I was being tailgated by a Hummer H2 today, which wasn’t a surprise around here. I looked in the rear vision mirror and, as I often too, thought it was a school bus due to the size, row of lights on top, and bright yellow color. A lot of the Hummers are Tonka/Lifeguard Yellow. The guy eventually zoomed around me in true H2 asshole style and then it hit me and the giggles started.
That guy just paid $60,000 to drive his own fucking short bus.
About 30% of my childhood was spent riding around in shitty beat-up station wagons going from one parking lot to another in a yellowish haze of smog. I got to relive a bit of that today because the nearby brushfires have once again turned everything yellow and a bit toxic, and I found a craptastic Chrysler Reliant K “woody” wagon in the Borders parking lot. It’s similar to the one I shot in Santa Ana before. Something about the way that smoky light hit the veneering and the frayed upholstery and the dirty glass caused me to have a Central Orange County Proustian Experience.
The rest of the shots are in this Flickr set.
There is one achievement of the last century that will stand without a doubt, and that is the 1980s era Toyota minitruck. In this Google video you see this greatness made manifest, as Jeremy Clarkson and crew do their best to destroy a 100,000 mile+ former farm truck with impact, seawater, fire, and other things.
Every broke person I hung out with in the 80s and early 90s drove one of these things. I’d buy one today. pbd had one that later the_silent_one had too. That was a 1980, wasn’t it? Greg’s was an ’88 and he put 100,000 miles of L.A. messenger/courier work on it before he sold it. The Chadian army blew up Libyan tanks with them. They. Will. Not. Die.
Is the Tacoma still that good, I wonder?
The warranty on my car just paid off big time. With 97,700 miles out of the 100,000 the warranty allows, I just had a really weird obscure electrical problem. It took them all week to fix, including taking the seat out of the car, replacing various parts and having that not fix it, calling the mothership, ordering a “multiplexer”, and crying out in rage and despair to the uncaring Demiurge.
My cost? $50. This is only the second time in five years that anything broke on the car, so my total cost for non-consumables under warranty has been $100. On this repair I had to replace the rear vision mirror, which the warranty doesn’t cover, so that and the interval service and the week-long electrical diagnostic ordeal cost me a total of $380.
I heart Acura.
Do not rent a car from Hertz now unless you’re willing to assume a lot more liability.
I require that Subaru brings this version of the STI to the U.S. Now. Thanks!
The STI without the lame wing and with more creature comforts. Yes. Please. Now.
Went to the LA Auto Show with zebulon_y and friendly_bandit and had a good time. It was about equal parts “Wow neat!”, “Wow, that’s kind of..” and “Wow, that’s just fucked-up”.
All the car manufacturers were showing off their golf carts. I will complain about golf carts some other time.
I got a dirty look from the Dodge spokesdroid when I said “Check this out, 14 miles per gallon in 2006!” loudly at the Charger SRT. “Guess you’ve got to really like that cruisin’ lifestyle!” I bellowed at him cheerfully. I sat in my future girlfriend, the Mazdaspeed 6, and in my other future girlfriend, the Subaru Legacy GT. I was surprisingly impressed by some of the big campervan things. That mercedes van that Dodge brought over from Europe is nicely done. We did not go into the Hall of Supercars because it was stuffed with hu-mans.
The best thing there was in the aftermarket hall. Someone has made the ultimate spinner, and it wasn’t even on the wheel. It was in the back of an SUV on display. It had lights on it that made patterns, nice, but then when it started spinning the lights made pictures! Like the American Flag, and Famous Art Type Pictures, and Hip Hop Lifestyle Imagery. It was one of those things that went so far into stupid that it wrapped right back around into art. It needs to go into a museum right now.
We went to Kappo Honda and had good japanese food with Lisa. I consumed: Tonkatsu,, hamachi sashimi, special toasted onigiri with eel, and some chicken udon. It was very, very, very, very, very good.
Mike Watt has a new van, and Jalopnik decided to document this. I like the fact that the photos they took are exact quotes of the photos from the Double Nickels on the Dime album cover.
Motoringfile has a nice update and analysis on the next gen engine for the Mini.
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