Wednesday ORT: Qwen Rises, JaecooLR, EnvIouS, Purple IWC

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Good morning, friends.

More proof I’m living in a simulation

In 1984, BMW brought us the 325e as an alternative to the unforgivably poky E30-generation 318i. My father had two of them, a black two-door manual and a blue four-door manual. By modern standards, it was not a thrilling drive: 127 horsepower and a diesel-engine redline at 4,800rpm. But if you were coming from a Malibu or Granada it was a platinum rocketship and it laid out a very durable template for “Premium US-Market Sporty Sedan”: six naturally aspirated cylinders in a displacement between 2.5L and 3.5L, rear (or all-) wheel drive, compact body. For about thirty years, everyone offered that car. Even Lincoln offered that car for a while, as the “LS”.

BMW no longer offers it. The cheap 3er is a turbo-four, as enjoyed by our own Gen X Garage Talk. The expensive one is a turbo six. But Toyota in their trad-con outlook will let the IS350 keep running for a little longer and they’re celebrating it with a Special Edition. It’s got all the good stuff, from the Mark Levinson sound to BBS forged wheels. Only 350 will be made, which is ridiculous; most dealers will only get one example. The “Envious” green color is tailor-made to catch your author’s eye, as is the combination of full equipment and NuLuxe seating. There was a time in my life where I truly loved the Lexus IS350 but now it feels a little too cramped and sporty for my rotting frame. Doesn’t mean I won’t call my dealer anyway. Truth be told, I would rather have this than an IS500; if I hit a tree on the way to dinner I won’t be going as fast.

What if we’re building the data centers for nothing

Would you willingly trust major portions of your life to a Chinese AI model? Trick question: you’re either already doing it or you’re about to. Everything the media wants desperately for you to believe about Chinese cars — they deliver more quality for vastly less money, they will be unstoppable in the market, they are the only future — is probably true about Chinese AI models. As a result, they are being built into countless products as a behind-the-scenes part of the infrastructure.

Something it’s important to understand about “AI” is that the notion of quality doesn’t really apply. A Swiss watch might be nicer than a Chinese watch but whatever defects exist in a given AI model can often be compensated for with additional time and computing power thrown at it. So while it’s possible to construct demonstrations where the American AI models are superior, that demonstrated superiority often requires some very specific conditions.

Just to make it dead plain: the astounding expected market value of OpenAI and Anthropic is mostly based on American investors either being unaware of Chinese models or relying on the comforting idea that they will be banned in the US to protect the JERBS of Sam Altman and Dario Amodei. (There is also the completely deranged and science-ignorant idea that one of those companies will develop an actual conscious intelligence then rent that intelligence to people rather than simply using it internally to unbalance the world.)

The biggest impact of Qwen won’t be in the data centers, however; it’s in the fact that starting next month you’ll be able to run variants of it yourself for $2,899 via the 64GB Mac Mini Pro M5. Qwen 3.6 should sit very comfortably on a Mac Mini.

In the very near future, American corporations are going to have to choose between two futures:

0. Rent their AI from American companies at absolute top fookin’ dollar, while being fully aware that every single thing they put into the prompt is being used to train a company that has intentions of competing with them down the road;

1. Give everyone a Mac Mini and keep their data private.

“B-b-b-b-but what about China stealing your data?” is the next question. In a universe where people could trust American corporations to at least consider the best interests of the country or their customers — think, I don’t know, General Dynamics in 1960 — you’d be a fool to let the Chinese touch your data. But this is 2026. Faced with the possibility of espionage out of locally-operated Chinese models or the certainty of training Sam and Dario, a lot of firms will choose the former. And, of course, everyone outside the United States will choose the former, because all of them trust the Chinese more than they trust Donald Trump (or, to be fair, trusted Barack Obama.)

There’s literally one play available to the hosted-AI people, which is to perpetually corner the market for computer memory so people can’t get the systems that would run AI locally. I’m not the only person who can see this, of course. Which goes a long way towards explaining the shenanigans in computer memory lately. Apple isn’t stupid; they are working directly with a Chinese supplier for Mac Mini memory. The enemy (China) of my enemy (Taiwan/NVIDIA/OpenAI/Anthropic/CoreWeave) is my friend.

Expect to hear a lot in both blue and red media about how we, as patriotic Americans, need to sacrifice everything to keep Anthropic and OpenAI “in the lead”. When you hear that, remember that the leaders of those companies would be delighted to see your children thrown into a woodchipper.

When I said I wasn’t going to race this year, that was a lie

Just for fun, I joined Danger Girl and Mini Danger Girl for the only SCCA race of the year at Nelson Ledges. The traditional October event has been canceled for financial reasons; if you know anyone who wants to sponsor it, apparently they were about fifteen grand short of putting it on.

Both of my Radicals are hors de combat but it was nice to get the Neon out for a run. I bought some scrubbed Hoosier R8s and although it took all weekend to get the pressures right, I think they are a genuine improvement over the R7. I had to play nice with a beautiful Datsun 510 in my Sunday race, but if I could have gotten around him the data suggests think I could have turned a 1:18.0 or even a 1:17.8, Very far from the 1:02.4 I can run in my SR8, but not bad for a car with a dead-stock engine and too much ground clearance.

