car "autonomous" is that it be able to make some basic decisions and judgments about what to do in these situations. I don't think Waymo has cleared the bar for this and I think a child would be at just as much risk.
" I don't think Waymo has cleared the bar for this and I think a child would be at just as much risk."
This.
Reminds me of "The Frame-by-Frame" story from "Valuable Humans in Transit" anthology.
Exactly.
"And wouldn’t the response by the robo taxi be quicker than a human in applying the brakes? I didn’t follow the story closely but I thought the criticism mostly was that the taxi didn’t stop."
Remembering the classic tenet of computer programming, in regards to "garbage in, garbage out", given how people either love or hate cats, it might be entirely possible that a Waymo programmer had a cat allergy.
See also: Uh, wasn't there an issue in Australia where autonomous Volvo prototypes kept drilling kangaroos, it simply couldn't process what to do if something like that ran across the road? Given how far we really haven't gone in regards to advancing autonomous driving technology (we're barely at "driving an established route"), while I'm upset about losing any animal to anything other than sheer old age, I'm curious if this is simply an issue with a technology that isn't really compatible with the environment it's been placed in.
On a side note, I'm typing this while also scooping some asshole 800-pound Maine Coon cat off of my freaking keyboard for the 50th time or so while trying to type in here.
Okay, fine, I let him stay.
Sir, our cars keep killing kangaroos, what should we do?
Umm, put boxing gloves on top of the headlights
I would have thought that Volvo would have created a kangaroo airbag to deploy right before the kangaroo bounced off the front of the autonomous car and rocketed/landed a couple of miles away, in relative safety, away from the self-driving Volvo.
The good news is we saved the kangaroo
And the bad news?
It landed on a kid
I knew we should’ve gone with the boxing gloves
Maine Coons are the golden retrievers of the cat world.
My boy Gizmo was 28lbs and SOLID in his prime. They have their own set of mannerisms.
There's a certain sense of...polish in his character.
...At least until he's overstimulated and tries to bite your face off.
It would take THREE of my ferals to clock 28 pounds.
That being said, I had a 20 pound blue male once who was basically a bobcat and could kill full grown hares with a single paw swipe.
It costs $75-$80 to travel 12 blocks on Uber in downtown NYC.
That's a lot of money to be made if there's no driver to be paid.
Well cats are not exactly easy to control. I blame Waymo. There is no reason for an autonomous car to hit a cat. The programmers probably hate cats or just don’t care. I commute in my Tesla almost entirely on FSD and it is very aware of critters. The other morning it saw a coyote run across the road in the dark before I did and slowed for it. It also navigates deer very well and even waits for them to get their shit sorted out.
Well, it's the cat or the kid waiting for the schoolbus.
Hang on, I'm thinkin'!
https://youtu.be/YTVw-QHy5mQ?si=gDmwQeHbjto_IzPc
Oh I agree cats are not easy to control. We’ve independently rescued over a dozen in 40 years. With very limited exceptions, none have ever made a break for it to go back outside even ones that clearly grew up in the streets.
Down here it’s full on carnage on the roads as far as wildlife. In just a few miles the last couple of weeks there were two dead deer - one headless - as well as assorted armadillos, skunks, squirrels, and possums. Oddly enough, very rarely a cat and never a dog.
So, is there an immortal deer running around the woods?
Billy Ray ain't gonna like this.
The current thinking is it was a buck with a decent rack, if you’ll pardon the expression. Somebody stole some valor there.
Can't really blame the guy. Every man wants a decent rack in his life.
Well, except those guys that're into dudes.
And even THEY appreciate a nice chest.
One of the cruel ironies in life is how fleeting a decent rack is, especially if you want children.
There was a six point buck in my backyard last week. I live less than 3 miles from the Detroit city limits.
They don't care. They don't care about motorcycles either.
Neither do humans
it's 50/50 with humans - especially if you look like you're something to fear.
Beware the cagers.
That's how I live my life.
