Keep the engine, but unattached to the driveline. Instead, connect its starter motor to the horn so that when you “honk” the engine revs up for one second.

Just don’t nick the glass.

Toxic? Never even thought of that. Osmium is one of the nobles together with iridium and platinum and should not oxidize unless forced to. No?

Perhaps they emulated it by adding a 1-second latency to throttle operation in software?

We briefly contemplated making wedding rings from osmium, but it turned out to be a quite ugly metal. Matte black.

And awesome pyrotechnical effects if it scrapes the asphalt.

Only to sail the petroleum seas of Titan.

Fun fact: gold has about the same density as tungsten, 19.3 kg/L.

I think a 1000 cc actually, and to be honest it is quite peppy since the car weighs about as much as a cardboard box. At least if you take it to like 8000 rpm on every gear.

That reminds me of when I wanted to take a gander at the engine in my parent’s Hyundai Athos.

The concept “two wheels rear, one front” is anathema to all that automotive engineering holds sacred. Should be, in any case. And the people designing such should be found in a pillory.

The most comfortable I have sat was in my Buick Park Avenue. Those leather sofas were like sitting in the hand of King Kong. You just sunk down and slouched.

Some are less dorky.

I can not speak for the roads there, but where I live (Sweden) there are quite a lot of wide and often sparsely trafficked straights that go on for miles and miles. Fences on each side, and you can drive for minutes without seeing another car.

Fun fact: the experimental contraption produced hydrogen which was burned off in a dedicated chamber. About 5x3x2 meters or so. Or in retard units I guess 15'x10'x6' or some such.

A couple of years back I participated in building an experimental gasifier. Sort of a huge wood gas generator, only modern. I designed the structural parts.

Oh, I have dreamt for many years of making an “A tractor”...

Last time I traded in a car the dealer asked what I wanted for it.

My method is “It’s 10k. Oh, you want to haggle? Then it is 12k.”

I have heard of instances where someone took a V8 and converted one bank to a pump, effectively driven by the I4 on the other side.