Time for our final post of the night and your Comment(s) of the Day!
This morning, Jason wrote about some fascinating details about a 1908 White Model L steam car in Monterey, focusing on how the dashboard is illuminated with a lantern. A Tangle of Kraken said:
What? No radium-painted dials!?!?
Phyrkrakr had a fantastic reply:
They didn’t exist yet, that’s how old this thing is. Marie Curie didn’t isolate radium as a separate element until 1910, two years *after* this thing hit the road.
Flyingstitch:
With a dashboard light like that, Meat Loaf should have owned it.
Rad Barchetta:
why is the rear license plate mounted at an angle?
An attempt to defeat early speed cameras? You know, the kind that mount on a tripod with a cover over the photographer’s head.
Ash78:
Cop chases car down on his penny farthing bike
“Where ya going in such a hurry, steam punk?!”
In today’s Autopian Asks, I wondered if there are cars out there made worse by having manual transmissions. Quite a few of you answered with work vehicles like pickup trucks or transmissions with vague feel and throws as long as a baseball pitch. I expected some to push back, but this reader-name-and-reply combo got me:
Rob Stercraw makes me laugh because this makes it seem like Focus owners cannot win:
Pete chimes in to complain about the 2013-ish Focus manuals being awful but if you chose it instead of the Powershit auto, it’s probably still working just fine.
Speaking of Ash78, I have to give you a second COTD nom today for your comment in Thomas’ piece about the M850i Gran Coupe:
Therapist: “Now I’d like to say three nice things about 850. Do you think you could do that?”
Me: “The grille is much nicer now. The rear headroom is the best of all the Gran Coupes. And at least it’s not one of those GT models, what the f*ck was up with that?”
Therapist: “OK, let’s not get off track, that’s only two things so far. Can you think of a third?”
Me: “Yes, at least Chris Bangle wasn’t involved.”
Bangle: “I’m sitting right here, dude.”
Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic images: Jason Torchinsky; depositphotos.com
Sad coda to my COTD: Look up the “Radium Girls” who died after their bosses lied and told them that radium was safe. They were instructed to put a fine point on their brushes to paint the dials by sticking them in their mouths. Several died because of it, even though their bosses knew that radium was deadly and kept taking all the necessary precautions themselves
And an infuriating bonus: the company’s lawyers (and their hired doctors) tried to imply that the horrible medical conditions afflicting these young women were due to their ‘loose morals,’ not anything they had come into contact with at work.
Count yourself lucky to not get it.
IME, the problem with the Focus was throttle calibration. On the non-ST, I had to kind of pump the throttle a little off the line to get a smooth roll out even after a recall to reprogram it (ST was calibrated pretty well), but I never had any issue with the manual transmission itself and my ’12 still ran like new without any maintenance (engine or transmission) when it was totaled at over 200k miles. I thought the ratios were perfectly fine—it was as fast as my previous 2.3 Mazda3 5 speed (that also had at least the same 5th gear ratio), but with an easy extra 6 mpg. At 23mph/1000rpm in 5th, there wasn’t a lot of room for large gaps between the ratios and any lower 5th would suck on the highway and be unnecessary. That also happened to be the same ratio as 5th in my ’83 Subaru GL that had a lot less power and worse aero, but I never wanted shorter ratios in that, either (though it had a higher top speed in 4th—redline—which was about 110, while topping out at around 105 in 5th). I will never understand why some people love screaming along in short gears, but I also do not understand why people like low torque, high hp engines that need to hit 4k before moving—they’re just frustratingly gutless in everyday driving with disappointing mileage, oil consumption, and longevity. To that point, my GR86 has the same short ratio in 6th, but putting taller winter tires on it (~7% taller FD) shows me that it wouldn’t really want to pull much taller of a gear, thanks to low torque and high hp. Funny thing is, my ’90 Legacy’s 5th was ~27/1000 and never felt deficient in torque even though it had fewer ratios and was down 50 lbs/ft (and almost 100 hp) for about the same weight and worse aero. Anyway, it confirmed for me that I would have absolutely hated the 1st generation twins.
He was apparently the first one in history to put a pair of dice in the windshield and used a nearby dashboard light to illuminate them.
Looks like one tip for getting COTD is to make a 20th/21st-century pop culture music reference and not a 19th-century literary reference like my comment the other day, on JT’s Cold Start about the Hillman Imp, about whether any Poe-heads had ever bought an Imp just so they could put on it a personalized license plate that says PERVERSE. Ha. On the other hand, even some Poe-heads aren’t aware of the short story so referenced (partly because some people mistake it for an essay rather than an actual story & don’t read it despite the intriguing title) so the joke gets a little more niche… Okay, maybe it just wasn’t all that funny a joke, lol.
Hey now, don’t sell yourself short. Every morning when I feed my dog, I say “The usual madame?” I laugh, she doesn’t but that’s showbiz baby!
My great gran was actually named Lenore after The Raven.
So I’ll edit my BMW COTD to help with a broader, more erudite appeal:
“The rear seats no longer feel like I’m squeezed in between cask of Amontillado and a black cat. Plus, my Usher playlist on Spotify sounds great, too.”
That’s it. You shall nevermore receive a COTD. 🙂
I missed that comment. I love the Imp of the Perverse. When I read that as an early teen, I felt like someone actually got me. I love Poe, but he often made the reader work to get into his stories as they tended to start with kind of a slog before it got good. That’s an Olympic javelin throw from today when authors often try to hit the reader with something in the first sentence or two to pull them in, but times are much different now and, in my case, I’m no Poe, so I need all the help I can get.
Now you’ve got me missing my manual ’04 Focus.
It’s a song
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_by_the_Dashboard_Light
I probably can, but let me sleep on it
I’ll expect your answer in the morning.
Too late, he’s gone gone gone
Nice! But it’s the morning and I’m still waiting.
Well, let me sleep on it
….and now I’m praying for the end of time.
I recently auditioned for a cover band, and this song was on the list. Holy crap is it fun to play. I hope it’s on the setlist when I play my first show with them in a couple weeks.
I’ll bet it is, its almost like 4 or 5 songs in one, and there’s a noticeable key change
The sudden shift from the swing feel of the first section to a straight funk feel is as genius as it is jarring.
Anywho, back to cars…. 🙂