Tag: cars

Toyota is determined to call everything a Corolla, it seems

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Supposedly in 2027, Toyota will be making an attempt to enter what is new to me, a mini-truck market.  I guess it’s something that’s not even a Tacoma which is already their mid-size truck, and definitely not the full-size Tundra which is their answer to compete with the Ford F-series and Dodge’s lineup of Insurrection-mobiles.  Like I said, I didn’t even know such a market was even in need or demand, but then again the automotive industry is just one giant game of keeping up with the Joneses, so if one maker does it, others will feel the need to get in the game.

Regardless, it appears that Toyota might be calling this to-be-determined mini-truck, a Corolla; the same name as the entry-level econobox that has existed for centuries at this point, as well as the crossover vehicle they just launched a few years ago that they slapped the Corolla name onto as well.  So regardless of the constant name regurgitation, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to stop Toyota from making a Corolla Mini-truck or whatever these, basically El Caminos of the future will be classified as.

All shade aside, I understand Toyota’s rationale for wanting to swindle customers by calling everything they have under the sun a Corolla; historically the Corolla is a solid, safe, reliable and reputable car that there’s a reason has lasted since the dawn of time.  The Hachi-Rokus popularized by Initial D, were basically Corollas, most every kid in my generation and the generation after mine’s first cars were usually Corollas because they were safe, fuel-economical and didn’t quite yet look like the car you get when you’re ready to give up on the rest of your life.

There’s a reason why Lotus borrowed the Corolla engine for their North American Elise models, and there’s a reason why when Toyota got into the crossover game, they immediately slapped the Corolla name tag onto it.

But at the same time, it’s gotten redundant, convoluting, and it’s frankly watering down the Corolla name to basically call everything in the lineup a variant of a Corolla.  Eventually, the name Corolla will be made into a level of trim, or a spin-off brand, like their attempt with Scion, and if Toyota ever gets any bad PR, they’ll probably just rename the whole fuckin company Corolla, since it’s such a name associated with vanilla safety.

Either way, it’ll be interesting to see what shakes out of the trees as far as Toyota’s foray into mini-truck production and marketing.  Frankly, if I had the means, I’d rather get a Japanese kei-car, if I wanted the compact utility of what the Corolla Truck looks like it’ll provide.  It would probably be cheaper even with VAT and import fees, come with less of the fluff and bullshit, and actually serve a purpose, but most importantly, because it wouldn’t be called a Corolla, it would imply that I have yet to give up on my life just yet.

Car Week: Hybrids that camp EV spots are dicks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The parking garage in my office has six EV spots.  There’s a sign on the zone that states that those who park in them are limited to four hours of charging at a time, but the thing is that there’s no enforcement of it whatsoever, so basically it amounts to rockstar parking for those who are fortunate enough to get to the building early enough to be able to camp one.

The thing is, it’s low-key become assigned parking for the same cars on a daily basis, and it’s become very clear on whom has what days as remote days, because they’re not in, but someone else is.  I’ve only gotten to park in one of them maybe like three times, and on two of those times, I strategically went outside during lunchtime to see if anyone had left and immediately moved my car to get one, but for the most part, it’s the same group of cars that camp them, not because they actually need them, but because they’re close parking spots in the grand spectrum of the property.

On most days, there are three Teslas who appear to arrive early enough to where they always park in the same spots.  Then there’s this one Nissan Leaf who reminds me of when Gilfoyle got that weird electric motor scooter so he could fuck with Dinesh when he got his Tesla, because they always camp the fourth spot.  The fifth spot is usually occupied by an Audi Q4 e-tron on most days, but some other Nissan Leaf on the days when Audi person must be remote.

But it’s the sixth spot that is the impetus to this post, because it’s there just about every single day, but it’s a Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid (a minivan).  Obviously meaning it is powered by both electric and petrol, and doesn’t necessarily need to be plugged in order for it to survive the next time the driver hops in.

