Category Archives: Cars & Trucks

Serious Off-Roading

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Mr. Wolf stopped by to visit the Land Rover on Friday. There was a time when we thought the truck would be done by September 2017. What is that, nine months ago? Like everything else with this project, the engine swap has been plagued with problems. There’s a chance the work could be complete by the time I arrive in San Francisco next Friday but I wouldn’t bet the farm.

I’ve confided to friends that my enthusiasm for this project has… waned. We can only hope that returns when I get the truck. But it’s a nice, first-world kind of problem. On a more positive note, Mr. Wolf took his Mercedes Benz Unimog off-roading last week (Fordyce Creek in the Tahoe National Forest) and shares this exceptional video.

Shelbyfest 2018

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When I got to the coffee shop Saturday mourning I found the street lined with hundreds of Mustangs. Shelbyfest is a big rally for Mustang owners and while these beauties don’t turn my crank like an old Land Rover, they are gorgeous hunks of metal. A policeman doing crowd control guessed there were 400-500 cars this year. I’ve included notes on some of the photos below.

 

Car dealerships are doomed

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Long-time auto exec Bob Lutz thinks car dealerships are doomed. They have 20 to 25 years left. Autonomous vehicles will completely disrupt the industry.

”Are they going to be fun? Absolutely not,” he said. “There will be no joy in sitting in an autonomous vehicle …. But it’s going to be enormously efficient.”

He suggested that parents will be willing to place their children in autonomous cars to take them to day care, soccer practice or school. He said they would be able to give their children limited access to a vehicle subscription service that would let them call cars to take them to preapproved locations, and that access could be expanded as they get older.

”When you send them off to college, you won’t send them with a car, you’ll send them with a subscription to a driverless vehicle service that they can use at their leisure,” he said.

I think it’s been a long time since cars were cool (not that I was ever a car guy). They’re all look like gray blobs of molded plastic. Lutz says the car of the future will just be a “module.”

He likened the modules to subway cars: Passengers don’t know who makes them, only that they get the riders to their destinations.

If I can drive my (mythical) Land Rover for five or ten years — and it’s as much fun as I hope it is — I’ll count myself lucky.