Horses for Courses

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A team of miniature ponies jacked up on ‘roids might be able to get the Budweiser wagon moving – but probably not for long. And it probably wouldn’t be good for the ponies. That’s why they use Clydesdales to pull the Budweiser wagon.

Horses for courses.

It makes you wonder why they uses the equivalent of miniature ponies to pull along the equivalent of the Budweiser wagon when it comes to cars. Meaning, engines too small for the job – made artificially more powerful to do the job via turbocharging them.

Well, there’s an answer for that of course – and readers of this column already know it. But there is a related thing worth knowing that bears on that point.It is the difference between power and strength.

Power is of shorter duration than strength.

A chainsaw is powerful. A mature oak is strong. The chainsaw is powerful for only so long as it runs. The oak endures.

Similar applies to engines.

Turbocharging – the use of a mechanical compressor to pressurize the incoming air-fuel charge so as to increase the volume of air (and fuel) within each cylinder prior to the combustion event – in order to generate more power than would otherwise be generated – isn’t the same as strength. And it is why these engines tend not to endure as long as those that are not turbocharged.

A big engine is naturally powerful. It is naturally aspirated – meaning it breathes in air as opposed to being force-fed air. It is like a large man who is naturally capable of easily lifting a heavy weight. The act doesn’t cause him to sweat. He could lift a much heavier weight before he began to sweat. This usually means he could lift the heavy weight regularly without negative effects – other than perhaps hunger for a hearty meal. But his back won’t be shot the next day. He won’t need to throw back a handful of Ibuprofen pills to ease his aches.

He is ready to go, again.

It is much the same with car engines. It s the reason why the bigger – stronger – engines tend to be the longest-lived engines in relation to the size of the vehicles they are in. That Budweiser beer wagon thing, again.

It is fundamentally about proportionality.

A pony can and probably will live a long and trouble-free life if it spends its life giving pony rides to kids who are much smaller and weigh a lot less than the pony. It does not strain the pony much to have an eight-year-old in the saddle. But hook that poor pony up to the Budweiser wagon . . . Even if you jack him up to temporarily produce the power output of  a Clydesdale, his long-term health is going to suffer for it.

Everyone who is an engineer knows it.

It’s why – historically – horses for courses.

If you bought a smaller, lighter car it typically came with a smaller engine – one that did not need a turbocharger to make up for it being small. It had enough power, naturally,  to handle the load it was tasked with pulling.

Now, all of a sudden, we find disproportionality under the hood. Engines that are too small for the car (and truck) that need to be turbo-jacked up to be able to handle the load they are tasked with pulling. But they are nevertheless straining – just like a pony with a full-grown man in the saddle. The turbo hides the fact of the strain – for awhile. But inside the engine, the strain is bearing down on the equivalent of the poor little pony’s back. Its bearing surfaces, crankshaft and connecting rods. The strain is compounded by the relative smallness of these critical components relative to the loads they are bearing.

So why are the engineers putting the equivalent of ponies in vehicles that are proportionately the equivalent of the Budweiser wagon?

There are two reasons.

Number one is because they effectively have to. Readers of this column already know all about it. Federal- and now, state-level – regulations regarding “emissions” (lately conflated with fuel efficiency) are forcing a downsizing under the hood that is similar to the downsizing of vehicles that happened back in the late ’70s and into the ’80s and for exactly the same reason. With the difference this time being that the car companies are responding to the regs by making engines smaller rather than the vehicles they’re expected to power.

The Number Two reason is probably the realization – on the part of the car companies – that cars (and trucks) with proportionately sized, un-strained engines weren’t showing signs of strain soon enough. They were – they still are – trotting along like the Budweiser Clydesdales for decades, which meant their owners (including second and third owners) weren’t trotting into dealerships to get a new wagon.

