For generations, kids have learned the basics of wrenching through working on small engines. Often, these would be attached to something like a lawnmower. Then, the kid might have an appreciation for basic mechanics and maybe even grow to love cars from this humble launch pad. This might seem hard in the EV era, as small engines like the ones found in garden equipment are going electric, but not all hope is lost.
David Tracy wrote about how he went electric for his lawnmower, and now he’s feeling sort of guilty about how his son Delmar (not his real name) might not be able to learn to love cars by spinning wrenches on a broken lawnmower. Some kids have even started their business careers by fixing small engines or by using their repaired mowers to care for lawns. V10omous says fear not, because there are still other avenues:
Get the kid a go kart or something fun with a small engine.
Fixing a lawn mower means its time to do work.
Fixing a kart engine means it’s time to have fun.
The incentives alone make the latter a better play to get a kid interested in wrenching IMO.
I wholeheartedly agree with this take. I never fixed a lawnmower as a kid, but I did do some serious backwoods racing in a 5 HP off-road go-kart that I maintained myself. I have a feeling that my need for speed today came from my shenanigans with a kart as a kid.
Also, maybe your kid will learn to love EVs, and that’s great, too!
Today’s Morning Dump was anchored around a story about how the crossover saturation point may have been reached. Crossovers are generally hated by enthusiasts, but I think Davey has a good take:
I’ve never understood the hate for CUVs. There are different vehicles for different people and their different needs. I have owned wagons, BOF SUVs, sedans, hatchbacks and now a CRV.
My CRV is better in the winter (Ontario) and for camping than our wagons were; it has higher ground clearance so when you load them up with gear and people, they weren’t 2 inches off the ground. It’s good on gas and easy to park.
I would love to have numerous vehicles for each thing, but since the price of vehicles is very high, having a single CUV is better (in my use case) than a single wagon, or sedan for that matter. Again, I’m active and have lots of stuff (crap) for my activities so I need space. It’s so much easier to load my CRV with the seats flat than any sedan or hatchback and not worry about bottoming out on a tree root or pothole (again, Ontario).
We need more small (affordable) trucks* like the Maverick. Hybridize everything.
Then, there’s Drew’s response:
What’s your favorite crossover?
Maybe Archie vs Predator, but there are a lot of great ones.
Finally, Thomas wrote about how the Subaru Levorg wagon might be coming to America. Beasy Mist sums it up well:
Levorg is 1. a really ugly word that sounds like a nonsense Amazon brand and 2. grovel spelled backwards.
Have a great evening, everyone!
(Topshot: Offerup Listing)
Model the behavior you want your kids to emulate. If you don’t want your kid to watch TV all the time, dont watch TV all the time. If you want your kid to be into cars, have a fun car, do fun stuff with cars.
My 2 year old constantly ask me to get the hotwheels down for him(we keep them in a large “car jar”). He LOVES my car, every time he walks past it, points and shouts DADDY’S CAR! He always asks to go for a ride as well.
My 4 year old is more into wrenching than cars specifically, and that makes sense since hes watched me install some things and service a couple cars in the garage. They are both getting really into car washes now that the pressure washer doesn’t scare them anymore.
I push comic books pretty hard on my boys, but cars are just a standard part of my lifestyle and it’s rubbing off on them pretty naturally. The dream is they’ll want their first cars to be nice safe trucks to tow their race cars to the track.
My mother bought a Suburban in the mid 80s (she got it in all black because she always wanted to drive a hearse). She loved being up high up over traffic. Which was possible then in Texas (now there are so many 18 wheelers on the road, it’s a wash). She always had to get sideboards, though, because she couldn’t make it up into the cabin otherwise. A CUV would actually be perfect for her. It’s why they’re so popular (and will probably remain so)
Sitting in a retirement home parking lot waiting for the vacuum to reach useable level, I had just started a rant about CUVs when I stopped and noted that aged people really appreciate the ease of just sliding in rather than down. Hell, I’m getting that way, catching myself grunting a bit every time I haul myself out of the roadster.
sometimes I hate that I’m getting more moderate with age and can’t justify hating on things like I used to. Righteous rage was fun.
Mine isn’t so much a comfort thing as realizing I’ve developed a deep appreciation for very good utilitarian design. We bought our second gen Scion XB because it was a decent reliable car for a really good price after my wife’s car was totalled in a crash (we significantly upgraded for just over the insurance payout for her car). Over the first year of ownership, the car’s utter competence at comfortably hauling people and things while being easy to drive and having a small footprint made me a fan. I’ve inheretied it as my daily when we bought my wife’s car and I really don’t have much interest in anything on the market that isn’t essentially a hybrid version of that car (no the new Prius, while being a nice car, doesn’t do it).
I should mention that I also really liked owning a first-gen Forrester. I just like small, boxy, five-door cars.
