There are many excellent submissions in the comments; I didn’t see this one so I’ll toss it in, as I rather like it. Early 930 Turbo “turbo” graphics on the rear fenders; always felt they gave off a groooovy vibe.

Frank Stephenson’s channel has been full of lots of tips! I’ve internalized his ideas that every line should have some tension in it, and that many good designs resolve up to an invisible perspective point above the car, for starters.

I do have a thing for straight 8s! Their popularity certainly peaked in the 20s and 30s but they were available into the early 50s, as pre-war designs got updated while newer pushrod V8s got developed. Overtorquing the crank was becoming an issue even at 50s power levels, though as others have noted, the mid-crank…

I agree completely. Even if an automatic is “easier” in stop and go or over speed bumps or what have you, the automatic will never give the complete control to the driver and all the smoothness and engagement that provides. Automatics in traffic/low speed situations almost always do more to annoy/irritate me than a…

I know how automatics work. Sorry my post didn’t cover your use case. When I think the work is overstated and is generally worth the fun you mention, we are in complete agreement.

All the things you mention make driving less fun; I find minimal distinction between those experiences with a manual and automatic. That’s why I seem to either drive manual, or get on mass transit.

In a performance-ey application, downshift forward (with braking)/upshift backward (with acceleration) is definitely the way to go. In a more luxury or utility vehicle, where such a feature has more to do with grades or maybe passing than sporty driving (basically where you expect most manual shifting to be done…

Damn...that sucks. There’s this built-in dichotomy with urban areas where most urban areas wouldn’t have that problem of widespread, full-on gridlock; yet the ones that do are so large that lots of people experience those problems. I get that. And yeah, I raised my hand partly because I’ve had the opportunity to make…

You have to be on a VERY congested route to face the slog you’re talking about, in peak times no less...obviously plenty of those people exist because they’re all there in the traffic jam together. But my point was more to say, there are also many routes in congested urban areas where you can avoid those situations;…

It happens...but I’m in the Bay Area, a reasonably populous, congested area; and there are some places that are hell. I guess I’ve always put some effort into choosing where I live and work where I don’t have to slog those hells often. I’m guessing you’ve either not been able to make that choice, or you live in LA or…

Outside of extremely rare situations where you’re generally slogging hours per mile on hilly terrain, which I can recall happening twice to me in the last 15 years; I prefer a manual to an auto in nearly every traffic situation I’m likely to encounter, rush hour traffic included. Normally it flows enough that you can…

I had a bit of a thing for lukewarm econosports things in the mid-00s...partly a lack of taste in a naive youth, partly a reflection of what I could “realistically” afford (and even then, in hindsight, I was definitely kidding myself). But mid-00s was my peak period of “test drive crap for fun” and I drove two…

Yay electric trucks! And the Rivian looks proper nice as it nears production. They won’t work for everyone, but I definitely knew guys in the trades who would’ve loved an electric truck. Most of them can’t afford these ones, but you gotta start somewhere...a used market starts here, and the new market develops from…

I think F1 is on a bit of a knife edge, but I’m cautiously optimistic they’re doing enough in their procedures (which seem very smart) and going to stick to doing them such that they land on the good side of all this. Yet I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a day where the season is re-cancelled due to pandemic-related…

Manual Miata/Manual Alltrack owners unite!

Yaaay authority posturing.

I’ll grant you all that; but you’re advising somebody buy a 23 year old car. How did the previous owner(s) treat it? You can do PPIs and interview the last owner and pore over service records but there’s no guarantees, especially at that price. Sure, a $10k Boxster isn’t a guaranteed disaster; I’m not saying it would…

I’m not trying to smear you; point is, you’ve spent more than this guy’s budget on an air-cooled 4-cylinder rebuild and you’re recommending he buy a newer flat-6 Boxster without any word what his future budget is for repairs, and him saying ‘I don’t mind wrenching but...’ You’re selling him a Boxster based on things…

You say “buy a used motor”, I repeat “I don’t gotta do that in Miata land”

Yeah, but are you gonna DIY an M96 engine rebuild with IMS fix? I don’t wanna be an IMS doomer; I know they only happen so much, but when they do, it’s catastrophic and M96s are complex, difficult engines to rebuild...definitely not the first one you delve into to save some money. M96 rebuilds, from what I understand,…