Looking at just how much car you can get for $48k right now, it’s absolutely mind blowing that half of the population is spending more than that. I know most of those are loaded up F150 Super Crews, but I can’t imagine looking at the alternatives and still deciding to take out a seven year (!) loan on one of those…

I think the true turning point was 1995, when Dodge restyled the front of the Ram to look like a semi so it would be more intimidating. Almost everything since then has just been a stupid agro arms race.

The reason why I won’t give the Civic a pass is that what Honda used to call a hatchback was much closer to a wagon.

It’s not just the lost volume opportunity. (Although the worst offense award has to go to the Civic hatch.) Just this morning I was loading up the back of my Crosstrek in the rain, lamenting the fact that because the roof isn’t full-length the edge of the open lift gate is just barely past the back bumper. With my old…

“perfect for fair weather drives with the top down!”

Since when does a police department actually pay for a “community engagement” vehicle? Around me they’re all either cars seized from drug dealers or free surplus MRAPs.

What about ten years from now?

FM isn’t as good for emergency broadcasts, because it has shorter range and more susceptibility to interference.

A limit of two 60lb bicycles is what you get when ChatGPT writes your owner’s manual for you...

It’s the opposite. When you move the load from the receiver out to the ball, the vertical force supported by the hitch stays the same, but the bending moment increases. So, tongue weight should be lower than vertical load limit.

I consider it a teachable moment and tell my kid that there’s a time and a place for every kind of language. Putting a fifteen million dollar car into a wall is a situation that reasonably warrants some strong profanity.

Mustang II

Maybe he was late-night channel surfing and hit that episode of TV Nation where Michael Moore traveled to Russia looking for the ICBM aimed at Flint, MI?

The truly wealthy are cheap bastards, because they didn’t rich by spending.

It’s also not clear from above how many of these are actually new sales and how many are deliveries on pre-orders. The monthly number looks big, but if most of it is made up of clearing a two-year long backlog it’s not sustainable.

1st generation Saab 9-5 Aero.

Yeah, business accounting doesn’t work like that. You put a line item in a budget and don’t spend it, it’s not a bonus, because the bean counters aren’t just going to let you spend it on something else. The best case scenario is usually a protracted fight after which they maybe let you reallocate. Usually, they end up…

They went with an insurance policy because accountants don’t like uncertainty. With insurance, what they budget for the event is the same whether the kicks get made or not.

The Hummer EV is only a few hundred pounds short.

I’m sure they played it up by ignoring the range indicator and continuing to drive so that they could get footage of the car dying on the track. But they didn’t make any false statements.