It took awhile for the “media” to acknowledge that those drugs they peddled as “vaccines” were no such thing – as they immunized no one (preventing the acquisition and the transmission of a sickness being the defining essence of what a vaccine is, properly speaking).
Similarly, it has taken awhile for the “media” to begin to acknowledge that a battery powered device isn’t and cannot be a “muscle car,” no matter how much it may look like one and no matter how quickly it gets to 60 or through the quarter mile.
But it is beginning to happen.
A writer for one of the wokest of “car” sites writes: “I’m still not sure if the electric Charger actually is one or not, but this is about as close to an EV muscle car as you’re going to find.”
Actually, it’s as far as you can find.
And not just because the pending device called Charger – which is unintentionally apropos given that’s exactly what you must do to keep it rolling – is a battery powered device. There is another reason why this thing is as far from the muscle cars it pantomimes as you can find:
Its cost.
This device’s base price is $61,590 – which will limit the range – of the buyer pool – to chiefly affluent middle-aged men who can afford the device. More finely, very few young men under 30 will be able to buy this device, leaving aside whether they want one.
The first muscle car – at least, the one that is generally regarded as such – was the 1964 Pontiac GTO. Part of what made it a muscle car was that it had a bigger car’s bigger V8 (the 389) that previously would have only been available from the factory in the bigger car, which needed the bigger engine. The smaller – and lighter – GTO did not need it. And that was precisely the point. The bigger-than-needed V8 is the very heart of the muscle car concept. The concept being audacity as much as performance.
But the GTO was also inexpensive.
Base price – back in ’64 – was about $2,500. In today’s devalued currency, that amounts to about $25k. That’s less than half the base price of the device that will carry the “Charger” name. Put another way, a person would need to have the finances to buy the equivalent of two brand-new 1964 GTOs plus enough gas money left over for the next five years to be in a position to buy one “Charger” device. Not many young guys under 30 could afford to buy two new GTOs back in 1964.
But lots of them could afford to buy one.
And hundreds of thousands of them did – because they could. Most young guys – especially back then – have an interest in cars like the GTO that is on par with their interest in young women. The two go together rather well. But the device called “Charger” is exactly what Pontiac’s chief – back in the late 1950s – was talking about when he talked about how it was easy to sell an old man a young man’s car but much harder to sell a young man an old man’s car.
The device called “Charger” being – at the very least – a middle-aged man’s car. Not only on account of price but also on account of its effeteness. It is automatic-only, whereas every muscle car of the past came standard with a manual transmission – and it is kitted out with climate control AC, power actuated everything and is so easy to drive anyone can drive it. Older guys are generally no longer guys who want to drive a car without amenities and they can afford not to. Younger guys, on the other hand, are willing to do without – especially if they can get into something a GTO with a 389 and a four speed.
Muscle cars were elemental – which was why they were affordable. You got the looks and the engine.
They were also intimidating.
This was also part of the recipe. Just starting the engine was enough to alarm the faint-hearted. And it took some skill to drive one. If you’ve ever depressed the clutch in one you will know all about it. There was no hydraulic assist in those days; you had to have a strong left leg and you had to have developed the skill of managing the in-and-out as you mashed the gas pedal, which was connected to that big V8 engine sucking air through a big four barrel carb (or two) up front.
Let the clutch out too soon and you’d stall the engine. Let it out too late or hold it partially in between too long and you’d burn up the clutch. Executing a precisely timed 1-2 (and then 2-3) upshift was a real art. There is none in pushing a device’s “On” button and mashing its accelerator pedal, which is connected to nothing. No more than is involved in pushing a microwave’s “on” button and waiting for it to warm up your frozen burrito.
Plus the sounds it makes are fake and gay while the sounds a microwave makes are at least real.
The muscle car is of course an impossibility today.
It being effectively impossible to offer a V8-powered car that is compliant with all the federal “safety” and “emissions” folderol for anything close to $25k. More finely, to offer for sale a car – not just the engine – that is compliant for anything close to $25k.
To be compliant, a car must have six air bags – and the car designed around them. It must pass muster with a litany of petty this-and-thats that have nothing at all to do with whether the car is going to crash or prone to crash – which you’d think would define whether it is “safe” to drive.
