You're closer to the truth than you realize. I met him once on the Nürburgring (they were demoing some outlandish VW truck he helped customize) and people were challenging him to take a lap with one of the local hotshoes and design a car while raced around the track. You should have seen the faces when he excused himself with this gem:
"Oh the internet here is so bad my ipad can't connect to my computer at home and I can't access my graphic assets."
Knowing this, open his instagram. See how many times you see that wheel from the XJS.
So much of his work is derivative, repetitive trash. Which is why it INFURIATED ME that the insurance company wouldn't work with Abimelec... but hey, Motor Trend was happy to snap him up.
Much like how all the light duty trucks keep getting taller every generation for no useful reason. The proportions are so goofy now I can’t stand any of them.
"You could very much improve on a stock early XJ-S. As Jaguar did by turning it into a stock late XJ-S."
Which wasn't the plan. Jaguar spent the better part of a decade developing the XJ41/42, which were (respectively) a coupe and a convertible that would replace the aging XJ-S, to be called "F-Type". They were also working on the XJ90, a new sedan with more modern, upright proportions that would replace the XJ40 XJ. (If you've ever sat in an XJ40, X300 or X308 XJ, you'll understand why this was desirable from an ergonomic standpoint).
When Ford fully took possession of Jaguar in 1989 and saw how badly its manufacturing and engineering operations were run, especially at Browns Lane, it canceled the XJ41/42 and XJ90. As far as the XJ90 went, Jaguar basically took the XJ90 concept's front and rear ends and grafted them to the existing XJ40, to create the X300--of which my "X305" XJ12 is a variant.
For the XJ41/XJ42, Ford told Jaguar to simply improve on the XJ-S and rechristen it the XJS, and that's the vastly superior model of which you speak.
However, TWR had a brilliant idea, which was to take the stillborn XJ41/42's suspension and adapt them to the existing XJS floorpan, for a budget XJS successor. They presented this proposal to the Jaguar board, who turned it down. It was subsequently picked up by Aston Martin, another FoMoCo property, as was the styling. TWR had brought in Ian Callum for the task. That car became the DB7, which catapulted Aston Martin into the modern era, especially after it received the new V12.
Shortly after that, Jaguar management--perhaps after being pressed upon by the Ford overlords--acquiesced, and the X100 XK8 was subsequently borne out of the improved XJS platform, as a cousin to the DB7.
I, of course, know all of this history – but the point is still that the facelifted XJS looks much better than the original.
Thankfully, the XJ41/XJ42 development (plus some of the XJS underpinnings) led to magnificient XK8, probably the most underappreciated Jaguar currently – and the thing I would very much like to replace my recently sold X308 with, though due to having a kid, I'll probably have to go for the X350, which finally got the useable proportions the X308 lacked.
I can and I did. But the X350 is something I'm willing to live with as a daily driver, including kid-hauling role. It's much safer, partly because it won't be rusty (aluminium), it's more spacious and generally it's a 21st century car, while the X308 is a facelift of a 1980s car.
There is a de minimis level of advertising in each ~250 page issue. There are certainly FAR, FAR fewer ads than you’d see in anything you could buy off the newsstand at Barnes & Noble AND the advertisements that do appear are FAR, FAR more tasteful / targeted to the readership / better integrated into the product.
My stupidphone keeps wanting me to download it. Needless to say, that ain't happening. I got rid of Facebook years ago, but had to reload it to stay caught up on the group for my neighborhood fight against the HOA that some developer is trying to start.
I quit FB as the middleman for my friendships a long time ago but have a “fake” one because my car and motorcycle clubs use it exclusively and there are some specific groups for hard to find parts.
I sold two cars on craigslist last year. Got 1-2k more than whatever the carmax equivalent offered me and 3k more than what audi offered me on trade-in
For what it's worth you can go into the app info and hit "uninstall updates" from the 3-dot menu, at which point the disabled app basically disappears from storage and you're left with a 100kb placeholder.
Magnus did a video recently featuring a Cayman R, owned by a soft and software engineer-looking guy from Texas. Magnus said a lot of nice things about it.
A month or two later it was on BAT. It sold OK but there was no Magnus bump to speak of.
I deduced a deal had been made for the video, and it didn't pay off.
I never wanted Magnus to be nefarious, but you've implied it. Now I can't go back. I'm not mad, though. It just confirms that most of the players in this game are clowns.
Do you think Haas will keep Nelson Piquet Jr. , sorry Jerry Reed "Smokey and the Bandit, sorry KMag around in 2025? Too bad the equipment is so expensive. If it wasn't, I'd love to have someone pull a NASCAR Dale E on him. I didn't sign up as a viewer for that crap. BS is that Haas is back.
Race was boring, fell asleep. Missed Norris winning. Probably not going to reup with F1TV in a couple of months. Don't have "TV" so if I care it will have to be after the fact on one of "those" sites
Heresy perhaps: something like this deserves to be done by competent people. Obviously these aren't those people, but you've joked about the Singer Milan and the Singer Accord V6 coupe - as gorgeous as they are, the XJS chassis deserve the treatment
The trick is, with cars that are distinct and have their own personality, to be subtle. This is incongruous and tasteless on every level, the exact opposite of what a Jaguar should be.
The bubble Caprice they did for some guy that ran across the country but was afraid of flying for a literal $1,000,000 is one of the coolest cars I have ever read about.
Insane money, but tough to argue the results if what you want is the actual best car money could buy.
Well, you can’t *really* daily drive one for a few reasons:
1-It looks like a “regular” 911 to the general public; this is part of the appeal of the car, of course, but if you’re driving around in $1MM, you want other motorists to react to your car like they would an exotic predatory animal - appreciate from afar, but don’t get too close; don’t tailgate; etc.
2-Should you have an accident in your $1MM 911, you’d prefer to have an airbag, right? Not in a Singer.
3-Should you have an accident in your $1MM 911, you’d like to be able to repair it with relative ease, right? The entire body is carbon fiber.
4-Who is going to service it for you?
5-Even IF you don’t care about having airbag(s) or the practical concerns of driving a car that is difficult to service or repair, they aren’t making any more of the “Classic.” So it would be damn hard to replace.
1 i would hope they do that anyway but of course they wouldnt
2 im used to not having an airbag but that aside im not sure having a 30 year old airbag would make the car magnitudes more survivable in a crash but its better than nothing
3 the funny thing is that this might be parallel to regular 993 ownership in the sense that its cheaper to simply replace and repaint than to repair even a steel fender and i bet singer could sell you one
4 singer themselves if not a service garage that deals with 993s although anything involving electrical might be tricky thanks to the unique harness
5 youre entirely right there
you make salient points but i cant help but lust after one as theyve done all the stuff i would have wanted to do to it anyway
When I singerized i mean a _tasteful_ restomodded XJS - not a wide-bodied fiberglass claptrap built on british engineering that was nowhere near SOTA at the time of manufacture.
It could be done, by a racecar manufacturer, or the Roadster Shop, or RaceCarReplicas, or dennis palatov. It's not impossible its just lots and lots and lots of time and effort
What you want out of an XJ-S restomod: straighten every bent piece, make it start and run every time, maybe come up with a better solution for the bumpers.
My heart hurts knowing that Newey is likely going to Ferrari. I've been captivated by him ever since my undergrad engineering days. And I've hated Ferrari for about that long too.
