trinacriabob

Just saw a Chrysler Concorde from the mid-'90s, so a 30 year old car. It was in perfect condition and had a "Happy Days" type lady driving it. It was forest green metallic with a gray interior. This car's treatment of the greenhouse is very generous compared to today's passenger cars. Apparently, they had a more rounded model that kept the same name and followed this body style. I think the rounded one is more attractive and the grille references the forthcoming Chrysler 300 a little bit. I have no clue what the engine in these cars was. I have never known if these cars - including the Eagle Vision and possibly a Dodge version - were any good, so I bought the Regal coupe that time around ... and am so glad I did.

March 18 Southern California's desert areas Saw this 1978 Cutlass Supreme for sale along CA-62, the highway toward Joshua Tree National Park. I don't believe it was a Brougham. All of the upholstery was sort of covered over with an upholstery that wasn't factory. The paint looked a little faded. It had a license plate from Plaza Motors - the Cadillac/Olds dealer in Palm Springs back when it was a "kinder, gentler" place, meaning reasonably priced ranch homes in the flats. It probably had a 260 V8. I wasn't interested enough to call, and not for $10,500. Was driving down a street in Palm Springs with some dated mid-century modern (or knock off) housing and saw this, a circa 2000 Grand Prix GTP coupe, in bright red. It had USC Trojans license plate frames! You're always bound to see interesting cars in and around Palm Springs and its neighboring towns.

True. Another questionable moniker is PLC - personal luxury car. Would a $5,000 MSRP Monte Carlo or Grand Prix from 1976 be a "luxury car" if outfitted in basic trim where vinyl seats are paired up with black seat belts if the matching seat belt option was not checked off? And, since they could seat up to 6 people if the armrest on bench seat versions is up, how "personal" would the space in these coupes really be? Meh. I can roll with this one. At least we know what is implied.

I will miss this car a lot ... not the Hellcat or other tricked out versions, but the basic car and what it represents. I'm perfectly fine with 292 hp to the 717 hp of the car shown here! At about 3:30 in the video, it hits that 298 kmh. That is ~185 mph! While watching this, I was hoping no one would change lanes on this guy. Not only that, with the evergreen tree cover on both sides of the autobahn, I was hoping no deer would come jumping across the roadway. When he's transitioning from one roadway to another, I like how nimbly this 4,000 pound car appears to handle. I guess my love of this car will have to be relegated to 5 to 10 rentals of one as opposed to actual ownership. @oldshurst442 It indeed has some German DNA. The transmission is sourced in Germany, the engine is American, and final assembly takes place in Brampton, ON, Canada. But it sounds like you know that. This car has more than enough German DNA to outrun Irma Bunt and her evil cronies with ease.

Good morning ... ... well, not really.

Look at this car. Malaise era Mopar. And all those GMs seen in the vid. And in yesteryear's Los Angeles! The world we know/knew has steadily been losing its personality.

That's way lower than I would have guessed. It looked to me like it might be higher. Maybe because the automakers are publicizing EVs disproportionately the cars with ICEs. I used to get a kick and also get annoyed by how Italians, and many Europeans in general, seem to rag on cars with automatic transmissions. All the EVs being sold over there are indeed automatic. They will be going electric. And automatic! I'm going to stay with a conventional car a little longer. When the calculation pencils out or is moot, I wouldn't mind have an EV.

I was going to go to the auto show this year and then didn't. The industry is in such a state of flux. And I'm not an early adopter, if that hasn't been obvious on this forum for a long time ... lol. So, I'll put forth a simple question: With just the domestic automakers, what percentage of their offerings at this very time is "EV : ICE?" 30 : 70, 40 : 60, 50 : 50, something else? Just an approximation, and not in numbers of units sold, but just by models/trims available to consumers.

I always assumed China and its cities were crowded and compact (with sprawl) and that that would not incentivize owning large cars. I guess I'm wrong.

