... for a given value of “normal”. How long is that thing?

Your father bought an ID19 Cabriolet? Now I’m jealous.

Austrian national TV did broadcast the whole thing. They also, hilariously, showed a victor’s interview with Veith before Ledecka’s run. Being an alpine (though recreational) snowboarder, I had a field day with my skier friends :-))

I had a 1997 Rabbit that made a whoppin’ 55 hp from 1.4 l. Do the math and you’ll see that the Bentley made almost 50 % more per litre of displacement. (And that Rabbit would still blow gaskets, and spring leaks in the manifolds.)

I have never seen one of those in person, but I have been intrigued by them since I read about them in an 80s German car mag. Those deepsea-fish looks, that tiny V8 ... I think the journalist turned a decent one down that was about $ 4,000 in today’s money.

When I was a kid, the TV ads for the Simca Horizon were as ubiquitous as they were obnoxious. Until my dying day I will not forget that the Horizon’s wing mirrors were “adjustable from the inside”.

Those low cost, high traction Panda 4x4s used to be disproportionately popular as winter beaters with the owners of expensive sports cars here in salty-winter central Europe.

Was hoping for a Cord, but I just learned they went out of business three years previously.

I did this on my Mazda a while back. You rightly said that the disassembly is the hardest part. Some further observations:

I always thought it was “one Prius, two Prius” (fourth declension).

Fun fact: I have similar shift knob in my Mazda5.

I’m pretty sure this would become a problem at the next annual inspection where I am writing this. Can you say “pedestrian safety”? Imagine getting impaled on that thing ....

This is glorious. I seem to remember that in 90s Saabs you could switch off illumination for everything but the tach or something. If something was off (such as coolant temp) the illumination would come back on.

If one day I have 50k to spend on a chair, I hope I’ll be smart enough to stay out of offices.

How to buy winter tires:

This must be the last stock A310 on the face of the earth. Literally every single one I have ever seen (and there were a few, as I live in Europe) had body modifications that amounted to a write-off.

“Climbing requires a lot of crap.” For a given value of “a lot”. Ever tried skiing or snowboarding? Now THAT’s what I call “ a lot of crap”.

I love Japanese cars from the “who needs design if you have a ruler” era.

I suspect you have never been on a chairlift, nor even seen one in high winds.

I question the wisdom of making your entry-level interior look so much like your $ 200k interior that it’s seriously hard to tell the difference in pictures. If I spent S-class money on a car I certainly wouldn’t want to look at an A-class gauge cluster.