Tab Clearing...

Today in headlines:

• Fidelity has cut its estimate of X’s value by 79% since Musk’s purchase


• China, at UN, warns against ‘expansion of the battlefield’ in the Ukraine war


• Switzerland and Italy redraw border due to melting glaciers

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Spiking the punch...

With Meta aggressively scraping your posts to train its large language models, feel free to drop some acid in the Facebook/Instagram punchbowl.

Fabingy!

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Automotif DLII..

By 1990 the life cycle of the Chevy Camaro's third generation was drawing to a close. Work was already underway on its replacement. Meanwhile, Chevrolet's sponsorship of the International Race Of Champions had ended, and so the sportiest Camaro reverted to the old Z28 moniker.

In order to juice sales for the final couple model years, Chevy released the 1991 Camaros early, only about halfway through the normal run of the '90 model year.

The 1991s featured some minor styling changes to spice them up, especially for the Z28 model. There was a new, more aggro ground effects package, with a bigger chin spoiler and cosmetic "scoops" on the side skirts. The Z28 added a big elevated rear wing and non-functional "power blisters" on the hood. Since there was no longer room in the spoiler for the third brake light, it was moved to the top of the rear window, on the inside.

The base motor on the Z28 was the LB9 tuned-port 305 small block, rated at 205 horsepower, with either a 5-speed manual or 4-speed automatic gearbox. Ticking the G92 Performance Enhancement Group option box got you a 5-speed manual with a 3.42 rear end and bumped the output of the LB9 TPI motor to 230hp.

The hot ticket for laying down the big numbers in the quarter with a '91 Z28 was selecting the L98 5.7L motor, which put out 245 horsepower, and getting the G92 3.42 rear end. This dropped quarter mile times to 14.3 seconds at 95 mph, according to Musclecar Review magazine, making it one of the few F-body configurations that could run with the 5.0L H.O. 'Stangs of the time at the drag strip.

This Ultra Blue Metallic '91 Z28, which would have had a base MSRP of $15,445 when new, was photographed using a Nikon D7000 and 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR zoom lens in September of 2020.

Tab Clearing...

• Unless you're deployed there (or transiting through) this piece from the Beeb is about as close a look as you'll get at Diego Garcia.


• Helene set some storm surge records in Florida.


• More stuff on the sunk minisub.

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That came in handy...

Tucked into my tote bag is my handy ProStorm travel umbrella, which was robust enough to use yesterday, despite the heavy winds.

However the rain was almost horizontal at times, which made me glad for another piece of snivel gear I keep in there.

Not technically a rain poncho, it's windproof and wicks like nobody's business. Just don't go pedestrianing around in it after dark.

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Hammered by Helene

Not us here in Indy, mind you. We got a little wind and rain. Some branches were down here and there. Power flickered only long enough to set the microwave clock to blinking. Other than that, it was pretty much a wet firecracker here.

Asheville, North Carolina on the other hand... yikes.

I remember when a good-size rock closed I-40 west of Asheville, and also when the southbound lanes of I-75 slid off the mountaintop between Knoxville and the Kentucky border, and how much that snarled traffic. I can't imagine what it's going to do to a decent-sized city like Asheville to have all interstate access whatsoever temporarily cut off.

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Meme Dump...

Automotif DLI...

The fifth (and final) generation of Chevrolet's El Camino ute debuted in 1978 as a downsized version of its predecessors and received a fairly heavy mid-cycle styling refresh for 1982. It had been styled to resemble the Malibu midsize sedan, but after the refresh it took its cues from the G-body Monte Carlo personal luxury coupe.

Gone were the hairier engine options from yesteryear, as the more fuel-conscious "new size" truckette came with an assortment of V-6s, a tame 305 small block, or the execrable Oldsmobile 350 diesel.

