I’m not saying it looks like an Audi, but you can tell their last two design heads have been from VAG. 

Mouth-breathing commentariat: Stick to cars!

A lover of old unloved tech and The Americans? Dear God, I’ve found my spirit animal.

Genuinely curious: what would be the issue with hooking up to an EV truck? I’m assuming you’re hooking a chain to the back of your own vehicle to tow someone else out of knee-deep water in this scenario. 

Regarding the flooded roads: I’ve got bad news for you about oxygen (a key ingredient to combustion) and its complete paucity underwater. First time I’ve ever seen “shorting out” as a qualm with electric vehicles.

Equal parts bemusing, horrifying, and functional? NP. 

What kind of uphill grades can you hit before you’re genuinely afraid for your life / liable to just putter out? I have a soft spot for the Grom but don’t live in a place where “flat” really exists. 

Ooooh yeah I could see that being a problem on certain forums. My trusty fallback with Miata forum advice has been “know a guy who’s been rebuilding cars for 40 years”, but that’s not a great recommendation for the general public.

If you want more five-dollar technical words for this phenomenon: flow detachment causes a rear vacuum, and the effect is massive for a brick-shaped truck at highway speeds. The activity in the picture below is also happening, mirrored upside-down, off the underbody of the truck, creating a nice scoop-type air current…

Hit the enthusiast forums. I realize that as a Miata owner, I have the easiest possible time crowdsourcing answers, but this is applicable to pretty much any vehicle and might save you a lot of effort or even potentially a broken car.

*sigh* While we’re reminiscing, I better get this out of the way: the reason I’m a Jalopnik addict is not nearly as romantic as how you became a Jalopnik writer. There is no tree, no unreliable Swedish car. Instead, it was a complete guide to car sex, written by some guy named Torchinsky, on some car website with a…

That pretty much looks like a list of “cars a high schooler / college student is likely to drive.” Ya know, the same demographic that tends to do a disproportionate amount of dying in car accidents. 

No love for the Cruze hatch? I was shocked at how not-terrible a 2018 I drove was. There are still new 2019s out there for solidly 30% off MSRP. 

So the guy built his own version of my elementary school-era bastion of basic financial and occupational literacy, Young AmeriTowne? That’s neat! And also weird. Really, really weird. 

I’m convinced that what you really need is an “easy” project, which hopefully the Mustang kind of is. There’s only so much “breaking more things in the process of fixing things” that one can do before it’s your soul that breaks instead. Ask me how I know. *casts scorching glare at two self-immolating 3D printer…

Check your bank account, subtract maybe $8 for bus fare/a meal in case you messed something up and stranded yourself, and bam: you’ve found the line.

I bought this leaky gem in February and have been rectifying every missed regular service from the previous owners’ time with it. Tom Greco is free to send me a thank-you letter directly.

cutomer sevis still sucks apparently. Some things never change. 

“The most important thing you will ever do in life is to give a shit.” - my thermodynamics professor, doling out the best advice I’ve ever gotten.

The price doesn’t matter. If you drive one of these, it’s because you want an SVJ. You want an SVJ because it’s the exact kind of ridiculous automotive profanity that makes you happy. And when you have Lambo money, you buy exactly the thing that makes you happy.