The wrong horse for the course solves both problems – from the standpoint of the car companies. These ill-suited beasts satisfy the regulatory regime (for the moment) while herding the populace toward the EeeeeVeees that that are “the future” – because they get you into the showroom sooner and leave you with less in your pocket, after.

It’s imperative, from their point-of-view, that the final run of cars (and trucks) that still have engines have unsuitably small engines that are likely to not last decades. So as to accelerate the “transition” to the EeeeeVeees they want you to be serially leasing and endlessly paying for.

It makes you want a case of Bud, doesn’t it?

. . .

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36 COMMENTS

    • NOTE: Re: speeding and safety

      Speeding has nothing to do with safety, the problem is the unsafe road designs built by the government, they blame accidents on speeding, so nobody will figure out it is the government’s crappy road designs that causes accidents, that they should be sued over.
      Adding bike lanes, with narrower roads and more concrete curbs and medians have made the roads more dangerous, have made them almost undriveable.

      The other problem is the horrible drivers on the road, they make it very very unsafe, they should be banned from driving, they should be removed to improve safety.

      F1 race cars have higher average speeds then any other cars, they are the quickest cars in the world on a race track. Driving on an F1 track is the safest place to drive but has the highest speeds.

      The reason high speed F1 tracks are so safe is because they are designed for safety, huge flat run off areas, gravel traps, no poles or walls to run into, public roads are the opposite, very dangerously designed, with added bike lanes they have become worse now.

      The other reason F1 race tracks are so safe is because of the very very highly skilled drivers, this makes them very safe compared to driving down the street filled with morons texting….lol.

      Fangio the greatest, best F1 race car driver in history, would not drive on public roads because they are very dangerous, he didn’t want to die, the horrible drivers on the road were the main reason. Fangio lived a long time, it worked.

      Lewis Hamilton one of today’s best F1 drivers does not like to drive on the street.

      The safest place to drive is a race track at very high speed, speed = dangerous is bs.

      Re: safety

      All they do is give expensive tickets to people going 10 mph over their stupid no science speed limit, to make it look like they are doing something…..lol…when the real problem is road design and bad drivers.

      • Hi Anon,

        If “speeding” is so “unsafe” – as I hear all the time – then how is it that I haven’t so much as scratched the paint in decades… given I “speed” literally every time I drive? I always exceed the speed limit because the speed limit is always set well below a speed that any competent driver in a any mechanically sound car can drive “safely” using his knees to steer. Speed limits are set deliberately low in order to make “speeders” out of practically every driver – so as to provide the basis for serial mulcting of drivers and to make driving miserable. That’s the synopsis.

  1. OK guys, call me a commie if you must, but I fell in love with turbocharged engines the first time I heard one run. I’ve owned a few of them – all diesels – as well as driven tractor-trailers. For me, nothing beats the sweet whistle of the turbo spooling up as a big inline 6 leans into a load. There’s something about the combination of the mechanical diesel clatter, the muted exhaust note, and the lazy rise and fall of the turbo’s whine that says, “This is a real truck.” Taking the mufflers off should be punishable by public flogging. If you give me a choice between listening to a bloated NASCAR hotrod and my tractor, I’ll take the tractor.
    Yes, I know: diesels are different. They have to be built heavier to begin with, so if you’re going to have a diesel, it might as well be turbocharged. But I remember the early attempts at turbocharging gas-burners, and I think it’s pretty cool that with modern computer controls engineers have finally made turbocharged spark-ignition engines run well on gas.
    The explanation that government mandates have prompted the trend toward small-displacement turbos is a sensible one, and I certainly don’t defend those. And it seems intuitive that, all else equal, these engines won’t last as long as bigger naturally-aspirated powerplants doing the same work. But – to play devil’s advocate – are there stats to back that claim up?

  2. It makes you wonder why TPTB are shy to push people towards horses. They’re renewable, natural resources that have been with mankind for thousands of years. Surely they, not “green” EVs that chug coal like candy, would be the choice of eco-conscious transportation.

