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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3160 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 21, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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One thing I feel like we discuss rarely here is cars.

I drive a late 90s/early 00s German sedan. When I made less money, I spent a good amount of time wrenching on it. I wanted to have some minimal competence and understanding of the car, and it was a great way to save money.

It still would be a great way to save money - I won't kid myself there - but the stress of preparing for a maintenance job, buying the specialized tools/parts, and working in my extremely cramped garage has lost some magic. I still feel accomplished doing little things but when I'm constantly under pressure to be doing work or parenting, there's less magic in DIY. Bike maintenance provides a similar dopamine hit with far less commitment.

That said, I just picked it up from the mechanic this week after a month-long absence and some significant work being done. I truly do not understand how people put up with newer cars.

This thing is absolutely sublime. It strikes a perfect balance between the precision and feedback from all of its systems while driving and what you'd define as "luxury" and comfort. I splurged on an aftermarket exhaust that fades into the background on the highway and absolutely rips when I'm driving like I stole it late at night on more empty roads.

Not to mention how it looks. Of course, any car you see as a teenager is what you base everything else on, but the slightly angular design language of this period right before everything turned into aero blobs for fuel efficiency and crash standards just really gets me going. I absolutely still look back at it when walking into the office and find myself getting excited when I step back into it after a long day.

Whenever I'm on the road watching hundreds of drones driving dirty shitboxes without using their turn signals or trying to drive efficiently, I fall into such a superiority complex. How could you care so little about something you do so much? For a country supposedly in love with its cars, it would be tough for Americans to give less of a shit about how driving feels and how they perform at it. For all I'm made fun of about the time and money I've invested in an older car, when I spread that out over the time I've used it and the joy I derive from it it seems like an obvious trade.

I greatly understand interior comfort and somewhat understand the pride of owning an aesthetic car, but paying to make the car sound better is a completely foreign concept to me. Why would I care what the car sounds like, as long as it isn’t an annoying sound?

There's already a response below suggesting what is admittedly the most common reason for a new exhaust - crappy ricer subculture signaling. There's more to it than that:

  • The default exhaust setup on a vehicle, especially in Europe, makes enormous compromises in performance to meet sound and emissions laws. Engines are better than they've ever been, and also more neutered from the factory.
  • It should be reasonable to experience the machine you've purchased through more than one sense. The difference between low and high end dining is often the presentation.

My car's engine is considered one of the best ever made, but the default mufflers make it inaudible. Some people simply cut the mufflers off to overwhelm the generous soundproofing of the car, but I spent some extra money on a dedicated replacement with still-strong mufflers. I can control how much sound it makes by how I drive, because when I'm cruising on the highway or slinking out in the morning there's no need for it.

It’s about signaling to a specific subculture organized around cars in a specific way. Be it the rice burner subculture, the hot rodding subculture, whatever.

Frequently you can tell these guys because they have their Instagram handles on their car windows; having their cars modified in a certain way is high status in that subculture, and so they advertise its association with them, personally.

How could you care so little about something you do so much?

I suspect this is a rhetorical flourish, but if it's a genuine question I think you need to take a step back from your own perspective. Everyone has something that they use/interact with frequently, but they don't care about except for its utility. The premise of "you do this a lot" => "you therefore should care about it" is false.

I've been trying to find a balance between protesting too much on a Friday fun-thread and really trying to outline where y'all are wrong here. @sarker talking about a Pillow Case is still just... so wrong, so let's dive in.

First, I disagree that you can safely disregard things you do a lot. I don't care about pillowcases as much as I do cars, but I know enough to understand that a lumpy yellow-stained sack on my bedframe is going to hurt my sleep and disgust anyone else coming into my bedroom. No, you can't care about everything all the time, but you should absolutely be investing your conscious thought into the major components of your life. It really doesn't matter what it is.

There's a bit of a strawman argument going on here about caring. Caring about cars isn't just status symbolism, the sensory experience, or even how good it can be to drive. I care about how I load my dishwasher because I have to do it every day. I care about how my keyboard feels because I press it hundreds of thousands of times a year. I care about driving efficiently because catching ten red lights a week means I've spent that much less time idling at a stoplight in my life.

Second, the attitude of "Well it works for me, and it's not important" gets to the heart of my annoyance. People have collectively lost their fucking minds about dangerous cars are. They're completely desensitized to the responsibility they wield when driving it. If I don't care about my pillows, I may not get laid or wake up grumpy. If I run my tires down to the belt, I run the risk of at least making a ton of people late to work next time it rains, but also kill someone else.

Maybe many people (here and otherwise) don't care about cars but keep them well-maintained. That sounds like a purple squirrel to me, but let's say that's the case. I still believe that purchasing a vehicle with poor performance characteristics sucks. I don't get into situations where I need them often, but I once again don't understand thinking "YAGNI" when it comes to controlling your own fate on public roads. It's the same reason I have a shotgun locked in my closet and frequently train with firearms. I'm not interested in rolling the dice with police response times when it matters.

My main rebuttal there is what I said before: everyone has something which is a major component of their life, but they aren't putting conscious thought into. I would be willing to bet that you, as in you personally, have things like this. It seems completely implausible to me that if we were to exhaustively list every single activity you do on a daily (or more frequent basis), that you consciously think about them all with any sort of regularity. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think I am, and it seems to me that this is a very strong argument against your stance on why everyone should care about cars. They matter to you and that's fine, but not everyone feels that way.

