Sadly, a significant proportion of people are so disengaged from politics that they are easily swayed by jingoism.

That’s a cool idea ... of course in the great wilds of Canada (and the northern US states), winter temperatures get low enough that you’d still be looking at 15+ minutes before things would have warmed up enough to be useful.

OS? On one of those? More likely custom firmware ... think something slightly (but only slightly) beyond a very basic BIOS.

I got mine in the early 80s - compared to the Chevette that was more common at the time, the Horizon was practically a luxury car ...

Yup

For me, it wasn’t the car I remember so much as the interior. I don’t know why, but the interior of these just sticks in my head:

You missed my point. It’s not the level of the taxes, it’s the BS that the politicians spin at you. Nobody talks about taking the job of governance _seriously_, instead they spout nonsense that makes people “feel good” about voting for them.

This is what happens when short-sighted politicians engage in populism (your taxes will go down, or this can be done so much “cheaper”, etc) rather than actually governing with an eye to the long term future. It creates one hell of an expensive mess to fix.

Stupid idiot. But ... it did make me think of this: An Army Of Birds (Skip to 1:25)

Ford had pretty much killed the Mercury brand in Canada by the time this thing first rolled off the assembly line ... so about the only Mercurys left rolling around here are either classics (as in 60s era stuff), or a few clapped out Mystiques (remember those?) ... and the odd Fox platform Cougar waiting for corrosion…

The price is a bit high, but it is pretty much unmolested. I suspect if you offered them a more reasonable price, you’d get it.

The original Z’s were smaller and less powerful than their NA muscle car competitors ... but they had a _look_ - they drew the eye (still do) The 350 and 370 models simply don’t. If I pull up alongside one at a light, I don’t even notice it.

I said it looks _dull_ - as in uninspiring, uninteresting, lacking novelty, etc.

I try not to ...

The 370Z doesn’t attract much attention because frankly it’s dull. Except for being a 2 seat sports car, there isn’t much to recommend it. The lines are ... well ... boring, and even more sad to me, they don’t even reflect a hint of the lithe grace that the first generations of Z cars carried.

Basically it was a version of the Mercury Monterey sold in Canada. Even when they were new cars, they were pretty scarce. I only remember seeing a handful on the road while we had ours.

We had one of these for over a decade:

That was part of the problem, IMO. Honda was putting so much into the Acura brand that they let the Honda brand suffer with mediocre designs.

The S2000 was a brilliant car - I never said it wasn’t. But most people can’t justify a 2 seater convertible as a primary car. That was a brilliant halo car for Honda in the wake of the Prelude’s demise ... but that didn’t address the flaws in their core product lineup.

The fifth generation Civic was an unmitigated disaster from my POV. The interior design was nowhere near as good as the fourth generation; goofy design elements like a clamshell rear hatch made no sense; the revised body shape made the hatchback less useful than its predecessor ... and the list goes on.