“Safety” as defined today means compliant with various this-and-thats, such as back-up cameras, structures that deform and absorb impacts a specific way and so on.
According to current compliance standards, a car like the ’64 GTO would be deemed extremely “unsafe.” But it was a car that could be sold to young guys under 30. And it was a muscle car. It did not pantomime one.
It was not fake and gay.
This device called “Charger” is certainly a performance vehicle. But that’s not what a muscle car is. Just as drugs that “reduce the severity of symptoms” are not vaccines.
It’s good to see that the “media” is finally beginning to recognize this.
. . .
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Eric I love that you dropped “fake and gay” in one of your articles. Cool dude confirmed lolol.
I saw this and thought of you. I hope you’ll like it (start at 5:52)
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Kb27xy0uAorR
Thanks for the kid words, Michael!
Mockery is powerful when used righteously.
“And hundreds of thousands of them did – because they could”
I missed out on the muscle car craze back in the late ’60’s early ’70’s. My problem was money or the lack of money as I worked minimum pay jobs back then. Jobs like washing dishes, assembling kitchen chairs, driving cabs and working in a non union paint factory. I instead I bought my first car which was a 9 year old dodge with a 6 cylinder engine and 60,000 miles that I paid $300 for. My next car was a VW Karman Ghia which had exceptional gas mileage. In my old age I drive a Mustang SVT Cobra to relive what I missed out on in my youth. Itz never too late to go muscle crazy.
As I recall back then auto insurance for young people was very, very expensive especially if you owned a HOT CAR like the GTO.
Hi Euro –
Yep! But – in that better, vanished time – one could skip insurance and “get away” with it…
And you could also move your license plate and city sticker from one car to another as my friend frequently did.
We’ve been “getting it” from our overlords for 50 years now:
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec24/big-lie-prosperity12-24.html
50 years ago, you could pay your rent with 3 days’ wages.
And cars were super-affordable, as Charles Hugh Smith describes:
“Cars and trucks cost a fortune now, and they’re bigger and heavier and dependent on electronics that can’t be repaired at home and that are super-costly to repair. And what exactly makes them so much better? Recall that we all managed to get by without rearview cameras … for decades.
“My 1979 Honda Accord (bought used for $2,600 in 1987 — $7,350 in today’s dollars) operated for many years with little more than routine maintenance despite being 8 years old when I bought it. It got about the same mileage (40 MPG) as my current 2016 Civic, which has a bigger engine and is much heavier. Is it a “better” vehicle given that repair estimates of $3,000 or more are now the norm? I could still replace a defective sensor in my 1998 Civic myself. Now? Forget it.
“In terms of repairability, modern vehicles are off-the-scale worse than the highly reliable vehicles of 30 or even 40 years ago.”
The “crappification” of America really started in ’71 when Nixon cut the last link between gold and the USD. Crap money seems to produce only crap jobs, crap food, crap service, crap everything.
https://s3mag.com/tim-kuniskis-is-back/
Hopefully he can turn the ship around
It always amuses me me how the so-called journalist ‘mos at Jalopnik, who claim to be “car guys”, constantly shill for the EeeVee manufacturers. They have no idea…
On a different note…thank God for John De Lorean. If it wasn’t for his persistence against GM management and his marketing savvy with the Tempest GTO option package, we (in America) might never have been blessed with the muscle car era of the 1960s – ’70s. He knew what the kids wanted!
He was also the drive to fixing the wallowing piss poor handling larger cars. The ‘73 Monte Carlo was a bloat mobile but didn’t drive that way. The story I got was he had the suspension designed off his personal Mercedes. Big sway bars, quicker steering, and at that time an unheard of -5 degree caster to make it track straight.
My post high school job was working for the local dealership car rental outfit. First time I drove one I couldn’t believe it was an American car, they were a kick to drive. Too much fun at times, one of the lot rats was bring a brand new Monte from the dealer out to the airport and took the winding river road back way. Wet road too fast = nose first into the Green River. 9 miles on the odometer.
