The Great Regression

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Volkswagen is touting the 260 mile range of its new ID.4 electric crossover, up 10 whole miles from what the EPA had previously estimated.

This means you can travel as far as 130 milesone way – before you are forced to stop for a long time in order to keep going that way. Or you can turn around and make it home – maybe. At the risk of maybe not quite making it and having to wait for a long time before you can get home again.

This is what you get for $40,000 to start, the base price of the ID.4.

Well, technically, $39,995. Gotta keep it “under “40k,” which appears to be the new benchmark for EV entry-level.

Here is what you used to be able to get from VW for $22,460 back in 2015 – which was the year before VWs like the TDI diesel-powered Jetta TDI sedan got in trouble with Uncle:

652 miles before you had to stop for a couple of minutes in order to be back on your way again.

To be fair, that was on the highway.

In city driving, the Jetta TDI could only go 449 miles – which is only just shy of twice as far as the ID.4 can go, anywhere – for just shy of twice as much.

Only in a world gone loopy could such a reversion and diminution be cause for anything other than embarrassment – and ridicule. But it is of a piece with the bizarro oh, thank you massa eructing from people who have been graciously allowed to walk around again, provided they wear a Face Diaper and provided they don’t stand too close to anyone else. Or the curious, obsequious gratefulness of restaurant owners allowed to open, provided they only serve half the people they used to be able to – while still being obliged to pay all of the rent and taxes, etc. 

It’s pathological.

That goes double-plus-good for for the car press, which in saner times would have ridiculed a car that went half as far and cost twice as much being purveyed as some sort of boon to the car-buying public.

Mind: The ID.4 is not a specialty/high-performance/ultra-luxury car. Such cars are exempt from the usual considerations of practicality and cost. A Corvette is not expected to be a reasonable car because it was never meant to sell in numbers; the whole point as regards a car like the ‘Vette is to be free of the constraints that bind cars that need to be practical and affordable in order to sell in numbers.

That doctrine has been cast to the wind – and not just by VW but by an industry that seems to believe that considerations of practicality and cost no longer matter with regard to EVs.

Even though the whole point with regard to EVs is to sell them to lots of people, else their supposed ability to arrest “climate change” is as pointless as attempting to drain the sea using a sippy straw.

But for a car to sell to lots of people it must be able to take those people where they need to go – wherever that may be – affordably and practically.

Well, it was.

Now, apparently, neither attribute matters – when it comes to EVs.

The same mentality that thinks a restaurant can remain viable at half capacity while being obligated to pay 100 percent of the costs seems to believe lots of people are going to be willing to pay almost twice as much to go half as far – and then wait five times as long (at least) to get going again.

There is a common denominator here.

Force.

No restaurants or gyms or businesses are operating at half or two-thirds or anything less than full capacity because they want to. They are doing it because they are obliged to, by the force of government.

Similarly, VW is counting on people being forced to buy – more likely, to rent – electric cars like the ID.4, which VW (and the industry, generally) expects to be the only available cars before this decade is out – because of the force of government.    

It is the same force, by the way, that is forcing VW to pay for the “free” three years of charging that is included with the purchase/rental of the ID.4 under the auspices of Electrify America, which VW was forced to fund the tune of $2 billion as part of the settlement with the government over VW’s efforts to “cheat” the government – for the sake of its customers.

Government emissions tests – not the ones you have to pass to get your car registered but the ones a car company must pass to get a car certified for sale to the public – had become angels-dancing-on-pinheads stringent, arguably with the intention of making it impossible to certify a diesel engine – at least, not one that was affordable and practical.

VW “cheated” on these tests by encoding software in the car’s computer to adjust how the engine ran during a specific part of the test. The cheating was so trivially minor that the “affected” (as they were styled) cars easily passed the state emissions tests required to get (or renew) vehicle registration in some states and had no meaningful effect on air equality and presented no threat to people’s health – the proof of which is that the government didn’t produce a single actual victim of this “cheating.”

It was a violation of the rules, that’s all – like not wearing a Face Diaper to enter a restaurant (where you’re allowed take it off once you sit down).

VW deserved the public’s support for standing up to “the rules” – by “cheating” the government, for the sake of its customers. But not enough customers rose to VW’s defense – just as not enough people have supported restaurants and businesses that stand up to “the rules” that are putting them out of business.