Honestly, the first time I saw it, I didn’t know that it was a hybrid and I figured it was some idiot driver who didn’t realize the spots were EV spots, but then as I walk past it, I see that the power cable is plugged into it.  But then I see that it’s a hybrid, and I’m like wtf?  That’s how I knew this was a behavior I found unappealing, because it didn’t concern me whatsoever considering how little I actually drive the Tesla into work, but it still annoyed me.

Seriously though, I just feel like this is a dick move for the hybrid car to camp the EV spot, just because it’s capable of using it.  When I got my Tesla, prior to getting the charger installed at my home, I actually needed the spot at work to keep my car charged, and even that wasn’t enough.  I still had to go find superchargers to keep it topped off until we had our home charger installed.

Frankly, ever since getting the home charger installed, I’m seldom in a position where I even need public charging.  I also imagine most of the people who have their own EVs probably have chargers at home, because the chargers at work are like, 2 kW, and even in an eight hour charge session, I’m lucky to get like 30% of battery life from it.

Honestly, it’s not just the hybrid that’s being a dick about using the EV spots, it’s basically everyone else who camps them on a daily basis as personal parking who are all being dicks.  I’m pretty sure the EV spots were really designed to be in-a-pinch charging options for people who actually need to use them to charge, and not peoples’ private assigned parking spots.  This isn’t just applicable to my office’s parking garage, but everywhere where there’s EV parking.  Especially shopping centers where they have a handful EV spots as literally the first spots closest to the business, even ahead of handicapped spaces.

In conclusion, EV drivers are dicks.  Yep, we’re all dicks.  DICKS

Car Week: Why do all EVs have to have stupid looking wheels?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I switched cars not that long ago, mythical wife getting her Tesla and driving around in that from time to time has kind of made me ponder the possibility of switching cars yet again, and potentially getting myself a Tesla as well, seeing as how the brand as a whole underwent some large price slashes earlier in the year.  With gas prices constantly fluctuating, mostly for the detriment, and seeing the sheer convenience and liberation of not having to pay for gas anymore, gradually chips away at my resolve at considering a switch.

At one point, I walked past a Model 3 in a parking lot, and I noticed that they had two car seats in the back of their car, looking comfortably enough, and I was like hmm. 

I still have a positive equity with my current car, according to my latest Kelley Blue Book estimate, which was a pretty good barometer to what my car could be worth, based on my previous car swap, which even further feeds the itch that perhaps I should swap yet again.

But the reality of my current situation doesn’t seem like it will be likely, considering I barely drive my own car as it is, since it’s the big safe dad car with the kids’ seats already in place, and switching to something like a Model 3 makes no sense at all, especially since I’d be the one driving it the least, which, sorry to sound selfish, but I wouldn’t really want to share that car if I had it.

All the same, the idea of going EV myself isn’t the least appealing idea in the world as it once was, and mythical wife and I talked about how it’s probably best if we still had at least one gas-powered car until the EV market really stabilizes and shows its lasting power.  That being said, I’ve always kind of got my eyes out for other EVs and not just Teslas, in case a viable option that doesn’t cost as much as a Tesla comes into play.

Which (finally) brings us to the topic of this entire post, why do all EVs have to have such stupid looking wheels?  It’s almost as if car designers all got a memo from the god of cars who declared that all EVs need to have these stupid looking futuristic looking wheels to really let consumers know that yes we are electric vehicles, if you couldn’t tell from our spaceship aerodynamics, three badges that announce we are electric and just general knowledge of the market, but we also want to have some wacky looking wheels to drive home the awareness that we are in fact, electric vehicles.

I googled my query, and there’s lots of mumbo jumbo about aerodynamics and weight and friction resistance and all that canned corn bullshit, but at the very root of it, nothing is different than the needs of any regular combustion engine.  Furthermore, there’s nothing that stopping the designers of EV wheels and looking at the OEM wheels for a Supra, Integra or Audi TT and making something that doesn’t have to look like a deformed D-pad on a N64 controller.