Chevrolet did offer a factory SS option, RPO Z15, that came with some trim & paint detail differences and an air dam. It also came with big SS decals on the doors and tailgate up through '83, but that stopped because Chevrolet started contracting through Choo Choo Customs of Chattanooga, which had mostly been known for its luxo conversion vans, to do an SS appearance package for the El Camino.

Choo Choo customs essentially fitted a Monte Carlo Super Sport snout and ground effects to the El Camino. In addition to the nose job, various options were available, like a "cowl induction" style hood bulge and functional side pipes.

Unlike the Monte Carlo SS, though, the El Camino SS was all bark and no bite. Whereas the Monte could be had with the L69 305 H.O. small block, which came with better-flowing heads, low-restriction exhaust, flat top 9.5:1 pistons, and a 750cfm Quadrajet, all of which added up to 190 horsepower, the Choo Choo Customs El Caminos still had the basic LG4 4-barrel 305 taxi motor from the regular El Caminos. While the lower compression ratio meant it'd run happily on regular gas, it also meant it only put out 150 horsepower.

The top and bottom photos were shot with a Nikon D1X and Nikon's excellent 35mm f/1.8 DX prime lens in November of 2021, while the middle one was snapped in October of 2020 using a Nikon D7000 and a 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR zoom lens.

That time we almost got blowed up...

A number of y'all are probably familiar with the time a Soviet Colonel saved the world from nuclear war by staying calm and listening to his gut instincts.

Even if you are, though, this is an excellent deep dive into the background, the details, and the aftermath of that fateful day.

(If you want to read a book about Able Archer 83, this is a good one, with lots of scans of original declassified documents.)

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Elsewhere...

• Pictures are no good if you can't find them.


• By 1970, the Mustang was already fattening up to hibernate through the Malaise Era.

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Meme Dump...

THIS! AIN'T! SPARTA!

Indiana National Guard troops are heading out for a deployment to Kuwait in support of Operation Spartan Shield, described in press release boilerplate as "the United States' operation to strengthen defense relationships and build partner capacity through leader engagements, multinational exercises and response planning."

I dunno about you, but I've kinda come down with a case of Sparta Burnout. They had really good PR, not only in some surviving ancient histories, but in modern tongue baths from sources as diverse as Steven Pressfield and Frank Miller.

Don't get me wrong, Gates of Fire and 300 are great entertainment, but they are anything but historically accurate. The reputation of Spartan military prowess is vastly inflated by Laconaboos.

This piece by historian Bret Devereaux is worth the read...

To start with, the Spartan reputation for military excellence turns out to be, on closer inspection, mostly a mirage. Despite Sparta’s reputation for superior fighting, Spartan armies were as likely to lose battles as to win them, especially against peer opponents such as other Greek city-states. Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War—but only by accepting Persian money to do it, reopening the door to Persian influence in the Aegean, which Greek victories at Plataea and Salamis nearly a century early had closed. Famous Spartan victories at Plataea and Mantinea were matched by consequential defeats at Pylos, Arginusae, and ultimately Leuctra. That last defeat at Leuctra, delivered by Thebes a mere 33 years after Sparta’s triumph over Athens, broke the back of Spartan power permanently, reducing Sparta to the status of a second-class power from which it never recovered.

Sparta was one of the largest Greek city-states in the classical period, yet it struggled to achieve meaningful political objectives; the result of Spartan arms abroad was mostly failure. Sparta was particularly poor at logistics; while Athens could maintain armies across the Eastern Mediterranean, Sparta repeatedly struggled to keep an army in the field even within Greece. Indeed, Sparta spent the entirety of the initial phase of the Peloponnesian War, the Archidamian War (431-421 B.C.), failing to solve the basic logistical problem of operating long term in Attica, less than 150 miles overland from Sparta and just a few days on foot from the nearest friendly major port and market, Corinth.

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Meme Dump...

Automotif DL...

1967 was smack in the middle of the sixth generation of Oldsmobile's 88, and received a mid-cycle styling refresh like the rest of its General Motors B-body stablemates. They continued fiddling with various trim levels and names, with the Delmont 88 at the bottom, the Delta 88 in the middle, and the Delta 88 Custom at the top. The Dynamic 88 and Jetstar 88 nameplates went into the dustbin of history.

