Ummm...no reputable bank (i.e., one with a reasonable interest rate) is going to "refinance" $75K for a car that is worth maybe $40K. That would leave the bank seriously undercollateralized for that loan. Shady sub-prime lenders will do deals like that because when you're charging nearly usurious interest rates,…

As a kid who grew up at racetracks around the Midwest, I'd love to see F1 come to Road America or Mid-Ohio. But I wouldn't begrudge you your Laguna Seca!

Interesting. As a die-hard follower of F1 for 30+ years, I certainly have mixed feelings about the decision to race in Bahrain this weekend. On the one hand, this season is shaping up to be one of the best in a very long time and so the more racing the better. On the other, it seems irresponsible to hold the race…

Not terribly surprising, though—she's Danni Minogue, who was Jacques Villeneuve's girlfriend for quite a while, IIRC.

Good call on the FX-16. I bought one for $250 a couple of years ago, drove the snot out of it, sold it for about $500 and other than the exceeding ugliness of my particular example, I've missed it ever since.

I don't mean crazy as in bad, I mean crazy as in I can't believe that the bean counters let the engineers slip that one through. I know they're supposed to work well, it's just an interesting (and not inexpensive) solution to the packaging issue. The P6 was the product of some creative thinking, and that's one of…

Don't forget the crazy pushrod-like front suspension.

I think you're thinking of Mars Red, which was the perfect name for the color, and more orangey than the Tornado Red that came on most of the Golfs and Jettas (although, IIRC, Mars Red was available on Golf GTIs and Jetta GLIs in '85 only). I had a buddy in high school who had an '85 Scirocco in Mars Red, and I…

Hell yes.

The Lancer and LeBaron GTS were—no joke—one of the best iterations of the K-car platform. My dad had a LeBaron GTS turbo as a rental car for a little while when I was 16, and it was pretty damned fun to drive for a front-driver. And it was a five-door hatch, which gave it extra points in my book.

Back when I was about 16 or 17, a friend of mine had a Manta. Very nice looking car, but the body wrote a check the underpinnings couldn't quite cash. Still, they're cool cars and on my regular rotation of Craigslist searches. You hardly ever find these for sale anymore, and sadly, when you do they're usually…

A "stop" lever just makes sense on a diesel with an automatic transmission, as you cannot shut off the engine by stalling it out (as you could in a stick-shift diesel) if the primary fuel shut-off mechanism were to fail.

The price is good. Not spectacularly good, but good. I like W123s, W124s, and W126s a lot—they are the last of the cars that represented what was really great about Mercedes, before the major decline in quality in the mid '90s. That being said, 560 SELs can be found in this price range fairly regularly. It's…

Yep, GMC (TopKick) and Chevy (Kodiak) versions. Most of them seem to be 2WD, but apparently when you're trying to pick up high-school girls, it helps if you have a lifted 4x4 so you can shame all those average Joes in their lifted Ram 1500s.

More or less. It's a lifted 4x4 Topkick pickup with a bunch of stupid shit added onto it that are purely for looks and will never be used.

Good call on the CXT at #1. There's a parent at my kid's school who drops off his/her (can't tell which, can't see up that high or through the obnoxious tint) child in GM's cousin to the CXT. Can't get much more asinine than these things.

This irritates me, too. Bikes *should* be very Jalop—they're great performers on the cheap. But nooooo, instead we have to hear all this "two wheels bad" BS.

That's one thing I've never understood about Schumi or Senna—they both had sooooo much talent that stopping to the cheap shots was completely unnecessary. I mean, I know there are cheap-shot artists in every sport, but more often than not, the cheap shots are to compensate for lack of talent. Neither Michael nor…

"A close examination revealed photo manipulation techniques under the wheels."

As others have said, this thing is probably overpriced by about 100%, but even a $9K asking price couldn't be justified without a lot of additional photos and information about what works, what doesn't, etc.