Saturday, October 26, 2024

I always avoided reading Jalopnik and Hooniverse back when they started so that I wouldn't repost their stuff, because it would uselessly redundant to have their material on my blog, everyone was already reading their blogs.

 I just wondered a moment ago if Hooniverse was still even in business. Not really, it sold out years ago. 

How can a person tell? 

Here's the words from their origin post:

Hooniverse intends to be the dumping ground for everything that’s not going to generate enough traffic at sites where they care about such things. Posts will never be optimized to maximize search results. Word count is irrelevant. Hooniverse does not cover Automotive News in the traditional sense.

and look at it's posts lately, they are some useless garbage




New car reviews for traffic, lots of crap optimized for search results. Damn shame. It began as a fun site. 

It sure as hell was trying to avoid doing car reviews on boring new vehicles from Lexus, Subaru, McLaren, Genesis, Nissan and Honda 

stored since 1974 in a storage locker with only 29,426 miles on its odometer, still wearing FJ6-code Sassy Grass Green, a set of black “billboard” stripes, and still has it's broadcast sheet


In 1975, the owner suffered from a traumatic brain injury that took away his ability to ever drive again. He decided to stow his pride-and-joy Plymouth on his father’s farm long-term; the risk of damage from moisture or other environmental hazards led him to ensure this was done the right way.

That meant draining all the fluids from the ‘Cuda, applying several heavy layers of undercoating all over the chassis and in the trunk and engine bay, and even painting the front and rear lower valances in a protective black finish. Around 1979 or 1980, it was towed from the farm to a U-Haul storage locker. It wouldn’t move again until 2024 when the owner's transfer to long term care earlier this year required his ’71 ’Cuda liquidated to cover those costs.



It was instantly snapped up by muscle-car collector Angelo Riccio, who's current collection includes an original 426 Hemi 1967 Plymouth Satellite convertible four-speed; and a 1971 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda


this is a result of sitting in one place, for 5 decades... the rust off the exhaust fell onto the floor and left it's perfect outline

American Airlines was fined $50M by the Department of Transportation (DOT) over breaches of airline passenger disability regulations for wheelchairs complaints made between 2019 and 2023.

The DOT alleged there were instances of "unsafe physical assistance that at times resulted in injuries and undignified treatment of wheelchair users," slow wheelchair assistance and mishandling of "thousands" of wheelchairs at American Airlines.

why does car insurance cost so much? Here's one little reason, they are greedy and corrupt, and don't have to admit it, just pay the fine while hiking rates for failure to conduct reasonable investigations or providing adequate explanation for claims denial

State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. has paid back $5.2-million to Montana policyholders after completing a necessary 18,000 claim reviews as part of a settlement with the Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance (CSI).

The settlement, which was concluded in February 2024, addresses unfair claim practices discovered in a two-year review of the company's methods by the state regulator. The carrier was penalized $4 million as part of the settlement with the potential deduction of $2 million in lieu of compliance measures.

CSI alleged failure to conduct reasonable investigations or provide adequate explanation for claims denial in some instances.

The company has now made all its necessary updates in policy and training of its staff as of August, thus achieving a $1 million deduction. A follow-up exam to begin in 2025 will determine the fate of the second $1 million suspension according to CSI, contingent on an error rate below 8%.

“State Farm is cooperating with the Montana Commissioner of Securities & Insurance and actively working to resolve the issues identified in the market conduct examination report.”

The review covers accidents that occurred between November 2018 and April 2022, with State Farm having already paid an additional $1.18 million on 2,436 previously reviewed claims.

Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Troy Downing applauded State Farm for diligently reviewing the claims and working with CSI to make good on the February 2024 consent agreement, ensuring the money is being returned to Montana consumers.

State Farm has the largest market share in Montana's private passenger auto insurance market with 22.63%, while Progressive Insurance Group follows with 19.96%.

how bad do Ferrari depreciate?




a 2021 Ferrari SF90 SF90 Stradale cost $770,000 new, and now is only worth somewhere near $400,000

Call that 50% in 3 years. That's bad. I wish I had a lot of comparison data, but I haven't looked for any

a 755 hp 2019 Corvette ZR1 was found stripped of most of its parts on a rural dirt road near Barrie, Ontario, Canada.