If it works out, it will be the SECOND time that Hammy has fucked over everybody around him and chased money... only to be rewarded with the best car through some sort of magical luck. The only consolation is that he'll have to qualify the thing against Leclerc, which will make his current struggles against Princess George look dignified in hindsight.
There’s definitely a weird uncanny valley thing going on with that Jag. I don’t hate it, and certainly don’t hate the idea of a restomod XJS as a concept, but the details of this just look kinda wrong in a lot of places.
Relatedly, I have a burning desire for an XJS of any stripe. Preferably done up as a rat rod with a 350, because I am redneck at heart.
Also relatedly, my wallet cannot afford a car like that without angering many people in my life.
But still a man can dream.
Completely unrelated to anything, anyone have any tips for navigating the present job market? I’m still extremely employed but I have totally soured on the company, as it continues to throw new roles at me with lightning speed all while offering approximately zero guidance. It’s less than ideal… Years of experience in ops management and account management in the automotive sector. Wouldn’t mind doing the same stuff but for a different name on the check.
What sort of guidance are you looking for as you take on these new roles? In my experience that sort of role movement usually means someone has seen value in you and they have you marked for upper management after getting a diverse taste of the business.
Is your experience with Tier Suppliers or OEMs? Given the account management I assume your ops management was customer facing/sales ops, vs manufacturing?
As dumb as it sounds, I'm mostly just looking for where to start. I've been with the same company for five years, and only came here after a total career change. Landscape has changed a lot in that time, and I didn't have quite the resume I do now.
Indeed and LinkedIn are a labrynthian nightmare to deal with. As it stands , I'm mostly just setting a few filters and sending an application out to whatever
And yes customer facing/sales; largely working with dealers rather than OEMs. Would prefer working for an OEM more than anything else at this point, but I'm not too picky on the specifics.
Get your resume buffed up, and consider having a professional review it, with all the "AI" HR systems being used now its more important than ever to have the right key words in your resume to get past the initial automated screening. The pros will help you with that.
I've found going direct to companies websites that you'd like to work for and reviewing their job openings, then using LinkedIn to try and "network" with the HR department/assumed hiring manager is a more effective way to job hunt than applying through the LinkedIn/Indeed postings. Be prepared to get ghosted more than you would on tinder only swiping right on 9s and above. Good luck, it is a slog.
I believe we have not yet discussed the OTHER retro-inspired front-engined V-12 coupe that broke cover recently.
I am talking, of course, about the Ferrari Dodici Cilindri, which some people are already calling the “12 C,” in apparent willingness to erase the McLaren (MP4-)12C from history.
I had been looking forward to the new Ferrari for some time; there is a long-running and active thread of speculation pertaining to the car on FerrariChat, where I occasionally lurk.
You can see the Daytona influence in the front end, of course. Some commenters also believe it looks like a Hyundai Ioniq 5 or a Lucid Air. The rear end has a bunch of black stuff that - per Flavio Manzoni - CANNOT be painted body color. Same goes for the roof (based on the configurator).
I have two friends who were invited to the Ferrari event in Miami (and therefore expected to purchase the car). One lives locally, attended, and didn’t like the car. He is begrudgingly ordering one anyway; he has an FXX-K Evo and has a 499P incoming, so he has to be a good boy and lap it all up eagerly. The other one lives on the west coast and is stepping away from purchasing Ferraris (he has 6 or 7 already and also owns a minority stake in a dealer group) in lieu of Gordon Murray’s products. He did not attend the event, and found the car very disappointing. As did I.
Furthermore, I watched the Kentucky Derby and then spent several hours later Saturday night catching up with an old friend who SHOULD be an ideal Ferrari customer. He is in his late 30s and inherited a serious collection of cars (275 GTB/4; D Type; Cobra; GT40; etc). In addition to the 275, he also has a Ferrari 575M Maranello. He said the rear end of the “12 C” reminded him of a Jensen Interceptor or an AMC Pacer!
Sherman, your circle of friends never cease to amaze. I am amazed you do not have permanent nose bleed traveling in such high circles. You talk of buying Ferraris like the rest of us talk of choosing between a Vega and a Pinto for a commuter car. But I guess someone has to do it and we are glad it is you and not Mr. Looserman. 🤣🤣
To be clear - I do not own a Ferrari. My concern is that the new Ferrari will pull prices on the 812 Superfast and 550 Maranello higher, as those are two that I covet! There is a big, big difference between buying a $1XX,000 car and buying a $3XX,000 car; it’s not just the dollar amount, it’s the psychology of it, as well. Had I been able to do so at age 25, I would’ve stroked the check without a second thought. A decade on, I realize it’s probably not the most (long-term) satisfying way to deploy that kind of cash. Maturity, I suppose!
I met the first guy through Instagram. He is a total trustafarian who has never even thought about work. We smoked cigars together - he is a big Cuban collector - during Ferrari’s Corse Clienti event at Road Atlanta in 2020 (the last semi-normal weekend before COVID). We are both diehard F1 fans, and he attends a lot of races with Ferrari, so he frequently feeds me little nuggets of info. He was briefly shown on TV when the broadcast cut to the Ferrari garage on Sunday.
I know the second guy through a few car forums. He is also a big Cuban cigar collector, and he has sold me several trophy boxes at “friendly” prices over the years. He lives in Bel Air, but he recently joined an Atlanta-headquartered law firm, so he passes through here from time to time. He is a good resource for how the Ferrari game “really” works, particularly at the dealer level.
I have known the third guy for 10+ years, and we are very close. His now-wife happened to overhear a conversation I was having at a happy hour; she joined the conversation and suggested that I meet her boyfriend. I was at their wedding, and we have traveled together several times. We were at Road America for the vintage race weekend in 2016 or so; a Jag D Type experienced a failure to proceed relatively close to our vantage point. The driver pulled off the track and through a gap in the fence. My buddy and I walked over (beers in hand - probably New Glarus); he began troubleshooting the problem with the driver, who was perhaps surprised that a fresh-faced fellow (he was in his early 30s at the time) had intimate knowledge of a Jag D Type’s mechanical foibles.
Sherman, I was complimenting you on your circle of friends, sorry my humor does not come across in a two dimensional format. I to have a few friend that have high altitude circle of friends. This past weekend a friend had me over as he was selling his 928-S and a guy flew out from California to buy it. The buyer showed up with a friend in a GT-3. He drove the 928 and had his friend follow to see how it looked going down the road. They traded places so he could see what he would look like going down the road. The buyer came back and called two more friends who arrived in Tesla S Class to check out the 928. Long story short this buyer took four hours of driving the car, putting it on a lift, having the compression checked, and driving the car three or four times. To top it off he haggled for an hour over $500 difference in offer and sale price. He then opens his brief case and pulls out $35,000 in $100 bills and pays cash.
My circle of friends and acquaintances is probably most attributable to my hobbies, and the fact that I have lived in the city center of two high income towns (Atlanta and Chicago) since I graduated from college.
But bear in mind I grew up in a town of 1,200 people that was an hour’s drive (each way) from anything (or anyone) remotely interesting.
Dying at the the thought of swapping places to see how it looks when driven.
How insecure does one have to be?
I think Sherman will state something like those in that station must be able to hold themselves up and examine their aesthetics. I say they don't have fuck you money yet or are underdeveloped humans.
