Originally Posted by
Ferrer
Some comments:
1) Lucas electrics are the single best automotive invention ever.
Surely a Lucas positive-ground feedback variable-venturi carburetor is the ideal towards which we should all strive.
2) I thought 4 speed gearboxes had disappeared from cars by now
Me too. As Kitdy alluded to below, Toyota was certainly resting on it's laurels as it was the last generation designed before the ****ing global financial crisis. The GFC and new emissions regs have managed to rouse Toyota from their stupor, at least in that department.
3) Great read
4) I bet this car is as fast (or maybe faster) as my car in straight line
5) I have a bumper sticker in my MX-5 which says "My other car is a Zonda"
Unfortunately, my Zonda has been in the shop for a while. Something about pistons escaping the block and gears escaping the transmission when I did a top speed run at 620psi (42.7 bar) of boost and 330mphz.
One of the greatest ironies is a friend of mine, which is an engineer, and who simply can't understand my obsession with Toyota iQs and Citroën C6s. I'm not saying he should buy a Renault Avantime, but if an engineer can't appreciate the greatness of the Miller engine in the supercharged Micra we are doing something wrong.
As an engineer, I am around a fair number of other engineers and have observed a similar phenomenon. They seem to be more interested in the utility of the car, than its actual engineering. The upshot of all that is that the parking lot where I work is filled with load-bearing pickup trucks, super-economy Japanese small cars, and Subarus... contemptible Subarus. For them, that cars are the most use-optimized cars available: haulers, for those who need to haul or want to look like they do, cheap to run cars for those who do not, and Subarus for people who like the idea of an all-around car and don't want to buy two sets of tires. There are also the inevitable (in the Northeast, anyway) fleet of Buick LeSabres and pickups driven by the blue-collar floor workers.
Nevertheless, if I ever get thrown the perennial question ("
what car should I get?") I always try to steer them (see what I did there?) towards something that at least isn't catastrophically bad, for fear that they'd end up in something as terrible as a Mercedes-Benz A-Class...
Oh wait.
As a compulsive craigslister, I tend to think of new cars in terms of old car prices. For instance: my roomate bought a WRX (he does have two sets of tires, though...) for around $30,000. I found a pair of "runs good" early-'90s Buick Regals on craigslist for $500. He could have had 120 Buick Regals for the same price as his Subaru. I am also incredibly cheap. so, when people ask for "real" advice, not "stupid Miles advice" I tell them to buy an early-'90s Japanese car for $1,000 with 70,000 miles and drive it until the darkness takes the Earth and everyone else is driving a Countryman (not unlike Shakespeare's "country matters"...).
I do give advice, but rarely when it comes to the whole car. I am much more likely to give a salient answer to a question about which car has the best engine/interior/reliability etc... than "Which car should I buy?" If they ask that, I tend to respond with something stupid. If they have the gall to suggest a car or two as a basis for my recommendation, I usually launch into a diatribe about those cars and their brand. That last statement really rams home that I am just a forumite, for all my talk of being a post-ironic car enthusiast, it sounds like I am just an angry armchair racer living in my parents' basement after all.
(PD. I recently drove one of the new Skydrivegreemotion Mazda 3s and it is interesting to think why would anyone to spend significantly more to get something that's worse)
Excuse my ignorance, but what is the difference between it and the normal one? I thought Mazda was beSkydriving the whole range.
Originally Posted by
Kitdy
Some more comments:
It was me in the Mazda 3.
Lies! It was Gilles Villeneuve (who started life as a drag racer, I believe) as far as I was concerned in the Corolla.
I must mandatorily apologize for all of us driving so slow.
Is it better in English Canada? I can understand the 50 km/h limits in the city itself, what with Kebekwah pedestrians milling around with their laissez-faire attitude towards checking for trraffic.
Did you deal with a lightly accented Canado-Dutchman? I know one who is with your people.
Noper, does he work in Mirabel?
You can see why GM was so cozy on their laurels. Toyota certainly is right now.
Yeah, I would imagine that when GM was king of the hill, there were far more faults in their cars. I was surpirsed to see so many American(-branded) cars up here. I can understand in other parts of Canada, because they're made there, but it didn't seem to jell with the rest of the cheap Japanese cars, quasi-Euro luxury cars, and an overabundance of Dodge pickups. I would have though that they would turn their noses up at the thought of a car made in English Canada.
"Kimi, can you improve on your [race] finish?"
"No. My Finnish is fine; I am from Finland. Do you have any water?"