The convertible body style was only available for 1967 as a Delmont 88 or a Delta 88, with the faded (but otherwise remarkably straight) Spanish Red example declared to be the latter by the badges on the aft end of the rear fenders.

Under the hood would have been one of several flavors of Oldsmobile's 425 cubic inch Super Rocket V-8, ranging from a tame 2-barrel with a 9.0:1 compression ratio rated at 300 SAE gross horsepower to a snarling 365 horsepower 4-barrel that needed premium gas for its 10.5:1 squeeze.

This one was photographed in September of 2017 using a Leica D-Lux 3.

Automotif DXLIX...

1970 was the final year for the third generation of Cadillac's DeVille series. Even though it had received a fairly serious styling overhaul for '69, this was still the era where small exterior changes were made every year in the name of planned obsolescence and conspicuous consumption. When you rolled up to the country club in this thing, nobody would mistake it for last year's Caddy.

The quad headlamps, which had gone from being stacked vertically to arrayed horizontally just last year, now had body colored surrounds to better blend the housings into the fascia. There were crests on the forward creases of the front fenders, now, and the grille was also different, with a bolder egg crate look.

Under the hood, you'd find the trusty Cadillac 472 cubic inch V-8. With its Rochester 4-barrel carburetor and a 10.0:1 compression ratio, the big 7.7 Litre mill turned out 375 SAE gross horsepower and a monster 525 foot pounds of torque.

That powerplant was enough to shove even 4,800 pounds of Cadillac to sixty in the mid-8 second range. If you wanted to slow down, you had power front discs and enormous finned drums out back. The car had a full array of ultra modern features like thermostat-determined climate control and automatic headlight dimming ("Twilight Sentinel" in Cad-speak).

1970 was also the last year of the Coupe DeVille convertible, and this Nottingham Green Firemist example is in primo condition.

This one was photographed in September of 2024 using an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and M. Zuiko Digital 12-200mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom lens.

Meme Dump...

Automotif DXLVIII...

Truly this car was the Last of the Dinosaurs. The fourth in Lincoln's Mark series of luxury coupes, the Mark V, though it was launched in 1976 as a '77 model, had actually begun development before the first fuel crisis in 1973.

By the time it came out, however, the nation had already experienced the shock of the OPEC embargo and so even though it rode on the same 120" wheelbase as its predecessor and was actually a couple inches longer (the longest postwar FoMoCo coupe, period, at 230.3"), vigorous weight reduction had shaved a few hundred pounds from the curb weight, down to "only" 4,652 pounds.

That new fuel consciousness also meant that the base motor for '77 was a 400 cubic inch 2-barrel version of Ford's Windsor small-block V-8, rated at 179 SAE net horsepower.The 208 horsepower four-barrel 460 cube big block remained an option.

For 1979, though, due to tightening CAFE regulations, the 460 was a goner, as was the second exhaust outlet on the 2-bbl 400, leaving only 159 ponies to propel this glamour barge down the interstate.

Motor Trend tested a '79 Mark V, a $13,594 Bill Blass Edition lacking no options but the factory CB radio, with the optional 2.75:1 performance rear axle (standard final drive ratio was 2.47:1) and managed an 11.6 second jog to sixty and a best quarter mile of 18.5 seconds at 76 mph.

About the car, they wrote:

"The 1979 Mark V was the essence of unconstrained American automotive opulence, conceived in a time when fuel economy and space efficiency were the concerns of lesser cars.

...Even with the weight loss, the Mark V is a huge piece of machinery, albeit a desirable one in terms of potential value. It is the last of a breed and has sufficient quality and style to assure eventual classic status It is entirely likely that, in 10 years, the owners of such cars will discover that they have a piece of collectible automotive machinery.