Maybe many people here don't care about cars but keep them well-maintained. That sounds like a purple squirrel to me, but let's say that's the case.

I can tell you that at least I am that way. I'm not perfect of course, but I check my fluids every so often, keep air in the tires and make sure I have tread, etc. It is simply a matter of safety, much as you said (that and not blowing up my several thousand $ piece of metal through neglect).

But maintenance is one thing, performance is another. I see no reason why I should care about performance. It's not like my life will be saved by how fast I can accelerate, or how well the steering performs under high stress, or anything like that. It doesn't interest me, and it doesn't benefit me, so of course I don't care.

everyone has something which is a major component of their life, but they aren't putting conscious thought into

Everyone has that but.... should they?

For me it's my yard, which I've discussed previously. I know I should care about it but can't. It falls lower on the priority pole, but at least I still know that I'm putting myself at a disadvantage.

It's not like my life will be saved by how fast I can accelerate, or how well the steering performs under high stress

I actually think it could and I believe that mine has. You're showing a little about what I'm talking about. Braking is another aspect of performance, and the stopping distance difference between low and high-end tires is enormous. It is precisely what the layman disregards that can easily be life or death. Just check the stats on TireRack between the worst and best tires for common sizes.

The fact that not every sticky driving situation can be avoided through braking is one of the reasons I care about other aspects like acceleration and general handling.

Everyone has that but.... should they?

I would say yes. Realistically, people simply do not have enough time or energy to care that much about everything. Some things are important, and some things are not important but personally interesting. Beyond that, who cares? Life is short, and people should feel free to spend it how they see fit imo.

It is precisely what the layman disregards that can easily be life or death.

I think that this is untrue by definition. If something was actually a common cause of life or death scenarios, people would learn about it and care. If I learned that 50% of drivers were dying when they use CheapMcBad (TM) tires, even as someone who doesn't give a shit about cars I would go out and replace my tires. I don't care about cars, but I do care about not dying and so I'm going to take steps if something is actually a common failure mode.

Now there is a delay here in between "something is known at all" and "something is known to the masses". So perhaps the things you mention are in that in-between phase where laymen don't yet know that they should care. But I submit that it's more likely that those things are, in fact, edge cases. That they are unlikely to make a real difference in safety for most people, and only an unlucky few will encounter a situation where those things matter.

Second, the attitude of "Well it works for me, and it's not important" gets to the heart of my annoyance. People have completely lost their fucking minds about dangerous cars are. They're completely desensitized to the responsibility they wield when driving it. If I don't care about my pillows, I may not get laid or wake up grumpy. If I run my tires down to the belt, I run the risk of at least making a ton of people late to work next time it rains, but also kill someone else.

Maybe many people here don't care about cars but keep them well-maintained. That sounds like a purple squirrel to me, but let's say that's the case. I still believe that purchasing a vehicle with poor performance characteristics sucks. I don't get into situations where I need them often, but I once again don't understand thinking "YAGNI" when it comes to controlling your own fate on public roads. It's the same reason I have a shotgun locked in my closet and frequently train with firearms. I'm not interested in rolling the dice with police response times when it matters.

marsey_confused.png

I take my car in for servicing every 5k miles as recommended by the service manual because I want to make sure that I can continue to not think about my car. If my car were to break down or get totaled, that would be bad, because then I would have to shop for a new car, which I really hate. It's precisely because I don't care about car choices that I want to avoid having to make that choice again for as long as possible.

I seriously doubt that buying a car with a 4 second 0-60 rather than a 7.5 second is going to meaningfully alter my fate on public roads (if you feel the urge to quibble about the particular performance metric I chose, reconsider). Situational awareness (aka looking at cars besides the car in front of you), defensive driving, and not tailgating are really all you need to get home safe.

The disconnect here is believing that I am exclusively saying that people need to care more about cars. My post is about driving. By maintaining your car, being aware, and putting your phone down, you're at what I consider a reasonable minimum of giving a shit in a vehicular society. I know we're on this forum to discuss and, therefore, argue, but my sense of superiority is primarily reserved for the masses of swerving dentmobiles without hubcaps and trailing vape clouds.

But yeah, I still believe you're leaving many things on the table with a Prius. Efficient cars are harsh vomit comets, and nobody would accuse them of winning beauty contests. The sacrifice of fuel economy and long-term peace of mind is worth what I get in spades.

The disconnect here is believing that I am exclusively saying that people need to care more about cars. My post is about driving.

Eh, at best you are equivocating between the two.

Whenever I'm on the road watching hundreds of drones driving dirty shitboxes without using their turn signals or trying to drive efficiently, I fall into such a superiority complex. How could you care so little about something you do so much? For a country supposedly in love with its cars, it would be tough for Americans to give less of a shit about how driving feels and how they perform at it. For all I'm made fun of about the time and money I've invested in an older car, when I spread that out over the time I've used it and the joy I derive from it it seems like an obvious trade.

-

I know we're on this forum to discuss and, therefore, argue, but my sense of superiority is primarily reserved for the masses of swerving dentmobiles without hubcaps and trailing vape clouds.

My last car was (minorly) dented several times (when other, less attentive people were driving it...) and the paint was peeling on the hood. I could have dropped thousands of dollars to have the dents fixed and repainted, but why? I pocketed the insurance payout and put it in the S&P instead. Car drives just as well with a minor dent on the bumper.

