I saw a Hyundai Venue the other day. It looks like a car that doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up.
It’s like the lovechild of a crossover and a Mini Cooper.
Spotted on the street today, I had to park and walk back in the rain to take a look. It’s a Honda Acty Street van, right hand drive, but licensed and registered in MA. Cute as a button.
Nice painting. Suicide doors? Artist license?
Here in my hokey little jerkwater town electric cars are still somewhat of a novelty. The only ones that have become non-noteworthy are Tesla sedans, and even those aren’t exactly common.
But yesterday I saw, on the road in my tiny rural deep-red poverty-stricken backward hayseed butthole-of-the-state town, an honest-to-God Lucid Gravity. I didn’t even know they were for sale yet.
And then not 10 minutes later I saw a Honda Prologue. I had not seen one in the wild before that I could recall.
10 minutes after that I spotted a Rivian behind me. It turned onto the same road I was turning onto and I noticed something interesting. You know how Rivian has the distinctive white light bar with white light oval rings around the headlights? Well, when the turn signal was engaged those lights went out leaving the yellow turn signal (which is part of the same oval ring around the headlight) the only light on the front. When the turn signal canceled the white lights faded back on over 2 or 3 seconds. Neat!
Then, last night at a BSA fundraising dinner and auction, I spotted a Cybertruck in the parking lot. I should’ve gone over and walked around it for a better look but alas, I’m sure up close it would still look like a polished dumpster and nothing more.
So a good day for electric car spotting.
But the most interesting car I saw was an old Mercedes 300E. My fans and devotees will recall that I onced owned a 1990 300E that I sold when personal funds were short and medical bills were annoyingly numerous-- something I now regret. The one I saw yesterday had an absolutely beautiful paint job that I’m sure was a post-factory addition: a deep maroon/burgundy with that slightly metallic wet look. Stunning. It appeared to be meticulously maintained. It was not equipped with the 4-matic drivetrain, the only thing that kept that specimen from being a perfect 10/10.
No pics because I was driving when I saw all of these save the Cybertruck, and who wants to see another one of those? 
I drove to Eugene today and saw nothing interesting. I guess Fate got it out of their system yesterday.
I own a 2023 Kia Soul. I started shopping for a Soul in 2019 but I could not get over how ugly they were. The headlights were these big bug-eyed monstrosities mounted low on the bumper that reminded of a Nissan Juke or VW Thing. Generally I don’t care about a car’s looks but those Souls were bad. It sucked because otherwise the car was perfect for my needs. In '23 Kia did some plastic surgery and gave it a much-needed facelift.
So I pulled the trigger then.
It looks like that Hyandai was designed by the same guy who did the 3rd gen Soul.
I think so about the artistic license. It puzzled me for a while. But I do like the painting. It’s a painting of a very, very old photograph, so who knows. I have not seen, the photo. Some things are best painted with your mind. And that’s where they should stay.
Either that or it’s actually a T. Wooden wheels on an A are quite unusual.
Cool. Thanks for the info. The fender and light made it look like an ‘A’ to me. And a T makes more sense. A used T would be much cheaper than a new A. And… well I doubt this woman made a great deal of money. That she even drove is quite astounding for the time.
If it was a Model T then that is a handful to drive. It’s not like a modern stick shift.
Here’s a video from Jay Leno on how to drive a Model T.
Someone who drives a stick today would have no clue how to drive it. It’s more like a manually operated automatic transmission.
I’ve driven just about everything. I wouldn’t have a clue how to get a T to move. I saw that video. It’s just bizzarro.
But you know you want to try. I’ve added it to my bucket list.
In one video I’ve seen someone said driving a Model T feels more like driving an oversized riding lawnmower than a proper car. I know the controls aren’t exactly the same, but you do control the throttle with your hand like a lawnmower, and once you’ve got the transmission it just goes without the driver needing to touch any pedals, like a lawnmower.
Unless you’re going uphill in 1st gear. Then you have to hold the pedal down the whole time. It begs the phrase “a long uphill battle”.
I saw a Maserati Quattroporte VI this morning. Honestly I think it’s a pretty elegant looking luxury sedan. I know, it’s not what most people picture when they hear “Maserati”, but they actually have had four door sedans in their lineup going back to the 1960s.
Maserati cars seem to have more “style” to them. I wish they could have gotten with Chevrolet and talked them out of going over to the dark side with the Corvette. They turned a beautiful line of cars into another supercar UFO (still a remarkable car).
