Setting aside the racist history of crack in the United States - which I think is fine to do, for the moment - it marginalizes and demeans a really serious issue, i.e. addiction. It’s perfectly normal for you to be like, “What the fuck?” in response to that, particularly if you’re not, like, a crack addict. (Not that…

Yeah, we do.

Not that my opinion, you know, matters in any objective way, but: good choice on retiring “crack pipe”, which demeans and belittles addicts. Good looking out.

That’s one of those fantasies I have periodically. While my lifestyle and budget and just general absolutely everything about me means that I’ll never own a brand-new car, and I’m kind of too old to do anything really impressive with one anyway, but I regularly consider which modern automobile I would purchase if I…

Most people just drive older cars into the ground. They ten buy a new depreciated car and the cycle continues.

Oh, yeah, speaking of rust, I should point out: I live in Michigan, where sheet metal goes to die. But that just becomes part of maintenance, particularly if you’re far, far too lazy to properly wash your cars, which of course none of us would ever be, ha ha.

“In the mid-’90s, 100,000 miles was about all you would get out of a vehicle. Now, at a 100,000 miles a vehicle is just getting broken in,” said Campau.

Humans read fast badly. Numbers should stay fixed, while gauges move in relation to them. While skeuomorphism for the sake of familiarity is a long-term ill, there are lessons learned from the last several centuries of displaying information that should be applied to digital designs.

Notice I don’t have my rear window in. The rear vacuum effect is so strong that at speeds above 30 mph or so, the strongest wind is actually from behind you, to the point that I have to carry a squeegee to clean the salt water from the inside of the windshield, because so much spray comes in the back window.

Many residential streets don’t have parking meters, and very few would have a street light in cable’s distance of every car. In many communities that do have parking meters, the same infrastructure issue of underground wiring would exist, because by no means are all parking meters electrified. 

Whenever I buy a new XJ, the first two things I do are replace all the braking hardware, and cut the exhaust off at the header and replace the entire thing. Lately I’ve been going for stainless steel pipes and band clamps. I have mixed feelings about this, but it should make eventual replacement of components a damned…

This is a work of art and a thing of beauty, but for that kind of money you could buy a car.

And that’s the SECOND floor in that XJ. Plus the U-channel looks rough inside. That thing’s a pup.

You’re damned right! 😁

Well, I mean, if we’re being serious: none of the above. It’s not actually very rare - even YJs are pretty common, and hardly anyone even bothers with the Wrangler Wave anymore because there are so many JKs and JLs on the road.

And having wheels with separate fenders is actually a throwback to the 1930s and earlier era. We stopped building cars that way because it’s space-inefficient.

There are days I don’t disagree. Plus it’s both my daily driver and my only car, and I live in the frozen northlands beyond the wall, as it were, so not only dumb but also sometimes exceedingly dangerous in terms of simple survival. But in terms of smiles per unit stupid, it’s extraordinarily efficient.

It actually has a car alarm - previous owner - so I used to arm that (until the fob basically turned to dust), which does indeed lock the liftgate. Most of the time I have the glass out of the hatch, so extra points for pointlessness there.

Stories of owners bringing these things well above 200,000 miles with very little repairs are common.