What I'm trying to say is, you are again conflating driving and purely aesthetic aspects of the cars being driven.

But yeah, I still believe you're leaving many things on the table with a Prius. Efficient cars are harsh vomit comets, and nobody would accuse them of winning beauty contests. The sacrifice of fuel economy and long-term peace of mind is worth what I get in spades.

Good for you. The questionable thing is acting as if it's ridiculous that some people just want to have low TCO. More than one set of preferences is valid.

I fall in a weird zone on how much I give a shit about cars/driving.

  • I give a lot of shits about driving. Driving is a coordination problem and one ought to:
    • Use only the leftmost lane for passing.
    • Not hog the left most lane. And move if a car is coming in faster, regardless of the fact if you are going at the limit or not.
    • Use the empty lanes to merge in instead of causing a traffic jam on the busy lane. You should not leave any part of the road unused! It's not "impolite" to cut in line, this is not a line !
    • Zipper merge.

Doing so, minimizes traffic and maximizes safety.

So you can understand how frsutrated I feel when driving, because a 100IQ average is simply not enough to expect the above to be the norm. But its mostly ignorance as well. Germany seems to pull it off.

I also don't care about what car I own. Speed limits ensure that I can't drive a fast car fast anyways... So might as well get the cheapest shitbox that gets me from point A to point B. The only reason I would get a good car is to not scare away the hoes.

I do love driving though. Not parking, not sitting in traffic, but driving. Fortunately for me I have a friend with a bunch of sports cars that I can borrow, so I get my fix for enjoyable driving when I really want to.

In short, I do love driving good cars, but don;t own one because I won't be able to use it the way its meant to be used for 99% of the time anyways.

Use the empty lanes to merge in instead of causing a traffic jam on the busy lane. You should not leave any part of the road unused! It's not "impolite" to cut in line, this is not a line !

Sometimes it is a line.

Here is an example. In this case, it got so bad that the city had to paint solid lines to prevent people from merging from all lanes, but imagine they were dotted instead to suit the example. The basic problem is: the bridge gets backed up - sometimes 30 minutes of traffic on either side to merge onto it. The right two lanes are "the line" for the bridge. The left lane is where you drive if you aren't getting on the bridge.

If everyone cooperates, you can have a clear left lane for the people who want to go straight, and traffic jammed right lanes for those that want to get on the bridge. However, if some of the bridge traffic defects and takes the left lane too to "not leave any part of the road unused", then merge right at the end, that screws over everyone who just wanted to go straight.

My thing is the coordination problem with lights turning green. Granted the issue is generally people on their phones, but even before that, I was really irritated by how long it takes a line of cars to start moving once the light changes. When it changes we could all start accelerating slightly and be on our way very quickly. Instead it's not uncommon for the last car in line to not even start moving before the light has turned red again, because each person waits for the person in front of them to get moving before they get around to it themselves.

Also reaction times in general.

And obliviousness to other traffic. Though that's at least as much of a problem in Costco. Why wouldn't you park your cart there? It's not like anyone else is in the store.

Once, when I was touring a house to rent from an acquaintance, he pitched it as basically: this house is a house. All the things you would expect to work do work, it's big enough, it provides shelter. That was true, and totally fine -- the house was totally adequate, and for the most part nothing leaked or sagged or burst while I was in it. This is also what I'm looking for in a car.

My current car is a hatchback with 7.5 inch clearance that can drive across Texas without breaking down. It can fit three carseats in the back if I pay attention to which ones I get. I am not very pleased that it tells me to keep my hands on the wheel even when my hands are already on the wheel. Grr. The lane assist and adaptive cruise control are nice, and I do not really want an experience when I'm trying to drive an 800 mile stretch of perfectly straight, flat road for a road trip. It will probably be annoying when the sensors start breaking down, I hope I will be able to afford just getting another car at that point or something. Perhaps there will be a model available that's fully autonomous on the freeway or something, which would be great.

My neighbor's son did something to his exhaust that made it roar to life at 4 am every morning for months, waking me up hours early. I don't know what it was, and when I tried yelling at his father about it (because the owner was slinking around avoiding me), he said nothing about the cause, but it was fixed within a week. I do not care at all whether that resulted in a less aesthetic driving experience.

I tried looking up 90s German sedans, and there seem to be different looks, but they all look just kind of like basic cars, maybe a bit ugly but not in a way that matters. The cars I knew as a teenagers liked to stall out at intersections and were too terrible to even drive on expressways; I have no impression of them other than that mostly they will move people around, but sometimes they're a huge hassle and not reliable. The air conditioner broke a lot, and I would be blasted with 100 degree wind. I'm not sure if I've ever known anyone who actually enjoyed the act of driving for its own sake, then or now.

Searle, in his lectures on Philosophy of Mind, talks about how perception occurs at the level of your baseline skill. And he talks about how men buy cars to impress women, but if he actually shows an actual woman at Berkeley his car they will say it is "red" or "a convertible" or if they're relatively knowledgable a "sports car;" they may notice the badge and they may not if they look closely. While when he shows it to his male friends in the Engineering department, they instantly see that it's a Guards Red Porsche 911 Carerra Turbo Targa, probably a 991.2 but he'll have to look closer to be sure. And it's not that either of them is "thinking" more about it, it's that they perceive those facts essentially instantly, but in completely different ways.