  3. Part of agenda 2030 is eliminating small businesses, all the ESG money goes to the big corporations owned by the billionaires in bed with the globalist/communist great reset gang.

    Small businesses that make small, light, analog, ice, kit cars, that were simple, inexpensive and a lot of fun, are being forced out of business with government regulations,

    (for example: Westfield just went bankrupt) only the big corporations making huge, over weight, very expensive, unsafe, defective, lithium fire bomb EV’s survive and you are forced to buy them….lol.

    It is working……..
    Rent Problems Escalate For Small Business Owners – 40% Can’t Pay

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-08-24/rent-problems-escalate-small-business-owners-40-cant-pay

  4. My Ecoboost powered Bronco is fine, but if I had the money and resources, Id fine a V8 that fit and swap it in, along with a manual that could support the additional power

    Id of gotten the infamous 2.7tt, but I wanna row my gears, so it is what it is

  5. The WEF’s vision consists of distorting this environmentally friendly vision and turning it into a global political tool

    Psychopathic Politicians: Role Models of a Slave Society

    One does not need to be a professional psychologist or psychiatrist to recognize the symptoms of the hardened political psychopath. They are visible every time one checks ‘the news’ on mainstream media. After a short time one recognizes that ‘what they say’ – and ‘what they do’ are very often precisely opposite from each other, and that the double-speak involved is intensely characteristic of the reversal of reality practiced by satanists.

    That’s why, when you turn on your TV to watch ‘the news’ what you are seeing is ‘the psychopathic spin of the day’. The fact that you don’t react by turning-off the set means you are still unable to discern truth from lie. Or, in rare cases, that you are watching in order to study the behavior patterns of professional liars.

    Within the political deception which surrounds WEF’s Great Reset/Green Deal, we find a starkly obvious case of theft. To be precise, theft of the early ecological movement’s long-term holistic agenda for the bio diverse trusteeship of the land.

    The WEF’s vision consists of distorting this environmentally friendly vision and turning it into a global political tool for enforcing Klaus Schwab’s fascistic brave new world of synthetic foods, robot-mechanised farming, ‘rewilded’ gated private forests and 5G powered ‘smart cities’ for disenfranchised country dwellers and redundant farmers.

    By twisting the true ecological approach to land management into a thoroughly distorted and fake look-alike, the word ‘Green’ has been 100% hijacked by the New World Order/Great Reset cabal. Tried and tested Real Green approaches have been usurped, in favour of macro scale industrial and digital mechanisation programmes for achieving the hallowed goal of ‘zero carbon’. If there ever could be such a thing as zero carbon– none of us would be able to breathe.

    The Origins of the World Economic Forum Go Back to the Third Reich nazis.
    schwab runs the wef his family was connected to the nazis in germany.

    The first environmentalist was Hitler. He also promoted being vegan even though he ate meat.

    gates and the other nwo/ccp/wef/.0001% witches want you to eat fake meat and insects, no more meat for you. they will eat steak.

    The holocaust itself was carried out under a green cover because Nazi racism was largely rooted in the Social Darwinism of German Romanticism that laid the ecological foundations for what today is otherwise known as environmentalism.

    the anti-Christian bias of the environmental movement in America now
    parallels the anti-Semitic bias in Germany during the 1800’s. “Nazi Oaks” describes why the holocaust is best understood as a modernized form of human sacrifice carried out under biological/ecological camouflage that is rooted in the sacrificial oak imagery of ancient paganism.

    Unbeknownst to many, the highway to modern environmentalism passed through Nazi Germany. By 1935, the Third Reich was the greenest regime on the planet.

