Robert Hall

Had to make an airport run at early o'clock this morning..on the way back, saw a clean black '65-67 Corvair coupe and a tan early '60s Rambler American convertible.

Cool...low miles for a 21 yr old car. My experience is with older Mercs, but AFAIK old BMWs are pretty nice also, albeit potentially expensive money pits like Mercs as the miles pile on and they age...

Interesting..haven't seen a '91-96 Caprice cruiser in ages...but, the Phoenix Police department still has at least 1 '87-90 Caprice police car still in service---I've seen it driving around downtown 4 times in the last few months, w/ a uniformed officer driving.

Whatever...4 snow tires are better than 2. Besides, 4 matching rims looked better than non matching. Back in the day ('88-94), I ran snows from mid-Oct to March in Ohio and Michigan, IIRC. Then summer tires the rest of the year.

Yeah, the theory was that having them on the front gives extra traction to help with stopping, at least on old cars that had rear drums. In 60+ years of driving in the Rust Belt, my Dad only had one FWD car and 2 4x4s.. the rest were RWD cars, and a couple RWD pickups. If I didn't have a 4WD SUV, I'd probably have a RWD car w/ good snow tires like Blizzaks all the way around for winter driving.

Yes, after all, 30+ years ago, most people (90% or more?) drove RWD in the winter, even in the rust belt. The key, as I learned from my Dad, was snow tires on all 4 wheels and most importantly, knowing how to drive in winter.

Beautiful car....I love the styling of the 3rd gens way over the 4th gens.

A premium larger Cadillac sedan would also need a modern DOHC V8, and they have already cancelled the next gen Northstar. Cadillac is probably going to have a FWD/AWD V6 replacement for the STS/DTS, to compete with the MKS in the $40k-50k FWD/AWD soft-lux market..

Sightings today---a beautiful red w/ black hood graphics '70 Mustang Mach 1 (my 2nd favorite year of classic Mustang, after the '69), a clean '64-65 Plymouth Valiant convertible (white w/the top down, blue interior), a pale yellow '70s/early '80s Merc 450SL roadster w/ the top down (love those little cars, even with the big bumpers), and a sharp red w/ black stripes, black vinyl top '67 Camaro SS/RS.

I like your sig quote from Dan Fogelberg.

Had to go to Ace Hardware for some line for my string trimmer (spring cleaning of the yard today), saw a goregous dark green '71 Buick Centurion conv. w/ the top down in the lot, I've seen this car drive by before, never saw it up close, in really clean shape.

Yeah, reupholster the seats, ditch the lameo steering wheel, get some wide whites on wires, and that would be a sweet weekend car show toy.

I'm interested in seeing what Verizon offers eventually on the Google Android platform...the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1 is about the only one out there currently. I'm usually an early adopter on many technologies, but not phones.

That's because of the recessions in multiple countries currently, though. Not because of the inherent goodness/superiority of RWD.

Yes, Twitter is just a quicker way to access the blogs and the news. It's still somewhat of an experiment, really. The flow of tweets would probably drive me crazy if I was subscribing to it on my phone, haven't gone that far yet. For a lot of bloggage, I really like Google Reader to aggregate a lot of RSS feeds. I actually turn off my cell phone at night, when I'm driving and sometimes on my weekend...drives my friends and family crazy. I'm still on the fence w/ smartphones, thought about getting an iPhone or maybe a Blackberry Storm. I don't want to go w/ AT&T and love tiny phones that fit in my front pants pocket, don't care for large phones.

No, what they are saying about tech conferences, new technologies, links to interesting blog postings, press releases, etc. it's not just trivial stuff. I update my Facebook status occasionally, I mostly use it to stay in touch w/ old friends, high school/college buddies, former coworkers.

I used to cringe as a kid when my Dad would tune the radio to PH. I never got into to him, always seemed too folksy and old timey/old people stuff for my taste.

Well, it's definitely polarizing. I've found a lot of useful links and info in tweets...but I'm mostly using it stay up on what the digerati are saying---since technology is my livelihood, I like to read a lot of tech and gadget blogs, listen to tech news podcasts, Twitter is just another way of doing that... and the breaking news aspect is great, IMHO.

I was reading an article in the March Automobile about the base Versa...manual windows, A/C optional, manual seat, manual locks, no interior light, no fob for keyless entry...sounds like something from 1985! Maybe Chevy can do a $9995 version of the Cobalt and call it the Scooter like the old Chevette scooter---vinyl seats, manual windows, no back seat, no glovebox door, the car for cheapskate curmudgeons!

That's sad..the Zeta models are the only things they have of value. The GMDAT stuff is just a bunch of FWD generics.

And for a flash from the past, remember 'hand written' notes and 'letters'? It's a dying form of communication, looks like.. Article on handwriting as a dying form

I first discovered Twitter at RailsConf07 in Portland, May 07. Then it was a new, fledgling Web 2.0 app used by the digerati and web developers to stay in touch during the conference, everyone w/ their Mac Book Pros (I felt out of place, had a Dell laptop then) and smartphones tweeting about the conference and where to go for sushi in the evening, or commenting on people's talks, etc. Since then, it's been going mainstream--even celebretards like Aston Kutcher uses it, as does Shaq (he's tweeted which restaurants around Scottsdale that he likes), the Obama campaign used it pretty effectively last year, my state's US senator's office (John McCain) is starting to use it, I get news updates from the BBC and CNN via Twitter now. It's pretty interesting to see something that was a 'cool techies in the know' thing amongst Web developers a couple years ago go mainstream so fast...a lot of that is due to the popularity of the iPhone, from which many people tweet.

I've been tweeting for about a year and a half...follow about 75 people, mostly friends, former colleagues and pundits in the software biz. I don't do it from my phone, just check the web site nightly...kind of a fun way to keep up with the digerati and fellow techies. My tweets are usually pretty boring, just stuff about restaurants I've tried, the weather, vacations.

Yeah, but it's more of a sports car..and a 2 seater. I was thinking of the 2+2 sport compact market...the only FWD ones left are the Tiburon and Eclipse (and maybe the TC) now that the Integra/RSX and Prelude are gone. I suppose the RX-8 fall in the 2+2 category also.

I'm just amazed to see Hyundai building RWD models...I'm used to them making cheap, disposable FWD generics. I'm impressed, esp. considering Toyota and Nissan have long since abandoned the compact RWD 2+2 sport coupe market in the US (i.e. Celica, Silvia/SX).