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Post by rscott on Jul 1, 2012 18:58:22 GMT -5
Steve is actually very car savvy and likes the Morrie - as do I..
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Post by rscott on Jul 1, 2012 21:32:03 GMT -5
I bought my first car in 1966, a 1961 NSU Prinz 30 at age 15, it was the Smart Car of the time. I bought it from an airman at the Minot Airforce base for $200. Loved the car, it was like a mini Mini with a little 20HP two cylinder engine and a top speed of 60 MPH. Extremely well engineered and built little thing made by a motorcycle company. I didn't own it long because of parts, simple things like points and distributor or even tires were expensive and took months to order from Germany. I spent $100 on parts and quickly sold it for $400.
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Post by StormInateacup on Jul 1, 2012 23:45:19 GMT -5
Steve is actually very car savvy and likes the Morrie - as do I.. I saw that episode. Let's face facts. I've seen EVERY episode of Top Gear - most of them at least twice!! lol He's absolutely right about not buying so called "Smart Cars" Smart my arse - they're the retarded child of the car industry. Smart of the marketers maybe to have sold middle class, clueless fools on the notion that they're doing something positive for the environment by buying one. Or who want to label themselves as "Earth Friendly" by giving their equally clueless and consumption driven neighbours yet another possession to covet and copy cat. And I was joking too btw - well not about huge Yank Tanks. I hate them, They're ugly and excessive and crude- And you'd be amazed how many people sought to trash the Morrie when I had her - till their fucking Commodores and Camrys broke down and they needed to hop a lift in Dorrie (Dorrie the Morrie. - I called her after the lady who had owned her for her first 7 years of life. She'd left the log books in the glove box) Dorrie ran better than the energiser bunny. And they'd be off to the next garage for a part that needed to be ordered in and cost them a week's earnings.
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Post by rscott on Jul 2, 2012 3:51:22 GMT -5
The Smart Car is just a name brand by BMW but the smart car concept is good. They all share several things in common, they are small and employ the extensive use of light weight aluminum and plastic, crash worthiness, well destined for a long service life with minimal maintenance and high mileage. I don't understand your dissing the smart cars of today when 75% of all cars are less environmentally sound. What's smarter, a single gas guzzling HumVee or five smart cars made with the same resources? Your Morrie and my NSU and Mini were the smart cars of their era although only the Mini was crash worthy. China, India and Japan lead in smart car production but they are seldom exported and the quality and safety can be iffy. Every manufacturer in every every country produces or will produce smart cars, What would a car have to do to please you? ?? And does one exist that does please you? ??
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Post by StormInateacup on Jul 2, 2012 4:24:19 GMT -5
The Smart Car is just a name brand by BMW but the smart car concept is good. They all share several things in common, they are small and employ the extensive use of light weight aluminum and plastic, crash worthiness, well destined for a long service life with minimal maintenance and high mileage. I don't understand your dissing the smart cars of today when 75% of all cars are less environmentally sound. What's smarter, a single gas guzzling HumVee or five smart cars made with the same resources? Your Morrie and my NSU and Mini were the smart cars of their era although only the Mini was crash worthy. China, India and Japan lead in smart car production but they are seldom exported and the quality and safety can be iffy. Every manufacturer in every every country produces or will produce smart cars, What would a car have to do to please you? ?? And does one exist that does please you? ?? But they're NOT made with the same resources. The batteries alone entail a massively polluting and environmentally, socially and politically damaging set of processes to manufacture. The interiors are made of such toxic synthetic materials, which exude so many harmful chemicals into the air around them that it is estimated it isn't safe to put a child into one for three years after its manufacturing. The components for most of them are made in a range of disparate and distant locations. Then each of those components needs to be transported to the next destination for that stage of the process to take place,. Usually by single hulled, flag of convenience container ships which guzzle fossil fuels to power and have an unfortunate tendency, due to the ill trained nature of Capt and crew, to flounder,, sink and discharge the bilge water and fuel stores into the most sensitive waterways on the planet. Then they need to be put on the same kinds of ships and transported once more to markets all over the world. Where they are put on trucks and transported by road to the various cities they need to be sold in. Polluting, nasty, diesel fuel powered trucks. Keeping older cars on the road longer and providing efficient, affordable public transport options is so that short local trips can be undertaken and cars are only used for weekend and recreational purposes a far better plan in the long term. But there's no bottom line in that that spells new sales for the car manufactures. So they don't do it. They're at take. Simply because the end user can comfort themselves that they, on the way to work are emitting fewer harmful chemicals into the air does not a sustain able technology make.
