Well done sir! I did a smaller scale "upgrade" to the Ford Fusion I bought last year. It was a nice car, three pedals, but the tan cloth seats were uninspiring. A few hundred dollars in seats and panels salvaged from a same year Mercury did wonders for sprucing up the appearance! Great work on the Benz!

NOx is actually a big deal with efficiency. It increases when you get into higher cylinder temps, just as you would during lean burn conditions. To some extent, fuel efficiency and emissions are opposed goals.

Gentlemen, I present to you the ultimate 90's machine. The Integra Type R. The 90's was when the import craze really came into its own, and the R was the king of the hill when it debuted in 1996 (later in the states). It was the ultimate expression of the generation of Hondas that came about in the 80's and matured…

I'm not missing anything. The point of Bugatti is to do exactly what it is doing. I am surprised so many of the commenter here don't get that. I mean, do you think the guys that run VAG are just stupid?

If Bugatti was an independent brand, you might be onto something. It's not. It's the halo brand for all of VAG. It's allowed to bleed money because that is what it was intended to do. A giant middle finger of a car to anybody who thinks the Beetle people have no business peddling Lambos and Audis. Nobody except…

Well, your obvious example happens to be a bias ply. That pretty well screwed your credibility in this little argument. Go watch a slo-mo video of a drag radial. It's not very flexy, and it's designed to have some give. Sidewall distortion is not a bad thing in getting off the line. It provides shock absorption…

Wrinkle wall slicks are bias ply tires. Thanks for the laugh, lol

Google "turboprop." Those are jet engines, they just have big propellers sticking out of the front of them.

Easy to judge from a world away. The states would look like a horror show if you learned about it while watching COPS.

Genuinely curious, did you look at picking up another beetle shell and swapping the good parts over? It sounds like the 'ol grey ghost was a little more rotten to begin with than you thought even before the roll. Was an empty beetle body ever considered as the fix?

"Race Wars" was the movie land version of "Drag Wars," which was one of the first big events hasting front wheel drive classes. It's all very late 90's :)

I think that public-private partnership is the key. The government shouldn't have to foot 100% of the bill, in my opinion. Use the same models that make toll roads work. Government is there to secure the giant loans and provide eminent domain, but the builder/owner has real skin in the game. Amtrak shouldn't even…

Amtrak currently does share the rails with freight carriers, which is why they are slow and constantly delayed. HSR wouldn't use that system at all, so right out of the box you're looking at needing a parallel infrastructure. You also can't have grade crossings on high speed track, so every road (every stinkin'…

You know, I used to make fun of those old movies and tv shows where they sawed the wheel. Then I owned a 59 Edsel Corsair and realized there is so much slop in those land barges it was only sort of an exaggeration. I looked down one day and noticed I was sawing the wheel across the massive on center dead spot!

From the paperwork in the car, it had been on their lot at least four months and they wanted it gone. It's nutty to me that people wouldn't want the car this way. There isn't *that* much engine for the size of the car, so having control of it helps alot. Ditto slowing down. Clutch pedal just makes the car much…

It's a 2009, so pre-facelift with the 2.3L/5spd. They only made about one in fifty that year with a clutch pedal. They're out there, just not many.

I don't know, you can't be as picky but you can find stick shifts on the used lot. I found one in a Ford Fusion of all things. I would have never even considered one of those, but with a stick it's a nice car. As a bonus, the lot REALLY wants to get rid of the thing because nobody can drive it.

Umm.... Is it supposed to be naked?

I think you're right that there are some good small cars out there. I put the Civic SI up there because it's the 4 seater version. It's the 2 seater layout that made the CRX so useful and unique. A nu-CRX would be something like a Fit with 2 feet cut out of the middle and no back seat and a sloped hatch. It…

That sounds like this guy. Where's the rex?