Friday, April 18, 2025

wow, interesting that they went retro on the artwork in the ad for this whisky, and used Barney Oldfield, and the Peerless Green Dragon... I suppose it was an effort to not cast the implication that current drivers would drink and race, but rested on the notion that in the good old days of 1910 or so, it was common place, and totally fine

 https://progress-is-fine.blogspot.com/2024/08/p-m-whiskey.html

the Jeep Gladiator Rubicon High Top Honcho concept for the 2025 Easter Jeep Safari, and the Convoy







I like this look, and so many guys have made similar rigs, or upgraded / restified originals... so, why the hell won't Jeep make these? 


This is the J6 Honcho

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/2025-easter-jeep-safari-concepts.html

ok, this is a reason to not stand too close to dragsters, when nitrous backfires.

 

See a much better view of this at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1785529692009038 

there once was a tank named Bomb, and another named Holly Roller. Bomb only took two hits across France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and never missed a day of work from when it landed in Normandy on D-Day until Germany's surrender



was used by the Canadian Army 27th Armoured Regiment (The Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment) which landed in France on 6 June and fought across northwest Europe until the end of World War II.

In the course of the war Bomb fired over 6,000 rounds

 It was one of the few Canadian tanks that fought without interruption from D-Day to VE Day.

Bomb was built at GM’s Fisher Tank Arsenal in Flint, MI with twin inline 6 cylinder 2 stroke diesel engines with a total 14L of displacement. Power was 410hp


Thursday, April 17, 2025

really attention grabbing way to advertise oil

 https://progress-is-fine.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2024-09-09T21:30:00-04:00&max-results=10&start=319&by-date=false

Bill Horton's 'wingless' HW-X26-52 once got 10 feet off the ground after 18 months and 50k in 1952

 https://x.com/tempest_books/status/1657656995930066944/photo/1

I don't remember ever seeing a car squat this much... that's some crazy amount of weight transfer!


a nice 1970 BMW 2002, skillfully converted into a pickup truck.


https://www.theautopian.com/a-bmw-2002-makes-a-fantastic-little-pickup-truck/

someone converted their F50 from Berlinetta to Barchetta

 

someone is going all out in Tokyo on this Hakosuka GT-R, with carbon floors, roof, fenders, doors, quarter panels, bumpers, and has made basically a full dry carbon KPGC10 time attack car


what 6 years, a blank check, the Mopar engineering dept, and Speedkore can accomplish in 6,000 hours


doors, hood, floor pans, body panels are all Carbon Fiber. Frame and rollcage are steel.

eight-speed automatic transmission,  345-section rear tires 

The suspension is sourced from Detroit Speed for the front axle double wishbones and the rear is a custom four-link solid-axle fabricated by SpeedKore itself. Penske dual-adjustable coilovers, with the front and rear swaybars also coming from Detroit Speed.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/carbon-fiber-1968-dodge-charger-hellucination-packs-1000-hp-v8

The hood would look cooler with a Super Bee six pack lift off hood, and the windshield is too tall. 

Subaru just did something very cool! They put ruler marks on the 2026 Outback's taillight!

 https://www.thedrive.com/news/the-2026-subaru-outback-has-a-ruler-built-into-its-taillights

and we learn about this Easter Egg just days before Easter! Neat!

Porsche just sent the new 2025 911 GT3 Weissach Package (992.2 generation) with a manual transmission around the Nürburgring. It only took them 8 years to break the Viper ACR's lap time





the official lap time is 6:56.294

That’s 3.7 seconds faster than the previous PDK-equipped GT3, and 9.5 seconds faster than the former record-holder for manuals, making the new GT3 the fastest stick-shift production car ever around the ‘Ring.

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

this is on some enormous building near Gillespie Field, a municipal airport in El Cajon

 

neat way to show some love for the Wizard of Oz books

I was in a parking garage today with 2 Lambos, a Rolls, and a Ferrari... it's shocking how many exclusive cars are in this garage, more than some car shows can draw!

 

I could only get photos of this Lambo

the next post has the other car 

one of my favorite things to do is "guess what's under the car cover"


From this angle, with that hood? 


you can see the louvers between the tail and the rear window


but these rims? Dead give away, this is a Ferrari


 Me, I like this game. 

In fact none of the Ferraris I can look at online have fender flares like these. 

What about second breakfast?

 




whoa, someone in El Cajon is driving an AMX as aa commuter to work!

Whooo Hoo! A 70s van spotted in the wild! Dang, this really needs some side pipes!

 

this helmet got me to stop, and grab a couple photos, then I noticed the billy club. That's more odd than the helmet




10 years after the Snoopy plate was made available, I come across this today

here's the 1st time I've seen a Chuckwalla door sticker on a car on the street




So, most of you don't know what Chuckwalla is, it's a race track on the California/Arizona border, just East of the Salton Sea

Chuckwalla Valley Raceway was built in 2010 and is considered by many to be Southern California's Premier road course. Situated on over 1,000 acres, the 17 turn, 2.68 mile track was designed to run both clockwise and counterclockwise, and to provide the safest possible motorsports experience for everyone from beginners to experienced racers.