My ire towards SUVs & CUVs stems from my love of wagons & my perception that they’ve largely disappeared due to these tall things. But, when I drove my daughter’CR-V diagnostically, I had to admit I could see why she loves it. It handled better than my shitbox wagons, was comfortable & fairly effortless—and she feels safe hauling my grandkids in it. The fact that it’s also soulless doesn’t bother most people. (Plus I was effectively invisible: if I wanted to rob a bank, that’s what I would use!) In today’s world, 23-2700lb wagons just aren’t being built for the US. And, that’s ok: people certainly don’t need my approval to drive what they want. I can always still hate on the Carolina Squatters 😉
ps: xbs are cool anyway. I never thought of them as a soulless CUV
I’m with you on generally being pro-wagon, but my taste generally skews toward the smaller ones (I wish Toyota would put their hybrid drivetrain in the Corolla hatch or Mazda would step up and do it with the 3 Hatch).
It’s just funny how our enthusiasm can change as we age. 10-15 years ago me would already own a GR Corolla, current me just looks at the people who’s attention it would attract and says “Yeah, no thanks. I’d rather have a car that’s quietly competent at what I actually use it for that doesn’t attract flatbill vape enthusiast within a half-mile radius.”
Now I need to yell at those damn kids to get off my lawn…
I didn’t acquire my Bugeye wrx until well into my 50s, so I know what you mean. I kept stock wheels & exhaust because I learned when young that the loud & fancy didn’t actually up my love life 😉
and I think stockish car plus whiteish beard has kept me from well-deserved tickets—plus mainly playing on remote mountain roads, of course.
I’m apparently not as inflexible and chronically broken as I think I am compared to so many others as I have no issues at all getting in and out of a GR86, but what I do have is an a-hole neck from multiple traumas over the decades and I find CUVs to be horribly uncomfortable since they’re stupidly tall (stupid because they still have unimpressive ground clearance and come with an increased frontal area) and, to keep from flipping over, they have overly stiff suspensions, which makes for an unimpressive-at-best ride that wants to toss my head side to side on uneven roads like a heavy metal concert goer with a poor sense of direction due to the greater distance from the roll center. For that, you also get poor handling, a bland experience that I find more road rage inducing since it makes me impatient to just get where I’m going to be done with the thing (driving them is what I imagine it’s like to be a professional horse masturbator, but without the income), poor use of available cargo volume due to a generally less usable vertical orientation, depressing ugly-boring styling, worse mileage, and a higher purchase price than the equivalent platform-mate car (if still available). Seats usually suck, too, and while that’s an industry-wide problem, I don’t understand why a supposed do-anything-OK-enough bland box shouldn’t at least have comfortable seats, but I guess people don’t demand them. Why not? I can only conclude that they’re the vehicle for door mat people resigned to their low expectations.
Enthusiastic thumbs up for your use of language. Head-tossing & horse masturbator had my coworker giving me the side-eye as I giggled, then chuckled
Honestly, what I really want is a square fender Subaru GL wagon with a ej22 or 205 swap. Lightweight, chuckable—and enough power to surprise.
I just finished writing a trilogy of children’s books (older kids, but that ruins the joke).
For similar reasons, I used to want an ’83/4 hardtop with a non-interference SOHC EJ22. I would have used the 4WD hardware to make it RWD, but at this point, I think I’d just go with FWD. It’s not like it would have a massive amount of power, anyway (though almost double the hp and 150% of the torque) and the parts would certainly be easier to get. That would be about the same power:weight ratio as my Mazda3, which was fine in that, but would be downright fun in something smaller and much less sophisticated. With the EA81, it wasn’t really a bad driver, but my FWD Legacy ran 16.3 in the 1/4 with the EJ22, so knock something over 600 lbs off and the beast would be a blast, definitely surprise some people, have a bulletproof drivetrain, be super easy to work on, and get decent enough mileage on the cheapest fuel.
Davey’s take just sounds like a justification for a Mitsubishi Delica van.
But we can’t have nice things here.
I couldn’t quite figure out why Levorg bothered me so much but Beasy Mist hit the nail on the head: Nonsense amazon brand name.
I think its pretty lame that the consensus here is that in the EV era kids arent interested in cars, and by extension that kids arent interested (or parents dont deem it valuable) to work on electric vehicle builds of all types.
Unfortunately it seems to be true. I’m Gen Z myself. More and more people from my generation are delaying getting their drivers’ license, or not getting one altogether. There seems to be a lot less value or interest placed in driving by my constituents.
That was me back in the day, a kid with an interest in engines and a non-running Snapper mower to learn on. Took it all apart, got it back together and with a big cloud of smoke it came roaring back to life. It survived a few years as I mowed 20+ lawns all around the neighborhood earning money for my first car. That little old flathead Briggs definitely encouraged me to keep learning how things work. Eventually excessive blow-by took it out, and that was well beyond my abilities to deal with at the time.
