Drew Dowdell

Lol you're not fitting in a Prelude.

It's been an interesting week when leaving one of my clients. I'm only there two days a week and there was a vintage Chevy pacing me outbound each day. These shots are about a mile apart. The Caprice was in exceptionally good shape with either the original owner or daughter of the original owner at the helm.

If you're looking for a comfortable fuel miser, the civic is the top of the list. It has the smooth low-end torque feel of the old V8s. It rides more like a luxury sedan than an economy one. Nicer leather and some faux suede and they could have called it an Acura.

If you're a light user and want a windows machine, look at the new ARM processor laptops. They're less expensive but have impressive performance for the price and some of the longest battery life you'll find on a windows machine. The downside is that if you have an older printer or scanner, therer might not be compatible drivers for it, so check first. We're kinda in the early 2nd gen of these processors, but Microsoft has committed to supporting them and even Microsoft's own laptops are using them. There are ways around that security limitation. I have an Obama era laptop that I got working on 11 and it runs fine. If you can get the make and model number of the laptop we might be able to give you some advice. That said, there's ways to clean it up without doing a fresh install.

I didn't notice that much of a difference, but I'm fairly limber. The difference for me is in the substantially superior interior and better power delivery. Aside from the extra surge of torque and minimal gasoline spend, you don't really know you're driving a hybrid in the Civic

Much easier - Switch to Firefox or Opera or brave

I miss sedans and big coupes. Sure, there are some left, but what's left isn't great. As much as we all nitpicked about some of the sedan offerings in the final years, most of them were pretty darn good even if they weren't what this crew thought of as "perfect". The Continental, Fusion platform and all, was still a very very nice car to wheel around. The Avalon and Maxima were built to eat up highway, the Crown is just kinda meh. The Buick Lacrosse Avenier was better than most Cadillacs from 10 years prior. Fusion and MKZ hybrids were comfy and efficient. Mazda 6 was a sexy sport sedan. Where are all the Eldorados? Where are the Rivieras? Why are my only two options the 4-series and CLE?

The Honda Civic hybrid is a substantially better hybrid than the Pruis.

I had my eye on that 7-series also, but I was going to be in enough trouble buying the 2-wheel BMW as it was. As I recall, the 7-series did leave the property under its own power.

And one of them stayed in the extended family...

Do you mean the PRR M1? They were absolute beasts. Not purdy, but all muscle. Even when diesels were coming online, the heaviest trains were still given to the M1. One M1b has been saved and is in storage, though it will never run again. The tender from another M1 has been saved and will be the tender for the new PRR T-1 5550 that is being constructed by the T-1 Trust

The Telluride details will be out on 11/10. I have them already, but they're embargoed.

I've never heard that about the S1 and I know a lot about the S1. The S1 had problems, but flex and vibration weren't really it. The problem was really how long the wheelbase was and that on less than perfect track, a drive wheel could lift off the rail ever so slightly and cause wheel slip. I've often wondered if the design of this engine and the PRR T-1 had included gearing between the 2nd and 3rd drive axles to make both engines operate as one, would the problem have been resolved. What is impressive about the Mallard and the entire A4 class is that they are roughly 2/3s the size of the big American streamline steam. Though never officially recorded, both the T-1 and S-1 are said to have beaten the Mallard's record on regular runs, not just a special event. But it really shouldn't be a surprise since their boilers and boiler pressure capacity are so much higher than the A4. Get a T-1 out on the straight track between Cleveland and Chicago and it could do 130 - 140 the whole way, leaving the 126 mph Mallard way behind. This beauty, which still runs, was engineered for a top speed of 140, but only ever maxed out at 100. It's got tiny "legs" though with short drive wheels and it's claim to fame was that it could maintain 100 mph with a heavy train over the mountains. This was the pinnacle of steam technology.

It's painful to be an auto enthusiast these days. All of the fighting over stupid political shit is such a turn off. Like what you like and don't yuk other people's yums.

So stop it.

Unfortunately, it's no longer possible to disconnect politics from automotive. There once was a time when the U.S. government just set safety and efficiency standards and let the rest of automotive go about its day. Now we have an activist government that is breaking apart decades or even century old auto manufacturing supply chains to try and score political points without any contingency plans in place. It has forced our closest trading partners into an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" stance and pushed them to make deals with China instead of us. It has undone progress the prior administration made in bringing manufacturing back to the US via EV regulations, entirely counter to the current admin's stated goals. It's all just so stupid and unnecessary, but there's no way to avoid it anymore. I too long for the days when we could just complain about CAFE standard or the weight gained from improving crash scores.

Different account. You're thinking of @VenSeattle. All of the accounts were new signups that got through 2 layers of spam filters. I pay for an extra layer of spam security for this site, that's why incidents like this are relatively rare compared to other sites. The first line spam firewall has blocked over 5,400 attacks over the last 7 days, and it's like that every week. So 11 getting through once every few months is still fantastic results. There's a second layer of spam filter as well. These spammers were reported to both.

And by '94 they had the LT-1 which made the 4,500 lb Fleetwood an 8.5 second car, and the Roadmaster 4,250 lb sedan an 8 second car. That sounds pokey by today's standards, but this was 30+ years ago and an 8.5 second Fleetwood is still way faster than most people need to be driving.

The 2.8 liter V6. Very complex 30 valve engines. Not the most powerful at a modest 190 hp, but buuuutter smooth and surprising low end torque.

2001 - 2004

Extreeeeeemly rare. There was a guy near me that had one in black. Wild machines.

I think its an appropriate update to keep with the times. I don't think they'll keep it in production long. Maybe 3 years and then a new platform. Being the cheapest non-Nissan EV, having pretty fast charging, and available super cruise makes it a compelling entry.

Before anyone complains that there isn't an increase in range, they switched to LFP batteries that have a lower energy density but a much better fast charge resilience profile. LFPs last a lot longer without degradation, they are cheaper and more environmentally friendly, and can fast charge better and without long term damage.

That's because the blundering idiot did tariffs wrong. Tariffs should only be used to protect existing or newly emerging industries, or in cases where a country is dumping products (like China did with solar panels and wind turbine equipment, and will do with batteries). Biden got the tariffs on Chinese EVs right because it paired that with domestic incentives to build those battery factories here. Obama reacted to the Chinese economic threat too late on solar panels and the entire domestic solar panel manufacturing industry got wiped out. Tariffs can be a useful tool when used with some precision. This is just a big senile orange elephant swinging a wrecking ball. The catch there is that they're both made in china. Those on the lower end of the economic ladder who are on the right do have a valid grievance with the way the economy is set up. While they are wrong about its cause, ignoring their needs has clearly resulted in suffering for the rest of us.