 

local resident says two other cars have also been dumped in the area in the past month, explaining: “There was a white car, a shell of a car, just dropped off on the side of the road, and not too long before that, there was another one on the same road.” 

 Niagara police say the ZR1 was stolen from a collector in Grimsby, Ont., on August 15, and they believe the stripped-down car was eventually dumped overnight Tuesday on Sideroad 9/10 Sunnidale near Concession Road 2 in New Lowell.

The NHRA Nationals Oct 31 - Nov 03 2024 at at Las Vegas Motor Speedway is the weekend before SEMA, and 75-year-old member of every major auto racing Hall of Fame, John Force, will be there to support his team and family

Las Vegas is close enough to Force’s Yorba Linda, CA home that he can drive over. “I want to show my support for our race teams the fans and all our sponsors,” he said in making the announcement of his return to the community. “They stuck with me during a hard time, and I want them to know that I haven’t forgotten them and I haven’t gone anywhere. I’ve just been doing my rehab, trying to stay strong.”

Force has been treating both his physical injuries, the TBI and the successive effects of many incidents and violent crashes that have been part of his 50-year career. 

“I want to be there for Brittany and that team with (David) Grubnic and John Collins. They’re gonna win a race, and I want to be there when they do. I really can’t wait to see all my guys,” Force continued. “I love them and I’ve missed them and can’t wait to be with them again!”

the Red Baron

https://abpic.co.uk/pictures/view/1858998

On April 28, 1961, Soviet pilot Giorgii Mosolov set a world altitude record of 113,891 feet in a Mikoyan-Gurevich Ye-66, an experimental MiG-21. This did not sit well with Darryl Greenamyer, and he started making plans to use an F-104 to take that record away from the Communists.

 However, there were two problems, 1st was getting an F-104. In the 1960s it was impossible for a civilian to purchase a complete Starfighter, so in 1965 Darryl began collecting F-104 parts to build his own. 

This one-seat F-104G had been written off after a crash. The powerplant was a US NAVY Phantom J79-GE10 engine which was tuned on a tested rate of 19,000 pound of thrust uninstalled. The F-104 engine has exceptionally high compression, which enabled the airplane to set an altitude record of 103,389 feet in 1959.

 Another reason for Greenamyer's choice is that the airframe was a zero-hour, zero-defect condition, no fatigue at all anywhere. It is the kind of opportunity you don't find every day. A stock F-104 weighted 15,000 pounds empty; Greenamyer's weighted only 11,500. Armament was out and also the speed brakes, drag chute, boundary-layer-control system and the leading-edge device actuators. It received the G-model's antiskid system and brakes. Including some compensation weight inside the nose the total weight became 11,800 pounds.

The second problem was funding, because everything in aviation, especially world record attempts, takes money. Darryl says, “I thought if I used the airplane to break the 3km speed record held by the Navy, I could raise a sponsor for the altitude record.” 

At the time the low-altitude 3km Closed Course Speed Record was 902.769mph, which was set on August 28, 1961, by USN Lieutenants Huntington Hardisty and Earl De Esch in a McDonnell Douglas F4H-1 Phantom during Project Sageburner.

Darryl’s hybrid F-104 was registered as N104RB and carried the Lockheed construction number of an F-104G. However, it had built from literally dozens of F-104s of all variants. The tail section, minus horizontal stabilizer, came from a crashed TF-104G that was found in an Ontario, California junkyard. The horizontal stabilizer came from a wrecked F-104G. He obtained the forward fuselage of a discarded F-104A that Lockheed used for static testing. The cockpit side panels came from the first production F-104A that crashed in 1956.

Greenamyer got his throttle quadrant from a Tennesse flying buff he met at the Reno National Air Races who had been using it as an office decoration. The trunnion-mounts for the nose-gear, some of the cooling-system valves and a few relays on the Red Baron were no doubt the most unusual parts of any interceptor plane with front-line capability. To get those items at Eglin AFB, Greenamyer had to pay $7,500 for a 25-ton piles of junk that included ammo-cans, missile cases, several segments of a helicopter, a Continental piston engine and a refrigerator! 

What he got out of all this was a badly dented F-104 fuselage section that he hoped to patch up and smooth out.

