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Hmm… that actually makes me feel old. You have kids, and this means it’s not what they’re listening to.
Not necessarily. In this age of no physical media littering a kid’s bedroom and all listening done via headphones/earbuds, they could be listening to anything and a parent would have no clue.
Hmm… that actually makes me feel old. You have kids, and this means it’s not what they’re listening to.
What’s the third? Sia and Eyelash are gimmes.
I've heard of Halsey, possibly if they were on SNL?
I know what they like, well, what they share on long car rides and what they ask for birthday presents. There is a lot of youtube and spotify happening more than cds, definitely.
One kid likes very strange remixes he finds on youtube.
The other is into Lemon Demon and Will Wood. So much will wood. Along with the more "heard of" imagine dragons, 21 pilots, panic at the disco, fitz and the tantrums.
They both like older stuff (ya know, from the 80s) also. Billy Joel, B52s.
Yeah, Halsey’s been on SNL. Billie Eilish, too (I think she also hosted.) I almost think Sia has been on, too.
My DIL is a big Panic at the Disco fan. She was real bummed about them breaking up. She’s also into acts that distress me greatly. She’s a big Buffet fan. I mean, she only just turned 30. WTF would you be into Jimmy Buffet at 30? She goes to his shows FFS. And, she recently dragged my son with her all the way from northern Indiana down here to Indy to see...Foreigner. Fucking Foreigner??!!?? And, to top it off, fucking Loverboy was the opening act. I guess this is what happens when you grow up in small-town Indiana?
My first concert was Three Dog Night in 1980 or 81. They did indeed play “Mama Told Me Not To Come”, too.
I wound up writing a musical biography, which is NOT what the thread is about. So I’ve spared everyone all of the details.
But I realized that it would be a lot of fun (and really, really mean) to have one of those “I can pigeonhole you by looking at your music library” people just look at what I have on CD. Tony Bennet and Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Buffett, Enya, Kathleen Battle, Asleep at the Wheel, Transiberian Orchestra, Meatloaf, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, all of the Beatles, etc. etc. I can see them just wandering around and mumbling afterward.
And that is essentially why having a CD player in my vehicle isn’t useful. I wouldn’t have room for passengers for all the discs.
“Angsty Enya” sounds interesting. Enya got me through a LOT of studying for undergrad and grad work. I could put on one of her songs and all the students scurrying around and not really rushing to classes sort of faded into the background. Adding angst to that kind of vibe would be at least intriguing.
Mentioning Enya in the Car Talk thread reminded me of an old rental car commercial.
Agreed - check word of mouth referrals. Also, you don't need to use a dealer, not even for warranty service. Independent repair shops can fix things under warranty. Or for cash or course.
Note that dealers are overflowing with 2023 new-car inventory at the moment, and they're going to have to clear it soon - the 2024 models will arrive soon. They over stocked / ordered while cars were hard to get, then interest rates shot up. So most dealers have lots full of high-end models that are barely moving. 100+ days of inventory. It looks like most new-car dealers are going to get soaked, to the tune of millions per dealer. Cutting the prices is the only way they'll move 2023s when the 2024s arrive. Potential buyers are waiting for the fire sale to start, which is the other reason why sales are slow.
So dealers have a financial incentive to make money off service right now. Way more so than usual.
Facebook is a great idea! Thank you! I need something like that because no one in my inner circle drives, but a couple at least Facebook.
I was so livid, I stormed out before the possibility of a loaner could come into play. Even so, still makes more sense to find a place that’s not overbooked.
Overbooked, or overly proud of their work? There is at least one Lexus dealership here in SA that never gets customers in in less than a week.
My Lexus owning friend (female, and this is important here) actually just drove in to get something minor taken care of, and encountered the “wall of no.” “No, we can’t get that taken care of until late next week, no we can’t tell you exactly when, either, no I can’t even give you a ballpark estimate of how much it’ll cost.”