....To drive the Mark V is to be the captain of your own huge, luxurious ship. In an operational sense, the Mark V is massive, smooth and competent only in boulevard or highway applications.....What it was designed to do, it does very well. It isolates the driver and passengers from the outside world, and when you're driving, it makes you feel - and makes other people thin k you are - rich. Even with its rather straight-lined, sharp-edged styling, the car has a certain rakishness and projects the image of the driver as an elegant rogue."

One of the final Detroitmobiles from the era when a big Lincoln or Caddy was the height of opulence and showing up at the club in something European made you look a little effete.

The subsequent Mark VI had to hang its head in downsized shame.

The Cream 1979 example in the pictures was photographed in October of 2020 using a Nikon D7000 and Nikon's excellent 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR zoom lens.

Frisky Dictators

Even during times of relative global security, countries with clout can get away with rather a lot of shenanigans in weedy little ex-colonial nations with shaky governments. Witness the relative impunity with which we ran rather a lot of the Global War on a Noun, or decades worth of Israeli punitive actions, both clandestine and overt, in the Middle East.

Generally, though, even those countries refrained from getting too frisky in nations perceived to have enough clout to punch back.

That's changed in recent years. Putin's FSB whacking Litvinenko and later trying to poison the Skripals in the United Kingdom was only a precursor to the stuff going down now.

Of course Putin's intelligence organizations remain hard at work: 

There’s a vocal coach arrested in Kazakhstan at Moscow’s request who went mad in a local jail. A caregiver for the elderly detained in Montenegro on Russian orders, carried out by Interpol. A schoolteacher detained by Armenian border guards after telling her students about Russia’s crimes in Bucha. A toy shop owner, an industrial climber, a punk rocker: These are some of the people caught in the Kremlin dragnet, all over the world.

And it is a truly global operation. In Britain, exiles are being followed and London opposition events are crawling with agents “who stick out like a sore thumb,” Ksenia Maximova, an anti-Kremlin activist there, told me. Russian intelligence officers have been sent to monitor the diasporas in Germany, Poland and Lithuania, according to Evgeny Smirnov, a lawyer who specializes in treason and espionage cases. Other emigrants have been stalked and threatened in Rome, Paris, Prague and Istanbul. The list goes on.

The Chinese are feeling froggy, too. During Xi's visit to California, a Washington Post in vestigation discovered:

• While there was aggression from both sides, the most extreme violence was instigated by pro-CCP activists and carried out by coordinated groups of young men embedded among them, verified videos show. Anti-Xi protesters were attacked with extended flagpoles and chemical spray, punched, kicked and had fistfuls of sand thrown in their faces.


• The Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles paid for supporters’ hotels and meals as an incentive to participate, according to messages shared in WeChat groups reviewed by The Post. At least 35 pro-CCP Chinese diaspora groups showed up to the APEC summit protests — including groups from New York, Pennsylvania and Washington state.


• Videos show at least four Chinese diplomats from the consulates in Los Angeles and San Francisco among the crowd of pro-CCP protesters, sometimes directly interacting with aggressive actors over four days of protests from Nov. 14-17. Some Chinese diaspora group leaders with ties to the Chinese state participated in some of the violence, the videos show.


• Chinese diplomats hired at least 60 private security guards to “protect” Chinese diaspora groups gathered to welcome Xi, according to seven people involved in the arrangement.

Even Modi's Western-curious India has gotten in on the action...

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada accused the Indian government in September of being behind the killing of a Canadian Sikh activist near Vancouver, there was fierce denial, skepticism and muted support.

India vehemently denied the accusations and forced out 41 Canadian diplomats. Canada’s allies, including the United States, said little, concerned about offending an increasingly important counterweight to China and Russia.

Even Canada’s opposition leader demanded that Mr. Trudeau “come clean” with the evidence behind the accusations.

But Canada’s case against India and Mr. Trudeau’s lonely stand were shored up on Wednesday after federal prosecutors in Manhattan revealed details of what they said was a separate plot in the United States, with links to the killing in Canada.