"The programmers probably hate cats or just don’t care." I went this route as well, but was trying to spare the feelings of any programmers present...oh, wait, that's if they have any...
lol well not ALL programmers.
Programmer, and 🐈 person.
Let’s not talk about deer.
It's totally a driver culture thing too. We produce truly horrible drivers.
Drive around Greece and - despite their rep - they're generally very situation-aware (maybe it's the manuals?) and they slow to avoid the MILLIONS of meandering cats as if they were their own children.
I agree with that. Did a motorcycle trip there and was very impresssed.
Also something to do with the fact that they have MILLIONS of meandering, scrawny cats. Population control is not a thing there.
(I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall during the lengthy, possibly-one-sided conversation between KitKat's owner and the fascinatingly-disinterested KitKat about the dangers of roaming the streets with Waymos on the loose)
Wife has a diesel to haul horses. Threw an emissions code, I cleared it. Then it threw a code and shut down dead on the freeway at 75 mph. No trailer that time; but would have been terrible with a full trailer 100 miles south of Ely or negotiating the Grapevine. So: OEM decided that liability for EPA violations>greater than liability to aggrieved widowers. Decision: Rip all that shit out. Fuck them and, unfortunately (I do feel a twinge of remorse as I bury the throttle and emit a snort of carcinogens for your kids to enjoy) fuck you, too.
Freedom is worth dying for.
Worth killing for first. Let's not go nuts just yet.
Authentic LOL.
Lock & Load….the programmer?
i mean i get it
You should see the tarded comments ont he drive, they think he should have got more time, and the pardon was bad because orange man bad.
the fact is stupid laws will be disobeyed, smoking weed as an example. Its a punitive government that puts peopel in prison for stupid shit. But then we the USA with 55 of the world population arguably ahs 50% of the world's prison population.
tds is tragic to see in person
anyway on the topic of incarceration rates
is there another country that has this many people committing crimes and also getting persecuted for it? i think jack or someone else here mentioned that the people getting locked up for weed werent just in there for that
There are well past tense were countrie with less crime for which people did not het locked up for anything and everything. Its past tense now because most of those countries went full woke
Depends on the state.
Many of them were violent offenses plead down to possession, and suchlike.
Very very VERY few people in coastal states at least are "in" for weed alone, and if they were it would either be a) a lot of weed, ie drug dealing, ie a death penalty offense in a sane country such as Singapore, or b) a repeat offender being technically locked up for many prior offenses.
[NB this is not to bootlick, cops are basically schoolteachers with guns; think of the average schoolteacher's ideology and conception of the world. A cop would read the average post here and see if there was any technicality to arrest the poster on.]
"Cops are bad paralegals with emotional issues."
"You should see the tarded comments ont he drive, they think he should have got more time, and the pardon was bad because orange man bad."
That is something I am repeatedly fascinated about: The obnoxious socialist/communist types that swarm all over The Drive/Jalopnik and related outlets. Do these people even own a car?
I’d be shocked if they even know how to drive a car
Well they do recommend not turning off adas on your honda passport because "its there for a reason" so no they don't know how to drive or care. Or maybe its just that the $ is sin shilling fake offroad mom mobiles.
The most egregious is autoblog. That appears to be an ev apologist site. Their famous headlines were things like "ev sales grow 50%," yeah from 10-15 then.
They had an article about someone bringing in their mini for a free alignment when the techs discover the wheel bolts are so loose the wheel is about to fall off. Autoblog foes on to say the owner was not a trained expert so didn't know.
The internet seems to have destroyed the enthusiast magazine or site. Even in the UK the old classic cars magazine are I think just shills for old car dealers now. well maybe they always were but the link is now very direct, and there is evo, who alas find that besides the Gt3 and Gt4rs, alpine 110 and occasional McLaren Aston all new cars are ugly turds so not much to get excited about or test.
Seems like if you have 5000k to 1 mill there are all these reborn reimagined old classics to being built, because new cars suck.
