I’m saying that there’s more to 0-60 than power to weight ratio. Transmission gearing, final drive gearing, launch technique, tire composition, whether you need to shift once or twice to hit 60, all that matters a lot. So to say that a manufacturer is cooking their horsepower figures based on power to weight ratio…

Plenty of German cars suck for reliability, too. Different design priorities - for some companies reliability is at the top, so they budget more money on higher spec components and allow them to be heavier and/or larger if necessary. Other companies sacrifice reliability for a myriad of other reasons, like cost …

Not walking home every other week after spending $40k on a new car?

0-60 is just as much about gearing as hp, if you’re talking about a few tenths of a second - that’s just one more shift.

This was not an accident. This was a completely predictable and very likely outcome. I can’t believe I need to say this, but swingsets and airliner jet engines have very different purposes.

It’s the rank hypocrisy of the party that loudly and publicly uses righteous morality, moral outrage and Christian conservative family values to get elected and get related laws enacted. Like Newt Gingrich, who was pressing Bill Clinton for impeachment related to an affair with a younger staffer, while at the same…

Speed doesn’t matter to fleets that buy trucks. Mileage does. Range does.

 Adding lots of weight changes the power to weight ratio. Try following an empty semi up a mountain pass, then an 80,000 lb loaded one. Adding lots of weight also changes range, especially when climbing grades. All of this matters a lot in trucking.

Considering VW’s track record of talking a new microbus up for decades with zero produced for sale, I’ll believe it when I see them on the street.

35k lbs? Ok, so the empty semi goes pretty well. Now add a typical 40,000 lbs of cargo and see how it goes. Empty runs prove little to nothing about tractor trailers.

Welcome to the Worst Columnist In Philly. Seriously, she’s this aggressively awful on a regular basis and somehow still has a job.

This. A thousand times this. Foreign Tire Service in NJ found this out the hard way with the thousands of recalled Chinese truck tires when the manufacturer left out the gum strip to save a dollar a tire, and didn’t tell them. The resulting van crashes and injuries and subsequent massive recall nearly bankrupted the…

Nah. Ex-Saturn master tech here - a factory quality alternator will commonly last a decade or more, crappy remans/white box parts, not nearly as long. Like optispark distributors used on Chevy LT1s, quality is very important. There are lots of shitty reman optis out there, because rebuilders don’t replace the…

I buy about $15k worth of parts a year. Used to buy $40k/year back when I owned my shop, and I’ve repaired nearly a hundred cars that had el-cheapo Chinese no-name parts installed by other people that failed prematurely, sometimes with catastrophic results. Your best bet is to buy a national name brand part. Rock Auto…

David: 23 year ASE master tech here - engine oil level can also go up from fuel contamination due to overfueling from faulty carburetor, fuel injectors or even water and raw gas oil contamination stemming from lots of short trips in cold weather over wintertime, where the engine oil never gets above 212 degrees - the…

Yes. Island Beach state park -where this happened - has a fishing beach, and issues 4wd permits so you can drive on that beach. I’d guess this dude knows nothing about airing down the tires to handle the sand better.

Uh, did you get the right stock quote for this story? Hertz rent a car is HTZ. Hertz equipment rental (like construction equipment) is HTI.

She can reverse the polarity of my gravatron flux anytime

Oh god, really? Your family scrapped out your ‘58 Oval rag? Holy fuck, I’d never speak to them again. I had a ‘58 Oval ragtop Baja bug (bought it that way, don’t kill me), it was possibly my favorite VW ever

I up voted the story for you.