Here’s a fun thought exercise I’m sure we all do from time to time: What would I do if I ever made it big? Well, I’d definitely buy a first-generation Audi R8 V10 and a Lotus Emira, and then I’d love to rehabilitate an Art Deco building to be home not only to me but to all my cars and motorcycles as well. Maybe I’d create my own Klairmont Kollections. Then I’d toss a bunch of cash at causes like helping other trans people.
What else might one do with made-it-big money? Lewin wrote about a very narrow Jeep that’s joined by a double-wide Jeep. We don’t know who built these things, but I agree with TheDrunkenWrench here:
Not gonna lie, if you have “fuck you” money, stuff like this is a great way to waste it. I love these!
How about a double-decker articulated GMC RTS-II bus? That’s how I’d spend too much money. Or heck, maybe a fully functional version of The Big Bus:
[Ed Note: I love The Big Bus. Here’s every shot of the articulated, atomic-powered Coyote Bus Lines Cylcops condensed into one video – Pete]
This morning, Mark wrote a Shitbox Showdown featuring two old camper vans. Well, maybe they were campers when they were new, from Gaston:
they spent the summer
road-trippingshagging in it. Now they’re having a baby, and don’t expect to be able to do muchtravelingFIFY
Jason wrote a Cold Start about a dinner we had with a stunt driver. There, she explained that a director once demanded a car that was “the one with the horse on it.” There are so many options here, and Hangover Grenade has another funny one:
Then when he says, “No I meant a Mustang, you moron!” you bring him a P-51.
Lewin wrote about how the Chevy Vega had an air filter everyone hated, but did the Vega actually last long enough for that to matter? From Zorah:
That’s ok. The head would warp before you’d need to change this. When I was a kid someone abandoned a brown Vega on our farm. My dad acquired it, took it home to Raleigh, and removed the head. After it got back from the machine shop he put it on the curb and sold it for $500. Every day he would go out and raise the price like ten bucks to get buyers to move fast. It worked!
Huh, this is the first time I’ve seen raising the price work as a tactic! Dogisbadob made the same hilarious joke:
Maybe they though the car would rust to death before the air filter needed to be replaced anyway.
Ouch. Don’t worry, I plan on bringing some positive press to the Chevy Vega next week. Have a great evening, everyone!
I’d love to rehabilitate an Art Deco building to be home not only to me but to all my cars and motorcycles as well.
Maybe with a bit of Art Nouveau in there too?
If I hit a big Megaball/Powerball lottery (and you can’t win if you don’t play, so I likely won’t) I would buy a Hughes/MD-500 or maybe an AS-350 and a home with a lawn big enough to land it on.
A helicopter pilot I used to fly with, back in my TV days, got to take the station’s Bell 206 home every night. He had to be up and airborne by 6 am for the morning show. Fortunately, one of his next-door neighbors was a Boeing test pilot, so the sound of a turbine spooling up wasn’t a problem. I don’t know what the neighbor on the other side, or further up and down the street thought about it, but he had that deal for many years.
I recorded the startup sequence of a 206 on a cassette and stuck it in the deck of my Peugeot 504 one time before picking my dad up for a doctor’s appointment. The look on his face when I turned the key, and the cassette started playing was priceless.
Retired and living in a condo, I am occasionally annoyed by the guy down the alley who commutes to work early on a loud-pipe Harley. To his credit, he tries to do that as quietly as possible. I don’t think it’s possible to wake any one up with my little Honda ADV 160.
“If I Won The Lottery I Wouldn’t Tell Anyone But There Would Be Signs”
Yeah letting the world know you have money is a great way to attract scammers, crooks and other unwanted attention.
Nobody needs that.
The better approach, in my view, is to be low-key.
But there is an exception to this.
If you’re an attention-whore like Donald Trump, then go ahead and publicly state how wealthy you are, walk down the street with $100 bills hanging out of your pocket, wear the fanciest clothing, drive the flashiest cars and be sure to let the world know you often arrive at destinations via helicopter or private jet.
My wife and I engage in this hypothetical every so often (about as often as we buy a Powerball ticket, so a couple times a year). We usually end up somewhere in the Northern Italy region on a huge compound made up 90% of a retirement home for unwanted cats and 10% of their servants’ quarters (our own included). There are cars, naturally, but notwithstanding our new geographic location, they aren’t crazy. In fact, as a creature of habit, Ms. FG probably has a Mondeo to match the Fusion she currently drives. Only maybe a hybrid. I, on the other hand, have a mini-stable of hot hatches in obnoxious colors: a green Audi RS3 and previous-gen Focus RS, a blue GR Corolla and 2018 Focus RS and a yellow Merc A45 and Lancia Delta Integrale Evo. And maybe a pair of wagons of some kind just to haul kitty litter. A Golf R and an E30 or a brand new M3.