The UK classic magazines just recycle the same articles they wrote in the early 2000’s.
Which were recycled from the 1980s... I use them to send me back to sleep in the middle of the night if all else has failed.
Even Hemmings has many fewer cars for sale ads than it used to, and I'd swear that half of them are from Beverly Hills Car Club.
Only a fool would bother with a Hemmings ad now. Go on Bring a Trailer and get top dollar in ten days.
i remember when my father told me he advertised something in old autos recently. he actually paid $15 to have tiny ad possibly be read by a fraction of the 30k total nationwide subscribers.
print media is pretty dead and bat or even facebook marketplace is vastly better
Subaru owners.
Why we have diesels but not turbines is not beyond me intellectually, but rather emotionally.
That guy spent most of a year in prison for a non-crime. Exoneration isn't enough - compensation is in order.
I've seen some absolutely vile comments made about this gentleman just because he broke emissions laws. These exact same people are super totally cool with killing babies in the womb though.
It's not going to be that big a step for the left to say "you broke a law... time to string you up". They're also going to be the ones throwing rocks through your windows before they do it while police watch.
the famously consistent left at it again
Sadly, I'm to a point where I believe the right should wield power heavily while it can. There is NO WAY the left wont use it. They're use to pressing the button every chance they get.. and they've had 100 years of pressing that button.
While I wish there was a good middle with moderation, it just doesn't exist. Even the libertarian party became a bunch of retards.
We lack the ruthlessness required to finish the job.
they already use that power
"Even the libertarian party became a bunch of retards"
became? i think the retardation was baked in
Find the edgelord running the LPNH twitter account and put him in charge of the country with zero checks on power.
Watch things get better
i was just about to say that at least he wouldnt be on the epstein list but then i realized that hes a libertarian so he probably has his own gay opinions on the age of consent already
I lean libertarian, less than I used to, but the libertarian party was always a bunch of retards
^ That ^
Who are suspiciously knowledgable about age-of-consent laws and obscure readings of the Constitution.
The fat naked guy was the cherry on that sundae.
Yikes!
This was the moment the Libertarian Party went full retard. (The endorsement was retarded; the walking-back was merely cowardly.)
https://nationalfile.com/libertarian-party-presidential-nominee-endorses-black-lives-matter-then-says-she-only-endorses-concept-not-group/
It's good to see that toxic online disinhibition effect is still alive and well.
I have a friend who brags about squatting 405 on the smith and I can barely hide my contempt.
To be fair, I don't squat ANY weight because my knees have had it -- but when I did squat, I didn't use a machine.
Nothing against smith squats. They serve their purpose but it's too easy to cheat your numbers vs. a real back squat.
I used to gym with a DadBro who bragged he could leg press 10 plates. I watched him get his knees into his teeth with it fully loaded and then push his patellae away with his dick beaters.
I called him for cheating his lift and he full on clutched all of his pearls. "I'm just giving it a little push. It's too hard at the bottom."
Similar to Smith Machine excuses.
"It's too hard at the bottom"
this is why lighter weights exist
gym bros hate when i tell them that but it is pretty funny
Full range of motion or else it doesn’t count!
this is the type of guy who says "i can drink 15 beers and feel fine!" and hes drinking mich ultras
I've never been able to squat real weight. I hired a personal trainer and everything back in the day "Somethings wrongs with your hips" Now my knees fucked and I have a proper excuse
My legs are made out of popsicle sticks and paper mache. That’s my excuse.
Does that 405 count the minus 250 lbs of the retained bar?
This doesn't make sense to me. When I could squat something, I tried to do the same weight in a hotel gym with only a smith machine, no rack or power cage. I could not do it because of the forced-straight barpath.
Aside from being stupid, is it supposed to be easier or harder to squat same weight with all the horizontal help?
Once you figure it out you can do more weight with a smith because of the fixed path.
significantly easier. like, almost 50%.
