Comparing the US to other countries isn’t necessarily an apples to oranges setup though. The US population is huge compared to a single European country, and universal healthcare doesn’t necessarily scale as effectively. I work for a Finnish company despite being in the US and have talked to several Finns about it and…

I mean, some exhaust systems cost that much to change the sound of your car. Maybe they used that for reference pricing.

My wife’s 09 Malibu already makes that sound, but it’s because of the transmission rebuild.  It has the weirdest whirring noise in low gear, especially when decelerating.

But not everyone who works for GM is a union employee, of course. What about the non-union salary workers? Well, as white-collar employees arrived for work at Flint today, GM’s UAW strikers blocked their entry with their own bodies, reports The Detroit Free Press:

Yeah, there’s definitely a car out there for everyone nowadays, which isn’t a bad thing.  I know I have my preferences, though I have respect for all of them to some degree.  I’ll give some brands a hard time just to poke fun at them, but at the same time I acknowledge that they do make some impressive cars.

I’ve always wondered why hydrogen internal combustion didn’t take off more.  I was originally planning to study it for my master’s degree in college, but there wasn’t really enough groundwork at my college to be able to set something up.  The idea I had was if you could retrofit an existing gas engine, that’s way…

You can do that on Vipers even with the cats, lol.  That part always surprised me a bit, but it’s basically only during extreme track duty you ever see that on a stock one.  Aftermarket tunes and exhaust can do it a lot more.

Fair enough. You can never really know when something is going to break on a car. It wouldn’t be a lot different than when I bought my house and was told the furnace was likely original to the house (built in the 80s). It worked just fine, but there’s no telling when it might give up. Wouldn’t be too much different…

I guess in my mind particulates are more or less synonymous with unburnt carbon, but I suppose I can see how they would be treated a little differently by different devices.  I know DPFs basically just burn them up in a super hot environment.  I got the impression a cat would treat them in a similar manner, but as…

Fair enough, though I do all my own work, so the cost of repair is a lot less for me. I also have some spare options, so one car being down doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the world for me. I realize that’s not typical, but it’s how my setup works at least. I’ve also pretty much never bought a car with the…

I’m still baffled how a catalytic converter doesn’t handle that.  I guess it doesn’t force trap particles until they burn like a DPF does, but that speaks more to the tuning than the exhaust to me.

Fair enough, I wasn’t aware of that, but it makes good sense.

A particulate filter on a gas engine?  I’m confused. I know that’s a thing on diesels, but do they just mean a catalytic converter?  Because that’s why burns any remaining fuel, which is more or less the only “particulate” I can see a gasoline engine making.

PPI is no different than buying a house in a sense. You get an inspection and go back to the seller to renegotiate. They are under no obligation to change their asking price, regardless of what the PPI comes up with. They can agree to fix the problems, lower the price, or sell as-is. All it really tells you is what to…

Fair enough. Admittedly buying used throws a fair portion of that issue out of the equation. It really comes down to the value of your current car vs the value of any “new” car. Electric is interesting because it has the same issue, though it could make up the difference faster if the price is right since you’d be…

I’ve had the same question for a while now, though I think one thing in that article helps explain it a bit. Automakers have already started spending on developing vehicles to meet those emissions levels, so if some newcomer were to swoop in and way undercut them by meeting “the new minimum”, the big guys would…

I believe all “gifts/prizes” are taxed under the maximum amount. Not sure I would call this “income tax” myself, though I could be wrong.

I don’t think I’d mind the extra legroom of the longer wheelbase, though that era of Corvette wouldn’t be my first pick of chassis, and I own one, lol.  I was excited thinking this was on a C5 chassis or something, but to find out it was a 77 dampened things a bit.  Seems nicely done at least.

Is it bad that even when it’s shown and explained out it makes no sense?

Not that I’m comparing it to Chrono Cross, but I had an interesting video game music moment the other day. A while back my when I was out visiting a friend in California, we were driving to one of his friend’s houses for a get together and he had recently loaded up a bunch of video game music that we listened to on…