So, apparently you wouldn’t consider cottage/shepherd’s pie or hunter’s pie or fish pie to be real pies either. There’s no requirement that something called a pie have a flaky pastry crust. Centuries ago, the crust could be similar to hardtack and wasn’t necessarily even intended to be eaten; it was a means of keeping…

Please. Everybody knows Mensa is for the losers who can’t make it into the Prometheus or Four Sigma Societies.

It’s not like there are only two options; Fords had the seatbacks open like bulkhead doors and face each other:

While I was at university, my Dad bought one of these after being caught by an early-November snowstorm and taking several hours to make a 15-min, 6-mi commute home. Not so much because he had trouble, but because so many other people were having problems on steep hills, and he couldn’t take a less-traveled but even do…

All the US manufacturers had “styled steel wheels” on some models, many inspired by or licensed from the British Rubery Owen “Rostyle”, although “Magnum” was the more common American name. They gradually disappeared in the ‘80s as alloy wheels imported from Asia eliminated the cost advantage of complex stamped steel…

They were gloss-black-painted alloys called Heritage wheels and could be dressed up with the dog dishes and chromed rings or completely covered by a chromed turbine-style ring with the dog dish center as a center cap. They look fine without any cover as well.

Presumably you already have a hydrometer in your toolkit so you can test to see whether you’ve ended up with an appropriate mixture in the radiator for your expected temperature range; even when low-risk I am not a big fan of “eyeballing it” when mixing chemicals, or baking. Since I haven’t had to routinely add…

Because you use the engines that you have available when the car is released. Between the excess width and height and all the glass, the Pacer was heavy, about 3000 lb for the standard 3-door and 3250 lb for the wagon. The later Mustang with the 88-hp I4 weighed as little as 2550 lb (2-door, 240 lb more for the hatch) …

The implication is that when the pedals are mounted on the floorpan instead of suspended from the firewall, air and water can penetrate around the mechanical linkages more easily should the seal become imperfect.

Sentia = US 2nd-gen 929 (1st gen 929 = Luce). It predates and was never intended to be an Amati model. The Millenia was to have been the middle US Amati but did replace the US 929; the bigger Amati was never produced and the smaller was based on the 626 and also never made it to the US, but was sold elsewhere under…

The opera windows were actually deleted if you bought the “carriage” style roof.

The coal variety is so named because it contains some of this substance, which is a component of and sometimes used synonymously for asphalt or pitch (the mineral variety, not plant-based). In other words, the car came with some form of factory undercoating or sealant, now common. One thing I don’t miss about that time…

The coal variety is so named because it contains some of this substance, which is a component of and sometimes used synonymously for asphalt or pitch (the mineral variety, not plant-based). In other words, the car came with some form of factory undercoating or sealant, now common. One thing I don’t miss about that time…

The early maintenance-free batteries weren’t necessarily maintenance free in all circumstances, which is why you could pop off the covers over the cells if necessary. And they were for some time significantly more expensive than a common battery, which is why they weren’t standard except on high-end cars, or cars…

UK firm Hot Octopuss has the best. The Pulse series and Pocket Pulse are great, but the recently introduced Jett is fantastic. Separately adjustable low and high frequencies, multiple patterns, hands-free.

UK firm Hot Octopuss has the best. The Pulse series and Pocket Pulse are great, but the recently introduced Jett is…

As far as convergent evolution, the rear-engined NSU Sport Prinz and the later NSU Spider based on it also have similarities in appearance. Again, Italy’s Bertone designed the hardtop, while the convertible seems to have been done by the Germans in-house.

His mansion is pink. All your alternatives are closer to fuchsia.

The Ford CD2 platform was an evolution of Mazda’s GF 626. This is most obvious at the rear, where the twin-trapezoidal links characteristic of previous Mazda products are visible from behind, rather than the “control blade” arms favored on Ford’s European-engineered FWD/AWD platforms. But the front parts were derived…

The lack of chrome, along with the dog dish hub caps, simply mark it as a low-line trim, possibly even an ex-police car or taxi given a respray. The driver ed car I learned on in 1976, a similar Valiant from a few years prior, had actually been both; it started with one of the local municipal police agencies, was…

From ones I saw at the time, the provided inch-or-so-wide straps had a flat, not-too-thick v-shaped hook at one end that fit over the leading edge of the closed deck lid, while the other end had a cinch that tightened around the raised bar