It is fascinating. The linked court cases in it can lead you down a rabbit hole for hours. I just finished reading the one where a guy bought a new Mercedes E63 and tried to get out of paying for it by a sovereign debt elimination scheme where he even submitted a bunch of gibberish that ostensibly made the Secretary…

Well, that’s the ID Bus off the shopping list for my next car. The really stupid thing is that up until very recently I’ve found that the one thing VW did consistently right was interiors, instrument panels and controls. Now, in following the Tesla path they’ve gone from being one of the best to one of the worst.

You mean this (the Meads case)?

We got the “zed” pronunciation from Britain. As did Australia and New Zealand. I think the question is where did you guys get that weird “zee” thing from? :-)

I would feel rather nervous about spending even the equivalent of $50 using a “currency” that had changed in value by 5,859% in a year. It could crater in value in the next year or two in which case you could feel smug about unloading it in exchange for something you wanted (though Tesla merchandise wouldn’t be my…

The C1 and C2 fuel injection isn’t a TBI system. It’s much more like light aircraft mechanical injection - a continuous flow port system:

I would have loved to have seen Grand Prix in a theater!

Just... why? Why a Grand Prix novel in the first place? Making the story rapey is awful but even well written we didn’t really need it. Grand Prix never was about story or characters, I love it because of the magnificent job it does showing the tracks and (sort of) cars of the era. Everything else is secondary. Well,…

I learned how to drive manual not too log after getting my license at 16. I had read about how to do it, and read about rev matching etc. as well in books and articles on more advanced driving. Never driven anything but an auto but I had read about it. One day we had some old friends of ours visiting. Their dad, and…

“You can customize the dash” Preferably with a Sawzal... maybe a Carl Gustav.

Always looked OK to me:

I think Halon 1211 is used for extinguishers like that and 1301 was for built-in systems. Halotron is supposed to have replaced it but I can still find portable light aircraft extinguishers for sale that appear to be 1211. We had a compact 1211 extinguisher in the garage when I was a teenager. About the size of a…

This is why I say the Gyro Captain was the smartest person in the Mad Max world when it came to choice of transportation.

It’s the interiors that I dislike the most. The VW ID for example. One of the only things I pretty much always liked about VW’s was the interior design. The overall look and the instruments and controls consistently impress me. I had hoped that the ID would be Golf-like inside, instead they went all-out on aping…

The automotive industry has pretty much universally used 12VDC negative ground on everything for over a half century now - I wish they had long ago decided to standardize on some form of external power socket. Something designed along the lines of the MS-3506-1 for example but cheaper due to not being designed and…

A female pilot friend of mine told me that. She also said pilots usually “f*** the same way they fly.” If true, this makes me feel sorry for the significant others of some of the people I have taken up for check flights...

A soaring pilot friend of mine ejected from a Starfighter once. Caused him some temporary back problems and got him shifted from fighters to transports by the RCAF. He ejected at fairly low altitude and didn’t have much time between his parachute fully deploying and him splatting face first into a farm field that had…

This... thing... is proof, if more proof were needed that we really are descendants of the “B” Ark passengers:

Leaving the design and build choices aside (as those are a matter of personal taste) the car seems less impressive the closer I look. And it seems kind of expensive even for the Vancouver area. On the plus side if the bodywork was done competently, having a truly rust free, straight and solid body is worth quite a bit…

That gets a star. And may the good Lord take a liking to you, and blow you up real soon!