Sure, but a working class woman(that is, one not at Berkeley) knows full well that that’s a Porsche, which means the man who owns it has a fair bit of disposable income.

I think most women would recognize that a Porsche was expensive, but probably wouldn't recognize anything about a 90s German sedan, lovingly cared for and modded, other than that it wasn't new.

Even I can recognize a carefully maintained turquoise low rider and have a bit of respect for the effort (but know nothing about why they're beloved, or how they drive. There was a whole museum room dedicated to explaining why, which I couldn't force myself to read).

Likely only if she reads the badges, while a man who's into cars clocks it instantly from a quarter mile away on the highway.

In the same way that my wife recently told me that the new flowers she put in the living room vase were special to her because they were the flowers in our wedding bouquet. I hadn't noticed that the flowers had changed, as the last ones were yellow too.

A lot of women impressed by a Porsche wouldn't immediately know the difference if you rebadged a Corvette.

But she would be able to recognize "fast, expensive car", which is what she's likely to care about. And she can tell the difference between a rebadged japmobile and an actual sports car.

How could you care so little about something you do so much?

I simply don't give a shit. I bought a nine year old Prius and drove it into the ground. Then I bought a four year old Prius which I am currently driving into the ground. 60 miles a gallon. Maintenance manual recommends oil changes every 15k miles. That's about all it needs to work flawlessly for 150+k miles. It even has a volume knob.

How much do you care about your pillowcases? You presumably spend more time on them then in your car.

The Prius really is a fantastic car! My first car was a 2004 model, had over 300k miles on it when it finally died (I don’t know the actual # because the odometer broke at 299,999)

You "used Prius" guys, how have the batteries held up? I always understood that that was a major limit to service life, but I might be wrong.

Newer Priuses have a 10 year manufacturer battery warranty, so that counts for something.

My last car was 14 years old when I got rid of it and the batter was still fine (it had other problems I got tired of dealing with).

Mine definitely degraded with time but did not fail (my catalytic converter went which was ultimately what caused me to ditch the car). mpg went from around 55 at 200 k miles to 42 mpg at 200 k miles). I knew someone who refurbished his battery which cost him relatively little to do (he did it himself). The batteries used to just be a bunch of nicad cells in series and when a battery “went bad” it’s usually just a few cells which can be replaced (cheap to diy, I don’t even know if it’s a service most shops would do).

I’m also unsure how this works with newer Priuses since I think Toyota switched all of their hybrids to lipo batteries in 2016.

They do eventually go bad, but it is often just 1 or 2 cells, you can just swap those 2 cells and the battery is good again, they are basically made up of lots and lots of laptop battery blades. I've done it with success.

  • I'm quite literally unconscious when using a pillow
  • Have you driven a high quality car? Are you a good driver? Do you value control over the multi-thousand-pound death machine you helm?

It's not a great analogy. I understand valuing reliability and low cost of ownership at different levels. Ironically I kinda enjoy driving Priuses - Hybrid powertrains are fun.

I don't know.. I've driven around big comfy cars with hydropneumatic suspension 200kw engines and I've driven the second shittiest ComBloc era car ever - Škoda 120 and if I didn't need to drive long distances I'd buy and use the Škoda.

The extra money doesn't seem like much. Sure you can't overtake in a slow car, but I don't mind driving a bit slower. It's never that slow.

Honestly if I wanted a car I'd want something like a beat up Hilux converted to run on LPG. Saves some on gas (tax is lower still), you can (gently) crash into people and not give a fuck and it's reasonably safe. If it had AC and massive bumpers so running into things at low speed wasn't a worry, each end it'd be ideal.

Looking at my dad go nuts about every new scratch on his shiny new hybrid semi-SUV seems crazy. It's a car - if you have to worry every time you go shopping some cretin will hit your doors with his doors.. ? Is having navigation, a bunch of black boxes that phone home, an integrated cellphone(to phone home) a fucking electronic voice reminding you to use a seatbelt spending an extra €10-15k at the very least?

I don't think so.

I'd want something like a beat up Hilux converted to run on LPG

You're optimizing your hypothetical car for something besides "niceness", but this is still car-optimization way beyond normie levels and way beyond " used Prius". (Though maybe not as far beyond normie levels as it would be in the US.).

You're unconscious, but you're still affected by what goes on. I assume you don't sleep on a brick floor.

Have you driven a high quality car?

I've driven teslas and bmws, depending on if you consider that a quality car or not.

Are you a good driver?

Never so much as a speeding ticket.

Do you value control over the multi-thousand-pound death machine you helm?

Well, it would be difficult to drive if I didn't have control, so I guess I do.

Are you a good driver?

Never so much as a speeding ticket.

So no then?

You need speeding tickets to be a good driver?

Unless you just run from the cops every time.

Every time what? The cops don't give tickets for going over the speed limit if everyone is (around here, anyway).

If not vastly exceeding the speed of traffic makes me a bad driver, I guess I am.

Yes.

More comments

Bwahahaha. But I do agree with @sarker I'm mostly a utilitarian driver. I've driven many a prius into the ground. There is something to be said for the thrill of a high end car with nice appointments while you go fast, I do that too. I see the merits of both.