Silentsod, I did not tell the good part. After the buyer and the owner of the GT-3 got back the buyer was talking to my friend and the owner of the GT-3 took a hose off the wall of my friends garage sprayed off the GT-3 because it got dusty on the drive over and shammed it down. And it happens again when the two other guys showed up in the S Class inevitably one of them did the same thing. Three of the four guys had Porches jackets and those wrap around skinny sun glasses. It was a hoot. I know they all must have been members of the Porche Owners Club…. Again I don’t travel in those circles. And before anyone blames Boomers they were in their 30’s….
Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather hang out with the guys choosing between a Vega and a Pinto, sharing beers as we're wrenching on the heap yet again and bitching about ... whatever. Honestly, it sounds like a lot more fun.
As I emphasize to Jack with regularity, I have significant life experience living both in deeply red, blue collar, rural America AND the precise opposite of those characteristics.
While both groups have their relative merits - and demerits - I find the relatively “urbane” cohort more interesting.
Maybe I’m a philistine, but to me the high water mark of modern front engined V12 Ferrari design peaked where it started, at the 550. Everything since has gotten fatter, uglier, and more automatic. Ick. Whereas the 550 is gorgeous, semi attainable, and usable. I covet one.
They are relatively scarce, absolutely beautiful, and will be big money at some point - certainly more than the 575, 599, F12, 812, and 12 C (assuming the “base” versions, not the Versione Speciale models).
This isn't going to be a popular comment here, but it rubs me the wrong way that the guy who bitches NONSTOP, IN ALL CAPS about how all his legal peril is ELECTION INTERFERENCE by keeping him away from the campaign trail, seems to have ample time to attend third rate sporting events. God forbid he miss a UFC fight.
It is my assumption that he was in the McLaren garage because he knows the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. Mumtalakat, the Bahraini Sovereign Wealth Fund, recently bought out the minority shareholders of McLaren (Mansour Ojjeh’s estate / heirs; Michael Latifi) to become the sole shareholder.
So there was little that Zak Brown and co could do about Trump making an appearance in the garage.
Another way to look at it: the Uniparty will not rest until he dies in prison, and they are willing to tear up every law in the country to do it. Why not catch a race in person before it happens, as it inevitably will?
If the Uniparty is really trying to do that, they’re doing an incredibly shitty job. For starters, why hand the most slam dunk case (the classified documents) to an incompetent Trump appointee that’s capitulating to every one of his bullshit stall tactics? And why push any of this after it became obvious that Trump is benefiting from playing the victim?
I do think that the amount of effort spent searching for crimes, no matter how novel, to prosecute Trump for is obsessive, wasteful and all around beyond the pale. I also think Trump’s defenses, which amount to “everyone is out to get me” and “the rules shouldn’t apply to me” illustrate that he’s a malignant narcissist unfit for office far better than any Democrat hatchet job ever could.
With respect, you're confusing the masculine mindset ("let's get him out of the way, or dead") with the feminine mindset ("Trumpitler must be PUNISHED!!!!"). Thus the avalanche of cases instead of one effective case, the idiot affirmative-action attorneys/DAs, and so on.
Trump's gift is that they keep handing him goblins and nightmare people against who he can contrast himself. Seriously. ANYBODY but Hillary Clinton beats him in 2016, even Mayor Pete.
I’m not confusing anything. If your conspiracy is made up of a bunch of histrionic boobs that can’t even keep the story straight, then you don’t really have a conspiracy.
It was the same thing with Dubya. They couldn’t decide if he was BUSHITLER or an idiot. Turns out I was wrong and he was a bit of both.
Masculine, feminine, whatever. The right embarrasses itself by taking it seriously at all. Trump is the luckiest man in the world based on the unlikability and incompetence of his opponents, yet he is the perpetual victim. Talk about feminine energy…
"If your conspiracy is made up of a bunch of histrionic boobs that can’t even keep the story straight, then you don’t really have a conspiracy."
To be fair, you don't need a "conspiracy to get trump" any more than you need a "conspiracy to spread monkeypox". As long as everyone is working from the same set of assumptions, their behavior will be the same.
"Turns out I was wrong and he was a bit of both."
More like von Hinderburg -- a decent human being who was of endless use to evil men.
"Trump is the luckiest man in the world based on the unlikability and incompetence of his opponents, yet he is the perpetual victim."
Being sued and criminally charged just once or twice can ramp up your paranoia and victim beliefs. How many times has it happened to Trump? The irony is that they've drowned the legitimate cases in a tidal wave of Leticia What's Her Name.
TikTok has American kids praising Bin Ladin and cutting their tits off, while ByteDance's version of TikTok for China, Douyin, limits children to 40 min a day and shows kids under 14 science experiments, museum exhibits, patriotism videos, and educational content.
If you can't tell the difference from deliberate behavior, maybe the behavior is deliberate.
Every social media platform, from TikTok to Instagram to Truth Social, is shit. Every one of them should be burned to the ground in a social media version of Project Mayhem.
There's a scene in the documentary The Social Dilemma in which a former Facebook engineer says, straight up, that there's no way he'd let his kids use social media.
Says everything you need to know about social media.
>TikTok has American kids praising Bin Ladin and cutting their tits off.
Yeah. But so do other social media platforms. Don't expect this to change with TikTok out of the picture.
>Douyin limits children to 40 minutes a day and shows kids under 14 science experiments, museum exhibits, patriotism videos, and educational content.
The lesson we should be learning from China on social media is to not ban the things we don't like, but restrict access to children and regulate the hell out of their purposefully addictive designs. But this would significantly hurt big tech profits, while banning TikTok will make them go up. Purposefully missing the forest for the trees.
China may be showing their kids that, but the kids there KNOW it's bullshit and they've been checking out of society for YEARS at this point (see the "laying-flat movement"). China is weak, aging FAR more quickly than we are, and lies about EVERYTHING. I wouldn't trust anything from them, given that their media is all state-controlled. Every last thing you hear about them is propaganda. Its entire intent is to make you post things like this. They are not strong, they do not innovate, their economic/financial situation is so much worse than ours. I wouldn't inflict Chinese society on my worst enemy. Well, maybe I would, but they suck. Maybe not as bad as Iran or Gaza, but pretty bad nonetheless.
I only know two kinds of ex-pats: people who feel as you do, and people who think China not only WILL rule the world, they SHOULD. There's, like, zero in-between.
China is like a piece of poorly-made steel: Looks tough, might even take a few good hits, but it's full of slag and inclusions that'll allow an otherwise recoverable hit to become fatal.
ADV China (now apparently The China Show) has a lot of really good content on the state of modern China. Their first-hand experience there shows that to be true.
It's not TikTok that's the issue, and it certainly isn't helping.
I would say something like the life of America, as a nation, has been given over to corruption through various ways (be it propaganda, a turn from X to Y, blah blah) and this is a broader fallout.
As an historical appeal - the founders of America understood the system they were putting in place required a particular character of persons.
Seventy five years of prosperity has made Americans soft. (myself included).
We take our good fortune for granted and (as as society) thing nothing of squandering it through generous welfare programs, lax immigration of the world's most unproductive, an overly enthusiastic regulatory regime, and outlandish climate change pork spending and mandates that will have a net negative return.