I was behind this car at a traffic light today. I guess my dashcam has a bug, because hitting the save button preserved the previous 10 seconds instead of 10 minutes. So you’ll have to go to Instagram to see it.
If you don’t care to click through, it’s a black Lamborghini Huracán with the rear fascia removed so you can see the twin turbo kit that’s been installed. There are two big exhausts, and two little exhausts, which I’m guessing are from the blowoff valves.
It sounded a bit crap, and scrolling through instagram as far as it would let me without a login my guess is this is one of the cars that I can hear street racing at 1am on weekends.
In front of the Huracán was a black Lamborghini Urus, which I think is the second to highest spec of the VW Touareg.
I was in Phoenix for the weekend and spotted a bunch of nice cars while driving around, but no photos. A nice Aston Martin Vantage Roadster, a pair of matching Ineos Grenadiers in green on the highway, and an unidentified Ferrari of recent vintage. We stopped for some tacos and spotted these two gems:
A VW Beetle from 1953-58 because of the rear window:
A gorgeous Karman Ghia, I think it’s a 70 or 71:
Beautiful Karmann-Ghia. I’d say it’s a 71-72.
I think those large bumpers were added to comply with US safety regulations that went into effect in 1973, if I remember correctly. So I am going to say 1973 or newer.
I own a Model T and that’s not how I would describe it.
A Model T is organized differently than a modern car. It makes sense if you know how a Model T works. There are three pedals on the floor. Each pedal controls a clutch band in the transmission. The left pedal is the tricky one, because if you push in, it engages the low gear clutch band, and if you let it out then it engages the high gear clutch band. So for “neutral”, you need to have the pedal pushed about halfway down. To make this a little easier when you first start the car, if you put the handbrake lever in the middle position, it stops the left pedal from shifting into high gear, so all you have to do is let out the pedal and the car is in neutral.
The middle pedal is reverse. The right pedal is your brake. Remember how I said each pedal controls a clutch band in the transmission? That’s right, your “brake” is just a clutch brake in the transmission. The brake pedal does not control proper wheel brakes. Leave a bit of extra room between yourself and the car in front of you, because no one has ever been impressed with how well a Model T’s brakes work.
The engine controls are up on the steering wheels. You have a lever on the left that controls the timing (no automatic spark advance on a Model T) and the right lever controls the throttle.
To get the Model T moving, start it either using the hand crank, or, if you are like me, you are lucky enough to have the “optional” electric start installed so you just push down on the start button (on the floor, under your left foot). A Model T can be a bit finicky, but every Model T has a position that it likes to start in with respect to the throttle and timing levers. Once it starts, adjust the throttle and timing so that the engine runs smoothly.
Now to get it moving, move the hand brake to the center position (or alternately, push halfway down on the left pedal and move the handbrake all the way forward), advance the throttle and timing levers, push down the left pedal to get it into first gear, and make sure to hold the left pedal all the way down to keep it in first gear. If you didn’t move the hand brake all the way forward earlier, now is a good time to do so. Keep adjusting the throttle and timing for road conditions. More throttle and advancing the timing when you need more power, less throttle and retard the timing when you need less power.
Once the car gets moving fast enough, let up on the left pedal. As long as the parking brake is all the way off, the car will shift into high gear. There’s a pretty significant jump between low and high gear, much more than you are used to if you drive a modern stick shift car, so you need to be revving the engine a lot higher than what you are used to for it to go smoothly into high gear and keep running without lugging the engine.
So yes, now you are in high gear, and all of your feet are off of the pedals and it just goes. But unlike a lawnmower, you still need to adjust the throttle and timing levers (unless you are on a very straight and level road, which doesn’t exist where I live). If you need to stop, you need to retard the throttle and timing levers, push and hold the left pedal in the middle position so that neither the high or low gear clutch bands engage, and hold down the right pedal to actually brake. Then to start up again, adjust the throttle and timing, let up on the brake, push the left pedal forward to go into low gear, continue to adjust the throttle and timing as necessary, and again when you get going fast enough, let up on the left pedal to shift into high gear.
This is what it looks like from inside the Model T. Note that the video is flipped for the internal shots since my son is taking the video on his phone. The young guy operating the phone is my son. We’re going about 35 to 40 mph according to his phone (the Model T doesn’t have a speedometer). That’s pretty much the top speed of a Model T.