Now THIS Is A Tragedy

Pic from Fox News

A stinkin' sinkhole opened up inside the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green Kentucky.

Let me repeat that - a sinkhole opened up inside a building at the National Corvette Museum, and as you can see, it swallowed some of the cars.

The museum said the cars are a 1993 ZR-1 Spyder and 2009 ZR1 "Blue Devil" on loan from General Motors; a 1962 Black Corvette; 1984 PPG Pace Car; 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette; 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette; 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette and a 2009 White 1.5 Millionth Corvette. 

Strode told the Courier-Journal that emergency personnel allowed museum staff to remove the only surviving 1983 Corvette, which was at risk of joining the other cars in the sinkhole.

Just so you know, 1983 was a transition year with no new car sales - the 1984 Vette was the first of the new design. So the"1983" models were essentially mules, and there were 43 of them originally. At the end of the model year and when production started on the '84 modes, GM decided that they all should be destroyed. However, some dedicated employees "hid" one, painted it several times to disguise it and finally GM said they wouldn't destroy the car.Thus it's inclusion into the Museum.

I'm sure they can all be repaired, but still. As a dyed in the wool Corvette nut, this is quite upsetting.

The Legend Is True!

Don't leave home without it! If you leave one signal on for too long, you'll run it out of blinker fluid and possibly cause a major imbalance in your vehicle, making it prone to falling over.

So don't do that.

H/T Jon on Facebook.

If I Were In This Commercial

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. A fine set of wheels should be kept clean.

Just not with Armor All's crap.

If this a$$shole came to my garage and tried to run off with my pickup because I hadn't kept it clean enough to suit him, he'd be staring down the barrel of a caliber that starts with four and ends with five. Then, I'd tell him to clean it up using the crap that his company sells as car cleaners and protectants. Stuff I have already.

For instance, the disposable interior cleaning sheets. Are you kidding me? All you get done is to clean some of it off, then smear the rest of the dirt around. When it dries, it looks like crap. So, lather, rinse and repeat until it becomes obvious that it will never get clean - those little white sheets are gonna come up dirty each and every time you wipe it across that door panel you've already wiped off about thirty seven times.

You think that crap is hot $hit? And you're willing to steal my wheels to prove your point? Prove it, mother&*%^)#.

And the scantily clad girlfriend?

If she's so willing to drop me for some role playing nitwit, she too can get to cleaning, and when they're done, just go ahead and run off with him. I don't need you, either. Might miss your assumed mad skilz in the bedroom, but as for the rest? Loyalty means nothing to you?

Eff you and the horse you rode in on too.

Travels

Spent a couple days in Grand Rapids, MN. We're talking cool weather there, and it was just the sort of temps that suit fat boys.

That would be daughter Allie, Mom Amy (my cuz), moi, and Dad Steve - my cuz-in-law. Number One Son was at his summer job.

Drove to Niles, MI today. I chickened out - Google and the nav unit wanted me to go through the east side of Chicago on the way down to I80. During rush hour. Nope, not at all what I did. Instead of getting off I39 and running I90 (plus all the damn toll roads) I ran I39 straight to I80 and came across. Only two toll roads that time.

I'll be spending a couple days here, then I'll head towards Indy.

Goodbye Old Paint

Goodbye, faithful and trusty steed! You were relatively trouble free, reliable, comfortable and fun to drive for over 100k miles. You were snappy and had a darned decent amount of power, and your four wheel drive saved my hiney many a time. May you enjoy your new home!

Test Drive

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Jeff Gordon pranks a car salesman. And burns off several thousand miles of rubber on that black Camaro. Yee Haw!

And yes, I'd ride along. In a freaking heartbeat.

My Head Aches

After looking at this car:

Be sure and click for larger. You wouldn't want to miss anything.

This is the FinnJet, built by a 71 year old former Finn Artie Rahko.

It’s made from two Mercedes station wagons and many, many other parts that Rahko has added continuously over twelve years.

