Funeral for Another Friend

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The last new Mustang is about to be revealed – just in time to herald its death.

Ford has been developing the sixth generation Mustang for the past several years – which is how long it takes to go from concept car to production car. We can be grateful it takes that long because if didn’t, it is likely there would not be a sixth generation Mustang. If the political considerations of today were determinative, Ford would never have committed the resources needed to develop a new non-electric car they knew ahead of time they could only sell for a few years after developing it.

Which, as Ford and everyone else now knows we soon won’t be able to buy – California having just decided for the rest of the country that the only cars the car companies will be allowed to sell by 2035 must be electric cars.

Which is actually even fewer years from now, as this column pointed out the other day. The ban on the sale of any new cars that aren’t electric cars that goes into effect in 2035 is having an effect right now.

A chastening effect.

The car companies are shying away from developing new cars they won’t be allowed to sell for much longer and which they know probably won’t sell very well the closer we get to the date after which they will be illegal to sell. It will be a fire sale (though not on cars that are actually prone to erupting in flames, as EeeeeVeeees are) on the remaining inventory of non-electric cars that buyers will likely begin to shy away from buying years before we get to 2035, out of not unreasonable concern that the next thing California – and possibly the rest of the country – will do is forbid the use of any cars that are not electric cars.

Or apply onerous taxes on those who use them.

Meanwhile, regardless, expect stagnation to set in. No further development of cars that are not electric cars – because why bother with it? It would be like spending time and money on remodeling a house you knew you could not sell just a few years from now – and might not even be allowed to continue living in.

So, the 2024 Mustang will be the last new Mustang. Ford will continue to build and try to sell it for as long as allowed and then there will be no more – though Ford may attempt to bowdlerize the name by using it in reference to an electric something-or-other that will never be a Mustang for the same reason that the also-pending 2024 Dodge Charger will never be a a muscle car, no matter how quickly its electric drivetrain gets it to 60.

An electric car can be many things. But to call something that does not have an engine a Mustang is like calling something that hasn’t got a dick a “man.” It is a worse affront to call something that has no balls a muscle car.

Balls being something more than mere power.

A V8 that rumbles threateningly – and authentically has balls. It takes balls to drive a very powerful V8-powered car hammer down, throttle not lifted. It takes no balls at all to push a powerful electric car’s Launch Control button and let the electronics hook it up. No more balls, at any rate, than it takes to ride the Cyclone at an amusement park.

We have lost our balls – for the sake of electric cars that few of us seem to want, especially those of us who like Mustangs and muscle cars. Is there anyone who likes these cars wanting them to be replaced by electric cars? It is a question begged but never asked – because the answer would reveal an alarming disconnect between what the buyers want and the politicians do not want them to have anymore.

This is the Sovietization of the American car industry, which now takes its orders from the government and tells its customers, in effect, take it or leave it. Remember when there were “alternative fuel” vehicles? Now these “alternative fuel” vehicles are become the only alternative.

The good news, if any, is that there will be a longer grace period to buy a new Mustang before there are no longer Mustangs (although there may be electric things with a “Mustang” badge affixed to their plastic flanks). The 2024 will be around for at least another several years, as contrasted with the rueful fact that 2024 will be the final year anyone will be able to “celebrate” the purchase of a new Charger or Challenger that’s still a muscle car. GM is also apparently going to smite the Chevy Camaro in two years from now.

That will leave the Mustang as the last one left and the one that will turn out the lights on what was a Helluva ride – until the ride went silent, on the day the music died.     

. . .

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37 COMMENTS

  1. There won’t be any electricity to charge the Mustang EV replacement

    Wind turbines catching fire and burning down forests. They are a huge fire hazard.

    Soon they will be banned on land, at least far out in the ocean they don’t burn the country down….lol

    Wind tubines and solar are the 4.9% so called green energy….lol…. which will be increased to 100%, they will set the country on fire, their will be no electricity, your EV will be a brick, you will freeze to death….lol

    Reliable, clean, cheap, efficient gas/oil/coal/nuc power plants are being shut down and replaced by fire starting, not green, wind turbines. Go and buy a woodstove.

  2. Moore’s law as religion. The self-titled futureist gives Ted talks to the Davos crowd with charts and graphs showing upward trendlines and hockey sticks out to the future (or at least 2030). They’re all betting that there will be a breakthrough in chemistry, manufacturing or (and?) material science that will get all these cool science experiments out of the lab and onto the highways. If they just throw enough money at the problem it will be solved.

    God laughs at your plans.

