Considering I live in Louisiana, and we just got a FOOT of snow, and there are power outages all over, there is no choice. Camry, baby! All fucking day long.
I live in the deep south and we have tornadoes to worry about every year, inches of snow every other year, and pipe busting weather every other year when the quasi government provided electric company calls Uncle and will do rolling blackouts.
I'm sure the X perusers among us already know the prune-faced lady bishop has a $2 million, 6bedroom, 4.5 bath house somewhere leafy.
I'm somewhat house adjacent to the good lady, and I can tell you it takes a few good Mexican-wielded leaf blowers to keep that puppy free of leaves and all trimmed up for the spring. And 4.5 bathe don't clean themselves do they?
If only California's authoritarianism extended to non-citizens, I might not have objected to their small engine ban initiatives. Loud leaf blowers are a blight, especially when you catch your landscapers leaning against your cars while running them to create the illusion that work is being performed.
It was a rental in La Jolla. The owners provided the landscapers to protect their property, which backfired spectacularly. They let everything die, for which they were as accountable as...a bunch of guys whose names and addresses had been made up on the spot and to whom California laws did not apply.
Going back to something I said a while ago, it is un-American to have a "staff". These "who will do some service? that a) most people used to do themselves or have their kids do or b) can't afford to pay someone else for anyway" are the modern version of let them eat cake. Other than its governor and congressional delegation, is there anyone in West Virginia who pays someone to mow their lawn or clean their house?
CA is probably the inverse of WV. I think I’m the only person in my neighborhood who mows their own lawn (takes me all of 15 minutes with a battery powered mower).
Long time ago I remember a little Japanese woman stand up comedian making a joke that most Japanese people were not rich, but the head of Sony was so rich he had a Jewish gardener. On a related note, despite what revisionist douchebag historinans like Richard Jensen would have us believe, one of my antecedents was turned down for a groundskeeping job because the lady of the house was looking for someone who was "a little darker."
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. This would have been roughly 1915-1919 or so. Richard Jensen's claim to fame is that a 14 year old high school student named Rebecca Fried refuted his racist claim that there was no such thing as the "No Irish Need Apply" signs.
The bermuda blend in our northern San Diego house could have been mowed with an old-fashioned reel mower--it was certainly small emough. Instead, the "gardeners" came every other week. The grass didn't really grow between mowings, and you can see that iconic southern California heat slowly win the war against the failing irrigation system over my six years there in the snapshots of my kids playing in the backyard. (Moved in at ~$550K Zillow. Moved out at $920K. Peaked at $1.4M. Sitting at $1.3M now with a $4350 rent last summer to my $2350 in 2014. I drove by it in October, while in town for a wedding. The yard's gotten worse. Oh, San Diego.)
Even though I have a belt and suspenders warranty on my Mustang I am doing everything in my power to keep it out of the dealer. Whether it's deliberate or accidental I know if they get their hands on it they are going to fuck something up.
These are supposed to be the jobs of teenagers looking to make a few bucks. Mow the lawn, shovel some dog poop. I still see local teens advertising on the bulletin board at the neighborhood store, they are the people we should be hiring to do our menial tasks. We get the poop scooped, and support work ethic in a kid at the same time
When we lived in town our neighbor sold his house to a Unitarian preacher and his family... for almost $400K. They then proceeded to fill their driveway with top-trim-level brand-new cars. They were nice, but in an odd way that filled me with distrust towards them. I'm glad to be out in the boonies now.
Remember when Aretha Franklin died and there were 100 pink Cadillacs lined up in front of the church for the procession to the cemetery? That church is the biggest in Detroit, the Greater Grace Temple. The pastor there inherited the church from his father who had built it into a megachurch. They're over on Seven Mile near Telegraph but the congregation's first big building was bought from the synagogue that my family attended. My father's veterinary clinic was just down the street, adjacent to the synagogue's parking lot and he got to know the original Bishop Ellis pretty well. Eventually, the church bought my father's building so they could expand the building to take up an entire city block. This was in the early 1970s and the good bishop transported himself in a Mercedes-Benz 450 S-Class that had all the chrome trim gold plated. "To paint the lily, to gild the grosser Mercedes..."
I used to look out my window at Edgewater amusement park way back when my family were "documented aliens." That roller coaster is where Greater Grace sits.
They held Rosa Park's funeral there too. That was a big deal. I photographed that one.
There’s folks of the clerical profession who are the exact opposite! There was a pastor at one of the inner-city Lutheran churches in Toledo who took such a vow of destitution that when she moved into a house with an automatic garage door opener, the remote was placed into her hand, and she genuinely had no idea in the world what to do with it!
If 47 was smart, he’d pull the tax-exempt status on the National “Cathedral!”
Unfortunately, that dimwit is probably the head clergy in the Episcopal Diocese encompassing DC. So you aren’t going to get rid of her easily. Particularly since the Episcopal Church is in a bit of a schism right now over the LGBTQRSTUVWXYZMOUSE+- thing, etc.! Same thing as most of the mainline Protestant denominations since roughly the mid-2000s.
John Salley bought it when he was playing for the Pistons because it has 10 foot ceilings. There are some magnificent homes in Palmer Woods and across Seven Mile on Hamilton and Fairway, adjacent to the Detroit Golf Club. A childhood friend of mine lived in a three story house on Hamilton. There was no fence between their backyard and the golf course so sometimes we'd hit a few balls.
Those exist, certainly. But so does paying a "housing allotment" that allows for the pastor to buy their own house.
My grandfather was a minister. He bought himself a house on his salary. It was a tiny little thing he added on to multiple times during his ownership. He passed away some years ago. My grandmother outlived him...which I understand having cared for her because I'm pretty sure it's taken at least 10 years off my life...and only passed away a couple of years ago. We sold her house for $45,000 in post-pandemic money. If that gives you any idea of the kind of luxurious lifestyle my grandfather maintained as a genuine minister of the gospel.
Suffice it to say that lesbian "bishops" who live in multi-million dollar mansions only happen when you do your best to purify your church of any traffic with the document it was supposedly founded on.
While there are some outstanding religious scholars who are woman (Nechama Leibowitz comes to mind), I've become very skeptical of female clergy. When I see a female "rabbi" wearing a yarmulke and a prayer shawl (which are not traditionally worn by women) I just think she's cosplaying. Come to think of it, just about all female clergy, no matter the faith, love to embrace the vestments of male clergy. One might think they'd come up with something uniquely female instead of dressing up like men.
Not that acceleration is everything, especially to midsize sedan buyers, but I think the fact that you can get a 0-60 time in the low 4s for $299/month in 2025 dollars is probably unprecedented in automotive history.
Is acceleration alone enough to make something a luxury brand? I say no, but it wasn’t that long ago that speed like this with a usable rear seat was only available from luxury brands. So it’s closer maybe than some think.
whats even more insane is that even if you wanted to build a car with 1000hp and also 9 sec capable yet still street legal and street driven it wouldnt be that easy
It’s a 140mph car that is falling off as it’s hitting that threshold. I’m not saying that ain’t moving because that’s damn fast for a street car. An ICE vehicle doing the same is freight training at that point so they usually win from a roll.
What will do that today? An 10spd coyote with a CARB legal blower setup through stock cats. We live in the age of bonkers if you’ve got the wallet.
Biggest downfall is the stupid IRS. An SRA swap
with some relocation brackets for the lower control arms and a tire would thrash. Hence the popularity of the S197 chassis or a truck over the 5/650.
That said Ive personally helped toss a basic Vortech on a 10 spd ‘19 and went 9.7 at 143 with an ET Pro out back.
One has to have an absolutely savage build to take them from a dig. Roll racing, from what In Mexico driving I've seen, is bereft of Teslas. Makes sense there.
Random off topic question for the ACF hive mind. Are the car brokers who advertise on lease hacker legit? My wife is looking to order a new X5, and our local dealer is basically offering MSRP. There are brokers on there advertising a 10% off MSRP, even on custom orders which seems too good to be true, but they have extensive reviews not just there but on google and Facebook and a web and social media and Enthusiast forum footprint thst seems too large to be fake. Every fiber of internet being says don't Venmo some dude $300, but if it's a scam it's pretty impressive in scope.
I used Clutch off of LeaseHakr to lease my Wrangler 4xe. It worked out great for me. It also established a relationship with a dealer, which resulted with me working directly with them the next go round, saving me $400 for the broker fee. YMMV.
I’ve used one in the past off Leasehackr and it was great. Just check that their user accounts have good feedback and you should be good. I think leasehackr does some vetting of brokers, though I’m not 100% sure of that.
When I bought the wifes Kia, I sat with one dealer who was trying for an extra 1k of "nitrogen filled tires and protection"
"I know this is a scam and you know this is a scam but if you knock it down $500 it will save me all of monday morning calling every dealer in a 45 mile radius"
The strong negotiation tactic obviously did not work and I spent Monday morning calling every Kia dealer in a 45 mile radius and ended up saving the $. I'd rather have paid the $500 extra but 1k was just too much.
The “bishop” was seemingly taunting God to send a lightning bolt indoors. Matthew 7:15-20 was personified in that service. Sadly, it is so common these days that few raise an eyebrow of skepticism.
I rarely check the Camry box. However, I’m compelled to make an exception to my hard-headed beliefs in this case.
It is amazing how disconnected these Christians are from Christianity. That’s why I identify as a 1st Century Christian, before all the politics and pageantry started.
That 300C could be—and likely* is*—labeled as a non-starter precisely because the key is missing. Whatever methods the thieves are using to clone keys steal Mopars was apparently inaccessible or otherwise unexplored by the auction house here. Seems like a safe bet, though I wouldn’t personally spend my money on it. Do you *know* how many Broken British Cars thirty-Gs could buy?
Speaking of thieves, apparently late-model TLXs are sudden targets for theft, all up and down the eastern seaboard. An acquaintance of mine had his 2023 Type S stolen late Monday or early Tuesday.
As for DEI, I don’t know that I have personally benefitted from the modern incarnation of it, to answer your question. I’ve don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation where my own merits didn’t stand for enough to get me hired without regard to my ethnicity. But who knows; maybe I did.
Update on the Phaeton, which got in a minor fender bender literally the day after I bought it:
It is totaled. The insurance company initially thought they could fix it for $2,000. They even found an undamaged front bumper cover, which is a feat. They were less readily able to find a driver-side marker light, but I tracked several down on car-parts.com.
And then their supplemental took things up to $5,600, which is above the 60% damage-to-value threshold needed to monetarily total a car in Oklahoma. Their initial offer was decent, but I think I can find some comps to get it up another $750 to $1,000. It absolutely can be fixed, but I think I’ll let it go and move onto something else. It was cool while it lasted.
Yikes. Only $2k to fix that? Sucks that such a simple _looking_ repair would take that beast off the road. But as I mentioned on another article recently, my QX80 rang up ~$7K to fix far, far less damage. Something's wrong with body shop repair costs, like everything else in our modern economy.
My neighbor is driving the other guy's insurance company's rental for like two months now waiting for them to total her several-year-old Fiat 500 for exactly that reason; rear bumper and the piece that fastens to.
Aren’t insurance companies’ captive rental options wonderful?! 🤢🤮 Last time I had to take my car to the body shop on Nationwide’s dime, Enterprise stuck me with a Mitsubishi Outlander for a week-and-a-half! Even after the rental office assured me that they’d find something Toyota or Honda when I contacted them to set up a pickup date a few weeks prior! It literally took me fifteen minutes to figure out how to shift the goddamned thing into Reverse!
Perhaps if I had looked in the glovebox, which, unlike most rentals, actually contained a full owner’s manual, found a few days into the rental period.
Fair enough. I bought mine with different expectations, because my previous Audi was reasonably reliable. I just thought I'd upgrade and experience the same. THAT DID NOT HAPPEN.
I think all of the full sized German cars are so tech forward that I don’t expect great reliability anymore. Durable, but they’re all going have niggling issues because everything is cutting edge.
If I wanted a reliable daily Audi, I’d be A4 or A6 Allroad (or Volvo) shopping but this would be. A fun car.
