Automotif CDXLIX...

The K-car front wheel drive platform arguably helped a moribund Chrysler battle its way back into the black from near-bankruptcy in the early Eighties, after it had been pulled from the brink by a government loan.

Other than trucks, the legacy RWD sedans, and the L-body compacts (Omni/Horizon/Charger/Turismo), pretty much every vehicle made by Mopar in the Eighties and Nineties was on a variant of the K-car chassis. The K-car platform was to Chrysler what the ground-beef patty is to McDonalds; shuffle a few basic ingredients around it and you can come up with a pretty good-size menu.

Need a sporty coupe? Shorten the K-car for the Daytona. Need a minivan? Stretch the K-car for the Caravan*. Need a largish sedan to replace the Diplomat & Fifth Avenue? Hey, check out the stretched K-car in the picture above!

That's a 1990-1993 Chrysler New Yorker Salon in Black Cherry Metallic. The Salon was a sort of base model New Yorker introduced in 1990, that deleted the hidden headlamps, had a simpler taillight treatment, and used a bluff chrome grille similar to the cheaper Dodge Dynasty. The corner of the car you can't see is all stove in, but it's in otherwise nice shape, including all four fake wire wheel hubcaps.

Power would have been provided by Chrysler's port fuel injected 3.3L 150bhp pushrod V-6, and sent to the front wheels via a 4-speed A604 Ultradrive automatic transmission made right up the road at the plant in Kokomo, Indiana.

*To head off the tidal wave of ackshyually emails, the minivans didn't technically use the K-car chassis. They had their own platform...that used K-car drivelines and suspension. 

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When You Need a Backup Gun.

Most cops of my acquaintance are pretty religious devotees of carrying a backup gun. An IMPD officer who I've known for years and have trained with in the past is alive today because he carries a backup gun and has trained to proficiency in its deployment and use.

For the average normie private citizen CCW toter? I mean, if you can carry one and train with it, great. It's probably best practice, I guess.

Personally I haven't habitually carried a BUG since... whenever I stopped wearing "shoot me first" vests with any degree of regularity, so probably back in 2007 or 2008.

Mostly.

There's one circumstance where I do carry a second gun pretty religiously, but I don't know that you could rightly call it a backup gun in those cases, and that's when I'm out and about in the dead of a Hoosier winter. I'm not tough enough to roam around in sub-freezing weather with my coat unzipped, and that makes accessing a blaster carried at the waistline, whether inside or outside the waistband, strong-side or appendix, a little hard to get at in a hurry.

Greg Ellifritz wrote about this recently:

"A friend once asked me for some winter coat carry advice. He normally carried a 9mm Glock 19 inside the waistband. Living in Minnesota, he found access to his Glock to be rather difficult when the gun was covered up by his heavy winter coat. My friend wanted to supplement his Glock with a smaller pistol carried in his outside coat pocket for quicker access in cold temperatures. Which pistol would be the best choice?

That’s a good question. Before I moved to Texas, I braved Ohio’s winters regularly carrying a revolver in an outside coat pocket. When the snow accumulated enough to cover up my ankle gun if I stepped in a snow drift, I carried my police backup gun in my outer coat pocket. "

Go and read Greg's piece.

I largely agree with his take, although I'm not as concerned with being able to fire the gun from inside the coat pocket. What I am concerned with, however, is being able to access the firearm while seated, especially in my car with the seatbelt fastened. While that's not actually as hard to do under an unbuttoned overshirt in summer as some people seem to think it is because they've never tried nor practiced it, it is in fact well-nigh impossible under a zipped up winter coat.

For that reason I select winter coats with a specific kind of upper chest pockets, the kind with vertical zippered openings along the centerline.

The photo above has the revolver hiked up and hanging out of the pocket just so you can see it, but normally you can't. It works without any shuffling of the garment when sitting on the driver's side (in the picture I'm in the passenger seat of Shootin' Buddy's Tacoma). Best of all, it can be accessed easily with the strong side hand, somewhat akin to a tanker-type holster, but it can also be drawn cavalry-style with the support hand if necessary. It's no coincidence that this is where the BUG pocket is on a 5.11-type vest.

