Splendid Isolation

Category: Drive Time

Basic Needs

Drive Time, Old Fartism

This article got me thinking.  A short excerpt:

When that computer-equipped vehicle begins to run badly or not run at all, a diagnostic check is in store, by plugging an electrical device into the receiver under the dash, and it produces a code.  That code number correlates with a symptom, such as 02 bank sensor, or cam positioning sensor, or ignition module, or sometimes vague terms that confound the most experienced mechanics.

The fix begins by purchasing the parts and installing them to determine if that fixes the problem.  If not, more guessing, parts, and labor, only to have that problem or another reappear again a few days or a week later.  Dealerships run their mechanics out at about $200 per hour, and the independent mechanics are not far behind.  The auto makers have figured out that if it is made complicated enough, and if expensive software and computers are necessary to diagnose the problems, the customer has to return to a “Factory Authorized Dealer” to correct the problem.  Not to mention some specialized tools necessary to access the problem.

If the vehicle is over ten years old, chances are, it will not be repaired, and it goes to the scrap yard to be crushed, and the low-income people are faced with the dilemma of how to get to work and transport the family.

Why has this happened?

All of this electronic stuff in cars has been done in the name of global warming and saving the planet — while ignoring a large portion of the average and lower-income population. We are a sophisticated society here, but we must do better.

As with almost all legislation nowadays, laws have been proposed by, passed by, and supported by people and organizations who are basically inured to the consequences thereof.

There is of course a solution, and it’s one near and dear to my heart.

It may be time to allow the auto industry EPA laws to lie fallow for a year every five years* and produce vehicles that are as easy to repair as my 1956 Chevrolet, without the computers or electric windows or door locks. Let’s produce vehicles with a simple heater and an air-conditioner, with inexpensive freon and an AM/FM radio. Produce these vehicles with four- and six-cylinder engines without fuel injection. The vehicle should sell for less than $10,000 and should last twenty years if not more. Teach auto shop in the high schools, and the family can learn to fix their own cars with inexpensive parts.

*Not every five years;  forever.  And not just EPA laws and regs;  the stupidly-excessive safety ones too.

Here’s what I want for myself.  A 1.6-, 2- or 2.5-liter internal combustion engine producing about 100-125hp in a smallish, light-framed car.  If I still had a family of kids, then a 3.0-liter engine producing about 175- to 200hp in a passenger car or smallish SUV.  If I wanted a small truck for routine household jobs (carrying fertilizer, sod, boards or planks for example), then a 2.5-liter engine producing 150hp, and if I needed a larger truck for serious work, a 4- to 4.7-liter engine generating 300hp.  (For the latter two groups, sufficient torque to tow a boat or small trailer.)   If I wanted something sporty, then go back to the first two groups of vehicle above and boost the power in a smaller (e.g. two-seater) car.

Here’s the commonality between all these vehicles:  no computer chips, no “engine management systems” or anything like that.  Forget those crappy little touchscreens while we’re there.  The electrical system needs to power the instruments, the lights, the windshield wipers… and that’s it.  Forget fuel injection, remote starting, power windows, power truck latches or power anything that is not directly related to the car’s primary function.  If you want to have GPS or any kind of emergency capability, use your damn smart phone.  If you can’t live without all those electronic conveniences, then by all means buy a “modern” car, SUV or truck with all those geegaws — but be prepared to pay a super-premium price (which one could argue is already in place, when a new-model Ford Bronco [!!!!!] can cost over a hundred grand).

I know I’m going to face one of those reductio ad absurdam arguments:  “You basically want us to all drive Trabants or Yugos!”  which is arrant nonsense.  Modern manufacturing techniques and metals have come a long way, and there’s no reason why “inexpensive” should mean “shoddy” anymore.

Here’s an interesting fact.  Do you know which groups of cars are seeing the greatest price increases?  Rebuilt and/or resto-modded cars from the 1960s and -70s that predate the electronic era.  And I’m not just talking exotic sports cars, either.  I recently saw for sale a restored 1965 Mercedes 230 SL (W113) for nearly two hundred thousand dollars, and it was gone within a week.  But that’s a sports car.  A 1964 Mercedes 220 SE is asking $68,000.  (My Dad had one of these back then, and he sold it with over 150,000 miles on the clock — and the next owner added another 100,000 or so before selling it, still in perfect running condition.)

