Personally, I don’t care for the look of Corvettes from the early-80s to the mid-00s. I’ve looked for body kits a few times only to find even worse looking junk. It’d be pretty awesome if this ends up being sort of the modern renaissance of the VW Beetle’s evolution to bajas, dune buggies, and eventually some pretty…

Is that a Karmann Ghia hood with the center ridge filled in/built up a little?

I like to pronounce cars as my favorite Craigslist misspellings would be pronounced. My favorite is “dog dringo” (Dodge Durango) and there are some Mitsubishi misspellings that are completely unpronounceable; so much so in one instance that I had no idea what the car was and had to click through, only to discover that…

Prior to an historic and devastating flood a few years back, I lived in a canyon above Denver (and will again once I get my life back in order). The road up the canyon was fantastic! Twists and turns, good surface, and only one place cops could possibly set up shop (which was unfortunately also the only passing zone).…

This is excellent news. I’ve been holding back on anything carbon fiber in any way due to things like this. The other unknown from my perspective though is longevity. How do these materials handle time, elements, UV exposure, oxidation, etc.? Sure it’s light, stiff, and looks cool, but if it turns to chalk in 10 years…

That was my initial thought, but looking at the diagram I don’t think that’s the case.

Why is it leaf springs can’t hang? I would think the simpler, more robust design would make them ideal. The only drawback I can see is POSSIBLY travel, or maybe the setup required to get more droop than lift? What’s the rationale here?

FCA build quality may be on par with the output of a burger assembling teenager on the last day before spring break, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for keeping it right and proper old school and taking a chance.

Depending on how they’re engineered and manufactured, I can see this actually being one of the exceedingly rare moves in a positive direction in terms of automotive reliability. Shocks are wear items, and when they start to go people rarely seem to realize it in what I imagine is a frog in a pot of water type scenario…

No Brazilian production in ‘57, and they were still using semaphores even in the US market, so no amber sections. +1 Pedantry

This. Is. Awesome.

Emissions and regulations are, for the most part, acceptable. However, say you actually WANT a car with proper cranked and winged windows, manual locks, NO AC, NO radio, etc. etc. you are SOL. Some of us like fresh air. Some of us like listening to a well oiled machine do its job. Some of us don’t want to worry about…

Often in my automotive archeological exploits, I find myself confronted with just this manner of mystery. I invariably plunge down a very similar sort of rabbit hole with thoughts such as, “what manner of childhood abuse would cause someone to run speaker wire from the front of a fuse block to under the seat with only…

Apparently, I’m the only one in the dark here... Can someone translate “sandwich spread” to American English? Is that mayo, miracle whip, hummus, aioli, peanut butter, ...? I spread lots of things on sandwiches, and only some of them can inarguably be declared “good”.

I wouldn’t be so sure about that... In a Wankel, you have one ignition event per revolution. The crank rotates three times for every one revolution of the rotor, each revolution of the rotor has three ignition events for a 1:1. This has three power stroke equivalents per crank revolution, which is how they’re getting…

My wife and I were at a stoplight last night, and some little Japanese car with an awful muffler made a lot of noise next to us (not much else). We both cringed, looked at each other, and laughed. Then I told her about the 124. It’s very possible that exhaust note just added this car to the very limited number of…

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What about locations where cell service isn’t available? Out in the middle of nowhere is precisely where people are most likely to fall asleep while being carted around in their robocarriages.

You see it as cheaper, I see it as better. In the mountains (where I lived until being displaced by a flood, but will again soon), there is no cell signal for data transfer. All these nifty features on new cars are completely useless baggage that drives up the price of what is already a mediocre and overpriced pile of…