At the Essen Motor Show in Essen, Germany, this huge model became one of the most controversial events attractions. Unprecedented way ship curb weight 3.4 tons scrolls to 8 rounds and will take up to 10 passengers. Although it passed two old estate Mercedes-Benz 300 TD but also includes parts of 40 other cars. These include for example. 86 projectors, 36 mirrors and 3 rechargeable batteries.  A vehicle approved to normal traffic had built for 10 years and considers it to be a work of art the value of $ 950,000.

Finnjet measures 8,839 mm, is controlled by the front and rear wheels, and the cabin features a microwave, 2 air conditioning systems, refrigerators, televisions, kitchen stove and even a complete sauna! For a relaxing ride along motorway reportedly consumes on average just 9.4 liters of diesel per 100 km.

It also comes equipped with a microwave, television, freezer and a couple of air conditioning units. What’s more, there’s even a functional sauna fitted in the passenger cabin. To keep the beautiful beast running, three batteries and three alternators have been installed.

You really should go to the link to see all the other pics. I always get a kick out of folk art - because that is what this is. At some point, excessive gaudiness turns into art, and this is about as arty as it gets!

Drivng Me Mad

Naming cars has been something of a dicey proposition for automakers. The marketers live in fear of a negative image, and if a car has a crummy name, it's already started out on bad footing that may be hard to overcome. Like Mitsubishi's Pajero, which in some Spanish countries is slang for masturbator. What??? Or perhaps Ford's Probe. Gonna head up the ol' fudge canal with that thing, are ya sport?

Chevy's Camaro originally was touted as a small, vicious Mustang eating animal, but some Ford folks supposedly found a Spanish translation that says it meant a small, shrimp like creature. I think the sales figures of the Camaro have bothered those Ford folks much worse than some tiny seafood. And the Pinto supposedly meant "penis" in the Portuguese slang of Brazil. One must admit it was the fabulous engineering behind it and it's competitor Chevrolet's Vega that earned it's bad rep. I guess at least the Vega was named after an established astronomical artifact.

And some of the General's newer offerings kinda sorta make sense. A Traverse? You, too can traverse the incredible distance from your house to the mall. The Volt? Apropos for an electric car. A Spark? Just the thing to light up the arse end of your slacker teenager. Howza about the Cruze? Same teenager burning up your money on your gas card, Dad.

Ford's fresh offspring? Escape and Edge? Escape from the Edge, dude! Driving a Focus will make you concentrate more - on what I'm not sure. And Fusion. I think they were leaning towards the techie side - like wow, dude, that's like nucular fusion, yannow. I don't think they were wanting to remind one of fusion in foodie circles - "Yes, this car represents the fusion between Nordic and Hunan style cooking - we present General Tso's Lutefisk!" Yeah, probably not.

The manufacturer that has my shaking my head is VW. Some make sense - the venerable Beetle, the Golf, and even the Jetta has a speedy sort of name. But Routan? Sounds like a bad 1960s Japanese monster movie. Routan vs Mothra. Coming to a late nite monster fest on your favorite channel.

I do not relate to the Toureg. I am German (and Irish, too), and the only thing that name signals to me is a mashup of Touring and Keg. Perhaps that is the car that one uses to tour Oktoberfest in Germany and tap all those kegs. The hose washable interior is particularly useful in that regard, and the breathalyzer enclosed in the steering wheel insures that you will not be spending an inordinate amount of time in der klink. Probably not gonna wanna bring little Susy and Bobby along for the trip. All those busty Frauleins might give the kiddos the wrong idea about how Daddy feels about Mommy.

And worst of all is the Tiguan. What in the wide wide world of sports is a Tiguan? I tell you this, I do not see the rugged Sam Elliot, all decked out in cattle drivin' gear and wearing a pair of Colt's finest, step up to the bar and announce "I drive a Tiguan. Anyone object???"

Sorry, don't see that at all. Tiny Iguana is more like it. Something I'd clean from my boot heel in Central America. "Yeah, Tom, you wanna shake out your drawers in the morning for sure. Nuttin' like puttin' on yer tighty whiteys and getting one of them thar Tiguans all excited. They and yer family jewels just don't mix, son." I can hear ol' Sam say that.

So what car names drive you nuts????

In the Hall of the Shade Tree Mechanic

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What's not to love? I really get a charge outta the spare parts at the end.