“the coyote…it’s running backwards”
If I won the lottery, whether people would know would be debatable.
I would have a HUGE car collection, but it would probably be the weirdest, least valuable collection. There’s an MGB on an S-10 Blazer chassis that I am watching on FBM right now debating if I want to go through the trouble of trying to get a title for it. And a Jeep cab on an International chassis that runs and drives for only a grand! But also no title. And a 1978 Chevy P10! But that won’t fit in my garage.
I want all of them, and if I won the lottery, I’d have all of them and more! I could just throw money at them! And they wouldn’t be worth much more than the under $5k it would take to buy them all.
A Jeep cab on an IH chassis seems redundant, but the MGB sounds VERY cool.
I just realized that if I had FU money, I would plop a Honda Beat body on top of a Suzuki Jimny/Samurai chassis. That would be hilarious. I wonder if the V6 from a Honda minivan would fit in there?
You should also have a Chevette, a Vega and a Pinto in your collection all in pristine condition.
That way you can proudly claim that of all the people who have piece-of-shit cars, your pieces of shit are the BEST pieces of shit.
I am so intrigued by your tease of a good Vega. Also, three Vega posts in like 10 days has to be the most press that car has gotten in decades!
Well look what I did there 🙂
Used to work at a company that was car-focused but with very few actual car geeks employed. Every Friday we had a work chat app contest: someone would pick the price limit and someone would pick the theme, and you had to pick your cars to meet that criteria. We mostly used Hemmings Classifieds or other sites, but for example it was “$10,000 / Prior to 1970” and you went from there. Blow the whole amount on one car, pick a few, etc. The “1 million dollars / anything goes” challenges were actually kind of boring; cheap / weird ones were more fun.
They eventually made a rule I couldn’t pick any Saabs.
A sage application of a Slaabter rule.
Woo! I’ve made the cut using swear words, a new personal best!
Great picture of the P-51.
My engineer-nerd fact about the P-51: it uses the Meredith Effect to generate thrust from its ducted engine coolant radiator. Not all waste heat has to be wasted.
Sadly cars don’t go fast enough to use the same trick.
Thanks, I just learned something! That’s a pretty clever use of that air flow but I have to wonder – if it has a minimum speed to be effective, what might the top speed be where it loses effect?
It’s been a few years since I read Meredith’s paper on it, but I think minimum effective speed was 300mph, top speed will be a bit under the speed of sound because airflow gets all kinds of weird there.
I was really hoping for a car related application, but outside some sort of limited class of land speed record it’s not going to work.
Apex prop fighter, hands down. And probably the most beautiful-looking, too.
Yeah, the Spitfire would like a word. And I say that as a long time Mustang fanboy. And as far as looks go, the G.55 Centaro probably takes the win.
The Spitfire was too limited in range to be a factor late in the war. Great for defense during the Blitz, though.
The P-51 was a war winner, to be sure. I can’t see air superiority being acheived without it. But test pilots from every country(even the Axis) praised it as a dogfighter when they got behind the stick. I suppose it really all comes down to point of view. Best dogfighter or best all-rounder?
Best at winning the war it was built for, what else matters?
Turn radius, climb rate, dive, one second firing weight, making the war winnable by saving Britian. OK, so that last one is probably in the pocket of the Hawker Hurricane.
Of course it was such a big war there were many pieces that lead to victory. But I put the 51 at the top of the list because before it was deployed, bombers were getting shot out of the sky by the Luftwaffe, but after it came on board the bombers were dropping on target and getting home safe. It was the key thing we needed to destroy Germany’s war production capacity.
Jay Leno style customs. I want a jet powered T bucket with original Big Daddy Lee Roth art sourced from somewhere. I want an old 55 Mercury, low as can be, with all the chrome, all the hand stitching inside, and so many coats of paint it looks like you could fall inside. Powered by a VW W-12 purely because they sound beautiful. Oh yeah, and a fully electric VW Thing that I’ll call the Cyberduck.
Lol’d at cyberduck
Was introduced today to the term “Deplorean” in reference to the CT. As much as I’ve tired of the hate, I really like the cleverness of the term.
Enthusiastically approve of the use of the term and I will never tire of hating the CT Deplorian.
Haven’t heard that one, but definitely adding it to my repertoire!