821–830 of 875 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
sadly I've seen an increasing amount of American-style SUV and pickup trucks in France since the start of covid.
I was in Paris, Normandy, and all over the south of France for two weeks and didn’t see a single pickup. I swear every car there is like a variation of the Ford Fiesta.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, a mechanical clutch would be a BEAR!!! All my personal vehicles have always had a hydraulic clutch. They make it so simple your left foot can just do it without you much noticing it.
If it's not a mechanical clutch then it's not a real manual ;-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
God did I ever love my '92 Rover. Maybe I should get another one.
'92 would be an RRC. Get a P38, they're a lot more "liveable" as a daily and they don't rot anything like as badly. Also an RRC is insanely expensive, and P38s have only just started the upward curve.
I was always skeptical of the P38s because of the airbags. How do you deal with that over the long term?
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…
The vast bulk of the Porsches is sold with automatic transmission. https://www.topgear.com/car-news/supercars/how-many-people-a... It's basically 'daily driver' versus 'enthusiast' or 'track car' now even for cars in that bracket. One big advantage in the second hand market is that if you look for an automatic you can be fairly sure that the engine won't have been overrevved. (The engine computer registers this and i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you want to toss a snow plow on the front and actually deal with it. That’s the thing even in urban areas you will see pickup trucks cleaning parking lots etc.
Even where I grew up in northern maine, where everyone had two trucks, 10 feet of snow per winter was reliably expected, and everyone runs a farm, very few people would plow their own driveway. For personal driveways, people had cheap push snow blowers. For the roads, we had big plow trucks and literal construction equipment was used for large roads and parking lots. Very few people plow, because plowing is harder th…
Back then I would say around 1/3 to 1/4th of households in the area with large trucks had a snow plow, but I only knew one guy with a snowblower. Of course that also related to how long it took the state to deal with back roads after even a minor snow event.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do know that. But... Assuming you can even get to the antenna without special tools... you're just going to cut the antenna so short that the radio can't get a signal? On a hunch? What if the SOC in your vehicle has to download a rolling encryption key every week in order to activate?
There are plenty of parts of the US with really poor cell coverage. Even if everything's working perfectly, there's no guarantee that your car can update. Having a car die because it couldn't phone home is both a lawsuit waiting to happen and a potential PR nightmare.
Going back and forth with measures and counter-measures besmirches the point. Cars have to be serviced and this may be considered just another aspect of it.
I'm not suggesting that this sort of thing is necessarily a good thing(tm) but, it may be viewed as such by some and it's possible.
Isn't it the consumer's prerogative and responsibility to decide?
Not to mention, lawsuits and PR nightmares can be factored into a business case analysis. VW actually went ahead and defrauded the US government in diesel-gate and they're still an almost $100 billion company.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The vast bulk of the Porsches is sold with automatic transmission. https://www.topgear.com/car-news/supercars/how-many-people-a... It's basically 'daily driver' versus 'enthusiast' or 'track car' now even for cars in that bracket. One big advantage in the second hand market is that if you look for an automatic you can be fairly sure that the engine won't have been overrevved. (The engine computer registers this and i…
Over-revving is next to impossible nowadays as the ECU will cut fuel flow to prevent it. Hence "bouncing off the limiter".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Talk about a strawman and cherry picking. Now compare your saab to a modern golf
That's an ironman, mate. Pedestrian safety is a huge part of modern safety regulations for vehicles. It's why the Mini stopped being mini. Between that and side impact standards they couldn't keep that low hood and door sills. I drove a Triumph Spitfire for a while. Any time I took it out of town I took the state highways or country roads, because not only would that thing fit under a truck trailer, at a stoplight I…
I looked on IIHS for the ford F-150 and it gives a green rating for the pedestrian safety. On further inspection, this is because there is a type of automatic braking. Now, I am happy to have that system, but that doesn't have much to do with the shape of the car at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any idiot can see a 2022 ford truck is better than being hit by my 1988 Saab, which a 4 year old is visible over the hood on, as compared to a ford, which, I think I probably couldn't see my wife over the hood.
Talk about a strawman and cherry picking. Now compare your saab to a modern golf
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're making terrible assumptions here. The fact is you'll need special tools and then you'll need to follow a special procedure as if you're defusing a bomb. Otherwise... the radio will phone home and inform the mother-ship it's being tampered with. The prima facie reason is that in case of an accident the car should be able to request help even if everyone inside the car is unconscious. The other reason is, of cou…
> The other reason is, of course, that document you signed at the dealership stated that you've only purchased the _right_to_use_ the car... not the actual car. I can assure you that (in the US at least) when you buy a car, pay off any financing, and ultimately hold the title free and clear , you do in fact own the car.
Titles to ratty, broken down, cars are bought and sold every day... aren't they? And, just because it's shiny doesn't mean it's a great car either. It could be a great sculpture.
I think the issues at play here are more about service and warranty contracts as well as buyer expectations. Having the title just means I own a giant hunk of metal and plastic, no?