What really set me off was that I saw an ad for the Mini Cooper EV, and what I really appreciated about it was the fact that it looked just like every other Mini on the road, but then I saw the car come to a stop, and it too, had some goofy looking wheels on it that stood out like a sore thumb in contrast to the rest of the generally traditional Mini aesthetics.

And then I see shit like Polestar and their racist-looking iron cross looking rims, and the Nissan Ariya which I once wished came out when I was originally in the car market, because I really liked the way it looked, but the actual release model now has some doofy-looking Saarlac teeth looking rims on them.  Ironically, the one EV who’s wheels don’t look as stupid as all others, is the one car that seems so characteristically out of place as an EV, which is the Mustang Mach-E.

When mythical wife was shopping for her Tesla, I actually helped steer her away from the standard wheels of her car, because they too looked all goofy and stupid, in comparison to the rest of the car’s aesthetics.  I’m typically of the mindset that the bones matter more than the skin when it comes to certain things like cars, but when you have to look at it everyday, may as well spring extra for the option that won’t make you think “but if I spent a few extra dollars..”

The bottom line is, I don’t understand why all car manufacturers feel the requirement to make EVs with the goofiest, doofiest looking wheels there are.  We all get that they’re EVs and they are different and most likely are the future to become the present, but we don’t need bullshit clown aesthetics to drive home the fact.  Especially if we’re going to be locked into 72+ month agreements to own them when we all inevitably start switching en masse.

Car Week: Is there anything dumber than putting Instagram handles on your car?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Maybe it’s a symptom of getting older, cars coming out of the box better, or a byproduct of where I live these days, but I hardly see any slammed (modified) cars anymore these days.  This isn’t to say they don’t exist anymore, I still see large groups of them every now and then on the roads or in a parking lot, but they’re clearly organized and don’t put themselves in the public eye as perhaps I once recollect, in Northern Virginia, where a stock Honda Civic or Acura Integra was about as rare as seeing a Ferrari in the wild.

But for the few instances where I see a noticeably slammed car on the road, I’ve also observed a trend that these car owners do that I’ve found quite puzzling, which is putting an Instagram handle on their rides.

Now it’s presumptuous to say that all people in slammed, riced-out cars are doing questionable, often times illegal vehicular behaviors, but let’s not kid ourselves either.  Whether it’s speeding, practicing power slides on public streets, burnouts in parking lots to illegal mods, emission-altering exhausts to tinted windows too dark, it’s usually people in slammed, riced-out cars doing it.

That being said, why in the world would people who occasionally exhibit in misdemeanor activity willingly put an additional identifier on their car that they can be possibly tracked down in the event that they’re seen doing dumbass shit?

Like I really don’t understand it; if you’re making videos doing burnouts or street racing or participating in a flash mob of other tricked out cars, and then putting it on your Instagram, doesn’t that make it even easier for cops to track and identify you?  Or say some rando is walking through a parking lot, sees your ‘gram, checks it out, and there’s videos of you racing or practicing donuts in a parking lot; and this rando just so happens to be a police, or reports your shit to the police, and now there’s an APB out for your ride.

Whatever though, even if these clowns had the wherewithal to sign up everything with dummy info, covers their plates before videoing themselves, and have gone through the trouble to minimize prosecution before putting their Instagram handles on their cars, they’re still pathetic in my opinion.  So attention-starved and narcissistic that they willingly go to the trouble to put an Instagram handle on their cars so that random strangers might possibly check them out online.

I’d really love to know the numbers of police busting people for car-related dumbass-ery on account of being able to track them from Instagram handles on their cars, because any number higher than zero validates the notion that it’s not really a particularly smart idea to advertise yourselves on your cars when you’re participating in some questionable public behavior.

