One of the many reasons automobiles cost what they do, other than the overhead from R&D and safety requirements built in, is that they are priced for market segments and the numbers are not based on cost of production but rather what the market will bear. Trucks are massive cash cows for the big automakers because of…

The automotive equivalent of "Bitch, please."

In its day its was one of the fastest cars available. Now we have horsepower in the name of marketing. All really a bunch of penis measuring in reality. You can have 650+hp for as long as it takes the engine to either spin a rod bearing or catastrophically float a valve or the ECU kicks in and goes into "50% power…

I sit just me, or will the folks willing and able to truly enjoy this car be mostly too young to afford it and the folks who can afford it are the ones the driver in the Honda Fit is desperately trying to pass because the blue haired Caddy driver hasn't been over 45mph in the last 20 years?

The problem the mega-labels that run the industry is that they run by a bunch of old white men that have no idea what cool is, no idea what drives the interest of the plebian folk they rely on because they are so far away form mainstream working class folks they cannot see them any more. Its the same reason we get…

You have to love an academic with a sense of humor. Most get so wrapped up in their self righteous sense of superiority they cannot simply poke fun at themselves.

I guarantee you GM could revoke their dealerships from the crappy ones and solve this problem without having to buy the out. My experience at most GM dealerships has not been good at all.

Left Houston on a return flight to Tulsa during a squall line of thunderstorms coming on from the Gulf of Mexico a few years ago. As we headed North the turbulence got so bad the overhead bins pretty much emptied themselves into the aisle and on top of passengers. It was so bad the pilot turned South out to sea and we…

Kind of looks like the folks who did the camouflaged rock part had never seen a rock.

I have worked in very dangerous and heavy manufacturing for almost 30 years. This is a symptom of complacency. The ground crew not doing their job, and the crane operator not paying attention to his load monitors. Certainly the containers are bent and abused but that means the team must be more careful at their job to…

Not on this list and most likely mentioned in he comments, the audio recording by Nick Mason of his BRM H16 all by itself on the track at Brands Hatch. That engine screams like the all the devils in hell let loose at once and is incredibly loud on the far side of the course.

Higher strength and elastic materials allow the same panels to be made thinner and lighter, reducing weight without compromising structural integrity. Very high elasticity numbers allow the material to absorb more energy from impacts before reaching terminal failure without resorting to it being thicker, heavier and…

The most amazing thing is, the majority of calls are not business or emergency related, they are personal calls about... nothing, and most likely calls to the person they going to go see in the next 10 minutes at their destination. So many are compelled to call their significant other as soon as they get in the car to…

Loving that old school H-pattern shifting too.

It would probably work well in studio, where you are typically shooting at your best ISO for image quality and lighting the subject. But with that oddball shape, you are going to be relegated to the tripod and if I am going to do that then I'll just shoot large format film.

Miss my '90 Si. No 305 V8 powered GM product was safe.

In his book he refers to them as Loaches as the nickname for the LOH-6 (Light Observation Helicopter)

My dad was flight engineer on the squadron commander's P3C for VP-16 based out of NAS Jacksonville from just after the VietNam was until the late 70s when he was grounded on a medical. They patrolled all over the Atlantic and Mediteranean from Reykjavik to Sigonella during the Cold War. Loads of crazy stories keeping…

Must read about the Airborne Scouts... Low Level Hell by Hugh Mills about the LOH-6s in Viet Nam.

I love how when you study the Aussie muscle cars that they are generally more comapct and muscular appearing than their US counterparts. Ours would start out this way and end up as three feet longer and a 1000 lbs heavier with every larger and lazier engines in them. There were the occasional big block muscle cars but…