Niggling tech-forward issues like failing steering racks, rusted-out subframes, exploding engine gaskets, multiple failed fuel pumps THAT THE DEALER REFUSED TO EVEN TRY TO FIX?
By the way, every car is built around one part that requires maximum disassembly to get to. In an A8, the steering rack is that part. Good thing they make reliable ones <sarcasm off>. Family members and I experienced steering rack failures in every Audi we owned over a decade. Slow learners, over there in Germany.
They TOTALED that car for that minor damage??????? If you like the car and lossing it to a total is going to put you in a new car payment situation. May i suggest you tell them you want the car repaired, Someone will say no and then ask for a supervisor, if they say no, call your agent and tell them you want your car repaired and send him/her a photo of the bumper cover damage and say this is NOT a totaled car. Continue to tell them you want the car repaired each time they call or you call them. Believe me they will eventually repair the car. I fought with Allstate and AAA for four months, to get Helen's car repaired after it was side swipped. Everyone wanted to total it and Helen would have lost all her equity in the car and had to start over on a new one. Got the Honda back in Feburary after it was hit in October. The insureane company even sent it to COPARTS before it went to the dealter for repairs. I told them to get back COPARTS and after a month they finely did. It was a big pain in the A** but if you do not want to give up all your equity make them fix it, they will.
I read an article from one of the Chicago rags describing how all the poor illegals are cowering in their ten-to-a-room fourth-floor walkups, deathly afraid of ICE cruelly rounding them up for no other reason than BEING IN AMERICA ILLEGALLY, and restaurant owners across Chi-Town were copmplaining that they couldn't operate because all their employees were AWOL.
Guess what? You can find Sympathy between Shit and Syphilis in the dictionary, guys. If your business model depends on criminals, it's a bad one and should be shut down.
The full phrase should be "Americans won't do these jobs because the wages are unsustainable because the labour market has been flooded by unchecked immigration"
That's an issue, too, isn't it? Government-mandated minimum wage. Thomas Sowell was right that the real minimum wage is $0 because the more the state jacks wage laws up the fewer companies will be able to hire anyone. Jobs that should go to teens to work after school or over summers should not be paying a "living wage." And a "living wage" is bullshit anyway. I made less than $30K per year and still supported my family while my wife stayed home with our kids, because modesty and simplicity are actually pretty nice ways to live. That being said it's also nice to drive a loaded low mileage CX-9 to and from work and blow a couple hundred bucks on old comics every month...
FWIW I work in meatpacking (kinda/sorta/close enough) and we’ve had zero discussion on labor issues due to Trump. We have had some interesting discussions around RFK Jr though (we make a lot of fast food)
The fast food industry exists because child-labor laws made teenagers economically useless.
If you're 16 you're not allowed be an auto mechanic or a truck driver or shoot coyotes for the local farmers, because some 19th century do-gooders decided your pimply ass should be cooped up in a classroom reading about the Crimean War or Susan B. Anthony.
To be honest, photos of broken kids working in filthy, unsafe steel mills would probably have tugged at my heartstrings, too. But there are so many unintended consequences to those laws. There was some kid prodigy who picked up a guitar at like 5 years old and began playing the blues like Muddy Waters who was prevented from playing in public by rival performers salty at his skill using child labor laws.
Not always a fan of his screeds, but @UncouthBarbarian is right that in essence the point of a job is to provide for a family, (regardless of age) and if Job X can’t do that or eventually lead to a place that does, then the work in and of itself fails to justify its existence.
Lest people get it wrong this is not to say “ditch diggers shouldn’t exist” but more that depending on the situation , either the economic reward of a given work activity is wrongly uncorrelated to its necessity (eg most unskilled laborers) or may be indicative that the job itself is not producing the societal value necessary to justify the job (and sometimes parent org’s) existence
Just a side note: a series of Jack Vance SF novels had, as part of the worldbuilding, a currency where the underlying unit was one hour of unskilled labor. It is interesting to mull over.
Of course, fast food jobs should not be a career (unless you wish to work up to store management or the like). But enough people seem to think it should be so, so $20/hour, and $5+ for a fucking Big Mac!
Sort of a side note: What covid exposed around where I live is that most fast food places were being staffed by retirees.
Highschool students generally can't work the breakfast or lunch shift during the school year, and most fast food places here suffered during those shifts the most.
I don't know how it is now, but when I worked in the residential and commercial painting business 25 years ago, the issue wasn't Americans wouldn't do the job, it was that Americans wouldn't reliably show up.
I'm not making excuses for paint company owners hiring illegals, but I saw this first hand. Americans would show up drunk, high, or cracked out and the illegals would show up on time. At some point Americans lost pride in the work they do and we are paying for it in illegal workers.
I asked. That was sometimes the issue, sometimes not. As one paint contractor owner pointed out, he was paying them enough for them to have the money to party all the time. Usually people who don't have enough money don't party.
Some of the guys who had stuck around at least a year were getting 25 (45 in 2025) bucks an hour under the table in 2020. This was working for a paint company that had 100 employees painting houses for a residential builder
Our Hispanics here in Hooterville seem to be very family oriented, hard working, and many own their own businesses. They are the biggest minority in my county, and they are a net plus over here. I’m sure they all would be insulted by the Episcopalian grifter’s “who will wash our dishes” remarks.
Religion got deconstructed, and drug pushers were allowed to invade, survive, and then thrive and get rich. While this was ongoing currency was intentionally debased while the cost of living was shot to the moon via property speculation, inflation and a litany of other forces totallt outside the domain of control of the worker.
The illegals weren’t really a punishment for succumbing to drugs either - from a temporaral standpoint their elite-sponsored-invasion was coincident or even *before* the workers began to debase themselves with drugs
"At some point Americans lost pride in the work they do"
Well, they were told to work smart, not hard.
OTOH, when you consider the much higher on-the-job mortality rate for literally anything that's hard work (I'm calling out commercial fishing primarily, but logging, farming, mining, etc are all in the top 10), and the fact that those occupations often break the bodies that survive (ever see the spine X-ray of a bricklayer?), you can't really blame parents for wanting their kids to not have to do manual labor. Really, wanting your kids having it easier than you did is the American way, ever since the days of the Founders.
"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
Mexico got too greedy. Even 35 years ago they had Mexicans working the kitchens for cash and sending the money back home. It was pretty much left alone. Even fucking Obama knew not to open up that door. I don't know if Trump can deport all these people but if he succeeds in sending people back and even slowing the cartels down Mexico is gonna lose a lot of money.
I have never spoken to a Tesla owner who is anything less than effusive about their cars, and the times I've ridden in Model 3s (Vegas Ubers), I've found them to be remarkably spacious and comfortable to be in.
That said, the current Camry Hybrid is one of the best all-around sedans ever produced, even in base spec. It's a no-brainer win for the Yota.
Comfortable? I've always felt like the Uber Tesla's I've ridden in had no rear suspension whatsoever. Felt like riding in a wooden wheeled cart.
Give me a 300,000 mile NYC Uber Camry any day over it. Or my usual airport driver's 400k E350, that thing is a tank and rides great because he takes perfect care of it.
My aunt passed away last week and I was talking to her grandson who in town for the funerary rites. It got down to zero last night here in Detroit and today I don't think it got over 18 today. He was getting ready to leave his uncle's place and said he had to warm up the rental car, something he said that he's not used to because they have a couple of Teslas back home in Las Vegas. I said to him, "Like you need to warm up your car in Vegas?"
"I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We’re scared now. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals."
the most retarded leftists do this neat thing where they say things that would normally be 4chan shitposts but they mean every word and wind up being more racist than the actual racists they hate and its hilarious
"I’m wearing a Brioni tie on that Budd shirt"
ffs what are we even paying the subscription fee for
I thought Canada was bi-weekly or bi-monthly payments? That's what I used to see on dealer windows in 2015/16/17 when I was up there monthly. Honestly haven't noticed what the dealers had advertised in Ottawa or Toronto during my two trips in 2024. Granted I also have barely any interest in new cars that I could buy off the lot nowadays...
How are these license mills any different than the non-believers at Episcopalian divinity schools where the attendees are just looking for a cushy job?
A shifty funeral director has more empathy than the grim looking bishop shrew.
I've long thought actual Born-Again Christians didn't care WHAT problems they had in this life because they were in good with Jesus. At least that was the case with the two guys I've met who I'm pretty sure were the real deal.
Heart attack? Car crash? Terrorist bomb? A thundering Meh.
"Hey Dad, this guy's with me. He's cool, you can let him in."
Famous motorcycle champion Freddie Spencer was accused of being too brave because of his faith in God. People actually accused him of taking too much risk because he believed God was on his side.
Look I am all for sending every back home but whether it POC citizens, illegal aliens or whatever other group is popular the leftists dehumanize them all with their rhetoric. I have worked with many illegals and they were all human beings like the rest of us deserving of being treated as such.
we have had an apocalyptically bad time since he took power and are dealing with an immigration crisis that has crippled the country and appears to be irrecoverable
seriously everything is going sideways fast here and we are in actual trouble
A few thoughts...the first an opinion , and the second... a fact. First, I want to go on the record as NEVER saying you looked like a soup sandwich. In fact, your wardrobe is to be envied...it's great, wonderful, amazing, perhaps the best since Lincoln! Second, the Obama and Clinton families didn't just break a few eggs in the acquisition of their untold wealth, they made omelets in perpetuity. Neither Bill, Hillary, Barry or Michelle came from wealth. I believe Bill simply wanted to be a politician, and he was a great one, while Hillary, Barry, and Michelle wanted cash, and lots of it. But they all turned government wages into many millions. But sadly for them, they all came to realize that money was not the answer to their unhappiness or their bitterness. In the end, despite their generational wealth, Bill is still stuck with Hillary, and Barry is still saddled with Michelle (at least for now). Their unhappiness endures.
One of the local (nicer) grocery stores has eggs for $12.69 per dozen. They are cage free or something like that, but still. My wife just got two dozen at Costco for just under five dollars. The regular local grocery chain is charging around four dollars for a dozen.
The best since Lincoln? I'm picturing a 1989 Taurus based Continental that was flogged in a New Jersey airport Hertz fleet for 120k! I'll continue to dress in a similar fashion but I'd start out as a Chevette.
I don't know how wealthy Obama's maternal grandparents who raised him were, but his grandmother was the VP of a bank and he went to a private school that has a larger endowment than Cranbrook.
As a former VP at a Fortune 500 bank, being a VP is meaningless. I’d be more impressed by a guy who knows where every item is in a hardware store. The guy who says, “Oh, hinges for a screen door? They’re in aisle 7”.
Useless people being promoted to VP (or many other management positions) is why I always laugh when people accuse a woman of getting a job on her knees or back. I'm like, Oh, it's better when a guy gets his job on the golf course or at the bar? Or because 50% of his genes came from the owner's wife and the remaining 50% are believed to have come from the owner?
You're killing me. I assumed you were a teenaged first cousin once removed of J & M Baruth. You're the Vietnam vet father!? I wouldn't know how to interact with my own father if I had anything similar to this. Fortunately, personal web logs don't have comments. Or readers. Heheheh.
Being able to regularly talk to my own father, and to interact with him in all sorts of ways, is a great joy in my life, and reminds me to stay alive for my own son, if I can.
Say what you want about Trump, but he ended the Clinton, Bush, and Obama dynasties. And with a stake to their hearts. The country owes him a debt of gratitude for that public service.
Hey Drill Sergeant? Be careful with that joke, it's an antique.
I have an Army-inspired everlasting hatred for the philosophy of negative reinforcement. Superman himself would be a worthless piece of shit to all the R. Lee Ermey wannabes in the silly hats.
I don't believe that to be a fair characterization. Some of the eggs broke themselves...by shooting themselves in the head. Twice. Or by hanging themselves with an electrical cord...after they supposedly shot themselves in the chest with a shotgun.
Here in the urban sunbelt Tesla’s pencil out pretty decently. Many decent apartment complexes have chargers that can overnight charge, many employers have chargers and the malls and grocery stores in nice parts of town all have chargers as well. For people who rarely if ever drive out the city limits (and there are a lot) it makes sense and at least here in Elon’s new adopted State even if you are headed out to a major city there’s a long row of Superchargers at Bud-Ees which chances are those drivers will stop at anyway. Frigid temperatures are an occurrence for a handful of times a year and they will probably work from home that day anyway. Even in Po Cousin San Antonio the roads are full of em.