Here is my CUV hate:
1) They are more expensive than the sedans they replace. I did the math at the Old German Lighting Site. A Corolla Cross with the EXACTLY the same specs and features costs ~$1,800 more than a Corolla. But the extra material costs for the slightly higher curb weight would come out to approximately $600.
2) They have a higher center of mass, which means they handle worse. In all of the dozens of rental cars per year I have driven, I’ve never driven an SUV/CUV that didn’t feel like a wobbly bar stool
3) The rear cargo room is only better than a sedan if you are willing to sacrifice rear visibility
4) Speaking of rear cargo room, an SUV isn’t nearly as secure as a sedan trink, because people can simply look in.
They also use more fuel per mile of travel and have increased maintenance/tire expense vs a sedan.
I hate them for that.
Quite true!
Two counterpoints:
1) There has effectively always been an upcharge for wagons. Keeping it with Toyota, this ’93 Corolla wagon is mentioned as being $1000 more than the equivalent sedan ($2200 today).
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15141002/1993-toyota-corolla-dx-wagon-archived-instrumented-test/
2) I’d rather have the option to occasionally haul something irregularly shaped that interferes with rear visibility than not be able to haul it at all.
Another benefit to the crossover is the availability of roof rails for when you need to haul even bigger stuff, or put your crap on top to make room for the dogs.
You don’t need SUV’s or CUV’s for roof racks!
In fact, sedans make roof racks easier to use!
Modern sedans don’t have enough horizontal surface for roof racks. They’re all pooping-dog-shaped fastbacks now.
The first thing I bought for my Prius was a roof rack and install it with zero intention of ever removing it. It works great and comes in handy when you least expect it.
Handling is always the dumbest excuse for hating crossovers. It’s not a track toy, the handling doesn’t matter. It’s not a lifted jeep either, it isn’t gonna tip over. Stop being so extra.
The handling between a sedan and a crossover is completely insignificant in normal road driving.
Ah yes, as we all know, the infamous Moose Test is implemented because auto safety organizations are worried about track days.
If I had a child between 5 and 15, I’d find them a child-sized KMX Kart and teach them how to convert it into an ebike that they could use.
It would teach them a basic set of wrenching skills and how vehicles work, and serve as an upgradable platform where things could be added(hydraulic brakes, suspension, ect.). It would prepare them somewhat for when the time comes to wrench on an actual car, while allowing them to develop some real world experience with using a vehicle of sorts.
I have one of those and I did (mostly) that, but with a Coleman minibike.
Anytime he rides it more than two feet past the end of our driveway, I get a cop on my doorstep because the neighbors down the way seem to think that this is a retirement community and not a neighborhood. I get it, you’re not supposed to ride them on the road, but we live in a complete nowhere, suburban dead-end cul-de-sac. There is nobody back here. They can complain about the noise, but it runs a lawnmower engine. Nobody here seems to have a problem with those as there is a neverending din of lawnmowers, weed whackers, chainsaws and leaf blowers going at all times.
He’s learned a lot working on this thing, but it’s been frustrating because he can just do loops around the yard and that’s about it. In protest, he took the muffler off and does them mainly near the side of the house with the grumpy old bastard neighbor lives.
Pluses and minuses. Do that in an urban ghetto or in a trailer park, and no one cares! I see kids whose age could be in the single digits riding around on ebikes, go-karts, pocket bikes, ATVs, ect. in the street all the time, in car traffic.
Most people wouldn’t want to raise kids there though, with good reason. The kids here sometimes carry guns too.
It’s unfortunate that a good middle ground doesn’t really exist anywhere in this country. Suburbanite Karens are the worst.
The defense of CUVs also touches on their biggest problem. They’re trying to be everything for everybody and are really not especially good at any one of those things.
My 7 (soon to be 8) year old is well on his way to being a car nut. Thing is, I’m not entirely sure how it happened in that I can’t point to anything in particular. He’s always loved climbing around in my truck when I’ve been working in the garage and playing with Hot Wheels.
Just last Friday we went to a local car show and he was thrilled to get to see not one, not two, but three GT-R’s (two R35s, which is his favorite car, and a Nismo R34). Unsurprisingly, he’s also been enjoying Initial D since I’ve been introducing him to it (of course the racing and the gas station interractions). I guess the best advice is to keep an eye out for sparks of interest and fan them whenever they pop up.
Also, (and I know I don’t need to say this here) show enthusiasm for all aspects of car culture. Show kids that all car enthusiasm is good; you like weird JDM stuff, cool. There’s a survivor-grade, natural patina barn find that still runs, awesome. Your’re into lowriders, love the passion. You’re facinated by hybrid drivetrains and EV tech, cool can’t wait to see what the future holds…
As a testament to this concept, one of the best writers in all of automotive journalism started off as an enthusiast of one of the most maligned cars in the industry, the Smart car
I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re referring to Mercedes, she’s really been killing it recently! I’ve always enjoyed her work but she’s just found another gear.