The guys that started Jalopnik are all long gone and some of them founded Autopian since then. They are still dumbasses, but at least they are car dumbasses.
It’s now part of a group of horrendous media sites such as looper and women.com.
Nothing like going bankrupt to convince you to “get it”.
Who do you think went bankrupt recently?
When your internal combustion engine car was used up and no longer running, there use to be some salvage value, even to get it hauled away for nothing and let the salvage yard deal with it. After the car was stripped for parts, there was value in the remaining steel for recycle.
What is the fate of someone who is the last owner of an EV and the battery is shot? Does Tesla/Ford/GM/Jaguar/Stellantis take it in as a salvage trade to get a new EV (or other ICE car)? How much is the credit? Is this cost baked into the EV price from the onset? What happens if later these companies refuse to take these EV batteries back, since they are all going broke over EV’s (except Tesla which makes money on carbon credits)??
Then that person gets to pay the price of stripping the car off the battery and then having it shipped to a special battery recycler. Since this is a *one off* and not a continued business of battery supply-recycle, enjoy the added cost to get rid of it. One more cost (and risk) factor of EV ownership?
We Are Beginning To Get It
Twilight of the empire:
‘In 2018, during President-elect Trump’s first term, Boeing received a $3.9 billion contract to build two new 747-8 aircraft for use as Air Force One. The aircraft were supposed to be delivered by the end of this year.
‘A new report from the Wall Street Journal suggests that continued delays indicate President-elect Donald Trump will not get to fly in the new Boeing 747s during his second term, with the latest projections targeting 2029 or later.
‘”The delay is startling given that Boeing isn’t building the planes from scratch,” WSJ noted’ — WSJ via ZeroHedge
Eleven years or more, to build two (2) aircraft based on a fifty-year-old design?
USA: not a serious country anymore.
Victory in Ukraine! /sarc
For me the most striking illustration was when the Concorde/SST was retired by the formerly prosperous west in the same week that China sent their first manned spacecraft into low earth orbit.
We’ve been robbed and enslaved. The first step to fixing the problem is to recognize it.
You want a 747-8? Well, you can’t have one!
MBS paid more money, he gets the 747-8 with a letter after the 8, not Trump.
1.5 billion for new jets for MBS, life is good.
Boeing has other buyers out there, Trump wants a 747-8F for free. He can wait for a while.
“I can’t do it by the end of the day. Repeat after me, “I can do this by the end of the day, Julian.”
Just because you make me repeat something doesn’t make it possible.
Just repeat it then.
It doesn’t make it possible.
It’s a lot of pressure, just leave me alone and I’ll work on it as fast as I can.”
The car guys I know are going for 4 door sedans and station wagons too…I went to a cruise night last summer and saw that Buick Estate Wagons, Chrysler New Yorkers and Cordobas, Mercury Marquis, and the like matched or even outnumbered the Mustangs, Corvettes, and GTOs.
Hi Mike, offensive is in the ear of the listener, my ’67 GTO rattled windows for blocks, girlfriend would meet me at her front door, drove to Fresno from Montana, my friend Brent and his dad waiting with a snifter of cognac. Stomp on the gas, let off and let her rip, I’d hear muscle cars out in the boonies at night, music to my ears.
Ah, the cars of my youth: 1967 GTO with a 454 Chevy LS5, glass paks (fiberglass burned out, was like running straight pipes), 1970 Chevelle SS 454 LS6 solid lifters, aftermarket cam (drive slow or fast, 6 mpg), 1966 GTO convertible, 1964 GTO, and a sedate 1967 Mercury Cougar.
Certainly the bums sitting in the automobile corporation C-suites are capable of listening to some good music.
There are millions of automobiles, it is a buyer’s market.
In the cars of my youth
How I tore through them sand dunes
And cut up my tires on them oyster shell roads
Ah, but nothing is forever
Say the old men in the shipyards
Turning trees into shrimp boats
Hell, I guess they ought to know – Guy Clark, South Coast of Texas
You could also fix them yourself. Either in your driveway or in the garage. EVs are unrepairable, because the most likely point of failure is the battery pack, which takes up most of the car. You can’t just unbolt it and swap in another over a long weekend. The rest of the car is built around the battery pack (kind of like how GM builds cars around the oil filter).