Car Week: When did Dodge Ram trucks become the official vehicle of insurrectionists?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Living in Georgia, there are plenty of rednecks around my neck of the woods.  That being said, there are a lot of people who drive around in pickup trucks, because rednecks love driving around in pickup trucks.  So when it comes to observational data, I do feel like I’ve taken in sufficient information over the years I’ve been a Georgia resident, at least to the point where I could make a post like this that does some wide-sweeping branding.

But as the subject says, I have to ask the question, when did Dodge Ram trucks become the official vehicle of insurrectionists?  Serious question.  Because I don’t think it’s really that far off-base to throw it out there that pretty much whenever I see someone driving around in a Dodge Ram truck, it’s always slammed to the gills, often times have some sort of aftermarket lifting to its cabin, and is driven by a white guy that not only looks like voted for the baked potato, but was probably circling around on the Capital Beltway on or around January 6th.

Like, I’m barely even kidding when I say it’s all Dodge Ram trucks.  I’d say that at any given time, eight or nine out of every ten Dodge Ram trucks I see on the road fit this exact description.  Always aggressively driving and giving off that aura that they have a lot of strong opinions about people that are not also white males.

Sure, there are the occasional Ford F-150s or Chevy Silverados that shoehorn their way into these descriptions, but for the most part, Ford F-series trucks are typically driven by people who actually use them for heavy-duty truck use, and Chevys are GMs and GMs also have Cadillac and Cadillacs are loved by black people, so you don’t see nearly as many Chevy or Ford trucks as white-powered up as you see Dodge Rams.

Anyway there’s a reason why this topic sat on the bench, because there’s really not much substance to it as much as it is a wide-sweeping accusational observation.  But I would encourage any of my zero readers to try and keep their eyes peeled on the road for Dodge Ram trucks, and see they get the same vibe I do, or if this is just kind of a Georgia thing, or just spectacular bullshit that only I’m capable of making observation of.

Car Week: New Driver Stickers, is this a thing now?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I keep a notes document of things that I jot down as possible things to write about.  I do a lot of thinking in my car while driving, so it should come as no surprise that a lot of things that end up on this list are often observations made while in the confines of a car, about other cars or just happenings on the roads. 

More often than not though, life tends to get in the way, and I never go back to any of these topics, and the list just gets longer and longer, and adds to my general anxiety that I don’t think I’m writing enough as I’d like to, and sometimes I’ll audit the list, and scrap a ton of topics into a column of dead things that I’d like to remember but doesn’t necessarily warrant a post written about it, and some I’ll keep as something with no real time sensitivity that I could come back and revisit at a later time.

It’s gotten to a point where I realized that I had enough car-centric topics to where I could literally dedicate an entire work week of posts about cars, and I figured this is probably an effective and efficient way for me to tackle some of the things that I’ve observed, and not spend too much time on each, because I think I’m getting to the point again where every post needs to be a Broadway play, when I really have no rules to brogging and sometimes need to remind myself that shorter posts are okay.

Anyway, to kick off car week, I’m going to bring up the topic of stickers or signs affixed to people’s cars that denote that there is the possibility that the driver of the car is new.  I’ve been seeing these more and more throughout the last 2-3 years especially, and at first, I thought much of it had to do with the idiotic laws that Georgia passed where something along the lines where teen drivers no longer had to do any formalized behind-the-wheel training as long as a parent could vouch for them that they’ve got like 40 hours of driving experience under their belts.

I mean that alone is completely asinine and puts the fear of god into me when driving around, knowing that some shithead 17-year old whose parents just want them out of their hair and gave them the permission to get a drivers license are on the roads at the same time I am.  I’m not sure that putting new driver stickers on their cars is going really help when they’re driving like imbeciles in the first place.