    It was also a sinister eco-imperial plan designed to Germanize the landscape by removing populations of people who were unsuited to their environment, and by turning it into a beautiful natural park for the future health of the German race.

    removing populations of people who were unsuited to their environment: today that is you, they call you an invasive species, you will be exterminated

    Hitler himself was not only a devout eugenicist (whose racial purification policies emerged through the funding of the Rockefeller, Carnegie Foundations as well as British establishment), but was also a devout Malthusian saying:

    “The day will certainly come when the whole of mankind will be forced to check the augmentation of the human species, because there will be no further possibility of adjusting the productivity of the soil to the perpetual increase in the population.”
    now gates is saying the same thing, depopulation is good.

    After the war, eugenics-promoting organizations and think tanks changed their names while continuing their work, morphing into new forms by the 1960s such as the
    NOTE :environmental movement, transhumanist movement, including the pharmaceutical/healthcare sector. now we have the wef pushing this with the great reset.

    these satanists have decided that the useless eaters on the bottom are an invasive species, the plan? end goal 7 billion cull.
    the billionaires at the top see themselves as a different species than the useless eaters, so they don’t need to be culled.

    Climate change is purely political and religious, based on fake science. Climate change, the new GAIA cult religion, a big favorite of the communist, reset, one world government, satanic cult freaks,

    This cull is a modernized form of human sacrifice carried out under biological/ecological camouflage that is rooted in the sacrificial oak imagery of ancient paganism.

    https://davidicke.com/2022/06/07/psychopathic-politicians-role-models-of-a-slave-society/?fbclid=IwAR3mgjYnBtmOcBEKM58D7Yt8nkityzNiYW50DKJlv_wcElGPTIk0HTNA4Z4

  6. As this agenda goes into effect it’ll get easier for the AGWs to enforce. Its brilliant really, in an evil genius sort of way. As ice vehicles become fewer and fewer, through all the machinations Eric has laid out, it becomes even easier to literally take them off the road.

    Got an errand to run, someone to visit. Better do it at night on back roads in blackout mode, and be prepared to outrun the local Po po.

    • I wonder if the AGW’s will be driving EV’s? If so probably be able to outrun them over a distance since they have to trade speed for range, maybe I’ll get to find out 😆.

  7. The new ice cars and even worse the EV’s are over weight and dangerous with their defective computers…..

    The quickest cars in the world usually weigh 2000 lb or less, a modern 3000 lb to 4500 lb supercar/hypercar (these hypercars are going EV too), will never be as fast, you can’t overcome that much extra weight,these batteries weigh from 1000 lb to 1800 lb.

    To overcome the weight they add huge hp, this makes the car unstable so they control it with, stabilize it with AI, computers, driver assists, they drive the car you don’t. These aren’t driver’s cars you are just along for the ride….

    The Porsche 930 turbo was called the widow maker because of off throttle over steer, it would over steer and crash backwards into trees, walls, etc., it was completely analog no computer driver assists.

    Chris Harris drove the new Porsche 911 GT 2 RS, it is like the old 911 turbo but has around 700 hp instead of 300, with the driver assists turned off he says it is far worse then the old car, it is the grim reaper…..lol

    The point is when these complex AI computer systems driving these cars fail and or malfunction, become buggy, these cars will be crashing, look at tesla, lots of crashes with their defective computer control systems.

    Without the driver’s assists they will crash into the bush. The EV’s are much worse, more dangerous, because of their lithium fire bomb batteries, all the new cars are being bastardized, ruined, the EV’s are far worse..

    • So you are driving something (actually the defective computers are) that is totally unstable with lithium fire bomb batteries under the floor…..lol …..bringacoffin

    • They don’t tell you when you buy it, that it is totally unstable, dangerous, but don’t worry it’s 50 computers will keep it out of the ditch/wall, as long as they don’t fail/glitch out, which they do and will, without warning.

  8. This is why I bought a higher mileage Subaru Outback with the 3.6L H6 over one with a 2.5L four and lower mileage. It is also why I will NOT buy the Ascent, which has a turbocharged H4, but ought to have an H6.

