Wrong. I was selling new VWs back in 2001, and I know for a fact that their drive-by-wire cars (which I am pretty sure was all of them) would automatically cut the throttle if you applied both throttle and brake. There is pretty much zero chance that drive-by-wire systems in other manufacturers’ cars of that vintage…

Yeah, I’m sure there were some cork gaskets, at least for the valve covers on the 428, probably certain other areas that weren’t under much pressure/vacuum. If either of them had a rope rear main seal, that would certainly be shot after 27 years of inactivity. And of course, virtually all of the rubber seals would…

Yeah, there is no way that happened and I laughed as soon as I read that in the article. Assuming that these are numbers-matching cars (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), nobody with half a brain would try starting either of those engines and risk ventilating the original block (and would presumably want to…

This is exactly what it is. On a wet racetrack, the driver or team will always set up the car with more brake bias toward the rear because you can’t get the same kind of weight transfer to the front wheels on a slick surface and therefore the usual bias you’d run on a grippy, dry surface would lead to the fronts…

BLUE INTERIOR! HALLE-FRICKING-LUJAH!

Yep, probably even more likely. But where is the OUTRAGE in that?

Manufactured outrage, says I. Now, bear in mind that I’m not a professional journalist, but I took some journalism classes in college back in the early ‘90s! It took me all of—what, maybe a minute and a half, tops—to look at each seller’s sales history and see that these are people who sell all kinds of stuff on ebay.…

Exactly. I bought my first car with my own money that I saved from my minimum-wage job at the hobby shop (where I rode my bike back and forth 5 miles each way each day), cutting lawns, and delivering newspapers. It was a piece-of-shit, seven-year-old Plymouth TC3, 2.2-liter with a 4-speed and not much else. Within…

Not sure if it’s been mentioned anywhere already, but at the quantity of cars he’s required to sell per month, Ron would be required to have a dealer license (Under MI law, only licensed dealers are legally allowed to buy/sell more than 5 cars in a 12-month period). If he doesn’t have a dealer license, he might be…

I think you need to work on your reading comprehension. I used to work in a dealership, too—like, 20 years ago. And yeah, the really talented techs were killing it because they could turn most (not all) jobs much quicker than the book time. They were also fast because they invested in the specialty and power tools…

Glad to see he has seen the light regarding a full cage. I do understand that not everyone wants to commit to the inconvenience and loss of utility that comes when you put a full cage in a car that you will still drive on the street, and not everyone has the ability to have a dedicated track car. But personally,…

The responding officer wrote:

It might have been more accurate to call Needell an ex-BTCC driver since he competed in more than one race there, even scored a few points!

I always laughed about the “Cross-Fire Injection” badges on early-to-mid ‘80s Vettes. In my experience, cross-firing was an ignition problem caused by bad plug wires. In others’ experience, it might have been a good way to end up getting shot by your comrades. Either way, it didn’t sound like something to brag…

“Lock its brakes so hard”??? Really, did you even watch the video before writing this? There is no lockup (which is to be expected on an ABS-equipped vehicle), and if there was, it would be *less* likely that the back tires would come off the ground, as we all know (or should know, Jalopnik allegedly being a car…

Awfully defensive, aren’t we? Car and Driver “compared” the GTI to the T/A when they pointed out that it was both quicker and handled better than the best performer on offer from Pontiac in ‘82. My “muscle car” (pony car?) driving friends always liked to race anything else with four wheels, so I don’t think they had…

I lived through that era as well. I recall well the November 1982 Car and Driver road test of the Rabbit GTI, in which it was noted that the GTI would outrun the “ballsiest” T/A of the time (1982 5.0/4-spd) to 60 by over a second, not to mention run circles around it when the road got twisty. Note also that my comment…

This should really come as no surprise: the 1982 Trans Am was “actually horrible to drive” and adding a bunch of non-ergonomic High Tech geegaws was never going to help matters. But I’ll be damned if those aren’t my favorite wheels that ever came on the 3rd-gen F-bodies.

I know it’s really the rubber license-plate holder, but it kinda looks like there’s a purse hanging out of the hatch.

Among Mopar enthusiasts, the story of the Superbird’s vinyl roof is well known (and true). It also had no bearing on the race versions—the profile of the rear window was what Plymouth needed to homologate (along with the wing, the nose, and the rear-facing front fender “scoops” that provided clearance for the tires on…