Someone’s already done a BMW I6 swap, so why not a MBZ swap?

BMW did it better

The 2012-2014 Mazda5 had a 6MT available in the US. This is my rare 2012 model; only a handful had the manual, and only a few of those were in the one-year only (for this body) Copper Red Mica. Over the years I’ve driven VWs, BMWs, MBs and a Porsche, but this is the one car I want to keep forever. I may buy other…

A few years ago I bought a fancy touchscreen stereo to replace the one in my Mazda. I tried living with it for a few weeks, but found that I just plain preferred the simplicity and ease of use of the stock stereo and the display on the top of the dash. Sure, the new stereo had tons of features, but from a usability…

RHD and an automatic might be OK in a LHD market as it’s one less thing to worry about. NSX with an auto? CP all day long. And RHD would make it easier to grab your food at the short line at Rally’s, although placing the order at the speaker would be a challenge.

About 15 years ago I worked at a big talent agency in Beverly Hills. I was making good money, but didn’t spend it buying new cars every couple of years when a new model came out like most of my co-workers. Anyway, I asked out a co-worker but it was a disaster - according to word through the grapevine the club I took…

Although I don’t have a C64 any longer (gave mine away when I moved 4 years ago), I do have an emulator on the Mac so I can still play M.U.L.E. That game still kicks ass 30+ years on...

Back in my old hometown of Westchester, CA, there is a building that IBM occupied for decades, starting back in the punchcard era, hence the reason the windows are arranged to make the building look like a giant punchcard: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9565564,-118.4160866,3a,75y,289.09h,109.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sA…

Paid $300 for my VIC-20, working every odd job I could find around the neighborhood to come up with the scratch. Kept it until I moved 4 years ago. Good times...

This is an easy one:

And as I recall, BMW had to do a bit of a break-in to the shuttered Lamborghini facilities to grab some tooling and assembly jigs that BMW owned for fear that they would have been sold at auction if Lamborghini was liquidated.

And here’s how they wind up at the bitter end:

Well, I think I know where I’m going for lunch on Monday...

Is this the one on Eager Road, or is there one I don’t know about. Must investigate...

Back around 1980 I had a friend whose dad worked for Intel. These crafty guys would pool their money to buy a game for the Atari 2600, yank the chip and duplicate it. Everyone in on this scheme had a modified cart with a ZIF socket on it, and a tray full of ROM chips that they could easily pop in. Sure, you had to be…

And from what I recall, it was said that during the ground effects era, 75% of the suspension compliance was in the sidewalls of the tires, which would imply a ridiculously stiff and almost useless suspension, and close to impossible to actually tune.

One nice thing about this relatively neutered engine is that it made for some simple and easy swaps. I recall reading an article ages ago about someone that took one of these and popped it into an E39 528i. Pretty much plug-and-play as I recall, and with the E39's valve cover it appeared to be bone stock, making it…

This car has a 5-speed with a dogleg first gear, and during long sprints on the start/finish straight he does get it into 5th. For the slow turns, like right before entering the start/finish straight, he puts it into what would appear to be first (left and up), but that is really second gear, as would be expected for…

In the case of the Mazda5, at least in the US, the base model trim was labeled as ‘Sport’. I suppose this is because it’s stripped out like a racecar, and it’s the only way to get the manual transmission.

Sadly, the original engine didn’t crack triple-digit horsepower, with the 2.1 starting out in 1986 at 95 HP and dropping to 90 shortly thereafter.