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Post by StormInateacup on Jul 2, 2012 5:14:58 GMT -5
Rare Earth minerals mining is one of the most appalling dirty secrets of the western industrial nightmare. It doesn't happen on our soil. It is not our people killed and subjected to wars and political oppression. The batteries they power up make our lives more pleasant, more convenient. More filled with self satisfaction about how "aware" we are of their benefits. How good battery powered cars are for the environment. How selfless we are to spend money on the cars powered by them. So we don't give a fuck. Well I give very much of a fuck. news.yahoo.com/toxic-legacy-malaysia-rare-earths-village-072639984.htmleta: tnahistoryoftechnology.wikispaces.com/Rare+Earth+Metals+and+Congo
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Post by rscott on Jul 2, 2012 5:17:12 GMT -5
Whoa - we need to define smart cars. Smart cars are NOT electrics or hybrids!!! I agree hybrids and multi fuel vehicles make little sense. Electrics however are a sound idea but not with current technology. Like you say, batteries are bad but electric vehicles are much cleaner to operate. The reason being even the dirtiest fossil fuel power plants produce power cleaner than even the most pollution free internal combustion engine. Another benefit is the ability to move any pollution outside of urban areas to reduce local smog. New power plants are very clean burning and cleaner sources of power are on the rise. The new generation of electrics will be powered by quick charging capacitors made of little more than lightweight benign layers of plastic and aluminum sandwiched together. The capacitors already exist but are being resisted by big oil, major car companies and battery manufacturers already heavily invested in the old technology. Tesla Motors will be marketing capacitors soon to replace the batteries in their cars. www.teslamotors.com/modelxElectric cars are already being treated as public transport in several European cites. Fleets of electrics owned by the government are placed around the city for public use. They have a light on top and if it indicates it is available, you simply insert your credit card and go. The worst polluter in the auto industry is the use of worthless decorative chrome not batteries.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2012 8:56:31 GMT -5
This was my high school graduation present. Dad found it in a junk yard, picked it up for a couple hundred and then had it overhauled for me. 1968 11 MG Sedan. Mine was navy blue and they reupholstered the interior to be cream with navy pinstriping. I adored this car. Wasn't synchonized in first, just as easy to take off in second. Would do 60 with a good tail wind. One of those fill up the oil and check the gas kind of cars. I adored this car. Drove it everywhere up and down the east coast. Right before my sophomore year in college, I broke up with my high school boyfriend, he revenged by poking holes in my brake line. Drove this car into the side of a building. When they towed it, both back tires blew almost causing the tow truck to crash. The mechanic said if I had been driving there would have been nothing left. I moved to Florida after that year.
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Post by rscott on Jul 2, 2012 9:22:08 GMT -5
I'm familiar with the car. Did you always remember to top off the oil on your bell shaped SU carburetor?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2012 9:25:20 GMT -5
I'm familiar with the car. Did you always remember to top off the oil on your bell shaped SU carburetor? Honey I have no clue, I was 18. I drove up to the now obsolete full service lane and let them do it. I knew where the gas went and where to beat the starter thingy when the car wouldn't start. Hell I didn't learn to change a tire until I was in my 30's. Didn't have too.
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Post by The Mad Hatter on Jul 2, 2012 9:26:22 GMT -5
Smart cars...
What I don't want is a car that can decide on its own to apply brakes and such, had that crap turned off on my Jeep. I also want no part of a car that parks itself or talks to me.
