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Cleaning thru mountains of paper, came across some notes I took about 7 years ago. I was orchestrating a warehouse move for the DOT; we ran a 26-ft moving truck twice a day for 7 days, moving contents of 1 warehouse to another. While waiting one day out in the parking lot, I circled a mercedes benz 560SL. It had airbags and that EXCITING!! ribbed plastic cladding; I would guess it was a late '80s but daimler is too lazy to bother changing the styling for years, so without a data plate, who knows. My notes read as follows: • black plastic rear view mirror with Pinto-esque dimmer button • black rubber-ringed sideview mirrors • black plastic door handles • black plastic grille bars [both the door handles and grille bars had sun-faded to that tiger-striped, sparkly grey color] • very cheap matte black plastic bumper fillers/extensions • black plastic A/C vents • Pinto-esque open-topped console [no lidded compartment], covered with a wood-look vinyl sticker • more cheesy 'wood' vinyl stickers around the radio • very exposed/obvious seat belt bolts & brackets • exposed foam rubber gaskets around the taillights • exposed rubber trunk gasket (lower corners) • exposed screws on metal pieces below headlights • seats were ironing-board flat, so were the door panels, with no detailing or design whatsoever The very notion that this was in any way a luxury car is a laugh riot. It was built cheap & sloppy, it screamed cheap & sloppy from front to back. mercedes was perpetrating 1940's construction levels on 1980s consumers. It's embarrassing. People who bought these should've thrown their money out the window instead. I have 1 pic from my old computer of this car; this sort of thing was supposed to be engineered past in the pre-war era :

1. When this Chinese Covid19 thing comes to an end and life starts to behave normally again...how will humans view travelling? a) Will it be solely to go from point A to Point B? b) will humans joy ride ever again? 2. If that ever happens that joy rides will be part of our future, how will we be doing that? a) with gasoline powered vehicles? b) with BEVs? c) surely we must have all noticed that Mother Nature has slowly recaptured territory lost to humans and Mother Nature has started healing herself in just a short time d) with that being said...which way will we sway? Because its apparent that human activity has impacted Mother Nature in not a very good way e) Well...gasoline is dirt cheap again. Batteries are not.... Tough decisions going forward as not all industries will be going full steam ahead so the "R" word (recession) will be a very painful one this time around. 3. All that does not matter, I wanna know if RIDE SHARING would still be a thing? Somehow ride sharing is tied down with EVs...and all kinds of ride sharing, autonomous self driving pods are supposed to be our future going forward. But are we now gonna design social distancing autonomos driven pods? a) are we just gonna ignore how we pollute this planet? b) how close do we really wanna get with our fellow man after this Chinese Covid19 thing comes to an end? c) What kind of automobile future are we looking at after this Chinese Covid19 thing? I personally think EVs are gonna be more popular than ever. But it will take MORE time for THAT to happen as not too many folk will be buying new cars anytime soon. And the other incentive for ICE that is also AGAINST EVs is that gasoline is dirt cheap again. However, I think this ride sharing thing is DEAD. From phobias of being too close to a stranger in the same pod to disinfecting manias and phobias that will linger waaaay past our victory of this new plague that hit us. I dont think social distancing @ 6 feet is gonna be our new norm for our species, but I think we will be very wary of each other. And I think we will all become germaphobes. And THAT is the death knell for ride sharing pods. Just a thought that I just got.