It's flawed question because if you put the same weight in plates on both, they don't actually provide the same weight in hand or on your back. The Smith machine bar does not equal 45 lbs of resistance.
In your experience, you simply weren't practiced in that movement so it was more difficult that day. A month of practice and you'd be crushing "more" weight on the machine.
smith squatting is great for people who cant do traditional squats but want to build squat like strength. smith squatting is really bad for people who like to brag. a 405 smith squat, even at full ROM, is remarkably poor for an adult male.
ive got no issues at all with machine exercises - hell, cable day is my favorite day - but you need to understand its apples to oranges with free weights.
Funny that first comment in your article mentioned “Muscle Mustangs and Fast Fords”. I had a guy at SEMA ask me if I would write an article about his truck - maybe for MMFF (as we used to call it) and I had to inform him that magazine died decades? ago. Oddly enough, I was surfing around the other night and came across Jim Campisano - longtime MMFF el Jefe. He now writes for a website called Street Muscle, it appears and the article I read was about Chevy stuff - gasp….for some reason we’re both a lot more gray than we were in the magazine’s heyday.
I recently discovered that a mere five magazines worth of MM&FF issues from the War-and-Peace-thick, early-2000's-era, every-5.0 parts-advertiser-on-this-planet-and-nine-others, murdering-of-a-million-trees-to-print-next-month's-issue, when it's stacked together and sewn into a harness, makes for an incredible set of body armor that stops everything up to a .460 S&W Magnum.
Isn't this part of the plot of a Denzel Washington and John Lithgow film?
They're using experimental Martha Stewart "Living" magazine-based body armor in that movie, she's actually in that film and plays herself as she enters into the armaments manufacturing industry.
shes gonna sell a scented candle that smells like gun smoke
And you will buy it!
Are you familiar with the Duke Cannon brand of men's toiletries?
https://dukecannon.com/collections/bar-soaps/products/big-ass-brick-of-soap-r-gun-smoke
Not cheap but their soaps are actually pretty good. Really rich lather that feels good on my skin. Since a lot of their marketing and branding is focused on Christmas gift sales, you can often find stuff marked down in the spring.
duly noted
thanks for the link
"Which is odd, because normally you don’t get a vagina until the day you start benching with a Smith machine."
Well, shit.
Smith Machine benching. lol 😂
This is a direct shot at my brother, who Smith benches at Planet Fitness.
I non-Smith bench alone, in the basement, and rely on Rogue's safety bars. Sometimes to a disturbing extent!
I will drop 250 pounds on my neck like a god damn adult before I smith machine bench.
Hell yeah! I’ll die like I lived- ego lifting with Creed playing at full blast in a dank gym!
With your arms wide open!
Will you have you down to one last breath!
I've *cough, choke* created my own prison!
AI software can make short videos of almost anything. You created the opening scene of one.
It’s not wrong to bully people who use the smith machine for anything but a pump cover hanger. It’s the cuck chair of gym equipment.
If I'm found crushed to death on the bench I hope a good friend will add a few plates before calling it in.
Cue the crime-drama style discussion with the coroner:
"Here's what's suspicious, Detective. The victim was found with 315 on the bar. But if you look at this chest muscle...
*bag unzips, the cops gag*
...it's obvious this mook had a 1RM at the Mamdani level."
Never use collars on the bench press.
This was the old-skool way to bench alone, that's for sure. Collars would kill you.
I know I am semi notorious for couture, but 90% of the time I'm just wearing a T shirt on the bench.
ba dum tiss 🥁
Lol literally reading these comments in between sets of benching. I'm wearing a polo shirt.
90% of everyone at my current gym (for rich twats) collars their bench bar. 90% of the time WITHOUT spotter bars to save them.
Totally inexplicable.
Represents total knowledge-passing breakdown.
Every time I want to tell a guy, just don't collar a bar with weight on it, I hold off;
perhaps wrong to fight Darwin's desires?
