Quick, tell me: What happens after you die? Really? Are you sure? It’s important! What about for cars? Do they have any sort of afterlife? Should we consult a clergyperson? Actually we don’t have to, because when it comes to what happens after you die, you know, eschatology, I have some ideas. At least for cars. Because I’ve seen a car’s afterlife: my old Scion xB’s, and it’s all thanks to an Autopian named Tom. I better explain a bit more.
When it comes to eschatology, the religious culture I was raised in (a sort of sloppy form of Judaism that put more emphasis on the cathartic value of near-constant kvetching instead of strict observance) is notoriously vague. There’s no real clear afterlife. There’s no overt heaven or hell, and as a kid, when I’d ask my parents what happens after you died, they’d usually just shrug and say “rot in the ground?” followed by a reminder that I’d have better potential as a door than a window and to get the hell out of the way of the TV. When it comes to cars, though, I’m a very enthusiastic believer. Cars can have afterlives, and I’m delighted to report that for at least one of my cars, my old 2006 Scion xB, the status of that afterlife has been upgraded from Purgatory to Heaven.
First, a bit of history about my life with this car: like pretty much every “modern” car I’ve ever owned, this one wasn’t really for me. When my son was born in 2010, it was made clear that we’d need at least one relatively modern and safe car in the fleet to handle kid-hauling duties, instead of relying on the ’73 Volkswagen Beetle, ‘73 Reliant Scimitar, or ’82 VW Rabbit Cabrio we had at that time. Wait, did we have that ’99 Golf then? I can’t remember exactly. All I know is I kept my Beetle and Scimitar but got a 2003 VW Passat wagon to act as a kid car.
As most of you have already likely guessed, this was a mistake.
Of course the Passat shit the bed right as my kid came into the world, and shitting a bed before a newborn infant can even take that opportunity is the sort of achievement a turn-of-the-century VW excels at. So, my kid took his first car rides on Earth in my old Beetle, and I resolved to get something that wouldn’t break down all the damn time for the more long-term kid hauler.
With reliability as a focus, borne out by exasperation, Toyota seemed a safe bet, and of the Toyotas in my price range, only one really didn’t launch me into a coma: the Scion xB. I’ve expressed my admiration for the xB before; it’s a true modern peoples’s car, a do-anything little box that delivers a lot and ask very little in return. It’s a packaging triumph, and shockingly fun to drive. I’ve shoved entire washing machines in it and let Tiff Needell hoon it on the track at Willow Springs.
That little refrigerator-looking box on wheels served my family so well for years and years. I did minor repairs on it as needed – a new starter, a coil pack, but overall, it was solid as a cast-iron rock. I did smack right into a deer with it once, days after letting the comprehensive part of our insurance expire, so I had to rebuild its face on the cheap in my driveway. I did take advantage of this to install much better headlights and re-badge it as a Great Wall Coolbear, the xB’s China-market doppelganger:
DIY badge engineering: my Scion xB is now a Great Wall Coolbear. Thanks, @geely_ash ! pic.twitter.com/hJwBquYLum
— Jason Torchinsky (@JasonTorchinsky) June 3, 2017
The little xB was still going strong, but my wife was getting sick of the somewhat low-rent feel of it, and wanted something a little nicer. So, around 2020, I got her a VW Tiguan, which was a great reminder to myself of my boundless ability to forget every worthwhile life lesson I vainly attempt to learn. What a pain in the ass that car is.
Anyway, with the Tiguan eventually and usually running, the xB was relegated to the parts of the driveway with the other less-used cars, and it sat.
And sat. And sat. And got moldy. And I lost the title, somehow, because, in case I haven’t been making it clear over the past decade or so, I’m an idiot.
Who likes mold in cars? Boy are you in luck! pic.twitter.com/wOqHUckV9v
— Jason Torchinsky (@JasonTorchinsky) May 15, 2022
But! Then David and Beau and I decided to start this lovely community you’re hopefully trapped in here, and I was hopeful that we could find something fun to do with the old workhorse, which now was cultivating a rich community of molds and funguses inside. I got it going again (which was easy – with a charged battery the thing never fails to start), drove it from North Carolina to Detroit (with one dead coilpack, so on three cylinders, and with a bad throwout bearing) and David and I used it as the Autopian Test Car for our meticulously-researched and executed study to find the ideal driving-while-eating food:
The xB did great, but at a significant cost: it was now absolutely filled with a revolting melange composed of the detritus of many, many driving-while-eating tests, a non-trivial number of which ended up in legitimate foodsplosions. The inside was gross, pronounced like a dry heave that teeters on the brink of no longer being so dry.