    On a similar note, when I had my 1968 Oldsmobile Delta 88 with a 455, I knew someone who had a Delmont 88 with a 350. I actually got better gas mileage with mine because the 455 engine didn’t have to work as hard as the 350.

    In the case of the Oldsmobiles, I think the 350 was offered as a way to keep the base price down and offer an “economy” option for buyers who wanted it. Most people ultimately went for the 455.

    So while using smaller engines may mean better mileage on paper, real world mileage (and real world pollution) ends up being worse. But nobody says anything about that, and we know why.

  9. “Everyone who is an engineer knows it.”
    Increase in power generates increase in breakage. Design should match such increase with increased robustness.
    Increase in speed increases wear. Design should accommodate such increased wear.
    Turbo and super charged undersized engines need not apply.

  10. ‘the final run of cars (and trucks) that still have engines have unsuitably small engines that are likely to not last decades.’ — eric

    An analogy can be made to buying an underpowered laptop, with a low-capacity CPU chip and minimal RAM.

    It will function for awhile. But OS and software updates (now a feature of cars too) will steadily bog it down, as the drive becomes more fragmented and cluttered. Eventually it becomes so s-l-o-w-w-w that it’s practically unusable and obsolete.

    Planned obsolescence was considered a shocking conspiracy against the public when Vance Packard popularized it in his book The Waste Makers (1960).

    Now, in the socially degenerate “Biden” era, it’s for the greater good.

  11. You don’t need no stinkin’ car.

    One horsepower is defined in physics by the ability of a horse to lift and hold 750 pounds of dead weight for one minute.

    You can’t drive a railroad spike with a tack hammer.

    Eight horsepower is what you see in the photo. Harnesses, tack, reins, cowhide for straps, horsewhips, it all adds up to a sum of money.

    Ten grand per horse, eighty grand, the coach, 20 grand, 100 grand for a winning advertisement, millions of kegs of Bud sold.

    Plus the truck and trailer.

    The Teamsters might strike then you’ll be stuck.

    Sell the suds, serve the steak… to Klaus, not you.

    No beer for you, just bugs.

  12. My late grandfather, who was as solid a car guy as they came, loved Triumph TR6s, his first-gen Honda Accord and an El Camino he named Ole George. He could go through the gears in a manual shift car like an artist.

    He warned me that forced induction cars were trash and to avoid them at all costs. I didn’t listen to him about the Mk. IV Supra, but the old 2JZ I have still has scads of power and could probably be boosted up to 1,000 hp if I wanted, which I don’t. I also baby the car, putting up the hood after every long trip to allow the turbos to cool off. I’ve also got a turbo timer.

    I also didn’t listen when I bought a 2011 Hyundai Sonata 2.0T with what was at the time a revolutionary engine. 274 hp from 2 liters was fantastic. My wife and I loved the swoopy the styling, the great highway mileage off boost (40 mpg on some trips) and the tremendous right-now power when you dropped the hammer. Sure, it sounded like a vacuum cleaner when you goosed the throttle, but it was a nice car.

    Until it wasn’t. First, the wastegate controller needed a reset and my wife and I were forced to limp three hours at 55 mph as the car threatened to overheat. The horrific electric steering rack required a complete replacement, which I’ve never had to do in a car. It also required a battery replacement annually.

    It was about to tick over to 100k miles (I drive about 60 miles one way to commute) and then I started to have a serious power fall-off. Then it stopped completely. I tried to fire it back up and nothing. Mind you, I was 30 miles from my house on a lonely 2-lane road in rural NW Florida. We had it towed to dealership miles away and they found metal bits in the engine.

    Hyundai replaced the motor under warranty (it was recalled due to a production issue that caused the turbo motors to seize), but it took 6 months. At least Hyundai gave me a rental car, which I put a gazillion miles on commuting.

    Even though it was recalled, I have no doubt it probably wouldn’t have gone much past 100k. As Eric says, asking a little motor to do too much will lead to serious issues down the road. Which is what I think car companies want. They don’t want you keeping your car for 200k or more miles. They want you enslaved, either with a lease or a payment on a disposable POS that might as well be a lease.