Bittersweet Memories

Pretty sure I've covered this meme (First set of wheels) before, but I'm lazy and ain't gonna look it up in the archives. That is my only digital picture - robbed it off an old Tripod site I uploaded it to years ago, and the original picture has apparently been lost in their many upgrades and the many hard drives I've had go bad over the years. So that pic is it.

That is a 1965 Ford F-100 SWB with a three on the tree and a 240 cubic inch six banger. A fifty cent piece would choke the huge carb right down. Dad bought it for me with the promise that we'd really work it over - we were gonna get 'er painted and drop a V8 with an automatic to make it go. Well, with many of my father's promises, that never worked out. When it came time to cough up, he always had an excuse. He paid for the truck, the insurance and tags, and the gas. The flip side was I had to stay with him for a summer job - one that didn't pay very well or get me many hours. My friends were making three to four times as much as I during summers, and could afford to buy halfway decent cars. He just couldn't understand why I wanted to move on to something else years later - I guess I should still be driving it according to his thinking at the time. Oh well. It served me pretty well for what it was.

What it was - indestructible. The valves would float before it revved out, so it could be floored and it had it's own natural redline - it just wouldn't run any faster, and it wasn't fast enough to grenade. I could get it to lay a scratch, but I had to wind it up and dump the clutch. Can you say axle tramp? I could make the bed bounce in pain. Wham wham wham wham! I'm sure the quarter mile times were well over twenty seconds. One of my buds had a '66 with the 300 and a four speed - he could always get me out of the hole, and I'd ever so gradually ease by after the quarter mile line had gone by as we lumbered over it. I always got beat, but it was close. These races were always quite amusing to our friends with serious quarter mile cars. They'd sit in the ditches watching us rolling with laughter.

The sheet metal was thick. When it was loaded down with mud, I could kick the body panels to dislodge huge chunks without denting the beast. The paint was a lost cause, so another scuff? Which one? I did my best to customize my pride and joy - I bought some white high back bucket seats from a Charger in a junkyard to replace the bench seat, those white wagon wheels in the picture (Dad bought some chrome ones originally, but they rusted out even though I kept them polished and waxed), an AM/FM 8 track from JC Whitney, a floor shifter from Hurst and other little odds and ends. That fade out red paint? It looked really good for about a week if I slathered on some wax and didn't really work on buffing it out, spray a ton of Armor All all over, then wax it again a couple times. The Armor All worked it's way into the paint and made it look pretty shiny (even slicked over scuffs!), but it didn't last. But I tried, anyways.

All this lack of power surely meant it made decent fuel mileage, right? Not so much. It didn't matter how fast or slow I drove - eleven to twelve mpg. Since it was a six banger, it was geared pretty low, and seventy mph was really pushing it hard. Fifty five was more to it's liking. Didn't matter. It drank fuel like it was cheap and was always gonna stay that way.

Those bucket seats were the spark behind one of the worst arguments between my parents I ever witnessed. I bought the things with the idea that Dad would help me install them - they needed some brackets fabricated to fit and I did not know how to weld at that time. Dad kept putting me off, and the seats sat outside in the weather for a couple of months. My mother finally got tired of seeing them sitting in the yard and how disappointed and hurt I was - because I'd ask for help every once in a while and fail. Generally, a nap during a baseball game on television was a priority over helping me. She jumped into Dad big time and ate his ass out about leaving me in the lurch, how the seats were going to rot, and any other thing she could throw out. At first, he was arguing back, but she eventually proved her point, because he grabbed me, and in tears, went to town to buy some angle iron. I got to hear all about how he was just about to get to this project, etc., what a bitch my mother could be and so on. I'd heard all that before, and I'd just seen her behavior get more action than anything I could safely pull off, so my sympathy meter was running pretty low that day for the Old Man.

Like I said - this truck has bittersweet memories for me.

Another time, he sent me out to get estimates for a repaint. He wanted the best - back then one hammered out the panels carefully and used lead rather than today's plastics for filler. Yesterday's plastics had a tendency to fall off after a period of time. The tech was new and needed work. He even directed me to go to another town to a highly regarded shop. After I got home with the estimates, he about had a cow and told me that we weren't going to paint this pickup - no matter what we did or how much money we spent, it was always going to be a six hundred dollar pickup - that being the original purchase price. I look back on that now and wonder WTF was he thinking? Why send me on a wild goose chase building up my hopes? I got home all excited and pumped. Which changed in a hurry.

