You're not wrong, so much as short-sighted in this case. Double-entendre intended. The way she argued the point was to point out that:
1) Honda advertised the mileage you could get widely, but ran teeny-tiny disclaimers on the mileage.
2) Honda recalled the cars on a maintenance issue and the "fix" reduced hybrid capability and fuel mileage even further.
Plus, you might want to bone up on your arguments -- the woman who won the case was a lawyer. In this case -- again, double-entendre intended -- obviously a successful one.
Good luck with your law career.
Like the baby wings on the nose of that simulator. That's cute ...
Pretty quick. It was a carbureted '81 model, 4-speed.
Higher-compression piston swap/cam/Hooker headers/experimental Javelin Engineering intake manifold with a Holley 7448 350 cfm 2-barrel. Dyno'd at 165 hp at the flywheel. Thicker sway bars/Mustang TRX tires & wheels and (much) better brake pads/moved the battery to the right-rear for .
I autocrossed it, but basically it was my Texas Interstate flyer -- low 20s mpg at 85-90 mph.
Mid-15s in the quarter-mile, and very competitive Street Modified (local rules with street tires) and marginally-competitive SCCA Modified times with slicks in autocross.
In the acceleration-challenged early '80s, that was pretty quick. I could pull an RX-7 or an '82 Z-28 from a start to my top end of about 115. Today I'd probably get smoked by a V6 Camry.
Buying the car with "the least cost to insure" is no way to go through life, son.
I remember, as a lad of 23-ish, having that very discussion with an insurance agent, right after he told me how much I was going to have to pay to cover a new Mustang GT 5.0 for my first new car.
He answered with "A Chevrolet Chevette Diesel."
"OK," I responded, "What is the second least expensive new car to insure ..."
And I ended up with a Ford Escort station wagon. I spent a baby fortune making that little bus fast.
Not a new idea -- This has been done in F1 -- Renault/Mecachrome started using pneumatics at the end of the turbo era -- late '80s/early '90s?
It should be interesting to see how this will work with a street car.
The way I see it, the quintessential Japanese car has to:
1) Be built by the Japanese, so transplant-built cars don't count.
2) It should also be built for the Japanese, not watered down for Gaijin consumption. The full, unfiltered flavor should come through, without worrying about the consequences. Kinda like that blowfish sushi that can kill you.
3) And ideally, it should have been exported widely. Because to best exhibit Japanese engineering logic, no matter how incompatible it might be with local conventions. It should have been shipped around the world without qualification (or even consideration) of how it will function in other environments.
The last criteria might be dating myself a bit, but there was a time when all the Japanese manufacturers shipped answers out to questions nobody was asking anywhere else in the world.
So let me offer my example of the quintessential Japanese car -- The Subaru 360.
Yeah, pretty much.
A genuine period piece, with that ISCA World of Wheels vibe. Ugh.
This would be a great prop for some '70s-gasmic Corvette Summer revival, driven by some dude sporting a bushy helmet-head haircut, brown-lensed aviators, a loud rayon print shirt, pastel-colored Sansa-Belt bellbottoms and platform shoes. Preferably sailing this beast to its fiery death off some crest on Mulholland Drive.
Crack Pipe.
Yet you don't explain why, or offer any alternatives.
Is this list simply to plebeian for you? Or is it out of your price range?
Or do you just aspire to rant blindly like O'Reilly for no real effect?
Right on.
If you, as the owner, get caught in this subterfuge, the best-case scenario would be that you'd be de-Bugged. If you couldn't play dumb enough and they could pin the fact that you knew this switcheroo had occurred, you'd be in as Deep Kimchee as the person who sold it to you.
Most all the Superbirds you see outside of racing machines (and actully, more than a couple of the race cars) had vinyl roofs. The covering hid the patch job done to replace the concave rear windows on other '70 Satellites/Road Runners/GTXs with the bubble-back windows the Superbirds used for better aerodynamics.
Now the race cars with the vinyl roofs? That was usually another story, that had to do with too much acid-dipping of the car bodies ...
You guys need a copy editor.
"and there are possibly be more"
"twisted itself around a poll at high speed"
I tend to let typos fly, because I've been known to let bad syntax fly myself ... but this is embarrassing.
Spellcheckers aren't enough.
I dunno. This is an interesting swap, but I don't know how effective it really would be.
Small-block Ford, with a three-speed automatic and tall rear gears. The powertrain setup for this wagon is straight out of the '70s, where Ford was bragging about its "road-hugging weight" and doing commercials on downhill fuel economy runs. Malaise-era acceleration and poor fuel mileage, the worst of both worlds. At least the diesel would get better mileage ...
It's clean enough to pass as a poser with the Old Money down at the farmer's market or picking up the girls from lacrosse practice. But they'll still snicker at you behind your back about the whole nouveau riche thing. This bus really needs an AOD overdrive and shorter rear gears. It'd get both better acceleration and far better mileage.
I think all it needs is a Powerglide for a softer hit.
Frickin' 11-flats. That could be a lot of fun.
Oh, that's sick. Put some fat steelies on this thing and roll up slowly to the stoplight. Play bad head-banging metal or really moldy '70s top 40 -- Seasons in the Sun, Chevy Van, that kind of stuff. North of the Mason-Dixon line, some Buck Owens or Porter Wagoner could fry their minds too.
Watch the light turn green and leave 'em behind as you take off into the Twilight Zone. With that much power, it could be even wilder with a Powerglide. Idle up slow, then when the cross street lights turn yellow brake-torque it just under stall speed. As the horrified street heroes suddenly hear the turbo spool up, they'll have just a second to realize it's all over.
I actually think it's a pretty awesome track. I'm going to go hunting on iTunes to see if I can find some more AWOLNATION. That's some haunting stuff ...
They're steadily replacing those big sample cases full of flight charts. Just load your maps into the iPad and go!
I don't want to pee in anybody's Post Toasties on a Monday morning, but I know from depressing personal experience that there's little more horrifying than trying to chase down problems in a Gray Market Mercedes, then have to chase down parts to fix them.
Like a lot of folks here, I appreciate the quaint older 280GE to the bling-tastic Mercedes 500GE or its various AMG permutations. But when it comes down to reliability and day-to-day usability, I would take the newer, Mercedes-certified machines any day of the week.
As a guy who dumped a sharp-lookin' Gray Market 500SEL for a VW Jetta and never looked back, a reluctant crack pipe.
Hmmm ... DC car with a California title. I think I'd want to hear this cowboy's campaign platform before I decided to buy a used car from him.
No, probably not. Non-repairable salvage title from the state, but an "easy repair. All the important parts are OK, but I'm not going to bother with rebuilding it myself."
Then why the Hell should I? I'm really not interested in Gary Condit's sloppy seconds ...
