Defining a plurality of cars is something that sometimes comes up in car news and it’s always funny. Did you know that officially, Toyota considers the plural of Prius to be Prii? Admittedly, having that official word is nice because “Priuses” seems like it should be wrong. Thanks to a reader, there’s now a silly way to define a group of Tesla Cybertrucks.
Today, Lewin wrote about how Tesla appears to be building Cybertrucks faster than it’s selling them. The trucks are multiplying like weird stainless steel tribbles. A. Barth takes an easy first COTD win with:
Fun fact: a group of those vehicles is called a “cluster”. They are cluster trucks.
I hope you can hear me groaning all of the way from Illinois! Speaking of groaners, Lewin published an article about how Ukrainian forces have repurposed a Toyota Mirai hydrogen tank to blow and Chronometric has me with that guilty kind of laugh:
Japanese manufacturers have been anticipating a hydrogen vehicle explosion.
Lewin moved to a big city (mostly Lewin in today’s COTD) and now no longer needs a car. So, he wants to go big and be a part of motorsport rather than just watching it. Rad Barchetta gives us a warm reminder that you don’t need 23 cars to love cars:
You can love music without being a musician.
You can love books without being a writer.
You can love horses without owning a horse or ever having ridden one.There’s no reason you can’t love cars just because you can’t own one.
To end on a more serious note, it’s sad to see the landscape of digital auto media change so much. Such great names like Autoblog are getting reduced to rubble. Stef Schrader drops a truth bomb:
Gah, this sucks unfathomable amounts of balls. That’s a great staff who truly deserves better, and it’s one fewer place to land stories or develop new talent. One of my favorite pieces I’ve ever written was at Autoblog: a review of the Amarok, complete with a Nürburgring lap. They have a great mix of fun stuff like that and more serious stuff on the page, and I love that.
I know I went off on Discord about this, but I can no longer recommend getting into automotive journalism as a job, as in, like a way to support yourself. Too many companies are unstable as hell and stuff like this happens way too often. Something’s got to give. I really hope The Autopian’s or Defector’s model of writer-controlled, reader-supported outlets takes off, but those outlets are few and far between as it sits right now.
Also, uh, anyone wanna buy Jalopnik? Good owners only — no theftbot-written trash factories, no private equity and please no goofs who tried to turn Sports Illustrated into an underpaid content farm. Those folks also deserve so, so much better and I’m tired of having to archive.org a lot of my best work because the herb turned off images on the entire back catalog.
Sadly, it does seem that we are in a unique position. I’ve heard so many horror stories from writers at other sites. As always, I hope they land on their feet. Have a great evening, everyone!
I suggest a group would be called a “Joke” of Cybertrucks.
Or a “Mistake” of Cybertrucks.
Or maybe simply a MuskHusk.
I thought it was an Edsel of Cybertrucks.
A “coping” of Cybertrucks.
I probably should have said this in my comment on the Autoblog post itself, but I didn’t and this article reminded me of it, so I’m putting it here instead.
What’s happening with AB and Jalopnik is why I’m a member here. I don’t want to see the Autopian taken over by private equity vampires who just want to suck the site dry and leave a rotting husk. I’m occasionally critical of articles here, but overall I really like what you’re doing and think it’s worth supporting.
Please keep that in mind the next time I go off on a rant about misleading headlines or the like. 🙂
I am thankful that my sophomoric wordplay happens to be on Mercedes resonant frequency.
Ah glad I’m not the only one who noticed the pics are all gone on old jalop articles. It’s a lot harder to know how well something babies without pictorial evidence but I’ve made the BRZ work anyway, and I might never have tried without Jason’s decade plus old article on the FRS.
Yeah, I was there during the Great Deletion. G/O Media’s legal department got scared that someone could sue because all of those old pictures didn’t have citations on them. So, all uncited photos were deleted and original photos were allowed to stay, but a user would have to be logged into Kinja to see them.
Weirdly, some original art got caught up in the deletion, too (like Torch’s original drawings), but that tracks. lol
Edit: Oh yeah, G/O has done this purging thing twice, and the last one was so aggressive it straight-up deleted articles from the website. This 2020 article got deleted:
https://jalopnik.com/for-20-years-we-thought-that-car-designers-created-the-1845915272
I was quite proud of myself for finally killing the rumor about that motorcycle. Then G/O deleted it. Thankfully, I’m still friends with the ol’ Jalops, so I had an editor re-publish it last year.
Sad day
Holy crap, they straight-up deleted a bunch of stuff, too? Geez. I don’t even know where to start on where to ask about my stuff. I guess this explains why I try to search for things and can’t find them anymore, but it’s really depressing that the site that used the champion the need for transparency to readers when an article is edited or pulled from the site is pulling this garbage.
Every single one of the people involved in leadership over that site network belongs in the gulag for ruining peoples’ lives. Every single one. (And that’s coming from me, for Pete’s sake, a person who is no fan of the carceral state.)
I can’t even see images when logged in anymore, either. Plus, my login is straight-up broken. I couldn’t even sign in the other day — it’s tied to my Facebook login and I guess Herb McPoopydiaper doesn’t want to keep up the API access anymore.
Glad I at least have PDF copies of all of my work, but what the hell is the point of buying a site network and its back catalog if you aren’t going to leave it up?
That is known as a Duschewagen gruppe in German.
Not a “Clusterfuck” of Tesla trucks?
[Shouting from the back]
That’s the joke!
Thank you
Thanks, Mercedes!
And thanks to the whole Autopian staff for doing what you do!
What Rad said 🙂
From an art perspective I can envision a group displaying: The ‘Compensatory Insecurity Collection’.. This collection speaks to societal pressures in 1st world countries that require small groups to agree on what success looks like and acquirinng said items regardless of needs, quality, or actual success while the remainder of society thinks ‘what a dooshy bunch’.
I still look at things on Jalopnik semi-regularly, but this is my home for car culture now. I’m surprised the old site has made it this long while being run by the same pig fucker who killed Deadspin, Splinter, Jezebel and I think Gizmodo as well. Those sites had their flaws but it was refreshing to have raw opinions and thoughts in an over-produced and sanitized media landscape.
Fuck off now and forever, Spanfeller.
Just want to say it again: I’m thrilled y’all are here doing your thing, I’m very happy to pay and to know my money’s going to support awesome folks doing awesome things, and I really hope you & the rest of Defector & all are the start of a real shift in media. This site’s consistent brilliance is a testament to giving good people the opportunity to do work they love and then getting the fuck out of the way, and I hope a lot of folks are taking notes.
I thought the plural of Cybertruck was a circle jerk of wank panzers.
that’s the owner’s group official name..
Wank Panzer is the name of my new band.