I started hearing a clunk when going around a corner, so I told Dad about it - I had no clue where or what to even begin looking for. He correctly determined that the rear bearing in the transmission was going out, but he kept putting off fixing it. It kept getting worse, and I guess he got tired of hearing me, worried, telling him about it, so we made an appointment in town to get it fixed. He was following me when all of a sudden, the driveline locked up. Luckily, I was on gravel. I fought for control, and gaining it, even managed to slide off to the side of the road out of the way, until it could be towed into town. The bearing had broken apart and locked the gears in the transmission. Dad said he was pretty proud of me for the good job of driving I did, and that lasted until one of the shop owners said it was a good thing that it happened on gravel. On pavement, it might have broken a u-joint, and if it was the front one and the driveshaft drove into the ground sending the pickup into a roll, Dad might have been burying me instead of bragging on my good driving. He should have gotten that truck in there long before he did.

Dad wasn't always an asshole - I've written about another incident where he rose above the situation. Plus, the ol' Ford had an oil consumption issue when he bought it, so he knew it was going to need overhauled. During a slow period one summer, we took it over to our neighbors and tore it down. The cylinder walls were really in pretty decent shape - we just honed 'em out and took a ridge reamer to the tops. The pistons were coated with carbon - it was my job to carefully chisel that crap off. The rest of the motor was full of crud, so we washed it all out. Detergents in engine oils have improved off the charts - back then, it was not unusual to find sludge all over and even plug up oil galleys when the motor was operated in a dusty environment.

The cylinder head got hauled to town to get rebuilt - the valves, guides and such were all pretty well shot and we just didn't have the tools to fix that. We went back with cast iron rings - figuring they'd seal up on the still slightly grooved cylinder walls. Dad figured we'd be back in to bore it out within about 10k miles, but those rings sealed up tight and I put on way more miles than that before we sold it. So that was one father/son project promise that was fulfilled, and that I enjoyed.

That old pickup did provide me with a freedom that I appreciate to this day. It was far from what I would liked to have, but it worked most of the time. It was more than a lot of kids had, too. It got me home from after school activities like football practice, took me to school events, got me to and from our various fields, took me hunting, cruising around aimlessly listening to the latest eight track, and so much more. Some girls turned up their noses at riding in it, but that was a sure fire clue that particular girl was not for me - even if I'd had a beautiful car good enough for them. I learned a lot of life lessons with that pickup - some were not positive, but they were valuable.

How Do Ya Want Your Peterbilt?

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When most people think of a needle nosed custom Pete, this ain't gonna come to mind. This goes beyond any kind of pulling a load.

This is Jay Leno's 1960 chopped Peterbilt with a 852ci two-stroke Detroit Diesel twin-supercharged V12 mated to an Allison 4-speed automatic transmission from a Greyhound bus. The engine produces 500 horsepower and nearly 1000 lb-ft torque with a red line of just 2,800 rpm. Built by the Blastolene Brothers.

"Just 2800 rpm." One of the hotrod tricks for the old mechanical four stroke motors like the Cummins 855 block or the Cats was to mess with (replace or just stretch the crap out of it) the throttle return spring and shim it up so that the cutoff of 2100 rpms could be exceeded. You really didn't want to make it a habit, or a ventilated block was a distinct possibility. Part of the idea was that the fuel "curve" would be fattened so that lower rpms could get more juice. Of course, other mods were necessary to get the fuel to flow. More diesel, more power. At any rate, 2,800 isn't really radical at all.

 Plus, this is a Detroit two stroker. It will not run without a blower. Yeah, it sounds cool to clearly have a  couple of superchargers mounted, but they are pretty much standard Roots style blowers that have been on Detroits since day one. The drag racers, in their search for more power, had in these blowers the ready ability to force more air into a four stroke gasoline motor with instant throttle response, as opposed to a turbo.  In fact, this engine is from the V71 family - twelve cylinders of 71cu in makes 852 cubes total. Probably the most iconic Detroit is the 8v71 - called the 318 because that was the horsepower rating. There was also a 6v71 and this twelve cylinder isn't much more than a couple of them mated. The 6 and 8vs were put into all kinds of equipment, but what the public encountered was mostly buses and trucks. The sound of an old bus roaring away - Detroit power.