My friend asked to talk to the shop supervisor and went TO the shop. They didn’t let her into the bays themselves, but there’s a window between the customer service desk and the shop. Big old service area, two vehicles in it. Just two. She left that dealership and went to their competition, who took care of her minor issue while she waited, and charged her some stupidly low fee. They got a loyal customer out of it.
I recommend not only checking out your friends’ Facebook pages, but local dealership’s FB presences. Then check Yelp reviews for those dealerships and compare notes. Yelp reviews are essentially (though not necessarily perfectly) immune to a business’ editorial actions, so if their Facebook reviews are OK but Yelp isn’t, you really know what’s going on.
One more thing: Treating a customer well, even if they aren’t a big part of your business, is ALWAYS good business, while treating ANY customer poorly is always BAD for business. Find that dealership that couldn’t bother to work with you on Facebook and see what happens when you let everybody know about your experience.
So, this new (to us) car we got is our first ever vehicle festooned with a bunch of gee-whiz bells-and-whistles. I can take of leave most of them. But, I have say, this being able to lock/unlock the car, or open the hatch, just by touching the door handle is pretty damned nifty.
I can utterly do without the fucking touchscreen inside, though. Such a bad idea.
I can utterly do without the fucking touchscreen inside, though. Such a bad idea.
Touch screens can be done well, if you have dedicated buttons for things like climate control. I find that if you have to do that via touch screen, you get distracted.
Plus, there are even smaller things like cruise control: I rented two VW-group cars and their implementation of cruise control was horrible. I was constantly trying to figure out what mode I was in. The touch buttons on the steering wheel did not help, because there was no haptic feedback as to whether I had pushed a button or not. And the fact that it was adaptive made everything 10x worse as braking and accelerating was rather harsh.
Last month I rented a Mercedes (van), and the cruise control UI was great. The stalk had two positions in the up/down direction, the first indent changed the speed by increments of 1 km/h, the second by 10 km/h. This way I could smoothly overtake trucks.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Luckily, all the climate controls are physical knobs and buttons. The touchscreen (at least so far for us) is largely the entertainment stuff. The car came with three free months of SiriusXM, and the UI for that is gawdawful. For instance, when you scroll down through the channels, there is no save state. If you scroll halfway down the list, then select a channel, the system doesn’t remember where in the list you were. So, if you decide the channel is crap, and you go back to the list, you’re back at the top. It also will put you back in the “All Channels” list, even if you were searching a specific genre. Very stupid.
Also, when you’re listening to radio (yes, we still do radio here), you can only seek up the dial. There is no seek down the dial. There is only a single “up” button on the screen.
One thing I have noticed about SiriusXM receivers in cars is that each brand has its own implementation. Honda, for example, doesn’t let you randomly select a channel by channel number - you have to scroll up or down. And there are a lot of channels.
On the other hand, Honda’s infotainment display is nicely integrated with the dash, and gives you access to a lot of functions. Environmental controls can be managed through it, but also through knobs clearly associated with environmental controls. The music/radio stuff follows an old paradigm. Like the channel/station that’s on? Hold any of the preset buttons until it beeps, and it’s programmed. This is actually a lot like programming a push-button AM/FM car radio.
As for having any screen stuck in the middle of the dash, why do so many car makers make theirs look like they glued an Android tablet to the dash? Like “SPLAT!” There it is, sticking out, not blended, not looking like it was even planed. Sheesh. I think the epitome of this is the Tesla display, but lots of makers do it almost as badly.
One thing I have noticed about SiriusXM receivers in cars is that each brand has its own implementation. Honda, for example, doesn’t let you randomly select a channel by channel number - you have to scroll up or down. And there are a lot of channels.
This is why I’m so thrilled to have been put into a “bring your own” situation, and get to use an iPad mini. I pretty much only use Waze, but I imagine that’s miles ahead of almost anything OEM.
