$10k sounds pretty reasonable to me actually, given how much of this requires almost entirely custom work (and how much you’re adding in parts). It’s not chump change, but it makes the C30 into a Swedish Golf R. That’s pretty freaking cool.

I put 87 octane in my XRS. Is that bad?

I wouldn’t put Subaru reliability up as the exemplar. You’re stuck doing a pair of headgaskets when (not if) they get blown. Parts availability I’ll give you, but I think it would be down to the model/year and mileage of the Volvo in question for me. Definitely would not buy a +100k mile Subaru though. You’ve still…

I’m actuallya little bit sad the US went the way we did with nuclear tech. The soviets were much more comfortable making little baby reactors and putting them in cool stuff. I think we would have done much better implementations, and commercial nuclear ships would be potentially more eco friendly than diesel (and…

I think this is an assumption that’s not backed up by the data we have. 2000 nuclear warheads is devastating, but it’s not a situation of annihilation. Most doomsday scenarios assume some sort of nuclear winter, which in turn assumes that modern cities will burn in such a way as to release enough particulate matter…

Wow, that’s clean. 250 hp with no forced induction ain’t bad. I bet it sounds lovely with the itb setup. Yeah, definitely prefer that car to an LS swap.

I’d bet a modern electrical and fuel injection system would fix most of the reliability. Maybe some preventative maintenance for some known issues. I’d think a 2.3 with built internals, a little turbo and upgraded magic pixie bits would be a much more interesting build than a me-too LS swap.

The track may be slightly less glamorous.

I had the hot wheels versions of this car!

“For this one, I think... polonium.”

Even worse, there’s cheap (relatively speaking, but by DoD standards cheap) UHMWPE armor that’s crazy light (again, relatively speaking). It’s probably not good for much beyond small arms fire, but anything more than that and you’re talking being up armored.

I think I’m something of a purist when it comes to engine swaps, but not to the point of being a fundamentalist about it.

If you say it with just the right emphasis, it sounds like the other name.

I think the few accomplishmentsi have in life are a result of an irrational determination to prove people wrong

Exactly

I think they could just as easily “hide” the headlights in plain sight. LEDs and “laser” headlights don’t need the real estate that old reflectors and bulbs did. See “Yamaha R1":

I drive an ‘03 Toyota matrix XRS that I paid just under $8k for a couple years ago with under 80k miles. I commuted two hours plus every day to work, and put about 30000 miles on it before I changed the oil. I‘m not proud of neglecting my car, but I am proud that it has held up so well to the neglect. The only work…

A stripped out KIA will get better mileage and be safer than a Corolla even from the early 2000's.

Almost nothing you named actually costs more to manufacture. I think the big thing that's driving cost is overall complexity and the cost of design that comes with it. The cheapest KIA still has a remarkable feature set, but it's pretty inexpensive.

As a relatively young man (32) who rode carbureted motorcycles to school during pretty much the entirety of my high school years: carburetors and points can go fuck themselves.