My favorite car I ever owned, or probably ever will own, was a 2001 Volvo S40. I just loved the way it looked, and I never had a better-feeling car to drive. The handling was very precise and the turbo was very responsive. It drove like it was on rails. Even more than that, I absolutely loved having a car nobody else had. Here in the Midwestern U.S., I have seen fewer than 10 other 1st-gen S40s, ever. I mean, ever. And I keep a sharp eye out for them. (The first-generation V40 is even rarer.) Obviously there's stuff out there like the BMW M series, various Acuras etc. that would have been hotter performers, perhaps objectively better cars on any axis; but that Volvo S40 was mine. I identified so strongly with it for some reason.

But it got to the point where I couldn't keep the CEL off reliably, and I really got tired of crawling underneath that thing, or putting my arm down in the engine bay to try and wrench out more stuff with my Torx kit... I am grateful for the mechanical competence I got from dealing with that, but I have a good job now and I just don't need to do that shit any more. I was ready to have that feeling that when I go to start the car, it definitely will start and I will get where I'm trying to go.

So I traded it in, and I now drive a white Buick sedan. In general no one will notice it. This Buick is definitely the most reliable car I've ever had. My cost of ownership has been minuscule. Absolutely great, reliable car. But it's not especially fun. Just comfortable. I wonder if I will ever have another car that I think is "fun." By the time I'm ready to, I wonder if driving yourself (instead of having a self-driving car) will be banned.

My favorite car ever was Daewoo Tico. Definitely unsafe, curb weight of 1000 lbs, something like 30-45 hp engine.

Very fast acceleration, you could zoom ahead in cities, only sports cars were faster in getting up to 60 kph.

Very fun and responsive to drive. The shift stick was under my knee as it was built for Koreans.

Still, most fun car I ever drove. Such cars are of course illegal now, because fucking EU and their fucking safety regulations that are totally for our own good. It cost like $4000 new then, but with all the safety baggage cars have you need some 120 kw small turbo in a city car to approximate the performance. And you pay a lot, lot more for it.

curb weight of 1000 lbs

It appears that the Tico's curb weight was 1400 lb, not 1000 lb. But even 1400 lb is a lot lower than the modern Mirage's 2000 lb.

I know what you mean. I had a 1998 V40 I still miss.

I love the way S40s look and have had a soft spot for them visually. Haven't had the pleasure of driving one.

Your feelings around maintenance and how it stacks up against your other responsibilities closely track mine.

It was a hell of a car. I paid $2800 cash for it, and at the time that felt like a ton of money. Then I drove it for eight years.

I wonder what that same money would get you now. Do you ever think about that scenario? "I'm 22 years old, I've got 3k saved up, and I've got to get a car that will get me to my job for at least a year or two." I imagine you'd end up with something like an Oldsmobile Alero. Maybe a Mazda Protege if you live in a lower-rust area. Definitely nothing under 10-12 years old.

I've finally gotten my driver's license after nearly a decade of procrastination. Sadly my hopes that self driving cars would be good/cheap enough for that to never be necessary haven't yet manifested.

I never really got the appeal of burning gas for the sake of it, now that I actually need a car for my job, sure, I want one that fills me with a sense of "pride and accomplishment", and most importantly, doesn't scare off the hoes. So probably a second hand half-decent sedan.

I really don't particularly care about the experience of driving, if I want to indulge in fantasies, I'll just fire up Forza and take cars that cost more than I make in a decade out for a spin.

If there was a box where I could sit for t=same time that actually driving would take, and it magically apparated me to my destination when time was up, I'd take it.

and most importantly, doesn't scare off the hoes

I think women may care slightly about supercars, but I think they actually care about something that is kept clean both inside and out. I would also throw out that an older, more uncommon car that's not a shade of greyscale would have some sexual market value. Plus, if she breaks up with you and sees something like it, she'll get a nice ping of remorse. If you drive a black camry there's no opportunity for long-distance, indirect emotional warfare.

I think some people just don't have the driving "gene" and that's OK, but I also suspect there are many people who do have it and don't realize it. If you haven't pushed a machine to its limits before then you won't know if you enjoy it. Even an afternoon at a high-end go-kart track can let you know if you have the bug or not.

Not every drive can be enjoyed for the same reasons. I love the utility of my minivan for long-haul interstate travel, where the compliant suspension, sliding doors, and infotainment system pay far more dividends than my sport sedan.

I don’t have strong feelings about driving, but I did inherit the driving stamina gene. I can, and have, driven for 14 hours in a single day without excessive fatigue.

Plus, if she breaks up with you and sees something like it, she'll get a nice ping of remorse.

For young men, this reinforces the value-add of having a low—or better yet zero—body-count girlfriend, much less wife. Far fewer avenues by which she can have a "ping of remorse" in this respect.

The male ick for high female bodycount is easily legitimate, if we accept that the female ick for male shortness, low socioeconomic status, or lack of preselection is legitimate.

The more guys who've banged her, the greater probability your cologne, car, interior decor, domicile, choice of vacation spots, choice of AirBNBs/hotels, educational alma mater, former or past employers, etc. can remind her of some other guy(s) for whom she's happily done fatherless things.

Or even if different, perhaps she may prefer the cologne of OtherGuy1, the car of OtherGuy2, the interior decor of OtherGuy3, the domicile of OtherGuy4, the vacation spot(s) she was at with OtherGuy5, the choice of AirBNBs/hotels of OtherGuy6, etc. to your chump selections/experiences.