Owned a XJ-S (either a ‘76 or a ‘78) for a couple years, long ago. Got it for next to nothing from a co-worker, didn’t run. Sent the fuel injection ECU off to some guy that rebuilt them. Fun car, though the 3 speed GM slush box was an absolutely AWFUL match to the high revving V12. Guys were doing 5 speed manual conversions, which I considered, but I ended up moving so I sold the car.
Styling holds up well. A light resto mod based on the Tom Walkinshaw race cars would be interesting, with some minor suspension and brake upgrades.
This thing those two ass-clowns are proposing to build should be burned in effigy. And anyone buying it should be sent off to live on “influencer island”, which is adjacent to “pedo-island” and where we should send all the world’s influencers.
d.e.davis invited me to drive in the 'usa today's most desirable cars' over 30 years ago. there was an xjs convertible in the group that i considered just took up too much space. it was sky blue. but when i eventually got in it felt like the most glamorous, romantic car i'd ever sat in. i was ready to take catherine deneuve and drive off into the sunset--and i didn't even like catherine deneuve. at the most only 3 other cars hit me with an unexpected emotion when i first sat in them. amazing.
Got a friend who bought a '95 XJ-S 4.0 convertible in 2015 for his wife to take their kids to get ice cream and for short family road trips. Not sporting in any way, but a fine grand touring sort of car as Toly says. And it turned out to be more reliable than her parade of leased Range Rovers. I want to think he paid something like $18K for it with ~40K miles then and it's over 70K now and has never given them any real trouble.
"six-cylinder convertible for Palm Beach divorcees" has become "six-cylinder convertible for happy New Albany wives"
Playing Real Good For Free is one of my favorite songs but I lost interest in Joni Mitchell when she started trying to prove that she was a real artist. At least I have some of her recordings. I couldn't tell you what any of Taylor Swifts songs are. I happened to catch a video of her performing live with the sound off and I got the impression that opera and ballet are more spontaneous and improvisational.
Speaking of music, I've been on a Dire Straits jag lately. Is Mark Knopfler a British Donald Fagen? Maybe not as much of a perfectionist, but he makes mature music.
If Tick Tock was shut down, pretty sure the next day the world would still turn. Sun would rise. Tradesmen would go to work. And politicians could worry about real problems.
"The Kyza?"
I have deafening DOUCHEBAG alarms going off in my head right now that sound just like Starfleet Red Alert klaxons.
That Jag looks like a modern incarnation of the Koenig cars of the 80s with the fake side intakes...
https://thembmarket.com/1983-mercedes-benz-380sec-koenig-specials-1
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1887-mercedes-benz-560-sel-koenig-specials/
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/classic-cars/a13100907/you-must-buy-this-jaguar-xjs-koenig-widebody-to-keep-the-1980s-alive/
But not QUITE as obviously fake.
There are a lot of AI cars and it’s as infuriating as an AI hottie
That guy long ago surpassed “douchebag” status and graduated to “douchenozzle”
im shattering his drawing tablet if i get the chance
dude needs to put down the pencil
I guarantee you he has never sketched a thing in his life.
His work's not bad.
At least I think so.
You're closer to the truth than you realize. I met him once on the Nürburgring (they were demoing some outlandish VW truck he helped customize) and people were challenging him to take a lap with one of the local hotshoes and design a car while raced around the track. You should have seen the faces when he excused himself with this gem:
"Oh the internet here is so bad my ipad can't connect to my computer at home and I can't access my graphic assets."
Knowing this, open his instagram. See how many times you see that wheel from the XJS.
So much of his work is derivative, repetitive trash. Which is why it INFURIATED ME that the insurance company wouldn't work with Abimelec... but hey, Motor Trend was happy to snap him up.
I think he's a more skilled digital artist than Abimelec, but Abimelec's got much more original ideas.
And that's more important.
I think he's making post graduate studies with a master's degree in enema nozzle
He made a recent appearance on The Smoking Tire podcast.
OF COURSE he did.
That show is increasingly a roster of people who bring nothing of all at value to any aspect of humanity.
(It all started with me and Bark, of course!)
That episode was legendary.
I am just imagining being invited into someone's garage and all of these are there....
That stupid Jag has been following me around the internet- I hate it! Can’t improve on a stock early XJS.
The original TWR modded XJS is one of my favorite cars. Very subtle modifications.
This new XJS is none of that. I’m sick of everything having to look like some kind of race car.
Race cars for poseurs who have never raced!
Meanwhile the credentialed racers are trying to get 15" wheels and 75-series tires on their daily drivers.
The large wheel trend is just bizarre to me. Almost always for daily driving everything about the experience is worse.
it makes sense for supercars because they need to fit huge brakes but other than that its a downgrade in terms of ride quality and tire cost at least
Much like how all the light duty trucks keep getting taller every generation for no useful reason. The proportions are so goofy now I can’t stand any of them.
You damn near pull something to get into the driver’s seat every time! And woe be it if the grab handle breaks off!
And the running boards don’t help much! But it becomes that much more difficult without them!
You could very much improve on a stock early XJ-S. As Jaguar did by turning it into a stock late XJ-S. The wide taillights are so much better.
But this monstrosity?
Hmmm I like the original taillights but the wides don’t totally kill the look
It's not a well-integrated body kit. The upgrades look too obviously tacked on.
"You could very much improve on a stock early XJ-S. As Jaguar did by turning it into a stock late XJ-S."
Which wasn't the plan. Jaguar spent the better part of a decade developing the XJ41/42, which were (respectively) a coupe and a convertible that would replace the aging XJ-S, to be called "F-Type". They were also working on the XJ90, a new sedan with more modern, upright proportions that would replace the XJ40 XJ. (If you've ever sat in an XJ40, X300 or X308 XJ, you'll understand why this was desirable from an ergonomic standpoint).
When Ford fully took possession of Jaguar in 1989 and saw how badly its manufacturing and engineering operations were run, especially at Browns Lane, it canceled the XJ41/42 and XJ90. As far as the XJ90 went, Jaguar basically took the XJ90 concept's front and rear ends and grafted them to the existing XJ40, to create the X300--of which my "X305" XJ12 is a variant.
For the XJ41/XJ42, Ford told Jaguar to simply improve on the XJ-S and rechristen it the XJS, and that's the vastly superior model of which you speak.
However, TWR had a brilliant idea, which was to take the stillborn XJ41/42's suspension and adapt them to the existing XJS floorpan, for a budget XJS successor. They presented this proposal to the Jaguar board, who turned it down. It was subsequently picked up by Aston Martin, another FoMoCo property, as was the styling. TWR had brought in Ian Callum for the task. That car became the DB7, which catapulted Aston Martin into the modern era, especially after it received the new V12.
Shortly after that, Jaguar management--perhaps after being pressed upon by the Ford overlords--acquiesced, and the X100 XK8 was subsequently borne out of the improved XJS platform, as a cousin to the DB7.
I, of course, know all of this history – but the point is still that the facelifted XJS looks much better than the original.
Thankfully, the XJ41/XJ42 development (plus some of the XJS underpinnings) led to magnificient XK8, probably the most underappreciated Jaguar currently – and the thing I would very much like to replace my recently sold X308 with, though due to having a kid, I'll probably have to go for the X350, which finally got the useable proportions the X308 lacked.
