I don’t know what kind of tomatoes they raise in Vacaville and thereabouts, but in the Central Valley, you see red tomatoes come off the trucks, maybe a ten or twelve foot fall, and bounce along the road at 50-60 mph without even smashing. They’re bred for machine handling, not eating in the hand.

> no issues since I “take care” of them

They just did the bottom end bearings instead of at least an in-chassis overhaul of the whole engine? I thought the usual failure mode on these, if the cooling system was not well maintained, the temperature gauge was allowed to creep into the red zone, or you opened the bad-luck packet in the glove compartment,…

...there’s a current drain the team is working to trace.

No, he’ll come out even angrier

And in the worst timeline, the good guys die in a car wreck and that mean cracker gets away and it’s just another unsolved hit-and-run tragedy.

The body kit is... pretty good as such things go, but I always liked this generation of Z just the way it was; no need to go to a lot of trouble and expense and doubtless added weight to shoot for “Italian exotic”” but achieve swole second-generation MR2 or Trans Am, depending on the angle.

Good, good!  Let the capsaicin and endorphins flow through you. Now witness the firepower of a fully armed and operational harissa!

Of course, you raised it from a pup, which is a lot different than buying an nth hand (safe caveat-emptor bet, since ownership history goes unmentioned) from a stranger...

They must be working pro bono because there’s no way this man paid them and they know their lawsuits don’t stand a chance

Yeah, I was expecting a deep dive on frame rust and engine sludging as part of a rather short list, as major car makers go, of actual problems.  Instead we mostly got aesthetic preferences and the odd product-planning misfire that resulted in disappointing market acceptance.

My wife dailies a 2004 Solara coupe that’s been in the extended family since new. It’s had good maintenance and non hoon driving and at 18 years and 125k we’d take it on a road trip unhesitantly.

If it isn’t the real deal, somebody went through a lot of trouble to set up the driver’s area as though it is. Besides, these vehicles are common enough, and have been around long enough to be cycling out of the fleet.

Those have a built in feature called Find My Fruit Phone, though it only works when said device is powered up and I think (could be mistaken here) that you need one of their computers to ping it.

From what I’ve read, the cockpit voice recorder on that plane only captured the latest running half-hour, so all that investigators got from it was post-overshoot, or something like that -- not this allegedly all engrossing work related conversation and/or nappy time, depending on who you believe.    

It’s a very old truism that the more seasoned the traveler, the lighter the luggage...

It actually happens from time to time though fortunately it isn’t very common.

Three instances of someone’s cat stropping up against their hand as they tried to vote?

Unfortunately this step isn’t just here. Between the urge to be first with breaking news and the ever shrinking newsroom budgets, I’d imagine it’s hard to reliably get a fresh pair of eyes on one’s work before hitting Publish.* The dedicated copyeditor is a dying job description.

If I had a spare ten grand and an empty garage bay I’d buy a one-way ticket to Vegas, evaluate whether to drive it home or trailer it, and of course binge some “Cannon” reruns in the hotel room before setting out.