Who is this douche and why should we care about him?

This. For example - the NJ salvage inspection is done by the State Police, who are exclusively looking for stolen parts, VIN documentation of every used part and sales receipts for every new part used in that repair.

When I ran a repaired salvage car through that inspection years back, the disclaimer was right up…

It does if you’re paying a premium for an undamaged,  “no structural repair” car - I.E. no serious accidents. Diminished value is a thing.

I used to do PPIs and forensic auto repair analysis at my shop (both for car owners and for plaintiffs/lawyers), and it depends on how much the customer is willing to pay for and how invasive they want me to get, basically. A standard, one hour shop labor PPI? Maybe not, if the repair was well done and everything…

If the Tesla standard for used cars they sell is “no structural repairs” , then it doesn’t matter how good the structural repair was, it’s still fraud and the consumer wins in this case.

A hand impact driver for getting stubborn screws loose. I use one made by Lisle. Great for removing all sorts of stuck fasteners, but especially the countersunk phillips head screws that hold brake rotors on many Japanese cars.

I’ve owned a FireAero (in 1989), a first gen SHO (in 2000) and a 1985 VF1000R (hence, the username)

All very interesting and fun vehicles, all with their own major, likely crippling flaws. No desire to own any of those ever again, but some of the other stuff on your list this week look like fun.

Generally speaking, cars with tiny interiors fog up quicker and easier that larger cars, if only because the humidity you exhale is a larger percentage of interior space, relatively speaking. And tiny cars usually have somewhat weaker, smaller A/C compressors in the name of efficiency, packaging, not sucking up much…

Hi! 25 year ASE master car tech here. The OP is correct.

For some reason I can’t star your comment. So here’s a star :)
As a former owner of a much beloved 1991 CRX, that’s exactly right. The CR-Z didn’t do light and sporty well, it didn’t do hybrid efficiency well. Like the NSX, if Honda had stayed true to the original mission - light, fun, elemental, but updated with…

Again, we’re back to Iacocca’s “you can force us to build them but you can’t force people to buy them”. And that 18 mpg half ton pickup is better than a 50% improvement over the 11 mpg half ton pickup my customer had back in the early 90s. Going from 11 to 18 saves a helluva lot more gallons of gas than going from 40…

My dude, you have 415 hp / 430 lb-ft vs 260 hp/330 lb-ft and a 6.2 vs. a 5.7

That 60% power gain is not costing you a 60% mileage penalty

Agree with most of that. There have been remarkable efficiency gains in cars and trucks since the 1980s though - my RWD ‘95 LT1 Caprice was 4200 lbs, had 260hp and got about 19 mpg highway, while my 2018 Buick TourX wagon is 400 lbs lighter, has 250hp and gets 31 mpg highway, even with the AWD. And it’s a far better…

That is wild, thanks for sharing!

Yep. Was it Lee Iacocca who said “you can force us to build them, but you can’t force people to buy them”?

The twin whammy of a very limited EV market and lack of per-unit EV profitability spells a bad time for automakers not named Tesla.

Market share of EVs and hybrids is tiny. Growing, but still tiny. Barra has a…

Also, for comparison - when I lived in LA in a very Armenian neighborhood, there would be a massive crash at the corner (nearly always between two Armenians) about once a month between a speeding car and another coming from a side street, and inevitably the innocent car parked on one of the corners would get…

The majority of this was in and around Philadelphia, where for years a large minority of drivers (think 40% plus) drove without insurance (fake cards or real cards from policies canceled after the first payment), with stolen registration stickers (cut license plate corners everywhere) and fake annual safety and…

NorCal is largely supplied by PG&E, their generation is 85% carbon free.

Can’t speak for anyone else, but of the three cars and one motorcycle I’ve lost (and the three cars and trucks my friends lost) to uninsured drivers so far -

*all* the at-fault, uninsured people who totaled our stuff were remarkably reckless and stupid. One was so drunk he couldn’t stand up, another was doing 80 mph+…

IME - the worst dealerships that sell the worst cars (Mitsubishi, Nissan and Dodge, I’m looking at you) to the worst customers are usually the ones with the loudest, most frequent and most obnoxious ads.