I live in the so called sun belt and the charging infrastructure sucks and single digits have been hell on range. I live in a city of 200k and 2 hours from cities of 500k and their charging infrastructure ain't great either.
I so want an EV but infrastructure has to get better first. Even new apartments going up aren't putting in chargers.
GM wasted $10 billion on their failed rideshare startup when they should have been building charging stations like Tesla did. Was this not obvious to GM management?
I had a Camry a rental after a minor accident for about three weeks recently. Going in, I wasn’t prepared to be very impressed. After driving it, if I was currently car shopping, it would be at the top of my list for driving to work (I put on a lot of miles for my job) and daily driving. Everything worked well and easily, and it had more power than I expected it would.
If it was strictly a lease v lease deal and I had zero lifestyle issues with an EV, I’m getting an EV every single day of the week.
Forget your $300 Model 3, do you *know* how cheap any of the Ultium platform cars are? Equinox EVs can be found under $200/mo with effectively nothing up front. A Lyriq is maybe $400! That’s a $70k car!
The Mach E and Ioniq 5/EV6 are better products than the Model 3 (at least in my eyes. Elon being the world’s most pathetic man aside, I despise the interior of all Tesla products) and lease for about the same money, if not considerably cheaper.
If it can fit your lifestyle, it’s almost stupid to consider anything other than an EV lease.
As for me, I live in an apartment and drive 30k miles per year, so I am taking “Bark Maruth’s” advice and test driving a Genesis G70 next week. Wish me luck.
You're going to like the G70. Even more so with the 3.3, perhaps.
I was bullish on cheap Lyricas until I got on the subreddit and saw how many of them have been in dealer service parking lots for MONTHS. General Motors makes Tesla look like Pagani.
Though in fairness, my dad drove a Bolt for a few years. I called it the Electric Egg. Never gave him trouble, had the battery fire potential battery replacement recall performed, and sold it for an '18 Cruze diesel 6-speed. The Bolt crashed over road imperfections, but was otherwise a fun little car to drive. The lack of a transmission was a revelation for maneuvering in traffic.
It is indeed with the 3.3. A lovely 2022 Sport Prestige with good miles in Havana Red and the light color interior. I’m excited about it. Fits the Venn Diagram of everything I am looking for pretty well, and is like $10k cheaper than an equivalent M340i or C43 or whatever. I may regret not buying a Lexus bc of resale, but if I have to go automatic, I’d like it to be faster than a Civic Hybrid at least.
Lyriqs aren’t good vehicles, and the Ultium products seem to generally be colossal pieces of shit, but they are cheap as hell to lease and the interiors are nice. I imagine leasing a Lyriq really means splitting time with a service loaner CT4 or XT4 and that’s not so bad either tbh.
Resale is overrated, keep it if you like it and drive it into the ground.
It's funny, I'd think of leasing a Caddy EV as a commuter if we end up moving to Miami for good, but then I remember how fast a friend dumped their leased SRX 3.6 to go back to European cars - just too many nagging unscheduled dealer visits. Finding a Polestar2 may be the best bet, but I also doubt my wife actually lets me get an EV. More likely we get a big, older German sled for the highway cruising we normally do.
I recommended a manual trans G70 to a friend in 2019 and he loves it. Fun to drive, great dealer service and dead reliable. However, is Genesis reliability that much better then standard Hyundai, or did he get lucky?
While there are skilled engineers there, it's much more the exception than the norm these days. GMs engineering talent is a hollow shell of it's former self after waves of firings, retirements, and a corporate culture that values attention seeking behavior and theatrics over actual achievement.
As for GM styling.... Go look at the VistIQ when it comes to your local auto show and tell me that wasn't designed by a committee.
Or the celestIQ where, when given a blank slate to do something really wild, GM design said "we want to copy the A7, but uglier"
I could go on at length but I think you see where I'm going with this.
It’s very region/store dependent, truthfully. Gotta shop around and also know what the myriad rebates and such are. The super, unbelievably cheap ones are in Colorado I think. That’s the place where you could lease any number of CDJR or Nissan products for numbers like $59/mo after taxes and tags.
Prologues were going for around $200/$250 per month around me in MD last I checked.
I saw an OutOfSpec video where Kyle said one dealer out there was literally doing $20/mo leases for Leafs. That's way cheaper than an actual golf cart!
Most of the crazy cheap ones are. Has always been the case with any lease. Miles aren’t *terribly* expensive if you buy up front though.
And, really, something like that would be fine for people like my fiancée who has an 8 mile commute to work and doesn’t drive a whole hell of a lot otherwise.
He’s a lot of things. Some of them interesting, most of them terrible.
At the very, very least — and this looking past all partisan politics and tech/oligarch shit — being the wealthiest man in the world and also being so starved for love and affection as he is is truly pathetic.
I would chalk it up to just being a cynical compliance car, but VW also went ahead and based their entire future around it soooo
Idk. It’s a truly, shockingly awful car and I feel badly for anyone that accidentally bought one.
I do appreciate that they then went ahead and made a $70k version that is different insofar as it looks like someone drew a VW Bus from memory instead of purely just an anodyne blob.
I promise you, you might not like Tesla styling, the elongated muskrat, or Tesla interiors, but a model 3 is worth far more than an additional hundred dollars a month over an equinox EV.
IS350 remains the car the smart version of me would buy, but they have the critical flaw of Being Slow, which, to paraphrase John Mayer, shouldn't matter but it does.
Is it still slow in a highway roll or just off the line? I find that I don't notice the differences much once a car is in the 4.5-6 sec 0-60 range, but lack of passing power drives me nuts.
I would absolutely consider an EV if I could charge at home. I can’t, and I have no desire to sit at a rest stop or WaWa or what have you for 45 minutes per day.
Agree. IS350 is more than sufficient for daily use. 2015 IS350 F Sport has been my daily driver for last 9.5 years. Maybe it's not "fast" compared to the M340i, G70 3.3, Tesla Model 3P et al but I would never call it "slow" and can't ever see needing anything faster outside of a track. Also handles great (replace the OEM rubber with Michelin Pilot Sports), rides great, and has been extraordinarily reliable. Per Julian's question, highway passing power is excellent. It's also nice to not feel like you have to take a shower after interacting with the dealer.
I'm plainly biased but I think it is vastly underrated merely because it is an old platform and its performance stats certainly don't leap off the page (and also the infotainment - particularly archaic in mine - but I don't give an F about that). I could easily replace it with something newer/faster but see absolutely no need to do so. I will say that - unlike, say most BMW products which these days are tuned to feel more like caged animals - it is relatively docile in ordinary operation and it's only when you push it that you fully appreciate its performance capabilities.
After the Gen 3.5 refresh in 2021 or whenever, they did get bigger and it's possible a little pokier.
And by the way, just so the ACF readers know, I’ve been driving an EV all across the country for work for the past three years and am intimately familiar with what living with a pure EV is like.
I have a very nice Level 2 charging station at my home and I also have very cheap electricity rates.
On paper, that cheap three year lease would be just as logical for me, as it appears to you, Jack.
But as great as EVs are with their instant acceleration and quiet interiors and waking up with a “full tank” every morning, what most folks don’t understand is the added wasted time and anxiety that driving an EV introduces into your life.
At some point, you will be driving to work, or to an emergency meeting of some kind, and due to weather/headwind/lard ass/lead foot, et al, your range will recalculate and you will be performing E6-B calculations like the navigator on the Red October trying to figure out if you are actually going to make it.
And then you divert to a charging station and……it’s broken. Or occupied by a fucking Uber driver in a Chevy Bolt that can only charge at 50kwh and the driver is a moron and tells you that he/she/it “must charge to 100%” and that will take three hours.
Trust me, people like us do not have the time to deal with the bullshit of driving an EV.
Fuck that shit. It’s no way to go through life.
Ride that V-Strom and enjoy life.
Drive that Tesla and hate life.
It’s that fucking simple.
Fuck! I’m worked up just thinking about the past three years driving all over the country on an EV. Frack!
Some people love the bars of their cages while fearing freedom more than anything else. They'll gladly eat the bugs, toss the salad, and drive the electric cars.
Amen, but the marketing messages tell me Tesla owners don't experience what life was like for us in hilly San Diego with a two-year off lease 2013 LEAF that could barely do 85 miles when we first bought it? The thought of having to compete with Model 3s for chargers if I were in a similar situation today... Nope nope nope.
Shooter, you must have the patience of Jobe, I applaud your ability to drive an EV across flyover country. I on the other hand use to drive my 76 Coupe deVille across my territory that stretched from Cheyenne to Larado and from Phoenix to New Orleans and would get upset when the gas pump was slow filling the 27 gallon tank with high test….
I've got a coworker who's wife purchased a Tesla. Her job is about 10 miles away so around town they always have a charge.
A week ago they went to a larger city just south about 120 miles away. They had started at 80 percent and got down there with less than 40 percent. The range hasn't been great due to the colder weather we've been getting in the south he said. They were in a panic trying to find a changing station that wasn't busy and actually worked. The city has plenty of chargers but he said you might have to drive 20 or 30 miles around just go find an open one on a weekend.
For me personally, driving several hours from one city to the next is stressful enough. No way am I panicking over getting a charge to get back home. We've had an EV push the last 4 years. How about a changing network and a grid update mandate first? It hit mid single digits here in the deep south and Utility companies were calling Uncle. How do I charge at night when utilities can't keep up in the winter in the south?
It's much easier to sell us all new cars than have the hard conversation about our busted infrastructure and what these mandates mean for it. In Connecticut, the state has passed tons of renewable requirements and banned new coal/gas and then allowed Eversource (our utility) to add a "public benefit charge" to everyone's bills that is roughly 30% of your total bill each month. This has caused great outrage, but it's just a hidden tax that the company is allowed to charge because our lawmakers are too craven to just raise taxes or acknowledge the effects of their policies.
As for EV's I see them all as great commuters and glorified versions of my mother-in-law's electric GEM Car "golf cart." That thing is great for running neighborhood errands around Miami or Vero, and an EV would do it all better plus get me to more places around town. However there's no way in hell that's worth the 40k that a real car costs, maybe if it was 15 like a nicer Nissan leaf but those days are gone.
“Now let’s get off this topic before “Sherman McCoy” realizes I’m wearing a Brioni tie on that Budd shirt and launches into the sort of moronic, utterly unjustified pro-Zegna tirade which used to be the exclusive province of mercury-addled hatters before it became inexplicably popular with “digital pimps” and other unsavory remoras around the cloaca of our piscine economy.”
*cracks knuckles*
As you will doubtless recall, my central argument was that truly “luxurious” brands are typically owned and / or controlled by shareholders with a long-term time horizon. Brioni is part of the beleaguered Kering conglomerate (for now, at least), whereas Zegna is under the leadership of someone named (Ermene)Gildo Zegna; Gildo does graciously allow other shareholders to participate in the financial performance of his family’s company, however.
Today to my middle management spreadsheet job (in my home office) I wore LL Bean “active sport” pants and a Huk sweatshirt with a stain on it. And LL Bean moccasin slippers. Life is good.
I wish I could find my pair of LL Bean flannel-lined jeans, because it’s rather cold in Atlanta at the moment. When I was outside earlier, I had to put my Canada Goose Expedition Parka into use.
I drove through Atlanta today (wearing flannel lined dungarees even). Holy smokes, Atlanta sucks at winter! I’ve never seen that many cars off the road with so little frozen material.
Fulton County salted heavily yesterday afternoon, whereas neighboring Dekalb County apparently did nothing. There was essentially zero evidence of snow today where I live; meanwhile, people were iced in just a few miles away. It was bizarre.
It snowed more further south, which is atypical. I-75 south of I-285 (i.e., toward Macon) probably got more snow Tuesday than it has in the past 25 years.
My friend who lives in Atlanta says he thinks they have one salt truck and one snow plow. I live in a city one state over with a county of 400k and we shut down a few weeks ago with 5 inches of snow. We have multiple snow plows and multiple brine trucks and the city was still shut down. Last year we shut down for a week due to ice.
