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Your car can be sporty, it can be practical, it can be new or used, but whatever it is – if you’re driving it to The Diner – it has to have style.
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You kept me laughing, as with the whale comparison. I still think we need a company to build custom cars.
I was going to work the other day, and the car ahead of me – a Honda Odyessy, for the record. Was driving me absolutely nuts – slowly accelerating like they had a pot of scalding hot water in their lap… I was so happy when we got to my corner, and I could turn left onto 50th ave and leave this jerk behind… Then his left hand blinker went on…
I was so aggravated, I noticed that the merge lane was vacant … So I blew past him on the right, winding the car up to 70, so that I could be past him before the merge lane abruptly ends…
My car’s digital dashboard is set to display my mileage – its the modern mood ring – rank my aggravation by gas usage… It maybe the reason big cities are so polluted – everyone is so aggravated driving in the big city that they’re using 3 times the gas they should be. I got to work with a rating of 7l/100km… I should normally get around a 6.5. My high score is a 29.5 – when I think back to that day, I am still surprised that I didnt kill anyone. (mostly me)
On my way.
Drove another car today. Will drive another car on Monday. Dealerships aren’t open on Sunday, because I mean c’mon who would want to shop for a car on Sunday.
OK, I’ll be that guy. We drove a ’22 Hyundai Tucson, very nice interior exterior compact SUV, a successor to our 2014 Honda CR-V. Both were nice, practical vehicles but the four-cylinder engines are geared to save gas so their acceleration is mild and when turning slowly through an intersection, the gearing could mean pressing the gas resulted in a panic-inducing lack of response. And these cars with small engines for gas savings could mean premature wearing out. So, a friend kept pestering me to consider a Tesla, specifically model Y. We know the arguments against and dislike the governmental incentives disrupting free markets. But I finally decide to test
Tesla Model Y arrived in our driveway.
drive one, and the acceleration is exhilarating (0-60 under 5 seconds)–it will give you the Eclipse experience again, and more, with much more space. To quote an old car ad, “Ask the man who owns one.” And yes, paying around $15,000 after Federal, new EV buyer, and Colorado rebates, and Tucson trade-in was in fact, awesome.
Four-door, compact, affordable, fun to drive; I come up with the Mazda 3. Specifically, the 2.5 S Premium. As you may have noticed, cars with a manual transmission get rarer every year. Out of the various submodels of the 3, only the 2.5 S Premium is still available with a stick. Whether you would like the styling, I have no idea. It’s not a high-performance car, but it makes 191 hp, so it’s not a dog. For the price, it’s a pretty nice combination of luxury and fun.
This second video is of a 2021, but there is very little difference between the 2021 and 2025 models.
I found that Mazda’s often lacking in head room.
Back when I used to regularly get rental cars from Enterprise, I would protest if they tried to give me a Mazda 3 sedan…
Iam only 6 feet tall, but found them very uncomfortable to drive… But maybe they’ve changed since then…
Please let us know what you eventually decide on – we’d be interested.
I will. And I forgot about the Mazda – argh, one more to investigate. And the clock is ticking!
Sure, but James is only about three feet tall, so that will not be an issue.
Interesting.
First up, government efficiency standards. I think we’re all conversant on that issue, but if you want any real customization of form you’re going to have to dial those back a bit. Let’s assume that happens.
First up, you’re right you’d need a limited number of options for some things — engines, frames, etc. The way I’m visualizing this is something like the character design screen off of a modern computer RPG. You’ll be presented with a number of sliders you can set to custom positions. Up top you’ll have a series of stats that’ll dynamically adjust as you slide your options around. Big engine, small frame gets you more pep. Big engine, big frame, gets you pep and trunk space but knackers your efficiency. Designing the interface for maximum consumer benefit (a perhaps unwarranted assumption) I’d have a running total for the price of the car, as well as a ten-year estimate of total cost to include things like fuel efficiency and so on.
The next question is how many customization options are discrete (choose from X engines) versus continuous (shape of the front end). I’m figuring you’d end up with a lot of discrete options. Perhaps you’re sorting through twenty headlight styles, but picking one item from a list is going to be easier than designing a custom lighting unit yourself. Remember here you’re selling cars to both Mr. and Mrs. Lileks. Judging solely by this podcast Mr. Lileks would be
obsessed withintensely interested in getting his car customized just right. Mrs. Lileks is as likely to go down the street and get a preconfigured car from a standard dealership to save herself the hassle.Now the hard one. customizing the shape of the car. My intention here is to leave most of the functionality without requiring the customer to learn SolidWorks. Two ways you could do that; a continuous slider with settings between ‘blocky’ and ‘curvy’ which will allow you to adjust the profile affecting the whole car, or a wire model of the vehicle where you can grab and drag the wires to stretch it in various directions. Say, to make a taller cabin for the gentleman’s hat, a feature sorely lacking in the current marketplace. Neither of those are likely to get you your shark fin. For that I’d suggest software to allow you to do a custom SolidWorks design which you could bring in to the dealer on a floppy diskette.
How manageable is that from the dealer’s perspective? First off, you’re going to need a hefty software back end. To keep a running total of cost, gas mileage, and so forth while customizing the shape and weight of the car you’re going to need a complex airflow dynamics modelling program in the background. That’s a lot of computing power, the moreso because you’ll want more than one terminal available. Probably doable in this age of bitcoin mining and LLMs but not a negligible cost.
Then, you’re going to need a large inventory of parts, keeping stuff on hand for quick turnaround. This gets exponentially more difficult the more discrete sliders you’ve got. It’s a significant industrial engineering challenge, but the good news is that car dealerships are used to freighting large inventory costs, at least judging by the rows of vehicles I see when I drive by.