Of course, lipstick feminists may just poison the well by saying A Real Man wouldn't feel threatened by his girlfriend/wife's bodycount. If your lifestyle reminds your girlfriend/wife of an ex- or one night stand, or how an ex- or one night stand did it better, you should only reflect upon it as a skill issue, be less toxic and insecure, and strive to be better. Just be her best.

Feelings and preferences are legitimate. Full stop. Anybody trying to shame you into thinking otherwise is not your friend and is likely trying to manipulate you to their own selfish ends.

There are still some nice sedans being made. Oh, wait, they've all been discontinued.

I drive a 14-year-old Citroen C3 hatchback. Or rather, my wife drives me around. I've missed my chance to upgrade it to something like Mazda CX-5, but I love its massive panoramic windscreen that matches my own receding hairline.

The Mondeo looks like ass.

I don't know, I like the discount Aston Martin look.

How could you care so little about something you do so much?

I care very little about food and despise cooking (mainly because it takes me a very long time to do it; while food prep time scales sublinearly with the number of diners, I'm only making for one), yet I eat more than I drive, to the point where I'd rather the twice-weekly ride out to get take out be more enjoyable than the food ultimately is.

I truly do not understand how people put up with newer cars.

Why else do you think they spend so much time texting behind the wheel, and why the industry has pivoted to making it easier to text behind the wheel? The very late-2000s through the mid-2010s was the era of car manufacturers thinking they knew better than your phone's software and voice recognition (spoiler: they did not), and then after that it was all screens for cost-cutting reasons (and also backup camera mandates, which given safety standards mandate poorer and poorer visibility was kind of a given at some point).

when I spread that out over the time I've used it and the joy I derive from it it seems like an obvious trade.

And given that most of the cheap cars in the 2010s were made by Kia/Hyundai, and are all ticking time bombs because of their engines, buying slightly newer isn't even going to help you. That's why you pick the slightly older cooler car, take heart that the market doesn't [generally] understand pricing (because for all Ford's/GM's problems, they at least don't tend to fail that catastrophically), and drive it until you cannot drive it any more.

You're tracing very well a significant fear I have around the death spiral of vehicular design. Safety -> Ugliness, Boredom, and Complexity -> Lower Engagement and Skill -> Safety....

And the general public will parrot the (very real!) reduction in injuries and deaths but barely consider the trades they've made for environmentalism and freedom. Using 5,000 pound cars to move a 175 pound human is a fucking farce, and all that nice GPS and cell-tower connected hardware is every 3-letter agency's wet dream.

I can't shake an overwhelming feeling of anxiety about the future of freedom of movement. I'm 140k into probably a 250k mile lifespan and don't know where I'll get my next car 10 years from now. The particular model still appreciates instead of getting cheaper, a replacement with more life in it will be expensive. I forsee a brief window where self-driving software for the masses makes more of my driving pleasant before keeping my hands on the wheel becomes outright illegal.

take heart that the market doesn't [generally] understand pricing

I love when folks get a $1,000 maintenance bill for their current car and then decide to buy a $50,000 car instead of pay it. It's fun breaking them down slowly by walking through how insane it is.

And the general public will parrot the (very real!) reduction in injuries and deaths but barely consider the trades they've made for environmentalism and freedom.

This has reversed in the United States in the last few years. Presumably some of that is Steve Sailer's deaths of exuberance hypothesis, but it also seems like idiots staring at phones is getting pedestrians killed at higher rates now too (I am referring to both the motorists and walkers as idiots, to be clear).

And pot. Potheads, unlike alcoholics, tend to think that they’re perfectly fine or even better driver under the influence.

When I was a kid the stereotype was potheads being pulled over for doing 35 under the limit, and complaining they were being profiled for their grateful dead and Legalyze Medicine bumper stickers.

Now they're tearing through red lights like alcoholics running from DMT demons, I don't understand it.

Hasn’t lot changed pretty substantially? Like it’s gotten stronger, at least.

watching hundreds of drones driving dirty shitboxes without using their turn signals

Speaking of identical shitboxes with insufficient lighting. Is it just me or are there also absurdly fewer colors of cars on the road now too? Even if they were less common you used to see a variety of colors on new cars being sold. Raspberry colored Honda Fits, bright orange Mini Coopers, Forest green Subarus, golden yellow Scion xBs, etc.

Now it seems like the vast majority of cars are some shade of grey/silver. There's something so bleak about seeing a never ending stream of grey cars, driving on gray pavement, with a backdrop of grey concrete buildings, all under a grey sky. It's especially bad contrast when people refuse to turn their lights on when it's raining.

Checking a few random 2024 models it seems like cars are only manufactured in ~4-5 grayish colors (black, grey, white, silver, and bluish grey) and red for some reason. What happened to just regular blue cars? I could have sworn that even 10 years ago every make had a blue option. Then even if the manufacture offers a non-grey color it's a $1k up-charge.

I’m going to die on this hill, but drivers need to turn their lights completely on every single time they drive, day or night, clear or foggy. The visibility is just so much higher. Next time you drive, take a look at incoming cars and note which one you see first. It’s almost never the biggest or the most brightly colored car, it’s almost always the one with their lights on. The auto-on crap is rarely calibrated correctly.

Why do people not have them on always? Some inane cost saving measure that'll bring in a couple dollars per year? Why is it not regulated by law?

Daytime running lights are required on new cars sold in the EU, but in the US our overlords at NHTSA haven't been able to determine that lights make you more visible.