Southern cities like mine admit to simply not paying for proper equipment when we get snow once a year. They'd rather have the city shut down. We also don't do winter tires.
Yankee-land (well New England), gets plenty of that ice/snow mix but since they're used to it and salt like crazy it only really happens in parking lots and some dirt roads...
We went by Nashville at rush hour. No weather to speak of and no problems.
Will probably take a completely different route back, but won’t be leaving Daytona until mid-afternoon Sunday so still have plenty of time for the weather to change our plans.
Wow, I'm pleasantly surprised by my neighbors. Usually the 24 looks like a demolition derby/mad max scene after any sort of weather. It once took me 90 mins to go from downtown to Murfreesboro mid-day in the rain, with crashes every mile.
It looks like it'll warm up a bit this weekend so northern Florida should be passable after the crazy snow they got. We're a bit South of you right now in Florida.
I’m wearing a windbreaker over a light fleece in Western NC and my neighbors are concerned I’ll freeze to death. As an ex-Chicago guy, it’s all relative. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing goose down above 0 degrees.
I once skied in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan when the high of the day was -18 degrees. Amazingly, the snow squeaks under your skis when it’s that cold because it doesn’t momentarily melt from friction. The snow is like styrofoam. Thank God for ski-in bars.
Everyone forgets that Alabama and Mississippi have a Gulf Coast, hell most coastal types would prefer to forget they exist outside of college football.
It's been crunchy cold this week up here. Kids were off school Monday and Tuesday. The snow is still crunching today, loud enough I can hear it when I drive through parking lots. I had a homemade pasty for dinner last night. There's another one in my lunch today. I'm an oddball in that I love this weather.
I had the opposite experience and realized that I've adapted to Florida winters now. It was 50 degrees and raining/raw yesterday with 20mph winds (windchill in the 40s), and I was all bundled up and complaining that it was cold.
5 years ago that would've been a perfect day to go for a winter bike ride in NJ or CT....
The name is an accurate description of them. I think I've got 4 pairs scattered about between the fur and flannel lined versions. Flannel works great as I get hot feet, but insides seem to take a beating after 2-3 years of wear (or my dog attacking the laces)
I, too, slubbed it. Gustin Wool Pocket Jersey long sleeve shirt (sick oxblood, bruh) for business up top, but Fjallraven G1000 pants (black) and the thickest Darn Tough socks (charcoal)... and bright orange, leather soled wool slippers from Kyrgistan rounding out the look. Consider that as you smoke your next stogie, McCoy!
Considering I live in Louisiana, and we just got a FOOT of snow, and there are power outages all over, there is no choice. Camry, baby! All fucking day long.
crazy, first floods, now snow, what is next for you?
i think locusts are up next
I thought I saw a pig flying in one of the pictures of the Atlanta area.
Were people caught on the freeways for fifteen hours at a time, or did this one not rise to “Snowmageddon” levels there?
Certainly could see that happening in Nawlins or Baton Rouge.
Cats and dogs, living together?
Tequila and a redhead.
this is the correct answer, and the most dangerous one.
Well, Jack has me curious about a Danger Girl of my own.
Every word you're ever heard about red heads is true ~ good, bad or evil, it's all true .
-Nate
Indeed, Sir! The last charge of Jack Baruth and his immortals!
Can a brother get an invite?
I live in the deep south and we have tornadoes to worry about every year, inches of snow every other year, and pipe busting weather every other year when the quasi government provided electric company calls Uncle and will do rolling blackouts.
I'm sure the X perusers among us already know the prune-faced lady bishop has a $2 million, 6bedroom, 4.5 bath house somewhere leafy.
I'm somewhat house adjacent to the good lady, and I can tell you it takes a few good Mexican-wielded leaf blowers to keep that puppy free of leaves and all trimmed up for the spring. And 4.5 bathe don't clean themselves do they?
You know, i didn't look into that because I just knew I'd be enraged by what I would find.
Martin Luther would have nailed his theses to her ugly face. She's a de facto seller of indulgences.
As a Lutheran, you surmise that you may be correct.
I missed the political statement, so I thought it was Mark Hamill in the first round of memes that came out.
this is why we didnt let women preach
…..in public.
Better make those battery powered leaf blowers so they don’t emit too much noise and pollution in the good neighborhood!
If only California's authoritarianism extended to non-citizens, I might not have objected to their small engine ban initiatives. Loud leaf blowers are a blight, especially when you catch your landscapers leaning against your cars while running them to create the illusion that work is being performed.
Well, you could just do like me and do your own landscaping on your tiny lot.
The entire time I was washing my truck yesterday the neighbors landscapers were just hanging out and chatting away.
It was a rental in La Jolla. The owners provided the landscapers to protect their property, which backfired spectacularly. They let everything die, for which they were as accountable as...a bunch of guys whose names and addresses had been made up on the spot and to whom California laws did not apply.
Going back to something I said a while ago, it is un-American to have a "staff". These "who will do some service? that a) most people used to do themselves or have their kids do or b) can't afford to pay someone else for anyway" are the modern version of let them eat cake. Other than its governor and congressional delegation, is there anyone in West Virginia who pays someone to mow their lawn or clean their house?
CA is probably the inverse of WV. I think I’m the only person in my neighborhood who mows their own lawn (takes me all of 15 minutes with a battery powered mower).
I don't think Angelenos have ever cut their own lawns. Back in the '60s there were a lot of ethnic Japanese gardeners.
Long time ago I remember a little Japanese woman stand up comedian making a joke that most Japanese people were not rich, but the head of Sony was so rich he had a Jewish gardener. On a related note, despite what revisionist douchebag historinans like Richard Jensen would have us believe, one of my antecedents was turned down for a groundskeeping job because the lady of the house was looking for someone who was "a little darker."
lol imagine getting rejected for being too white
hey wait a sec
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. This would have been roughly 1915-1919 or so. Richard Jensen's claim to fame is that a 14 year old high school student named Rebecca Fried refuted his racist claim that there was no such thing as the "No Irish Need Apply" signs.
https://www.vox.com/2015/3/17/8227175/st-patricks-irish-immigrant-history
I rocked a push mower when I lived over by SDSU. Suck it, Al Gore!
The bermuda blend in our northern San Diego house could have been mowed with an old-fashioned reel mower--it was certainly small emough. Instead, the "gardeners" came every other week. The grass didn't really grow between mowings, and you can see that iconic southern California heat slowly win the war against the failing irrigation system over my six years there in the snapshots of my kids playing in the backyard. (Moved in at ~$550K Zillow. Moved out at $920K. Peaked at $1.4M. Sitting at $1.3M now with a $4350 rent last summer to my $2350 in 2014. I drove by it in October, while in town for a wedding. The yard's gotten worse. Oh, San Diego.)
When I owned a home in a wealthy Chicago suburb, I was the only person I saw who ever washed a car in his own driveway. I did it because I enjoyed it.
My neighbors had services who would stop by weekly and clean up the dog poop in their yards. From their own dogs.
Funny, that’s one service I haven’t seen out here in CA. Then again I’m not in one of the La Jolla or Rancho Santa Fe “wealthy” areas.
I wash my own cars because I don’t trust anyone else to do it properly.
I'm with Steve here, I don't hardly trust anyone to do anything correctly these days .
-Nate
Even though I have a belt and suspenders warranty on my Mustang I am doing everything in my power to keep it out of the dealer. Whether it's deliberate or accidental I know if they get their hands on it they are going to fuck something up.
I mow my own lawn and do most household work that I can handle but I gladly pay the $20 a week for someone to come clean up the dog poop in my yard
These are supposed to be the jobs of teenagers looking to make a few bucks. Mow the lawn, shovel some dog poop. I still see local teens advertising on the bulletin board at the neighborhood store, they are the people we should be hiring to do our menial tasks. We get the poop scooped, and support work ethic in a kid at the same time
"Merry Christmas! The shitter's full!"
Neighbors reacted thusly, I take it?
do you remember the tv show 'hazel'? it was about a fulltime maid in a regular household; in the '50s and nobody thought it odd; enviable maybe!
Remember what they took from you
Hell, look at “The Brady Bunch!”
I'd imagine that the church may provide some kind of parsonage.
No, it is registered to her. From what I understand she's a general do gooder.
The kind the world would be better off without.
...who, despite having employment that is definitionally intended to be humble manages to have effortless piles of money. Awful lot of that in DC.
When we lived in town our neighbor sold his house to a Unitarian preacher and his family... for almost $400K. They then proceeded to fill their driveway with top-trim-level brand-new cars. They were nice, but in an odd way that filled me with distrust towards them. I'm glad to be out in the boonies now.
Remember when Aretha Franklin died and there were 100 pink Cadillacs lined up in front of the church for the procession to the cemetery? That church is the biggest in Detroit, the Greater Grace Temple. The pastor there inherited the church from his father who had built it into a megachurch. They're over on Seven Mile near Telegraph but the congregation's first big building was bought from the synagogue that my family attended. My father's veterinary clinic was just down the street, adjacent to the synagogue's parking lot and he got to know the original Bishop Ellis pretty well. Eventually, the church bought my father's building so they could expand the building to take up an entire city block. This was in the early 1970s and the good bishop transported himself in a Mercedes-Benz 450 S-Class that had all the chrome trim gold plated. "To paint the lily, to gild the grosser Mercedes..."
Side note-Aretha's dad was a monster and hopefully rotting in hell.
12 pink Cadillacs might have been reasonable, but 100 seems like overkill...
I used to look out my window at Edgewater amusement park way back when my family were "documented aliens." That roller coaster is where Greater Grace sits.
They held Rosa Park's funeral there too. That was a big deal. I photographed that one.
The way you tell Unitarians it's time to leave is to burn a question mark into their lawn.
Doing well by doing good!
There’s folks of the clerical profession who are the exact opposite! There was a pastor at one of the inner-city Lutheran churches in Toledo who took such a vow of destitution that when she moved into a house with an automatic garage door opener, the remote was placed into her hand, and she genuinely had no idea in the world what to do with it!
Toledo, home of Tony Packo's, destitute pastors, and the Christmas Weed. Sometimes I miss my hometown!
If 47 was smart, he’d pull the tax-exempt status on the National “Cathedral!”
Unfortunately, that dimwit is probably the head clergy in the Episcopal Diocese encompassing DC. So you aren’t going to get rid of her easily. Particularly since the Episcopal Church is in a bit of a schism right now over the LGBTQRSTUVWXYZMOUSE+- thing, etc.! Same thing as most of the mainline Protestant denominations since roughly the mid-2000s.
I live next door to a Lutheran bishop who owns his house.
I bet it's not as nice as the 31,000 sq ft house the Archdiocese of Detroit built for their bishop.
https://www.schraderauction.com/auctions/8780
1920 Detroit was the 4th largest city in the USA so I imagine the Catholics could readily afford that. The ownership history is fascinating.
John Salley bought it when he was playing for the Pistons because it has 10 foot ceilings. There are some magnificent homes in Palmer Woods and across Seven Mile on Hamilton and Fairway, adjacent to the Detroit Golf Club. A childhood friend of mine lived in a three story house on Hamilton. There was no fence between their backyard and the golf course so sometimes we'd hit a few balls.
Is that the one Spiderman Salley lived in?
Nevermind you had it
Those exist, certainly. But so does paying a "housing allotment" that allows for the pastor to buy their own house.
My grandfather was a minister. He bought himself a house on his salary. It was a tiny little thing he added on to multiple times during his ownership. He passed away some years ago. My grandmother outlived him...which I understand having cared for her because I'm pretty sure it's taken at least 10 years off my life...and only passed away a couple of years ago. We sold her house for $45,000 in post-pandemic money. If that gives you any idea of the kind of luxurious lifestyle my grandfather maintained as a genuine minister of the gospel.
Suffice it to say that lesbian "bishops" who live in multi-million dollar mansions only happen when you do your best to purify your church of any traffic with the document it was supposedly founded on.