Sir, if I can put my son in a 993, you can put yours in an X308! :)
I can and I did. But the X350 is something I'm willing to live with as a daily driver, including kid-hauling role. It's much safer, partly because it won't be rusty (aluminium), it's more spacious and generally it's a 21st century car, while the X308 is a facelift of a 1980s car.
Don't tell anyone, but I also think it's better looking.
You might enjoy issue 12 of The Road Rat; XJ-S is the cover story.
Then again, you might not! It depends on how many watch ads you want to see.
There is a de minimis level of advertising in each ~250 page issue. There are certainly FAR, FAR fewer ads than you’d see in anything you could buy off the newsstand at Barnes & Noble AND the advertisements that do appear are FAR, FAR more tasteful / targeted to the readership / better integrated into the product.
The patron is Guy Berryman.
WHAT
IN
THE
NAME
OF
GOD
Agree
Always liked the look of it the way it was designed. They can only ruin anything they touch.
My stupidphone keeps wanting me to download it. Needless to say, that ain't happening. I got rid of Facebook years ago, but had to reload it to stay caught up on the group for my neighborhood fight against the HOA that some developer is trying to start.
Facebook came as shovelware on my Samsung phone and I can't delete it, only disable it.
Stupidphone, indeed.
I quit FB as the middleman for my friendships a long time ago but have a “fake” one because my car and motorcycle clubs use it exclusively and there are some specific groups for hard to find parts.
My dog has a Facebook account that he occasionally uses to buy things off Facebook marketplace.
That's the ONLY reason I have a Facebook account. Accessible through my desktop.
so your dog can shop on FB marketplace?
Uhh...YEAH!
Proving, once again, that on the internet, no one knows you're a dog.
I have a fake page as well, with 5,000 friends I never even met! 😂😂
Ha! I have one friend, my FIL otherwise it thinks I’m in India and have freaky fetishes probably due to the google phone number
Hey, just like ACF!
Sir, some of us DO meet from time to time!
Yeah I'm gonna have to do the same. Craigslist is dead, even in Ohio.
I sold two cars on craigslist last year. Got 1-2k more than whatever the carmax equivalent offered me and 3k more than what audi offered me on trade-in
That’s about the only thing it’s good for.
I had facebook for tinder. Haven’t had it in 7 years or so. Best decision i ever made. Umm, next to marrying my wife i guess. If she asks.
For what it's worth you can go into the app info and hit "uninstall updates" from the 3-dot menu, at which point the disabled app basically disappears from storage and you're left with a 100kb placeholder.
did this to a bunch of apps and made a ton of space
highly recommended
Oh, I did.
Disabled what I couldn't delete.
"Disabled what I couldn't delete: the Christian Craighead story."
I'm preparing to make a $2000 (initially) mistake thanks to Facebook!
Buying an absolute boat of a motorcycle
Magnus did a video recently featuring a Cayman R, owned by a soft and software engineer-looking guy from Texas. Magnus said a lot of nice things about it.
A month or two later it was on BAT. It sold OK but there was no Magnus bump to speak of.
I deduced a deal had been made for the video, and it didn't pay off.
I never wanted Magnus to be nefarious, but you've implied it. Now I can't go back. I'm not mad, though. It just confirms that most of the players in this game are clowns.
I saw the header picture of him and thought, "Gandalf the Ghetto."
you win the internet today. everyone can log off and come back tomorrow.
This is probably good advice even if he didn't win!
Its_all_so_tiresome_guy.jpg
That's life! One day you're the face of PORSH and the next day you're pump-and-dumping auction cars!
(Badly)
I love the "this album sucks" photo caption. Too funny.
So far, "The Prophet Alanis said the Chili's was in here!" is still the high-water mark for ACF captions.
Do you think Haas will keep Nelson Piquet Jr. , sorry Jerry Reed "Smokey and the Bandit, sorry KMag around in 2025? Too bad the equipment is so expensive. If it wasn't, I'd love to have someone pull a NASCAR Dale E on him. I didn't sign up as a viewer for that crap. BS is that Haas is back.
Race was boring, fell asleep. Missed Norris winning. Probably not going to reup with F1TV in a couple of months. Don't have "TV" so if I care it will have to be after the fact on one of "those" sites
Racing For Me is an excellent motorsports torrent site...
Heresy perhaps: something like this deserves to be done by competent people. Obviously these aren't those people, but you've joked about the Singer Milan and the Singer Accord V6 coupe - as gorgeous as they are, the XJS chassis deserve the treatment
The trick is, with cars that are distinct and have their own personality, to be subtle. This is incongruous and tasteless on every level, the exact opposite of what a Jaguar should be.
i feel like the only company thart came close to figuring that out is singer
everyone else screws it up somehow
Would also give the nod to Icon here. Their stuff is pretty sublime.
maybe
while i understand that an ls is a great idea for most things im not keen on it in an fj
Then for you, FJ company is what you need. They offer modern toyota powertrains in their FJs and other cruisers.
https://www.fj.co/
It's cheap, reliable, powerful, remarkably efficient, lightweight, and compact. It's ubiquitous for a good reason!
They do put Coyotes in their Broncos, which is more thematically appropriate I guess.
the ls is a fantastic engine i agree and the coyote certainly works in the restomodded broncs i think a worked over sbf could be just as good
now that i think of it i wonder if a stroked and bored naturally aspirated 2jzge with vvt could be used in the fj
I agree he does beautiful work, but six-figure "derelict" cars are wrong on every level.
the ev conversions and ls swapped rolls royces dont make any sense either
[looks both ways furtively] uhh yeah they sure don't [tugs collar]
Saw their F-150 at a Malibu restaurant two years ago. It was fairly astounding.
The bubble Caprice they did for some guy that ran across the country but was afraid of flying for a literal $1,000,000 is one of the coolest cars I have ever read about.
Insane money, but tough to argue the results if what you want is the actual best car money could buy.
This thing? https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a30507/icon-chevy-caprice-build-process/
I want it, but not sure that isn't indicative of my total # of concussions suffered more than anything else...
My problem with Singer is he makes them for people who don't want to add miles to their priceless Porsches, so they buy a $400,000 Porsche.
The guy is pushing these cars even further beyond the reach of mere mortals.
I think $400K will get you about 40% of a Singer “Classic.”
Bottom of the DLS market is about double that, AFAIK.
i think the dls is an example of a lily that has been overgilded
Given how little they'll be driven, they might as well be gelded.
fuuuuuck. now *really* hate Singer.
but the intent appears to be a perfect porsche that you could daily drive and use just the original car which i quite like
its not really compromised which is how it ought to be
the perfect Porsche already exists. It's called the 993. 🙃
I owned a 993 for 3+ years and rode in a friend’s Singer in Malibu several years ago.
He had an early 4.0 liter car and paid less than $600K for it. Someone offered him ~$1MM for it, and he took that deal.
I didn’t drive the car, but my impression of it was that it wasn’t worth $600K (or 20x what I had paid for my 993 in 2012) and certainly not $1MM+
Well, you can’t *really* daily drive one for a few reasons:
1-It looks like a “regular” 911 to the general public; this is part of the appeal of the car, of course, but if you’re driving around in $1MM, you want other motorists to react to your car like they would an exotic predatory animal - appreciate from afar, but don’t get too close; don’t tailgate; etc.
2-Should you have an accident in your $1MM 911, you’d prefer to have an airbag, right? Not in a Singer.