VW – washed clean of heresy in Room 101 – now casts a gin-teared eye at the Telescreen, feels love for Big Brother and is no longer worried about the people who were its customers.

. . . 

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34 COMMENTS

  1. Sinclair Premium and a Harley, the “go to” on the way to Sturgis from Western WA in our road trip ‘90s. Great gas, clean stations. And breakfast at Perkins. Like to do it at least once more before it all fades away.

  2. It matters not to the Psychopaths In Charge what the “effect” of VW’s “cheating” might have been, if any effect at all. The number one crime, a capital offense, that cannot be tolerated by those Psychopaths In Charge is disobedience.

  3. I have been driving my pickup truck which gets me about 280 miles before I need to fill up. It’s a pain in the ass. I could only imagine having to stop for a charge.

    I’ve been spoiled by driving a TDI for the past 18 years where I don’t fill up until after the tripmeter ticks over 600 miles. I never realized how important range is until I had to park this car.

    • I had, until I had to part with in courtesy of a divorce, a decent ’95 E300 diesel with the OHC 3.0 liter diesel six-banger, the successor to the dependable OM617 five-banger that powered many a Benzer from about ’73 onto about ’89. This beast got 40 mpg on the highway and about 25 around town. It wasn’t fast off the line, having only about 114 ponies, but it was torquey…and once you got it up to about 55, just hit the throttle and it’d respond! I could likewise go all the way from Sacramento to Salt Lake City on a single fillup, though I almost always tanked up in either Winnemucca or Elko as by then I had to take a dump or a leak anyway and get some grub.

      Someone please explain how that ol’ Benz, going as far as it did on diesel, which itself the refiners can get more product from a given barrel of petroleum that gasoline, as well as put less additives, including some rare earth metals, and how THAT can be improved upon insofar as the ballyhooed “carbon footprint” is concerned. BTW, I did also feed that Benz some B20 (biodiesel), and noticed no difference at all in engine performance nor fuel economy. Again, how it THAT any LESS “Eco-Friendly”?

      I’ve concluded that most of the politicians that pushed these “fatwas” on the motoring public don’t know jack shit about economics, nor chemistry, nor mechanical engineering. Why THEY should be allowed to make that decision “in the Public Interest” defies logic.

  4. That range is an estimate, based on a dynometer test. Similar to the one that VW (and GM… but no one remembers that), “cheated” on to get their fuel system permitted on Uncle’s highways. Those same tests seem to be incredibly generous in their treatment of electric vehicles. Most people who own Teslas don’t see anywhere near the MPGe that the sticker says, especially if there’s any reason to run the HVAC system. But that’s OK, it’s just a guide. Not to be taken as gospel. Unless you’re a true believer of course, then you can figure out a way to ignore the truth.

    • Literally, “YMMV”, or “Your Mileage May Vary”, the ultimate disclaimer. It means that everything we just claimed on behalf of this “WunderWagen” is utter BULLSHIT, but since those were the numbers that the EPA testing facility reported (and, like has been documented with the so-called “impartial” Consumer Reports magazine, BRIBED by Japanese automakers to favorably review their product, knowing they can’t be held to account for it), they get to tout it to hawk their vehicle.

      • Hi Douglas,

        Yes. I didn’t mention that in the piece so I’m glad you brought it up. The touted range with EVs can vary significantly – and because of factors that do not affect non-EVs much at all, such as weather and use of accessories. If it’s 18 degrees outside and I have the heat cranked and lights on, my truck’s mileage (range) will be about the same as it would be on a 60 degree day, in part because heat costs almost nothing extra in energy terms to use. But in an EV, the battery’s performance is less in the cold and accessories such as heat draw significant power from the battery, further reducing the energy available.

        This whole thing is a turtle head poking out of government’s arse – that almost everyone seems to think is pretty.

        • There are people, the true believers, who are so in the cult that they’ll blame themselves for not achieving the MPGe number. They spend hours on Reddit with the others who will offer tips and encouragement, which might get marginal improvements. And then there will be the one guy who lives in Cocoa Beach FL, lives right on the beach so he gets perfect weather every day, and is a retired NASA scientist so he has all day to futz around with testing different driving techniques. He has all the answers ready to rattle off.

          Some would call it a cult, I’d say more a modern take on living a monastic life.