Throughout the decade long construction Darryl searched for an engine, and it would eventually take him all the way to the Pentagon in the spring of 1976.  I went to the Pentagon, walked into this room full of Air Force Generals and made my presentation. They said, ‘Are you kidding? Get out of here.’ So I went down the hall to the Navy with the same presentation. Not only did they agree to loan me an engine, they gave me a contact at NAS North Island in San Diego where they apparently overhauled the engines.

I called North Island, and they said they had five engines just out of overhaul and told me to come down, pick the one I wanted, and they’d put it on the engine stand and show me where and how to tweak it to get more power.”


As America’s Bicentennial approached, Ed Browning, owner of the Idaho-based Red Baron Flying Service, came on board to provide Darryl with much needed financial and logistical support. Browning’s sponsorship also gave the F-104 its name, “Red Baron.”

On October 1976, the Red Baron team flew over Mud Lake, a dry lakebed 30 miles south of Tonopah, Nevada to take on the Navy speed record.

Bigfoot was REALLY popular in the mid 80s, so Ford sold a special edition in dealerships, the 460 hp 1987 Bigfoot Cruiser options package, that is now one of the rarest and least-known special edition classic vehicles on the market today.



Ford created its own tribute version with a double Westin roll bars and KC off-road lighting, via a conversion  outsourced to a company called Scherer Truck Equipment. Unfortunately, some of the modifications present on the Bigfoot Cruiser led to a recall and a buyback,

Ford’s recall noted that there were 360 F-150 and F-250 pickups, plus 200 Rangers fitted with the package, but collectors believe that only 300 were purchased by customers in total. Ford has also stated that 660 trucks were modified prior to the recall.

The Bigfoot Cruiser is a unique piece of American history because Ford was one of the few companies in the 1980s to experiment with more extreme lifts and trail-ready suspension packages (with Dodge celebrating its Baja success through the even more rare, also-recalled Rod Hall Signature Edition trucks around the same time).


The origin of it all? Bob Chandler had a successful construction company in the 1970s before being stopped by a motorbike accident. Bob began altering his 1974 Ford F250 4X4 to fit his interests, as he was an off-roading aficionado in the budding field, looking for something to do. So, Bob started with a reinforced axle, a bigger tire, and various motor tweaks & lifts.

Bob’s used his F250 to compete in off-road events with his family. And as the truck increased in size, from the engine to the axles to the tires, curiosity in the beast grew as well. He executed roadside stunts, performed at events, and later appeared in films and television shows. It evolved into the phenomenon that it is today, spawning an entire class of vehicles, an industry, and for some, a way of life.

a proposed rule from the U.S. Commerce Department is aiming to eliminate certain American vehicles produced in China and imported into the U.S., such as the Lincoln Nautilus, because of key Chinese software and hardware

Canadian officials are also asking for a similar ban, Canada’s Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said “We do have real security concerns.”

Freeland added that Canada is “absolutely” considering a similar ban, adding “that is something we talked about in imposing the tariffs on EVs and something that came out very, very clearly in the consultation."

 the Lincoln Nautilus, is built at the Changan Ford Hangzhou Assembly plant

I wonder if any race had the vast number of famous people that the 12 hours of Sebring, 1970, did.

On track:
Steve McQueen, Peter Revson, Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, Vic Elford, Sam Posey, Bobby Rahal, Carroll Shelby, Jo Siffert, Masten Gregory, Peter Gregg, Don Yenko, Janet Guthrie

Covering the race:
Bill Warner, Bernard Cahier, Chris Economaki, 

Parade lap:

I don't know if I've mentioned before, that Peter Revson's uncle founded Revlon cosmetics. 

Polaris profits dropped 82% compared to last year.

Causes? 

high interest rates pushing people away from financing large purchases, unease over the upcoming US Presidential election, the lack of snow for the vast majority of the East Coast last winter, as well as the general unease folks have over the economy and their employment stability.

in today's Ringbrothers press release, they listed 3 vehicles they are bringing to SEMA

1970 ‘Cuda
1987 Grand National
1972 Blazer



Just like I don't see the point of repeat posting the same news or vehicle, I don't see the point of bringing the same vehicle, or one just like it, back to SEMA in less than 5 years. 

Not many people go to SEMA every year, I guess? But the coverage of SEMA is available every year, and if reporters simply show that you brought the same, or similar vehicles, then, why bother looking at the coverage?