3-Should you have an accident in your $1MM 911, you’d like to be able to repair it with relative ease, right? The entire body is carbon fiber.
4-Who is going to service it for you?
5-Even IF you don’t care about having airbag(s) or the practical concerns of driving a car that is difficult to service or repair, they aren’t making any more of the “Classic.” So it would be damn hard to replace.
1 i would hope they do that anyway but of course they wouldnt
2 im used to not having an airbag but that aside im not sure having a 30 year old airbag would make the car magnitudes more survivable in a crash but its better than nothing
3 the funny thing is that this might be parallel to regular 993 ownership in the sense that its cheaper to simply replace and repaint than to repair even a steel fender and i bet singer could sell you one
4 singer themselves if not a service garage that deals with 993s although anything involving electrical might be tricky thanks to the unique harness
5 youre entirely right there
you make salient points but i cant help but lust after one as theyve done all the stuff i would have wanted to do to it anyway
100% agreed.
When I singerized i mean a _tasteful_ restomodded XJS - not a wide-bodied fiberglass claptrap built on british engineering that was nowhere near SOTA at the time of manufacture.
It could be done, by a racecar manufacturer, or the Roadster Shop, or RaceCarReplicas, or dennis palatov. It's not impossible its just lots and lots and lots of time and effort
strong agree
imagine one of these as reliable as an anvil and yet more powerful and designed for purpose
With a Hartley 1GZ v12, or other modern v12. The LS-based NewZealand one perhaps:
https://www.motor1.com/news/377022/insane-ls-v12-crate-engine/
https://www.hartleyengines.co.nz/
maybe but id like to see what a properly developed jag v12 could before i replaced it entirely
its nice having a jag in a jag
What you want out of an XJ-S restomod: straighten every bent piece, make it start and run every time, maybe come up with a better solution for the bumpers.
That's it. For me, anyway.
Making some sense of this rats nest of wires and tubes would be a plus too ;)
https://prestigeandperformancecar.com/wp-content/uploads/XJRS41_amd-900x563.jpg.webp
My heart hurts knowing that Newey is likely going to Ferrari. I've been captivated by him ever since my undergrad engineering days. And I've hated Ferrari for about that long too.
This is what I hate about it:
If it works out, it will be the SECOND time that Hammy has fucked over everybody around him and chased money... only to be rewarded with the best car through some sort of magical luck. The only consolation is that he'll have to qualify the thing against Leclerc, which will make his current struggles against Princess George look dignified in hindsight.
There’s definitely a weird uncanny valley thing going on with that Jag. I don’t hate it, and certainly don’t hate the idea of a restomod XJS as a concept, but the details of this just look kinda wrong in a lot of places.
Relatedly, I have a burning desire for an XJS of any stripe. Preferably done up as a rat rod with a 350, because I am redneck at heart.
Also relatedly, my wallet cannot afford a car like that without angering many people in my life.
But still a man can dream.
Completely unrelated to anything, anyone have any tips for navigating the present job market? I’m still extremely employed but I have totally soured on the company, as it continues to throw new roles at me with lightning speed all while offering approximately zero guidance. It’s less than ideal… Years of experience in ops management and account management in the automotive sector. Wouldn’t mind doing the same stuff but for a different name on the check.
If you can figure out a way to work with a recruiter, do it.
Yeah finding a good one is on my list of to-dos.
What sort of guidance are you looking for as you take on these new roles? In my experience that sort of role movement usually means someone has seen value in you and they have you marked for upper management after getting a diverse taste of the business.
Is your experience with Tier Suppliers or OEMs? Given the account management I assume your ops management was customer facing/sales ops, vs manufacturing?
As dumb as it sounds, I'm mostly just looking for where to start. I've been with the same company for five years, and only came here after a total career change. Landscape has changed a lot in that time, and I didn't have quite the resume I do now.
Indeed and LinkedIn are a labrynthian nightmare to deal with. As it stands , I'm mostly just setting a few filters and sending an application out to whatever
And yes customer facing/sales; largely working with dealers rather than OEMs. Would prefer working for an OEM more than anything else at this point, but I'm not too picky on the specifics.
Get your resume buffed up, and consider having a professional review it, with all the "AI" HR systems being used now its more important than ever to have the right key words in your resume to get past the initial automated screening. The pros will help you with that.
I've found going direct to companies websites that you'd like to work for and reviewing their job openings, then using LinkedIn to try and "network" with the HR department/assumed hiring manager is a more effective way to job hunt than applying through the LinkedIn/Indeed postings. Be prepared to get ghosted more than you would on tinder only swiping right on 9s and above. Good luck, it is a slog.
I appreciate this!
I believe we have not yet discussed the OTHER retro-inspired front-engined V-12 coupe that broke cover recently.
I am talking, of course, about the Ferrari Dodici Cilindri, which some people are already calling the “12 C,” in apparent willingness to erase the McLaren (MP4-)12C from history.
I had been looking forward to the new Ferrari for some time; there is a long-running and active thread of speculation pertaining to the car on FerrariChat, where I occasionally lurk.
You can see the Daytona influence in the front end, of course. Some commenters also believe it looks like a Hyundai Ioniq 5 or a Lucid Air. The rear end has a bunch of black stuff that - per Flavio Manzoni - CANNOT be painted body color. Same goes for the roof (based on the configurator).
I have two friends who were invited to the Ferrari event in Miami (and therefore expected to purchase the car). One lives locally, attended, and didn’t like the car. He is begrudgingly ordering one anyway; he has an FXX-K Evo and has a 499P incoming, so he has to be a good boy and lap it all up eagerly. The other one lives on the west coast and is stepping away from purchasing Ferraris (he has 6 or 7 already and also owns a minority stake in a dealer group) in lieu of Gordon Murray’s products. He did not attend the event, and found the car very disappointing. As did I.
Furthermore, I watched the Kentucky Derby and then spent several hours later Saturday night catching up with an old friend who SHOULD be an ideal Ferrari customer. He is in his late 30s and inherited a serious collection of cars (275 GTB/4; D Type; Cobra; GT40; etc). In addition to the 275, he also has a Ferrari 575M Maranello. He said the rear end of the “12 C” reminded him of a Jensen Interceptor or an AMC Pacer!
Sherman, your circle of friends never cease to amaze. I am amazed you do not have permanent nose bleed traveling in such high circles. You talk of buying Ferraris like the rest of us talk of choosing between a Vega and a Pinto for a commuter car. But I guess someone has to do it and we are glad it is you and not Mr. Looserman. 🤣🤣
To be clear - I do not own a Ferrari. My concern is that the new Ferrari will pull prices on the 812 Superfast and 550 Maranello higher, as those are two that I covet! There is a big, big difference between buying a $1XX,000 car and buying a $3XX,000 car; it’s not just the dollar amount, it’s the psychology of it, as well. Had I been able to do so at age 25, I would’ve stroked the check without a second thought. A decade on, I realize it’s probably not the most (long-term) satisfying way to deploy that kind of cash. Maturity, I suppose!
I met the first guy through Instagram. He is a total trustafarian who has never even thought about work. We smoked cigars together - he is a big Cuban collector - during Ferrari’s Corse Clienti event at Road Atlanta in 2020 (the last semi-normal weekend before COVID). We are both diehard F1 fans, and he attends a lot of races with Ferrari, so he frequently feeds me little nuggets of info. He was briefly shown on TV when the broadcast cut to the Ferrari garage on Sunday.