While there are some outstanding religious scholars who are woman (Nechama Leibowitz comes to mind), I've become very skeptical of female clergy. When I see a female "rabbi" wearing a yarmulke and a prayer shawl (which are not traditionally worn by women) I just think she's cosplaying. Come to think of it, just about all female clergy, no matter the faith, love to embrace the vestments of male clergy. One might think they'd come up with something uniquely female instead of dressing up like men.
Not that acceleration is everything, especially to midsize sedan buyers, but I think the fact that you can get a 0-60 time in the low 4s for $299/month in 2025 dollars is probably unprecedented in automotive history.
Is acceleration alone enough to make something a luxury brand? I say no, but it wasn’t that long ago that speed like this with a usable rear seat was only available from luxury brands. So it’s closer maybe than some think.
You can get a used Plaid — that’s a 9 sec car with 1000hp — for like $45k now.
It’s fucking silly.
whats even more insane is that even if you wanted to build a car with 1000hp and also 9 sec capable yet still street legal and street driven it wouldnt be that easy
It’s a 140mph car that is falling off as it’s hitting that threshold. I’m not saying that ain’t moving because that’s damn fast for a street car. An ICE vehicle doing the same is freight training at that point so they usually win from a roll.
What will do that today? An 10spd coyote with a CARB legal blower setup through stock cats. We live in the age of bonkers if you’ve got the wallet.
Biggest downfall is the stupid IRS. An SRA swap
with some relocation brackets for the lower control arms and a tire would thrash. Hence the popularity of the S197 chassis or a truck over the 5/650.
That said Ive personally helped toss a basic Vortech on a 10 spd ‘19 and went 9.7 at 143 with an ET Pro out back.
i still cant believe just how fast some modern cars can be when you lean on them, especially the trucks
nobody 20 years ago would have believed you if you told them
I'm sorry, what? Plaids are 45k now? This sounds like the type of idiocy I need in my life.
https://tinyurl.com/3f3tu8te
Yup!
gut that and add slicks to wreck some dudes racing from a dig on the street
I’m long out of the car meet/In Mexico scene but I imagine even those folks have enough sense not to have a go against an EV lol.
Per a buddy in CA, there are plenty of idiots with Gallardos doing exactly this
One has to have an absolutely savage build to take them from a dig. Roll racing, from what In Mexico driving I've seen, is bereft of Teslas. Makes sense there.
The automotive world was a better place place when a blazing fast car was 0-60 in 6 seconds.
whats it like living in 1954
The cars looked better.
entirely justified opinion
Different and not as good as many will tell you but at least in 1954 you had more variety .
-Nate
And style
Random off topic question for the ACF hive mind. Are the car brokers who advertise on lease hacker legit? My wife is looking to order a new X5, and our local dealer is basically offering MSRP. There are brokers on there advertising a 10% off MSRP, even on custom orders which seems too good to be true, but they have extensive reviews not just there but on google and Facebook and a web and social media and Enthusiast forum footprint thst seems too large to be fake. Every fiber of internet being says don't Venmo some dude $300, but if it's a scam it's pretty impressive in scope.
I used Clutch off of LeaseHakr to lease my Wrangler 4xe. It worked out great for me. It also established a relationship with a dealer, which resulted with me working directly with them the next go round, saving me $400 for the broker fee. YMMV.
I’ve used one in the past off Leasehackr and it was great. Just check that their user accounts have good feedback and you should be good. I think leasehackr does some vetting of brokers, though I’m not 100% sure of that.
They can't do anything that YOU can't do, but what's your time worth?
It would take several hours of cold calling to find a dealer offering 10% off MSRP.
For many, hiring someone to know which dealers aren’t happily raping the customers should pencil
This sounds like a question for your brother.
When I bought the wifes Kia, I sat with one dealer who was trying for an extra 1k of "nitrogen filled tires and protection"
"I know this is a scam and you know this is a scam but if you knock it down $500 it will save me all of monday morning calling every dealer in a 45 mile radius"
The strong negotiation tactic obviously did not work and I spent Monday morning calling every Kia dealer in a 45 mile radius and ended up saving the $. I'd rather have paid the $500 extra but 1k was just too much.
The “bishop” was seemingly taunting God to send a lightning bolt indoors. Matthew 7:15-20 was personified in that service. Sadly, it is so common these days that few raise an eyebrow of skepticism.
I rarely check the Camry box. However, I’m compelled to make an exception to my hard-headed beliefs in this case.
I'll see your Matthew 7 and raise you 1st Timothy 3:1-7.
I'll see you both and raise with Proverbs 6:16-19.
You boys slide on down to the Triple Rock and hear what Reverend Cleophus has to say.
I’m not sure of your reference, but I just started singing NOFX to myself out loud.
That verse could have been written especially for Donald Trump.
I thought she had a lot of nerve referencing Micah and walking humbly with God when she just made a rather prideful sermon.
It is amazing how disconnected these Christians are from Christianity. That’s why I identify as a 1st Century Christian, before all the politics and pageantry started.
they arent christians
just people who want to emulate parts of christianity they like and ignore everything else
Might as well put a golden calf on the altar of her church.
or a bronze bull
"Impossible Christians"
"i cant belive its not christianity"
I agree.
I'm a fundmentalist Christian myself, in the sense of wanting to know the truth of man's relationship to God.
Those fundamentalists who tell you it's sinful to dance and play cards and fuck your wife on the living room couch are full of shit.
Sometimes the living room couch is all you have!
Oops =8-) .
-Nate
What would Jesus do?
Certainly not that!
Trump and Vance left a Yelp review. They said the service wasn't good.
(::Rim shot!!:)
That 300C could be—and likely* is*—labeled as a non-starter precisely because the key is missing. Whatever methods the thieves are using to clone keys steal Mopars was apparently inaccessible or otherwise unexplored by the auction house here. Seems like a safe bet, though I wouldn’t personally spend my money on it. Do you *know* how many Broken British Cars thirty-Gs could buy?
Speaking of thieves, apparently late-model TLXs are sudden targets for theft, all up and down the eastern seaboard. An acquaintance of mine had his 2023 Type S stolen late Monday or early Tuesday.
As for DEI, I don’t know that I have personally benefitted from the modern incarnation of it, to answer your question. I’ve don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation where my own merits didn’t stand for enough to get me hired without regard to my ethnicity. But who knows; maybe I did.
Update on the Phaeton, which got in a minor fender bender literally the day after I bought it:
It is totaled. The insurance company initially thought they could fix it for $2,000. They even found an undamaged front bumper cover, which is a feat. They were less readily able to find a driver-side marker light, but I tracked several down on car-parts.com.
And then their supplemental took things up to $5,600, which is above the 60% damage-to-value threshold needed to monetarily total a car in Oklahoma. Their initial offer was decent, but I think I can find some comps to get it up another $750 to $1,000. It absolutely can be fixed, but I think I’ll let it go and move onto something else. It was cool while it lasted.
https://imgur.com/gallery/HVJSdlj
Kyree as I continue to live vicariously through your car collection (?), please buy a V10 S6 next.
Excellent suggestion!
I second that motion.
They write off a car for that???
They do if the parts are difficult to find.
I have a 2006 manual saab and a 2018 dodge grand caravan. Nobody is stealing my shit.
That’s crazy that an insurance company would total a car over a bumper cover and side marker light.
My insurance company would also want a new wheel and tire on that corner to limit liability. Still shouldn't be totalled.
Yikes. Only $2k to fix that? Sucks that such a simple _looking_ repair would take that beast off the road. But as I mentioned on another article recently, my QX80 rang up ~$7K to fix far, far less damage. Something's wrong with body shop repair costs, like everything else in our modern economy.
I think, in my case, they're having a difficult time finding parts.
My neighbor is driving the other guy's insurance company's rental for like two months now waiting for them to total her several-year-old Fiat 500 for exactly that reason; rear bumper and the piece that fastens to.
Aren’t insurance companies’ captive rental options wonderful?! 🤢🤮 Last time I had to take my car to the body shop on Nationwide’s dime, Enterprise stuck me with a Mitsubishi Outlander for a week-and-a-half! Even after the rental office assured me that they’d find something Toyota or Honda when I contacted them to set up a pickup date a few weeks prior! It literally took me fifteen minutes to figure out how to shift the goddamned thing into Reverse!
Perhaps if I had looked in the glovebox, which, unlike most rentals, actually contained a full owner’s manual, found a few days into the rental period.
As much as I want to find a Phaeton or that era A8 to drive, this terrifies me about owning them, being so rare that anything will total it...
I still have nightmares from my A8 ownership back then. Just don't.
I suspect that every A8 warning applies to Phaetons too.
I'm sure it does, but this would be a fun 3rd or 4th car so I'm not super worried if it's not up to Lexus standards...
Also have very good German shops in CT and Miami so, would get ahead of all I could working with folks who know them.
Fair enough. I bought mine with different expectations, because my previous Audi was reasonably reliable. I just thought I'd upgrade and experience the same. THAT DID NOT HAPPEN.
I think all of the full sized German cars are so tech forward that I don’t expect great reliability anymore. Durable, but they’re all going have niggling issues because everything is cutting edge.
If I wanted a reliable daily Audi, I’d be A4 or A6 Allroad (or Volvo) shopping but this would be. A fun car.
Niggling tech-forward issues like failing steering racks, rusted-out subframes, exploding engine gaskets, multiple failed fuel pumps THAT THE DEALER REFUSED TO EVEN TRY TO FIX?
By the way, every car is built around one part that requires maximum disassembly to get to. In an A8, the steering rack is that part. Good thing they make reliable ones <sarcasm off>. Family members and I experienced steering rack failures in every Audi we owned over a decade. Slow learners, over there in Germany.
They TOTALED that car for that minor damage??????? If you like the car and lossing it to a total is going to put you in a new car payment situation. May i suggest you tell them you want the car repaired, Someone will say no and then ask for a supervisor, if they say no, call your agent and tell them you want your car repaired and send him/her a photo of the bumper cover damage and say this is NOT a totaled car. Continue to tell them you want the car repaired each time they call or you call them. Believe me they will eventually repair the car. I fought with Allstate and AAA for four months, to get Helen's car repaired after it was side swipped. Everyone wanted to total it and Helen would have lost all her equity in the car and had to start over on a new one. Got the Honda back in Feburary after it was hit in October. The insureane company even sent it to COPARTS before it went to the dealter for repairs. I told them to get back COPARTS and after a month they finely did. It was a big pain in the A** but if you do not want to give up all your equity make them fix it, they will.
I read an article from one of the Chicago rags describing how all the poor illegals are cowering in their ten-to-a-room fourth-floor walkups, deathly afraid of ICE cruelly rounding them up for no other reason than BEING IN AMERICA ILLEGALLY, and restaurant owners across Chi-Town were copmplaining that they couldn't operate because all their employees were AWOL.
Guess what? You can find Sympathy between Shit and Syphilis in the dictionary, guys. If your business model depends on criminals, it's a bad one and should be shut down.
this exactly
more nonsense about how "americans wont do these jobs" is en route whenever someone wants to justifiably expel illegal aliens
The full phrase should be "Americans won't do these jobs because the wages are unsustainable because the labour market has been flooded by unchecked immigration"
Hell, I'll make burritos and mow lawns for fifty bucks an hour.
That's an issue, too, isn't it? Government-mandated minimum wage. Thomas Sowell was right that the real minimum wage is $0 because the more the state jacks wage laws up the fewer companies will be able to hire anyone. Jobs that should go to teens to work after school or over summers should not be paying a "living wage." And a "living wage" is bullshit anyway. I made less than $30K per year and still supported my family while my wife stayed home with our kids, because modesty and simplicity are actually pretty nice ways to live. That being said it's also nice to drive a loaded low mileage CX-9 to and from work and blow a couple hundred bucks on old comics every month...
(Conehead voice): "Correct!"
for fifty american dollars an hour id swim across the river and learn spanish as well
For 150 Canadian, I’d shovel moose poop!
All the Spanish I know, I got from Speedy Gonzalez cartoons and the first two "Predator" movies.
Yep! And at the end of the day, you can point to something tangible that was created!
FWIW I work in meatpacking (kinda/sorta/close enough) and we’ve had zero discussion on labor issues due to Trump. We have had some interesting discussions around RFK Jr though (we make a lot of fast food)
the agriculture and meat processing industries have entered the chat
Well said!