Even worse is the Tesla. The chassis is basically glued together. No way a home-gamer is going to have access to the proper tooling for removing and reattaching body panels. Those epoxy mixing guns have to come from 3M and might even have restrictions as to who can buy them, ‘lest the environment be “impacted” by a mistake.
But even normal cars require a set of tools that are expensive and hard to come by. The brake calipers on the old ’91 Lumina (spit) were attached with a monstrous T head bolt, T-75 IIRC. My mechanic had to special order it from the Snap-On rape wagon (two more payments and he’ll actually own it!). Pretty sure he only used it on my car, and then I got rid of that rolling special needs vehicle. Sorry Russ.
When dad dies my nephews will probably pick through the tool chests looking for something useful. Problem is most everything he has is SAE, not metric. Not useful for much except trying to keep an old car running. They both do some wrenching, mostly bolt-on aftermarket Jeep stuff, but all that is metric sized hardware.
Indeed, I just bought a GEM car for the wife to run around the garden and the small town. But the auctioneer lied (who would have thought it…) and it needs a battery pack. And even a golf cart/GEM takes 6 very expensive batteries, a $2000 plus battery pack is a great way to save $100/year on fuel and maintenance on our 40 year old Kawasaki mule.
Of course, now I’m thinking of how to get one of the Buick 3.8 gen 3 supercharged V6 I’ve been saving for a special project in there. A sleeper of Q ship proportions…
“the Snap-On rape wagon.” Ain’t that the truth. I bought a really nice swivel head ratchet that cost a pretty penny a long time ago (they’re currently $180). The assurance was a lifetime warranty. While excellent, those ratchets were known for stripping out the gear wheel in the head due to them being very finely geared (as opposed to course). I made a warranty claim a few times, and all the rape wagon would do is give me a rebuild kit, which I had to do myself. Ok, ok, it only takes 10 minutes or so.
I still have it and it’s stripped out again. I just want to get another rebuild kit to make it functional, but now Snap-On is trying to charge me $25 for it. WTF.
Defining muscle car is like defining love –you know it when you see it.
it has to be:
overpowered but underweight
the sound must be deep & loud but not offensive
it must have a 4-speed manual
the stylings must be badass & fast
it must be wholly impractical as a daily mover or a family car
Lack any one of those criteria & it ain’t a muscle car. That’s just my $.02.
From Doug Casey (link: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/12/doug-casey/collapse-of-the-5-trillion-green-energy-scam/)
International Man: Even with enormous government support, electric vehicles (EVs) can barely compete with gasoline vehicles.
According to J.D. Power, a consumer research firm, the average EV still costs at least 21% more than the average gasoline vehicle, even with government support. President Trump has promised that he will end subsidies for EVs.
Can EVs compete with gasoline vehicles on a level playing field?
Doug Casey: First, let me say that the government shouldn’t subsidize anything. They create distortions in the market, resulting in misallocations of capital. The result is that a few politically protected types benefit while the overall wealth of the society declines.
I don’t have anything against EVs. They can be much faster and handle much better than gas vehicles. For selected uses, such as within cities, where EVs can be charged easily, they certainly have a place in the automotive ecosystem. And over time, EV batteries will improve, giving them lower costs, better performance, lower weight, and longer range.
But internal combustion engines are constantly becoming more efficient as well. Deciding the most economic and generally satisfactory technology should be up to the producers and the users, not bureaucrats. It’s a matter for physics, not politics, to determine.
Subsidizing uneconomic vehicles just wastes capital, lowers the general standard of living, and slows progress. There are serious problems that EV advocates don’t want to consider, such as the amount of extra electrical power needed to run these vehicles. That will require more generating plants, almost all coal or gas fired. And a vastly improved grid to distribute that power effectively.
The premature and forced adoption of EVs will likely result in bankruptcies throughout the automotive business. Which will slow progress, wipe out many investors, and unemploy many workers. Here’s a radical thought: The government should have nothing—zero—to do with cars.
My 67 Chevelle SS is fairly practical. Unlike a Camry or Accord, it can carry 5 people and their crap, and it’s 5 instead of 6 because it’s a manual transmission.