    • Yeah, there is no way that this piece of crap would be able to get the 260 mile range at typical highway driving speeds which approach 90 mph in the state of Oklahoma on I-35. I would be lucky to make it to the Texas line, 140 miles from my house.

  5. Why did car companies roll over on the electrics so easily?

    They agreed to this path in 2012 and I guess thought they could reverse the rules? Played that one wrong.
    Now they want your tax dollars to subsidize their products.

    I don’t know what to think of this lack of foresight into the unintended consequences they helped bring upon us all.

    • Because they are incorporated, and corporations are a creation of the state, having no rights the state does not give them, which the state can just as easily take away. I’ve long argued they are NOT private businesses. They are at all times at the mercy of the state, in all regards.

    • Dan asks, “Why did car companies roll over on the electrics so easily?”

      We bought a VW Sportwagen (4-door Golf station wagon) 2 years ago. The car is stunning. It is handsome. It holds as much as a mid-sized SUV. It is a blast to drive, smooth and quick’ agile and stable. We (family of 4, fully loaded with luggage) just averaged 38 MPG on a high-speed Western road trip. It is a marvel in every way. Oh, and we got it for well under $20,000 new.

      Why did we get it for under $20,000 new? Because there is absolutely no market for a car like this. It had been sitting on the dealer’s lot for over 4 months, per Edmunds. That model was discontinued 6 months later, as VW was done selling 5,000 of them annually in the US. This astonishing feat of engineering and construction; they couldn’t give them away.

      VW is following the market. Americans have minimal interest in amazing diesels, or gasoline powered cars. We buy $35,000 SUVs and pick-up trucks hand over foot.

      VW read the tea leaves, in my opinion, correctly. They bent the rules to build better cars for consumers, that consumers could care less about. They were going to have to pay huge fines. Why not use those fines to underwrite the transition to the next age in transportation?

      We may not like it, but I think they made the best strategic corporate decision for the cards they had. They will be at the top of the EV heap rather than the bottom of the IC heap. Will EVs pan out? We’ll see. American customers have pissed away their opportunity to buy superior VW diesels and IC cars. VW wasn’t going to make it that way. They had to roll the dice on EVs, whether or not it will work. Now they make superior EVs (even if/though EVs are inferior to diesels and IC cars).

      • I have to say the European diesels are amazing when it comes to fuel economy. My BMW X3, manual gear box, all wheel drive from 2007. It has a 2.0d engine generating 170 or so HP, which isn’t bad. But heres the thing – on a 62 litre tank if I do 50/50 motorway – town driving I can get 500 miles on a tank (and its hilly where I live). And with regards to reliability – it only broken down once on the road in the 7 years ive had it (poor thing gave me a red warning for the battery which I should have take seriously, but I was busy that day so still drove it over 100 miles before it completely died on the side of the road).

        Theres no way they could have sold electric cars with cars like this out there !!

      • Hi Jeff,

        The point I take issue with here is this business of “following the market.” There is very little natural market for EVs, simply because they are too expensive and impractical for most people. This ID.4 costs $40,000 to start – and people who make $40k or less per annum cannot afford that, even if they did want it. Leaving aside the absurdity of spending that kind of money to have to deal with a car that can only go about 130 miles down the road before it must either turn around – in order to make it back home, without having to stop. Or stop – and make you wait – before you can get moving again.

        And they ask me why I drink!

        • VW’s problem was they produced that at a time when fuel was cheap. It’s true that for my local drive, I just don’t care that much about fuel economy when I’m paying under $2. Adjusted for inflation, that’s gotta be less than I paid in the ’70s.

          Now fuel probably won’t hit $4, at least for more than a blip to force out the holdouts. After that, the ruling class will be able to buy fuel, but not the serfs, and because of the decreased quantity demanded, the ruling class will get the best technology, the premium fuel, all at pennies on the dollar.