  13. Hi Eric,

    Nino Greasemanelli, a diddy-boppin’ daddy if there ever was one! Loved his bits, best mornings ever, Tuna Tuna Fish, The Lawman, Sgt. Fury, (with the choppers and him sobbing quietly), How ’bout “Estelllllllle? Are ya listenin’, ya pig, ya!”, or, when he’d tell a gal he’d be “right back” after some savory “hobble-do-gee”, to the sound of that V-8 revving, tires screeching and the growl of runnin’ through those gears as he sped off, AMF! 5 star radio, never to be duplicated, the firing of that guy was an earlier precursor to cancel culture and it took a great morning guy away from what he did best, show us stereotypical macho guys who were a bit over the top (Oh, baby, I’m a Redneck) and help us forget about life for awhile. And now…..It’s MARTINI TIME!! Time to head for that crystal clear liquid that takes me so far away from all my problems and so far away from all my pain……………MARTINI TIME!! Hallelujah! Thanks man, for a blast from our past, you are spot on as always and not to be missed in the daily SITREP! Carry on!

    • Hi THor!

      I grew up listening to the Grease and even won a “You look jus’ like hog!” T shirt, which I picked up at the station from the man himself. You are absolutely right about the prequel. I think I have the subject for my next rant!

  14. And ten years from now, no one will know exactly why their engines start burning oil and blowing head gaskets at 110 thousand miles. It will just be accepted that your brakes will outlast your drivetrain, starter motor, battery, 24 inch rims, transmission, active suspension, and exhaust.

    That is, if your car wasn’t stolen or destroyed by vandals looking for scrap metal.

    The stereo should still function, but be hopelessly out of date and incompatible with 8G cellular service and iPhone 22, so the only sound that comes out are warning chimes and V8 engine sounds. Oh and the subscription channel for Sirius XM, which now costs $300/month and still plays the same 10 song rotation on the same 10 channels.

    When you take it to the dealer, technicans (not mechanics) will don their AR goggles, jack into the OBD IV port and have a conversation with the engine management unit. The EMU will tattle on you, spilling the beans on how you drive agressively, corner too quickly and use 85 octane fuel. But he wants to do a good job so he uploads the logs to Ford’s cloud to see what to do. The response is (as you already figured out) that the vehicle’s warranty was violated and that the recommended fix is going to cost $15,000 to repair.

    You decide to replace the head gasket yourself. The parts department is happy to order a factory gasket, but delivery will be in 2 months. When it finally comes in you have to sign a waiver that you understand you’re giving up any warranty rights and that the state will call this a drivetrain modification and therefore an automatic failure of any future smog test (you did read that part right?). When you take it in to the testing center the EMU again tattles to the state’s cloud, which immediately suspends the vehicle registration and orders the EMU to shut down the engine until the dealer can recertify the engine.

    It didn’t have to be like this.

  15. This is why I don’t want to get rid of my ’02 A6 Avant. In terms of cargo and interior it is now a “large” wagon (because contemporary vehicles have become so small) and it has a V6 3.0 NA. It’s not “quick”, it isn’t going to win any races but that’s fine with me.

    The downside is that it suffers from Audi’s formerly famous “excessive oil consumption” problem due to whatever engineering issues they had at the time.

    Now my ’15 A4 Allroad with a laughable 2.0T I4, I am on that pedal like a mad man just about every second that I drive it. I always use “sport” mode because I just can’t bear the lag-hard transmission program otherwise. It’s great on gas mileage but I bet it won’t last that long because of how I drive it and the weight that it’s pulling.

    And that’s the A4 which is smaller and lighter than the A6 platform. And those morons put the same engine as the A4 into the A6, albeit with a high performance “tune”.