Bench press is the one lift that is fatal; typically several fatalities per year, according to Jonathon "Sully" Sullivan MD
no collars, suicide grip. we die like men.
Im nervous tomgo over 250 with my safety bars. Fortunately i have solved that problem by tweaking my shoulder and not being able to lift 250 anymore
Safety bars, GAY
I have a 40 year old Soloflex. If my shoulders weren't messed up I'd still be using it.
Folks! Folks!
First there are spotter bars, *but even if spotter bars didnt exist* - if you are smart and do not put collars on the bar, you can shrug-of-shame yourself out of probably anything 245 or lighter. (YES, the bar "whips" when you get into heavier weight - part of the fun)
Why people put collars on heavy bench bars with no spotter is beyond me. At least kill yourself in a non-retarded way
smith machine benching when dumbbells are LITERALLY RIGHT THERE is the definition of lazy ego lifting. you gain a tremendous amount of secondary strength just hauling the weights over to your bench, let alone the act of balancing them as you lift. put your legs up and do em one at a time with the other suspended and now you are really cooking with gas!!!
The Venn Diagram of new S5 owners and Teen Vogue apologists/acolytes is just one circle.
At the very least, the latter are in situationships with the former where both of them spend a lot of time talking about restaurant food and/or trying to get the other person to top.
A situationship is where you tell the cop the rental car isn't yours, right?
A situationship is where the girl is doodling her wedding plans in her iPad and you're not entirely sure if her parents are alive or dead.
Or when ONE of you's okay with just being a fuck toy.
sounds depressing
Doesn't it?
"and/or trying to get the other person to top."
Is that because they bench with a Smith machine?
Well played!
Hilarious, also new S5 owners and "visa holders" is a single circle
Oh, man. Hammer, meet nail, on the Audi assessment. That 2009 S5 (and moar, the RS5) was one of the best street cars I've ever driven on the track. Swoon...
Amazing how Audi managed to make a genuine Audi look like a cheap Chinese knock-off, ain't it?
Sad part is theyre not alone.
I'm almost convinced I want an S5 with a 6-speed.
its a good thing they wont sell you one.
Well, the older one, anyway, and if whoever's trying to sell me a used one knows better, they'll just tell me to hit the road anyway.
Have you seen Audi’s alleged new designs ? Better than Jag’s but not by much
I was behind a new A5 in traffic yesterday, it looks slightly better in person but should still be a Jetta not an Audi. The last gen was so clean and refined, now they all look cut rate. The only new Audi that looks good is the eTron in S or RS guise. It's a better looking Taycan but it's sadly electric and $100k+
hereby requesting people to join the ACF "prevent Konger from purchasing a cherry used <2015 RS5" committee
how do i join the group that encourages you to buy one
im an enabler at heart
Love that about you!
Not sure what would be persuasive tho... the youngest v8 RS5 is 10 years old now. In german years thats old enough to vote, drug, drink, war & whore
dont look now, but nice V8 S5s are getting pricey. that being said, the s/c 6 was faster, more reliable, sounded pretty good, and had crazy tuning potential.
One of my sons works primarily on German vehicles, the 4.2 is not one of his shop's favorite engines to work on, and if anything, they'd rather the owner take their timing set replacement jobs somewhere else.
Audi repair step 1: place customer wallet into service position
Isn’t this the motor with 3 timing chains? Can’t say I blame him!
There had to be a reason one of my (loaded) former clients traded his impossibly well-specced RS5 for a (can't recall) 997 or 991 Carrera GTS.
I wouldn't do the same myself, but there's no doubt he had his reasons.
PS as a twotonic teuton, really the S5s and RS5s are begging for an engine swap to something that works at the level they were designed for. "God grant me the heft of wallet, romance of outlook, and lack of financial foresight to attempt to swap a modern Audi with a reliable modern V8 and accompanying transmission"
Just buy a Corvette to drive when the Audi is broken, you'll be better off.
It’s why I could never bring myself to buy one, quite honestly, as much as I’d like one. Damn my sensibilities….