These are definitely some interesting times we're living in.

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Elsewhere...

• Hey, let me tell you about that time I screwed up the photography opportunity of a lifetime because I didn't know what I didn't know!


• 1990 Caddy Fleetwood coupe...

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Serutan is natures spelled backwards...

I was complaining about the lack of precipitation causing a certain rather... whiff aroma around the sewer drains at big intersections like, say, 54th & College yesterday morning.

Well, we had a pretty good line of thunderstorms blow through yesterday evening, the kind that would have definitely had me worried about the old hackberry in the back yard were it still there.

The rain was blowing sideways and there was hail lashing the back wall of the house like half-spent turkey shot.

It wasn't a lot of rain in total, probably only a tenth of an inch or so, certainly no drought-buster, but hopefully the fact that it all came down at once provided enough water in the storm sewers to, er, get the mail moving, as it were.

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Automotif DXLVII...

In the early Fifties, the Nuffield Organization (Morris, MG, Wolseley, & Riley) merged with Austin to form British Motors Corporation. Like most other British car brands, MG had been suffering from a bit of postwar austerity. The classic T-type Midget was getting a bit vintage-looking in the early Fifties, with its narrow bonnet and open fenders.

Work began on a replacement and the new MGA was launched in 1955. The new car had a modern, fully-enclosed body with sleek lines. It retained the classic long hood & short deck proportions, which allowed the Austin-sourced overhead valve inline four to largely sit aft of the front axles.

While it could be had as a fixed-head coupe, the MGA was mostly sold in roadster form.

Allow me a side digression to point out here that it is a true roadster, with no permanently attached top. In fact, there aren't even any exterior door handles. There was a little pup tent sort of affair in the trunk, and if it started raining you could pull over beneath a convenient overpass and use this apparatus of sticks and canvas to divide the world into an exterior and a slightly less-damp interior. Roadsters are open cars intended for open-air motoring and while my BMW Z3 may say "Roadster" on the door sills, it's stolen valor.

At any rate, the initial MGAs were powered by a 1.5L (1,489cc) Austin 4-cylinder. For 1959, though, they received a displacement bump to 1.6L (1,588cc). Breathing through a pair of SU carbs and boasting an 8.3:1 compression ratio, the motor in the MGA 1600 put out 79.5 horsepower, which was a nearly ten percent bump over the earlier version and adequate to propel the little 2,000-pound roadster to an honest hundred miles per hour.

British magazine The Autocar managed a best zero-to-sixty run of 14.2 seconds and dispatched the standing quarter mile in 19.3 seconds.

This lovely Old English White example was photographed in Broad Ripple back in 2017 using a Nikon Coolpix P7000.

The MGA 1600 is an interesting blend of features both modern... disc brakes up front! ...and archaic... the horn button is in the center of the dash?!? What's most modern about it, though, are those dashing good looks.

Drought…

So we’re officially in a moderate drought here in Indy. All but about five days so far this month have seen above average temps and the only rain we’ve seen since the first was a fraction of an inch back in the first week of September. This has two big effects in the neighborhood:

• First, the leaves on the trees are going to turn earlier than usual. Some have already started.


• Second, as I may have mentioned, Broad Ripple has an elderly sewer network that combines both sanitary and storm sewers. Go a few weeks without rain and things can get a little whiff at bigger intersections near the storm sewer drains, since there hasn’t been storm water flow to wash everything down to its final destination.

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Tab Clearing...

• Chris Arnade walks the Faroe Islands.


• The Throwing Madonna.


• A Rape in Cyberspace.

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Meme Dump...

Celebrities are supposed to be role models, right?

Sean "Diddy" Combs knows the score: A dry carbine is a malfunction-prone carbine...

There are two kinds of people: Those who were horrified by this article, and those who were horrified by this article but wish with every fiber of their being that they could have sent this screen shot to Uncle Pat.