As an example:
Fast food shouldn’t exist. The “slave laborers had less economic precarity”-tier jobs shouldn’t exist, ergo the foodservice type should not exist.
“That shouldn’t exist” is a worthwhile proposition that needs wider use. Thank you.
Unapologetically stolen from
https://substack.com/@uncouthbarbarian/note/c-87751314?
The fast food industry exists because child-labor laws made teenagers economically useless.
If you're 16 you're not allowed be an auto mechanic or a truck driver or shoot coyotes for the local farmers, because some 19th century do-gooders decided your pimply ass should be cooped up in a classroom reading about the Crimean War or Susan B. Anthony.
To be honest, photos of broken kids working in filthy, unsafe steel mills would probably have tugged at my heartstrings, too. But there are so many unintended consequences to those laws. There was some kid prodigy who picked up a guitar at like 5 years old and began playing the blues like Muddy Waters who was prevented from playing in public by rival performers salty at his skill using child labor laws.
Agreed about this, the key is the nuance.
Not always a fan of his screeds, but @UncouthBarbarian is right that in essence the point of a job is to provide for a family, (regardless of age) and if Job X can’t do that or eventually lead to a place that does, then the work in and of itself fails to justify its existence.
Lest people get it wrong this is not to say “ditch diggers shouldn’t exist” but more that depending on the situation , either the economic reward of a given work activity is wrongly uncorrelated to its necessity (eg most unskilled laborers) or may be indicative that the job itself is not producing the societal value necessary to justify the job (and sometimes parent org’s) existence
Just a side note: a series of Jack Vance SF novels had, as part of the worldbuilding, a currency where the underlying unit was one hour of unskilled labor. It is interesting to mull over.
It can be a very thought provoking exercise to think of one’s contribution to society in terms of multiples of an unskilled laborer’s pay.
marxist nuance if you ask me.
perhaps, if taken to an extreme conclusion - but you know that's not my school of thought.
At a basic level all I am claiming is that the gini coefficient should be lower. And, I think I've got friends who would say no, it should be HIGHER.
And those friends are smart so perhaps there are crackpot arguments to be made in both directions
Now, though, we have a society that would never allow children to be exposed to such danger. Our cultural morality wouldn't allow it.
Which is why it's time to revisit child-labor laws.
"we have a society that would never allow children to be exposed to such danger"
the founding fathers could never have predicted discord
Do a image search "lackawanna county coal mine tour kid mannequin and mule"
Of course, fast food jobs should not be a career (unless you wish to work up to store management or the like). But enough people seem to think it should be so, so $20/hour, and $5+ for a fucking Big Mac!
No, they shouldn't. But they were never meant to be.
Sort of a side note: What covid exposed around where I live is that most fast food places were being staffed by retirees.
Highschool students generally can't work the breakfast or lunch shift during the school year, and most fast food places here suffered during those shifts the most.
somebody sells it and somebody buys it; therefore it exists--and should.
I don't know how it is now, but when I worked in the residential and commercial painting business 25 years ago, the issue wasn't Americans wouldn't do the job, it was that Americans wouldn't reliably show up.
I'm not making excuses for paint company owners hiring illegals, but I saw this first hand. Americans would show up drunk, high, or cracked out and the illegals would show up on time. At some point Americans lost pride in the work they do and we are paying for it in illegal workers.
Again, sounds like a Compensation problem, not a Lazy, Ungrateful American problem.
always worth asking if increasing the wage would lead to a better crop of workers
Compensation, debased currency, real estate overpricedness, snowball-problem
It’s not any one thing , though if it was, it would be central bank fiat currency
I asked. That was sometimes the issue, sometimes not. As one paint contractor owner pointed out, he was paying them enough for them to have the money to party all the time. Usually people who don't have enough money don't party.
Some of the guys who had stuck around at least a year were getting 25 (45 in 2025) bucks an hour under the table in 2020. This was working for a paint company that had 100 employees painting houses for a residential builder
My roofer got tired of bailing out his redneck workforce on Monday mornings, so he replaced them with our local Mexicans. The legal ones.
One sympathizes.
Who can afford to live on a roof laborer’s wages except a careless drunk or a person willing to live 4 to a bedroom and 12 to a 3 bedroom house ?
Our Hispanics here in Hooterville seem to be very family oriented, hard working, and many own their own businesses. They are the biggest minority in my county, and they are a net plus over here. I’m sure they all would be insulted by the Episcopalian grifter’s “who will wash our dishes” remarks.
In my mind it’s a chicken and egg problem.
Religion got deconstructed, and drug pushers were allowed to invade, survive, and then thrive and get rich. While this was ongoing currency was intentionally debased while the cost of living was shot to the moon via property speculation, inflation and a litany of other forces totallt outside the domain of control of the worker.
The illegals weren’t really a punishment for succumbing to drugs either - from a temporaral standpoint their elite-sponsored-invasion was coincident or even *before* the workers began to debase themselves with drugs
"At some point Americans lost pride in the work they do"
Well, they were told to work smart, not hard.
OTOH, when you consider the much higher on-the-job mortality rate for literally anything that's hard work (I'm calling out commercial fishing primarily, but logging, farming, mining, etc are all in the top 10), and the fact that those occupations often break the bodies that survive (ever see the spine X-ray of a bricklayer?), you can't really blame parents for wanting their kids to not have to do manual labor. Really, wanting your kids having it easier than you did is the American way, ever since the days of the Founders.
"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
--John Adams
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times
Mexico got too greedy. Even 35 years ago they had Mexicans working the kitchens for cash and sending the money back home. It was pretty much left alone. Even fucking Obama knew not to open up that door. I don't know if Trump can deport all these people but if he succeeds in sending people back and even slowing the cartels down Mexico is gonna lose a lot of money.
I've long wondered how stern the stuff is that makes up Mexico. One supposes not very much.
We're gonna find out.
Personally, I LOVE the idea of the Mexican government stuck between the cartels on one side and the US Marine Corps on the other.
I have never spoken to a Tesla owner who is anything less than effusive about their cars, and the times I've ridden in Model 3s (Vegas Ubers), I've found them to be remarkably spacious and comfortable to be in.
That said, the current Camry Hybrid is one of the best all-around sedans ever produced, even in base spec. It's a no-brainer win for the Yota.
Comfortable? I've always felt like the Uber Tesla's I've ridden in had no rear suspension whatsoever. Felt like riding in a wooden wheeled cart.
Give me a 300,000 mile NYC Uber Camry any day over it. Or my usual airport driver's 400k E350, that thing is a tank and rides great because he takes perfect care of it.
FWIW, my coworker’s model 3 dual motor had an effective highway range of 100 miles in this recent cold spell
I guess he wasn't using the heater, then!
My aunt passed away last week and I was talking to her grandson who in town for the funerary rites. It got down to zero last night here in Detroit and today I don't think it got over 18 today. He was getting ready to leave his uncle's place and said he had to warm up the rental car, something he said that he's not used to because they have a couple of Teslas back home in Las Vegas. I said to him, "Like you need to warm up your car in Vegas?"
"I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We’re scared now. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals."
the most retarded leftists do this neat thing where they say things that would normally be 4chan shitposts but they mean every word and wind up being more racist than the actual racists they hate and its hilarious
"I’m wearing a Brioni tie on that Budd shirt"
ffs what are we even paying the subscription fee for
as far as the camry vs model 3 debate goes i can see see few people spending $656/mo https://www.tesla.com/en_ca/model3/design#overview over the $144.62 weekly of the base model camry https://www.toyota.ca/toyota/en/build-price/camry?series=CAH&model=DAACKC&year=2025
granted this is in canada so the results might be somewhat different elsewhere
Weekly payments?
correct
i have no idea what their deal is with that
I thought Canada was bi-weekly or bi-monthly payments? That's what I used to see on dealer windows in 2015/16/17 when I was up there monthly. Honestly haven't noticed what the dealers had advertised in Ottawa or Toronto during my two trips in 2024. Granted I also have barely any interest in new cars that I could buy off the lot nowadays...
See, if you had a uniform and a pulpit and a fake title, you, too, could make such pronouncements.
“Dear brethren, gathered before us, God is good, and Miata is always the answer! Amen.
exactly zero reason why we couldnt turn acf into a cult
we already pay dues
might as well get some tax break out of it
Aren’t there mail order clergy license mills? Legal in most states.
How are these license mills any different than the non-believers at Episcopalian divinity schools where the attendees are just looking for a cushy job?
A shifty funeral director has more empathy than the grim looking bishop shrew.
I've long thought actual Born-Again Christians didn't care WHAT problems they had in this life because they were in good with Jesus. At least that was the case with the two guys I've met who I'm pretty sure were the real deal.
Heart attack? Car crash? Terrorist bomb? A thundering Meh.
"Hey Dad, this guy's with me. He's cool, you can let him in."
Famous motorcycle champion Freddie Spencer was accused of being too brave because of his faith in God. People actually accused him of taking too much risk because he believed God was on his side.
Or maybe he was afraid God would say, "You should've gone for it, Freddie. You knew I had your back."
unfathomably based
Look I am all for sending every back home but whether it POC citizens, illegal aliens or whatever other group is popular the leftists dehumanize them all with their rhetoric. I have worked with many illegals and they were all human beings like the rest of us deserving of being treated as such.
exactly
they can be decent people
in their own country
I agree but the fact these leftist bastards get to claim the high ground bothers me greatly.
i feel the exact same way
unfortunately there doesnt seem to be much stopping them from acting like this
Shit it is bad here but aren't youup there in Soviet Canuckistan with years of Trudeau rule.
correct
we have had an apocalyptically bad time since he took power and are dealing with an immigration crisis that has crippled the country and appears to be irrecoverable
seriously everything is going sideways fast here and we are in actual trouble
A few thoughts...the first an opinion , and the second... a fact. First, I want to go on the record as NEVER saying you looked like a soup sandwich. In fact, your wardrobe is to be envied...it's great, wonderful, amazing, perhaps the best since Lincoln! Second, the Obama and Clinton families didn't just break a few eggs in the acquisition of their untold wealth, they made omelets in perpetuity. Neither Bill, Hillary, Barry or Michelle came from wealth. I believe Bill simply wanted to be a politician, and he was a great one, while Hillary, Barry, and Michelle wanted cash, and lots of it. But they all turned government wages into many millions. But sadly for them, they all came to realize that money was not the answer to their unhappiness or their bitterness. In the end, despite their generational wealth, Bill is still stuck with Hillary, and Barry is still saddled with Michelle (at least for now). Their unhappiness endures.
"break a few eggs in the acquisition of their untold wealth, they made omelets in perpetuity"
some might say the omlettes were just a side benefit of breaking so many eggs
speaking of eggs, I was in the grocery store yesterday, and the cheapest carton of dozen eggs was $9.99!!!
try buying the ones that arent gold
they only had the standard white and brown. there is some sort of "chicken shortage" out here in californistan
dunno if theres much of a shortage theyve always been pretty much the same sizea nd if anything have gotten bigger over the years
In Michigan they're forcing producers to go cage free, which meant my local Kroger was out of eggs for a while.
California has passed a LOT of weird laws on farming and food. It drives the prices up a lot. Odds are those eggs are imported from another state.
Its time CA just delete every law and start over. And the ballot initiative thing sounds like a good idea but just results in all sorts of stupidity.
"Where does food come from?"
"The store."
...is the problem.
bird flu has been going around
One of the local (nicer) grocery stores has eggs for $12.69 per dozen. They are cage free or something like that, but still. My wife just got two dozen at Costco for just under five dollars. The regular local grocery chain is charging around four dollars for a dozen.
I just spent 35 bucks on chicken feed, if that makes you feel better.
Depends on if that was a 5 lb or 50 lb bag.
Well… it was actually 100lbs. Two 50lbs bags from Tractor Supply.
I prefer clean hands and a good night's sleep myself.
Maybe it was Mom who said it, but I dont want to call her and ask!
The best since Lincoln? I'm picturing a 1989 Taurus based Continental that was flogged in a New Jersey airport Hertz fleet for 120k! I'll continue to dress in a similar fashion but I'd start out as a Chevette.