The filthy state of the mold and now food-waste-saturated interior coupled with the lack of a valid title and a promise I made not to bring the thing back home meant that the xB’s fate was uncertain at best. I suppose the smart thing to do would have been to go through the hassle of dealing with the title and taking it to a state-bonded auto recycler and ending the car’s life, returning it to the elements from which it came, where it would be reborn as low-sodium soup cans and a door bracket for a 2024 Chevy Trax, or something.
Of course, that’s not what we did. Instead, we did the opposite of the smart thing, and abandoned the car in the parking lot of a major global auto manufacturer, because we did a lot of hoping that no one would notice it.
Incredibly, this worked for a while, at least long enough to mostly forget about all the things that would need to be taken care of to, you know, handle this situation like an adult. Of course, cruel reality always shows up where it’s least wanted, like the parking lot of a major OEM. The company seemed to be getting wise that an up-and-coming car publication may have ditched a filthy heap with their logo spray-painted on the doors in one of their parking lots, so it had to go. We were actually tipped off by a reader, who emailed us:
Just FYI, since I’ve seen that you dumped the “Autopian test car” in the [redacted] (which is hilarious BTW):I got an email from security today saying that they’re going to resume enforcement of the competitive vehicle parking policy from the pre-COVID days. I attached a pic of the map they sent out and your car is in one of the “[redacted] vehicles only” sections. Might want to move it to avoid tickets and/or a wheel clamp…
Luckily, Mercedes was in town, so we had her rescue it from the lot. And then, for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, our publisher Matt thought it’d be funny to ditch it by the house of an ex-Jalopnik editor with a very important spouse.
This was not my idea.
The whole thing could have gone a lot worse; thankfully, no bomb squads were summoned, and within a few days the car was freed once again, and this is the point where its new afterlife begins. You see, I count its life with me as just that, a life, and then the period of disuse as a sort of end. The afterlife, such as it is, begins with its use in that gross video, but then becomes a sort of purgatorial state; no direction, goals, title, or home. It was drifting in the aether of being, with no certain future.
At least not until the reassuringly-named Tom Sturdy enters the story.
Tom heard about the xB via our Discord, where Matt put the word out of the little car that needed a home. Tom stepped up, and, well, I’m going to let him relay his story from here, because there’s plenty:
Timeline: Unknown, 2023 (God I hope it was in 2023) - "The Video" is shot (T-minus???) April 13, 2023 - "The Video" is published (T-minus 80 days) June 13, 2023 - Open call for rubes (T-minus 19 days) June 14, 2023 - I introduce myself (T-minus 18 days) July 2, 2023 - I pick up the ATC (T-minus 0 days) July 5, 2023 - I start cleaning (T-plus 3 days) July 15, 2023 - HooptieX (T-plus 13 days)
Hi,
I’m Tom, an auto enthusiast from southwest Michigan. I work from home, but my “daily driver” is a 2016 Ford Focus ST. I love weird vehicles, and have owned more than one three-wheeler in my time. Here’s a little story about the most recent vehicle I picked up…
My adventure with the Autopian Test Car (ATC) started on June 13, when Matt Hardigree posed an open question to the #Detroit area Discord channel:
As a 34 year old man with poor impulse control and too many cars already, I knew the answer immediately. I had even found an upcoming HooptieX event that would be perfect – it was about a month away in a town less than an hour’s drive from me. Still, I tried to play it cool.
I asked if the car had any mechanical issues, if it had to be a LeMons car, and where the car was located. Matt was cagey with the details. I could tell he didn’t want to spook me now that he had gotten me on the hook. I had a dim awareness that this particular car had been used for some video content in the past, but I wasn’t prepared for what I would eventually discover.
Later that day, I broached the subject of acquiring a new vehicle with my wife and put on my best salesman pitch. “It’s a free car! I found a race that would be perfect for it! It’s famous!” She had two words for me. Absolutely not.
24 hours later, I was making my virtual introduction to Matt, expressing a sincere interest in rescuing an unloved, orphan jalopy. My gracious, patient, and accommodating wife and I were tucking into a cup of ice cream from the local creamery after an evening at the Gilmore Car Museum’s Wednesday night cruise-in when she relented, stating that I could get the car as long as she didn’t have to look at it when I crashed it. Perfect!
