@Jstas has gas!: Neither BMD nor cruise missles had human flight certification. Yeah, they're more complicated than say ICBMs which barely even have GNC but it's nothing like the exponential increase in complexity you get when you have to guarantee the ENTIRE system is multi-fault tolerant to critical failure. Add in…

@Jstas has gas!: sorry, thought you were being serious(ish). there are enough people out there who don't really get how difficult this stuff is to accomplish and it gets to the point where it's difficult to have a sense of humor about it.

@Jstas has gas!: One of the reasons that we beat the Soviets to the moon was that they were more rigorous in their safety certifications and were more risk averse...

@OMGItsWeasel: of course, once we stopped competing with the soviets, the space program kind of lost direction and america lost interest

@freelunch: Depends on the weight of the bike, but my '80s $1200 76hp tariff beater is good for the 0-60 sprint in the mid 4s, weighing in at about 550lbs. It won't do wheelies, but it's still pretty scary in 2nd gear above 5k rpm with the throttle wide open. In fact, if you just go japanese, you can pretty much get…

Well, the only "Mazda Miata" "sportbikes" are chinese 200cc affairs. Even the few and far between 500cc sportbikes generally manage supercar-like acceleration in the legal speed ranges. Also, 17k isn't bad at all - but I still can't get over the unbelievable 14k price tag on the mindblowing s1000rr...

perfect! i'm sick of seeing commercials marketing the sienna as some sort of hipster family vehicle, the routan as an example "german engineering" (these commercials are so bad i could swear they're trying to be 'ironic') or the accord crosstour as a race car (seriously - they show it driving around a track - that fat…

@pauljones: 33k should buy you about 60 m10s in pretty good shape. those engines are pretty much worthless and not too difficult to swap... that guy is either lying or took it to a dealership

$8k would be a pretty good price on a Baur 2002tii or even a hardtop 2002tii in good condition. A non-factory roof chop plus that degree of body rust means this is unfortunately just a parts car. Engine work on these things is cheap and easy compared to dealing with rust.

@ZB209: Don't forget - the anchor cost more than the car

@nataku8_e30: hehehe

Well, it's too early for me to read this thoroughly, but if I'm not mistaken - you basing a lot of your argument on the assumption that the performance reduction caused by donking is only noticeable at racing margins. My experience has been that it makes the car almost unusable for normal daily use. Most of the cars…

@Scandinavian Flick: Do it! If that were near me, I'd have a hard time resisting... Most of the parts are interchangeable with the w109 (I'll just pretend that makes them cheaper)

Traffic maps are great and all, but as I've discovered in Houston, they're worthless when there ARE NO ALTERNATIVE ROUTES

@FormerlyPreferredCustomer: I actually thought about that the other day, but it's really not THAT bad. There's a bit of rust damage and the paint is dull, and the hood is a few feet out of frame and easy to reinstall. The interior is in pretty good shape as well. With the parts cars nearby, it does make more sense to…

Oh, also "on tall period suspension"

They're actually fairly cheap (often under 20k). My Dad bought this one back in the late '70s, drove it through most of the '80s and last registered it in '89 I believe. When I was home a few weeks ago, we were trying to get it going - and this post is an excellent excuse to post a video of it!

I'd do what Caterham did...

@Jones Foyer: I see no reason why the bloggers can't post a few lower quality, car related stories as long as they also have some high quality posts on topic. That crazy bitch car crime calendar seemed pretty annoying and tangential, but seems to have gotten a large following. Unless the internet is almost full...…

Wouldn't it make more sense to base it on a Fiero?