I know the second guy through a few car forums. He is also a big Cuban cigar collector, and he has sold me several trophy boxes at “friendly” prices over the years. He lives in Bel Air, but he recently joined an Atlanta-headquartered law firm, so he passes through here from time to time. He is a good resource for how the Ferrari game “really” works, particularly at the dealer level.
I have known the third guy for 10+ years, and we are very close. His now-wife happened to overhear a conversation I was having at a happy hour; she joined the conversation and suggested that I meet her boyfriend. I was at their wedding, and we have traveled together several times. We were at Road America for the vintage race weekend in 2016 or so; a Jag D Type experienced a failure to proceed relatively close to our vantage point. The driver pulled off the track and through a gap in the fence. My buddy and I walked over (beers in hand - probably New Glarus); he began troubleshooting the problem with the driver, who was perhaps surprised that a fresh-faced fellow (he was in his early 30s at the time) had intimate knowledge of a Jag D Type’s mechanical foibles.
Sherman, I was complimenting you on your circle of friends, sorry my humor does not come across in a two dimensional format. I to have a few friend that have high altitude circle of friends. This past weekend a friend had me over as he was selling his 928-S and a guy flew out from California to buy it. The buyer showed up with a friend in a GT-3. He drove the 928 and had his friend follow to see how it looked going down the road. They traded places so he could see what he would look like going down the road. The buyer came back and called two more friends who arrived in Tesla S Class to check out the 928. Long story short this buyer took four hours of driving the car, putting it on a lift, having the compression checked, and driving the car three or four times. To top it off he haggled for an hour over $500 difference in offer and sale price. He then opens his brief case and pulls out $35,000 in $100 bills and pays cash.
I just don’t travel in these circles…..
My circle of friends and acquaintances is probably most attributable to my hobbies, and the fact that I have lived in the city center of two high income towns (Atlanta and Chicago) since I graduated from college.
But bear in mind I grew up in a town of 1,200 people that was an hour’s drive (each way) from anything (or anyone) remotely interesting.
Dying at the the thought of swapping places to see how it looks when driven.
How insecure does one have to be?
I think Sherman will state something like those in that station must be able to hold themselves up and examine their aesthetics. I say they don't have fuck you money yet or are underdeveloped humans.
Silentsod, I did not tell the good part. After the buyer and the owner of the GT-3 got back the buyer was talking to my friend and the owner of the GT-3 took a hose off the wall of my friends garage sprayed off the GT-3 because it got dusty on the drive over and shammed it down. And it happens again when the two other guys showed up in the S Class inevitably one of them did the same thing. Three of the four guys had Porches jackets and those wrap around skinny sun glasses. It was a hoot. I know they all must have been members of the Porche Owners Club…. Again I don’t travel in those circles. And before anyone blames Boomers they were in their 30’s….
I'd honestly nix the deal for a guy haggling over $500. Out of spite
Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather hang out with the guys choosing between a Vega and a Pinto, sharing beers as we're wrenching on the heap yet again and bitching about ... whatever. Honestly, it sounds like a lot more fun.
As I emphasize to Jack with regularity, I have significant life experience living both in deeply red, blue collar, rural America AND the precise opposite of those characteristics.
While both groups have their relative merits - and demerits - I find the relatively “urbane” cohort more interesting.
I’m not a big fan of recent Ferrari designs, but this car is smokin’ hot. Looks great
Wouldn’t it look better if you made the black stuff body color and made the rear end less “futuristic” and more like the F12 or 812 (round lamps)?
Maybe I’m a philistine, but to me the high water mark of modern front engined V12 Ferrari design peaked where it started, at the 550. Everything since has gotten fatter, uglier, and more automatic. Ick. Whereas the 550 is gorgeous, semi attainable, and usable. I covet one.
The 550 is it.
They are relatively scarce, absolutely beautiful, and will be big money at some point - certainly more than the 575, 599, F12, 812, and 12 C (assuming the “base” versions, not the Versione Speciale models).
Yes, agreed. Round lamps for sure
No mention of THE ORANGE MAN literally ENDORSING the ORANGE CAR to WIN the Miami Grand Prix?
orange car good
This isn't going to be a popular comment here, but it rubs me the wrong way that the guy who bitches NONSTOP, IN ALL CAPS about how all his legal peril is ELECTION INTERFERENCE by keeping him away from the campaign trail, seems to have ample time to attend third rate sporting events. God forbid he miss a UFC fight.
It is my assumption that he was in the McLaren garage because he knows the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. Mumtalakat, the Bahraini Sovereign Wealth Fund, recently bought out the minority shareholders of McLaren (Mansour Ojjeh’s estate / heirs; Michael Latifi) to become the sole shareholder.
So there was little that Zak Brown and co could do about Trump making an appearance in the garage.
some people know how to design a schedule--it's a talent.
Another way to look at it: the Uniparty will not rest until he dies in prison, and they are willing to tear up every law in the country to do it. Why not catch a race in person before it happens, as it inevitably will?
If the Uniparty is really trying to do that, they’re doing an incredibly shitty job. For starters, why hand the most slam dunk case (the classified documents) to an incompetent Trump appointee that’s capitulating to every one of his bullshit stall tactics? And why push any of this after it became obvious that Trump is benefiting from playing the victim?
I do think that the amount of effort spent searching for crimes, no matter how novel, to prosecute Trump for is obsessive, wasteful and all around beyond the pale. I also think Trump’s defenses, which amount to “everyone is out to get me” and “the rules shouldn’t apply to me” illustrate that he’s a malignant narcissist unfit for office far better than any Democrat hatchet job ever could.
nobody said they were smart just dedicated
With respect, you're confusing the masculine mindset ("let's get him out of the way, or dead") with the feminine mindset ("Trumpitler must be PUNISHED!!!!"). Thus the avalanche of cases instead of one effective case, the idiot affirmative-action attorneys/DAs, and so on.
Trump's gift is that they keep handing him goblins and nightmare people against who he can contrast himself. Seriously. ANYBODY but Hillary Clinton beats him in 2016, even Mayor Pete.
I’m not confusing anything. If your conspiracy is made up of a bunch of histrionic boobs that can’t even keep the story straight, then you don’t really have a conspiracy.
It was the same thing with Dubya. They couldn’t decide if he was BUSHITLER or an idiot. Turns out I was wrong and he was a bit of both.
Masculine, feminine, whatever. The right embarrasses itself by taking it seriously at all. Trump is the luckiest man in the world based on the unlikability and incompetence of his opponents, yet he is the perpetual victim. Talk about feminine energy…
"If your conspiracy is made up of a bunch of histrionic boobs that can’t even keep the story straight, then you don’t really have a conspiracy."
To be fair, you don't need a "conspiracy to get trump" any more than you need a "conspiracy to spread monkeypox". As long as everyone is working from the same set of assumptions, their behavior will be the same.
"Turns out I was wrong and he was a bit of both."
More like von Hinderburg -- a decent human being who was of endless use to evil men.
"Trump is the luckiest man in the world based on the unlikability and incompetence of his opponents, yet he is the perpetual victim."
Being sued and criminally charged just once or twice can ramp up your paranoia and victim beliefs. How many times has it happened to Trump? The irony is that they've drowned the legitimate cases in a tidal wave of Leticia What's Her Name.
best prez since coolidge---so much more swamp to drain. you prefer the current administration?
