The Economy

Back in days of yore, several aftermarket companies sold fiberglass bolt-on body kits that looked sort of stingrayish to slap on the Volkswagen Beetle chassis. I’m sure most of those have rotten away by now and look about like the economy might when certain folks can’t get their acts together to avoid the looming government shutdown.

 

Just to pull the discussion back around to The Economy, there's a larger cultural/economic force at work when we're talking about Boomers buying the cars they lusted after but couldn't afford in 1969.

Certainly accounts for the spike (wockawocka) in the kind of restomod businesses and TV shows we're describing.

Whereas Generations X through Z seem less and less enamored of the car or the truck every day.

 

Georgia-Pacific closing Fla. cellulose factory. GP describes a state-of-the-art plant operating on 85% biomass generated electricity. GP-2-Pager-FAQ-05.2022 (scene7.com) If we could only replace those pesky employees. Last time I checked people were still having babies which needed fluff-stuffed diapers. Owned 10 years, the accounting depreciation has run out. Call me cynical.

 

They're trying to sell 500 of them. Since you can buy repro body panels and you won't have to repair them before prepping for paint, that's a much more profitable way to go. Original examples, even V6 versions, are hard to come by and very pricey.

 

I don't disagree. That said, dropping an LS motor into, well, damn near anything is the cheap way of choice to instant power. It's a relatively compact engine with an aluminum block, so it's light. You can buy them at a junkyard for $600-800 used from many things GM or get a higher end version from a Caddy, Camaro or Corvette. You can buy a fresh crate motor already hopped up. Hot rod parts for them are cheap and abundant. It's been done to death, to the point that a lot of custom car guys are tired of them, too - but its a cheap and easy way to power a build from a 50's pickup to a Miata. In many cases there are already engineered parts to adapt them to X car so that you don't have to design and build them, saving on time and money. You start with 300 horsepower or so before you even begin to hop up the motor.

 

One underrated thing - how many younger generation folks can afford a house with a garage that can be given over to a project car for months or years at a time? Good look getting a landlord or HOA to sign off on letting you wrench on one out in the broad daylight in front of God and everybody.

 

There were several in our neighborhood growing up in northern California. They aged extremely poorly as you'd expect fiberglass to do in hot summers and rainy winters. Same with fiberglass dune buggies.

 

But what's a good neighborhood without at least a couple of project cars sitting on cinder blocks for years at a time in the yard?

 

Hell of a read. But I stumbled hard over this ...

After he finished hosing down the machines, he started scrubbing blood and fat off the steel parts with chemicals that, if they hit skin, created welts that could take months to heal. Shortly after 2:30 a.m., he thought he saw a bit of torn rubber glove within the conveyor belt of the deboning area and reached in to grab it. Suddenly, the machine came to life. Across the factory, another worker had failed to see Marcos crouched with his left arm deep inside the assembly line and turned it on.

The belt caught the sleeve of Marcos’s baggy jacket and pulled him across the floor. Hard plastic teeth ripped through his muscles, tearing open his forearm down to the bone. By the time someone heard his screams and shut off the power, his arm was limp, a deep triangular gash running down the length of it. A rope of white tendons hung from his elbow to his wrist, horrifying the workers who gathered around him. He understood from their faces that something was badly wrong but didn’t feel any pain as the wound began gushing blood and he started to lose consciousness.



I mean, somebody tell me that somehow I'm seeing this all wrong.
Otherwise, how does this go wrong so badly at The New York Times?

 

When they say left, they are obviously talking about its political affiliation and how this is bad for Biden

 

Cars are so well made now that my generation views their purchase like buying a microwave. You care a little bit about how it looks and how much power it has, but ultimately…it’s a microwave.

 

I blame Toyota. American car makers made sure that you knew things could break or be recallled.

The Toyota Camry is a toaster.


It's as reliable as one, and has the driving personality of one as well.