Where else are you going to see a Pulse autocycle?
I told Matt a little about myself and my plans for the ATC and he seemed to like the cut of my jib. He explained that the Test Car had been relocated as a practical joke and that I would probably be able to pick it up ASAP.
Two weeks later, I received a message from Matt. “Way Rert” was finally tiring of the biohazard outside lowering their property values. They needed the car gone yesterday or their next call would be to the constable. As luck would have it, I was going to be in Detroit in 3 short days to pick up some friends for a road trip, so this would be a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. “Way” and I ironed out the details, and my next call was to uhaul to get a tow dolly reserved.
T-minus 0 days
Sunday morning arrived and so did I. After a short drive to Detroit, I picked my friends from their hotel and we headed over to meet Way. Way Rert turned out to be Ray Wert, former EiC of Jalopnik and Cat Fancy contributor.
Ray explained that the ATC had been abandoned in his yard under cover of darkness, and recently he had taken to leaving the car unlocked with the keys on the seat. When I opened the door, I could immediately tell why nobody would want to steal it. Bits of food were strewn everywhere and the odor was pungent. A roll of trash bags was covering the driver’s seat.
At this point, the ATC had been festering in this condition for (at least) 80 days. Rain was in the forecast and I had a 3 hour drive ahead of me. Still, I elected to leave the windows open in the test car, the thought being that any water that happened to get in during the drive might rinse the upholstery. A downpour during our drive turned into a veritable monsoon. I think I made the right call.
We also stopped in Ann Arbor to see the football stadium of the local college:
I spent the next couple of days in Chicago with my friends, sightseeing and doing general tourist activities. When I returned, I only had 10 days to get the ATC ready to race.
My first thought was to gut the interior “because race car,” but the more I looked at the Scion, the more I started to fall in love with it. Sure, the engine bucked on its mounts and all the warning lights screamed “Stay Away,” but one spark plug and ignition coil later and the 1.5l motor purred like a housecat (the lights are all still there though).
Yes, the interior smelled like a Long John Silver’s dumpster, but I could tell that someone once loved this car. The AC worked! All the floor mats were there! Plus, when I discovered and opened a now almost 3-month-old fortune cookie, I knew I would be ok.
A good omen is discovered
I won’t go too in depth with my cleaning methods, as Mercedes Streeter has already written a very comprehensive “how-to” guide. What I will say is this: since discarding the interior was always an option for me, I went for the nuclear option with my tactics.
Step 1 was to suck up all the large debris with the shop vac. This took care of most of the bits of chow mein, bread bowl chunks, and taco flakes.
Step 2 was to douse the entire car in sanitizing spray. I don’t know if this actually did anything, but it did give me peace of mind.
Step 3 was to empty an entire bottle of Zep oxy carpet cleaner over the entire interior of the car, followed by a thorough scrubbing with industrial degreaser wipes.
Step 4 brought out the big guns – two bottles of Zep mold and mildew bleach spray (this isn’t an ad for Zep, I’m just lazy and my Menards groups these cleaners together). After an intensive misting of the interior, I left the car out overnight with the windows open and a couple of box fans inside to dry out.
The final step I employed was to deep clean the interior with a carpet steamer. I pulled 3 gallons of black sludge out of the upholstery, but surprisingly it ended up looking great! I wouldn’t advise most people to bomb their car with bleach spray, but at least in my case I didn’t notice any staining or discoloration.
The one tip I will offer that Mercedes didn’t cover pertains to floor mats. While a spray with a garden hose and a scrub with a sponge and soapy water works ok, you tend to still have a lot of crud leftover. At least, you do when you are dealing with petrified broccoli cheddar soup. An ice scraper works excellently to free up the deeply trapped detritus, plus it helps your mats dry out quicker since they retain less water. If you’re only using soap and water, you’d be amazed (and nauseated) to see what you can scrape out of a set of “freshly washed” floor mats.
After a couple exhausting days of cleaning, I was ready for HooptieX. I didn’t have the highest hopes for a bone-stock xB with 232,000 miles (plus a few stickers for extra horsepower), but the event was a blast! I may have gotten stuck in the mud on my first outing, but the course eventually dried up enough that I was able to put down a few successful laps. I ended the day covered in mud and in high spirits, secure in the knowledge that innovation and determination will lead me to success.