Located East of Palm Springs, off the I-10 near Joshua Tree National Park, the track is ~3.5 hours from LA, San Diego, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.

While working on the family tree project, I found I'm related to Robert McCulloch (middle name, Paxton, and I think you know the rest) and Gregory Peck!

I've already posted all about Robert P McCulloch, maker of chainsaws, cars, helicopters, superchargers, go cart engines

His father in law was Briggs, of Briggs and Stratton engines. 

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search?q=McCulloch

Yes, I really am having a lot of fun, and luck, looking through my family tree project for last names that might be the same ones as famous people. 

Still to look up, Bosch, Petty, Haynes, Cushman, Schumacher, and Eaton, of the vehicle related field. 

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

A Denver attorney has successfully fought a $75 "toll lane weaving" ticket in court, potentially opening the door for others to challenge similar penalties.


"I got a Notice of Civil Penalty and it said that I had committed a safety violation by weaving in and out of the toll lane on C470," Josh Bowlin, a trial lawyer, said.

Despite paying the actual toll, he was still penalized for how he entered the lane.

Bowlin decided to challenge the ticket after reviewing the statute that the Colorado Transportation Investment Office 
(CTIO)a division of the Colorado Department of Transportation, was citing.

"It was called a safety violation," he said. "But you look up the statute that the tolling authority was citing, and it says that they can issue a civil penalty for toll evasion, and I thought to myself, well, I wasn't trying to avoid paying the toll."

In the first nine months of toll lane weaving enforcement, CTIO issued more than $40 million in citations to drivers accused of crossing double white lines, to cross into a toll lane or entering or exiting a lane outside of a marked entrance or exit.

To fight their tickets, drivers, without any formal legal training, have to file a lawsuit against the state – serving a summons to the Attorney General’s office, finding witnesses, submitting evidence and navigating a range of pre-trial hearings.

“They have to go to court and initiate the lawsuit and figure out how to bring the tolling authority into the court system, which is difficult.”

His legal training and 15 years as a trial lawyer were useful arguing his case in a February trial that lasted for about four hours. During that hearing, an attorney from the state questioned Bowlin on the stand and called several witnesses from CTIO and the companies that run the toll lane enforcement program. Bowlin didn’t call any witnesses and instead argued the law – that the citation sent cites a statute on toll evasion, which he argued he didn’t break.

After a month of deliberating, the judge ultimately ruled in Bowlin's favor.

"The judge eventually held even if entering across that lane might be some kind of traffic infraction that you might be able to get pulled over by a sheriff's deputy or something like that, that it wasn't the kind of thing that the tolling authority could just send this notice of civil penalty out and collect $75 for," he said.

CTIO, a division of the Colorado Department of Transportation, stated they "will continue to operate the program as we have in the past." (because the State made 40 million dollars with this program already, in just 9 months

"it fell off the truck" is something they say in movies a lot, in New York or New Jersey... but, in Kentucky?

Two tractor-trailers containing more than 40 thousand pounds of beef each had been stolen from a slaughterhouse in Bean Station, that contracts with a trucking company, which has its own subcontracting agreements with other trucking companies.

The sheriff said, about the theft, that it appears a fake company claiming to be a contractor picked up the two shipments of 80 thousand pounds of beef.

a cartel involving some of the world's biggest carmakers were just busted for preventing competition on vehicle recycling. That resulted in antitrust authorities in the EU and Britain fined

The European Commission said 15 manufacturers, including BMW, Ford, Stellantis and Volkswagen, and an industry group colluded to avoid paying car dismantlers and lower consumer pressure to recycle more

A parallel probe by Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) reached similar conclusions, fining 10 companies and two trade bodies more than £77 million ($99 million).

The cartel was revealed by Mercedes-Benz, which participated in it but received immunity — and avoided hefty fines across both sides of the Channel — for cooperating with the authorities.

But the companies involved, which also included Toyota, Suzuki, Volvo, Honda, Renault, Mitsubishi and Opel, coordinated to avoid paying dismantlers, sharing sensitive information on individual agreements.

https://www.courthousenews.com/eu-uk-fine-carmakers-nearly-600-million-over-recycling-cartel

NZ Offroader has posted a video on Instagram of an engine powered (PTO) winch that RAPIDLY moved it up a very steep hill built by the Grieves Brothers, one of them, is an elevator tech




Grieve and his brother Mark built a 1984 Suzuki Samurai for competition use. It runs a 250-horsepower Nissan SR20DET engine with a Toyota automatic and, importantly, a Land Cruiser split case transfer case to provide a power takeoff (PTO) output.