Even though these Detroits were blown, they really only compared to their naturally aspirated competitors. And, the way to increase the power was to throw a turbo on, just like the straight breathing four strokes. The 350 Detroit was an 8v71 with a turbo. I drove a "Silver 92" - which was one of the last two strokers. Detroits were always painted an odd green color, but the "new" ones were all silver. The example in the Ford cabover I drove for several years was an 8v92 rated at 475hp, and like all Detroits, the torque curve was all above 1500 rpms. Part of the old trucker lore was to properly drive a Detroit powered truck, before climbing behind the wheel, one must place one's hand in the door jamb and slam the whee out of the door. That would put you in the proper frame of mind to wind the crap out of it and try to abuse the motor. If you took it easy on them, they had no power. They always had to be" on the boil." Contrast the Cats, which were all about low end torque and lugging.

And five hundred horses from that old V12 ain't bad, but contrast to my current Acert Cat at 550hp, and I hardly ever go over 1700rpms. So, five hundred horses in something that light is nothing to sneeze at, but this is obviously set up as a cruiser. It's been tweaked, and I'd bet all the internals have been lovingly picked for their performance characteristics and then polished and balanced, plus the fuel pump tweaked.

If ol' Jay got tired of this puppy and decided to give it to me, I'd not turn it down. However, I'd bet most SBC powered Deuce coupes or similar would suck it's doors just because they're so much lighter and wind up so far more quickly. As a "Just Because We Can" exercise, it's full of win.

H/T Nunkle Kim

If I Were Jay Leno

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I'd have this puppy in my garage. If you have to ask why, you'd never understand.

H/T Dave Barry via CNet

Hot Wheels! Too Cool!

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This is just plain awesome. I thought I had a few Hot Wheels cars back in the day, but wow! Apparently not.

I guess I'll always be that little boy that loved playing with his and his pals' Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. A gearhead forever!

Stolen from Mike Elgan

Do You Know Your Fifties Cars?

You got 81% (39 right out of 48). The average score is 73%

Something different today - step right up, try your luck, see if you can beat the score! Play American Torque's Car Show Game - 1950s!

I don't know my Chrysler products, or a bunch of the "off breeds." I did ok on the Ford and GM stuff, though. Heh.

H/T Road Pig

Because It's There

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Asking gearhead why one would do this is akin to asking Mallory why he wanted to climb Everest.

I'd say those hides were pretty well smoked. Probably got all the goody out of  'em.

H/T Larry S.

Put This On My Bucket List

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Want. Excuse me whilst I clean up the drool 'round here.....

H/T Nunkle Kim

Why Didn't This Catch On?

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Heh. Count on the ol' luggage getting kinda grungy with the bottom of the trunk opened up. Did this wondrous invention only turn the car in a clockwise direction?

And I'd bet if you had a flat, getting the spare out of there might have been a challenge.

H/T Hoss

Re Volting

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If this could be any happier I'd puke. All we need now is lots of red banners waving and some videos of goose stepping soldiers with tanks and missile launchers. Government Motors indeed - they've got a Five Year Plan for us, and we've paid for it!

In case you haven't heard, the new Volt retails for $41,000. Base version, that is - the one with some goodies costs $45,000. The Nissan Leaf costs eight grand less. Buy Amerikan!

Or, buy a conventional dino burner - the Chevy Cruze is basically the Volt without the electrics, and it starts at around $17k to $23k for the fully optioned version.

The whole idea of electric cars and their advocates who think we should all be forced to switch over - or incentivised into buying into the idea has always put me in a sour mood. If the technology worked and the cost was competitive, there would be no need for such Machiavellian maneuvering. We as taxpayers have footed the bill to help bring this car out, and we'll still be on the hook for the DOE's plan to install 15,000 240 volt home charging stations - about 4,400 available to Volt "owners."

