Tuesday, April 08, 2025
Enzo Ferrari had actually founded Auto Avio Costruzioni (AAC) in 1938 to manufacture aircraft parts and machine tools for the Italian Government. By December of 1939, Lotario Rangoni, Marquis of Modena, had commissioned Enzo and AAC to build two racing cars for himself and a young Alberto Ascari to use in the upcoming Mille Miglia.
Monday, April 07, 2025
Merle Haggard once leased this dome car, the Silver Palace.
some Canada and USA car stats
Canada is the largest importer of U.S. cars and trucks, and the U.S. is the biggest importer of Canadian-made vehicles, with over 90% of the country's inventory ending up in the States.
In January 1994, manufacturers produced more than 575,000 vehicles in the States; by January 2025, fewer than 100,000 vehicles were produced in the U.S., according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Today, about 53% of cars sold in the U.S. are made in the U.S.
Construction on Disney’s new, 22-story New York City headquarters at Hudson Street caused what the city said was nearly $6 million in “significant structural damage” to the neighboring Spring Street NYC Fire Museum, forcing it to close for nearly a year.
“Construction work at the site of the new Disney HQ caused damage to the FDNYs historic building, which is home to the NYC Fire Museum,” a city Law Department spokesman said in a statement. “This filing protects the City’s rights while we work with Disney and its insurers to determine whether we can resolve this matter without further litigation.”
https://nypost.com/2025/04/05/us-news/disney-left-nyc-fire-museum-with-6-million-in-damage-city/
Kawasaki made a robot horse, powered by a hydrogen engine
It goes without saying that the video above is almost entirely CGI. The Corleo on display at the Osaka Expo can stand and adjust its posture, but otherwise has very limited mobility. There’s still a long way before it can achieve the kind of agility as shown in the demo video. The concept is primarily a thought exercise, with no plans for production.
Kawasaki is presenting a hydrogen-powered four-legged robot concept at Osaka Expo 2025 providing a glimpse of the future of off-road personal mobility. Resembling a robotic horse – or perhaps a lion, as the name “Corleo” suggests – the concept was developed by the parent company Kawasaki Heavy Industries and not Kawasaki Motors
The Corleo’s four legs are all powered by electricity generated by a 150cc hydrogen-burning engine housed between the two front legs.
https://www.motorcycle.com/bikes/news/save-a-horse-ride-a-kawi-the-kawasaki-corleo-concept-44620192
funniest thing I've read all week.
mindin’ my business, when this absolute dumpster fire of a pickup — I’m talkin’ rustier than a stripper pole at a condemned dive bar — comes flying past doing Mach Jesus. The thing sounded like it was held together with hope, half a zip tie, and maybe a whispered apology to Satan. Engine was squealing like it just found out safe words are optional.
Couple minutes later? That same busted-ass truck comes BACK, flying like it caught feelings, and right behind it: three flashing, siren-blaring friends lookin’ to take this whole situation from fast to furious. I mean they were on his tail like a drunk ex lookin’ for closure.
I had front row seats from the lot — pants halfway down, popcorn in one hand, moral compass nowhere to be found. The whole chase had more raw tension than backdoor prom night in a borrowed van.
And then… it happened. The pickup gave one last moan — like a porn star faking it after 45 minutes of missionary — and then silence. I swear the motor blew so hard it probably shot a piston straight through the dashboard and into another dimension. That thing didn’t just leave the group chat… it blocked everyone, deleted the app, and threw the phone in the river. That has to be why the chase ended — because the poor bastard's getaway vehicle literally nutted its last bolt.
in a strange series of circumstances, I've not needed to have brakes turned, rotors or drums, in about 20 or 25 years. So, not that my commuter needs the front discs turned, I find that the action of turning rotors, is obsolete.
I stopped by a garage that does a LOT of repairs, from transmissions to brakes.
Well... they came highly recommended, so I dropped by to make an appointment, and was told that the steel in rotors is garbage, they just warp if turned, and it's not that much more to install new replacement rotors according to the mechanic.
So here's what new ones cost. What's the point of turning rotors for the same cost then?
