I love how that ashtray starts empty and ends full, and also how there’s an ashtray on the car because of course.

“Rabble rabble rabble.” Quit it. You know why more young kids aren’t gearheads? Because assholes like you don’t want to welcome them. It’s sure as hell a hard time for me to stay positive about the car community when every other person is ranting about how worthless I am.

You can run any 4cyl Acura on regular, whatever. It’ll just be slower and get worse mileage. It started at $32k with plenty standard, making it dead average on price. Nobody wanted it because people don’t want wagons when SUVs are the same or slightly higher in price, it’s not the Acura’s fault.

We already got the TSX sport wagon and literally nobody bought it. You can argue it was too anemic, too automatic, too FWD, whatever, but the reality remains that making it a turbo AWD stick or whatever would have made it appeal less to the mass market.

See my reply to myself

Wait until the rolling coal bros start grenading engines for maximum chesthair.

Totally true! Totally irrelevant to my point! And by the way, fuel cells are rated by actual output, in case my point wasn’t clear.

Doug, just beware that on bare pavement studs will actually decrease traction. No funny business.

Fuel cells happen to be about a third of the cost of batteries per kwh. And what do you mean how efficient are they? Where do you think capacity figures come from? Specific enthalpy figures? How efficient are your batteries? Are their advertised capacities calculated by just multiplying the energy from a redox…

Lithium ion batteries are around $145/kwh versus $55/kwh for fuel cells given equivalent production quantities. Projections to 2021 put lithium ion batteries at $100/kwh and fuel cells at $40 - obviously the numbers are shifting, but it isn’t 2020 yet.

If you assume a static weight for the chassis, remember that the energy density of a battery is about a tenth that of a fuel cell by weight. If you do a one-to-one substitution of energy storage, you’re already at a drastic weight disadvantage, which will kill range, and at a significant cost disadvantage. You have to…

It honestly doesn’t matter. Fuel cells are literally 10x more energy dense by weight than batteries. If you start with the same energy capacity as fuel cells in batteries, you’ll be at a tenfold weight disadvantage and therefore a huge range deficit, especially for a city car. The only way to even it out would be to…

There’s no way in hell you could get more than a third of this car’s range at the same price point with batteries instead of fuel cells, period.

The “turbo timer” type thing is kind of a myth. If you’ve been off the gas your turbo will have spun down comparably to idling.

To clarify the comment about Volvos (and Swedish cars in general): They’ll start up and drive, and they’ll get you home. They will do these things with commendable stubbornness. Us Swedish car enthusiasts like to optimistically call that “reliable.” What gets lost in translation is that our definition of “reliable”…

That 2003 Saab will be impossible to find parts for!
That 2003 5.5L Mercedes is a steal!
Old Volvos are bulletproof!

Anyone know if there’s a full lineup available?
Last summer I was walking through Berkeley and did a double take walking by a BMW shop when I saw an 850 with a rattlecan paintjob and a cage sitting in a corner. I went up to talk to one of the techs and he was super friendly - they race the car in LeMons, V12 and all.…

Hahaha. After clicking the link and doing a ctrl+f for “brakes” I hope the name stays a coincidence :P

Darwin, your car is wonderful and that’s a great post. However, I thought “the guys at National Speed merged the two so that Darwin could end up with 500 HP street car” was an allusion to natural selection.

The Iranian people chose this government. We just had to help them choose it, by deposing their democratically elected prime minister and engineering a power vacuum in which our favored monarch could consolidate their rule.