That's the same Smith & Wesson 432PD with CTC LaserGrips in a cheapo Uncle Mike's pocket holster to keep it correctly oriented in the pocket that I've used for this job nearly twenty years. There are more rugged holsters out there, but I think this is only my second or third, and it's about due for replacement. If you wanna be all Vimes' Boots about it, there might be a sixty dollar leather holster that'll go twenty years without replacement, or you can buy a fifteen buck nylon one every seven years.

The downside to this in the winter is that you can't use the coat check unless you have a way of discreetly slipping the holstered blaster out of your pocket and into a purse or bag or whatever, so you gotta be that goober who drags your coat with you everywhere.

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Automotif CDXLVIII...

The Volvo 200-series debuted in the 1975 model year, available as both a 2- and 4-door sedan, as well as a station wagon. These rugged rear-wheel drive cars were the most popular Volvos yet on the U.S. market, and really helped cement the marque's reputation for safety.

Though the styling remained more or less the same over the entire model run, the composite headlamps on this Polar White 240 wagon, seen parked on College Avenue in SoBro on a drizzly morning in early December, mark it as an '86-'93 car.

That's right, this same shape was available for purchase on Volvo dealer's lots for a nearly two-decade stretch, proving that it's hip to be square.

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QotD: Politics Is Showbiz For Ugly People Edition...

"In the age of social media, one need only be right for a moment—for one pithy putdown or quick comeback. That kind of superficial politics inevitably leads to figures such as Santos." -Kevin D. Williamson

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Artsy...

Beaded water on painted sheet metal makes for an easy artsy subject.

These were shot with the Pentax Q10 and the 8.5mm f/1.9 01 Prime lens.

8.5mm is the equivalent of a "Nifty Fifty" on the little 1/2.3" sensor. (Well, 47mm equivalent, actually...)

"Ooh, ooh! Pick me!"

Another good episode from the guys at Tactical Tangents:

Having a good selection procedure is important for getting the right members on a team. Mike steals a page from advertising, only where an ad man conceptualizes the ideal customer, he’s looking for the ideal SWAT guy. The process could work for any team selection, though. Just think about what the ideal candidate would say, think, do, or feel, and look for those people. Listen to this episode for ideas on how to do just that.

Overheard in Front of the Television...

Watching Batman on MeTV last night... the episode from the second season with Otto Preminger* as Mr. Freeze ...I mused aloud:

"When I was a kid, if you’d asked me “Who’s freakier, Colonel Hogan or Bruce Wayne?”, I’d have been all “Oh, Bruce Wayne for sure. I mean, he runs around with a teenager in tights and booty shorts” which just goes to show that you never can tell."

*Three different actors played Mr. Freeze in the TV series. George Sanders played the role in the first season, but was unavailable in the second, so Otto Preminger got the part. According to Wikipedia, "Due to tensions and difficulties on set in Preminger's two-part storyline, Eli Wallach replaced Preminger in the role of Mr. Freeze for the final two-part storyline of season 2." That sounds like an interesting story, which I'm fixing to look into. Preminger was a controversial dude, but his Mr. Freeze is the most memorable of the trio, and probably why heavily-accented Schwarzenegger got the part in the execrable Schumacher flop, Batman & Robin.
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R8 with 7D

The second generation of Audi R8 shares its chassis... and basic V10 power plant ...with the Lamborghini Huracàn, just like the first generation was a platform mate with the Gallardo.

This Ibis White one with the cheeky license plate was photographed with a Canon EOS 7D.

It's hard to believe that Canon's EOS 7D will be celebrating its fifteenth birthday next September. When it came out in 2009, it was an instant favorite, combining the rugged, weather-resistant construction and pro controls of Canon's 5D series of full-frame cameras with an 18MP APS-C sensor and a price tag a hair under two grand.

The 1.6X effective boost in focal length and blazing 8 frames per second speed made it popular with nature, sports, and air show photographers, and it was among the first DSLRs to be able to shoot 1080p HD video. (Mind you, I'm strictly a stills photographer and I don't think this moving picture fad will stick around.) The original 7D remained in production unchanged for five years, an eternity in the Peak Digicam Era. Used ones can be found for as little as under two Benjamins at BezosMart.

