They may also have a design trademark.  This is one area where copyright and trademark law overlaps a little.

Eleanor’s likeness is also trademarked, so they do have to defend it. Taking a shot in the dark, I assume the company threatened to sue. And instead of fighting it in court, they settled out of court and part of the settlement was the Car being surrendered. Just a guess, and I’m not a lawyer

Can you tell him Oppo is still alive and well?

Misheard ATC calls are really common, we’ve all been corrected in read backs, and it’s exactly why we read back. Listening to the ATC audio, it sounds pretty clear, but again that’s on the recording, he was in a Husky, likely had a window open which makes hearing even more difficult.  Thousands of these incursion…

I was just thinking that these might be the sorts of mistakes any amateur pilot would make. Flying is complicated, air traffic control is complicated, and I imagine properly hearing instructions from controllers and responding perfectly is difficult. There are probably also a lot of safety margins built in to flight…

Look. I like Jalopnik, and most of the authors. But none of you are pilots, as far as I can tell, and it really shows.

You know how many times I’ve seen people cross the active when they’re not supposed to, especially at municipal airports? How many times I’ve misheard ATC and been corrected by my co-pilot, or vice…

Wait... there’s no option to go find a rotted-out Jeep Comanche from Craigslist and restore it with welds to the frame then drive into the action and winch out a postal Jeep stuck on a rock at the bottom of the Hogback on the White Rim Trail in Moab? This will never catch on with Jalopniks. 

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. 

I’m a fan of the ship shipping ship shipping shipping ships.

This will be a TL;DR for many of you, but I thought you might enjoy as it is relevant to this story.  Excerpt from my book about personal near-death experiences that I’m writing:

Remember when the story came out about the bridge collapse cause in Florida? I got a lot of crap for saying that college teaches engineers to be good at number crunching but there’s more to engineering than that. Lot’s of comments about how “obviously they sucked at number crunching, because the bridge fell down”

Exactly simplifying analysis will get people in trouble all the time. There’s a funny (to an engineer) essay called “a Structural Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown” I read way back when. Every single thing the author says makes perfect sense. Stuff like considering a single strap of fabric, assuming a force based…

Whatever. It’s abundantly clear the hub is cantilevered from the spokes parallel to the horizon.

My thought was this would be a self limiting problem in a car in Dallas in the summer. Just park it in the sun for a hour and you will top 150 degrees. 

that’s cool and all, but have you seen 3dBotmaker Diecast racing?

This points out the HUGE problem we have with society here in this country right now. For years and years if there were signs that said stay out we stayed out except for a few asshats that would not abide. But now with YouTube and Instagram and a young generation of people that have never been told no this problem has…

Desert sand formations tend to grow very slowly and in areas with very little rain like Death Valley, can be preserved intact for centuries or longer. Though not as spectacular as other natural formations they contain valuable information relevant to fields like geology and climatology because they function as time…

Agreed. Also Overlanding:

There’s a difference between “it broke while harvesting and I need it back in service ASAP” and “it stopped while harvesting because the cabin air filter reached its service hours limit and an authorized service tech needs to come out and replace it with an OEM filter and reset the timer to get it working again.” And…

The new systems literally will NOT recognize components, unless a John Deere Representative comes out and runs their recognition USB key to unlock the tractor.

This would be like if you needed to change the brakes on your car and could only go to the dealership, because the moment you removed the wheel, the engine…