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It's seldom a new factoid comes my way about post-war American cars (up to circa 1980). This is one I just learned : first gen Rivieras have detachable door skins, so the door internals can be accessed / serviced. Never saw this on any other car.

Several Ohio counties have Indian names, I grew up in Tuscarawas County, now live in Cuyahoga County..

I got so much shit. Believe it or not- this alley is the after pic of cleaning it out. There was a full sheet of ply, a spare B-59 hood, and a bunch of other flotsam that prevented walking down that side. Threw some stuff out, hood is leaning against the outside of the building until I can get it into my storage container. Can't necessarily tell from this, but the car is shifted over (to the left) about a foot & a half past the door opening. Going to return that snazzy piece of art to a car (instead of a shelf), air the tires, move it over, and roll it outside, wash it. It hasn't been outside... I can't remember how long it's been. I remember it outside... dimly, once. My son has been itching to work on it, and even tho I can't mentally process major complex surgery on 2 vehicles at once, perhaps I should actually try.

nonpayment *(whore moans)

The '75 Grand Ville convertible was a sweet looking car...really like the front end w/ the rectangular headlights that year. My other favorite biggun of that year was the Buick Electra coupe.

I used to have Greg Brady hair when that was "acceptable." Thank God that, between the onset of male menopause, which I guess takes the fullness out of it, and frequent Great Clips coupons, I try to look respectable. Perhaps I succeed because I was at a self-serve picnic event last year and this guy standing next to the table and talking to the person seated next to me was complaining about those "Dumb-o-crats." I let him keep going for a while and then went at him, "Hey, I'm a Democrat ..." and told him that that's how I was raised and that you can still be a suburbanite and on and on. (I'm not referring to politics here, but appearance, behavior, and stereotypes are often linked and, most of the time, the linkages hold some water.) He wasn't expecting that sort of a comeback! Humans are a fascinating species.

Nowhere near as early, but Volkswagen had that feature on the Mk V Rabbit/Golf/Jetta, and Saturn's S-Series was that way.

'41 top tax rate was actually 88%. It did hit 94% in '44 & '45, then edged down a bit to 91% in '46 - thru the '50s. Had to pay for the War. It was 81% in '39, 79% in '38-'34. All these numbers are too high, and none of them prevented new millionaires from being made. It was 91% in 1960, and the number of millionaires grew by 600+% from '44 to '60. 'Not wanting to be seen in rich cars in the '30s' was a social construct, not a Gov't-sourced one. It's not about 'rigging', tho it would be if Gov'ts confiscated wealth in order to fatten their own pockets. Big Gov't is by far the most wildly inefficient manager of money in the known universe. No accountability, no sense of reality. And if "big corporations don't pay taxes" and "Millionaires / billionaires don't pay taxes" and the bottom 47% don't pay taxes..... WHO'S LEFT? Where does the richest corporation in the US, the IRS, get it's $3.5 TRILLION from?

Well, we are talking about '71- I doubt AM-FM was standard on much below Cadillac. I have one on my '64, but that (or '63) is the first year. Pontiac vinyl in the '60s was stupendous quality- most people mistake it for leather. Not sure if it was the same quality by '71. Grand Ville had standard variable-ratio PS, power discs and a 455... with a standard 3-spd. Upholstery was actually a knit nylon & vinyl combo- not taxi grade at all. The 3-spd just seems like an anomaly today.

I could see buying a manual floor shift because I do like manuals----those are fun in sporty and performance cars,, but a column shift in a big family sedan seems so awkward...those cars probably also had am radios, manual windows, no A/C and vinyl bench seats..taxi spec.

Yeah, I knew his solo work quite well from MTV and radio back in the day....great voice. I've gotten into some of the early Genesis work and seen their guitarist (Steve Hackett) perform it live. Though I'm more familiar w/ 80s Genesis w/ Phil Collins (love me some Phil too). I really like the two mid-80s albums Eric Clapton made w/ Phil Collins as producer and on the drum machines...

Wowza...had no idea the Bonneville and Grand Ville got those. I wonder if any still exist. A 3spd column shift manual seems like such an insane idea in a huge 70s car, esp. a premium model like the Grand Ville. I guess a few cheapskates didn't want to pay extra for an automatic..

