trinacriabob

This is a little stale dated for a spotting thread, so I'll put it here. Since the owner probably both has a sense of humor and doesn't mind the attention, here's something I saw in the desert at Joshua Tree National Park: Clever.

I'm not up to date on the latest Volvo wagon configurations. I'd have to see that blue in person. It would also depend on the interior color. Yes to New England, though. Most of it. When people say they like N.E., it's usually Boston and MA, VT, NH, and ME. Most people aren't big fans of CT and RI. I also just recently read that many N.E. states have a high outbound move rates because of cost of living and tax burden ... less so for weather.

Also spotted later on August 26. Is it any wonder that LA fitness members also use this parking structure? I bought a few things, came back, and, sure enough, an LA Fitness dude opened up the Ford truck to get into it. I asked him if this trio was staged. He said it wasn't. Of these three, the prize for the front grille (without all the added on stuff) goes to Ford.

Two people with masks + 1 plexiglas(s) partition = lots of repeating oneself and/or mistakes in orders

I like some things about it while others not so much. The roof line is traditional and safe ... if that's what you want. The rear tail lamp arrangement is attractive enough ... it has enough going on. As for the dash, I don't like the little knobs on the air conditioning vents. They remind me of something American, sort of ungainly, and from decades ago. I will have to hand it to Volvo for one thing. It was once upon a time America's hippie car. THIS was the car you drove off to UC Santa Cruz or Smith College in ... and put lots of counterculture stickers on. Thankfully, Volvo has passed that baton to Subaru (which is probably now quietly trying to shed that image with larger and more up-line cars). Said another way, "You've come a long way, baby."

Spotted August 26 on yet another trip through Arby's drive through, this time to get a Reuben sandwich: Looks ominous - don't know what it is, what year it is, or what engine it might have had A true "getaway car" - it got away from fitting snugly inside my photo

Heard it at a Starbucks, where you can now sit inside, and where the music loop came into being long before the baristas were ever born: Love the refrain, "Say what?"

The random thing I was really going to say: as I was driving to the dealership today for a routine maintenance item, I thought about DASHBOARDS. Given how much I disliked the dash in that Toyota Rav 4 I was given as a rental recently, I wouldn't own one. I almost think that, if you don't "connect" with the dashboard and the car's interior, you should NOT buy that car. You will be in that cabin for years ... and years (if you're like me).

While it was all fictitious, she must have had a pair to be able to boss someone with Beatrice Arthur's persona around, not to mention her late husband. This little lady had a grating voice. My mom used to watch this show.

A lot of talk about car interiors on Random Thoughts today and, as I'm getting something to eat at Mickey D's, I see a newer Lexus with a burgundy interior ... and a feisty dog inside. Decent enough burgundy inside, in leather. It was a Lexus IS 350 AWD, once I got behind it in the drive through. The sun was obviously setting. I made a noise to the dog. I thought it was a lab. When it turned toward me, it had a white patch below the collar. Not a pure lab. Dogs are like little kids. They get rambunctious when riding around in the car.

This speaks my language. This is right about where burgundy should be. I can deal with the hard steering wheel, having had this in a Brougham, but my major heartache is that someone went through the trouble of ordering their base Cutlass Supreme (coupe) with bucket seats and a console but didn't spring for the gauge package over a boring strip speedometer ... and a clock that would be where the Olds logo is on the fake wood applique. As I was scouring for photos, I also ran into this one. The occasional Regal S/R colonnade is like a needle in a haystack compared to Cutlass models with bucket seats (Salon, Calais, etc.) of the same years. What a beautiful set up of bucket seats, a nicely trimmed Riviera-like console, and a trestle shifter. Who can forget this really unique car?

And then, it's a miss on some of the old school colors they want to bring back - they (Fusion, Malibu, etc.) had/have this somewhat orange "brick" color for a while and, instead of a bringing back a good maroon or burgundy for interiors (Corvette, Challenger, etc.), it's closer to red. The automakers have done a better job of bringing back blue interiors - FoMoCo (Lincoln), to name one.

This is the cheap way out for GM, especially at the price points of some of these larger vehicles. That's far from a two-tone tan and it doesn't look good. It's so you can match it up to any exterior color choice more easily and the factory order parameters will let it fly. A true two-tone tan and two-tone gray would look good, but much different from what's shown in these photos.

Pocket dialing is the pits. I've had a few random strange episodes with it. Perfect stuff for "Candid Camera" type skits, as in looking at your phone and thinking "WTF."

Seen on Saturday ... what a treat to see one of these. I'm guessing this is a Thunderbird of 1994 to 1997 vintage, more or less. Not too shabby for a 25 year old car. A friend of mine had one in silver (with the V6) and a girl I knew had one in that metallic color that looked like a grapefruit (with a V8) that also had a sunroof. If I recall, these Thunderbirds came with a lot of standard equipment (almost all power options) and had a base model MSRP of around $17 K or thereabouts. They offered a good value. Ford used these aluminum alloy wheels for quite a while. Would this be pin striping ... or pimp striping? Regardless, you don't see it much anymore. Attractive rear tail lamp set up You rarely see comfortable cloth bucket seats like this anymore This generation of Thunderbird had the two big sweeps in the dash dialed ... and it looked good. I got to drive one of these one. It may have also been silver. It had the 4.6 SOHC V8. I had it on a trip to Vancouver, Canada. It performed beautifully, with enough power and plenty of smoothness, and was fairly good on gas. Who'd have thunk the 4.6 V8 would have powered FoMoCo's flagship cars going forward for quite a long time?