It gets 15 MPG despite being easily able to smoke any 2024 naturally aspirated vehicle regardless of make.
Smash the EeeVee lunacy:
‘Donald Trump’s transition team is considering canceling the U.S. Postal Service’s contracts to electrify its delivery fleet, as part of a broader suite of executive orders targeting electric vehicles.
‘Reuters has previously reported that Trump is planning to kill a $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicle purchases, and plans to roll back Biden’s stricter fuel-efficiency standards.
‘Trump’s transition team is now reviewing how it can unwind the postal service’s multibillion-dollar contracts, including with Oshkosh and Ford, for tens of thousands of battery-driven delivery trucks and charging stations.’ — Reuters
https://tinyurl.com/442vwddn
We don’t need no stiiiinkin’ EeeVees. 🙂
Imagine trying to do any sort of long-term planning in this regulatory environment. Democrat president sets a standard. 4 years later, Republican president rescinds it. 4 years after that, Democrats put them back in place, only worse.
How the hell are you supposed to design a car over the span of more than one presidential term with that going on?
Don’t get me wrong, they brought this on themselves (as we all point out time and time again). Maybe with the Chevron Deference case being favorable to freedom, maybe these edicts will lose their teeth anyway. But it seems like the Congress better get their act together soon. They’re just one executive order away from being dissolved.
‘it seems like the Congress better get their act together soon.’ — ReadyKilowatt
Yeah, after 235 years, why not now?
Mahatma Gandhi, on being asked, “What do you think of Western civilization?” answered, “I think it would be a good idea.”
Lesson learned: Fight the unconstitutional federal diktats in the first place.
Wrong.
How does F² “drain the swamp” by hiring 10k new swamp creatures?
How does F² drain the swamp by forming a new grift aka DOGE? Putting Grifter #1 the “duke of DC” in the swamp?
Its March 20 all over again and Im watching stupid people lap up pure BS. . .
And four years from now
Rinse and repeat.
The government’s military vehicles being 100% EV would be OK by me.
Two thumbs up!
Airhead Jenny Granholm joins in the ‘Biden’ regime’s looting:
‘The Department of Energy is racing against the clock to finalize a $335 million grant to help Stellantis overhaul its auto plant in Belvidere, Illinois.
‘The plan calls for Belvidere, which opened in 1965 as a Chrysler plant, to be overhauled to make electric pickup trucks and includes a new battery plant to be built nearby.
‘The factory employed 5,000 workers as recently as 2019. There were 1,350 workers building Jeep Cherokees when it was idled in February 2023.’ — Crain’s Chicago Business
https://archive.ph/vJaBT#selection-2785.0-2785.313
More EeeVee pickups — yeah, those are gonna sell like hotcakes with buyers beating down the doors. /snark
EeeVee Fever is dead. But in the ideology-warped minds of the ‘Biden’ regime, it’s still 2021 and America desperately needs ‘MOAR EeeVees.’
Death to Stellantis. Stinking pickpockets.
Hagerty just did a drag race video and the entry price point to performance essentially begins at $35k w/Mustang, WRX, GR86, GTI, 3 Turbo and Elantra N.
They’re all 4 cylinders and the Mustang & 3 are automatic only.
In terms of on-track performance, these cars beat supercars from 1964, so the AMOUNT of car you can buy today is still relatively cheap.
But how many young people can even afford these entry level cars – much less the average ones that are likely going to cost $40k or more out the door?
(Even Subaru just eliminated the base $32k WRX and now begins with the Premium trim over $35k.)
Then when these cars don’t sell, they get canceled because “nobody is buying them!”
The dollar – along with its users – is/are broke.
Hi Flipm
Yes, exactly. Performance cars have become middle aged men’s cars – and there are not all that many of the latter who want to buy a modern performance car for reasons that include their impracticality as well as – frankly – their being harder for older guys to get into and out of, etc.
The original muscle cars were cars that could be bought by guys who just graduated high school. And because so many did, there were lots of really cheap used muscle cars available in the ’80s. My high school parking lot was full of them. I owned a beater ’78 Camaro. Not a Z28. But it did have a 350 and that smnall block V8 could be made into a serious performer with a weekend’s work installing a $150 cam kit and a set of headers, etc.