I don't know how wealthy Obama's maternal grandparents who raised him were, but his grandmother was the VP of a bank and he went to a private school that has a larger endowment than Cranbrook.
As a former VP at a Fortune 500 bank, being a VP is meaningless. I’d be more impressed by a guy who knows where every item is in a hardware store. The guy who says, “Oh, hinges for a screen door? They’re in aisle 7”.
Former securities and insurance VP here. Yep, means nothing.
Useless people being promoted to VP (or many other management positions) is why I always laugh when people accuse a woman of getting a job on her knees or back. I'm like, Oh, it's better when a guy gets his job on the golf course or at the bar? Or because 50% of his genes came from the owner's wife and the remaining 50% are believed to have come from the owner?
You're killing me. I assumed you were a teenaged first cousin once removed of J & M Baruth. You're the Vietnam vet father!? I wouldn't know how to interact with my own father if I had anything similar to this. Fortunately, personal web logs don't have comments. Or readers. Heheheh.
Being able to regularly talk to my own father, and to interact with him in all sorts of ways, is a great joy in my life, and reminds me to stay alive for my own son, if I can.
Say what you want about Trump, but he ended the Clinton, Bush, and Obama dynasties. And with a stake to their hearts. The country owes him a debt of gratitude for that public service.
more importantly he singlehandedly prevented a women from becoming president on two separate occasions
Great point! And not just any women, but two women who could accurately be described as being America’s ex-wives.
thats being charitable
they are demons rendered unto flesh
one just happens to be more brown and retarded than the other
"That's why people like Sarah Palin. She's not shrill. She doesn't remind anyone of their ex-wife."
- Rush Limbaugh
Except for Todd Palin.
Well...yeah.
best phrase of the year so far!!!
More specifically, THOSE particular women.
Pantsuit-wearing ballbusters and shrewish harridans both.
Slick Willy is about Trump's age. Look at each of them and who they're married to.
Not only is Melania smoking hot, she gets the idea of being a Trump. This video sums it up, from the streets. https://x.com/KarluskaP/status/1881767877801631890?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I wonder how much his teetotaling plays into how he has more stamina than most people half his age?
I suppose it’s between that and Melania. 🙂
Both he and W are really starting to show their ages!
Obama seems to be doing the best of the three former Presidents.
"Soup sandwich."
Hey Drill Sergeant? Be careful with that joke, it's an antique.
I have an Army-inspired everlasting hatred for the philosophy of negative reinforcement. Superman himself would be a worthless piece of shit to all the R. Lee Ermey wannabes in the silly hats.
I don't believe that to be a fair characterization. Some of the eggs broke themselves...by shooting themselves in the head. Twice. Or by hanging themselves with an electrical cord...after they supposedly shot themselves in the chest with a shotgun.
“He fell down an elevator shaft….onto some bullets.”
Here in the urban sunbelt Tesla’s pencil out pretty decently. Many decent apartment complexes have chargers that can overnight charge, many employers have chargers and the malls and grocery stores in nice parts of town all have chargers as well. For people who rarely if ever drive out the city limits (and there are a lot) it makes sense and at least here in Elon’s new adopted State even if you are headed out to a major city there’s a long row of Superchargers at Bud-Ees which chances are those drivers will stop at anyway. Frigid temperatures are an occurrence for a handful of times a year and they will probably work from home that day anyway. Even in Po Cousin San Antonio the roads are full of em.
I live in the so called sun belt and the charging infrastructure sucks and single digits have been hell on range. I live in a city of 200k and 2 hours from cities of 500k and their charging infrastructure ain't great either.
I so want an EV but infrastructure has to get better first. Even new apartments going up aren't putting in chargers.
GM wasted $10 billion on their failed rideshare startup when they should have been building charging stations like Tesla did. Was this not obvious to GM management?
Apparently, Nope.
They had fantasies of Tech startup stock valuations from their Cruise misadventure.
room temp iq in than boardroom
at least theyre consistent
You can slay the miles in a Camry. If you're in a Tesla you're a grocery stick charging all the time.
I had a Camry a rental after a minor accident for about three weeks recently. Going in, I wasn’t prepared to be very impressed. After driving it, if I was currently car shopping, it would be at the top of my list for driving to work (I put on a lot of miles for my job) and daily driving. Everything worked well and easily, and it had more power than I expected it would.
If it was strictly a lease v lease deal and I had zero lifestyle issues with an EV, I’m getting an EV every single day of the week.
Forget your $300 Model 3, do you *know* how cheap any of the Ultium platform cars are? Equinox EVs can be found under $200/mo with effectively nothing up front. A Lyriq is maybe $400! That’s a $70k car!
The Mach E and Ioniq 5/EV6 are better products than the Model 3 (at least in my eyes. Elon being the world’s most pathetic man aside, I despise the interior of all Tesla products) and lease for about the same money, if not considerably cheaper.
If it can fit your lifestyle, it’s almost stupid to consider anything other than an EV lease.
As for me, I live in an apartment and drive 30k miles per year, so I am taking “Bark Maruth’s” advice and test driving a Genesis G70 next week. Wish me luck.
You're going to like the G70. Even more so with the 3.3, perhaps.
I was bullish on cheap Lyricas until I got on the subreddit and saw how many of them have been in dealer service parking lots for MONTHS. General Motors makes Tesla look like Pagani.
Uh oh. Is that the same piece of GM that Honda is putting its name on?
the Honda / Acura EV is a Chevy Blazer EV in disguise (same platform as Lyriq)
Yay, additional versions of a crappy EV no one wants.
I think they’ve sold a bunch. I wonder how many Honda buyers realize they bought a Chevy?
I’m positive the Honda dealer never mentioned it (if they even know).
Same percentage as knowing Isuzu SUV buyers at Honda and Acura dealers in 1994!
Oh my, it is? LOL
Though in fairness, my dad drove a Bolt for a few years. I called it the Electric Egg. Never gave him trouble, had the battery fire potential battery replacement recall performed, and sold it for an '18 Cruze diesel 6-speed. The Bolt crashed over road imperfections, but was otherwise a fun little car to drive. The lack of a transmission was a revelation for maneuvering in traffic.
Yup! Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX are all GM, baby! Down to the infotainment, HVAC controls, and physical keys.
Amazing. I was surprised the proportions looked so similar !
I thought I heard something just this past week that the GM/Honda Ultium partnership is probably done.
eeeeek, that's not good; so there are Lyriqs parked out front by the dozen (unsold) AND out back by the dozen (broken)?! perfect GM, just perfect.
It is indeed with the 3.3. A lovely 2022 Sport Prestige with good miles in Havana Red and the light color interior. I’m excited about it. Fits the Venn Diagram of everything I am looking for pretty well, and is like $10k cheaper than an equivalent M340i or C43 or whatever. I may regret not buying a Lexus bc of resale, but if I have to go automatic, I’d like it to be faster than a Civic Hybrid at least.
Lyriqs aren’t good vehicles, and the Ultium products seem to generally be colossal pieces of shit, but they are cheap as hell to lease and the interiors are nice. I imagine leasing a Lyriq really means splitting time with a service loaner CT4 or XT4 and that’s not so bad either tbh.
Resale is overrated, keep it if you like it and drive it into the ground.
It's funny, I'd think of leasing a Caddy EV as a commuter if we end up moving to Miami for good, but then I remember how fast a friend dumped their leased SRX 3.6 to go back to European cars - just too many nagging unscheduled dealer visits. Finding a Polestar2 may be the best bet, but I also doubt my wife actually lets me get an EV. More likely we get a big, older German sled for the highway cruising we normally do.
I recommended a manual trans G70 to a friend in 2019 and he loves it. Fun to drive, great dealer service and dead reliable. However, is Genesis reliability that much better then standard Hyundai, or did he get lucky?
No, it's no better.
It's worse.
The difference is that Genesis gets to compete against BMW and Mercedes-Benz rather than against Toyota and Honda.
Out of curiosity, did your bother ever have any issues with his?
I don't believe so but on the other hand he didn't have it foe all that long...
Don't forget the part with the lyrIQ where the dash vent can't blow air at the drivers face
That’s funny, because GM blows at so much.
Not for lack of engineering skill or passion in the Design Department. GM's failings are entirely the fault of the boardroom.
For once my friend, I beg to differ.
While there are skilled engineers there, it's much more the exception than the norm these days. GMs engineering talent is a hollow shell of it's former self after waves of firings, retirements, and a corporate culture that values attention seeking behavior and theatrics over actual achievement.
As for GM styling.... Go look at the VistIQ when it comes to your local auto show and tell me that wasn't designed by a committee.
Or the celestIQ where, when given a blank slate to do something really wild, GM design said "we want to copy the A7, but uglier"
I could go on at length but I think you see where I'm going with this.
I was thinking Corvette, MagnaRide, the LS...
“VistIQ?”
What in the wide world of sports is that?!
I am wondering if you know Lyrica is a treatment for fibromyalgia and you are being sarcastic or just made a typo?
Not just for that. It's a great nerve pain medicine.
Sure but fibro is funnier.
No matter how many times I hear about these bargain leases, I can’t find them in northeast Ohio.
It’s very region/store dependent, truthfully. Gotta shop around and also know what the myriad rebates and such are. The super, unbelievably cheap ones are in Colorado I think. That’s the place where you could lease any number of CDJR or Nissan products for numbers like $59/mo after taxes and tags.
Prologues were going for around $200/$250 per month around me in MD last I checked.
I saw an OutOfSpec video where Kyle said one dealer out there was literally doing $20/mo leases for Leafs. That's way cheaper than an actual golf cart!
The lease for the GM vacuum cleaners are probably for 10K miles. Anyone driving to bingo, the pharmacy and church will do that in 4 months.
Most of the crazy cheap ones are. Has always been the case with any lease. Miles aren’t *terribly* expensive if you buy up front though.
And, really, something like that would be fine for people like my fiancée who has an 8 mile commute to work and doesn’t drive a whole hell of a lot otherwise.
To Tesla's credit, going to 15k miles adds something like $30 per month to the total.
That’s wild.
Good for them.
If Elon wasn’t such a hatable, pathetic figure and if the cars were made to anything resembling a quality standard, I’d be rooting for them.
Musk is a heroic figure. I’d buy any of his products, if they worked for me.
He’s a lot of things. Some of them interesting, most of them terrible.
At the very, very least — and this looking past all partisan politics and tech/oligarch shit — being the wealthiest man in the world and also being so starved for love and affection as he is is truly pathetic.
Almost all leases are like that. From 10k to 12k miles costs me like $8-12/mo on both Acura and Jeep.
Don't ever lease an AMG CL mercedes, then. That cost me $450 a month to change.
Saga of my '05 Skyline: Purchased in May 2017 with 57K miles. Given to my friend in November 2024 at 80K miles.
The secret is having a 5 mile commute for two years, then working from home the next six.
Should add, VW has a nationwide $189/mo lease deal for ID.4s. After taxes and tags and such, you’re looking at like.. what $250 max?
That said, the ID.4 is the biggest, most irredeemable piece of shit new car I can think of off hand so perhaps don’t do that.
Im seeing that for rwd models. So nationwide really means half the country for that version. Dealers near me also have precious few of those anyway.
I drove a press ID.4 and thought "Finally, a car to make the Model Y look serious."
I would chalk it up to just being a cynical compliance car, but VW also went ahead and based their entire future around it soooo
Idk. It’s a truly, shockingly awful car and I feel badly for anyone that accidentally bought one.
I do appreciate that they then went ahead and made a $70k version that is different insofar as it looks like someone drew a VW Bus from memory instead of purely just an anodyne blob.
I promise you, you might not like Tesla styling, the elongated muskrat, or Tesla interiors, but a model 3 is worth far more than an additional hundred dollars a month over an equinox EV.
Check out an IS350 as well
IS350 remains the car the smart version of me would buy, but they have the critical flaw of Being Slow, which, to paraphrase John Mayer, shouldn't matter but it does.
Is it still slow in a highway roll or just off the line? I find that I don't notice the differences much once a car is in the 4.5-6 sec 0-60 range, but lack of passing power drives me nuts.