I think the B7 cars make sense to try a LSx swap- and I’m sure the kits are out there- but IMHO the B8 cars are never going to look “classic” enough to be worth the squeeze.
Here’s the kicker a dealer literally asked $3,800 to replace TPMS sensors. Thought better of it went down to $1,600. Needless to say got them done elsewhere for $400. The dealers are a tough bunch
😳
If you don’t mind sharing, how was your ownership experience, from what mileage to what mileage, and what advice (other than just “don’t) would you give someone covering their eyes and considering?
Started seeing Waymos downtown Denver recently. At first glance I thought they were the Euro-style parking ticket cars.
The hippies who are burning them are doing the right thing for not exactly all of the right reasons.
agreeing with hippies for the wrong reasons is one of my favorite pastimes
can't wait until they have to deal with snow.
With ice on the roads,
With heavy sleet covering everything on the car,
With so much snow that a) no idea where the road lanes/boundaries are, b) the wheels are spinning all over the place,
With blowing snow that covers all signage,
And so on …..
The only autonomous driving that might interest me is keeping me from getting killed when driving tired on an interstate. The only time that I drive when actually impaired is when I'm falling asleep on the road.
I should get a dashcam just in case I could document it.
'This one looks like it spent some time at the bottom of the Mekong River. '
Or up someone's ass. Happy belated Veteran's Day!
(missing that ref for the piece, -10 for Hufflepuff)
That's a WWI era Lancet!
If you were hiding a March 1972 Japanese watch up your ass, it wasn't because the NVA was *making* you do it.
prison wallet smuggling for the love of the game
Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.
Those lines cemented the reputation of one best and weirdest actors that has ever lived.
There was a beauty parlor a couple of towns over from me. For a long time they had a poster in the window of him and the words "Walkens welcome".
Everyone raves about Samuel L. Jackson's blistering performance in the apartment that ends in the Ezekiel 25:17 monologue. But for my money, Walken's monologue is the best dialogue in the entire film. The pacing, the voicing, the way his tone and delivery changes with part of the story, and of course his mannerisms - from how he holds his hat and appears nervous as he's introduced to Butch, to how he handles the watch, to how he hands it over as he says "and now, little man, I give it to you" - is a masterclass in acting. (and, honestly, direction and editing - the scene was assembled from 14 takes)
I ought watch that movie again. Been a few years.
14 takes? Wow. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=christopher+walken+the+watch
I should amend that - Tarantino shot 14 takes. I am not sure all 14 were stitched into the final scene. Tarantino wanted to do it all in one take, but later realized he wanted a slightly different feel for each part of the story - World War I, World War II, and Vietnam - and for the reaction shots, so each take was tailored in a slightly different way. I don't know if that applied to the actors or only the filming. that said, the beauty of it is comes across as one take.
to see three examples of absolutely masterful use of a single long take, check out:
1. the long tracking shot of Henry and Karen entering the Copacabana in Goodfellas (just under three minutes)
2. the opening scene of The Player by Robert Altman (a four minute tracking shot in which one of the main characters is explaining Orson Welles' masterful use of the technique in Touch of Evil as he walks through the parking lot of a film studio)
3. the stunning POV car ambush scene in Children of Men (at 5 minutes long, the best example in a film with no shortage of impressive long takes).
The opening scene in The Player is almost too meta. It was nice of Altman to pay homage to Welles, but I think Welles did it better.
I think, when it comes to great scenes in that movie, you're forgetting the entire subplot that was needed for the directors cameo appearance.
another excellent scene in a film bursting with them. but I still think the watch scene is the best of an amazing lot.
Amazing GS. I would have it Zaratsu polished for no other reason than to support people who have that skill.
That's the second Glenn Frey reference I've caught this week.
It's the ultimate enticement!
Caught that and LOLed, but have listened to that album (one of the best of all time; ZERO filler there) so many times I can't always tell which track is by whom, though I may know the words by memory