Danger Girl got pushed off at 105mph by a Touring-class BMW in her Saturday race; the fellow apologized after the fact, it was a pure racing incident. She managed to get back on track to finish with a class win ahead of, um, me. She came back and took the overall win in our group on Sunday despite being short a front spoiler and undertray. MDG, sponsored by Mike O Racing, took strong second place finishes both days, keeping her championship alive. She also beat me in the multi-class “pursuit race” Saturday afternoon. That race was a lot of fun. There was a kind of deranged little person, not really up to MDG’s pace or talent level, who kept trying to bump the Neon in his Spec Racer. I paid little attention to it; the Neon Lion does not concern himself with Spec Racers.

Eventually he got so agitated that he spun himself out. Top fun.

I really enjoyed the weekend and I’ve decided to challenge a couple of the fellows in the E Production class at Mid-Ohio. The Neon is a knife in that gunfight but I think we will have fun.

Also, The Commander put his camera down on Sunday and ran an autocross. He finished 4th of 13 in class, ahead of a Corvette and various Miata, using a V6 Accord on all-season “WeatherReady” tires. I think he might have a talent for autocrossing. This is not necessarily a good thing!

Enjoy this photo of your humble author looking very serious while wearing a Bangkok-cased Moonswatch:

It was nice to go racing after all this year. Naturally I’d rather be running my Radicals, so if you have a moment to pray, please pray that I find a suspiciously lucrative position for 2027 and am able to fund $55,000 in engine work to make that happen!

Speaking of playing on misguided patriotism

The #1-selling car in the UK right now is the Jaecoo J7, which wasn’t on sale in the country eighteen months ago. It costs 45,000 UKP against the Range Rover Sport at 77,000 UKP, but it looks pretty similar. There’s a genuinely fascinating article in the Telegraph about it:

One wonders who these folk are, falling for this sleight-of-hand, like so many curious and eager shoppers on Oxford Street crowding around a man dealing out fake Rolexes. Who are these mutts willing in the Chinese invaders, ushering into our once-proud nation heaps of metal that shame the concept of chic and style?

Who are these hustled beatniks who think they look grand at the school gates with their upholstered tanks of chrome, leather and plastic? They are nothing more than purveyors of an outrageous con, and paraders of a copycat fake with no more value than a counterfeit Hermès Birkin handbag.

This fellow hasn’t been read in on the latest “dupe” trend, has he? This is the same playbook used in the States by the Kia Telluride and Hyundai Palisade, which started off looking kind of like a Range Rover but have now given up all pretense to differentiation:

which one's "real"

Jaecoo is just doin’ it Chinese.

The author of the Telegraph piece does have a point, however: why would Britons abandon their “home brand” for a Chinese imitation? Well, it’s not really a home brand:

Jaguar Land Rover has been a Tata property for eighteen years. A significant percentage of the engineering is now done in India. The firm is now assembling CKDs (completely knocked down car kits) in India for their own market.

While the Range Rover continues to be built in the UK, and I believe that’s very important, it would be reasonable for the average Brit to ask: “Why should I pay more to make the Indians rich? What have they done for me, exactly?” There is something ghastly about having the country run by the proverbial rootless cosmopolitans who are busy strip-mining it for sale to the highest bidder while also stuffing it overfull with the cheapest labor possible… and being exhorted to do the patriotic thing.

In much that same way that no American should feel much allegiance to OpenAI, maybe the average Brit shouldn’t be too concerned about allegiance to Tata Motors.

It’s ironic, really: so many people have spent so much time undermining the West for their own purposes, failing to consider that their parasitism has also weakened the host for other invaders.

Now how much would you pay?

When is a $9200 watch from a “second-tier” brand worth the money? Here’s an attempt to answer that question. The newest IWC “team watch” for AMG Mercedes F1 has an eye-catching color scheme, but there’s also some technical interest to it. The movement is the in-house 69385, which has already developed enough of a reputation among watch lovers to be the subject of a very faithful superclone. It’s best described as “mechanically fancier than a Valjoux 7750, less fancy than an Omega Co-Axial or Rolex 4130, with first-rate finishing”. It uses the Pellaton winding system and is likely to be pretty bulletproof.

The case is Grade 5 titanium. Early IWCs in this metal, like my 2006 Ingenieur AMG or the Porsche Design watches made by IWC, were Grade 2, which is softer and easier to damage. Top-end IWC watches, like the Ceratanium Top Gun Doppelchrono worn by Nelson Ledges overall race winner Danger Girl, use Grade 5 with an applied ceramic-style coating. This straddles the middle with a tough alloy in natural finish. It is equal to the RLX titanium used in the Yacht-Master, which costs about 3x as much MSRP.

You’ll recognize this one when you see it in public for sure. As a result, it’s already sold out or on waitlist at most IWC boutiques and dealers. I certainly can’t afford one but I might have a chance to wear one in the near future, and if I do I’ll share further impressions. I think it will also retain some value, so if you have ten grand sitting around and you’re in the market for a Rolex Milgauss or Speedmaster “Sapphire Sandwich”, this is worth considering as well. Would you wear it? The IWC Singapore Chronograph, like Tosca, isn’t for everyone.