Many of these responses assume you have the money to do something about it. Sometimes, young people (I was once one, you know) have to drive a piece of crap because they are broke. The kind of broke that means fixing a ground problem with a coat hanger and electrical tape.

I’ve found that slathering my car every Spring with a generous coat of SPF-200 sunscreen helps preserve the paint color longer.

I would love to see affordable (cheaper than ICE) electric cars before I’m too old. Is that before or after we get flying cars? I’m a bit confused on that point. With all the ‘projected in the near future’ stuff that rarely gets backed up.

Oddly, they’re not the best I’ve seen. I put a pair of these on the Wife’s Buick, and she complained about the lines on the drivers side. I’m considering replacing them this weekend with cheaper, more effective ones.

Oddly, they’re not the best I’ve seen. I put a pair of these on the Wife’s Buick, and she complained about the…

That actually is a good idea, but look how it’s reversed in the past decade. Dell, etc., all make components that only fit their own boxes. And don’t get me started on laptops, notebooks, and tablets, all of which use specific parts that only fit that particular model.

Darn. That’s all? A guy’s gotta eat, y’know.

Someone poured a bunch of sugar into my Toyota once (‘79), and it got sluggish. All I had to do was swap out the fuel filter. It got clogged. I asked the dealer what was causing it, and they actually had it tested. Then they gave me another couple of filters, and told me to keep changing them every week until I…

I know trade is good. But I also know deficits are bad. It’s hard to find a logical place in all this.

I agree with tons of this. I want a pickup like my ‘79 Toyota. I was looking at a car where a manual was a $3,000 option! And I’m not too wussy to crank my own windows, just less to break.

They would have to pay the fine on all eleven of them, though.

5th... IS the Bolt really ‘serious competition’ for Ford EVs? Now I love Chevy, and I love EVs. I’m the perfect demographic for Chevy to sell me one. But the Bolt just won’t do it for me.

Your comment about tolls is up for debate. It costs millions to rebuild a stretch of highway. If the local Gov’t wants a private company to do it, that company is going to want something for it’s cash and effort. They aren’t going to do it out of the kindness of their hearts.

It depends on how fast they want to cut back. I do know a few companies that scared people with talk like this, but just had a hiring freeze. Over a two year period, the number of people retiring or leaving for another job accomplished the goal without a single layoff.

I pretty much agree. Our current system of ‘low bidder’ isn’t the greatest, coupled with ‘brother-in-law’ deals, but sometimes it works out. Private roads built and maintained by companies would mean tolls, and I see that quoted here a lot, but it would mean tolls forever.

That’s not too far off. Didn’t Britain badge some Yugo-type thing as an Astin Martin?

Yeah. I was in Quality Control at the local M&Ms plant. I got in trouble for telling the board about all the Ws that were going out.

I assume people have learned nothing at all in the rush to build ‘the next great thing’. The Bricklin “could be available in two years”. Yeah. Like Cheap EVs, the Elio, and Flying cars.

Maybe they should talk about the legality of that, also. A friend of mine once went through the ‘new contract’ thing. When they couldn’t agree on it, he turned the car over to void the deal. They had already sold his car off, though, and offered him only what they gave him on trade-in. Since he still had to buy a…

That didn’t bother me nearly as much as how gravity worked during acceleration and braking... or even worked. 2001 showed us how only spinning can generate Earth-type gravity. Only in the Trek movies did we ever see gravity fail.

Actually, they can’t. Just like paying a toll to drive over a bridge, you have no control over how the bridge is run. If they don’t pay, they don’t sell cars.