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The Corvette is really cool. Distinctively styling, a real classic.

(I hear they need to go in for maintenance more than most cars, though.)

The traditional beef against 'Vettes is that, however much straight ahead muscle and standing start acceleration they may have, they don't handle worth a damn. Personally, I've never much liked their looks, either, especially after the Stingray was introduced in '64.

Interesting (to me) Corvette anecdote: As some of you may recall, my very favorite television series of the 1960s was route 66 in which two young men went traveling around America in a Corvette which unexplainedly got replaced with the new year model every new season.

When Martin Milner (Tod Stiles and later Pete Malloy on Adam-12) was cast in the series he argued for a Porsche instead. Supposedly, the producers thought this was very funny. What American, after all, had ever heard of Porsche in 1960? Outside of Hollywood, that is.

I'm taking this to mean that they've fixed it:

Hey. Show some respect for the forbidden love of Mark Hamill and Annie Potts.

Kwix,
Your comment makes me LOL. The only difference I can see between the ZR1 at the top of the tread, and the GMT you posted, is one is red and the other is blue. If you painted them alike and parked them next to each other I wouldn't know which is which.

Course, that's just because I don't like sports cars. Speed and handling, who needs it. Packed in with your toes higher than your ass, and that only three inches off the pavement, bah. Give me luxury. Sound and comfort don't stop being fun even at 25mph.

A cool car that costs nearly as much as a house. Hmm ... must be a guy thing. I'd rather have a cool house that costs nearly as much as a car.

I wish that existed. :*(

I'm kind of "meh" on sportscars. However, if we're pretending that someone is giving them away, I'd take a BMW M3 over a Corvette. I just like the looks of the BMW better.

That said, I'm finally car shopping. Leaning very heavily towards a late-model VW TDI Jetta. But man, those things are kinda pricey.

For the frugal, the Tata Nano*
*MSRP, $2,500. Tax and title extra.

re: The Tata Nano

I love that it exists. 9" rims and all. Like Jared Lorenzen, some things are put on this world not to perform in a given function, but to look hilarious trying to do it.

Is that thing worse or better than a Trabant, Sandy?

Interesting.

Yeah, that's the luxury sports coupe model.

I wish I lived somewhere that houses only cost $117K.

Wait, no I don't.

VW's are service department's best friends. Just about the time any extended warranty end (5 years?) your first window motor should go out, followed in quick succession by the rest of them. Then, the A/C blower, then the CD player, then your computer will throw a few nonsensical codes regarding emissions and then you'll understand that WWII never ended, it just moved to consumer goods. =P

where is there a cheap empty lot anywhere in New York City?

My starter 2 bedroom 1700 sq ft bi level cost me $86k, and it was in good shape. Same house is still only about $105k.

I don't think housing cost differentials are a North / South thing as much as a Northeast Corridor & West Coast versus the rest of the U.S. thing. You can buy a decent house in, say, Omaha for $150k, too. Of course, there are equivalent salary differentials, too. My son overheard a girl's father in Oklahoma bragging this summer about her post-college starting salary of "over $30,000!"

As for living in a small to medium town south of the Mason-Dixon line, I can think of any number of university towns (e.g., Charlottesville, VA; Durham, NC; Austin, TX) I'd far rather live in than any number of Northern large cities.

Could we maybe get off the notion that 9 out of 10 Southerners are Klansmen and that we just got shoes and running water last week? I don't know about Jonesboro, but I've seen very little of the South in the last 10 or 20 years that comes anywhere close to the negative stereotypes that keep popping up here from time to time. Yeah, you can find it and, of course, when you do it makes the national newspapers, etc, but you can sure as hell find it in, say, South Boston, too.

Fair enough, pbirmingham, and yes I did read that you were speaking from personal experience. My hackles do get raised a bit, however, whenever I read anything quite so sweeping as "south of the Mason-Dixon line." I don't feel in the slightest bit inferior as a Southerner. Neither do I feel the need to hold my tongue when I think the South is being unfairly characterized. (And I have certainly heard Midwesterners decry having their homes referred to as, say, "fly-over territory.")

That should do the trick.

My hackles do get raised a bit, however, whenever I read anything quite so sweeping as "south of the Mason-Dixon line."

i generally think of that line starting somewhere around staten island.

that would be a neat reality show - transplant a guido family from staten island (hopefully the middle son calls it "shaolin") with a family from...some other place in america.