But here’s the real observation that put this post into motion – people who put new driver stickers on expensive, fast, or expensive and fast cars, and are most likely not at all new drivers at all.  Like, in my office alone, I can think of several cars that fit the description I’m aiming for, that are very fast cars, well maintained and obviously cared for, but I have a hard time believing that the people driving them, are at all new drivers.

There’s one specific one that I see daily, because they have vanity tags, always back into their spot, which takes a modicum of talent that usually accrued by, experience, the opposite of a new driver.  I’ve also seen them drive off, to the capabilities of their car, which is fast, aggressive and like a dick.  They’ve also been present as long as I’ve been coming into the office, which at this point is over a year, to which, not really a new driver anymore there.

There are countless other examples that I’ve seen that served as the impetus to this post, but the bottom line is that I’m wondering if this is a thing now or something.  Much like how in the past, people would drive around with the thin blue line stickers on their cars, because there was this belief that having them on your car meant you were an ally of police, and therefore less likely to get pulled over by real police.

I feel like there are people out there who think that putting new driver paraphernalia on their cars gets them a little leeway from police and that randos on the road will give them a little bit of leniency when it comes to them driving around like assholes, or is like some sort of really bad and lame smokescreen to the rest of the road to where they can drive like dicks and it’s okay because they’re “new drivers.”

Either way, I think it’s a lame attempt for people to try and have an excuse to drive like shitheads, and I don’t believe anyone is a new driver, when they’re putting stickers on fast and/or expensive cars, as if anyone would give a genuinely inexperienced driver the keys to Chargers, Teslas and Mercedes.

We’re long past how the mighty have fallen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: WWE Hall of Famer, Tammy Sytch “Sunny,” pleads no-contest to vehicular manslaughter under the influence, faces upwards of 25 years in prison

I haven’t really kept tabs on Sunny since her gradual disappearance from the world of professional wrestling, but when the story came out a while ago where she killed a guy in a drunken car crash, it opened the doors to wondering how her life had gotten to this point.  The last time I really saw her was when RAW had their 1,000th episode, and I remember thinking how she had held up pretty damn well, but it’s abundantly clear that the last 12 years of her life most definitely have not.

I knew she had some legal issues and had been in and out of jail a few times, but nothing seemed more than her own dumb choices of DUIs and being flippant about parole or unauthorized travel, so despite her poor judgment, at least she wasn’t like a hot mess of violence or more than a drunk for a criminal.  Frankly, her manslaughter charge, as tragic as it is that it resulted in loss of life, was just her doing what she had been doing, but to an extreme point, seeing as how she allegedly blew a ridiculous .280 BAC, which is almost as impressive as Johnny Damon’s also-Florida drunken escapades.

So we’re long past the point of stating how the mighty have fallen, because over the last twelve years, ‘ol Sunny has fallen quite a bunch of times, but not to as severe of a degree as this one.  Goes to show that being one of the original OG breakers of the internet back in the day really doesn’t have any monetary worth, although like many people in my generation, probably feels she would have thrived in today’s society with what they had at the table back in the day.

Honestly, the only reason this post came to fruition was the .280 BAC and how it reminded me of how amused I was with Johnny Damon’s DUI.  Frankly, I was never really a fan of Sunny, even if she was supposed to be eye candy, and as time has passed, aside from her personal demons, I’ve never really heard much good about her ever.  She was not well-liked in the locker room, mostly due to her ego on top of the typical chauvinistic culture back then, but much as come out with her extramarital affairs and basically how she cuckolded her husband Chris Candido numerous times, which doesn’t really jive with my ideals.

You can take the trailer park trash out of New Jersey, but can’t take the New Jersey out of the trailer park trash.  Especially when they relocate to the trailer parks of Florida instead.

But if I really have to have a last word on this, I suppose it’s for the best for all parties that Sunny gets the book thrown at her.  Not only will she be taken off the streets and be one less liability of a driver to not DWI and kill any other innocents, perhaps some nice quiet time in incarceration is what she actually needs to try and overcome her personal demons.