This Audi R8 was photographed using the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM zoom lens, which is probably the best lens Canon ever made specifically for its crop sensor DSLRs. When it came out in 2006 there was some head-scratching as to why it didn't rate the red ring of an "L"-series lens, but it does lack weather sealing and has a polycarbonate lens barrel, plus I think Canon just plain likes to snub crop sensor shooters as a bunch of poors who should move up to full frame.

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QotD: Skilled Trades Edition...

"The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." -John Gardner

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Return to the Lanky Wars!

Marko's latest novel set in the Frontlines universe is an Amazon First Reads selection this month, meaning it's free to read for Amazon Prime members!

Dive in to Scorpio...

Automotif CDXLVII...

The other day I noted the unusual longevity of the Corvette and Mustang nameplates, which will be celebrating their 71st and 60th birthdays, respectively, in 2024. I also noted that almost no model name had such an enduring run.

In the photo above is one of the closest: Oldsmobile introduced the 88 in 1949. Its predecessor, the 1948 Olds 78, was powered by a 257cid straight eight rated at 112 horsepower, but while it carried over the Futuramic postwar Olds styling of its predecessor, the 88 featured Oldsmobile's brand new Rocket V8. The 303 cubic inch Rocket had overhead valves, a 7.5:1 compression ratio, and put out 135 SAE gross horsepower.

The 88 nameplate remained in production through ten whole generations, and the Bright White 1994-'95 Oldsmobile Eighty Eight Royale is an example of that final generation.

The tenth generation of the 88 was the second one after the car had gone to a front wheel drive platform in 1986, and this '94 Royale would be powered by the GM corporate 3800 V6. This was a Buick-derived port fuel injected pushrod 3.8L motor rated at 170bhp SAE net.

Oldsmobile axed the 88 name after the 1999 model, finishing a fifty year run, among Detroit's longest.

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Meme Dump

Important Internet Tip!

All those anonymous Gmail burner accounts you've used for trolling people's faces off or logging into dubious web fora are going to get deleted tomorrow if you haven't logged into them in the past two years.

If you want to use those personas again, make sure to dig your old passwords out and log in to them today to reset the shot clock.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #248...

Currently underway are reviews of the Avidity Arms PD10 for RECOIL: Concealment and the Girsan MC-14 for Shooting Illustrated.

It's still pretty early in the process for both. I've got a hundred rounds of Hornady Critical Defense .380 through the Girsan and two hundred rounds of Remington 9mm 124gr FMJ through the PD10, all of it just blasting away at seven yards on the indoor range at Indy Arms Company.

A Jog Around the Blogs...

• A solid rule of thumb for the private citizen in a self-defense situation is "Don't pursue the bad guy." When someone tries to force entry into your home or assault you in your driveway, you're going to be mad. If they run, you'll almost instinctively want to chase them. Don't. If you turn the tables and they leave, you've achieved your victory conditions for the scenario. Leave the rest to the po-po.


• The Online Photographer blog has turned eighteen!


• Marko has received a token of esteem.

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Automotif CDXLVI...

All through the Fifties, Detroit's "Big Three" produced pretty much nothing but big cars. Longer, lower, and wider were the watchwords for every model year. 

While the various marques of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler sold varying models in that decade, they were all just variations on the same full-size platforms.

Not every consumer wanted a car that big, though, and they came with other problems. If you live in a neighborhood like Broad Ripple, where many of the garages predate the '50s, you can see the alterations that were made to some garages that had been built during the age of the Model A to allow them to accommodate the much longer new cars. It's also daunting to imagine navigating these narrow streets in a tailfin-bedecked twenty-foot chromasaurus with numb on-center steering and a hood ornament 'way out there in another zip code from the front seat.

The smaller manufacturers like American Motors and Studebaker offered smaller cars, and sales of imports like Germany's Volkswagen began to take off and Detroit realized they were leaving money on the table, so all the Big Three launched compacts in the early Sixties. The Fords and Mopars were fairly conventional shrunken versions of their full-size cars, but Chevy went with something truly different.