I don't think you'll find it wanting for speed in daily use, but I would agree it's not fast.
That said, if you're looking for fast....go test drive a model 3 performance. Any of these cars are slow compared to that.
I would absolutely consider an EV if I could charge at home. I can’t, and I have no desire to sit at a rest stop or WaWa or what have you for 45 minutes per day.
Agree. IS350 is more than sufficient for daily use. 2015 IS350 F Sport has been my daily driver for last 9.5 years. Maybe it's not "fast" compared to the M340i, G70 3.3, Tesla Model 3P et al but I would never call it "slow" and can't ever see needing anything faster outside of a track. Also handles great (replace the OEM rubber with Michelin Pilot Sports), rides great, and has been extraordinarily reliable. Per Julian's question, highway passing power is excellent. It's also nice to not feel like you have to take a shower after interacting with the dealer.
I'm plainly biased but I think it is vastly underrated merely because it is an old platform and its performance stats certainly don't leap off the page (and also the infotainment - particularly archaic in mine - but I don't give an F about that). I could easily replace it with something newer/faster but see absolutely no need to do so. I will say that - unlike, say most BMW products which these days are tuned to feel more like caged animals - it is relatively docile in ordinary operation and it's only when you push it that you fully appreciate its performance capabilities.
After the Gen 3.5 refresh in 2021 or whenever, they did get bigger and it's possible a little pokier.
I could regularly get an IS350 to 100-125mph between corners in the Hocking Hills. It's no 392 Hemi though. Neither is the IS500, come to think of it.
And by the way, just so the ACF readers know, I’ve been driving an EV all across the country for work for the past three years and am intimately familiar with what living with a pure EV is like.
I have a very nice Level 2 charging station at my home and I also have very cheap electricity rates.
On paper, that cheap three year lease would be just as logical for me, as it appears to you, Jack.
But as great as EVs are with their instant acceleration and quiet interiors and waking up with a “full tank” every morning, what most folks don’t understand is the added wasted time and anxiety that driving an EV introduces into your life.
At some point, you will be driving to work, or to an emergency meeting of some kind, and due to weather/headwind/lard ass/lead foot, et al, your range will recalculate and you will be performing E6-B calculations like the navigator on the Red October trying to figure out if you are actually going to make it.
And then you divert to a charging station and……it’s broken. Or occupied by a fucking Uber driver in a Chevy Bolt that can only charge at 50kwh and the driver is a moron and tells you that he/she/it “must charge to 100%” and that will take three hours.
Trust me, people like us do not have the time to deal with the bullshit of driving an EV.
Fuck that shit. It’s no way to go through life.
Ride that V-Strom and enjoy life.
Drive that Tesla and hate life.
It’s that fucking simple.
Fuck! I’m worked up just thinking about the past three years driving all over the country on an EV. Frack!
Some people love the bars of their cages while fearing freedom more than anything else. They'll gladly eat the bugs, toss the salad, and drive the electric cars.
and why pray tell did you volunteer for that punishment??
Was that directed at me?
Yeah, why driving the EV?
My job. I was required to drive one. For privacy reasons, I don’t want to reveal too much. But I drove an EV cross-country for work.
I hope they pay you well. Having to sit in a parking lot waiting for some twit to slow charge a Bolt is cruel.
ICE vehicles are worth my time, EVs aren’t. Case closed.
Bonus points for Hunt for Red October reference!
And this thing handles like a pig!
It was a true joy to read!
"He was good ship."
Da!
I don’t need that kind of additional stress in my life, I’ll stick with cars powered by an internal combustion engine.
Amen, but the marketing messages tell me Tesla owners don't experience what life was like for us in hilly San Diego with a two-year off lease 2013 LEAF that could barely do 85 miles when we first bought it? The thought of having to compete with Model 3s for chargers if I were in a similar situation today... Nope nope nope.
The general public has figured out that EVs are niche vehicles and don’t want them. That is set in stone. They’re done as aspirational vehicles.
Shooter, you must have the patience of Jobe, I applaud your ability to drive an EV across flyover country. I on the other hand use to drive my 76 Coupe deVille across my territory that stretched from Cheyenne to Larado and from Phoenix to New Orleans and would get upset when the gas pump was slow filling the 27 gallon tank with high test….
One ping only Vasily.
"You arrogant ass!"
I've got a coworker who's wife purchased a Tesla. Her job is about 10 miles away so around town they always have a charge.
A week ago they went to a larger city just south about 120 miles away. They had started at 80 percent and got down there with less than 40 percent. The range hasn't been great due to the colder weather we've been getting in the south he said. They were in a panic trying to find a changing station that wasn't busy and actually worked. The city has plenty of chargers but he said you might have to drive 20 or 30 miles around just go find an open one on a weekend.
For me personally, driving several hours from one city to the next is stressful enough. No way am I panicking over getting a charge to get back home. We've had an EV push the last 4 years. How about a changing network and a grid update mandate first? It hit mid single digits here in the deep south and Utility companies were calling Uncle. How do I charge at night when utilities can't keep up in the winter in the south?
It's much easier to sell us all new cars than have the hard conversation about our busted infrastructure and what these mandates mean for it. In Connecticut, the state has passed tons of renewable requirements and banned new coal/gas and then allowed Eversource (our utility) to add a "public benefit charge" to everyone's bills that is roughly 30% of your total bill each month. This has caused great outrage, but it's just a hidden tax that the company is allowed to charge because our lawmakers are too craven to just raise taxes or acknowledge the effects of their policies.
As for EV's I see them all as great commuters and glorified versions of my mother-in-law's electric GEM Car "golf cart." That thing is great for running neighborhood errands around Miami or Vero, and an EV would do it all better plus get me to more places around town. However there's no way in hell that's worth the 40k that a real car costs, maybe if it was 15 like a nicer Nissan leaf but those days are gone.
Last uber/lyft I was in was a Bolt. Pretty sure it was rented; CO has different plates.
“Now let’s get off this topic before “Sherman McCoy” realizes I’m wearing a Brioni tie on that Budd shirt and launches into the sort of moronic, utterly unjustified pro-Zegna tirade which used to be the exclusive province of mercury-addled hatters before it became inexplicably popular with “digital pimps” and other unsavory remoras around the cloaca of our piscine economy.”
*cracks knuckles*
As you will doubtless recall, my central argument was that truly “luxurious” brands are typically owned and / or controlled by shareholders with a long-term time horizon. Brioni is part of the beleaguered Kering conglomerate (for now, at least), whereas Zegna is under the leadership of someone named (Ermene)Gildo Zegna; Gildo does graciously allow other shareholders to participate in the financial performance of his family’s company, however.
Today to my middle management spreadsheet job (in my home office) I wore LL Bean “active sport” pants and a Huk sweatshirt with a stain on it. And LL Bean moccasin slippers. Life is good.
I wish I could find my pair of LL Bean flannel-lined jeans, because it’s rather cold in Atlanta at the moment. When I was outside earlier, I had to put my Canada Goose Expedition Parka into use.
16 degrees in Gods Country, Baltimore, today meant I was dressed damn near head to toe in the very chic Carhartt
-6° in Chicagoland. Had the LL Bean Baxter State Parka out. That’s a heavy ass jacket.
It's been about the same in Detroit. I've been wearing my Persian lamb ushanka. The Russians know a thing or two about cold weather.
I drove through Atlanta today (wearing flannel lined dungarees even). Holy smokes, Atlanta sucks at winter! I’ve never seen that many cars off the road with so little frozen material.
I live in Buckhead, which is in Fulton County.
Fulton County salted heavily yesterday afternoon, whereas neighboring Dekalb County apparently did nothing. There was essentially zero evidence of snow today where I live; meanwhile, people were iced in just a few miles away. It was bizarre.
We shot through on 75 north to south with no issues. Just lots of “holy shit, look at that one!”
It snowed more further south, which is atypical. I-75 south of I-285 (i.e., toward Macon) probably got more snow Tuesday than it has in the past 25 years.
My friend who lives in Atlanta says he thinks they have one salt truck and one snow plow. I live in a city one state over with a county of 400k and we shut down a few weeks ago with 5 inches of snow. We have multiple snow plows and multiple brine trucks and the city was still shut down. Last year we shut down for a week due to ice.
Southern cities like mine admit to simply not paying for proper equipment when we get snow once a year. They'd rather have the city shut down. We also don't do winter tires.
Simply put, the south doesn't really do snow.
Especially when the snow is on top of an ice sheet, which is common. Something Yankees rarely deal with.
Yankee-land (well New England), gets plenty of that ice/snow mix but since they're used to it and salt like crazy it only really happens in parking lots and some dirt roads...
If you're headed to/through Nashville get ready for more... It looks like that with rain up there.
We went by Nashville at rush hour. No weather to speak of and no problems.
Will probably take a completely different route back, but won’t be leaving Daytona until mid-afternoon Sunday so still have plenty of time for the weather to change our plans.
Wow, I'm pleasantly surprised by my neighbors. Usually the 24 looks like a demolition derby/mad max scene after any sort of weather. It once took me 90 mins to go from downtown to Murfreesboro mid-day in the rain, with crashes every mile.
It looks like it'll warm up a bit this weekend so northern Florida should be passable after the crazy snow they got. We're a bit South of you right now in Florida.
You look to have crap weather to enjoy at Daytona, too.
I recall being there one year when it was raining sideways and 36 degrees.
😂
I’m wearing a windbreaker over a light fleece in Western NC and my neighbors are concerned I’ll freeze to death. As an ex-Chicago guy, it’s all relative. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing goose down above 0 degrees.
I once skied in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan when the high of the day was -18 degrees. Amazingly, the snow squeaks under your skis when it’s that cold because it doesn’t momentarily melt from friction. The snow is like styrofoam. Thank God for ski-in bars.
Half an inch of snow HERE yesterday and I was one of about twenty people out of 300 who wasn't working from home.
I've lived in north Jersey, Chicago, Akron, Pittsburgh. It doesn't snow here in the old Confederacy.
We had nearly 7 inches of snow Tuesday in the Gulf Shores/ Mobile area. But New Orleans and Pensacola got all of the press.
Everyone forgets that Alabama and Mississippi have a Gulf Coast, hell most coastal types would prefer to forget they exist outside of college football.
I experienced that phenomenon at Winter Park, CO once. The snow was really slow due to the friction.
It's been crunchy cold this week up here. Kids were off school Monday and Tuesday. The snow is still crunching today, loud enough I can hear it when I drive through parking lots. I had a homemade pasty for dinner last night. There's another one in my lunch today. I'm an oddball in that I love this weather.
Homemade pasty. You are a lucky man.
Mmmmmmmmmm!!! 😋😋😋😋😋😋
I had the opposite experience and realized that I've adapted to Florida winters now. It was 50 degrees and raining/raw yesterday with 20mph winds (windchill in the 40s), and I was all bundled up and complaining that it was cold.
5 years ago that would've been a perfect day to go for a winter bike ride in NJ or CT....
Yes, it isn't cold until the snow squeaks. That happens at the same temperature that causes nose hairs to become rigid.
My neighbors in my western chicago burb moved in from Australia. It'll be 53 degrees and I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt and they're in their parkas.
It was -10° yesterday morning when I headed out to walk 10 miles delivering mail. By 5:00 it was +10°. 10° has never felt so warm.
are those the Wicked Good slippers? if so, how are they? been pondering a pair
I have several pairs. They are worthwhile. I like the leather soled, shearling-lined slippers for indoor wear.
Yeah the venetians (no ties). On my second pair, they’re fantastic.
The name is an accurate description of them. I think I've got 4 pairs scattered about between the fur and flannel lined versions. Flannel works great as I get hot feet, but insides seem to take a beating after 2-3 years of wear (or my dog attacking the laces)
I, too, slubbed it. Gustin Wool Pocket Jersey long sleeve shirt (sick oxblood, bruh) for business up top, but Fjallraven G1000 pants (black) and the thickest Darn Tough socks (charcoal)... and bright orange, leather soled wool slippers from Kyrgistan rounding out the look. Consider that as you smoke your next stogie, McCoy!
The cigar lounge is invariably frigid.
I am currently smoking and wearing 5 layers.