Simca 1204. Was copied to yield the first gen Golf and the Omni/Horizon twins. Great handling and ride. An example of a promising child born to bastard parents. Wagon added utility. The dealer service manual is a great read.

If the federal government can present a compelling argument that they need your stuff and they are offering just compensation they are going to legally take it. If you have a different perspective and try to utilize your second amendment rights to change the outcome you’ll likely end up dead.

Japan has operated high speed trains since 1964 carrying billions of passengers without a single fatality. The US is the only developed country where train travel is more dangerous than air travel. What we have is a political cluster that will never be fixed.

More accurately they are angry spiders. Don’t ask.

Stopping sales of of new gasoline fueled new cars means squat. When California announces that they won’t sell anymore gasoline you’ll have some news.

Amtrak’s Positive Train Control is an old technology. It was installed on Japan’s bullet trains (labeled ATC) at the onset of operation in 1964. Since that time they have carried 10 billion passengers with zero fatalities. The real question is why does the US subsidize by the hundreds of millions of dollars a system…

1974 December 26th at my grandmother’s in north Texas at 20F. Replaced the clutch by myself on a ‘71 2l Pinto with only a bottle jack and some $2.99 jack stands in a 60 year old windy maintenance building with concrete floors so soaked in oil they never dried. Put down corrugated cardboard to fight the oil. Bought…

During the winter New York applies hundreds of thousands of tons (yes, thousands of tons) of salt on the roads. Surprisingly environmentalists have been fairly mute in this respect. I expect NYC uses far more salt on 5th avenue (site of the old GM building) than what Detroit is beefing about.

Headliners are certainty a PITA but there are worse engineering failures. All of the electrical interconnections in a car are ultimately subject to increasing resistance over time. There are accelerated tests for these connections which accurately predict their failure in the real world. There are a wide range…

I could take a lot less. Imagine your autonomous driven car takes you an intersection in a sketchy neighborhood. A few miscreants quickly show up with card boxes weighted enough to withstand the wind. In a few seconds you would be in a cardboard stockade that the autonomous driving system would be powerless to…

Adding a bigger sump and an oil filter would have greatly reduced required maintenance. The air cooled engines had no oil filter and required oil changes every 1500 miles. Most dealers had a lift in the front of the service bay and a handy waiting area. Owners could drop in Saturday morning and get a quick oil change.…

Try this: put a retractable tow bar in the front. Tow bar has manual connect but remote release. Have an app that identifies those with trucks that are going your way and are close to you now. Stop off in a safe area, connect the tow bar, use the app to pay the $5 for their trouble and the truck drives off pulling…

I think that any single French mark would struggle in the US. I do think that if there there was a “Frenchy Motors” brand that could pick and choose from any of the French models they could find success. I posed that to a Peugeot engineer who also thought it would work but said that Peugeot would rather die than…

Let’s face it the end for hoarders is rarely a happy one.

I suggest the wheels started to fall off in 1992 with the introduction of the Civic Del Sol. The first generation 1984 Civics were cars that represented the best cars they could build. Once they were designed they sought production efficiencies to lower costs, not to move to technologies that compromised performance…

I soon foresee miscreants moving orange barrels or even cardboard boxes in front of autonomous driven vehicles at any sort of traffic control just to see what happens. Not so long a go similar minded thugs in Britain found out that a light tap on a front bumper would set off the burglar alarm. Soon there was…

There are busses that duplicate much of the subway routes for one. They could leave the prices for busses where they are. A bigger question is whether the public should subsidize eternally the decisions of those who choose to live far away from their job. Historians have long regaled the spirit of American pioneers…

Obviously I missing something. Why can’t they raise fares or go the Uber way use congestion pricing? They are at capacity with a product that is preferred over buses and taxis. Raising prices only makes sense. Japan’s mass transit is clean, safe, crowded only for short periods, it privately owned and profitable. …

With the exception of early MB ML’s (a true TARDIS) most SUV’s and CUV’s are exceptional space wasters. You see this when you attempt to fold the seats down and find that the height of the remaining cargo space is often less than that of a wagon of the same length. One problem with wagons: the hatch opening design…

While I haven’t read its mention, I know it will com: a near instant kill switch that in the event of technical catastrophe the manufacturer (or NHTSA) will be able to force all cars of a given type to safe harbor. Once a dangerous defect is discovered the Feds will not sit patiently for the owners to return it to…