    • Excellent point RK,
      They think by casting out their mandates they can make it happen, kind of like King Canute…..didn’t work for him, won’t work for them either.
      Quoting Captain Picard – “make it so!”

      • Mike,
        It is truly remarkable how the Psychopaths In Charge continue to posit they can change anything they please, by edict. Especially the notion that they can stop a climate that has been forever changing from ever changing again. By saying “make it so”. Picard was my very least favorite Star Trek character. Arrogant, condescending, and always the “hero” of the moment.

        • Makes sense since the foundation of Satanism is that we are our own Gods and there is no objective morality or reality, it’s all up to us. Satanism is ultimately nihilism and a death cult. But thats who’s in charge. Fwiw mask wearing is absolutey standatrd in occult ceremonies.

        • I always look up in the sky pointing at the sun when I’m forced to engage the green knuckleheads. I tell them simply that they can’t change what the sun does. They have no argument.

    • Yeah. 🙂 LOL.
      The Great Breakthrough In Battery Technology ‘as been Just Aroun’ th’ Corner for th’ past fitty years, guv.

      You know, the 3kg battery pack wiv 1000 mile range and effectively infinite loifetime, which charges in less than a minute using nuclear power that is “too cheap to meter.”
      Slid into Electric Avenue…that is, if you can get the dilithium crystals.
      I hear there’s a shortage…

  3. While it really is likely the end for the ICE Mustang, that is definitely not true of the Dodge lineup. I think it’s a mistake to conflate the Daytona Banshee EV concept with the Charger.

    The next gen Charger proper will live on when Stellantis shifts over to the new lighter chassis that has been planned for sometime, away from the current one based on the older Daimler Chrysler partnership. The next gen Charger will be using the Hurricane twin-turbo I6 instead. They’re still committed to ICE, minus the V8 sadly due to regulations everywhere, but the TT I6 is already developed and deployed in the Grand Wagoneer, and they’d be foolish not to capitilize on that investment across the board. Stellantis in Maserati also spent a ton developing the Netuno TT V6.

    The EV models will be using different monikers, again like Daytona Banshee, etc
    (BTW I replied to the other post just specifically regarding transmissions)

    Regarding the ridiculous CARB 2035 mandate, have you seen this:
    https://www.motortrend.com/news/california-carb-ice-ban-lawsuit/

    “The lawsuit is led by Ohio Attorney General, Dave Yost, and joined by Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. The lawsuit alleges that the California waiver violates a doctrine known as equal sovereignty, pointing to California’s unique status in being able to set its standards higher than the federal average. Revoking California’s waiver would also gut its ICE ban.”

    • Hi Javid,

      Yes, but the new six won’t be able to “comply” for long, either. It most certainly will not comply with EeeeeVee-only “mandates” slated to come into force come 2035.

      And an EeeeeeVee Charger or Challenger is just another electric appliance. Why bother with it?

      • Eric,
        And what is the expected life of most electrical appliances? About ten years. Some will accidentally last longer, or shorter. Longer usually requires significantly higher up front cost, and may not last longer anyway.
        The elephant being, there’s a BIG difference between buying a washing machine or dishwasher and buying a car.

      • Eric,
        Well considering they will have another 12 years with the next gen Charger/Challenger with the TT-I6 H.O. (and potentially additional hybrid version), that’s still better than the current Charger gen which lasted 8 model years. And that’s really only for California and those states that decide to follow suite after 2035.

        While about 16 states follow CARB rules, the ban itself is done outside it via CA governor’s EO. I’m not so sure about the California 2035 mandate really coming to pass nation wide or those other CARB following states. I already cited the lawsuit by many other states’ attorney generals, and just looking at the reality of energy policy and green restrictions, energy crunch, I am not so confident some other states would embrace such folly. Stellantis is probably be hedging here, as among the big 3 former detroit, they’re the only ones who at least have still havent’ put all their eggs into the EV basket

        BTW can I change/remove email subscriptions? The manage subscriptions page is broken

        • Hi Javid,

          Actually, the current Challenger/Charger is an almost twelve-year-year-old platform. Yet they are still popular as they are and Dodge would have been able to sell as many as they could build, were Dodge allowed to continue building them.

          The six that’s coming is a dead man walking. “Zero emissions” mandates will see to that. CA determines national car policy as a functional fact. Expect the six to be dropped well before thew 2035 cut-off because there will be new “mandates” that will make continuing to sell any IC engine’d car all-but-impossible years before 2035. Do you really believe the EPA will stay put for the next ten years? Or even five?

          And no matter how powerful the new six may be, it is not a V8 and that means the next-gen Dodges that are powered by it will be performance cars but not muscle cars.