Okay, it’s me again. I’m so impressed with all Tom accomplished with this little car, and even more impressed with how he took it out racing in the mud, hardly any time at all after he rescued it. And he’s not even remotely done! Look at these fantastic hand-painted stripes he’s added:
Holy crap, right? The stripes, the extra lights, the fact it’s motile and running and being enjoyed, I adore every single oily bit of this. Tom even found an old 5.25″ floppy disk I had in there, some lost artifact from one of my many ridiculous old computers, and has it hanging from the rear view mirror now, a perfect little nod to this car’s past.
Make no mistake: this is Tom’s car now, but I appreciate that the little reminders of its past life, like the sloppy spray-painted Autopian logo, have endured into its new, exciting afterlife.
This little xB is realizing the dreams of any basic, everyday car, if I may anthropomorphize wildly. It started life as a practical economy car, a grocery-getter, lived a full life ferrying me and my family around, occasionally getting treated to something unexpected, like a track day, or something worse unexpected, like smacking into a bunch of myopic venison in a fur coat.
It was a car that was appreciated and cared for and used, but did eventually outlive its usefulness – only to be reborn into a second life of good-natured hoonery and racing and making people happy in the finest, silliest ways.
Oh, and it has a real title and everything now, too. I know it happened because I was pretty much not involved in that process at all, guaranteeing its success.
What an uplifiting tale for a humble, boxy little car! Thanks so much to Tom for giving this little happy shitbox the exciting and ongoing epilogue it deserves. I can’t wait to see more pictures of this be-striped xB tearing it up in the mud!
This is great. Tom, you are a badass. I love how this community comes together to rescue kittens and shitboxes, great group of folks around here!
I remember seeing the painted stripes while scrolling through the discord and thinking what kind of madman would take on that mess. Tom is not a madman though he is a saint and should be treated as such. Can he be made pope of the discord? Is that too much? I always loved the xB and I’m glad this one was given new life.
This story reminds me of Disney’s Susie The Little Blue Coupe, which is a powerful, emotional story about the life (and afterlife) of a car, but also served as the inspiration and origin of Jason’s own Cars-universe homunculus theory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTF6v3ejaJQ
I loved this little cartoon as a kid so fucking much.
Ditto, in fact I re-watched it a few years ago & it still stands up as a great cartoon!
Two words for Jason: DEER WHISTLE!
As someone who wrecked the same car twice because of deer I can safely say, they are a scam.
When I blow my dog whistle he comes running.
When you blow a deer whistle…
Proof, once again, that the 1NZFE is freaking bulletproof.
The more I learn about Torch’s history and decision making, car buying and other….the more I wonder how he is still alive, let alone a leader of this wonderful website.
I love xBs and I’m so glad to see this one avoid the crusher. The stripes are rad too.
Something to consider for thick floor mats, I have a drill bit with a brush attached to it (drill brush – creative). I tend to spray them down with a solution (in this case via my carpet cleaner that I bought for my house which was once full of 40 year old carpets) hit the mats with the drill brush to loosen everything up, and extract. Works pretty damn well.
I had a visceral reaction to that “Before” photo. That is absolutely, positively, 90000002% how you get ants. It came with ants, I bet. ANTS!
Lana did it!
LANAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
WHAT!!?!?!!
Ants? At this point it probably came with maggots.
Well I don’t see any ants. Thank God for small miracles!
I do wonder if the possible maggots Dumb Shadetree mentioned ate the ants, or if the selection of road trip foods straight-up killed the ants.
Holy CRAP, I was saying in another comment that you guys lacked a “bag of nasty” to throw at people, I STAND CORRECTED! Also you literally dumped it on someone’s front yard! I’m surprised, scared and impressed all at the same time!
Kudos to the brave soul who cleaned this up!
> smacking into a bunch of myopic venison in a fur coat.
This is why I keep coming back to the site.
Jason: isn’t this the second time Bambi has encroached into your car’s personal space at speed?
At least 2x that he’s been willing to talk about (1x w/ the xB, 1x w/Pao).
Who knows how many other Bambi v car run-ins he’s Not willing to talk about 🙂
I think I know which Detroit car plant that Scion lived at for awhile and I’m still laughing.
I’m guessing Honda? Just because the sign says [redacted] parking only, and I see a couple of Hondas just past it. It’s that or Honda owners are way less law abiding than I thought.
