A USB dvd drive is light and dirt cheap. I'd much rather have one sitting (unused) on my desk than schlep it around inside my laptop all day long.
The question isn't "what's the fastest German car" or "what's the coolest German car" but "what's the most quintessentially German car".
Germany is a nation that has seen some shit, to say the least. Unsophisticated backwoods barbarians that dealt with everything from roman armies and attila the hun to being ground zero in the two bloodiest wars in history. Batshit crazy aggressors though they often were, there's probably more resilience there than anywhere else on earth. The defining characteristic of Germany is that it's somehow the economic center of Europe rather than a smoldering hole in the ground, thanks in no small part to its insane will power (ok, and the Marshall Plan). With all due respect, it's the cockroach of nations.
W123. Period. End of discussion.
All BMWs are douchebag BMWs until they're 10 years old. A decade from now, many people will be talking about how the Bangle years were the ne plus ultra of bimmer design. I would put non-trivial money on that.
Stripped out E90 335i's at your local LeMons race are gonna be so goddamn hot.
E39's have diff mount issues? So BMW fixed that on the E34 but then brought it back for the E39? And that recirculating ball steering out of a 1940's truck? Please. E39 M5's are about as sophisticated as fox body mustangs.
That, right there, is how trolling is done, kids.
Again, we come back to an NA/NB Miata: outgassing complete, capable of thousands of air changes per hour.
Eh, she's closer to a high speed oval or a drag race than I like. I like my women to look a bit more nordschleifesque.
Actually, thinking about that more carefully, maybe not the 'ring. Looking at some maps, I think Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours is the closest I can get to a cross section of a vagina.
I remember the xr4ti being a bit tail happy to begin with, though it's been—holy shit, where did my youth go??—15 years since I drove one. This one is going to be seriously entertaining.
Agreed in general. Devilishly advocating three words, though: S14 Powered 2002.
Quick turn in, catlike transient response, connectedness. The mustang doesn't tick any of those boxes. It ticks other boxes, but not those.
Through any kind of handling transition, my E36 on M3 running gear feels MUCH more like my 3500lb accord than my 2200lb miata. And the miata feels like a boat compared to something with 500 fewer pounds to chuck around. If you want a car that does EXACTLY what you tell it to do and communicates back to you clearly, there is no substitute for good suspension design, rwd, low COG, a short wheelbase and low weight. Even if its slow and lacks grip it will be awesome. If you've never driven a miata with proper springs/shocks/alignment, you owe it to yourself. :)
I definitely see the gt 86 replacing my e36 as the occsionsl kid hauler in my family. I want this so bad it hurts.
Cat meat.
... their owners have more money than brains. Over-engineered engines??? I know plenty of folks who have had head stud failures.
911s survive for-frickin-ever because they're a luxury item that never goes out of fashion and never gets boring and rarely get driven on salty roads. Most 1980's Ferraris are probably still around, too, for that matter.
The Veyron is both the least interesting car you can buy for $1.7M and the least interesting way to break 225 MPH.
To me, Japanese cars are much more about continuous refinement and the quest for perfection than about any technology. The Toyota manufacturing process is *the* technology that defines not only Japanese auto manufactures, but ALL auto manufacturers and indeed all of modern industrial engineering.
So yeah, I nominate the Camry as the embodiment of Japanese industrial awesomeness. It's not sexy or fun, but it's about as sensible and perfect as cars can be.
You could also make a case that the NA Miata is the quintessential japanese car. Japanese auto manufacturing was really kicked into high gear by the desire to compete with american and european cars. There are lots of examples of japanese manufacturers copying american/european styling/technology and improving it, and the NA Miata is kinda the ultimate offspring of that process. Combine super anal japanese engineering, innovative-but-shitty british sports cars, and a desire to win the hearts of Americans and you really can't fail.
Except you're going to pay the same for Audi and VW parts 99% of the time. Parts for a VW Passat with the same motor as an Audi A6 are not cheaper, nor are VW service centers cheaper than Audi service centers (especially since they're usually the same place).
Sorry, but which software will decrypt TrueCrypt or Lion's FileVault?
You don't believe in a biblical hell, do you? :)
The tone here is weird. These are two mega-corporations, and Apple is no longer run by a petulant idiot savant who will sacrifice his company's success to prove a point or get back at someone. They don't have feelings or emotions and they don't hold grudges. Their lawyers can battle 24-7 but the companies can (and will) continue to engage in mutually beneficial partnerships.
I could care less what the two of them do to each other, as long as they're not picking on someone weaker than them and actually stifling competition. Hell, if we ever see intellectual property reforms in this country, it may well come as a result of some kind of mutual recognition by Facebook/Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple that they're pissing away an awful lot of money impotently defending their "property" which will be obsolete before the ink is dried on all the subpoenas.
Reading about this genuinely brought a tear to my eye. Losing Saab is like loosing Porsche. I can't think of another company like the two. Saabs are as close as you can come to the opposite of the 911, but both of them dominated their respective motor sports with batshit crazy designs and stuck to their iconoclastic guns way longer than a rational company would have, through sheer force of will and great engineering. For fucks sake, fwd 2 strokes on the mid-1960s still winning races? Pure crazy. Freewheeling drivetrains in the 1970s? SPG 900? 9000 Aero? They were never anything more than fringe lunatics when they were independent, but god bless them for pushing funny ideas as far as they did.
Watching them forced to sell off these national treasures feels so so so so wrong. The world is a lot more bland without them.
Huge improvement but in NO WAY does it live up to what I've come to expect from Apple.
The photo stream is nice, but it's severely limiting only being able to use it with iPhoto and not being able to share a photostream with a family member without sharing my entire iCloud account. The doc sync would be fantastic if it worked with more file types. It doesn't offer much that I can't do better with Google/Dropbox/whatever. It's got lots of potential, though. The promise of seamless integration of desktop and mobile devices is exciting.
BY ALL MEANS ASK A BUNCH OF STUPID QUESTIONS AND PROLONG MY MEETING SO YOU CAN FEEL BETTER ABOUT YOURSELF. THANKS. THATS REALLY GREAT.