I think the last time I needed drums, for my 69 Super Bee, I bought them at Worldwide Auto Parts (I don't know if they are even in business anymore). Then I traded for an original 69 Coronet Bee front disc brake set and had those rotors turned. I had a couple used cars around then, and never needed to get brakes done, then in 2011 I finally could afford a car payment and bought my very first new car, 3 years later, traded that in on my 2015 new car, and here it is ten years later and I finally have to deal with the rotors. I did the brake pads at about 50k miles
Sunday, April 06, 2025
it's been 8 years, but I recognized this Starliner... there just aren't that many race inspired 1960 Starliners out there. I posted this one in 2017, now it's up for auction
https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2017/05/nascar-inspired-1960-starliner-build.html for the post and the video
https://www.hagerty.com/marketplace/auction/1960-Ford-Galaxie/7cea7d71-457d-49bb-a291-33d4949ca8ff mentions that this was a 2 episode build by Popular Hot Rodding in 2012
A Sun brand licensed set of Kal Equip diagnostic meters, and a Sun timing light, is coming to auction
https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2025/01/kal-equip-co-of-otsego-michigan-maker.html for my recent post on these cool vintage diagnostic pieces
https://www.mecum.com/lots/1144014/vehicle-inspection-kit/ it will likely sell for more than the similar sets you can buy on ebay for around 150 dollars
I'd learned of the Rosetta stone, but only just now heard of the similar tri-lingual Behistun Inscription 100 meters above an ancient road connecting the capitals of Babylonia and Media. It's the worlds first roadside billboard, 2500 years ago.
The inscription provides a lengthy sequence of events following the death of Cyrus the Great in which King Darius fought nineteen battles in a period of one year to put down multiple rebellions throughout the Persian Empire.
Darius proclaimed himself victorious in all battles during the period of upheaval, attributing his success to the "grace of Ahura Mazda" his god. The inscription includes three versions of the same text, written in three different cuneiform script languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian.
The inscription is to cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone is to Egyptian hieroglyphs: the document most crucial in the deciphering of a forgotten written language.
Although Darius makes it clear in the work that he wanted people to read his words, and even though he placed them on a well-traveled road between Babylon and Media (two of the major administrative centers of his empire), he placed them so high on the cliff that no one on the road would have been able to read the inscriptions or see the images clearly.
Further, once the relief was carved and the inscriptions complete, he had the ledge the workers had stood on removed so no one could get close enough to deface the work. Removal of the ledge, however, also meant no one could get close enough to read it.
The roadway inscription has the Old Persian text in five columns; the Elamite text in eight columns, and the Babylonian text. A copy of the text in Aramaic, written during the reign of Darius II, was found in Egypt.
After the fall of the Persian Empire's Achaemenid Dynasty and its successors, and the lapse of Old Persian cuneiform writing into disuse, the nature of the inscription was forgotten
German surveyor Carsten Niebuhr visited in around 1764 for Frederick V of Denmark, publishing a copy of the inscription in the account of his journeys in 1778. Niebuhr's transcriptions were used by Grotefend and others in their efforts to decipher the Old Persian cuneiform script. Grotefend had deciphered ten of the 37 symbols of Old Persian by 1802, after realizing that unlike the Semitic cuneiform scripts, Old Persian text is alphabetic
https://www.worldhistory.org/image/8764/the-behistun-inscription
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behistun_Inscription
Of course, there's a more enjoyable way to learn about this, it's reading pages 115 to 126 of Hendrik Van Loon's book Ancient Man, The Beginning of Civilizations. Written in 1920.
Van Loon is one of my favorite authors, and he illustrated his own books beautifully, and did an amazing trick of making what he wrote, easy to enjoy. I just learned more about Egyptians, Sumerians, Mesopotamians, Phoenicians, and how writing was invented and how to read some of the hieroglyphics and cuneiform than I would have imagined possible in a single 200 page book.
this horse drawn trolley car, the horsecar 76, is believed to be the oldest preserved streetcar in the world, built somewhere between 1853 and 1862.
the incredible private subway car of August Belmont Jr., the financier for the first subway line in New York City at the Shore Line Trolley Museum in Connecticut.
The type of streetcar, known as a reversible horse car, could actually rotate 360 degrees on its undercarriage utilizing a single pin, so when the trolley needed to go in the reverse direction along the rails, the horse and the cab would just rotate around.
Saturday, April 05, 2025
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I don't recall I have ever seen this many badges on a car
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Masons, Scottish Rites.. that's a busy person!
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