The Japanese don’t ban American cars. This is probably David’s old employer, Chrysler/Jeep/Stellantis/FIAT/whatever.
I think this is correct, given its proximity to David’s former
hovelresidence.Considering the amount of work Jason and Mercedes did to help clean up the shack/help pack, they deserve little patron saint statues at Galpin.
Okay…I now consider myself both educated and entertained.
But don’t bother upvoting or commenting because the notification thing is still broken on mobile so I won’t see it!
Commenting after I upvoted. You can’t tell me what to do!
Fwiw it works in the Brave browser on android for me.
As an xB owner I applaud the resurrection of Chainsaw Boy’s piece of shit.
Don’t EVER let him near it again.
Those racing stripes made my day! 😀
This is great Tom! I recall that post, and thought it was just too far. I’m glad you did what you did, cause it’s awesome.
ALL HAIL THE AUTOPIAN
TESTRACE CAR!…are you sure I’m not dead? This has to be Hell. I’m almost certain.
It’s hot, and the wind feels like a hair dryer. Can’t even touch grass for joy. I have race cars, but no full-time job, so I can’t hoon it. No end in sight to that, just endless busywork where assorted application hell-systems crash mid-application and force me to start over and hardly anyone calls back because my resume is weird. No idea when that’s going to be over, either. The track keeps closing for wildfire risk, too, which of course it would in Hell. That’s how hell works: constant denial of pleasure.
Everything is exhausting and unsatisfying. There’s no payoff (or track day) in sight. I’m all but certain I must’ve angered God and ended up in the bad place.
…
Probably the Mormon God. I drank a LOT of cokes as a kid.
If it makes you feel better, I have a full-time job and I still can’t afford to hoon it. Worst of both worlds!
SEE???? It’s like the tale of Sisyphus, except we have a more expensive rock.
‘Sisyphean’ is one of my favorite adjectives.
(I know that’s not particularly helpful.)
Sometimes moving to a different place really is good for the soul inherently. I’d definitely feel pissed off if I was sweaty all the time and couldn’t hoon my cars. Which, given my summer living situation, has actually been the case. And I’m pissed off more often than usual.
If it isn’t in the financial, family, logistical, etc cards to move, that’s very fair. On the other hand, if there is any possibility that those cards could be ignored, though, screwing off to somewhere new without a plan isn’t the worst of, well, plans.
Apparently seasonal depression is a thing in the heat, too. Usually I’ve broken up Hell Season with a trip elsewhere to marvel at like, ooh, aah, cars and mountains or whatever. This year, I couldn’t. I’m hella stuck here unless someone sends me away for freelance work or offers me a lot more money to move somewhere else, and yep, I hate it.
I EVEN MADE TYPOS AND ERRORS IN THIS COMMENT AND MY EDIT WINDOW CLOSED BEFORE I COULD FIX THEM!
THIS IS MY HELL.
I feel your pain. I’m currently not yet unemployed and they keep delaying the inevitable laying-off decision (but not the actual deadline) for bullshit reasons. It was my dream job, and they are trying to make me hate it, not out of malice, but out of administrative convenience.
I’ll soon have nothing to do but stare out of the window at my new track car that I can’t afford to track while it rains and rains. And apply for jobs three hours away.
Ugh, I’m sorry. That’s the worst. Hell, that kind of work instability was why I took a buyout and left Jalopnik. (That was probably a bad move in hindsight, but at least I got a longer Nürburgring vacation out of it.)
I’ve been looking a lot harder outside Texas, too. I just feel stuck—I’d like to move up the masthead into a more senior role, but it’s not happening down here. I seem to have hit a wall where no one really wants to hire a remote for that in a location without as much industry support. We’ve got a more limited press fleet than Detroit/LA/NYC and even they have to come down from Dallas. There’s only a few national-outlet autojournos who even live down here and really only Toyota’s reps up in DFW on the automaker side, so networking around is “maybe if there’s an event?” or “I guess they’ll come in for F1.”
Between that, the heat and a few other factors I won’t mention for sanity’s sake, “willing to relocate.” There’s a lot I still love about this place (friends! tracks! parks! food!) and that sucks, but something’s gotta give. A more stable outlet that’d offer more money and a step up career-wise would be huge.