What is this? It's not badged. It has some reference to the "Police Caprice." Is that a tri-shield logo I see in the center caps? Mostly, I like it. It's the sort of sled I could see myself driving. - - - - - As for the new Encore, there is styling improvement both inside and out. I don't know how much I like it. Wow ... 1.2 liters? That's 72 c.i., more or less. And that's all the MPG it gets? I like the way Buick is inscribed on the rear, below the new tri-shield logo. It doesn't look bad. They photographed it in some sunny location. I still don't know if it's for us, the Chinese, others, or some combo of the above.

Yes, interesting. Thanks. The Lincoln Versailles piggy-backed onto the Ford Granada while the Cadillac Seville was designed from scratch and had a much better standard engine upon being released. Then: - 38 minute video - typical - that's longer than an episode of "The Brady Bunch" or "Bewitched" - the initial sequence where he pans around it at night when it's illuminated is sort of cool ... sort of ... and, best of all, he's NOT talking - he admits that he had his "covid whiskey" ... why am I not surprised? - it takes 22 minutes to learn that it has a FoMoCo 302 c.i. V8 under the hood, though it was probably a coin flip between a 302 and a 351 ... but we did learn that the trans was a 3 speed automatic and one that probably lacked the lock-up feature - the dashboard and instrumentation are hideous - he definitely seems to be biased toward GM, given that he gushes over the colonnades and such ... which is fine with me. That said, he doesn't seem to like this car very much. - whose house is that that he's always doing these YouTube vids from?

Funny! Yes to all that Greek grilling. Portuguese food is simple and delicious, but I don't like the chicken piri piri you might be referring to and which seems to have become trendy in short order. I don't think it's authentically Portuguese, but might have come into their cuisine by way of Brazil, Angola, and/or Cape Verde. If you like chicken piri piri, it will be easy to find on the Plateau Mont-Royal, a neighborhood I struggle with (cough) ... haha.

Yes to a select few of those (chicken paprikash, chicken lo mein, sesame chicken) since I will not go near anything spicy. Ever. My nose runs the entire time and that's not fun. Adding chicken teriyaki, lemon chicken, chicken fricasse (Cuban), chicken enchiladas and burritos, chicken souvlaki, etc., etc.

All I can say is bring it on: chicken parmigiana, chicken piccata, chicken cordon bleu, cashew chicken, chicken tetrazzini, etc., etc.

Rattlesnake? "It tastes like chicken." Alligator? "It tastes like chicken." - - - - - Hard pass on both.

He wouldn't be the true-to-form @oldshurst442 we know if there weren't those occasional rants.

NIFTY !

Let me be the first to wish one of our more unique and active members @oldshurst442 greetings on his special day, per the site's daily "news feed." Happy birthday - Charoumena genethlia - Bon anniversaire And many more ... enjoy your day!

I like the photo on the right and its caption. It's both easy and difficult to explain, with the latter applying to someone not familiar with the state's educational landscape. In addition to the good private schools like Stanford, Cal Tech, and USC, there are 2 state university systems. There is the UC system (more prestigious and geared to research and preparation for graduate studies) and the CSU system (less prestigious, with a few exceptions, and more applied and vocational). When I finished high school, they flat out told you that a certain GPA and SAT score would get you into the UC system, and that formula included Berkeley (the mother campus) and UCLA (sort of the co-flagship). Move forward 2 or 3 decades and the landscape is very, very different. Now, Berkeley and UCLA admit less than 15% of the freshman applicant pool. Some of the other good UCs admit about 25% to 35% of their applicants. That's less than Montreal's McGill, which I think is a better school. Except for the 2 polytechnic universities within the CSU system (San Luis Obispo and Pomona), the others admit fairly liberally, with some as high as 85% to 90%. SLO and Pomona are good at engineering and architecture, which may not be found at the other CSUs, so the admit rate is lower. Now, if we're talking the Bakersfield, Fresno, San Bernardino, and Chico campuses, just show up with a pulse and, at Chico, a strong penchant for partying. I knew this chick who looked like Rachel Ward's lost twin sister and who graduated from CSU Sacramento. She said, "If a resume from Chico State lands on your desk, just put it in the trash can." That's a stretch, but I laughed. I'm sure a few capable scholars end up at CSU Chico, but not many. Sorry for being slightly pedantic, but I keep tabs on this sort of stuff. California is a weird but interesting place. It has about the same population as Argentina. Within the last few years, less people are making it a destination. But when my parents got to this country, they bolted from the greater New York area when the opportunity to live in Southern California presented itself.

