The 1972 Peugeot 504 I owned in the 1970's was a stylish but mundane french sedan. But even it had a “tricky” paint job, way back then. Mine was a metallic silver that was impossible to touch up. I was told it was because they ran an electric charge through the body at the factory when the paint was applied and the…

It seems as if road tripping during a pandemic efficiently eliminates all of the reasons to road trip in the first place. When I road trip I want to feel, taste, smell everything. I have made a roundtrip to Alaska from home in San Francisco on my motorcycle. Motorcycles have a way of putting you up and close with…

Attending college in Oregon in the 1970's, our program attracted a share of students from Canada, so weekend roadtrips to Vancouver for some party suggested by a Canadian friend were a thing. We were architecture majors who endeavored to apply recently learned, or at least heard about, planning and implementation…

Neutral. In 1993, when this car was new, my driver was a 1963 Mercedes. There was something much cooler about driving a 1963 in 1993 than driving a 1993 in 2020. My car had a severely classic body with a vestige of a fins and a tree worth of wood dash. You got too much attention and offers to buy it waiting for the…

In my younger days with my first car, an MGB, I did a little of everything, from body work to switching out a fresh engine. Those cars were made of things that seldom actually broke, but demanded being adjusted, tightened, loosened, lubricated, or taken apart and put back together on a frequent schedule in order to…

When you see this sort of out of the blue, totally unforced error, you have to ask why. Like the Goya Foods guy, digging this hole all by yourself and getting yourself into this sort of position demonstrates there is something faulty in your thinking that means maybe you shouldn’t be running that business.

In college in Eugene, Oregon in the 1970's I almost bought a VW Brazil based Puma. The seller was “motivated” and I remember having it for several days to drive. Excellent fit and finish and did not feel like a part bin car at all. I drove a Peugeot at the time, so I was very open minded regarding cars.

I like these and remember writing some sort of essay long ago (Nixon in the WH) that production of entire new cars should stop and existing cars should be refitted, and refitted again and again, with the latest technology. Your choice of a 1913 RR Silver Ghost or a 2013 Mustang GT would be based totally on aesthetics…

It should have been easy, a single-wide dirt road with gentle switchbacks, not a trail. But not long before I rode through there must have been heavy rain, and heavy vehicles had left deep ruts that criss-crossed like a giant railroad switching yard. You would have an easy hundred yards and then you came to the end of…

I decided to cross a mountain in Arizona/New Mexico on the dirt with a 600cc street bike. Both pegs were toast by the time I got to pavement. It hurt after a while riding with no pegs and legs just flapping in the wind. But then I realized the bike came with spares and move the passenger pegs over and they worked fine…

I have no doubt that Henry Ford would be considered a super twat if there was Twitter in 1910.

I bought a small amount of cheap Tesla stock end of June of 2010. Just had the 10th anniversary. It was aspirational, wishing them well, instead of a serious investment.

So in China, you will be speed limited based on your political allegiance to the Party? And the car just shuts down if it detects alcohol in Saudi Arabia?

I like how even as a spoil of war built in a place it didn’t come from, the kidney grille survived, the Bristol 401:

It satisfies

I have owned Tesla stock for about 10 years and have followed it through all of the drama. I knew it would shoot up again as soon as SpaceX successfully docked with the ISS. The companies are not financially connected, but Tesla stock is the main entry to the Musk tech empire.

I bought one of those new in a Sacramento K Mart the day before I was snap decision flying to Mexico City in 1976 because I had left my Minolta up in Oregon. Still have it but haven’t used in since the previous century.

Not the best timing to release this story, considering Tesla released their Q1 financials today and they did very, very well. Stock up 70+ since the market closed 3 hours ago.

In 2003 I purchased a BMW 1150GS motorcycle under a similar scheme. I recall no payments for 6 months and an interest payment of 0.9%. I triple timed the payments, once they had started, and paid it off quickly.

I have lived in the same San Francisco neighborhood for 40 years now, the Haight-Ashbury. In the early years, the 1980's into the ‘90's, I was used to seeing a Facel Vega and a Mercedes 300d (Adenaur) parked on the street as daily drivers. These are google grabs for example. I usually wrangled a garage but at times…