Hi Flip,
Middle aged men (in which I am married to one) do not want them. As a woman with one husband and three BILs none of them have any interest in anything new. It isn’t even the price, just that today’s cars have zero soul. These guys are happy to spend $20-$25k for something they do want which is usually 20 or 25 years old. A car from their youth.
Watching Stellantis destroy Dodge, Ford torture the Mustang, and GM “redesign” the Corvette is sad. I can only assume today’s Board of Directors and engineers absolutely hate cars. Why they feel the need to obliterate once iconic brands is beyond me.
Nostalgia is an easy marketing technique. Thing is, it isn’t “middle aged” men buying these cars, it’s the old guys who’ve got a defined benefit pension or their 401(k) bought MSFT and AAPL early. Their houses are paid for, or they’ve cashed out the old place and moved to a bungalow in The Villages. Either way, they have to spend a certain amount of money every year or get taxed at a punitive rate. So they buy stupid things like Corvettes. My neighbor is one of these pensioners. He has a new body Corvette in the garage, it comes out on sunny summer days for a few hours. Never has to wash it because it never gets dirty. He’ll probably trade it in a few years for something else, just to avoid paying taxes.
I have a friend who recently retired at 64. He had a countdown timer running on his work computer that ticked off the time until his stock options hit maturity. When that day hit he was gone, off to live near his sister in law in Florida (happy wife…).
That’s the money the big three are chasing. They don’t care about Gen Z or bringing in new buyers. They’re the Uber generation (except that they aren’t, but the deaf and dumb C suites bought into the idea). They’re going to rent or have autonomous vehicles moving them around, drones delivering their dinner, and air “taxis” flying them to the hospital. Imagine! 🙄
If I end up in a place like The Villages, I need an intervention.
I lived for a decade in an HOA outside Tampa dealing with threats of violence over nonsense like sod.
Hi Roscoe,
I used to have to deal with an HOA. I learned. I will never buy a house with that business involved. I had to beg permission to paint my own damn house – and get the color “approved” by a surly Frau.
“Surly Frau” would be an excellent name for a band. The kick drum could have that pic of Angela Merkel that you’ve used.
The worst HOA Nazis around Tampa are the retired military who arrive in town on the tail end of their careers, trying to turn the last house purchased on their off base housing allowance into either rental fodder or a 10x gain.
Defenders of our freedom.
That housing allowance expanded greatly over the last few years, essentially a bribe to look the other way while Biden shuffles his way into a nuclar war.
Welcome to southern Oregon.
That’s a perfect summary, RG –
I love quick/fast cars. But they must be interesting cars. EVs are the the opposite of interesting because they are all fundamentally the same, including how they drive. There is nothing endearing about them. Nothing that creates an emotional bond. I don’t need to bond with my microwave oven. I just need it to nuke my food. When it stops being able to do that, I throw it away and get another. EVs are a lot like that – only they also cost much more than other appliances.
Hi Eric,
Just got the AMG this week. Unbelievably fast and so smooth. One would take a look at this car and not think much is under the hood, but it will kick a Lambo’s ass. I am going to love taking this car onto I-66.
603 hp. Enjoy the ride!
She is pretty awesome, Rain. You feel like you are going 25 and you are at 80 real quick.
Congrats RG. My wife lusts after the AMG. The GT in particular. She ‘settled’ for a Caddy ct4 blackwing, cause she talks a big game until the checkbook has to come out, haha…………………..
Hi Chris,
The one we got is almost 20 years old. The prices on these are close to nothing. How a $200k car goes to $20k is beyond me, but it is fun car to drive. No doubt repairs will be expensive, but the hubby doesn’t buy anything he can’t work on.
Ford needs to put the “secretary car” version of the Mustang back into production, with a normally aspirated V6 and a reliable automatic. Dependable transportation but interesting. Price in the upper $20s.
A lot of males bought “secretary cars” back one day.
And girls named Donna drove Camaros.
Back in the day. I hate autocorrect.