    If you think battery replacements are insane (well, they are but…) try getting an engine rebuild or replacement for an A6 at Audi! Years ago, I looked at buying a new engine from Audi for the ’02 A6. The parts alone were more than $30K — it was so ridiculous that I just blocked out the details. I bought the car for $8K.

  16. Back in the seventies, long gas lines were common place and people grumbled. Now imagine everyone have to drive an EV with long lines to a charging station. Today’s society is near about approaching anarchy and grumbling would be replaced by physical fights and possible shootings. Hello “build back better”!

    • Hi Allen,

      I agree – in re society approaching the breaking point. I am encountering road-ragerous “driving” almost every time I drive. I drive fast – but not in a way that ought to arouse the anger of a sane person. I will pass a car that is moving slower than I want to drive, but never tailgate or cut anyone off. I just pass. But this enrages some of these Freaks. I had one of them not only lean on his horn but keep leaning on it for several minutes after I passed him. He also flashed his high beams at me. I almost stopped and got out to explain to him – it was an old man him – that it might not be smart to do what he did to someone who might literally beat him into pulp. Of course, he might have had a gun… and then it would have been me as pulp. It’s crazy. And very sad.

      • Hi Eric

        If it was an EV, the huge EMF given off by the car could be effecting the driver’s brain and or the driver could be brain injured from the nazi needle they thought was a wonderful idea, safe and effective…..lol….and or the driver was a rabid leftist, they are all nut case control freaks…..

      • hmmmm, I’m surprised you are seeing these reactions in western VA. Is it on a connector road to a metro area? That could be it I guess. Maybe a college area near a metro area?
        It happens to me in my metro are too, and it makes me laugh. But in my rural place, the person I am passing actually moves over a little to try and accommodate, some even pull over (cause they’re smart and/or courteous knowing it’s a long mountain rd with no passing places, and it’s not cause I’m on their bumper, I never am).

    • Hi Allen
      Yep,,, good thing we have a government to prevent anarchy! The same government causing ALL the problems. Same gov that says the shot is safe and effective, wear a mask,,, same gov that wants you to eat ze bugs,,, same gov that is causing the shortages and supply chain breaks to prevent the flow of goods,,, same gov that is hiring 87,000 new irs agents and handing them guns and a license to kill if you refuse their audit,,, same gov that is trying its damnedest to start a world war,,, and on and on

      but thank God, at least we don’t have confusion and anarchy!

  17. Spot on Eric!
    By the time the majority figure out EVs are hateful assaults on our way of life millions of good older cars will have been neglected and scrapped. The newer obese turds festooned with short lived gadgets and stuffed 4’s won’t be repairable at all by the time 2030 rolls around. Old cars and bikes will surge in value like a 2 door classic from the 60’s, and will increase with attrition until only the inner circle and their minions can collect the few survivors.
    I don’t know how these parasites expect this to play out but if people can’t travel in this country ANY car on the road will become a target as a matter of survival. Just these EV mandates, absent the other policy blunders, threaten to peel the thin veneer of peace and order from our civilization. A literal zombie apocalypse of shuffling hungry masses is on our doorstep if this green agenda becomes reality.

    • Indeed, Black –

      My ’76 TA (garage kept, out of sight) is a relic from the “better, vanished time” Rush sang about. The Orange Barchetta – with me as the Uncle who has the country place … my niece will one day inherit it. I preserve it for her sake as well as mine.

    • BlackFlag,
      A thing most don’t understand. What we call “civilization” is a thin and poor paintjob. Easily stripped away by widespread poverty, which appears the goal of our Psychopaths In Charge.

      • Hurricane Katrina taught me that very tough lesson. It didn’t take much for the Crescent City to become an apocalyptic watery hellscape.

  18. Perfect example: the wife’s late model Kia Sportage. It is comfortable & has descent accessories for the price point. What it lacks is power. I’ve said it a thousand times –it is woefully underpowered for its size. That in turn makes it not so good on city/highway mileage.

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