Hey, at least it isn’t the 2.7T. That one has it neatly tucked UNDER THE TIMING BELT.

Yes. All of this. Car enthusiasts like to demonise Nader for his book, but the fact is, he had a point. Even more so, his case study of the Corvair was only a single chapter; the others death with far less controversial things – poor workmanship, ‘fashionable’ styling inside and out causing needless injury in an…

Driving down a city street doing a small but comfortable amount above the speed limit, someone hurtles up behind me, flashing their high beams, attaching themselves to my bumper, etc. It’s a narrow street, with parked cars either side, so there’s no way for them to pass or me to pull over, so I just keep on doing what…

And my personal favourite...

Heh, I remember the jacking trick – I owned a Xantia for a while. I’m pretty sure that didn’t even come with a normal jack, just an adjustable axle stand. Reputedly, they could even balance themselves with one of the rear wheels missing, but I was never brave enough to try that.

Nope, BXes all had the full self levelling setup. My family had several. Great cars, if rather fragile.

It should also be noted that Lt. Kroll is a bit of a piece of work, with a history of discrimination and excessive-force cases, and white supremacist ties.

Latex gloves. Always.

Yeah, that generation have a pretty bad reputation. The transmission had some ‘clever’ programming that put it in neutral after you had been stopped for a few seconds, with the idea that it would save fuel. The problem was, when you took your foot off the brake, it didn’t engage drive quickly enough, causing pretty…

I think that you might be confusing the 850 R and T5R with the first-generation (P80) V70R that replaced it – all those complaints are signatures of that model, and the earlier R cars never had AWD, and came with much more reliable (if less sophisticated) transmissions and electronics.

My ‘96 850R’s heater core started to let go at around 210,000. Thankfully, it was only a small leak, rather than a dramatic failure, but I still ended up getting quite a lot of coolant in the footwells. I’m sure it’s one of these things that depends on all sorts of factors, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be uncommon…

Haha, came here to post this. It’s a good thing, though, given how often they seem to fail...

I’m not normally one that goes for modified cars, but that looks like an exceptionally clean and well-executed example, for a very reasonable price. NP all the way.

When he was in college in the ‘70s, my father-in-law bought a rather tatty 1956 MGA roadster in order to impress a girl who had previously been dating a guy who owned an E-type Jag. He pulled it off, and they got married a few years later, but with kids and jobs and a mortgage getting in the way, the MG got parked up…

Heh, I learned that the hard way in an automotive setting. Found that Stromberg CDs really don’t take kindly to having their pistons twisted during reassembly. Similarly, SUs don’t work too after you forget which dome matches to which piston, or let either of them roll of the workbench and fall onto the ground :(.

Heh, sounds like the setup that some V8 Rovers had in the ‘70s and ‘80s. For some reason, Rover’s idea of an automatic choke (or possibly just a sick, sick joke) was to add a third vestigial carburettor solely for cold-start enrichment and fast-idle control. It piggy-backed off the float bowl of one of the main carbs,…

Heh, the mid ‘90s Renault Espace actually DID have the ability to swivel the front seats around! The idea was that you could turn the front seats around, fold the middle row down, and have a picnic-table kind of thing going on. The driver’s seat even had a key lock on the swivel lever so that you could turn it around…

I’ve definitely been feeling this. After the Delta-Northwest merger, Delta is the only major airline serving my local airport (MSP), and there’s been a notable trend of fewer, more expensive flights.

That’s one of the reasons that I love working on old British cars – you get a real sense of industrial and engineering heritage from them. As an amateur historian of technology, I get a real kick out of that.

Heh, the original R-12 AC system in my ‘85 Scirocco still works great, despite the car having sat unused in a shed for 15 years. No idea how, but I’m certainly thankful for it, even if I do have to switch it off whenever I’m going uphill or trying to pass someone!