I'm with you on some form of active illumination whenever the car is in drive.

It's not clear to my why NHTSA takes a different stance than every other safety organization with respect to daytime running lights. Motorcyclist, US auto manufactures, insurers, and state DOTs all think that active illumination increases visibility, but somehow NHTSA can't find an effect.

Is it just me or are there also absurdly fewer colors of cars on the road now too?

It is not just you.

I'd tend to blame the obsession with resale value, taken apart in this article about watches. Time was, cars didn't last nearly as long as they do now, especially American cars. 100k miles used to be "on death's door;" now it's a warmup for a lot of models. It was common for the first owner to drive the car all the way to the junkyard, or to sell it for a minimal amount when they were done with it. Modern cars on the road are close to 14 years old, in 1970 the average was under 6, and it only broke ten well in the Dubya administration.

Once reselling your car becomes a concern, tastes become recursively drawn towards the inoffensive median, an ouroboros of boredom. Most people don't mind a white, silver, gray car. Personally, I would love a baby blue or orange car, but never buy a red or gold or black car. But I wouldn't reject a white car. Another person would utterly hate a baby blue or orange car, but would buy a red or gold car. But they'll also accept white. So someone selling a white car has more buyers than someone selling an orange car, giving them higher resale value.

It's recursive, because if the second owner expects to sell to a third owner later on, then he will also prioritize white over orange, and so will pay more for a white car than an orange car. And so on down the line.

People bought fun cars when they expected to drive the car all the way to the junkyard, or they simply didn't care and chose what they liked personally. Today, people make responsible financial choices, and pick boring colors. Everything trends towards a mushy middle. C'est la vie.

It started with the supply chain issues after COVID. Dealers didn’t want colored cars, because they wanted to avoid a situation where they only had three cars of a certain model in stock and two of them were niche colors that most buyers wouldn’t want. So they started ordering only gray, white and black models. The manufactures took note of this and started making more gray, white and black models and fewer brightly colored models. This in turn made the colorful ones more expensive and harder to find, and so even fewer people bought them. So now most cars on the road are gray, white and black.

Started way before covid.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/37001/this-graph-shows-how-car-paint-colors-have-gotten-more-boring-over-the-years this is article from 2020

But I’ve seen reports that the average age of cars on the road in the U.S. is ~13 years old. Assuming that this is referring to the median (and despite finding countless articles repeating the “13 years old” statistic, I haven’t found one that specifies if the average in question is a mean or median), then this suggests that post-COVID-lockdown effects on the distribution of colors among cars on the road can only be marginal at best. And even if the statistic refers to the mean, I doubt that outliers have too much of an effect here.

Of course, your explanation does perfectly answer the other part of your interlocutor’s question, why new cars only come in grey.

I've noticed that, post 2021, many new cars have a sort of muddy shade. Whether it's green, or blue, or brown there's a muddy undertone.

It serves to signal that the owner has a new-model car.

For the same reason, the iPhone usually comes in a new color when the latest model comes out. So if you have a rose gold phone, or a yellow phone, or whatever, people will know you have a new one.

I saw a graph of the relative popularity of colors of car paints, and they pretty much settled into shades of grey sometime in the late 90s. It used to be far more varied, but at one point it all converged on black, grays and white.

Thankfully it's not quite that bad in India, outside of the southern part of the country, where white is the new black. Then again with the solar insolation we get that's an eminently sensible decision, albeit a boring one. Personally, I'm fond of scarlet or crimson cars, and there are still plenty on the streets here.

Car enthusiasts will say that it's the manufacturers. It's another median approach to the market, playing things safe and giving people what they'll buy more consistently, even if it won't excite them as much.

I think that's copium.

If you ask any woman what color car they want, it's going to be grey, white, or black. Just like they're all doing with interior walls.

Men tend to be ambivalent at best, or simple followers of female preference. The vast majority of people view a car as an appliance or a status symbol where conformity is part of its value, as opposed to a critical component of their freedom infrastructure and identity. Look at how many identical Louis Vuitton bags you see being abused in an airport.

There's something freeing about that, as @Walterodim pointed out. Cars are fucking expensive and so not caring about them is nice in many ways. But bottom line: I think the reason for lame colors is that people are boring.

I used to own a fire engine red Sunbeam Alpine convertible, manufactured in 1966, and bequeathed to me by my dad. I burned it to the ground by accident but that's another story. Later in Japan I bought a Eunos Roadster, also red. If I had a sports car now I think I'd go for bright yellow--my wife would despise it. But yeah, yellow. Maybe with a white leather interior. I'd ride it up and down the coastline (if I could find one nearby.) With the top down.

But yeah we have a gray diesel that seats like 8. At least the license plate is custom (that was free for some reason) and a secret handshake to OT Star Wars fans. Small victories.

TK421?

Why aren't you at your post? Maybe yes, maybe no, but please don't guess anymore.

How could you care so little about something you do so much?

I don't drive much (about 5K miles per year) and don't care much when I do drive. I bought thoroughly mediocre Scion tC (basically this model) ten years ago, it serves me well, and I have pretty much zero interest in replacing it anytime soon. In the post-Covid era, I think I've probably put more miles on it from the occasional roadtrip than anything local. Thanks to the inflation in the used car market, the private party value of it is ~65% of what I paid for it new, so even considering replacing it makes no sense to me.