          There is no such thing as a six cylinder-powered muscle car.

  4. EV’s with their lithium fire bomb batteries are catching fire, so are the wind turbines. someone joked, with all these fires this tech must be from the devil….lol…

    Efforts to portray wind turbines as ‘safe’, ‘clean’ and ‘green’ are undone by their reputation for spectacular pyrotechnic displays whenever they decide to self-immolate and turn themselves into terrifying, toxic fireballs.

    Around the world, hundreds have exploded into in palls of toxic smoke and balls of flame – in the process – each one raining molten metal and over 1,000 litres of flaming gear oil and hydraulic fluid (see our post here) and burning plastic earthwards.

    an ecological catastrophe, this is what the globalist/communist/satanists with their gaia fake science religious cult are pushing the world into.

    Wind turbine fires are ten times more common than the wind industry and its spin doctors claim ….see our post here and check out this website: turbinesonfire.org

    In the second article below it’s reckoned that: “The rate of fires has remained consistent over the past decade according to available data. Typically one in every 2,000 turbines will burn down every year.” With hundreds of thousands of these things now speared into communities all over the world, that’s an awful lot of free pyrotechnics in the offing.
    lithium fire bomb batteries and wind turbines, the whole world will be burning…

    https://stopthesethings.com/2022/08/27/spontaneous-combustion-wind-turbine-fires-way-more-common-than-industry-claims/

  5. “This is the Sovietization of the American car industry, which now takes its orders from the government and tells its customers, in effect, take it or leave it.”

    This is a critically important point.

    The American proles have been bamboozled into thinking they live in a “free country” with a “free market” and “private enterprise” when in fact all major corporations are ultimately controlled by the government.

    No, we don’t have direct government ownership of the means of production the way the USSR did (and the way our ally Great Britain did in the 1960s) but if General Motors goes bankrupt and is given $20 billion by the government, the government is the de facto owner.

    Even companies like Ford that did not directly take cash from the government are so beholden to government regulation that the government for practical purposes controls them.

    The same thing is true of every industry, look at how the social media companies have engaged in censorship at the behest of the government. Look at how telecom companies are required to allow the NSA to track every single phone call made in the country. Even sports leagues are beholden to government anti-trust exemptions in order to operate. The Department of Defense actually paid the NFL to do patriotic propaganda. Now look at how woke the sports leagues are all going. As far back as 1971 the government forbade Duke Power from requiring that employees have a high school diploma lest the requirement it be construed as “racist.”

    We do not live in a free country with a free market, we live under a left-wing corporatist state in which the corporate oligarchs and the government are so inbred they might as well have three eyes.

    It’s frustrating to hear these deluded, flag-waving “conservatives” blather on about “freedom” and “private property.” What a joke.

    • The American proles have been bamboozled into thinking that the all EV future will mean everyone gets to cruise to work in a Tesla Model X or Cybertruck at “Ludicrous” speed and some kind of magic battery technology will come along to make it all affordable/practical.

  6. Over at Youtube there is a car hunter, Barn Find Hunter, interesting thirty minute show on looking for cars in the hinterlands. Episode 46 is a good one to watch. Chevy, Ford, Dodge, oodles of them now worth many thousands each.

    The future for fuels is here.

    Synthetic Diesel:

    “Synthetic diesel is free of sulfur and other petroleum byproducts. It is produced through a process of chemical recombination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, called the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, into a variety of synthetic hydrocarbons. Natural gas, coal, or biomass are common feedstocks, but in recent years, other materials have been explored. For instance, the Audi car company has developed new technology to produce what it calls e-diesel, using water, air, and electricity as raw materials. The company is building a pilot plant in Switzerland that it says will produce sustainable fuel that releases almost no carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

    Synthetic fuels will be a better solution than millions of batteries that will pile like discarded bicycle graveyards in China.

    There are solutions.

    • Drumph,

      I’ve been saying this for years! Especially here, if you’ve never caught me. I’m a chemist and I WILL be synthesizing fuels, as well, with biomass from my land.

      Had I much more money, I have the perfect plan for bio-synthetic fuel production. It involves setting up large biofuel farms all over the Americas, but particularly in Central and South America. Want stop the flow of Central Americans into the US? Fuck a wall, try giving them jobs that pay well, making fuel for the whole world.

      Land around the equator has year-round sunlight in abundance, as well as plentiful rain. Biomass could be cooked down to carbon and sent to US, or processed on site to synthetic diesel and gasoline.

      This would derail the “Climate Change” agenda, as the fuel all would be carbon-neutral. It would allow cheap fuel to be produced in abundance, and high MPGs would no longer be required (though that might be desired).