One of the more interesting photos most of us have seen: (palms are sweating) Yikes.

@Drew Dowdell I think I liked my C3 because I've had really small, buzzy, manual Renault and Peugeot econoboxes in southern Europe in that past and did not like them at all. I would imagine that, with the combination of a diesel, a manual, and difficult driving situations, the C3 would be no fun at all. I was amazed by how the shift quality of automatic transmissions in small European cars has gotten so much better. Early 2000s Smart cars with automatics have volumes written about how awful their automatic transmissions were in terms of shift quality (can't vouch for reliability). The receptionist at the Citroen dealership told me that people over there NOW like the DSG very much. I learned that this is what southern Europeans call automatic transmissions. In the past, automatic transmissions were viewed negatively in southern Europe in that they took the fun and control out of driving. I recently learned that the small gasoline engine in the C3 and similar cars is a 3 cylinder engine! That's what the cheap Toyota Aygo has, as well as the Mitsubishi Mirage. I had the reverse situation. I was once supposed to get a Fiat 500 or something automatic. They didn't have any. I ended up in an Opel Insignia automatic wagon. Three fantastic days: the ride, the quiet, the barely noticeable shifting, and the familiar feel of a cousin of GM-Buick. The thing was that, at this airport, Thrifty was served by the Hertz counter. The rental agent printed the agreement and it came up to about 350 Euro. In nicer words, I asked "WTF?" Turns out they had put it on a Hertz form and pre-selected ALL the optional insurances. I pointed out that my reservation with Thrifty amounted to about 160 Euro. They tore up the Hertz printout and ran the correct one. You have to watch these schmucks.

Every place I've worked had different restaurant hangouts - at one place, it was a pizza place some of us liked, at another place, it was a Mexican hole in the wall that had an incredible enchilada platter and, at another place, it was a Greek restaurant where the lunch pricing was much more reasonable than the dinner pricing. When I was in college and worked at a few hospitals part time and during summers, it was the cafeteria. You couldn't beat the prices. It seemed hospitals tend to be big gossip grapevines; however, the business side of the house tends to be buffered from the medical side, so we were able to figure out that the goings-on might be entertaining but weren't connected enough to get the details. I guess that, if a person wanted details so badly, they could watch soap operas as a surrogate.

I don't know ... it's something about the way they grill their chicken, meat. When EPL put out coupons, it would incentivize me to go there for some tacos and whatnot ... and I also liked putting their very tasty mild to medium green sauce on my food. Touche'. This is called "nichemanship" in marketing jargon, IIRC. It's seeing an unmet need ... and filling it!

Right, now that I think about my '92 Regal coupe with a deep shelf or cowl, not to mention the unique "ravine" dash it had from 1988 to 1994, before it took on the more conventional 3 zone dash with the bigger glove box seen in other W-bodies, such as the very last Cutlass Supreme with the blacked out C-pillars. I'm undecided as to whether I prefer the long shelf or the short cowl, which is really apparent in the current Chevy Malibu where the dash starts a downward descent right from the windshield.

Ha. I was organizing and purging photo files and it seems I hadn't uploaded these. I couldn't believe how this played out: there was a wait to see the sales reps so it was soft sell and this dealership had Citroen C3s on display, not to mention these hanging chairs I remember seeing in my childhood and teenage years, which were ideal for hanging from the beams on an outdoor wooden patio in a warm climate. Inside a Citroen dealership in another land: This one was spoken for (sold tag somewhere on it): One of the current odd pastel colors that's popular across the pond ... "Why?" I ask ... I got a kick out of this chair:

Cheap chain Mexican food: Del Taco. Period. Slightly less cheap chain Mexican food: El Pollo Loco.

It's a head scratcher because, when you look at them and now even see them in so many cars at lower price points, you wonder, "Why didn't they think of this sooner?" I'm going to guess that something along the lines of a Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham or a Lincoln Town Car type vehicle would have been the first (?) I remember that, in minivans, the dual sliding doors was a big deal ... and I remember the ads for the rear seat passenger TVs in Oldsmobile Silhouette minivans. Once they lost the long snouts, the GM minivans seemed like decent vehicles, even though they were probably reliable enough when released with the more unusual looks.

Updated

PHOTOS - Exterior and mechanical Here's a sleek looking Dodge Charger with the Tampa Sunshine Skyway Bridge in the background, taken from Fort De Soto An angled rear three quarter view of the Dodge Charger Great lines ... and the latest rear light bar is the best design to come along The latest grille looks clean, sort of merges with the headlamps, and works well blacked out An "aerial view" of the Dodge Charger Engine bay: 3.5 Pentastar V6 - 292 hp - in RWD set up ... big air intake, small battery area (unless they've stashed it elsewhere), strut towers (with black grommets at the top) ... more or less symmetrically laid out, with room to reach things Driver's side view of the engine bay - oil fill cap, coolant recovery bottle, brake fluid (and master cylinder?) under the black rubber lid (at the right) ... but I couldn't find the transmission fluid dipstick (not sure if this is a sealed unit) Passenger's side view of the engine bay ... looks like 3 direct injection ports on this side of the engine bank, battery hookups here, up front (but the battery may be elsewhere since it looks shallow, just like they did with the last-gen Pontiac Bonneville) ... what was surprising was that the engine sat higher and more forward than in old school RWD cars ... maybe that is because of the rack and pinion system (not sure) Touche'. Just in case you don't know the brand and model of car whose hood you were raising up ... - - - - - End of exterior and mechanical photos