Mississippi exists in tis own world. Aside from certain souther parts of Louisiana and the metropolitan centers in Alabama, those states are bad too. I think crushing poverty might have something to do with it. I don't think racism goes away as quickly where there are still poorly educated people without jobs. Everyone needs someone to blame.

People, being the status-seeking primates they are, feel better about their own lowly position if they can shit on someone else. Add to that the natural herding/destroy the other herd impulse, and you get intractable bigotry.

I think Americans from the rest of the country can figure out how to function properly within 24 hours in any new location in the country. They may not like it, but they can survive. Not the orange ones though.

Eh, its better than it used to be. I say this as someone who went to high school in Mississippi. As it is, the South is definitely very not homogeneous when it comes to racism. As to rural racism, it is important to note, that outside of the south and outside of cities, there are basically no black people. Rural goobers up north are surrounded by white people and now Latinos. I wonder how the interaction in rural areas between whites and Latinos is in the rest of the country. However, as you will recall, there was anecdotal evidence of racism leading to Hillary's win in West Virginia, where the percentage of blacks is way below the national average and much further below most of the south. I have relatives in northern Louisiana, and they are disgustingly racist. The "N" word is not an epithet, it is how black people are referred to. Northern Louisiana, however, has a relatively low black population. But they are quite racist, in my experience. The animus towards blacks in the South just seems higher, even when there are few blacks around. The further away you get from the "Deep South" (MS, AL, Northern LA), the better race relations get, to the point that some places, such as Atlanta, may end up having normalized race relations prior to the country outside the South.

I think Americans from the rest of the country can figure out how to function properly within 24 hours in any new location in the country. They may not like it, but they can survive. Not the orange ones though.

that's my hope! that's what would make it excellent television.

we could call it "meet the ginos" or "escape from staten island."

Back to the subject at hand. I've never been much of a 'Vette guy. I do want a DB9. The Volante convertible is sex on wheels. 0-60 in 4.6 seconds and it's fast in more than just a straight line. Of course, first I have to find $180K between the couch cushions to afford this bad boy.

That luxury sports cars have sex appeal might seem like a pronouncement from Captain Obvious, but it's been made scientifically official:

"The roar of a luxury car engine does cause a primeval physiological response."

Is been shown before, but this engine has been known to send men's testosterone to 11!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJuS0jR6_E4

Here are some other nice sounds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwiS9yLtl2g

:)

Thanks LIT,
Linked off of that was this. The same engine in a Rover. Now, that is excess.

Probably. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Tim,

I'm also also missing the gene on my Y chromosome that is supposed to make me care about cars.

I got that one, though it remained dormant until

(1) It became apparent that I will probably never own an airplane
(2) I had a son who was interested in cars.

Now, the sports-caring gene, I totally didn't get.

bitter disappointment throughout childhood broke my sports-caring gene. Now I can only fathom to watch college football, and only then if my team is doing mildly well.

NERD!!!!!

My favorite was the SR-71, Serenity, and the Velociraptor.

I too, have a near approximation of Stevo's gene expressions.

I can't pick a favorite plane, though notables have been mentioned, and since I lived near Myrtle Beach AFB, I am also a Warthog fan.

Spaceships...yeah, my favorite will be whichever one I get to go in.

Dinosaurs: this is more lunchstealer's area. I like both the recent megafauna and the pre-dinosaur oddities, as well as the contemporaries of Trilobites, et al.

I love my A-4, because it's fun to drive and looks really nice. But if I can geek out over fuel economy next I'll be fine with a Prius.

Cool. I like the warthog because it is ugly, tough and get's the job done. Do you do avionics or something else?

BTW those "stealth" aircraft are not invisible to quality radars with trained operators.

Thanks, Sandy. I'll have to read that book. (The reviewer sounded a little like a whining anti-capitalist, though.)

(1) Tie: Beech 18 and Lockheed Electra
(2) Imperial Star Destroyer
(3) Tyrannosaurus Rex

Yeah. I couldn't hear it, but they looked like merlins, or some other non-radial aviation engine. I lived for a while next to Addison Airport, where the Cavanaugh Flight Museum is, and used to have P51s, P47s, P40s, B17s, C47s, and TBYs flying past my apartment (along with common flybys by Texan trainers). The radial on the TBY was just fearsome.

I know what it looks like. On Bunker Hill we recorded a 10 sec video of a pilotless drone at 150 ft. The last second was a Standard Missile descending on said drone and detonating. Like the fist of god, I tell ya. Pure orgasm inducing beauty to a fire control guy like myself.