If I stay here, I’ll probably end up switching jobs, maybe to corporate comms, maybe to PR, maybe to marketing. None of those roles that I’ve applied for have even reached out to me beyond an automatic rejection. I even got ghosted by staffing firms I reached out to, which I didn’t think was a thing. Back to feeling stuck and occasionally taking the Porschelumps on coffee runs to keep them in running order, I guess. (Sorry for the vent! Seems like a vent thread now.)
Venting is good for the soul. You’re among friends here, Stef. Hang in there.
It’s probably a good idea to stay away from Marketing. When companies have to downsize, marketing seems to be the first department to be gutted.
A lot of companies are downsizing right now without announcing anything. That’s what a lot of the push to return to the office is. They figure a certain percentage of employees won’t return to the office and they will drop off the payroll without the company having to offer severance or unemployment, with the company not having to go public with financial concerns.
Yeeeeah, that’s bleak, too. I worked in tech marketing before going into writing full-time, and it was doable? A job? It paid the bills when the cost of living was way cheaper, I guess. Precisely a role that paid money. It didn’t help that the department I was in was super-cliquey—and I was out of the girly-girl clique. Maybe I’d have enjoyed it if I worked with people I liked, so I’m willing to give it a second chance. If it paid enough money to play with race cars again and the company seems mostly stable, I’ll consider it.
I think I’d rather go the comms route, but it’s all a moot point when none of the word-related fields outside of journalism even so much as calls back.
They’re convinced AI will soon be able to do the job.
Every marketing department I’ve known seemed to be full of recent female college graduates. Every one of them left within a few years when they either got married or had their first child.
I haven’t worked with every marketing department. My limited sample size could be messing with my data.
Yeah, although it gives me hope that that’s backfiring in big ways, and large language model companies are now demanding sizable money to use their services commercially. May it continue to backfire until the hype train eats turds and implodes.
Most of the women I worked with were married/engaged with no sign of leaving and stuck around after having kids, so that part’s a big YMMV. Austin’s a pretty socially progressive city that’s really normalized that, though, and it’s also expensive to live here. Making it work as a couple (especially with kids!) on one income is…uhhhh, here’s hoping that one income is a big’un.
Bingo
Don’t you live in the hell hole called Texas?
JFC! Run away for God’s sake kid.
Run fast, run hard.
(wish you luck Stef)
Yeah. One of my friends noticed that I was unusually happy today. THE WEATHER SUCKS LESS! THERE ARE CLOUDS! A HIGH UNDER 100 F! FOR A BRIEF MOMENT, THE WIND FELT COOL INSTEAD OF LIKE SATAN’S FARTS!!!
I think a lot of it’s seasonal/situational, and this is the season that sucks, so it’s making the whole situation feel even worse.
Hey Stef, that’s hard. For what it’s worth I’ve found a lot of comfort in the old line, “When you’re going through hell keep on going.” Keep putting applications out there, keep pushing forward, and I’m sure something will pan out. You are awesome and I love reading your work.
<3 Thanks, man.
It will be impossible to see an xB on the road now and not crack a grin thinking of this.
I’m proud, Tom, that this thing’s finally enjoying the retirement it deserves, being thrown around in the mud, with classic stripes that put that new special-edition 4Runner’s to shame.
It helps that my current daily (approaching 226k) is the cute toy that came in the box that was the xB.
It helps even more that I love boxy cars, and by some coincidence, my first (an ’89 Volvo 244) was sold to me by a fellow named “Sturdy” Thomas.
Hell. Yeah.
Also, I appreciate where Max left it. U SUCK, Roy. U GUST LOST RALLI KAR. (:
(Edit: I’m also proud of that detailing job! And thank you, Torch, for updating us on this thing’s whereandwhatabouts.)
Wait, do you have the xA, the later xD, or the truly tiny iQ?
My xD has 208k on it and is still going strong. These things never die and are kinda fun to drive.
Yaris! Same oily bits, different body and interior (and, granted, not a Scion). I agree, it’s fun in the classic slow-car-fast sense, especially on twisty back roads.
I feel this feat of amazing interior cleaning has really raised the bar for S.W. Gossin’s success with that half-alive Buick Park Avenue of his.
Also, those stripes are amazing and if Toyota had offered such a thing itself, there’d definitely have been even more interest in the xB.
Okay.
Okay.
Hear me out.
When the drive train finally conks out, I have two words for you:
Steam
Catapult
Who’s with me?!?!
