As you stated, many Tesla owners claim that charging time is not a problem, and that people will just get used to it. In reality, electric vehicle range anxiety is not some psychological condition that lacks merit. The limited range and long refueling times for electric cars are serious flaws; and electric cars will…

Exactly. Maybe BMW is taking a smart approach. Although experts claim that BEVs have entered the mainstream, they will be confined to second-car status until the range increases and charging time decreases.

Yes, if it is in good shape, grab it. The AWD Safari is still one of my favorite vehicles. The rear-biased AWD system worked great, and the seats could be totally removed. You can even put the second row in facing backwards, which is great for skiing and bicycling trips. Mine rusted out from road salt, or I would…

When smoking was still commonplace, most people used matches, and just tossed the extinguished match out of the car window (well, hopefully it was extinguished). I knew several people that, out of habit, accidentally threw the lighter right out of the window after lighting their cigarette.

I thought the same thing. Here is one that I saw on the street recently.

OK, thank you, that explains it.

The pattern on the dash appears to have a 5 where you drew 4 (at 6:22). I am sure that it is really 4th, it just looks strange.

Sorry if I missed this in another video. The shift pattern seems to indicate:

It is a shame if there are no more tracks. I actually learned a lot from racing slot cars. As I mentioned, motor position affected balance, traction, and handling. We also experimented with armature winding. Heavy-gauge wire resulted in lower resistance, but light-gauge wire would mean more turns. Of course, you could…

Do pay-by-the-hour slot car tracks still exist? When I was an early teen, there was a big building (I think that it used to be a bowling alley) that had three very large tracks; and it was within walking distance of my house. You could rent a slot car, rent a controller, or bring your own. It was very reasonably…

Oh, I forgot to mention, I put the engine from a 1976 Super Beetle in this 1963 bus. The larger engine, along with the reduction gears (portal axles), gave it quite a bit of torque.

Thank you. I never knew that. As strange as it sounds, the VW bus was actually pretty good off-road. OK, it was nothing like a real 4WD off-road vehicle, but it did fine on the back roads in Colorado and Wyoming.

The older VW busses had reduction gears at the ends of the axles that look a lot like this. The reduction gears allowed the busses to use the same engines as the Beetles, and they raised the body by a few inches. Of course, the top speed suffered.

I attended high school just north of Reading, PA. Since the Reading Railroad declared bankruptcy in the early 1970s, there were a lot of abandoned tracks. For some cars, it was possible to go to a backroad railroad crossing, align the wheels with the tracks, let most of the air out of the tires, and ride the rails.…

What a great trip.

I sometimes use my Garmin (suction cup on the windshield) when I am going to be in heavy traffic. My car is a little older (2006 Boxster) and it does not have CarPlay. The Garmin, attached to the windshield, is right at eye level and easy to see without having to look down. When I bought it, I paid for lifetime map…

By the way, I know that this drive did not originally start out to be a race, but it ended up being a heated competition.

Horatio’s Drive, by Dayton Duncan, was written to accompany the Ken Burns documentary of the same name, but it is also an enjoyable read as a stand-alone book. It chronicles the first automobile trip across the United States in 1903.

That looks very familiar. We had lots of these in eastern PA and upstate NY. Tastee-Freez was part of the same chain.

I owned a VW Golf TDI diesel for a short time. One thing that I learned is that all dealers are not created equal.