I drove one of these as a rental car in France. During a jaunty day spent touring the Loire, it was fine. An evening drive to CDG in a rainstorm on the motorway was terrifying. I’ve never driven a car, before or since*, so susceptible to being tossed into another lane by the wind generated by trucks.

You see 5 parts Festivas and 1 working Festiva.

You’re making payments on a car without putting miles on a car. I’ve started renting cars for road trips sometimes just to save my own car from getting 2000 extra miles on it.

Yes. It’s dumb, but my biggest beef with it is that it’s uglier than it needs to be. If you’re an actual “coachbuilder”, you ought to be able to produce a vehicle that doesn’t look like something some idiot made in his garage with a sawzall and some bondo.

Just make sure to get insurance that covers rentals for “as long as it takes”.

Half a million clams is chump change in the land of hypercars. You want custom switchgear, you’ve got to step up to a Koenigsegg.

There’s a special kind of “Tesla is the answer to everything.” amongst these folks. They’re worse than Miata fans. 😉

More likely is that, given the amount of dealer consolidation over the last 25 years, the dealership that owned it in 1993 is now owned by some large corporate dealer network who wanted exactly zero to do with a 25-year-old theft recovery.

Legit. I’m not gonna lie. I would love to have a P100D. That said, I encountered a woman this morning that epitomizes Tesla drivers. We were waiting for an appointment and got to talking about tech stuff. Comes up that she’s got a Model X. She suggests that I ought to get one too. I defer, pointing out that I spend…

There was a period of time a couple years ago where Carmax was lousy with these. You’d put in 4 doors, AWD, and “sort by price”, and the first 4 pages of listings were these. Because I was thinking of getting something disposable, I drove one. Once. I felt my soul being wrenched free and said no way.

Many of the safety advances have been costly additions (airbags top that list), but cameras and sensors are not only relatively inexpensive, but they’re components that get exponentially cheaper at scaled production. Truthfully, they’re all just interim steps on the road to autonomous vehicles.  

Whenever I see these amphibious vehicles, I’m always struck by the complexity of their retractable props. Why not just use a waterjet?

Another odd thing is the inconsistency of turn indicator stalks on RHD cars. They’re always on the left side of the column on LHD cars, but they can be on either side on a RHD car. For someone used to driving from the left seat, trying to indicate a turn and shift at the same time, with the same hand, is confusing.

Well, I’d say that making a choice to buy a car that required such action is a choice. It’s not like there aren’t homologated options already available in all of these cases.

I love that Australians aren’t afraid to put down serious cash to buy and then convert to RHD vehicles not normally sold in Oz.

light on details

Nothing says “batshit crazy, but practical” like a Chevy Astro AWD. And here’s one in Ohio well under budget.

This could be an awesome project to take over, but not for $9k.

As long as Uber (and Lyft) are allowed to take advantage of drivers, there’s no business case for a competitor that isn’t shitty to their workers. Frankly, when the ride-sharing services started, prices were high enough to deliver wages at or above (sometimes significantly) minimum wage. Now there’s been a race to the…

Yes and no. The existence of Uber’s business model precludes the development of businesses that aren’t shitty to their employees.