Notably, I actually really enjoy cars and car history. I grew up really loving them, but by the time I had enough money to buy anything particularly interesting, I had grown out of the phase of my life where I cared much about what I personally owned. I'm a lot more interested in having a sweet bike and fresh racing shoes than I am in what I drive. No matter what I drive, the vast majority of my driving is going to be smashing the cruise control button at 77 MPH on the highway and bullshitting with my wife until we get where we're going.

the slightly angular design language of this period right before everything turned into aero blobs for fuel efficiency and crash standards

This is when cars (not trucks) died. The aesthetic difference between a budget minded four door sedan and a legitimate luxury sedan is so close as to be meaningless. Excessively low to the ground, 'swoopy' overall lines that are optimized for fuel efficiency, safety standards, and a '[design] for the broadest possible audience, across the broadest number of countries, to be manufactured in the most efficient possible way.'.

I could write a long piece with hand-wavy gesture to ideas like "we used to have style!" or something, but I think the explanation is far more Quantifiable; we have self-limited choice because of risk aversion and the ability to pre-market products using data. We target the "largest median" of a product and sell that with a few small deviations.

This explains everything from the rolling suppository sedans of today to endless Marvel sequel movies. I'd say it even explains the current political situation - Biden is nothing if not the triangulated middle of the Democrat party over the last 40 years.

But @yofuckreddit wants to talk cars, so we're going to talk cars.

I like 60s-70s muscle cars because they're big and fun to drive. They're not fast compared to today's standards. Given their engine inefficiency, bouncy suspension, and bloated frames, a moderately outfitted coupe of today could beat them on any course that isn't a straight quarter mile dragrace. But driving them puts you in some sort of purpose built road machine. If you thought to yourself "I want to drive the War Rig from Mad Max" I'd invite you to consider a classic early 70's Charger R/T.

I appreciate finely engineering supercars and not-so-supecars (probably like @yofuckreddit's espresso sipping eurocar) but am self-aware enough that I know I could never drive them the way they are meant to be driven. It seems to me like you're almost a fighter pilot in terms of surgical precision in those asphalt cockpits. I'm a cruiser. I like to drive on an interstate outside of a major population center somewhere between 70-85 for hours at a time. Turns are distracting - I am the captain of a battleship and using the rudder is cumbersome.

This is why the only current vehicles I can stomach are full size pickups. I have driven Jeeps and, although highly practical and adaptable, they feel like Tonka Toys to me. An F250 feels like driving a personal freight train. Aesthetically, there is quite a lot of sameness in truck designs with the primary differentiating feature being grills (which really kind of boils down to chrome vs no chrome). The base level of aesthetics, however, is far, far higher than sedans. When you have that sharp cut down from the back of the cab to the bed, you have something clean, distinct, and obvious. No pansexual blended smooth brain lines of TeslaCivicAltima electric razors.

Sadly, I am blackpilled on cars and trucks. EPA and safety regulation means we will never have the glory of Land Yachts and Broughams again. Trucks are already being faulted for being too much truck.

I have some slight optimism that General Aviation could make a comeback. Deregulating it wouldn't be front page news as it is so niche and an increase in demand would reduce the cost of private planes plummet because, first of all, they would start actually building them again. And I think companies would take risks in airplane aesthetics because, once you're above basic airworthiness, there aren't a lot of reasons to be super aerodynamic or structurally ultra-robust if you're staying subsonic. Flight is still associated with imaginative risk taking in the popular consciousness, and the overwhelming majority of current private pilots are doing it as a passion hobby, not a job.

Stylish big, powerful, kind of useless cars are now, sadly, purely a rich man's novelty item

This is why the only current vehicles I can stomach are full size pickups.

A while back when I was cutting firewood on a semi-regular basis and regularly overloading an early 90s Ranger, I found a halfway decent deal on a 2001 Dodge three-quarter ton with 5sp manual and 5.9 Cummins. Great hauler, great tank range (I've road tripped a fair bit of Mexico in it), sounds great for about half an hour, generally very cool. On the other hand, everything that isn't the motor has a remarkable tendency to require involved or expensive repairs, it's challenging to park on less than about 40 acres, loud enough inside that listening to music is just about doable but podcasts are right out, expensive to operate, and honestly kind of a pig offroad because of the weight and turning radius. I don't cut firewood anymore, and it would probably be easier to carry motorcycles in something with a lower bed, but I also don't want to sell it because I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to buy something like it again. Alas.

Stylish big, powerful, kind of useless cars are now, sadly, purely a rich man's novelty item

Verging on CW, but see https://www.avoidablecontact.com/p/brief-notes-on-the-meaning-of-the

they envisioned a future where you commuted to an open-plan office via a battery-powered penalty box while they blasted past with the frenetic mechanical symphony of a 9,000-rpm V-16.

I don't understand. How are they going to blast past when the average speed on the freeway is 20mph?

Love the Bugatti link.

This caught my eye:

I can’t see how they’re making money at that price and volume — presumably the platform will be used for several additional vehicles, because the total revenue of the Tourbillon won’t exceed a billion dollars.

In venture capital tech investing, a billion dollar company (enterprise value, not revenue) is known as a "unicorn" and is the indisputable marker of a fantastically successful investment. Anything over $100m is good, albeit a little ... pedestrian. It is intriguing to me that ultra high end car manufacturers (Bugatti, Lamborghini) may be thinking in terms of raw dollars and cents in the same way.

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