Even if we all ran right out and bought/leased Volts and their ilk - the products won't meet our needs:

The heart of the automobile (and of automobility) is its potential.

The automobile’s potential is its greatest secret—an open secret and yet, it often seems, a forgotten one. The big SUV in my garage may occasionally make a 10-mile trip to Walmart or 2-mile run to the volunteer fire station when the siren sounds. But it has the potential—the size, the power, the range—to take me, my friends, and our bicycles over the mountain to a distant bike trail, or 1,100 miles with a load of furniture and books to my son’s house in Florida.

A century ago, the gasoline-powered automobile revolutionized personal mobility. It did it so profoundly and swiftly as to make it a routine aspect of our daily lives. Wide-ranging mobility is so normal that many people, particularly in the anti-car crowd, have forgotten its importance. On whatever day you may happen to read this, Americans will travel 11 billion miles in their cars, going to work or to lunch with friends, shopping, visiting the doctor or dentist, picking up materials for a home project, transporting kids to soccer or a pet to the vet—compacting into a few hours tasks which, had they even been contemplated before the automobile, would have taken carefully planned days or weeks.

This marvelous potential, whether we use it a little or a lot, is woven deeply and invisibly into the fabric of our economy and of our lives. We Americans do not buy cars merely to get from point A to point B. We do not buy cars to meet average 20- to 40-mile-per-day travel expectations. We buy them with the idea that they can take us where and when we want to go, day or night, good weather or bad. What’s more, we buy them for their potential to carry not just ourselves but our families, friends, poker cronies, softball teammates, dogs and cats, antiques, tools, fishing rods, Avon deliveries, picnic lunches, easels and paints, Salvation Army donations, church bazaar cookies, saddles and tack, groceries, vacation paraphernalia, and whatever else we may dream of with some degree of comfort and safety across town or country. And, oh, yes, we might be dragging a boat or a couple of dirt bikes or a pony trailer behind us as well.

This powerful potential is at the crux of replacing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs). Can EVs ever develop the potential that ICE cars routinely deliver? This is not merely an issue of range, but range plus the sheer reserve power to carry real-life loads, deal with emergencies, and finesse the unexpected detour or delay.

I've been sitting on this article, kinda waiting for some inspiration to include it in a post. The stupid video above was just that. As they say, read the whole thing.

On the new Nissan Leaf:

Take, for instance, the case of the celebrated and much-anticipated (coming to the United States in December) Nissan Leaf EV, with its projected range of 100 miles. This car has been touted as a breakthrough on range for a “decent”-sized EV with seating for five. We cautioned recently that its 100-mile range might not be realistic. Now, one of Nissan’s top engineers has warned that the Leaf’s range may be reduced by as much as 40 percent under what most drivers think of as typical driving conditions. Hidetoshi Kadota, the Leaf’s chief engineer, says, for instance, that if you are driving in heavy traffic on a cold day and using your heater you should expect your range to drop to about 62 miles. And that is predicated on your driving at about 15 miles per hour. At higher speeds the range will presumably drop more.

If you happen to be driving on a very hot day, using your air conditioner, you should expect a range of 70 miles—if you keep your speed under 50 mph. But on a really nice day, when you don’t need either your heater or your air conditioner, you may be able to drive more than 130 miles in your Leaf, provided you cruise at a steady 38 mph. Kadota’s estimates not only contemplate speeds the vast majority of drivers would find laughably unacceptable, they are also apparently based on the Leaf with a single driver. No passengers. No noticeably heavy cargo.

This is not the potential most Americans expect in their cars. While in some quarters it may be exciting to contemplate even a theoretical 100-mile range, let’s put that in a little perspective. Here’s a headline from Motor World, January 15, 1914: “Ford To Build That Long Looked For Electric Car.” A subhead notes that the car “Will Employ Special 100-mile Edison Battery.” The article reveals that the great Thomas A. Edison “has been developing a battery especially for the purposes of the Ford electric and has succeeded so well that a 400-pound battery, capable of operating 100 miles without recharging, is assured.”

Well, history tells us nothing was assured about Edison’s battery or the Ford electric, which was never built. It is sobering to consider that after almost a century Nissan—with its $18,000 lithium-ion “sandwich” battery pack that weighs 660 pounds—is promising the same range that had been “assured” with the Edison battery, back before the First World War.