It’s a little more difficult with U.S.-made cars of that era, because most have been Dream Machined and muscle-carred into the stratosphere.  Even a reconditioned-to-original-spec Chevy C20 or K5 model truck will run you about $90,000 (which is insane).

Look none of this is easy.  Life nowadays seems to be horrifyingly complicated and over-technical (battery-operated electric toothbrushes?  FFS), and I know that what I’m asking for is probably too much.

But I’m allowed to dream;  and I dream of a simple mechanical vehicle that even I — the most un-mechanically-minded man in the Western world — could fix with a simple instruction manual.  (And really, that manual does not have to warn me not to drink the battery water;  I already know that.)

I once helped a buddy fix his Mini-Cooper’s suspension, with nothing more than a few basic tools and a good repair manual, I replaced my Fiat’s exhaust pipe all by myself — and I once worked with a couple of guys to replace a universal joint on an old Land Rover, with no repair manual — so I’m not completely helpless.  Would I want to do the repairs on one of my dream cars?  Hell, no.  But if push came to shove, I’d like to know that I could.

And of the car cost less than $10,000 as mentioned in the article above, that would leave a lot of money to pay repair bills, you betcha.

Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about;  just picture them with more modern shells, better electrical systems (e.g. no Lucas) and modern rustproofing, and you’ll get the idea.

1967 BMW 1600

1974 Datsun 620 pickup

Peugeot 504 Ti

1975 Mazda B1600 pickup

And one more:

1976 Mercedes 300 D wagon

…and even that’s starting to get too complex — but it would last forever, as many did.

Feel free to suggest alternatives, or argue with my basic thesis, of course.

Quirky Racer

Drive Time

Back in Ye Olde Days in the Racist Republic, the top tax rate was 48%, and with a National Sales Tax of 14% (on everything including food), you didn’t get much of your paycheck left for any of the pleasures and indulgences of life.

So what employers did was offer most employees a company car — which wasn’t taxed — as part of their total compensation along with a “fleet” credit card to cover all fuel and maintenance costs, and let me tell you, it was brilliant.  (Do the math for yourselves, adding up the car payment, insurance, running costs and depreciation, and see what you end up with.  The number will stagger you.)

Now not everyone qualified for such largess, of course, but if your job involved activities like calling on clients, fetching office supplies each month or visiting field offices, you qualified.  Senior management, of course, also got cars because of the “prestige” of their jobs (even though they were the ones who could well afford not to have one, the bastards, but that’s corporate inequity for you).

Anyway, the company was usually very strict about who drove the cars — you couldn’t let your wife drive it to get groceries, for example — because in most cases the insurance only covered the actual employee.  So if the car was involved in a wreck and you weren’t the driver, say hello to massive damages and (probably) termination.

As for the cars themselves, the model you got was very dependent on your place in the hierarchy of the company, and most companies simply gave you the car that your predecessor had driven, or if it was too old (usually around 2 years or 50,000 miles or so), you could get a new one from an approved list.

Well, my company car was once in the shop for some rather major repairs that would take at least a week to be done, and so I approached my boss and asked what the company was going to do about it.  He called up the company accountant, and was told that one of the other guys at my level in the company would be away on leave for a couple of weeks, so I should just get the keys from him and use his car in his absence.

I must confess to feeling somewhat apprehensive about this, because said vacationer was a slob of the first order — his office looked like he hosted daily food fights and small animal sacrifices — so I got his keys and walked down to the underground parking garage, prepared to run screaming.

However, to my amazement, not only was Fred’s Saab clean, but it was spotless, looking brand new.  (I should have known;  included in approved “maintenance” was a six-monthly full detailing of the interior, and he must have just done it the day before he left.)

But that wasn’t all.  Among the VW Golfs, Passats and Mitsubishis in that group of approved cars, he’d somehow managed to wangle himself one of these:

Yup;  it was a Saab 900 Turbo, the one that came out with a “remodel” in 1984.

Bloody hell, the thing was a rocket (and especially so when compared to my staid Opel Kadett a.k.a. Chev Cavalier stationwagon, with its anemic 1500cc un-turbo’d engine).

The Saab was also a sharp-looking silver (as in the pic), whereas my Opel was… bamboo-yellow.  (Hey, it was the only one available at the time and remember, it was FREE.)

Anyway, I drove that Saab for nearly two weeks, and boy did I love it.  What amazed me was its roadholding, which was better than any car I had driven before, and only bettered by my next company car (promotion!), a BMW 325i.