That is why I chose to use baby llamas for my "controversial" post. To get a rise from people. They are sooo cute and adorable that when I mentioned they get sacrificed (at the Tesla Motors altar), I was hoping some of these Muskian religious zealots would start hatin' on me. Id get clicks and some fame and Id get my own shock jock TV or radio show or something. ] But alas, that didnt happen. I only seem to get a rise with people when I say shyte like rich, bitch, WHITE middle aged "Karens" drive Porsche CUVs... Oh well... Ill continue on my shock jock ways until I get my day in the shock jock world of entertainment some day.

I need to go out to Great Clips at some point...haven't had a haircut since February, been trimming it myself and shaving every couple weeks or so...I was already lazy working from home, gotten worse w/ self-quarantining..

Styling-wise, my favorite year of '70s GM B/C/E models is 1971, followed by 1972...before the bumpers got too big and they still had 2dr hardtops.

Lucky me, Washington only has 31 and like you we had to memorize them and what was the key product for each county. ? Lucky we do not state what county your from, but they do ask the name of the county your in which is weird to out of state transplants as everything here is Indian terms. So I live in Snohomish County.

Unbelievable stats. How did it even pencil to have an option like this, with no economies of scale, on their production line? Literally, a few. I would hope that someone hung onto these as relics. I'll say this ... that, by about '75, Pontiac was the best division at producing full-size (premium) vehicles that could pull of the sporty look, thanks to things like their dashboards and wheel options.

Baby llamas are adorable as fck.

I remember learning to drive in my grandfathers truck, 3 on the tree. LOL

To use a phrase from Minions, the little Girl. "THEY ARE SO FLUFFY!!!"

Perhaps Acura should make the MDX the same size as the Telluride/Palisade and make it just as posh. That would leave room for a slightly larger RDX and allow a subcompact CUV for entry-level Acura buyers.

It is good to open the purge valve once in a while.

That is pretty cool!!

Wait- I thought some bought manuals because they LIKED them?? ? Chances certainly are that those 6/4/2 units are long gone. I know of a really clean '70 Catalina Safari 3-spd, saw it at a car show a couple years ago, then again this month- it had been smacked into by a drunk. No bigger deal than a floor-mounted manual; you're doing the same thing in the same position... It was not only standard, it was the standard. Didn't find Olds' info, but the 3-spd was standard on the '71 LeSabre, LeSabre Custom & Centurion.

Peter Gabriel has such an awesome voice. I never knew Genesis with him as the singer. I got to experience that on youtube. But his solo career I knew quite well back in the day. He was a staple on Montreal radio. Liked him then. Like him even more today with youtube. Cool version indeed!!!

Was enjoying the music of the Pointer Sisters last week when I watched Beverly Hills Cop I and II....great, fun music from my youth.. I was listening to the German versions of two albums Peter Gabriel recording in the 80s, incl. th German language version of 'Shock the Monkey'...pretty cool..

Its been 30 years man. I still dont know what it is you cant touch. Could somebody PLEASE tell me what you cant touch. The beat? He stole that from Rick James so OBVIOUSLY its a beat you CAN touch. Either way. Its a phoquing cool song to dancer to. Sometimes though, I prefer to get SUPER FREAKY if you know what I mean!!! Ive pumped up the jam many a time in 1990!

3-spd was actually standard in ALL ‘71 full-size Pontiacs in the beginning of the MY. Numbers built: Catalina : 144 Catalina Brougham : 6 Bonneville : 4 Grand Ville : 2 Grand Prix had 116 manual trans cars, tho those were likely 99% 4-spds.

Gotta Love auto stories that are done about what would you give up for your truck especially electric pickups. Interesting the percentages for the various things asked and this is driven by FORD. https://www.autoblog.com/2020/06/22/ford-pickup-truck-survey/ So with the 2021 Ford F-150 Pickup reveal days away, Ford wanted to understand what people would do to hold onto their pickup. This is what Truck owners will give up to hold onto their pickup Quoting the story: Number one was streaming services, with 82% owners ready to drop them. More surprising was alcohol, which was close behind at 79%, followed by coffee at 71%. The numbers began to dwindle with other choices, though, as just under half of respondents would give up their phone for a year versus their trucks and 44% would give up eating meat. The hardest sell was giving up sex for a year, which only got 38% of owners. When it came to an EV Pickup this is what came out: Nationwide, 40% of owners are "excited" about fully electric pickups, which isn't a majority, but is still a sizable chunk. While Ford didn't highlight every state, it did show that the majority of truck owners in California, 62% specifically, are excited for electric pickups. Interesting is that the top 3 choices for going EV all centered around power and capability of the truck, along with charging locations and reduced maintenance were the top 3 items. If your interested in the whole questionnaire that Ford did on their trucks, check it out here where Ford has it posted for the Public. Check out the history of the F-150 Ford Pickup with pictures in the PDF file that starts with Fords first pickup in 1917 to today. Very cool. https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North America/US/2020/06/22/The-Great-American-Truck-Survey-2020.pdf JUNE 25th 8pm EDT for the 2021 Ford F-150 Reveal!

