I recently watched Final Destination Bloodlines. Look, I don’t know why, but I’m drawn to those silly films like a moth to a flame. Anyway, I keep thinking that the plots of these movies are too absurd to be realistic, and yet, here’s a reader with a Final Destination-like story.
Mark Tucker wrote a Shitbox Showdown featuring a pair of cars for sale in Indiana. What I didn’t expect was this comment from 10001010:
I already have a tiny sports car, and mine has a manual, so I’m voting Chevy.
Story time: I was a teen in the 80s so I of course I had a water bed and one day while cleaning my room I decided to vacuum out the crumbs and lint that fall down in the crack between the mattress and the frame. The more I pulled back the mattress the more detritus I found so I kept pushing it further and further back. Eventually I’ve wedged myself into the gap between the mattress and the frame and I’m pushing with my legs and shoulders to shove this giant water balloon as far as I can while vacuuming it all up when all of a sudden **FLORP** and the mattress sprung back into place trapping me underneath it. The vacuum was on so my stereo was turned all the way up so I could hear it so nobody could hear me screaming. Why is this story relevant today? Because while I’m trapped under that mattress the Beach Boys came on the radio singing to me about Kokomo and I remember thinking I didn’t want that to be the last song I ever heard.
Thomas wrote about how the Nissan Xterra is reportedly coming back and it might be an extended-range EV. Ash78:
Stop, I can only get so EREVct.
Finally, Jason is currently drooling over a low-mileage Fiat Strada, a car built by robots. Shooting Brake:
Impressive they managed to get the robots to match the historic poor Italian build quality so well.
PresterJohn:
Bob Mayer videos are a perfect antidote for misplaced nostalgia. I couldn’t stop laughing as they were showing the production crew helping him bump start a BRAND NEW CAR! The paint is rated “good” because it is only a little grainy and even has some gloss (!).
Oh, you have to watch the video below:
Beer-light Guidance:
I still listen to old episodes of Car Talk and feel much the same way about that. It is amazing how much crap we used to put up with.
Caller: Hi guys, I have a 1985 Renault Alliance with 15,000 mile. I was driving down the street the other day and one of the rear doors fell off.
Tom: Only one!?!? You must have bought a good one!
Ray: Yeah, these things are notorious for having the doors fall off, we see it all the time in the shop. But that’s ok, at 15,000 miles you’ve pretty much reached the end of its lifespan anyway.
Have a great evening, everyone!
(Topshot: Warner Bros. Pictures)
I don’t like horror movies but the Final Destination films are hard to look away from. It’s like death by Rube Goldberg.
Every Strada owner on a road trip: Finally, I‘m Almost There!
We have forgotten how BAD the “good old days” actually were. Back in the ’80s dad always had some kind of car issue, and he was mechanically inclined. He probably had more tows due to breakdowns in that decade than I’ve had in my life. Emissions controled carbs were terrible and early TBI fuel injection was not much better. Exhausts rusted off in 5 years and honestly getting 10 good years or 70k out of a car was an acheivement.
Every time someone says, “They don’t make them like they used to.”, I say, “Thank God!”
Honestly a lot of it was just bad metallurgy and even worse quality control. Mechanization of assembly flattened out quality control and set it on the higher end, and metallurgy is (though we might be using the past tense of “was” soon) much more advanced now. Survivorship bias is certainly a thing, but a lot of cars from the 1960s survived because they were higher quality, while stuff from the ’70s and ’80s is scarce because it was lower quality. The material they’re made out of makes a lot of difference, as ’90s cars in the 2020s seem to be disappearing at an even faster rate than ’80s cars did in the 2010s because of the extensive use of plastic in them.
It’s funny that cars made today would be just as shit if you take away one of the two. Something both Jeep and Vinfast are showing.