I love cool cars/vehicles, but I hate driving and owning them (too much money and liability). I’ve spent most of my adult life living in NYC and committing via bike, but I did briefly live in DC for a few years and needed a vehicle there. Decided I’d get something old and cool, so I found me a '95 Toyota Land Cruiser originally imported from Australia (and ended up in a Virginia warehouse somehow).
Despite my hate for driving and owning a vehicle, I certainly loved the heck out of my Land Cruiser! So many cool features and such great engineering. And being from Australia, it was Right Hand Drive, which always resulted in impromptu convos or thumbs up while sitting at stop lights. I’ve never been engaged more with strangers over a car than when I’d drive around in my Land Cruiser.
I ended up selling it when I left DC. Didn’t need it any longer. But mainly because I’m not a mechanic or well versed in cars enough to hunt down replacement parts for an old imported RHD Land Cruiser. Ended up being more work and money than I wanted to manage. Now I’m happily back on my bike which doesn’t require gas or repairs or insurance haha.
It treated me well though, and always grateful that I was briefly a Land Cruiser owner.
Nice! Yeah, I mainly got it because of its reputation for reliability and usefulness, and it certainly lived up to that. But being almost 30yrs old, it was definitely not an easy or comfortable machine to actually drive on-road. Thing’s mad heavy and not meant for driving above 65mph.
Driving on the highway was the worst…unless it was raining or snowing. Then I was cruising past everyone effortlessly. Never felt more safe driving in snow or rain than in my Land Cruiser.
Hope Toyota starts making the GR86 in something besides green again soon
Edit: well maybe I will have to get a BRZ instead - literally 90% of the GR86s available within 100 miles are thegreen Hakone edition with leather and crap I don’t want, which also means a BRZ would be like $10k cheaper
I came across a 2002 toyota camry with a deeply worn exterior that was sitting in a relatives driveway and everyone claimed it was the best car and deeply coveted.
Now i’m like… do I need a camry? I never thought of this option before.
achi mama, I finally replaced my 2007 Toyota Battle Yaris hatchback (a partially murdered out Yaris) with another mildly warm hatch, a 2018 Toyota Corolla iM. it’s a weird one for the US; they only did this “iM” for one year before redesigning the Corolla hatchback in 2019, so it’s actually just a Euro/JP (manufactured in Japan) Toyota hatchback that they sold as a “Corolla” but that has no Corolla badging on it whatsoever. anyway, I adore this thing (especially with hatchbacks becoming less common in the US). feels downright luxurious having all these fancy amenities I was missing out on (but while still having a physical button option for just about everything) – I guess I just gotta buy a Toyota hatchback once every 17 years I’ll be good to go
So the problem with this for me is it’s a prelude only in name and body type (sedan). It doesn’t take through any of the prelude visual design ideas and simply does not look at all like a prelude. Like even the 4th gen, the sleekest one and my least favorite, looks like a prelude in the back end and windows.
This is a fine looking modern electric car but it sure doesn’t look like a prelude. On the one hand, I’m glad Honda is making an electric car. On the other, if you’re gonna make a prelude you’d better make it look like one! I feel mildly betrayed!
I haven’t given it much thought before, but what strikes me from the image you posted is how long and low the hood lines for all of those cars are. Low hoods aren’t really possible on new cars these days but they could have at least made the hood on this new one less stubby. It’s almost closer to a 2nd gen Eclipse.
Hmm hey if Honda and Nissan merge then maybe this could also end up being a new Eclipse thanks to the Nissan-Mitsubishi relationship
Every time I’m watching an old movie and I see just like some regular old Corolla from like 1992 parked on the side of the road in the background I’m like whooa cars used to look so fucking good and real!!
But then I remember the new bubble look is very good for safety which I’m totally fine with. Now lets just remove 98% of SUVs and Trucks so I can comfortably cruise around in a tiny car. (It’s a pretty bad ratio in Wisconsin)
So since my last post in June my partner and I got a car! A 2017 Chevy Bolt EV. It has been such a pleasure to drive so far and it works really well for what we need. The charging infrastructure in philly is lacking, but between an extension cord off of our porch, and our neighbor who graciously lets us use his setup it has not been that difficult. Charging overnight off of a regular outlet at $0.07 per kwh means you can fill the battery up for under $5. That gives you a range of 250 miles in summer, and approx 190 miles currently.
The Bolt doesn’t have any of the cool features that Tesla’s have, but I very rarely need any of those features anyways. And it actually has handles knobs and buttons for the most used things like volume so in that way it is a design marvel over a tesla. And it’s in METALLIC ORANGE (not my picture). Also, with the newly released tesla NACS adapter our charging potential just doubled.
It’s a cute car and would recommend it to anyone who can figure out an at home charge setup.
You don’t want any of those tesla features anyway! and the Bolt has like… handles you can just use. and windows! you can see out of all of them. Pretty cool. I think you made the right choice.