        • Eric, we need only look at the sorry state of consumer goods produced in the former Soviet Union, or to some extent their satellite states behind the erstwhile “Iron Curtain”. It’s not that they didn’t have competent scientists and engineers; they did. It’s that whatever was produced was IAW what various “committees”, all reporting up the Party bureaucracy to the Politburo, DICTATED that was “needed”. Automotive-wise, most of the Soviet designs were, well, STURDY, given the relatively poor state of their roads and harsh climate, but they had little use for innovations common in the West, at least until they imported Western designs and manufacturing techniques, like when they contracted with Fiat to design and produce the “Lada”, itself derived from the trusty Fiat 128. Jay Leno owns a snazzier car, as it were, called the “Volga”, made by GAZ, better known for their military trucks. His is a ’66, but looks like a refugee from 1949. It was horribly outdated in terms of technology, but like the Soviet-built tanks, it was tough! Since there never were enough of these cars available, and certainly nothing like a Russian version of Kragen or CarQuest, the privileged few that actually got one for their private use seldom complained…as if anyone would listen!

          FWIW, when Khrushchev made his visit to the USA in 1959, he saw a traffic jam across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which alone was astonishing, but what the Premier really noted that in most of these oversized American dinosaurs, there was SOLELY the driver! That’s what gave him pause…that the typical American routinely commuted to work in a larger, more comfortable and reliable car than anyone, especially in the “worker’s paradise”, could dream of owning at all, and not only could he afford that beast, but there was ANOTHER one in the driveway, usually a station wagon, that the wifey drove and hauled the kids around in. We fail to appreciate what a FREE Market, left unconstrained, can achieve IAW consumer demand.

          • Hi Douglas,

            Yup. I happen to have an old SKS rifle. It is a remarkably crude thing. But it is effective – and as Marshall Zhukov said, quantity has a quality all its own.

            • Re; Quality having a ‘quality’ all its own…I’m fairly sure that’s more attributed to Stalin, though the Marshal (“Now where can a soldier get some ‘lubrication’ around here?”) certainly abided by that sentiment and put it to effective use. FWIW, Zhukov often critiqued his commanders as being TOO willing to expend the lives of their men, but not themselves, and considered high casualties as being a sign of military incompetence.

              As for the Simonov Carbine, yes, GREAT weapon, like most everything else they produced, reliable, and SOLDIER-PROOF. The 7.62 x 39 mm intermediate round was actually designed for it in 1943 with the intention that it would be as the M1 Carbine, using a similar .30 caliber “short” or carbine round was for the US Army, i.e., more for rear-echelon troops, or artillerymen, or tankers, than the trusty 1891 Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle. The famed “Pe-pe-Shaw”, or PPsh 41 sub-machine gun, was issued to ‘storming’ platoons or to senior sergeants and/or officers (to ‘motivate’ their men to engage the ‘fascists”!). It was later on that the ‘tankist’ Sehrzant, Mikhail Kalashnikov, designed his own select-fire carbine, after fiddling around with a captured German StG 44, and decided on the 7.62 mm intermediate round, imitating the German weapon that likewise used a 7.92 mm “Kurz” (short) round. This feature actually has gotten the SKS carbines BANNED in California, as the Dummycrats mistakenly believe that some gang-banger can easily convert a Simonov into a functional AK, under the Roberti-Roos Act of 1989 (passed in wake of the Stockton, CA schoolyard shooting earlier that year). FWIW, if the SKS’s mag is NOT detachable, it’s ok. The net effect, of course, is that ANY carbine or rifle with decent modern characteristics is either banned outright or a “Californicated” version must be substituted. Yet another reason I won’t grow old(er) and die here.

        • When we bought the Sportwagen in April, ’19, I was sure that the next car we would buy would be a VW EV (and I was excited about it). Nope. Why spend $30K on a (electric) car that doesn’t do what I need it to, when I can get a perfectly good (IC) one for under $20K? Not us, thanks.

  6. Douglas,

    That’s one hell of a post. I like it. Accurately sums up my three score or so on this planet.

    So your question boils down to this?

    Are our betters denying to themselves the things they deny to us?

    Hell no.

    As Huxley might say, “They are our betters for Ford’s sake!”

  7. And the “costumers” deserve it!

    Modern Moron Slaves(MMS) won’t do anything to protect their own Organism so one cannot expect MMS do to anything about a car company or a restaurant, specially if the action will force them to NOT OBEY the shepherds commands!

  8. “Only in a world gone loopy”

    Eric those six words describe just about everything of late.

    You might consider changing the name of your website. If the domain is available.

    Can’t be too much longer until people ask, “Autos, what are autos?”

    Government Mandated Restraint Transports have pretty much been the topic here in the last decade.

    What the hell happened to being able to just go and have a little fun? I guess it just got priced out of existence.

