I couldn’t identify it, but I saw a Toyada right hand drive van, probably a HiAce 5th generation (2004-19) on the highway. I could immediately tell when it showed up in my rear view that it was something interesting. It was a 4WD model, fairly tall.
Waymo van and car in San Francisco today, as viewed from atop the hop-on, hop-off tour bus I was on
I assume those aren’t antennas or GPS related since they wouldn’t need to be that big. I wonder of that’s a LIDAR set up. Whether driving around like a Google Street View car and doing scans of the neighborhoods or if the car can process the LIDAR data in real time, I have to assume they’ll work better when they have three dimensions of data instead of pictures to work with.
ETA, yes LIDAR but nothing new. I’ve just never looked that closely at the pictures I’ve seen of Waymo taxis.
I was just in Phoenix last weekend and you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Waymo cab.
Yesterday in San Francisco I saw a ZOOX automated car. I’m starting to see some of those. ZOOX is a local company, HQ’d just south of San Francisco in Foster City.
Pink Porsche Panamera. Such alliteration… (but not assonance)
•
•
•
•
•
No picture, alas, but a Smart car, with a yellow roof and bright red body, like a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe, complete with a Little Tikes sticker on the pillar between the side window and the rear window.
I’ve seen pictures of a lot of those. Seems to be a common theme. If you do a google image search for “smart car cozy coupe” you’ll find quite a few.
I’ve never seen one in real life though.
I saw a late fifties or early sixties VW Beetle coming back from the store this morning. I was driving, so no pics.
1st generation (1957-59) Ford Thunderbird, parked at a neighbor’s house. I’m sure it’ll get garaged soon.
On my commute home I noticed something odd about the car in front of me. I eventually made out the script “Lamborghini” on the rear end, and figured out that it was a Urus SUV. In the dark it’s surprisingly unremarkable.
This guy really likes his Cobalt. Picking some arbitrary-ish numbers for KBB, I’m going to go out on a limb and say the rims and tires are worth more than the car. Plus what ever it costs to set the camber like that. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind it. Like, I’m guessing plenty of others here, I was around in the 90’s when it seemed like every other car you saw was a modified Honda CRX that sounded like it was farting down the road. Plenty of people would prefer to use their current beater (or buy one) to modify like this because they like working on cars. But, I dunno, a Cobalt? I
Maybe it’s a sleeper.
Doesn’t having your wheels angled out like that screw up your tires? Or do they make tires that are specifically designed for that?
My “I spent two minutes on the internet and I’m something of an expert now” research says that a small amount of camber, such that the tires can deform enough to sit flat isn’t going to wear them out too much faster. Cambering them enough that the outside edges are lifting off the ground will, as you can guess, cause the inside to wear out much faster. And, for some reason, every discussion about this seems to involve someone jumping in to say it’s not the camber that ruins the tires, but the toe in (wheels angled towards the center of the car).
Having said that, I’m guessing a lot of people that drive with an excess amount of negative camber do it knowing they’ll have to replace their tires more often. I’d think they’d consider it part of the upkeep of the car.
Once they start to show wear, you can probably buy more time by reversing them on the rims (and rotating them) so they ride on the other edge for a while.
I’ve only seen one thing dumber than that. A low-rider Jeep CJ. This was in the mountains. Jeeping/off-roading country. “Congratulations, you just destroyed the promary utility of the vehicle.”
I spotted this the other day, a BWM wagon with the same sort of camber on the wheels. I can’t image those tires have a long lifespan.
Saw the HiAce again, same stretch of road. The license plate was PASTA.
Ferrari Portofino
The Ferrari Portofino, a hardtop convertible grand tourer. It was produced between 2017 and 2023 as the replacement for the Ferrari California T.
Cost: approx $250,000
Perhaps a WW is its owner, and s/he loves to golf?
And the Portofino is considered the “entry level” Ferrari!
1957 Dodge Power Wagon