Electric cars just plain won't work for most of us. They might work as a second vehicle for those in certain circumstances, but any time some heavy lifting or unexpected extra miles or load on the motor might be encountered - forgeddaboutit.

Maybe I'm just a selfish Gaea hating knuckle dragger, but do y'all really think this thing would work for moi? I live twelve miles from the nearest town. I live forty five miles from my job. Of that forty five - over twenty are gravel. Do you really expect an electric car to be able to make the trip (one way now!) through mud and or snow? When the temps drop to below zero, do you really expect the batteries to perform as they would in their optimal temperature range - say around seventy or eighty degrees? How about when it's over one hundred during the summer? Can the motor pull the load on gravel and the air conditioner? With a load of groceries? Or would I have to limp it home and fire up the ol' gas guzzler to take an extra trip just to buy groceries or any other possible heavy item?

I can hear it now: "Oh, Jeffro - it's clear the electric car won't work for you - exceptions will be made." Exceptions will be made is something we hear all the time - you'll be exempt from that tax, your business won't be required to follow this safety standard, you don't have to report that income - whatever. It's bad policy. If it isn't good enough for everybody - it's bad social engineering - not that there is good social engineering. Loopholes are for the elites who write up this stuff, because they know and deserve better than the hoi polloi. For thee but not for me.

But Jeffro - if we don't pour cubic tax dollars into at least trying to find alternate energy resources for our transportation - where will we be?

What? Y'all don't think businesses and entrepreneurs over the world aren't trying to find the magic solution? You don't think battery manufacturers aren't working their butts off trying to make a better battery? You don't thing energy companies aren't spending their budgets away trying to find effective sources for our energy needs in the future? The people/companies who succeed will be friggin rich beyond their wildest dreams if they succeed. Conventional fuels from biomass? Workin' on it. Other forms of engines? All kinds of avenues covered. Even stuff like power loss over distances in electric lines is being studied. Any way to save a little. Capitalism tends to do these things if there is a demand, and there is a demand. So, government funding of some "green" initiatives can and does impede progress - because government can't read the future and by funding their pet projects - they are causing unfair competition for the other possibilities that just might work.

So, for now - you can pry my keys to my gas guzzling Z71 pickup from my cold, dead fingers.

Chevy Billboards

Welp, once again I'm raiding the ol' email inbox. It's gonna be zero or so here at Osceola, IA, where a couple of us are holed up on our way to the southwest corner of Wisconsin. Gonna be cold there, too.

These pics are supposedly of billboards Chevy is putting up around the Detroit area to bolster support for the brand. Real? I dunno, googling it finds most references say the same thing I just mentioned. So, take it for what it's worth, which is basically nothing. For an old gearhead, the pics are art, man!

Disclosure: I had a '79 L82 'Vette - black with black interior, so the front shot of the chrome bumper black shark below happens to really start my motor.






















Mmm, mmm, mmm. Tasty.

No, Really

Mitsubishi's Fart Fighting Crossover

Get a whiff of this. Mitsubishi has put a new spin on the automotive fight to save the environment when it introduced a concept at the Tokyo motor show that makes the unexpected passing of wind a little less embarrassing.

As part of a new interior package its calls 'cocochi', the PX-Miev's upholstery incorporates an anti-allergen coating that Mitsubishi says breaks down offensive odours and volatile organic compounds as well as deactivating allergens such as ticks and pollen.

And if fighting farts isn't enough, each of the PX-Miev's four seats is air-conditioned to ensure any remaining odours are quickly distributed and dispelled.

The PX-Miev's obsession with smell doesn't end there. The air-conditioning system pumps out aroma molecules as well as negative-ion and enriched oxygen to reduce fatigue and enhance comfort.

And a driver-monitoring system uses a distinctive fragrance as a warning if it thinks concentration is wavering.

It also issues audible, visual and vibrational warnings. The PX-Miev is also concerned about your looks, its new-age interior including a radiation-blocking glass that prevents darkening and aging of the skin.

Mmmmkay. Could it be, just maybe, possibly - there was a whole design committee that had their potty training just a tad early?