    My memory fades as I get older. But didn’t VW make fun things years ago?

    Couldn’t you change out a VW motor in less time than it took to finish your second beer?

    We’re dune buggies really a thing?

    What happened to Fahrvergnügen? Was that really a thing?

    Perhaps Ted Kennedy should have driven a Volkswagen.

    “Only in a world gone loopy”.

    • The VW Bug was probably the EPITOME of cost-effective automotive engineering. Some of its features were “copied” from the Czech Tatra 97, as Ferdinand Porsche said of the Austrian engineer that worked for Tatra, Hans Ledwinka, “Sometimes Hans looked over my shoulder, and I, his”. Indeed, once the KdF “Kafer” (German for “Beetle”) was introduced, Tatra filed a lawsuit against VW AG, but Hitler promised to “settle out of court”, which he did by virtue of strong-armed the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in September of ’38 and took the rest in March of ’39 (the “Czech” part, which had the Skoda works, which also produced the excellent Czech 38(t) light tanks that were a huge part of the ‘German’ panzer divisions in the early years of the war, became the “protectorate” of Bohemia and Moravia, while the “Slovak” part was ostensibly its own country but pretty much a German puppet state.

      The “backbone” chassis, which Ledwinka had developed some 15 years earlier, was the fundamental feature also of the VW family of vehicles. More unitized in construction, the basic frame/pan allowed for differing bodies to be dropped on the same chassis quite readily, keeping costs down and production high. This also gave the Beetle an unique ability to FLOAT, at least temporarily, which was handy in areas where there still weren’t a lot of paved roads, or, later, as Hitler’s Wehrmacht went on its “World Tour”, military Beetles and Kubelwagens could more readily get across creeks and puddles than other light vehicles. Like the Tatra, the Beetles engine was an air-cooled, flat-four design, but Porsche, seeking to lighten it further, made the heads of aluminum and the crankcase of a MAGNESIUM alloy! His engine designers fussed with making an aluminum cylinder with a cast-iron sleeve pressed in (“auto-fretaging, similar to what’s done with cannons), but couldn’t solve the problem of the sleeves working loose when the engine got heated up, so the cylinders had to be made of cast iron entirely. While some aspects of the Beetle and its variants were quite high-tech by the standards of the day, it was intended to be inexpensive and simple to maintain, a true “People’s Car”. The engine is held to the transaxle by four screws and can be removed from the vehicle in about an hour for service. And that’s the great thing about the Beetle! It’s cheap, easy, and fun, kinda like the first girlfriend! But I suppose THAT’s ALSO been outlawed by Kamala the Killjoy.

      • Douglas,

        Obviously your knowledge of VW tremendous.

        Do you remember any of the VW ads from the space race years?

        I know they did the mission has changed ad a couple of years ago.

        • Sadly, I don’t remember much about VW ads from the 1960s or so. Truth is, and I’ll have to check with my Pop (still going strong at 87!), in its heyday, VW’s only competition were the Big Four’s “compacts” (Plymouth Valiant, Chevy II, Ford Falcon, AMC Rambler), all which started with inline sixes. There were a few Renaults and Morris Minors, or even the occasional Fiat (“Fix it Again, Tony”) 500 which had small four-bangers like the Beetle, but save the US Eastern Seaboard, they didn’t have widespread acceptance. The Beetle more or less sold itself on the basis of its low cost and simplicity. Contrary to its image as the “flower child’s” ride, the actual customer base of sales of NEW VW Bugs were the bread winner had bought the wifey a big ol’ Chrysler or Buick Station Wagon to haul the “tribe” around in, and just wanted simple, functional transportation My Dad bought one in 1960 and it was THAT car that went with us to Japan, he was advised that big American cars were hard to drive on those narrow Japanese rural roads and practically impossible to get through those diminutive streets. Since it was just my older Sister and I (we were six and four, respectively, when we went to Japan in ’63, my younger sister came along late the next year), it was enough for the relatively little driving we actually had to do. At most, we fought over who got to ride in the “back-back” (that space under the rear window, over the engine, behind the back seat). That car served long as well, through another assigned at Andrew AFB, and one thrill my Dad gave us was going down the I-495 Beltway from MD to VA, down a long hill, across the Potomac, and he’d get that thing, with a good tail wind, up to about 75, and get the front wheels momentarily airborne!

