I remember very vividly when the first WRX’s went on sale, because a friend of mine bought a fucking Jeep for the same amount of money at the same time. To be fair to him, it was really his dad buying the car, and his dad wouldn’t have had no Subaru. Also the kid would have killed himself in a WRX.

The Viziv performance and tourer concepts are clearly next gen WRX/STI/Levorg.  And closer to reality than some of their prior namesake concepts (uh... WRX concept anyone?)

Should also be noted that car prices in Australia are insane in general.  A loaded 911 will run you about the same, $300k range.

A few years back I would have told you that I was pretty much desensitized to the cruelty and evil that humans are capable of. At least to the point where simply reading one mans account of something he went through as a child wouldn’t affect me.

Semi-related: one of the absolute best ways to go with pizza is to have those cold slices (preferably thinner-crusted, cheese-only) reheated with extra cheese and whatever toppings tossed on. Can make so-so pizza good and good pizza exceptional.

Not to be all a jerk, but I’ve always imagined salt flats as being a very dull place to go fast. I mean you can go as fast as you want there, and that’s good. That’s the point. But without any reference points to gauge your speed against, I figured the biggest perceptible difference between, say, 80mph and 280mph…

Oh wow, Accord, Civic, Camry and Corolla are selling a lot better than I would have thought. That’s the big surprise to me.

Yea, must be first Torchinsky exposure.

OMG I just saw Stephens post, I can’t believe BMW did that. The Germanness of that is too much, too much.

I’m no steam punk, but this gives me a great idea for an overly complicated steam-turbine hybrid electric system.

Being a serious-business Engineer, I would have solved this problem in 3 minutes for zero dollars.  Tape a free Harbor Freight LED flash light to the steering wheel pointing at the cluster with near-dead batteries (the only kind of AAA batteries I have.)

The sad thing is that this doesn’t necessarily have to be true.

Wow, nice (aside from stance.)

This comes with the territory of pushing “cutting edge technology” to the market sooner. It is often unreliable. Part of why people pay that $10k premium (not counting depreciation, which is effectively another premium) for a “Luxury Car” like a BMW or Mercedes Benz is because they carry a bunch of technologies and…

HoT tAeK aLeRt: The wrap-around dash is nasty, sets off a panic in me and I’m not even claustrophobic. Only car I felt more uncomfortably confined in was Viper.

Bureau of Leftist Terrorist Elimination. I’ve always loved a fried egg on my BLT.

You’re giving 17-36 year old males too much credit.  

That’s funny, but I’d bet WRX STI and Raptor get cross-shopped a whole lot more than anyone would think.

Right, fun isn’t “fast enough,” because that matters.

Well it wasn’t me behind the wheel, but I was standing 20 feet away from the car when it came to a stop. Some friends and I had a Mercury Topaz “woods beater” that we uh, beat on in the woods like a forsaken rally car. One nice summer day, a couple of kids who I don’t even think were 16 took it for a spin. We were…