One of the joys, or horrors, of buying a used car is finding out what the previous owner(s) did to it. Sometimes, you get some nice upgrades. My Triumph Rocket III came with an upgraded intake and a custom attachment that I could use to balance the bike as if it had a center stand. Nice! Other times, you get stuff that makes you scratch your head. The previous owner of my Volkswagen Passat TDI wagon put limo tint on every single piece of glass, including the windshield. David just drove a BMW 840Ci and learned that the coupe was a glorious flagship, but what’s up with that upside-down radio?
I’m laughing too much trying to figure this out. Perhaps a previous owner just really needed those radio presets an inch higher? Maybe there’s something on the head unit that makes it impossible to install the correct way? Maybe the previous owner was Australian?
Cheap Bastard wins for calling out our favorite Jeep man:
“Why someone had installed the radio upside down is beyond me”
Its a Jeep thing. I’d have thought you of anyone would understand.
Speaking of things our fearless leaders are known for, Jason wrote a Cold Start about an advertisement for the Honda Vamos. A lot is going on in the advertisement, but something stands out. In the background is a wall with “MOTHER F” on it. Now, Jason could have done a deep dig and figured out what the rest of it said, but in patented Jason fashion, he used a little imagination to finish the image.
Thanks to SLM, we know that this could have been a particular farm called the Mother Farm in Japan:
There’s a ranch named Mother Farm in Futtsu Japan…
But Jason isn’t having it:
Don’t ruin this for me with your “facts”
Can a staffer win COTD? Because that was great!
Finally, I think Ranwhenparked and BolognaBurrito speak some truth about the idea of turning the Jeep Wagoneer into a brand of SUV. Ranwhenparked:
I think Stellantis may have a belief that the Wagoneer brand has a wider appeal than it does. People like the classic Grand Wagoneer, but that’s more to do with that one specific model than an affection for the name itself
BolognaBurrito:
Just stop making models into “brands.” It just confuses people, and yet it seems to be something modern marketing departments seem to love.
I agree with you, dear readers. I’ve long been baffled as to why Range Rover, Defender, and Discovery need to be brands within Land Rover. However, Stellantis might be the worst with this because there’s no reason why Dodge and Ram need to be separate. Remember, SRT was also its own brand for a while, even though nobody would say such a thing as “SRT Viper.”
We missed Comment Of The Day yesterday. So, for a winner from today, we have BolognaBurrito, who gives us a brutal and hilarious explanation for why the new GTI has its badges on its doors and why I suffer with Volkswagen ownership:
Fuck you, that’s why. When will you understand that Volkswagen knows better than you! The infotainment isn’t bad, you’re just dumb! The radiator hose directly piped under the oil filter isn’t in the way, you just can’t do it right! The GTI badge is on the door because that’s where it’s best!
Have a great evening, everyone!
BMW 6.9
I just figured that the upside down radio was because the owner had grown up in a single parent household and their mom drove a Corvette with one of those sideways radios, and they just got used to looking at the radio from upside down.
“why Range Rover, Defender, and Discovery need to be brands within Land Rover”
Excuse me, but isn’t a Land Rover a kind of Rover?
I remember when Rover was a brand within JRT (Jaguar, Rover Triumph) in the days before Ford.
At one point practically every British manufacturer was part of Rover.
Except Morgan.
OOCCOTD:
“Yeah, but if GM were a soda pop… they’d be a clone of Faygo… and not the one and only Coca-Cola”
Put that in your pipe and blow bubbles with it.
I did love bubble pipes as a kid. Probably intimating a grandfather who had a bad smoking habit that led to a pacemaker and eventually a terminal heart attack. But hey, who doesn’t love blowing bubbles?
People that grew up next to a clown named Bubbles?
I’ve also heard it as, “Do you wanna hear a clean joke? Bob took a bath with bubbles. Do you wanna hear a dirty joke? Bubbles is the neighbor next door.”
We invited bubbles to the party… and now Ricky and Julian are pissed that they didn’t get an invite.
