That thing about your hands needing something to hold onto is something I noticed with my dad. I got him to stop by getting him to replace those motions with a pencil or a sucker. Usually the small DumDums since he has a sweet tooth and you can buy them by the bag, perfect for keeping in your pocket or in a cup in the…

18 years without cigarettes and when I daydream about talking to someone I have a cig in my hand. When someone lights up around me I get a faint craving but as soon as they exhale, get that shit away from me. 

The social thing is tough, but what Dale Jr. said about it being your partner/buddy rings really true for me. My social network of smokers has mostly dried up at this point, but I still see nicotine as my emotional support / daily partner / crutch. I stopped smoking almost two years ago using Juuls and I’ve wanted to…

The dream thing... I quit smoking over 5 years ago and still have dreams in which I’m smoking. I almost always wake up with a faint sense of shame, lol. It’s really weird. 

I think BMW has the right idea with their new one platform for ICE, Hybrid and BEV (am I the only person who thinks of Rocko’s neighbors when this acronym is used?) vehicles. We are in a transitional period as far as drive-trains go and streamlining manufacturing for all of the popular drive-train variants seems like…

You raise several interesting points— I think the idea of “if I’m spending this much money, it better be superior to what I had before” is The End Game here.

They are dandy, if somewhat expensive, commuter cars. I worry, with consumer debt back to 2008 levels, that a lot of guys are hocking their soul for a $60K Commuter Tesla when they should just be buying a clean, practical, reliable $25K Toyota Hybrid Corolla.

I worked for awhile in Silicon Valley and the PNW doing market analysis on tech sector companies— and there’s definitely different phases to adoption.

From a Market Emergence POV, the reason the big guys are holding back a bit is because they recognize that we’re at the Moment of Truth for The Early Adopters... there’s a good case to be made that EV’s sold to this point are primarily “Early Adoption” buys. Several things indicate this:

Beauty of Montana it is so cold salt doesn’t work here so we sand the roads! So no rust, it is this plain jane tan color and interior looks brand new. In the summer they sometimes remove the seats and lust leave them sitting in the parking lot. I would pull the 3rd row for most of the time, but with 2 kids we are…

Dang. I never realized how much better they look without the bumpers.

When you said “matador”, I hadn’t noticed the actual matador standing next to the Toronado (what can I say? My eyes go straight to the car), so I thought you were refering to these:

I’d be surprised if any still exist. Commercial real estate is so expensive now it simply wouldn’t pay. Still many in club rooms around the world. There seemed to be a bit of a renaissance from 2000-2015 in the 1/32 plastic car (ie Scalextric) world but it seems to be tapering off now (I was involved from 2000-2010).…

There’s scalextric scale slot cars, and often shops that sell them have a track.

What a clean body. And a separate star for a graceful and evocative image.

Yup. In the old days people would put those reduction boxes and axles from the Buses on VW Bug dune buggies.

Those “reduction gears” were in fact repurposed portal axle components of the Typ 82 Kübelwagen – needed not just to improve off-road performance, but also to make it easier for the car to crawl at soldiers’ pace.

If you have the time to take the trip I cannot recommend driving the car home enough. It may not always be the cheapest option, but it’s a great way to thoroughly get to know your new car, and you get the bonus of having an opportunity to see things you may otherwise never get to see. Spend a little time with a map…

Not the best, but the first one that I can remember...how could I forget this glorious architecture?