      • VW has not forgotten these lessons. It intends to rule the roost with EVs because of the superiority of its “MEB” platform. It is the safest (this will be a big deal when EVs are common); is very high performance; and is wildly adaptable (everything from a Golf-type vehicle to the forthcoming minibus; and powering both VWs and some Audis).

        As Eric so elegantly and clearly states, there is alot that is unfortunate about this transition that VW is making. But, I would like to point out, the engineering is world-class and very much in the VW/Porsche tradition.

  9. Comes down to the same issue re: electric vehicles. If enough of the motoring public WANTED them, they’d be sold w/o any need for Government mandates, tax credits, and so on. At least there was this notion that the CUSTOMER is ALWAYS “right”, so SELL him what he WANTS to buy (good and “hard”!), so even if there was supposed to be some nefarious or selfish purpose (like the discredited claim that car makers didn’t want to install “safety” belts in their cars b/c it implied that the vehicles were “unsafe”), at least no one FORCED a vehicle on the motorist that he didn’t want.

    Same with all the “Rona” restrictions on ordinary commerce, especially dining out and ENTERTAINMENT. Why do Americans put up with that shit? Because they’ve already been bamboozled on the notion that a sufficient “emergency” exists to justify it! Happened in both World Wars, most especially in “Dubya-Dubya-Two, Da Big One!” (“Don’t you know there’s a WAR on?”). You wanted to drive to the next county to see Aunt Mabel (Is this trip REALLY ‘necessary’?), or had a hankering for a burger on the third day of the week (“Meatless Tuesday”), or you had a full larder (“HOARDER”!). The other side did it, too…as Reichsmarschall Goering, in an interview with the US Army psychologist Gilbert Gustave, remarked…

    Naturally, the common people don’t want war … but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

    So all the present-day leaders need do is concoct this notion that the Earth only has a few years to “live” unless we ditch our “selfish” habit of driving automobiles with internal combustion engines, or that supplies of fuels are running out (“Peak Oil”), or that the USA is SELFISHLY using more than it’s “fair share” of the ballyhooed “carbon footprint”. The justification for the scam never lacks creativity. Funny thing is, most of the wealthy can virtue signal by getting a Prius and being seen in it (in reality, the maid or butler uses it the most to run errands for their employer) for the photo-op. But those that MAKE policy, are they downsizing from their palatial mansions, or using public transportation, or making ANY of the “sacrifices” they encourage, we, the great “boobsie” (HL Mencken) to do?

    • Far from being “fossil fuel”, hydrocarbons are not only plentiful but are being renewed by yet-unknown processes deep within the earth.
      The term “fossil fuel” was coined in the 1950s when little was known about the processes by which oil is produced. Oil is “abiotic” in nature, as even depleted oil wells are “filling back up” from deep below the earth’s surface.
      Oil interests are drilling wells at 5,000 feet, 10,000 feet, and 15,000 feet and deeper, and coming up with oil deposits way below the layers and levels where “fossils” were known to exist.
      As Russia gained much expertise in deep-well drilling and coming up with oil deposits far deeper than that of the level of “fossils”, abiotic oil at extreme depths was actually a Russian ‘state secret” for a long time.
      Not only that, but there are planetary bodies in which hydrocarbons are naturally occurring (without fossils).
      “Peak oil” and “fossil fuels” are discredited concepts that environmentalists and others are latching on to, in order to display their hatred of oil being a renewable resource as well as to push prices up.
      Follow the money.

      • Excellent point! However, laying aside the discredited notion that petroleum came from the residue of corpses of ancient fauna, I recall some funny commercials about the “Dinosaur in your tank” and pointing out how “Dino” gave his all for that fill-up.

          • Eric,

            “The Sinclair sign is one of my favorites.”

            Then sing along.

            Sinclair service products are better by far.

            The best you can buy for your car.

            The service supreme and the restrooms so clean.

            At the sign the green dinosaur.

        • We took a roadtrip last week in our VW Sportwagen and stopped in Sinclair, Wyoming, for a pit stop. Yes, the Sinclair that the gas company is named for. There is, literally, a refinery out back.

          Does anyone know if Sinclair still drills and refines its oil there? Is it a true “made in America” product?

          BTW, their restrooms aren’t always, “so clean” and their pumps & pricing seem a little sketchy to me.

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