Next week, you’ll be able to read my racetrack review of the McLaren 675LT at R&T. I’m stoked for you to read it and I’m even more stoked for me to write it. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do exactly that.
This was a busy week for me and Bark, even with all the various drama about people being beautiful at any size. Let’s check it out.
Over at TTAC, Bark’s popping collars and stacking dollars with a series of posts that had the commenters ecstatic with joy and/or rage. He endorsed the Lincoln MKS, Escaped to South Dakota, and gave some advice on finding an escort in the pages of Craigslist.
For R&T I offered a plan to save the manuals and a plan to save racing from the EPA.
At TTAC, I was undone by mass transit and disgusted by Motor Trend‘s decision to rewrite its own past.
This weekend, I’ll be at “The 1 Show” in Portland, checking out some great cafe-racer motorcycles and meeting old friends. See you on Tuesday, everybody!
First two bark links are broken
on a side note, I don’t know how “behind the scenes” you are at TTAC, but lately there’s been some sort of Flash ad or ads which have been bringing Chrome to a standstill for me. I think the “Rocket Mortgage” ones which popped up from time to time was one culprit. I don’t know if there’s someone higher up who handles the ad networks and can look into it.
It does it on Firefox as well. Something about a Script running, hitting stop script doesn’t do anything. Only option is to force close the entire window.
Yeah, check your links. Looks like you missed the “http://” and so you actually have a relative path.
I’m with you on your frustration with Honda/Acura. Their last good products were the 04-08 TSX and TL. After that, everything got soft, they detuned the TSX’s engine a bit, etc, etc. My ’08 TSX has a dash not much higher than the DC4 Integra’s, and that’s something I have grown to appreciate so much since driving recent Acura offerings. There is a tiny bit of “old Acura” in the TLX 2.4, but not enough to compel me to purchase or really recommend the car.
Relatedly, I was at Germain Lexus with a friend, and I decided to sit in the RC-F. It was so claustrophobia-inducing! Chunky pillars are bad enough, but in my opinion, there is nothing worse than a tall dash in a smallish car with sporting pretensions. (Okay, it’s really a GT, but the styling is so aggressive and the marketing literature seems to set it up as an M4 competitor.) Save tall dashboards for SUVs.
I’ll fix those links, thank you!
Danger Girl wants an RC-F. I wouldn’t be surprised to see one in the driveway come summer. Hope it’s orange with the carbon fiber trim.
Exciting! Have you driven the RC-F? The engine is certainly a winner, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on the ride and handling.
RC was very comfortable when I sat in it, but my experiences with other IS has not been so good. I tried an IS350 before I purchased my TSX, but there was no manual available with the 3.5L and I couldn’t get over how uncomfortable the seats were. I’m only 5’11”, but if I sat in the proper position, close enough to the wheel, my head hit the headliner. And the large, serifed “ALL AUTO” makes me feel like I’m driving an “old person’s car.”
07 Acura TL (automatic) owner here and I buy a stick shift TLX in a heartbeat. Last time I was at the dealership for service they almost had me sold on a new TLX with everything (I really like the red/parchment color combo) but I like not having a car payment and I’m not too enthusiastic about buying another automatic.
If you’re in Portland, I’d uhh…. Higly recommend you run over to Foster-powell and hit up devil’s point for an evening, especially if you can manage it on a Sunday.
I have found Subaru’s reliability to be overrated, but at 75k when I checked the oil in the transmission it was clean as the finest Mobile 1 fresh from the bottle. I dislike autos intensely but in a modern minivan you have no choice. I don’t understand why I can leave the scoobie in 5th and put cruise on no problem, but in the minivan it hunts around dropping gears and varying the speed my 5mph. In certain states that can be the difference between not getting stopped and getting a serious ticket.
I found the MT/SEMA article amusing, since I’ve been a subscriber to Car Craft for close to 20 years now and SEMA runs the same old “They’re coming for your hot rods!” article every 5 years or so.
That said, the EPA needs to be hit hard with a massive and agency-wide RICO lawsuit; its long term collusion with all the radical watermelon groups (Greenpeace and Sierra Club for starters) spices up its legislation via regulatory fiat with a heaping helping of corruption. Anyone who’s suffered the misfortune of buying a new consumer washing machine in the past 10 years should be calling for that agency’s disbanding. Ironically my outstanding Staber home washing machine does not sport the Energy Star label simply because its trap door drum is too small to qualify for their bullshit metrics. My recommendation for homeowners to install a used Dexter SWD unit in the corner of their garage is looking better and better.
And Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming isn’t a hoax; it’s a scam.
All activist/crusader/consumer advocacy groups should enact a 15-20 year sunset clause; once their initial goal has or has not been met, it’s time to dismantle the org and stay out of everyone else’s business. MADD’s hung around for at least 30 years beyond its sell-by date and is solely interested in its continued existence at the expense of humans getting along with their lives.
crossposting from Mark’s rental review at TTAC:
” Stereo sound quality from the nine-speaker system was outstanding, ”
Thanks 🙂
I’ve noticed the manual price discrepancy in ferraris as well. I think these V6 supercars coming out will be damned as well. A sports car with a V6 and an auto? Doubly so. Supra>300ZX. Skyline>VR4. If they put a V6 and an auto in the new ford GT, I garuntee you they will never be worth more than the first Ford GT.
Bark,
An interesting choice in music, given your environs where everything is country and western or classic rock. They don’t hear music like that much in Keystone.
Thank God there was a really cool record store in “the gap” in RC where one could find something different, along with rolling papers. Never forget the time I walked out of there with Stanley Clarke’s I Wanna Play for You. Young bassist’s mind blown.