Honestly? A Baja or the Santa Cruz is exactly the kind of thing I need. I do a lot of biking and hiking. The bed is the best place to stick a muddy mountain bike and gross dirty shoes for the drive back. Both are reasonably sized and are easy to drive and park, and both will actually fit in any garage that’s not…

I kind of wonder what that grey building was originally - it doesn’t look quite big enough to be a service station even though it has garage doors on the front (and it doesn’t look like any old station architecture I’m familiar with, but I’m not a super expert).

I did see the Nashville store a few years ago - that…

I feel like if you were able to find and sell enough stuff you could make a living off of it. My aunt made decent money doing just this, except she ran her shop out of the barn and outbuildings of the farm she and my uncle lived on (and my uncle had a full time job).

I actually just did a mini road trip out that way a couple weeks ago - I live near Chicago, and drove out towards Fulton/Clinton then drove south to the Quad Cities. By the time I got to LeClaire I was needing to fuel my car so I stopped at a gas station, filled up, then parked to get a Coke or something in the mini…

I am all for warning lights going on when someone is using these systems, the only problem I can think of is what color to make them. Flashing blue and red is out because it’s the same as police cars (and probably other emergency vehicles but I don’t remember and don’t care to fall down that rabbit hole right now).…

I figured something like that. I have no idea if the cage has braces running through to the front and back of the car (into the trunk and engine compartment). 

It’d have to be a three row SUV with the third row permanently mounted and not foldable, and a trailer out back to haul your groceries, permanently mounted out back with a drawbar and bogies like a rail car, and the trailer doesn’t have a tailgate and is lined in shag carpeting, has two more seats mounted dead center…

I think these start as a Camaro body in white, so it at least has crumple zones - but I wonder if there’s extra bracing from the cage that messes that up.

AIUI, for road vehicles a sudden pressure loss doesn’t result in the full activation of the brakes - and like you said that’s probably a good idea, as anyone who’s locked the front wheels in the rain can tell you. There’s an emergency backup system for this scenario.

The fact that Barney Miller was mostly set in the precinct, and rarely left that set, helped the “play with jokes” feel. One of the things I liked about it as well.

I’ve heard a few things too. There was a guy here on Jalopnik who compared George Barris to Saddam Hussein, because apparently Barris was rude over the phone to one of his car club buddies one time in the mid aughts. Did this on a story announcing Barris’ death. 

Similarly, “balls to the wall” refers to aircraft, when the throttle lever is all the way forward, the ball on the end of it is at or near the firewall. 

Neither, although I apprciate the compliment! I’m just a weirdo who likes to spin yarns. 

trying to hex the moon instead

That’s interesting . I’ve never delved too deeply into the labor issues facing BL (and British industry at large, I suppose) at the time - they tend to be mentioned as contributing causes in books and articles but no real information. For example I know that labor issues at the BL Speke plant were a reason that the…

Yes and no. The Marina sold pretty well for much of it’s life, but in typical fashion BL kept it around too long so that by the 80's it had a reputation for being out of date and unreliable. But the troubles went far deeper than just a few cars that weren’t super amazing. There was a terribly spread out and…

I believe Lotus used them on the Esprit till the early 90's. 

I feel like an article about weird automotive glass would be interesting, but I also think that Zagato would have like five entries. 

You get a hell of a discount on Rolex watches if you buy them at the factory. And I bet the chocolate is amazing.

That was a BL thing - a bunch of cars used the same part.