(Note for the humorless: By all accounts this guy is a real dirtbag, one of those sorts of dude who uses clout and success as tools to victimize women for his personal jollies, and they're apparently still writing books to throw at him... but any gun nerd chuckled at the plain text of that headline.)

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Automotif DXLVI...

1983 was a big year for Ford's Mustang for several reasons. 

It received its first big styling refresh since the Fox body Third Generation pony car had debuted in 1979. In addition to revised taillights and other trim and interior details, the snout was revised, with a slimmer grille and better aero, giving a claimed ~2% reduction in drag.

Not content to cede the droptop renaissance to GM and Chrysler, the convertible Mustang returned after a decade-long hiatus. Ford performed the roof-ectomy in-house, rather than farming the work out to ASC. Initially only offered on the Mustang GLX, it was joined mid-year by a ragtop GT. Despite their high price premium over a hardtop 'Stang, convertible sales wildly exceeded the manufacturer's expectations. (GT hatchbacks started at $9,300 while base price for a GT convertible was $13,479, or the equivalent of $42,600 in 2024 dollars.)

Finally, the GT version saw big performance gains. The 302 Windsor V-8 under the hood saw the previous year's 2-barrel carb replaced by a genuine Holley 4-barrel, while the exhaust system was reworked for better flow, including a more efficient catalytic converter. As a bonus, the previous 4-speed overdrive manual, with its awkward, widely-spaced gear ratios, was replaced by a 5-speed Borg Warner T5.

The results were impressive, with an 11.5% horsepower bump over the previous year (157 to 175 SAE net). Car & Driver tested an '83 hardtop GT and recorded a zero to sixty time of 7.0 seconds and a 15.4 quarter at 90 mph. The 5.0L H.O. pushed that new aero snout through the air all the way to 125 miles per hour, too. The Medium Charcoal GT convertible in the picture would have been a few ticks more sluggish due to the added weight of the stiffening added to keep the chassis flex to a tolerable minimum.

It was a pretty clear statement from Ford that the Malaise Era was done in Dearborn.

The one in the photo was captured in July of 2022 using a Canon EOS-1D Mark III and an EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens.

Meme Dump...

Automotif DXLV...

The two big automotive buzzwords in '73 were "economy" and "safety". Since 1966 a host of mandatory improvements in automotive safety and security had been mandated in the United States. Mandatory seatbelts (lap belts in '66, supplemented by mandatory shoulder harnesses for front seat passengers in '68), padded dashes, collapsible steering columns, side marker lights, headrests, and other modern features all became the norm during this era. 

There were also rules introduced to reduce burgeoning insurance costs from crash damage and theft. Steering columns that locked when the car was turned off and the elimination of exterior hood releases cut down on theft, while bumpers that could withstand a 5mph impact were mandated. At the same time, clean air standards were imposed, and the disorienting effects of the '73 Oil Embargo made fuel economy a priority.

Into this environment Malcolm Bricklin introduced a new sports car: The SV-1. A nod to the times, the name stood for "Safety Vehicle", but that was an odd choice of moniker. While the massive bumpers... the front one made it look like a flounder getting its mouth washed out with soap ...were claimed to keep the vehicle from experiencing any structural damage at impacts up to 12mph, there weren't any notable improvements in protection for the occupants.

It wan't much in tune with the fuel economy vibe of the times, either. While the project had originally started with the intent to produce a simple, lightweight car powered by an Opel 4-cylinder, the final result was the 1974 SV-1, powered by an American Motors-sourced 360 cubic inch V-8.

The structure was of a laminate of color-impregnated acrylic resin over fiberglass for the body panels, all bolted to a steel rolling chassis, similar to the later Pontiac Fiero. Like the Fiero, it was not particularly svelte for its size, worsened by the lump of a V-8 and AMC-rebranded Torqueflite 727 automatic transmission or four-speed Borg-Warner T10.

