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)
To our dear friend 10001010 while the waterbed may be gone, I wish I could find one, it was the best invention to reduce your electric bill. Freeze outside turn it up and put a blanket on toasty. Too hot turn off the heater and you stayed cooler. As for keeping it clean without dying I always embraced my training from dancing with the big girls. They were always my favorite because less likely of being turned down and they loved getting into the music.
o.O
For those of you old enough to remember the era of points and condensers a “tuneup”
lasted maybe 6000 miles before it became a issue .
Leaded gas caused plugs to foul on a regular basis and oil consumption especially among the small block Chevy engine group was taken for granted .Cork gaskets leaked as soon as you put them in no matter how much gasket sealer you used . Two piece rear main seals were a horrible thing to deal with.
In Vermont where I grew up road salt ate up everything and it was a race to see which failed first , the engine , transmission or the body.
Bias ply tires that lasted maybe 20000 miles with no traction whatsoever.
Bondo packed into rust holes stuffed with paper to patch rust holes so it would pass state “inspection”
30 weight oil was the norm and try starting some old big block on a cold winter morning with out a jump.Not gonna happen.
I remember helping my dad jump start his truck literally every day in the winter to go to work , jumping it off my mom’s new battery ( Sears Diehard ! )
12 miles to a gallon seemed standard back then?
Ahh the good old days, such fond memories.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s when people were still daily driving cars like that.
Fast forward to the other day and someone asked “Where do you get your car serviced?” and I stared blankly for a second.
Because my car has been “in the shop” once in a decade for a timing belt/waterpump job (plus a second time last month for a failed alternator while traveling, but I’m not really counting that one yet…more of a “sh*t happens” moment with subcomponents).
Even my unreliable 90s and 00s VWs were mostly DIY affairs. No points, no valve jobs, no balance shaft work, just mostly routine crap and the occasional electrical problem that could be mostly ignored.
As a kid, we were on the side of the road or stuck in a parking lot at least once a year. No cell phones, of course. It was just part of life.
I loved the click and clack show.
Lol all credit to Bob Mayer on this one. Forgot to mention the (presumably manufacturer provided) Strada needed 2 batteries and “emergency service” 3 times along with 1 tow. Can you imagine such a thing today in a press car?
Oh and the 2100lb Strada got 20mpg city with the A/C on…
The nowadays equivalent is that YouTube Brownlee tech guy testing the Fisker car..
The Final Destination movies are just a guaranteed watch from me. I don’t care how bad it is, you don’t have to show me a trailer, I’m going.
I’m the same with the Fast & Furious movies. I’ll ride that franchise into the dirt and watch every one they release. I do not care. They’re cinematic guilty pleasures where I get to shut my brain off.
“you don’t have to show me a trailer”
A logging trailer? Ha ha
Yeah, I really don’t mind F&F…they are just fun and exciting. I can’t watch them all the time though.
The 1st one is definitely the best one
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!
Emphasis on almost.
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.
My former ’85 Caprice with the E4ME electronic Q-Jet was fine. I had it rebuilt around 2011 when the car had ~85k miles IIRC. I still miss that car.
This. Cracks me up every time someone born in this century writes about how the garbage we grew up with really wasn’t that bad, or has some feined nostalgia for a malaise era “muscle” car. Kids these days have no idea how good they’ve got it. Now get off my lawn.
Cars that flexed so badly the doors couldn’t open when one corner was jacked up. 3000 mile oil changes because the oil was genuinely liquid dinosaur crap (it’s not but gets the point across). Cars needing new exhaust systems every few years because of corrosion. Air conditioning that barely outlasted the warranty. Electric accessories routinely failing and being told “dive across and unlock that door” or “that window switch doesn’t work”. Those were the “good old days” I remember.
“3000 mile oil changes because the oil was genuinely liquid dinosaur crap (it’s not but gets the point across”
I think that had more to do with poor combustion efficiency. Cars were tuned to run richer, especially for cold starts which lead to more soot and perhaps oil dilution too.
It’s a “why not both” scenario. Oil was not good and less precise fueling led to dilution that compounded the issue. Computer modeling and better manufacturing enabled by computers helped everything about combustion engines.
I suppose the way to test that would be to see how well modern full synthetic oils perform in old beaters and – if possible – how vintage oil performs in modern ICE.
That would make for an interesting topic for some intrepid YouTuber! Get an old 350 and a modern LS. Burn, fuel dilution and additive remaining.
A better test may be measuring oil degreadation in an older, carburated motor and the same engine with modern EFI. Use your old 350 example, one from say 1975 and one from 1995.
The only reason my BMW bavaria still exists today is because the entire car has been rebuilt at least 3 times by multiple owners. All the shortcomings that sent most of them to the scrapyard 40 years ago have been addressed with fuel, ignition, and cooling system upgrades and rust repairs.
I was taking my 15yo grandkid to the airport and regaled them about past vehicles and various on-the-road fixes I made to keep them running. Flat tires, loosening spark plugs, 54 MPH max speed, transmission locked in 2nd, string for throttle cable, oeverheating, etc. Things that the kids just haven’t experienced since their parents drive cars that are so, so much more reliable than they used to be. The kid was increduluous that such things happened!
I imagine someday the 15 year olds of today will be regaling their own grandkids with legends of how past generations were able to achieve debt free lifestyles, retirement, single generation nuclear family households, working from home, outright ownership of things, unconverted garages that still had room for a car, and actual privacy.