1970 Trans Am.

3rd Gear: Let Dodge keep being Dodge for as long as they can go (I know, electric Charger and all...) and make Chysler the all-EV upscale mark. Bring back old nameplates like the Imperial and New Yorker. Build electric sedans. Younger buyers don’t even know those names so there’s no stress trying to rebrand a 300 or a…

There was traffic cam video on local news (Toronto) this week of some assclown trying to use the snow-covered shoulder to race around a group of moving plows setting up an echelon formation on a multi-lane highway. It did not end well for this driver, and he was rightly roasted on social media for his stupidity.

Not saying it’s a good strategy, just a strategy.

Or, depending on your chaotic inclinations, you could escalate the situation and light up a cigarette in there.

So could you theoretically be locked inside a Tesla if the battery failed entirely for some unlikely but still possible reason? Having never been in a Tesla to know, did they disrupt the interior door handles too or just use normal, functional releases?

Increasing car theft is a factor too. Total numbers in the US have been rising pretty aggressively since 2021. An article in The Telegraph today shows that in the UK, year over year car insurance costs have gone up an average of 54%. V8 Range Rovers are said to be almost uninsurable now because of theft rates.

I don’t hate it either, and supercars are definitely, in my opinion, not off-limits to mods. But this one is honestly kind of underwhelming. Liberty Walks’ bolt-on flairs, slammed suspension, and big wings are getting a little repetitive.

Brain: Yay!!

The older I get, the less inclined I am to see any of this as real innovation or as offering any sort of benefit to me. It’s all a sales pitch. I just envision myself eventually being swamped with things I don’t want or need while frustratingly trying to find the “unsubscribe” option buried somewhere on an ancillary…

So what you’re saying is I should buy a tow truck. 

Like they say, gotta shoot your shot, right? LOL. 

I too would like to live in a world where the trash collector pays me every day to pick up my garbage. But then again, if that were to happen, it would probably also mean living in some sort of Monkey’s Paw universe where I have to pay to go to work. I don’t think I want to be the one who establishes the precedent and…

The difference is that the Japanese and Koreans started their manufacturing industry buying the old machinery that American (and some other Western) manufacturers were getting rid of when they upgraded. The old machinery was worn and less precise, so the products they made were of similar less precise quality. This…

That would aggravate my OCD so much I’d probably crash trying to fix it while driving. 

What if I conceal carry when I’m walking?

When I mentioned that we have 4 seasons it wasn’t to imply that it’s somehow an impediment to 15 minute or walkable cities. This is Toronto. Say what you will about the place but one thing for sure, it’s a bigass city and it’s busy and congested at the best of times. All the older sidewalks are way too narrow. We have…

I consider myself small-c conservative and I more or less live a 15-minute city lifestyle by choice and design. I walk to and from work as well as for 99% of my daily needs like shopping or entertainment or just being outside. The only time I drive is to leave or return to the city. I don’t rail against bike lanes but…

4^th Gear – We’re going to see progressively more of this because it’s embedded in China’s MIC (Made In China) 2025 policy. This has been in place since 2015 but China doesn’t talk about it publicly as much since around 2018 when a lot of Western governments started complaining more vociferously about it.

The sagging door liner, especially being a known issue, is kind of crazy. I mean I’ve never seen anything like that, and I’ve been through a pretty wide variety of expensive, cheap, good and bad cars.