Why not a trebuchet?
See the USA with your trebuchet!
Do we know anyone with a trebuchet? Or at least access to one?
Oh someone here must have one, daily drives it, and can tell you all about how it’s totally superior to a ballista.
Are there people out there claiming ballista superiority? That makes flat earthers seem reasonable.
This is the internet. No matter what, there is someone with a firmly held counter-position and they are willing to argue about it…
Mangonel or GTFO.
Hi!
I built a fleet of five (maybe six, it was years ago) trebuchets and used them as a candy delivery device and part of an engineering in schools event.
They weren’t very big, only 9 feet tall, but they were kind-of portable, and ultra reliable.
The events got cancelled during the opening day (remarkably for reasons entirely unrelated to bringing a fleet of medieval war machines in to a school) but we got paid for all of them anyway, so we had all these trebuchets and nothing to do with them. So we duelled with them at 20 paces, used them to fling things to see how far/broken they would get, and generally played with them.
Then, as they took up a lot of workshop space, we lent them out and never went back to collect them.
I tried building a ballista as a launch device, but it was clunky and terrifying. So I converted it to a catapult with bungee cords instead, but even then it was way more dangerous to the users than the trebuchets, and prone to trigger related breakdowns and misfires.
I’m the engineer friend of a guy who has a lot of ideas. Sometimes it means getting to work on weird shit.
This rules, NGL.
I could see that: my wrist rocket was never anything but an instrument of destruction, but the mini trebuchet I made from a chopstick, a piece of cardboard, a toothpick, and a pin with a little felt sling was several hours of fun getting dialed in. It could reliably deliver a wasabi pea into a ramen bowl from around 12 feet.
big ones for candy would have been a blast!
I just read about how the ballista is superior to the trebuchet because much less energy is lost to accelerating, then stopping, the heavy spine. Pretty sure that was at Dr Devereaux’s acoup blog.
Whatever—you can’t sling a shitbox with a ballista, so trebuchet = better
“Whatever—you can’t sling a shitbox with a ballista, so trebuchet = better”
Not with that attitude, you can’t! You just gotta build a REALLY big ballista.
“We’re gonna need a bigger rubber band. Way bigger.”
As Chris-In-The-Morning said: “It’s not the thing you fling. It’s the fling itself.”
Google ‘piano fling scene’ for your Nothern Exposure fix, people.oops: looks like nbc has shut that down. A damn shame
-thanks for reminding me.
I rebuilt pianos for years, and always wanted to do this, but it’s labor intensive, so a stack of kerosene-soaked pallets & target practice with a 30-30 had to suffice as catharsis.
I got as far as steam and decided this absolutely needs a steam engine. Mercedes knows train people….
This car rules! There’s a set of rallycross tires in Milwaukee that I think it might need…
I get it. When you’re done, you’re done.
Having rescued a few myself, the flip side is that there’s a hell of a lot of energy to be found in, ‘Why the hell not?’ A lot of fun can be had in a manual moon-mileage shitbox-especially fueled by a sense of whimsy. Thanks, Tom!
-note this is a good antidote to SWG’s junkyard article, too
Lets be honest here it did not outlive its usefulness. It was sent to the farm because a woman yet again aspires for something better. For it is Think of the baby so you buy a dependable appliance. Then after a few years its think of the children so dependable isnt good enough. Isnt it just like a woman to constantly complain until she gets what she wants?
However, seeing JTs past decision making ability where a used VW was considered a reliable anything I have to say good call Mrs T keep raising JT to be better and also i love your pierogis.
Dude, can we just stop with the archaic misogyny? I know so many dudes who complain and piss and moan, too— this isn’t a gendered thing at all. She has a more rational, practical mind than I do. That’s it! She wants what she wants from a car, like we all do. I’m delighted to have you comment but let’s just let the old bullshit stereotypes about men and women just die, already. They were shit then, they’re shit now. You’re better than that. I appreciate it.
Dude uncool I posted an apology said it was made in jest. But you block it to make me look bad. Who was the bad guy here?
Take your meds Dave….
> It was sent to the farm because a woman yet again aspires for something better.
Dude wtf
Although that does sound like transference. I’m sure she did find something better after she left.
Don’t get him started on “Women’s Rights.” Or the “stolen” election, life is too short.
I’d like to know who upvoted that despicable comment.
Incredible work Tom! Not sure why you did it, but great job all the same.