I actually just now thought up one quasi-legitimate reason that head unit might be upside down…
When I replaced the factory head unit in my ’97 Ford Econoline, the aftermarket one had the radio antenna plug in the opposite corner. The plug in the van for it was too short to reach across. I found a 6-foot extension in a store somewhere, but it certainly crowded that space behind it, even mostly curled up, since all I needed was something like 10 inches to be comfortable.
Luckily I upgraded later to a better head unit for more control of my subwoofers, and that one had the plug on the closer side. But what a pain in the ass.
If you ever run into this problem again they make little extension cables that are a foot or less for that very purpose. Some even have right angled ends for when space is tight. If they don’t have one at your local auto parts chain or Best Buy you can order one from crutchfield or directly from metra for around $10.
I imagine, and this problem occurred almost a decade ago. It just happened that the 6-foot extension was the only thing available at whatever store we’d been at and it’s one of those things where you don’t want to leave the car in a state of partial disassembly. And hey, it got the job done. So no real harm done. Just an inconvenience.
But that was the first thing I thought of when I saw this. If they flipped it “until they could get an extension” and then got used to it…
I’m losing faith in this website. You posted “I needed was something like 10 inches to be comfortable.” and nobody commented on that?
My brain went there while I was typing that and I figured “eh, if someone wants to point it out….let them have the laugh”
The problem is that the cutoff isn’t black and white. Would it still call that comparison to mind if I’d said 15 inches? (please don’t answer that…)
My favorite VW FU is how they won’t tell anyone where the A/C compressor control module is. Might be under the hood, might be inside the dash, might be somewhere else. Might not. They won’t tell us.
For a long time I’ve said if I ever have the opportunity to own a Viper, I’m going to be sure to buy a ’13-’14 model, and I’m going to insist on calling it an “SRT Viper” all the time, just to annoy other Viper owners.
(full disclosure, a good friend of mine has a Viper)
Let it be known that I am (was?) a Volkswagen fan. Only owned one, and it was great. But yes, there was a radiator hose directly under the oil filter. Certainly not that bad in the grand scheme of things, and certainly something I’d be willing to live with for a car I want. Problem is, VW doesn’t make a car I actually want any more (GTI and R are close).
I’ve sidestepped this problem by owning a VW with a Skoda engine. So far, everything I’ve needed to work on has been mostly logically laid out.
“why the new GTI has its badges on its doors and why I suffer with Volkswagen ownership:
Fuck you, that’s why.”
Another excellent reason to buy Japanese:
No, Futt SU VW!!
“It’s the same reason the weird electrical problems you had in your old Type 2 Westy could be traced to a bad hazard switch, since we routed literally all power for the entire dashboard through the four-way flasher, because reasons. And we have not changed in the four decades since then. Get with the program.”
Shit like that was common for the era. The full power for my headlights go through the actual switch on my ’65. Hell, have you heard of things call ammeters they used to have on cars?
COD! Yay!
The radiator hose directly piped under the oil filter isn’t in the way, you just can’t do it right!
what
why even
There should be a compulsory field service technician (in regular words, mechanic) rotation before you can become a mechanical engineer at VW.Two years out amongst the unwashed masses, changing out filters and belts and those stupid needless hex bolt lugs, and whatever else rolls into the shop.
To Phantom Pedal’s point, I asked a friend over to help change the accessory belt and tensioner on the Z4. Belts were off and on again in 15 minutes. The car remained up for a month because my friend’s and my fingers were too large to start the bolt back into the hole. We tried for two hours that day, and I probably put in four more hour besides. My teenage daughter came to visit it and threaded it within two minutes.
Sometimes I wonder how the mechanics even put up or deal with shit like that.
The head unit is installed upside down for one simple reason.
The after market wiring was too short to plug and play properly.
It’s a BMW thing.
Just good ole fashioned German engineering.
“How can we make even the simplest thing impossible to work on?”
“Why put 6 inches of harness behind the radio when 3 will do?” – German engineer, probably
Not just a German thing. My ‘89 SHO had just enough wire to reach the stereo. After the wires were secured to some structure behind the dash, it was 1cm too short. The installer managed to stretch the wires for installation, but the plug kept pulling out of the radio when I’d hit some bumps in the road.