TikTok has American kids praising Bin Ladin and cutting their tits off, while ByteDance's version of TikTok for China, Douyin, limits children to 40 min a day and shows kids under 14 science experiments, museum exhibits, patriotism videos, and educational content.
If you can't tell the difference from deliberate behavior, maybe the behavior is deliberate.
Every social media platform, from TikTok to Instagram to Truth Social, is shit. Every one of them should be burned to the ground in a social media version of Project Mayhem.
There's a scene in the documentary The Social Dilemma in which a former Facebook engineer says, straight up, that there's no way he'd let his kids use social media.
Says everything you need to know about social media.
My son is 15 and still doesn't have an account. Thank God.
If you won't let your kids use what you're building, you're a monster and you know it.
>TikTok has American kids praising Bin Ladin and cutting their tits off.
Yeah. But so do other social media platforms. Don't expect this to change with TikTok out of the picture.
>Douyin limits children to 40 minutes a day and shows kids under 14 science experiments, museum exhibits, patriotism videos, and educational content.
The lesson we should be learning from China on social media is to not ban the things we don't like, but restrict access to children and regulate the hell out of their purposefully addictive designs. But this would significantly hurt big tech profits, while banning TikTok will make them go up. Purposefully missing the forest for the trees.
Banning Tiktok is a sop to the Zucks who paid for Mr. Biden's election. What they really want is to buy it at a discount, and get the userbase.
China may be showing their kids that, but the kids there KNOW it's bullshit and they've been checking out of society for YEARS at this point (see the "laying-flat movement"). China is weak, aging FAR more quickly than we are, and lies about EVERYTHING. I wouldn't trust anything from them, given that their media is all state-controlled. Every last thing you hear about them is propaganda. Its entire intent is to make you post things like this. They are not strong, they do not innovate, their economic/financial situation is so much worse than ours. I wouldn't inflict Chinese society on my worst enemy. Well, maybe I would, but they suck. Maybe not as bad as Iran or Gaza, but pretty bad nonetheless.
I only know two kinds of ex-pats: people who feel as you do, and people who think China not only WILL rule the world, they SHOULD. There's, like, zero in-between.
I could probably stand to be a bit more even-handed about them, but, you know, I have a jingoistic Japanese wife, so that's flat out.
China is like a piece of poorly-made steel: Looks tough, might even take a few good hits, but it's full of slag and inclusions that'll allow an otherwise recoverable hit to become fatal.
ADV China (now apparently The China Show) has a lot of really good content on the state of modern China. Their first-hand experience there shows that to be true.
serpentza has a lot of eye opening content as well
no pun intended
Communism is like unreinforced concrete. Solid in compression, but will crumble not long after the first cracks appear.
But I also fear that the chicoms might have figured out a way to reinforce communism.
Yeah, with that same shitty steel I mentioned.
They're sneaky little fucks, not transcendant geniuses who found some magic way to keep communism afloat.
Everything is about saving face. So long as they can keep doing that they will. But, as is often said on Instapundit, what can't go on, won't.
They just recently figured out how to manufacture ball point pens, so we may indeed be in trouble.
or like their tofu dreg projects
looks pretty but is made of styrofoam
I come down on the MDStreeter side of things.
It's not TikTok that's the issue, and it certainly isn't helping.
I would say something like the life of America, as a nation, has been given over to corruption through various ways (be it propaganda, a turn from X to Y, blah blah) and this is a broader fallout.
As an historical appeal - the founders of America understood the system they were putting in place required a particular character of persons.
Seventy five years of prosperity has made Americans soft. (myself included).
We take our good fortune for granted and (as as society) thing nothing of squandering it through generous welfare programs, lax immigration of the world's most unproductive, an overly enthusiastic regulatory regime, and outlandish climate change pork spending and mandates that will have a net negative return.
Owned a XJ-S (either a ‘76 or a ‘78) for a couple years, long ago. Got it for next to nothing from a co-worker, didn’t run. Sent the fuel injection ECU off to some guy that rebuilt them. Fun car, though the 3 speed GM slush box was an absolutely AWFUL match to the high revving V12. Guys were doing 5 speed manual conversions, which I considered, but I ended up moving so I sold the car.
Styling holds up well. A light resto mod based on the Tom Walkinshaw race cars would be interesting, with some minor suspension and brake upgrades.
This thing those two ass-clowns are proposing to build should be burned in effigy. And anyone buying it should be sent off to live on “influencer island”, which is adjacent to “pedo-island” and where we should send all the world’s influencers.
d.e.davis invited me to drive in the 'usa today's most desirable cars' over 30 years ago. there was an xjs convertible in the group that i considered just took up too much space. it was sky blue. but when i eventually got in it felt like the most glamorous, romantic car i'd ever sat in. i was ready to take catherine deneuve and drive off into the sunset--and i didn't even like catherine deneuve. at the most only 3 other cars hit me with an unexpected emotion when i first sat in them. amazing.
“I didn’t even like Catherine Deneuve…” This has to be a wind-up. How can you NOT like CD? Seriously!
Knowing Toly, it's because she posed nude for him and he wasn't impressed.
Ah, the apotheosis of ennui...
aw c'mon man...i appreciate her but she's not my type...but then my near-perfect wife wasn't my type either! funny how God works!
Got a friend who bought a '95 XJ-S 4.0 convertible in 2015 for his wife to take their kids to get ice cream and for short family road trips. Not sporting in any way, but a fine grand touring sort of car as Toly says. And it turned out to be more reliable than her parade of leased Range Rovers. I want to think he paid something like $18K for it with ~40K miles then and it's over 70K now and has never given them any real trouble.
"six-cylinder convertible for Palm Beach divorcees" has become "six-cylinder convertible for happy New Albany wives"
In my opinion, the restomodded Jag has nothing on the Group 44 XJS.
https://journal.classiccars.com/2020/05/16/pick-of-the-day-group-44-jaguar-xjs/
Is it me, or does that look like it should be rubbing paint with Regals and Monte Carlos at Darlington? Great link, Ronnie.
Come on, Ronnie, that's like saying
"You might like the new Taylor Swift record, but it's not 'Court and Spark'!" :)
Playing Real Good For Free is one of my favorite songs but I lost interest in Joni Mitchell when she started trying to prove that she was a real artist. At least I have some of her recordings. I couldn't tell you what any of Taylor Swifts songs are. I happened to catch a video of her performing live with the sound off and I got the impression that opera and ballet are more spontaneous and improvisational.
Speaking of music, I've been on a Dire Straits jag lately. Is Mark Knopfler a British Donald Fagen? Maybe not as much of a perfectionist, but he makes mature music.
The best thing Mark Knopfler ever did was the Amanda White call.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w4UNasgaz4
Not this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOuFO8KPnjw
"But anthemic rock music is inherently fascist — anything intended to move huge masses of people is politically offensive to me."
I wonder how Fagen feels about Beethoven's symphonies.
must hate college cheerleaders!
Holy shit is THAT what that XJS is? I saw it and ignored it because they’re not for me, and well, look at it. It’s terrible. Now I hate it even more.
And justifiably so!
If Tick Tock was shut down, pretty sure the next day the world would still turn. Sun would rise. Tradesmen would go to work. And politicians could worry about real problems.
Shut her down.