He probably read about Hubbard’s Sea Org fleet and got jealous.

How much time does a sailboat this size spend under sail? I’ve always gotten the impression that modern sailboats spend a *lot* of time motoring.

I had the same thought. :)

The problem is it’s smart enough to know it’s in Boston, so it’s trying to drive like a local.

The main reason you don’t see wood anything in production cars is it’s not dimensionally stable. That means your wood pieces don’t fit the same from day to day. That’s fine if you’re hand-assembling each car but it’s not a good fit for automated assembly.

Two points:
- U.P. has been known for decades for short-sighted cost-cutting. I knew someone in the 1990s who worked for them as a signal maintainer, and described yards where rails were sinking into the ground because the ties had been allowed to rot away. It’s hard to say any U.S. railroad is run *well*, but U.P. has…

I remember hearing the same about Minneapolis.

I do miss floor switches for high/low beam. Not like my left foot is doing anything on the highway anyway. ;)

It might also make a difference that this bike was designed purely for top speed runs. You can put up with a lot in terms of tuning issues if the only thing you care about is peak horsepower; any bogging or dead spots in acceleration are fine as long as you can nurse it past them.

Agreed, just wish more cars had used relays instead of putting full amps through the dash switches. I had a headlight switch catch fire on a VW Bus once, and a blower switch melt on a Rabbit. A high beam switch on an old Mercedes I had fried from years of arcing and left me with Low Beam and Flicker as my options.

The original concept for the Type I (in the late 30s) was you’d put 50,000 miles or so on the engine, then have it swapped for a fresh one. This made sense in an era when cars rarely went half that far without needing a valve job. That’s why the engine is so quick to remove/replace.

I like to tell people, about pre-80s cars, “these cars were built in an era when technology was expensive and labor was cheap, and the maintenance schedule reflects it.”

Hence the old term “lead sled” for a customized car. Lead was eventually replaced by Bondo in the better-living-through-chemistry era.

I remember when my parents bought a Plymouth Neon. They’d talked about how they originally had meant to get a Dodge, and the dealer offered to just swap the badges for them. ;)

Pontiac was the master of this. They could turn any car into a new car just by tacking on different plastic cladding.

AMC was like that episode of The Simpsons where Marge has one high-end fashion dress and keeps having to alter it to make it into new outfits. They were doing the best with what they had. ;)

I get the economies of scale that required them to borrow a steering wheel, but why borrow the second ugliest wheel Ford ever made? (The ugliest was the one in the 1997+ E-vans.)

Ever noticed a lot of limos have vinyl roofs? Ever wondered why? When you make a super-stretch limo, you end up with body flex. Enough body flex that going over dips will put waves and creases in the roof panels. Vinyl covers this up handily.

I drink coffee mostly because I’ve seen the amount of hassle it takes for my friends to get the amphetamines and it’s just not gonna happen for me.

I rented one of those EcoBoost Mustangs and didn’t perceive any lag. And I used to drive an ‘81 Mercedes 300TD with a big dumb Garrett T3 turbo, so I know what lag feels like. ;)