Next, manufacturing. If you’re going to have a turnaround time in hours you’re going to need the car to be built locally, which means many small factories rather than Detroit. Taking WI as an example state you could set one largeish factory between Madison & Milwaukee and cover multiple dealerships in the southeast of the state. Folks from farther afield would have to wait for mail order. Right, but I was talking about manufacturing. To lower the turnaround time you’re going to have to increase the capital cost of manufacturing. You need to build in slack capacity otherwise you might as well tell ’em to get in line.
To actually build the thing you pick the frame, then send it through, bolting the discrete options on as it gets from station to station. Customization here is a mostly solved problem and not much slower than traditional assembly line manufacturing. The trouble comes when you get to the customized body shape. I don’t know how they do things now, but my impression is that they make one large stamp and bang ’em out by the million. That won’t work for us. I presume this problem can be solved though. Attaching it is also going to be an issue. I’m imagining here something like a longhouse frame with custom curves of metal welded on to that.
There are going to be further issues too. If you’re going to design the profile of the car then you should be able to change the windshield around, but casting a new glass shape isn’t going to be quick and easy. Maybe that’s something you’d have to make a discrete option so you can mass produce ’em before hand, but I’d prefer no tto.
Okay, you’ve got your shiny, new, one-of-a-kind car in vibrant &00A3FF coloring. Then you hit a deer. how are you going to get it fixed? Your body shop will have to either be able to stamp out custom curves themselves or overnight them from your manufacturing facility. Hope you built in enough slack to make repair parts. Other than that the shifting design is going to make things harder to repair, but I doubt impossible.
Bottom line, it’s a cool idea, might even be a practical one, but you and I don’t have the kind of cash to set it up.
Paging Mr. Musk. Paging Mr. Elon Musk. Please pick up the green courtesy phone.
James drove an AMC Pacer.
Cassette deck with Elvis Costello, The Cars, Blonde, and The Talking Heads stored in a fake leather case.
I had a 99 Honda Accord that I felt exactly as James explained, I could never love it like my Camry and Lexuses (Lexi?)
As I was driving this afternoon, I looked over to my left and had a surprise. It was a Toyota Crown Royal Saloon with right-hand drive. The driver appeared to be a middle-aged Japanese gentleman.
Did you ever try a Prelude? I could have loved it for the looks and drivability, but the seats etc were far too restrictive.
My brother had one in the ’80’s. Fun little car.
The one I test-drove would have been “First Generation.” I liked the looks, but the seating etc was too cramped. Same problem I had with a Pontiac Fiero, in addition to the “center tunnel” with shifter etc, being too high. And I’m not even a big/tall person. Maybe later versions were better, I never tried one again. Wound up getting the TR8, after also test-driving RX-7, 280ZX, Camaro, Firebird, and Alfa Romeo GTV6 among others.
Since this post has caught the attention of car guys (are there any car girls on Ricochet?), this seems like an opportune place to let people know about the Motor City Ricochet Meetup in August. We have a number of events planned, with the Woodward Dream Cruise being one of the big ones. This is a day-long parade of classic cars. There should be cars at the Henry Ford Museum, NASCAR fans may want to visit the Roush Automotive Collection, and some of us are going go-cart racing one afternoon. See the post for details.
I always wanted to try the Honda S 2000. A lot more power than a Mazda Miata, the draw back, is a manual 6 speed… Its been a long while since Ive driven a manual, and I fear that my out of practice might wreck it.
No, it will come back quickly. Manual transmissions make most drives worth it. (Commuting in traffic is not much fun.)
But, as long as I mentioned my brother’s Quaalude earlier, I might as well share this story. His next vehicle after that was a pick-up truck with a manual transmission. Again, this was back in the 1980’s. For some reason, I needed to borrow his pick-up one day. As soon as I got in and started to move it, I realized the clutch was burned out.
He saw the look on my face, “What’s wrong?”
“You need a new clutch. Don’t you know how to tell when a clutch is burned out?”
So, move forward more than twenty years, my brother and his wife of the time are selling her car. It’s probably fourteen years old, but of a brand and vintage I liked, and mine, of the same nameplate and a year’s difference, was having severe issues. Thus, I agreed to buy their car. There was a little work to be done first, and we agreed they would take care of that, and I would pay a higher price to get a car that was in good condition. I hopped the train to Chicago, then took the local commuter train out to his town. He and his wife picked me up. We took care of the sales paperwork, and then he took me to where the car was.
I got in the car, started it up, started it moving, and realized that the clutch was burned out.
He was still there and saw the look on my face, “What’s wrong?”
“The clutch is burned out. Don’t you know how to tell a clutch is burned out? Did your mechanic drive this and not know the clutch is burned out?”
Twenty years later, and he was still unable to recognize the signs. I drove three hundred miles to the Detroit area and promptly called a transmission place to put more money into the car.
You may have already made your selection, but I got a Volkswagen Taos about a year ago that I like for its fairly crisp handling (about $30,000). I find it has plenty of power, but you might prefer the more powerful and slightly larger Tiguan. I didn’t want to spend the extra $2,000 forthe Tiguan. VW also still has the Jetta sedan. I have a creaky knee that now makes it harder to get into low sedans. The VWs have a very Germanic feel (solid door closing, firm ride, unfussy dash layout), which is what I am used to, having driven BMWs when I was employed and could justify spending more money on my car.
The suspense of waiting to hear about James’s test drives is killing me.
He should be filming them, building a car review channel… How can all these cars look the same but also be so different?