“Public Transportation” are you nuts? After all this no one who has a choice will get anywhere near the mobile petri-dishes (buses and trains) for years if ever. Not saying the overall premise of public transportation is a bad one but COVID-19 will to far more to discourage investment in public transportation than…

UP’s steam locomotives have all been converted to burn oil rather than coal. What is coming out of the stack is primarily steam not smoke.

Oh, I know how it works. And I know why it was done, none the less there are pros and cons to every decision and we’re now seeing one of the cons. This was bound to happen sooner or later, that is the problem with lean/just in time in any industry, it is fine most of the time but doesn’t allow for extra capacity for…

Not even close. I’m about the furthest thing from a Socialist. Simply pointing out that this is the ultimate end game of trying to run a health system with “just enough” capacity, it was bound to bite us sooner or later. MBAs run the healthcare industry these days and have tried to apply the same concepts from “Just…

The problem with lack of capacity in the healthcare system is not covid-19, it is decades of shortsighted decisions to trim health system capacity to the bare minimum for normal conditions (after all empty hospital beds are loosing money), and as a result anything beyond “normal” load (whether it be a disease or…

Agreed, while some precautions may be called for (especially among the elderly and those with existing medical conditions that make them more vulnerable). This is not the black plague (>90% death rate) or Ebola (~50% death rate), heck this isn’t even the Spanish Flu (8.5% death rate). People are completely blowing…

I applaud you wanting to keep someone who is high-risk (an elderly person) safe. But overall people have lost their minds and are panicking over nothing. For some prospective globally approximately 1.2 million people are killed in traffic accidents each year, while covid19 has killed a little over 6 thousand (mostly…

True, but if they were destine for the scrap yard, they likely would have been cut up either way.

Between this and fuel-injection NASCAR is really making their way into the 1980s .... oh it is 2020, well better late than never I guess....

At least bad chain tensioners generally give decent warning if you’re paying attention. While a broken belt (yes, they “normally” don’t fail if replaced when specified but some do, and certain models are more prone to premature failures just like some vehicles have failure prone timing chains) will immediately grenade…

The only thing bigger than those grills is the size of the crow bar it will take to pull the BMW “designers” heads out of their asses.

While I support a truly “basic” safety inspection as DT mentioned, unfortunately it is usually one extreme or the other. Either no inspections at all or ridiculously through ones that go well beyond “true” safety issues. Here in PA BS stuff (not “real” safety issues) you can fail for includes: non-matching tires,…

eh, the weak points on these are primarily the electrical gremlins (which come primarily with age not mileage so any ZJ will have them at this point), the auto transmissions (which of course won’t be an issue with this one), and of course rust (which also doesn’t seem to be an issue here). While it would never be…

... And I’m supposed to care about climate change why?

Some strategically placed re-bar or angle iron driven at least 3-4 feet in the ground will generally fix that problem. One place I lived we had that issue with the hired mowers (HOA hired) constantly clipping decks, gutters, landscaping, etc. I drove a few 5 foot long pieces of re-bar into the ground (leaving about…

“What more do you want out of a machine?”  ... I mean some people  want to survive a moderate accident......

Right.... And a $50 trillion cost and the fact that it would be run by a government so inept that it can’t even run a railroad (Amtrak) or the postal service effectively (both far simpler than a health care system), totally won’t be an issue......... (really, I foresee such a system being a bankrupt trainwreck in less…

agreed, most Japanese cars of the 1970s had fairly reliable (for the time) powertrains, but bodies made of the thinnest and cheapest steel they could find. If you lived somewhere that salted the roads or even a damp climate they would generally rust out long before they had a major mechanical failure.

... Yah, we all know FCA is “special” in that regard, but the vast majority of 8 year old cars (aside from European luxury brands and FCA products as you noted) assuming they’ve been properly maintained should have many years of reliable use left.

To Chuck Schumer and every other a-hole who wants to shove electric cars and “environmentalism” in general down everyone’s throat. “Please do the world a favor and go die in a fire”. While I’m certainly not opposed to the option of electric cars I can’t support trying to force the on anyone and would never support the…