      In the end, it would short-circuit the entire authoritarian circus, and we would keep our cars without anyone being able to claim we were cooking the planet. I think that’s how I know it will never be done.

      • Hi, BaDnOn,
        I’ll be listening to what you have to say.
        {uncloaking now}
        My S.B. is in chemistry, from long ago (M.I.T. 1970 under Prof. Jeff Steinfeld).
        https://chemistry.mit.edu/profile/jeffrey-i-steinfeld/

        In about a year, I will be looking for something to do.
        Met yesterday with a close friend who has been involved with various forms of “alternative energy,” including biodiesel, for some time, and has been after me to “come join us” for awhile.

        As previously mentioned here, I, like you, will not be anybody’s bitch. Anything with which I might choose to become involved would necessarily be an independent effort.

        TTYL,

        • Hey Adi,

          I’ll keep everyone here in-the-know. 🙂

          I’m convinced it can be done, we never need to be out of fuel, and if you’re reading this, you ARE the Resistance.

          Also, it sounds like your Prof. did some interesting work, as well as writing his book on kinetics, which I have downloaded for my library. Thanks!

    • If a way to burn water for fuel was discovered it would make zero difference. EVs as we all know have nothing to do with anything remotely practical, they’re all about tightening the government fist around our throats so there is nothing that will stop their adoption ouside societal collapse and revolution.

  7. Let’s reinvent the cars, all the myths of the ages
    Celebrate vehicles from deep elder forests
    Have you forgotten the lessons of the ancient war
    We need great golden copulations
    – Jim Morrison
    An American Prayer

    It’s sad to think this is the end for the muscle car or hell, automotive fun of any sort.

    It’s also lights out for the Big Three. The people in Detroit can’t really believe that allowing the government to put its grimy hands on their shoulders and whisper BOHICA (Bend Over, Here It Comes Again) in their ears while their business is shot to hell in a battery-fueled orgy of stupidity is a smart strategy.

    I agree that the purpose of this exercise is to not only get the hoi polloi out of vehicles and limit their mobility, but is to deindustrialize even further this country. The ruling class knows good and well that this will be the end of the U.S. auto industry. And they don’t care.

  8. The only funerals that anyone will be attending are the Big Three (GM, Ford, and Chrysler) who have decided that they would rather live on their knees and pay homage to Uncle Sam rather than die standing and make something that isn’t deemed “California approved.” Let them fail. I shed no tear drops for these deserters.

    Let us turn to the independent new car companies that will see (and strive) to fill the vacancies on ICEs with lots of horsepower, beautiful, detailed designs, and loud mufflers. These guys may be a few years away from production, but they are working and will fulfill the missing gap that the Big Three have walked away from.

    This is just an example of what is coming. Note: I would prefer a brand-new well-designed automobile rather than just a remake, but I give these guys kudos for trying and keeping gas powered V8 engines alive.

    https://www.foxnews.com/auto/chevrolet-chevelle-muscle-car-back-bizarre-way

  9. It’ll never work to push everyone to electric… as we all know for a million reasons. This push will fail, like everything else Woke touches.

    So, I’d be investing heavily in old skool petroleum stawks now if I were in ‘the market’, which I’m not.

    Also got Toyota’s(and Hyundai ?) hydrogen fuel cell tech which is at least viable. You can refill in a few minutes at a normal filling station.

    • Re: David August 29, 2022 At 11:59 am

      It’s not supposed to work.
      It’s supposed to make cars cost too much for people to afford to buy and use.
      It’s supposed to impoverish us.

  10. The car makers are doomed. At least many if not most. The goal is not to get you into an EV. It’s to get you out of any V. Far fewer cars will be sold, because far fewer will be able to afford one, even if they were willing to put up with EV shortcomings. Leaving aside the intentional destruction of the middle class that used to buy cars. If the Psychopaths In Charge deign to let us continue to drive them, there will be a big market for ICEV parts and repairs. If.
    “This is the end”
    Another Doors song.

      • I don’t see the psychopaths winning. I think the WEF is a pipe dream for people so out of touch with reality about what the world needs that they will be the ones hanging from the tree branches.

        I won’t bore anybody too much with geopolitics, but we all see what is happening in Europe right now. Gas prices this winter are expected to skyrocket (although they did decrease about 20% today since most of the EU is ahead on stockpiling natural gas). What becomes of Europe when their electric bills reach rates that the average European cannot afford and it is disconnected? When businesses throughout the continent start failing? When this fall harvest is less than required and supermarket shelves run bare?

