A Fleetwood is in that rarefied luxobarge category where I’d actually prefer the automatic. And for that much money, I can get a newer Lexus LS to fulfill my speeding couch quota.

Buy a 2004 WRX with a blown motor and tow it to a tuning shop. It’ll leave with 500hp for less than 30k (including the car).

Just put the damn thing in the Crosstrek already. Keep the power numbers at 250-260 to slot it below the WRX, put a 6 speed in there, and get ready to drown in money.

I found out recently that my old WRX was so far gone when I traded it in that it never got registered or retitled. Still don’t know whether it’s worse to see the actions of a subsequent owner, or to find out that you are the last owner...

The evening after I got my learner’s permit, less than 48 hours after my 16th birthday, my Dad brought me over to the middle school parking lot with the family minivan, a 1996 Mercury Villager. I had been playing a lot of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 with a wheel and pedal set...of course, the pedal set had basically…

I had about 300 to the wheels in my 16g-equipped 07, mostly because I didn’t want to mess with the fuel system. Spun bearings on modified cars is hardly surprising, the owner’s manual recommended conventional oil until 2008...on a stock car you could get away with it but the minute you start tweaking you have to…

The pistons are hypereutectic steel which isn’t the strongest material for engine internals, but works fine as long as you aren’t pinging. I ran my EJ255 for 160,000 miles on stock internals, the last 50,000 or so with an upgraded turbo. Basically any power level you can run with the stock fuel system is safe for the…

The farm subsidies, in addition to being distortionary, go to large corporations instead of small farmers over 90% of the time. And the resources industries are competitive (in the economics term of the word)...the subsidies do little other than enable less effective companies to make more money. Generally speaking, a…

I will fully admit Cobb makes good stuff, and that makes what I said less likely. That said, I still wouldn’t put an intake on a WRX or STI unless it needs one...and “needs one” happens when you go rotated turbo and are forced to replumb.

The R&D tax credit is peanuts compared to BLM leasing subsidies, and now that most of our oil is domestically produced this is a much bigger deal. 

Essentially every auto manufacturing facility in the US was placed there because of large sweetheart deals with local governments, especially the recent ones. Also, the government lets companies harvest huge tax losses (enabling them to pay significantly less in taxes) when they build factories, refineries and the…

The government subsidizes land purchases for oil and gas extraction and subsidizes corn to the point where it’s cheaper to make it into corn syrup than it is to grow sugar. It’s a gigantic amount of money, and significantly larger than the EV tax credit. By total volume, those subsidies are larger than the EV…

It’s the intake. The stock tune (08-14 STis, the WRX is a little more conservative but still susceptible) is a little close for comfort in the open loop section, and adding an intake makes the MAF sensor extremely unhappy. A tune can only compensate if made with that specific intake in mind (Why Cobb only certifies…

2014 Lexus GS350s for ~25k. I may need a highway cruiser...

A Leaf costs 50% more than a similarly equipped Versa Note ($29,900 v. ~$19,000 for a Versa SL). Between the relative efficiency and the fact that the Leaf will never require oil changes, transmission service, or any cooling or ignition system parts, and it’s closer to 10-12 years to making back the initial outlay.…

And even though Econ 101 touches on substitution, many seem to miss it. Cobalt and Nickel costs are being driven by the popularity of the NMC chemistry, but both the older lithium iron phosphate and the abovementioned LTO chemistries use essentially none of those two metals.

The current estimate is that EVs will reach overall cost parity with ICE vehicles between 2020 and 2022. This is years before they’ll reach price parity, and it’s a combination of the higher efficiency and lower maintenance requirements of EVs.

And I didn’t even count refinery energy, so it’s actually even more than that.

It’s already happening. One of the biggest issues with cobalt is that cobalt mines have never been a significant business...cobalt is a secondary product mostly extracted in concert with nickel mining. There is a real threat of a cobalt shortage, but only because people are digging new mines which may not be active…

The American grid may be outdated, but that doesn’t make it inefficient. You would likely have gas turbines which are around 60% efficient, plus 5-7% line losses, going into a battery which is about 90% efficient, driving a motor which is 95% efficient. That gets you to an RTE of about 48%. The average ICE has an…