Creepy assed shit.
Drivers don't need all those fucking apps and other distractions that are being offered today.
I also want no part of a GPS locator or another person having the ability to remotely disable or otherwise alter a moving vehicle.
Up here on the farm it's tractors, combines, 18 wheelers and pick up trucks with 8 or 10 cylinders that are capable of getting shit done.
Oddly, many of the pivots (irrigators for the unwashed city folk) have a GPS system that can call someone if something goes wrong with them.
I spent a bit of time last week running a tractor and had a blast until my back reminded me that probably wasn't a good idea.
My car is 34 feet long and gets 10 MPG with a decent tailwind.
I can certainly see where in large population centers where efficient transportation would be desirable, but I will forever like full sized vehicles with enough power to do whatever hairbrained idea floats through my head. The Jeep was the only 6 cylinder I ever owned and it got 19 mpg, but would go anywhere I pointed it.
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Post by rscott on Jul 2, 2012 9:59:28 GMT -5
Again you're confusing smart cars with something else, a smart car is simply one good for the environment. Hmmm - You diss GPS but it's at the very heart of all new farm equipment you just described. As far as anti-lock brakes, traction control and stability roll control, I'll never own another vehicle without them and top heavy vehicles like SUV's need it most. Ford is the first to offer it on all their vehicles and like all Ford and Daimler Benz, all safety patents are available free to other manufacturers. My new Escape has those things with the the ability to turn them on and off selectively and to slowly shut itself down if it senses critical engine problems. Mine is a fly by wire system similar to aircraft. If my cars gyroscopes and positioning sensors detect my car sliding sideways in a corner it instantaneously adjusts the steering rate, and throttle response before applying diagonal braking. You sense it as a driver by slowed response and sluggish feeling which tells me it's time to rein it in a bit. It's the same system that allows 2500 pound rally cars to control 500 HP. There is no way the average human can out drive a computer It's so efficient at increasing race speeds that most auto sports like NASCAR and Formula 1 prohibit it. In the case of NASCAR it would reduce crashes and hence popularity. In Formula 1 they're worried the team with the best computer would win, not the best driver.
The one thing that does bother me is the crash and GPS data it stores. Big brother can subpoena that info and use it against me in court. This isn't a new car thing, they can do it with most cars built from the mid 80's onward. I'm looking into several Ford hacks that would actually erase all of that info from the hard drive in the event of a crash.
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Post by The Mad Hatter on Jul 2, 2012 10:13:00 GMT -5
GPS on farm equipment doesn't bother me that badly, but in cars on the highway at operating speeds I have seen drivers so busy fucking with it that they are all over the road. A tractor or combine is hardly operating at those speeds and mostly the worst that would happen is a slightly crooked row.
As far as all those fancy things cars can do with self correcting nonsense, I have a zero confidence factor. I don't want to feel any vehicle I am operating do something unexpected that I didn't tell it to do, especially making a decision on its own while I am trying to do something with the vehicle.
If I feel the vehicle slip my instincts automatically engage and if the vehicle is trying to do something else then there is a great potential for some kind of conflict and a wreck. As far as close proximity detectors, there is a thing called insurance dammit. lol
People are becoming so damned dependent on computers that they are forgetting how to be people. Hellllllloooooo SkyNet.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2012 10:14:29 GMT -5
I don't care, I think the ones that can parallel park FUCKING ROCK!!! I can't parallel park to save my ass. My depth perception is crap in those fucking little mirrors.
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Post by The Mad Hatter on Jul 2, 2012 10:27:28 GMT -5
I don't care, I think the ones that can parallel park FUCKING ROCK!!! I can't parallel park to save my ass. My depth perception is crap in those fucking little mirrors. When I started driving it was part of the driving test to be able to parallel park and if you couldn't do it then you failed. I was driving farm equipment at 8, flatbed farm trucks that had 3 on the tree and had to be double clutched at 10, and over the years have driven so many different things that I am a cocky bastard when it comes to operating a piece of equipment or a vehicle.
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