The Corvair used an air-cooled horizontally-opposed six cylinder motor mounted aft of the rear axle. In an era of increasingly large V-8s, the 140cid 80hp Turbo-Air six in the 1960 Corvair was a little twee. Note, please, that "Turbo-Air" was just the name hung on by the marketing department; actual turbocharged Corvairs were still a couple years off.

Chevrolet launched the Corvair as a full line of vehicles: Sedans, coupes, convertibles, station wagons, even vans and pickup trucks.

While sales started off briskly, they started trailing off almost immediately. The non-turbo Corvairs were woefully underpowered, handling could be quirky, and the sedan and coupe versions lacked any pillarless hardtops which were very much in vogue at the time. The wagons and pickups had to have higher load floors to clear the engine.

The cars were redesigned for the 1965 model year. The wagons and trucks were dropped, hardtops were added, and the new cars had gorgeous lines, more power, independent rear suspensions...but nobody cared much.

Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed is sometimes credited with the demise of the Corvair, but when it came out in '65, it was basically just throwing dirt on the coffin. Small sedan buyers were buying Falcons and Valiants, while sporty coupe buyers were snapping up Ford Mustangs as fast as Dearborn could churn them out.

Chevy halted further development of the rear-engined oddity and concentrated on their Chevy II compact and the forthcoming Camaro small sporty coupe. The Corvair was left to coast through the 1969 model year before finally getting the axe.

The pictured car is a 1966 Chevrolet Corvair Monza 110 convertible in Regal Red with the 164 cubic inch flat-six in 2x1bbl 110hp trim. 

It was photographed with a 36MP Nikon D800 & 24-120mm f/4 VR zoom lens, so those photos can be embiggenated rather a lot.

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Brrrr...

It is nineteen degrees fondly Fahrenheit* out there right now, with a dusting of snow blowing through the air. It hasn't been this cold since last March, so winter is definitely about here.

It is the time of year for long sleeves and thermal underwear, waterproof Merrells instead of the airy and ventilated kind, wool socks instead of cotton.

I also need to think about dragging the daylight spectrum lamp down from the attic and clearing a space for it on the corner of the desk.

*In case you didn't know the origin of the phrase, it's the title of a novella.

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Insert modem handshake noise here.

This is your annual reminder that "Cyber Monday" is a shopping day that was only relevant back in the late Nineties. 

Back then you couldn't order from Pets.com or eToys.com any time from Thanksgiving day through the following Sunday without worrying about your kids picking up the phone and knocking your USRobotics 14.4k modem off your dialup AOL connection. 

So everybody would put off their online Christmas shopping until they got back to the fat pipe connection at the office on Monday morning, and do their e-commerce gift shopping while they were supposed to be working.

Now that everyone has hot and cold running broadband in their pockets 24/7, the whole idea is a little retro.

Anyway, Happy Cyber Monday to those who celebrate. There are some good deals at BezosMart on Lego sets, Kindle eReaders, security cameras, and Canon lenses.

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Think Different...er.

I've been using the same Early 2015 MacBook Air as my road machine since I bought it from Marko...back in February of 2018, it looks like, at the same time I bought a similar vintage Mac mini which is still serving as my desktop rig.

Apple hardware tends to stay viable for a while, but they're finally old enough that the latest versions of Photoshop won't work on them 100%. Some features need a newer OS and Apple silicon for full functionality.

It'll be a while before I can afford to upgrade both, but a refurb MacBook Air with the M1 CPU should be doable between now and Christmas, and then maybe in January I can swing an M1 mini for the desktop.  

Automotif CDXLV...

Speaking of Mustangs, a couple weeks ago I stopped at Roberts to pick up some prints. Parking out in front of the store, my 1994 Mustang GT wound up nose-to-nose with a 2023 Mustang Mach-E GT.

I'm not a hundred percent comfortable with calling those Mustangs yet. It's not the electric power plant, because Lord knows they're plenty quick and powerful enough, but the four-door crossover SUV look that bothers me. I suppose I'll get used to it eventually; it's Ford's car after all, and they can call it what they want to. Just give me some time. 

I was picking up physical prints of a photo I'd taken with a DSLR. In a perfectly symmetrical world, the Mach-E pilot would have been getting high-res digital scans from film.