I get a kick out of reading reviews of hotels overseas on venues like Tripadvisor where people from many countries sound off on their experiences. I seem to run into one common ESL-ism, whereby reviewers comment that "the stuff" was usually really good, or sometimes not so good. In context, it's obvious this implies it's "the staff." However, they're going off of how they would pronounce it phonetically. These reviewers will often be from Eastern Europe and the Middle East, most of the time. I love stuff like this ... in our world that is so far from being remotely monolingual.

I love this lady. She is Lashonda Lester, a Detroit native who moved to Austin and wound up doing stand-up. She is no longer with us, passing at about 41 from cancer. This is what I'm listening to and sometimes do so when I need a good laugh. Her delivery (voice modulation, etc.) are perfect for this sort of gig. (She also has another good YouTube about Russians and religious types coming to the door.) May she RIP.

I didn't know he was a comedian until a friend of mine told me it's the same guy who was in "Green Book," cast as one of the brothers-in-law, I believe. I don't find him as funny as some of the others who did this Italian-American spin on awkward situations because I think he's working off of an already established comedic platform ... and it's not as convincing because he's actually from Chicago and not the NYC area, where they do talk like that.

They did a good job with RTD in Denver, from what I could tell. There are TWO ways out of the airport ... one that goes downtown and one that goes south, pretty much to the Tech Center and passes near some huge lake or reservoir in doing so. There is even a commuter rail interface that takes you up to some northern bedroom communities, probably from Union Station, but it's not RTD per se'. It's all light rail in the RTD part, so that's all faster to put together. I had planned to go but then the pandemic hit. I had planned on getting in and out of DIA using RTD and then picking up a rental car at a suburban location down in the Tech Center. I've probably said this before - broken record: there was a trailer set up as an info booth on the Boulder Turnpike on approach to Boulder coming up from Denver. This was about 25 years ago. This earthy-crunchy chick who was presentable enough (and not the kind who could braid her armpits) was working in it. She was smug and not that friendly - she shouldn't have had a public contact job helping tourists. As soon as a hippiesh compatriot dude she knew walked in, and not even for touristic purposes, she lit up. Ah, yes, she was with tribe! You then wonder what people like this might be like in the present day after some initial slight hitting of the wall. Did she join the establishment, move to the nicer and newer suburbs, and find a husband who would keep her in bon bons ... or is she working at a candle shop in Boulder or Capitol Hill and driving a beat up Subaru wagon? Yes, I do tend to overanalyze things.

This is interesting - to me, at least. Today was the grand opening of the new Metro line from Istanbul's new airport (about 30 miles out, and practically on the Black Sea) into the city center. They opened the new airport - Europe's busiest - in 2019 and fully relied on big coach type buses. The old airport was connected to the city by Metro, and now the old airport has been put to some alternate use. This new high-speed line takes less than 1/2 and hour. It does not yet go into the skyscraper part of the city, but that's on tap and just a few planned stations away. It takes one more Metro train to go into the historical center ... and this high-speed Metro is not intended to ever go there, which is a good thing. This whole situation is analogous to Denver Stapleton flipping over to DIA, which is way the hell out of town. Denverites joke that it's in Kansas. https://www.dailysabah.com/business/transportation/erdogan-inaugurates-high-speed-metro-line-to-europes-busiest-airport Personally, I enjoy riding on different subway systems.

I agree about the color part. On a sportier vehicle, mixing it up with red accents on the dash or even in the seat stitching can be nice. I've seen this on older Camaros and in vehicles like GMC Acadias from the 2010s ... and it worked. It becomes a matter of how much, though. @David @Robert Hall As vehicle manufacturers move their line-ups to EV, one can see, at a quick glance from the home pages of their websites, what the manufacturers offer and where MSRP starts. For (almost) ALL of these EVs, the prices are a huge jump from the equivalent models powered by ICEs in the near past. The price jumps make for some serious heartburn.