611–620 of 875 posts
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It would be nice if they still made cheap cars with no tech to just go from A to B. Old school Fiat 500 or Citroen 2cv style
I picked up a 1994 Toyota Pickup for this exact reason. It's so insanely simple, they didn't even give it a proper name. One of the last true work horses, if it wasn't for that damn rusty frame.
Driving along on cruise control, if a long downhill is encountered, the car will shift down to engine brake. That's cool.
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Because they're not classified as passenger vehicles, so they don't have to meet the same standards.
I understand, but a modern pickup truck comfortably seats 6 in its King Cab (and good luck finding a truck without a King Cab) and has a bed that is useless for carrying anything except maybe your gym bag or a dozen cases of empties. There is no doubt the purpose of a modern pickup truck is as a passenger vehicle and secondarily to provide an advertising medium for you political beliefs. The fact that modern American…
You can find plenty of more compact pickups - I've been searching for the best one for a while because the Dodge Ram and Ford F150 are just too big.
The Honda Ridgeline, the Ford Maverick, the Chevrolet Colorado, the Hyundai Santa Cruz, the Toyota Tacoma, are all more compact, only seat 2-4 people, and have more bed than cab.
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meh, my wife's car does that, but to me it's not the same. I think if I can put into words what I like about manual transmissions, it's more than just the control to change the gears, it's the actual tactile feeling of removing power from the drivetrain (via clutch), then re-applying it. it's the cliche feeling of "connection" to the car, road, and what's happening. But I understand why the manual is dying. Most peop…
Or how about just being able to anticipate the power band around a corner? Being able to downshift on a hill without thinking about it. Those are things you don't even realize you do in a manual, that you do. case in point, me flooring it on a left hand turn in my moms prius and having to wait a good 500ms for the thing to start moving at all. I know exactly what my manual does in first gear and when, I don't think a…
You can do that in an automatic, too. Reach over to the gear selector, move it from D to a lower gear.
I can honestly say I don't give a shit whether I'm driving a manual or an automatic. I don't really think about gear changing in either.
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> many large pickup trucks are providing real utility to construction, farming, etc. Yes. One in 10 or maybe 20
Let me guess, you don’t live next to farmers or a lot of snow.
If you want a vehicle that will handle moderately deep snow the best a subaru station wagon is probably the ideal shape, or at low speeds a shorter jeep wrangler if you are actually going off road.
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Disagree. Because the utility is seldom fully utilized in an urban environment, they are nearly pure fashion. They serve as a signaling mechanism the same way that a pair of Gucci loafers do, just for a different culture.
They serve as a signalling mechanism all right; they signal that their owner has no taste, and doesn't care.
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> many large pickup trucks are providing real utility to construction, farming, etc. Yes. One in 10 or maybe 20
Let me guess, you don’t live next to farmers or a lot of snow.
However when my wife walks past one and the hood is over her head, knowing that this is possible because it’s exempt from regulation as a ”farm vehicle” seems like a corruption of government regulation.
I don’t think we need to make people prove how they will be using a vehicle, so maybe we should just require different license classes based on vehicle’s current weight and/or height? Driving a 7,000 lb truck that is 6.5’ tall is not the same as driving a passenger car.
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It would be nice if they still made cheap cars with no tech to just go from A to B. Old school Fiat 500 or Citroen 2cv style
Look into the Dacia Sandero, then. When they launched they were about six grand in the highest trim spec, which included a space to fit a stereo. Not the stereo, just the space to fit it. Manual door locks, manual windey windows, manual seats, buttons and dials, mechanical gauges. All based on "proven technology" first-gen Renault Megane components, so it's easy to fix.
Manual transmissions are dead. I grew up learning to drive a manual transmission car. Awesome. I loved the feeling of driving and shifting gears up the hilly, mountainous, twisty horrible roads in Jamaica. Exhilarating! But cars got better. I got older, and now automatic transmissions are so much more efficient than manual transmissions * for ordinary people *. We're not talking about people who love driving here. We…
> now automatic transmissions are so much more efficient than manual transmissions * for ordinary people *. Efficient in what way? I find it highly unlikely an automatic would have better fuel economy than a manual.
Bear in mind this was a relatively primitive late-80s Zf 4HP18 gearbox, with a lockup clutch in 3rd and 4th, giving similar ratios to 4th and 5th with the manual box. If anything the manual box let the engine rev a couple of hundred RPM higher in 5th, but the auto box would drop briefly out of lockup on moderate acceleration in top allowing the engine to reach a bit higher speed.
Manuals are MUCH MUCH more common in other countries. I was just in the UK, and (because I'm curious) I peaked in cars in every lot we parked in. Manuals were the dominant mode there, in my unscientific sampling.