Lisa mastered the stick in 8th grade.
What! No jokes about the Faguar 00 yet? You guys are slipping.
Well, there’s this: https://www.advocate.com/out-100/out100-2024-red-carpet#rebelltitem18
Except the 64 GTO is $25K in 2024 dollars.
I think a bone stock 64 GTO plus $10,000 worth of modifications would take a Coyote Mustang, let alone the 4 cylinder.
Hi Horst,
Yup – exactly!
I could amp up the 455 in my Trans Am to make 500 horsepower for less than $5,000 in hi-flow heads, roller cam and a few other parts. Given that the TA is light relative to modern performance cars – a mere 3,700 lbs. – it’d be a killer in the quarter mile. Assuming I could hook it up!
That T/A is like Anakin Skywalker’s light saber, when Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi hands it to “Ani’s” son, Luke:
“It’s your father’s lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster, but an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.”
I’ve nothing against new tech, even stuff that came out long after I waited anxiously every night of Dec 24th-25th to see the following morning what “Santy Claus” had brung for me. There was something about the Detroit Iron of the 50’s, 60’s, and into the 70’s, before the EPA, Jimmy Carter and his Gott-Damned “Malaise”, Catalytic converters, and the Insurance Mafia making cars overweight, underpowered, and just plain “Bucking Foring”. It was manufactured with enough precision to not fall apart after 20K miles, but even V8s with an excess of 300 ponies gross were typically not all that complicated. That is, if you had auto shop in high school, you could perform basic maintenance on even the new rides. The big things were learning how to properly TUNE an engine, and any manual writer that listed a procedure with adjusted air/fuel mixture with a $5,000 (in 1973 dollars) engine analyzer, well, THEIR works I paid no further heed to. Any kid with a timing light, a vacuum/fuel pressure gage, a dwell/tach, and a multimeter could achieve a satisfactory tune-up, and the $150 or so spent at Sears (often what “Santa” brought for XMas or Birthday presents once I turned sixteen), along with a set of Craftsman tools (again, the “present” for the Big Boy and his toys), and there wasn’t anything I couldn’t tackle. My Dad had learned a few tricks of carb float setting and check the vacuum break, which often cured hard starting, stalling, and poor fuel economy, from that Carswell AFB auto hobby shop, keeping a 318 Poly 2-barrel on a ’66 Coronet going that he’d picked up for cheap.
And “seat of the pants” driving was a REAL thing! Sounds, and FEEL were often reliable indicators that something was amiss.
At least both my boys, now 40 and 38, do their own work and have done several projects. PRACTICAL skills, and more than simply being a “shade tree” mechanic. SELF-RELIANCE. I’ve seen some of the things that even I rarely did, like the younger one installing a pre-hung door in his former home in Iowa when he lived there, and the older one doing all sorts of “fix it” projects to avoid debt or “calling the guy”. That’s TOXIC MASCULINITY at work, folks, and I’m GOTT-DAMNED PROUD OF IT, as well as my sons.
My daughters are no slouches at fending for themselves either.
‘It took awhile for the “media” to acknowledge that those drugs they peddled as “vaccines” were no such thing’ — eric
Whereas Big Gov STILL doesn’t acknowledge such a thing. In its waning weeks, the ‘Biden’ regime continues its sabotage campaign. HHS ‘secretary’ Becerra:
“I am now amending section XII of the [emergency] Declaration to extend the time period of PREP Act coverage [of ‘vaccines’] through December 31, 2029. COVID-19 continues to present a credible risk of a future public health emergency.
‘Development of and stockpiling vaccines [sic], therapeutics, devices, and diagnostics for COVID-19 continues to be needed for U.S. preparedness against the credible threat of a public health emergency due to outbreaks of COVID-19.’
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/12/biden-regime-quietly-extends-covid-19-emergency-declaration/
*YAWN* Dude, that is so five years ago.
Brainless, corrupt taco bender ‘Becerra’ polluted the waters for future Hispanics who (unlike him) are actually capable and qualified. ‘Becerra’ has been almost as destructive as ‘Mayorkas,’ who HIAS risibly described as ‘the first Latino to head the Department of Homeland Security.’