I don’t know how well the 900 Turbo fared in the U.S., sales-wise, but I’m told that it didn’t do well.  A pity:  it should have blown all American cars of similar type off the roads.  The only problem, as I see it, was that we Murkins loves us our big-ass engines, and even with a turbo, the Saab’s little 2-liter fourbanger probably did not have the allure of the typical mega-liter V8s from Chrysler, Chevy or Ford.

Me, with my fondness for small, peppy engines?  I loved that Saab with a passion, and only getting the promotion to Beemer-level prevented me from nagging the boss for one.

I have since learned that while the Saab wasn’t that popular in the U.S. market as a whole, its actual user base was almost fanatical in their devotion to it.

Can’t say I blame ’em;  for two weeks I was one of them.  Hell, I’d take a new one now, if I could.

Flight Of Fantasy

Drive Time

So what car did Ian Fleming’s James Bond really drive?

Forget that Aston Martin / Lotus / BMW nonsense;  Bond was a Bentley man.

And when you have an actual car designer who was a devoted Bond fan in his youth… well, you get this wonderful creature, handbuilt and derived from another Bentley model altogether.

Never mind that Ian Fleming’s description of said Bentley never existed;  Our Hero Car Designer (Tony Hunter) just went ahead and designed and built his Bentley pretty much from the writer’s description — and the result is a one-of-a-kind, snorting, roaring beauty.

Old W.O. would have approved, mightily.

So would (the real) James Bond.

Sublime Beauty

Drive Time

Please watch just the first 8 minutes or so of this video, and then tell me why I shouldn’t lust after an Arnholt-Bristol:

Good grief, they’re beautiful.  And spendy.  Typically, they run for well over a quarter-million dollars, when you can find one.

Quality + scarcity + performance… you get the picture.

And speaking of the above features, the other two cars featured later in the video aren’t bad, either.

Snoops

Corporate Fuckery, Drive Time, Surveillance Society

Yeah, don’t fuck mess with Texas:

Texas has sued insurance provider Allstate, alleging that the firm and its data broker subsidiary used data from apps like GasBuddy, Routely, and Life360 to quietly track drivers and adjust or cancel their policies.

Allstate and Arity, a “mobility data and analytics” firm founded by Allstate in 2016, collected “trillions of miles worth of location data” from more than 45 million people, then used that data to adjust rates, according to Texas’ lawsuit. This violates Texas’ Data Privacy and Security Act, which requires “clear notice and informed consent” on how collected data can be used. A statement from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the suit is the first-ever state action targeting comprehensive data privacy violations.

How so?

According to Texas’ complaint (PDF), the data collected included “a phone’s geolocation data, accelerometer data, magnetometer data, and gyroscopic data, which monitors details such as the phone’s altitude, longitude, latitude, bearing, GPS time, speed, and accuracy.”

With that data—plus, in some cases, data from connected vehicles—Allstate could see when, how far, and for how long someone was driving, along with “hard braking events” and “whether a consumer picked up or opened their phone while traveling at certain speeds.”

Texas’ lawsuit claims that Arity incentivized—through “generous bonus incentives”—apps like GasBuddy, a gas price-tracking app, and Life360, which is intended to keep tabs on family members’ location, to “increas[e] the size of their dataset.” Under their agreements with app makers, Arity had “varying levels of control over the privacy disclosures and consent language” shown to app users, according to the complaint.

And now for the doublespeak:

“Arity helps consumers get the most accurate auto insurance price after they consent in a simple and transparent way that fully complies with all laws and regulations.”

But they’re not the only villains in this piece:

The suit also cites Allstate as gathering direct car use data from Toyota, Lexus, Mazda, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, and Ram vehicles.

And if these assholes shared data with Allstate, you can bet your house that they did so with other insurance companies too.

If you’re not into letting corporations do this to you:

…you may want to avoid any dealings at all with these bastards.  It’s not like Stellantis (Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati) are reporting a boom in sales, after all.

When the Texans win their suit, at it should, I would argue against fines because those bastards will just pass the cost into their customers and claim a tax deduction at worst.

What I would do as TxAG is get a list of all Texans with Allstate policies, and demand that Allstate provide free insurance to them for a period of time commensurate with the start date of Arity’s snoopery.

I know, that would just cause Allstate to cease operations in Texas.  That’s fine, too — take away access to the second-largest pool of drivers in the U.S.