        The entire world is not backing and rooting for the WEF. The problem is the elites are short sighted that they refuse to see this through the smog created by their private gas-powered jets. If Europe falls who saves them? If I am Russia or China, I am waiting patiently to the side. I then march into a continent that has become so self-righteous for their green views, socialist work environments, and then does not even have a weapon to defend themselves if invaded. I doubt it will that difficult to conquer. Hell, after a few 10-degree days and nothing but a loaf of bread to quiet the rumblings in their stomach, they may even hold the door open.

    • Yep.

      I just hope an important lesson will be learned in the process.

      And that lesson is (or should be): TELL THE GOVERNMENT TO GET LOST! TRUST YOURSELF INSTEAD.

    • 4.9% of energy production is so called green solar and wind, but it is far from green and they want to expand it to 100%, it won’t work, you will freeze and no electricity for your EV.

      Not Green: Offshore Wind ‘Industry’ Destroying Fishing Grounds, Birds & Marine Life

      Taking wind turbines out to sea not only escalates the cost of the occasional power they produce, it destroys coastal landscapes, birds and other marine life.

      Millions of birds of battered out of existence by these things every year. And offshore turbines are driving puffins and other threatened species to the brink of extinction.

      Wind turbine noise has been proven to disrupt whales’ sonar guidance and communication systems, creating another threat to the already threatened Atlantic Right Whale.

      The damage done by offshore wind farms to fishing grounds is met with practiced contempt by wind power outfits and malign indifference by their political enablers.

      And, as Viv Forbes puts it, offshore wind power facilities threaten the lives and lifestyles of coastal communities, everywhere.

      For years now, subsidised wind energy investors have been razing ridgelines, felling forests, and slicing birds, bats, and insects. They trash the landscape to benefit a few landowners and speculators in a vain attempt to produce cheap, reliable electricity from a low density, unpredictable, intermittent energy source.

      these towers of whirling knives accelerate their invasion of shallow coastal waters. They pose a lethal danger to sea birds – beheading or de-winging pelicans and petrels, seagulls and sea eagles, gannets and grebes, kites and gliders. They also endanger coastal shipping, barges, helicopters, fishermen, and tourists. And the noise pollution from pile driving and turbine whine is affecting whales and seals.

      Better to stick with clean, safe, reliable, efficient power plants that only take up a tiny bit of real estate and cost far less.

      https://stopthesethings.com/2022/02/04/not-green-offshore-wind-industry-destroying-fishing-grounds-birds-marine-life/

  11. ‘That will leave the Mustang as the last one left and the one that will turn out the lights on what was a Helluva ride’ — eric

    Like a lot of Big Gov programs that were simply plunged into on blind faith, without even a pilot test, EeeVee mandates are likely to smack the wall in this decade for two reasons.

    One is that buyer resistance to EeeVees is real. A majority of drivers either don’t like them, can’t practically use them, can’t afford them, don’t have a garage to charge them, can’t pay several thousand dollars for a 240V charging circuit, and so on.

    Second reason is that when massive buyer resistance collides with a crumbling economy (Fed chair Powell announced Friday that rate hikes will continue until morale improves, no matter what), car makers face bankruptcy on their loss-making malinvestments.

    In a functioning capitalist system, soundly rejected New Coke (EVs) would revert to Classic Coke (ICEs) by popular demand; the mistake would be written off and put behind us.

    But under Woke Socialism, Big Gov will stubbornly double down by bailing out these failed, gov-mandated ‘investments.’ Result: a thin menu of new cars on offer; many victims simply priced out of personal transport entirely.

    What have they done to our car, yeah?
    What have they done to our fair sister?
    Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
    Stuck her with knives in the side of the cowl
    And tied her with mandates and dragged her down

    I hear a very gentle sound
    With your ear down to the ground
    We want V8s and we want ’em …
    We want V8s and we want ’em …
    Now
    Now?
    NOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

    — The Doors, When the Music’s Over

    • Jim,

      Fine adaptation!

      Also could be considered:

      “Not to use the gas,
      Rear wheels don’t get spun,
      Nothing left to drive that’s
      Fun, fun, fun…”

      • I love the gearheads I have gathered together on this thin raft
        We have constructed hot rods in honor of our escaping
        This is the land where the V8 died

        The Leftists in the forest, brightly feathered
        They are saying, Forget your rights
        Live with us in forests of serfdom
        Out here in the work camps there are no cars
        Out here we is owned, immobilized

        — The Doors, The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)

      • One foot on the brake, one on the gas
        When there’s too much traffic I can’t pass
        I can’t drive 55 (miles) (to the nearest charger) (EV’s are crap)

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