As for having any screen stuck in the middle of the dash, why do so many car makers make theirs look like they glued an Android tablet to the dash? Like “SPLAT!” There it is, sticking out, not blended, not looking like it was even planed. Sheesh. I think the epitome of this is the Tesla display, but lots of makers do it almost as badly.
Why not? You’d want the screen as high as possible (above dash level) but just below the bottom of the windshield. Otherwise drivers would have to look down to touch the screen. And maybe it would be easier to repair?
Mankind's only chance is to harness the power of stupid.
Height has never seemed to be a problem with any display I’ve seen - except the Tesla “everything” display. And at least for American market vehicles, dashboard parts being “easy to repair” is the antithesis of how cars are designed.
My gripe is the lack of integration in the shapes of the dashboard. If it looks added on, why not make it tiltable/rotatable? If it’s embedded in the dash, please make it look like it wasn’t installed by a guy with a sawsall.
.As for having any screen stuck in the middle of the dash, why do so many car makers make theirs look like they glued an Android tablet to the dash? Like “SPLAT!” There it is, sticking out, not blended, not looking like it was even planed. Sheesh. I think the epitome of this is the Tesla display, but lots of makers do it almost as badly.
I would not be surprised if that’s exactly what many of them are...repurposed off-the-shelf touchscreens. Trying not to make them look like add-ons would likely look even worse.
Reminds me of the old scraper whiskers "curb feelers" that poked out for parking. You could tell you were the right distance from a curb when the whiskers began scraping. I haven't seen those on cars since I was a kid.
Perhaps something for securing the spare tire underneath? What does the still-secured end connect to?
Ditto Laminar’s question. My first thought (before reading where it was) was some kind of mechanical rotation pick up, ala old speedometer cables. But that’s a “pull/push” cable of some kind. Or it’s supposed to tension a plastic part to keep it properly shaped and/or out of the way of stuff.
I’m looking forward to hearing what the other end is connected to, and maybe some expert on your vehicle chiming in with “oh, that’s a X”.
If your van can fly, you may need a road-feeler underneath. So you know when it's safe to cut power. We're past 2015, so hover-conversions are on the table.
Well the 407 coupe did NOT last long. The dream of running one was pretty well sured by, well, running one. An interesting and obviously not going to end soon parade of error codes and faults etc. Luckily the dealer took it back.
So I had a look round and switched to this...
Peugeot RCZ. Love it. Love the styling and it's a very nice place to be in. Running the 2.0 HDi so decent fuel economy as well. It was even reasonably sporty (for a diesel) but had it remapped to 200BHP and 420Mn torque which works very well given the weight of the car.
Still not a 205 GTi though. And still only a few front headlamps
This space for Hire! Reasonable rates. Reach an audience of literally dozens!
You’d think but actually the boot is huge, and the rear seats (such as they are) fold down to give quite a lot of load space.
The Peugeot's rear window is amazingly big. How much of the boot is under that window? My last sedan (a 2007 Civic) had a fairly long rear window, so the rear deck was pretty deep, making the trunk (boot) space was deceptively large; the lid was only a fraction of the length of the trunk. Also 60/40 fold-down seats made it handy to haul a lot of stuff.
It wasn't as sporty as that Peugeot, but it's surprising how many "good old boys in trucks" assume Hondas are underpowered. To their public embarrassment.
Thankfully I’ve never had to make use of it myself, but there’s a slot behind the rear door which has a key that fits into it, and then gets spun with the lug wrench to lower the spare.
Tire’s still in the (inverted) well. If I don’t catch a flat, the shop who fixed it will see if it’s actually fixed when I switch over to winter tires in a couple months.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Sep 7, 2023, 09:29 AM
Originally Posted by ghporter
That makes sense. A winch mechanism would be a lot more secure than the typical pickup spare, and a lot more user friendly too.
GM and Ford have both used a winch system for a couple of decades now. Not sure what Dodge uses, probably some combination of Blue Line flags and FJB stickers to hold the tire up in there.
To their public embarrassment.
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