Not incompatible with other theories: There are also “’grievance’ or ‘wound’ collectors,” which works about like it sounds: people who nurse grudges over real or perceived slights, often going ‘way back. Most are probably just miserable old cusses who share the love if they have an opportunity, but some eventually…

A turbine engine that turns 20k rpm connected to a standard VW transaxle so it could do 100 mph in 1st gear.

“I’m pro insurrection!” is not the greatest marketing strategy

Not getting why a simple ad needs to be an exhaustive listing of every inch of the car.

Looks are indeed subjective, and the people who appreciate the E-type vote with their wallets, unfortunately a lot earlier and more often than I will ever be able to, barring substantially better choices at Powerball.

mechanic who convinced me it was time to tear it down and examine EVERY nut and bolt.

Ducky was obviously fleeing the murder rate in his native land. If television is to be believed, Britain’s dwindling population consists largely of murderers and detectives.

Edward Teller and friends had some ideas about how to build it good and quick, too! Some forgotten wit dubbed this “the Panatomic Canal.” I think a particular Colombian routing ultimately won out over Panama and Nicaragua as the mainstream approach. By the late 60s, though, the whole idea of nuking our way through the…

Smokers trying to sneak a cigarette usually think other people can’t smell it. That’s because their sense of smell doesn’t work even halfway decently anymore. They’re basically leaving a Pepe le Pew visible trail in the air, and it’s in their clothes and hair and any nearby soft furnishings and drapery too.

The price is kind of a pain point for a 24 year old family sedan, but with a used car you’re buying the owner’s driving and maintenance history as well as the intrinsic durability of the machine, and this car has both going for it.  Mileage for year is about half national average and I’ll bet it was gentle.  NP on an…

Yep. Priorities. I am not a cruel person and wouldn’t relish being in this situation with the poor rabbits, but if the alternative to making highway hasenpfeffer is wrecking the car, it gets filed in the “nature, red in tooth and claw” category pretty easily.

A former boss—a well heeled Italian-American who appreciated the finer things in life, all the more if they came from the old country—was crazy about his, and certainly wouldn’t have dismissed it as an Italian Taurus.

Aside from the cruelty of schedules for truck drivers (never mind the armies of gig-economy drivers doing commercial work with smaller vehicles these days, there is a related problem with lack of good places to pull over around cities and tend to the needs of the creature in a better manner. This very site covered the…

Pilots of small planes (who definitely cannot pull over and scurry around a big roadside bush, and are mightily discouraged from flinging anything out the window) can buy a smaller thing of that nature, which if memory of seeing one serves, is called a Provisional Human Element Range Extender or P-HERE.

And honestly, if you can’t make that small financial stretch at purchase, can you really afford the cost of ownership of any 40 year old Mercedes?

A possible complication: There was plenty of time, and room in the middle of that intersection, for the car driver to realize his mistake and salvage the situation. Might even be local driving culture to cross one set of lanes while you have the chance, then pause in the middle to size up your prospects.

Absolutely. Assuming your car still runs, it’s simultaneously your best means of getting away and, failing that, your strongest armor and deadliest weapon. Stomp the gas and call 911 while you put some distance between you and the attacker, and if he gets in the way, well, it’ll probably hurt him more than it hurts…

Yeah, the look he cultivates may be military-ish, but if he’s 36 now and has a near 20 year history of significant crimes spanning several states, it isn’t clear when he might have been in.

So, they had an easily identifiable subject who never changes his appearance committing these crimes while driving the same vehicle.

On the outside, as such things go, it’s surprisingly plausible, though I’d go with either steelies and wheel covers or the sort of “mags” that back-in-the-day hotrodders would have put on a ‘50 Ford.