Depends on what you mean by reliability, of course. The number is true enough in that five operational orbiters were built and three survived. I’d call that attrition rate, though, rather than reliability.

A quick look around shows that for several thousand more I can get any of several Model 3 Long Rangers with an untainted title and quite significantly lower mileage... and those are dealer prices. Rampant ND for a high miler (given the location, doubtless somebody’s freeway commute car) that has a branded title…

Title status is also not apparent in the ad—thanks, Facebook Marketplace—and there are no plates shown on the car so we can’t visually confirm it has current registration. We can assume it’s ok since not mentioning it being tainted would be a glaring error for the seller.

That is good looking work, and would make it easier to do something I plan to do with our regular Solara this very afternoon (buy several bags of sand for a yard project). You’d want to mind the cargo weight on that front wheel drive unibody, but the bed seems big enough t0 be more utelet than useless. If the Solara…

Even diesel from when this car was new is more sophisticated stuff than some people seem to think, and I highly recommend against using filtered waste oil from restaurants. Converting it into biodiesel is within the realm of the informed backyarder with tolerant neighbors. but the process must be honored if you want…

I’ll take the convertible ‘64 Thunderbird the CIA guys drove in Goldfinger, back in the glory days of “promotional consideration” at Ford. And a nice example might be worth what they’re asking for this.

I’ve got a poignant feeling, based on circumstantial evidence and a hunch rather than facts, that this one is for sale by the owner’s family after they persuaded him to hang up his keys—or by his estate. That would jibe with what seems like a testing-the-waters price, though if you want one you probably won’t find a…

You can find these with broadly comparable mileage and a clean title for not much more money... and that’s dealer pricing.

Considering that a Dakota R/T with just 25,000 miles on the clock went for $20,000 just last year, and that’s with some BaT auction fever, it’s hard to justify paying  more for one with almost three times the mileage just to see what kind of accelerated wear cycle the aftermarket blower put on the engine and…

The first thing I thought was that the ad is extremely sparse for a ten-grand ask, especially for a low-production machine orphaned decades ago.

If “music from and inspired by” counts, let’s get The Horse Whisperer in there, and (though it was a deeply flawed movie) maybe Songcatcher.

In a better timeline than we deserve, Alpha House got (at least) a third season...

On a recent weeklong rental for which I needed a full-size pickup, I spent the first day in a Tacoma because Alamo was still processing the F-150 I’d reserved. Fine; I had enough schedule pad to delay my trip for a day. Said F-150 proved to have the crumpled build sheet in a door pocket and, when I looked close,…

If there’s any justice, they and their attorneys are now renting cars from the premium aisle at literally any other company.

It was before we met, so I didn’t witness this, but my wife likes to tell the story of how she once rented a small moving van—or meant to, anyway. Whatever that company meant by “confirmed reservation,” it was well short of “we have a vehicle of that nature or are likely to get one.”

Being nice to customer service people, especially when they’re slammed, is always and everywhere Being an Excellent Human. That of course is why we should do it— but sometimes it has its rewards too, and that’s certainly the cherry on top.

They’re committing serious fraud for such little???

I don’t know how much mileage they put on ‘em, but it looks like a brutal duty cycle, sort of a parody of stop-and-go city driving. And both factors have probably gotten a lot worse since the pandemic related boom in mail order.

Might as well. There was no way he was going to match speeds with the runaway truck long enough to figure out where to grab hold of something and how to get in (preferably without getting scraped off against a phone pole in the attempt, or run over by your own front wheel, or both).

Scaling down hull thickness in proportion might have been difficult had they gone that far, but the general idea is good and certainly makes it more feasible to test multiple designs and learn how sensitive they are to manufacturing variability and so forth, as well as to get that modeling/validation feedback loop…