For 1975, the engine and transmission were replaced with a Ford 351 Windsor V-8 and FMX 3-speed automatic transmission, with no manual option. (Bricklin defended this by saying that manual gearboxes didn't promote safety, which was also the claimed reason for the lack of a cigarette lighter or ashtrays.)

The 351 smog motor, with its 2-barrel carb and 8.0:1 compression ratio, wheezed out only 175 SAE net horsepower, so it had its work cut out for it hauling 3,560 pounds of plastic and steel. Car & Driver eked out an 8.6 second zero-to-sixty run with their test car and managed a 16.6 second quarter mile at 84 mph through the traps. Maximum recorded top speed was 118 mph. Observed fuel economy was 12-15 miles per gallon, which made one glad for the 21 gallon tank, no doubt.

Adding insult to injury, MSRP for 1975 had ballooned to $9,780 ($57,225 in 2024 money), almost fifteen hundred bucks more than a comparably-equipped Corvette.

"Ah," you say, "But the Corvette doesn't have those nifty gullwing doors!"

No, no it does not. The Bricklin's doors were power operated, each with their own hydraulic ram originally designed to operate a convertible top. Raising them in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot no doubt would draw a crowd of gawkers.

Both door rams were driven by a single pump and, while both doors could be raised and lowered at the same time, there was no interlock to keep you and your passenger from trying to raise one door while lowering the other. If you did that, you'd brick the pump, and be trapped in the car until you pulled the pivot pin out of the ram where it connects to the door and then try and do an overhead press with the 90-pound door while slithering out of the car and not dropping the door on yourself while doing so. You'd also have to do that CrossFit exercise if the car lost battery power while you were in it.

The interior exhibited the not quite ready for prime time vibe that plagues extremely low production volume cars, especially from startups. Combine all the downchecks with slews of problems at the factory in Saint John, New Brunswick, and it's not a surprise that Bricklin production ceased with the 1976 model year.

This one was photographed in Enfield, New Hampshire in June of 2022 using a Canon EOS 5Ds and EF 24-105mm f/4L IS.

(Cross-Posted at Cars Gone By.)

Miscellaneous Linkery...

• "I'm not saying they were right or anything, but their tanks sure were cool..."


• Don't poke the author. It's rude.


• Resilient Wheat


• 1969 Camaro RS/Z28

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Whupped.

Spent a week in Akron doing work with 4" schedule 40 PVC pipe in an office building at night after the employees had gone home, and then drove the four and a half hours home yesterday and I am just absolutely whupped. I'll probably be hearing sawzalls cutting pipe and drills coring concrete in my head for days.

It was good to get home to Bobbi and the cats and my own bed, though.

Today's gonna be a rest & recuperation day while I catch up on some promised writing.

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Automotif DXLIV...

Triumph's Spitfire was launched in the early Sixties as a competitor for the Austin-Healey Sprite. Like the Sprite, it was a teeny little thing. Unlike the Sprite, it was a little more plush, with features that made it more suitable as a daily driver.

It was what the British call a "drophead coupe", rather than a true roadster, meaning it had a permanently-attached folding convertible top. Rather than detachable side curtains, it had actual roll-up windows. And it had an actual trunk (or "boot"), which the first generation of Sprites had lacked.

Originally equipped with the 1,147cc four from the Triumph Herald, the motor in the Spitfire swole up until the the final variant's 1,493cc.

The U.S. version of the 91 cubic inch motor had a 7.5:1 compression ratio and sipped gas through a single Zenith Stromberg carb. Horsepower was rated at 53 SAE net, and that meant that performance was...modest. Road & Track clocked a zero-to-sixty run of 15.4 seconds and a 94 mph top speed.

If I'm not mistaken, the grotesque 5 mph front bumper and slim rear bumper tag this Leyland White Triumph Spitfire 1500 as a 1973 model. It was photographed in September of 2016 with a Nikon Coolpix P7000.
 

Automotif DXLIII...