Correction: that is the Worst Looking Truck ever!

Im bald on top. So you beat me there with the hair. I shave my face every damned day. Working in the restaurant industry just makes it that more cleaner for the customers, health inspectors and when the bosses (my partner and I) lead by example and we both are clean shaven everyday, it makes it that much more easier to (not demand) by politely suggest that we prefer that our employees are clean shaven too. We cant force employees to be clean shaven, but we have to enforce a mandatory beard net as that is the law. But we much prefer that employees are clean shaven. Its a cleaner look. But all that is for nothing as we wear medical masks now... Not mandatory, but we prefer to do it that way for our customers. (and for ourselves, I guess) And it gets hot in the phoquing face. And hence why I had to vent yesterday. Nothing really happened. I just got overwhelmed with this whole Covid thing. The masks fogging up my glasses. The heat and sweat on my face while wearing the mask in the kitchen. The constant repeating of ourselves, both the employees to me and me to my employees because we cant hear ourselves communicate to each other due to the muzzling of our voices due to said masks on top of the regular restaurant kitchen noises... It finally blew over and I hd to vent. I vented in my car screaming with every little thing that has bugged me over the last month or two. LOL. Plus I vented with a post on here due to something that has bugged me on here, but then I edited it and posted that I vented and now Im happy. But I bet I got more chest hair than you. Im more macho than you in THAT way at least.

I have no idea. What my mom told me that day has stayed with me ever since. Sometimes there is wisdom to be learned from old tales that our parents, grand parents, great grandparents, great great grandparents have passed on to us. I love fresh figs. I dont really care for the dry figs. Ill eat them, but I do much prefer the fresh figs. I love birds too, but like your dad, if I had a fig tree or two and birds ate my figs, Id have a conniption or two.

Oregon Bus Depot deploys wireless charging system that is in the pavement, freeing up space and decreasing charging time for the deployment of EV buses. https://chargedevs.com/newswire/wave-deploys-wireless-charging-system-at-oregon-bus-depot/ In addition to the news of electric auto's, seems Tesla Long Range Model S has received it's awaited new battery range. 402 miles on a single charge for the updated Tesla S Long range auto. This is a 20% improvement over 2019 models with the same battery pack design. https://chargedevs.com/newswire/tesla-used-a-variety-of-technical-advances-to-increase-model-s-range-to-400-miles/

West Coast to lead the nation in becoming a Diesel free commercial truck zone. Utilities are working with the Class 8 Semi Truck industry as they deploy heavy duty rapid chargers to allow 800V Semi Truck and faster charging stations in support of the future of commercial transit. Along the major freeway system there is already an existing charging network that supports auto's and medium duty trucks from traditional level 1 charging to Level 3 rapid charging and with Level 4 extreme fast charging for vehicles coming on this is getting a boost of support as Utilities invest in having charging systems that will support future Class 8 semi trucks like the new Freightliner EV semi above. GreenCar web site is reporting that the comprehensive 185 page West Coast Clean Transit Corridor Initiative study will truly change as they add high powered DC fast chargers along the 1,300 mile I5 corridor from Mexico to Canada along with sites connecting state highways such as I-8, I-10, I-80 in California, I-84 in Oregon and I-90 in Washington as well as other local routes. 10 years ago, the West Coast Electric Highway was built from Whistler, British Columbia to Mexico with charging stations every 25 to 50 miles along I-5, U.S. 101 and California Hwy 99. The new initiative is to add these direct charging or extreme fast chargers since Semi Trucks (Class 8 ) take 100 times more power than a traditional DC fast charger for auto's. Total cost of the project is estimated at $850 million Full report can be read here: https://www.hdrinc.com/portfolio/west-coast-clean-transit-corridor-initiative PDF version of the report can be downloaded here: https://westcoastcleantransit.com/ Where you can see the 11 utilities that are to take part in this expansion of the charging grid. This is based on the following: Zero-emission MD/HD truck market assessment Zero-emission MD/HD truck forecasts Stakeholder surveys Current trucking market landscape analysis Current utility infrastructure evaluation Current and forecasted truck volumes along the corridor Identification of locations for future electric truck charging facilities

