And that works for some people! My dad is one of those people. He drove base-trim white Honda Accords from 1992 until 2018. Only two cars.

For me, at least- and for how I see and value cars -I would have rather paid the same money for a high-trim used Civic with a radio and more power and gotten even just 10 or 15…

There is a charm to the entry spec once it’s no longer a necessity. My friends and I always joke about each of us “50/50-ing” a car: Find the cheapest possible base trim lightly used car for $10k and put $10k of mods into it. What could we create? It would be fun.

Absolutely true, I fully agree- But I think people underestimate how reliable of a used vehicle they can get. Finding a nice, recent year, used car for the new-normal ~$20k entry for a new car is NOT a challenging prospect.

I really believe that, with a little bit of work and patience (which I absolute recognize is…

The gas is a fair point, but I got frustrated with my new-car-buying-options and threw my hands up in the air and went fully off the rails. I would stand by my point and just recommend people make a less ridiculous decision than I made.

The smart decision I ALMOST made before I fell in love with my stupid bubble-butt…

Since I bought mine functionally sight-unseen, I actually spent $2500 on the extended warranty, and whether or not the timing belt had ever been done was one of the things that wasn’t clear. Got it back to Arizona and I told my mechanic to tear the thing apart- if he couldn’t come up with at least $5k worth of shit to…

I’ve come to like the subtle, slightly blobby styling on the Air...
But this just looks like a Lincoln Corsair and a Chrysler Pacifica had a baby they’d rather forget about.

I’ll take some heat for this, probably, but brand new examples of base-trim budget sedans/hatches. Nissans jump to mind, but probably because they’re particularly common in my neck of the woods.

It screams “I wanted a new car but I can’t afford one and my pride wouldn’t let me just buy a decent, reliable, lightly-used…

If I were Rivian or Tesla or whatever, I would include the AM radio hardware with only basic shielding. I’d bury it away in the UI somewhere under a toggle for “Emergency Radio” and have the vehicle automatically enter a limp-state that keeps power below the interference threshold when the user requests the emergency…

Don’t worry, it wont.

Okay but, again- the ENTIRE Russian car market is about as big as California, not the realistically available market share to the EU and the US. And that’s just based on sales volume, not value of each sale. The average new car price is 10-20% higher in the US and EU than in Russia, and even higher than that in…

“Even if the market is the size of California, any car manufacturer will die for such.” - The ENTIRE Russian market is the size of California. It’s a fucking fever dream to think that US car brands could ever even achieve EQUAL market share to Russian, Chinese, and European brands in Russia, so the feasible market cap…

In 2021 there were about 1.5M reported new car sales in Russia, but in 2022 that number dropped by nearly 60% to about 0.6M new car sales.

This makes the entire Russian market fall somewhere between Pennsylvania and California in terms of yearly new car sales.

Of the ~$13B in non-Russian cars they imported in 2021 (in…

I mean, they’re losing $10k-$40k per car depending on who you believe and which method of calculation you agree with. If they were selling through a dealer network you’d NEVER be able to get one for less than $100k, so right now there’s not a lot of negotiation because the prices are, by all rights, already better…

I bought an R1T. Pretty much your only negotiation, if you’re financing, is Rivian’s finance partner vs shopping around for your own loan.

And by “negotiation” I mean that you can say “well I have a bank that will give me X.XX% with only $YYk down” and they’ll go “sick! Sounds like you should go with them!”

See when I read “pump switching” I thought this was the old trick where the pump you take is actually the pump for the other side, so the pump you swiped your card for is actually in the car across from you, pumping gas against your card, while you start pumping gas against whatever paltry $5 the other person pre-paid…

Planes and cars were being designed primarily with computers by the 90's.

And besides- printing of sand molds is more CNC than it is computer design, and CNC machines have been around functionally since the ‘50s.
You don’t need CAD software and a 3D part file to make stuff with a CNC. Even basic CAM software can do…

If what you’re looking for is precision, Additive is actually pretty middle-of-the-road compared to the mass-manufacturing processes already being used for body panels like this. Additive is good for high-complexity/low-volume. Automotive body panels are the opposite.

That’s also why satellites aren’t really an…

By my math, with the size of some of those panels, I think you’d blow your tolerance from thermal expansion alone unless you plan to keep all of your facilities within +/- 2 degrees C year-round, morning-to-night.

I suppose yes it is TECHNICALLY possible, but it’s completely infeasible.

Even if you held your facility to +/- 2 degrees year round, morning to night, you’d still have to account for about 0.1mm of tolerance from thermal expansion ALONE on a 2m body panel like the hood.

You sit on the threshold, my child.
Sleep on it- consider the meaningless blobs of modern sedans and crossovers. Consider the grotesque bloat of the modern truck.
Consider the unique beauty of the El Camino.

Return tomorrow after your prayers and know in your heart how radically the Holden One-Tonner fucks.