Like its crosstown arch rival from Dearborn, the fourth generation of the GM F-body Camaro/Firebird twins was actually more of a very heavy refresh of the previous generation than a clean sheet of paper reboot. If you park a '92 and a '93 next to each other and look at the line of the C-pillar and the hatchback, it really becomes obvious.

The new refresh had some very important upgrades, though, and the most important was a transmission tunnel capacious enough for a more modern manual transmission, namely the 6-speed Borg Warner T-56, which had originally been developed to live behind the brawny 488 cubic inch V-10 in the Dodge Viper.

This was important because the previous 3rd Gen cars were saddled with the Borg Warner T5 5-speed and that meant that the rowdiest motors could only be had with slushboxes, since the T-5 wasn't up to the torque of the 5.7L 'Vette motor.

For the Fourth Gen cars, though, the 305 V-8 was gone. You could get a base Firebird secretarymobile with a 3.4L V-6, or you could get a Formula or Trans Am with a hairy-chested LT1 350 V-8 Corvette motor.

1998 saw a mid-cycle styling refresh for the Firebird. The Trans Am got a more aggro-looking snout, vents on the front fenders, and now the motor choices were the GM corporate 3800 V-6 200hp for base Firebirds and the 5.7L LS1 'Vette motor for the Formula and Trans Am.

Packaged for the F-body, the LS1 was rated at 305 horsepower, or 320 if you checked the box for the WS6 package, with its functional cold air "Ram Air" intake.

Car & Driver tested a 1999 30th Anniversary WS6 Trans Am convertible and ripped off a 5.3 second zero-to-sixty and a 13.9 second at 104 mph quarter mile run on its way to a 163mph top speed. These would have been impressive supercar numbers just a decade earlier and the Fourth Gen F-bodies remain some of the most performance bang for the minimum wage buck on the used car market to this day.

This one was photographed in September of 2024 with an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and Panasonic 12-60mm f/2.8-4 zoom lens.

It's been how long?

I just realized the other day that I've had the Mustang for five years now, which is the second longest I've ever owned a car, after the Z3. (In a few weeks I'll have owned the Bimmer for twenty three years.)

I had the Porsche 924S from... let's see... late '94 to late '96? I got that '75 Granada in '90 and sold it in '93? So whatever's in third place is a very distant third. 

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Calm Your Tits...

First the orcas, now this...

Animals are getting uppity in Europe. First we had orcas attacking yachts off the coast of the Iberian peninsula, now there are eagle attacks in Scandinavia...

In the most recent attack, a 20-month old girl was playing outside a farm in Orkland, a small municipality in the south, on Saturday when the eagle came “out of the blue” and clawed her.

The girl’s father, who was not there during the attack, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that the mother and a neighbor raced to fight the eagle. The raptor attacked three times before it was killed when hit with a piece of wood, Folkestad said.

Automotif DXLII...

There are two automotive phenomena in play with today's ride: The Indy 500 Pace Car, and the Indy 500 Official Car.

First, there's the Pace Car. Pace Cars have mostly been convertibles, but more importantly, the Pace Car needed to be able to be able to perform the chores of the actual pace car in the race. During the Malaise Era, this resulted in actual Pace Cars that were heavily modified to be up to the high speeds involved, and those modifications were not applied to the replica Pace Cars sold for the street. As an example, the actual '83 Riviera convertible Pace Cars for the track (there were two built) had 4.3L twin-turbo intercooled V-6 motors that pumped out more than 400 horsepower and were in no way remotely street legal.

Then there are the Official Cars, which are used in 500 Festival events and parades leading up to the race and in the festivities on race day. Frequently these are the same make and model as the Pace Car, but not necessarily. In 1983, they were, though: Riviera convertibles.

Of the Official Cars that Buick provided to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that year, sixty were white Riviera convertibles with maroon interiors, making these somewhat rarer than the 502 Pace Car Riviera XX replicas.

This one was snapped in September of 2024 using an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and Panasonic 12-60mm f/2.8-4 zoom lens.