Rivian files new paten for drop tail gate per Teslarati.com. Everyone watches everyone and in the auto industry that is no exception where Rivian is expected to really shake things up. They had shown at an auto show a concept tail gate that dropped. It now seems it could very well be available on the truck as an option over a traditional tail gate or it could become the standard tailgate. Teslarati discovered this reviewing patent filings from December. Patent details of the actual tailgate here: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2019236967&tab=PCTBIBLIO Teslarati story here: https://www.teslarati.com/rivian-r1t-tailgate-swing-drop-patent/

Haha just working from home and with remoting in everything was so slow I didn't really have much chance to get on here.

'81 Eagle Sundancer Conv. conversion model, only built in '81 and '82. Pretty unique, how many can say they own a convertible 4x4 Coupe with decent ground clearance? Nice vanity plate too, "81 4x4". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Eagle#Sundancer_convertibles

The 4x4 posts while having the 4x6 screwed into them are for tenting. This allows us to have from heavy clear plastic early in the year when frost is still possible over the starts planted to protect them to using the lite weight cloth coverings to keep insects out but allow rain to fall on the plants. At this stage except for the lettuce as this helps keep it very clean, the rest of the veggie plants are established enough to grow with out tenting needed. Here is how it looked earlier this year after we had already gone from clear heavy plastic to just tenting against the sun. The posts will also be used as I will secure some lattice work for the squash plants to grow up on and let the squash hang and grow big, but clean. Planning to secure lattice this weekend if it does not rain. It will look like this. Lattice also allows the plant while growing and keeping the veggies clean to spread out easier so it does not mildew here where we tend to get plenty of drizzle.

Pandemic projects. So in my 12th week of working from home. Actually loving it saving 2hrs a day in NOT having to commute to the office. As such I have gotten back to my enjoyment of wood and projects. I figure @A Horse With No Name who is a kindred spirit would enjoy my wood projects. So during this time, I hit a mental road block on a project and remember my math teacher who always said there is a solution, just go do something different and come back and you will find the solution. So I did just that, went out to my shed, used scrap wood, screws and stain to create a small table for my BBW area. My other recent project was a bit bigger, the wife wanted an easier time gardening, so I figure why not build her a decent raised bed. The last raised bed was a 2ft high plastic bed, $400 from Costco. 3ft x 10ft x 2ft high. I thought I could do this better with natural wood. So off to searching the web and then Home Depot and here is my raised bed I built for the wife out of 4"x6"x10ft timbers. This ended up giving me a 5ft wide by 10ft long 30" tall raised bed for gardening. You can see the Costco plastic bed with Garlic growing, planted early winter to the left. Stacking it into the ground. 3/8th rebar, 3ft long. 2ft into the ground, 1ft of wood. Drilled hole and then pounded the bar in. Finished bed with liner installed. Bed filled with Black Gold compost / dirt. Great way to grow healthy veggies. So the wife is on an organic kick, all things nature, no chemicals and as such I was researching various ways to make this last even longer then the estimated 15 to 20 years or so. As such a coworker introduced me to a Japanese technic of making the wood water and fire resistant. The technic is called Shou Sugi Ban. This is taking a torch to the outside and charring it and then wire brushing it down to have a harder wood surface. This take the softer carbon parts of the wood and harden it. My coworkers veggi bed, in the future any more beds I build will have this done on the inside and outside first before liner and dirt is put in. My Shou Sugi Ban veggi bed now that I have done the technic on it. More info if your interested in the Shou Sugi Ban technic here on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=shou+sugi+ban+technique Cool table project done here on this same technic.

Have you noticed how rarely you see DeLoreans on the road? Apparently their owners only drive from time to time.