A Perpetual Picture Of Your Car Thread

Arasirsul

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Do other countries note what type of transmission you passed your test with?
UK licenses say whether you took your test in a manual or auto. If it was an auto, then you are not allowed to drive manual cars without taking a further test. If you tested in a manual you can drive both. This is one reason for a lot of people taking the test in a manual even if they plan on driving an auto after.
Other than the police though, I don;t know how many places actually check these details (when hiring vehicles or whatever).

I never actually took a state-issued driving test [0], but as folks noted, here in the US, we don't differentiate between automatic and manual. The UK was happy enough to rent me a manual car on my didn't-say-one-way-or-the-other license when I was there, though.

[0] Where I went to high school (Hillsborough County, FL), high-school drivers' ed classes grant you a waiver for the test. In theory, the state tests 10% of those people, in practice, I never knew anyone who got selected. So instead of an actual driver's test, I got high-school football coaches showing us films of BLOOD ON THE HIGHWAY! and then was turned loose on the streets...
 
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yd

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Tire pressure sensor went off on the Z4. I was like, dammit, must be the front left that I put the goop into that held so well has finally failed.

Nope, all tires were low - about 1.9 bar in the fronts and 2 bars in the rears. Our roads where we are beat the shit out of things. Put things back to the proper 2.2/2.6 front/rear combo and hooooobaby, feels 'tight' again but damn if that is not one heck of a rough riding car on crap roads. Absolutely great on smooth pavement though.
 
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Mat8iou

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[0] Where I went to high school (Hillsborough County, FL), high-school drivers' ed classes grant you a waiver for the test. In theory, the state tests 10% of those people, in practice, I never knew anyone who got selected. So instead of an actual driver's test, I got high-school football coaches showing us films of BLOOD ON THE HIGHWAY! and then was turned loose on the streets...

So you never had to take a driving test? Nobody was bothered with doing it like that?

Australia seems to have gone fairly extreme on the testing process for new drivers - In NSW, you have to log 120 hours of driving (including 20 at night) over a minimum of 12 months before taking the test, although there are ways of reducing this as some types of registered training can count for double hours etc. If you don't have family with a car though it could be an expensive process. There are then 2 levels of P Plates - the first lasts one year, the second another 2 years. During that time you can't drive vehicles with a power to tare mass ratio of greater than 130kW per tonne. There are also restrictions on max speed, zero blood alcohol permitted, limited trailer towing weights and a whole load of other things during that time - so for young drivers it is a minimum of 4 years before you get a regular license.

This is strikingly different to the UK (ans I had assumed most countries), where (assuming you could get insurance for it), you can pass your test and then go out on the roads in a supercar the next day.

In Queensland the restrictions are stricter - a P-plater cannot drive: any vehicles with eight cylinders or more; any supercharged or turbocharged petrol vehicles (force-fed diesels are permitted); any vehicles with more than 210kW engine output; and any rotaries with an engine displacement of more than 1146cc. There are some exceptions to this - but sometimes it is surprising which cars get caught out by these rules. The turbo rules have changed for more recent cars, because they finally realised that a lot of smaller engined cars use them for increased fuel efficiency.

These restrictions don't just exclude obvious sports cars - things like the 2024 Hyundai i30 N Premium - and there are plenty of other anomalies both in terms of ones that are unexpectedly allowed or aren't.
 

yd

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Looks good! And holy cow even a mid-size truck today looks massive.
Is that not F-150 sized aka full sized? It certainly isn't a Ranger! In no world is that a mid sized truck to my mind - full bed and full twin cab is full sized truck to my mind. That wouldn't even fit into the boundary of my car park spot downtown, I would have to rent two spots!
 

yd

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It's a Chevy Colorado which is a mid-sized truck. The one size larger is the Chevy Silverado, which is the same size class/is direct competitor to the Ford F-150.

Hence my comments about how big the damned thing is!
My parents have an F150 they like. I can't stand it - it rides and has the handling of a sofa and the steering you can do with your pinky finger instead of grabbing the wheel like a man. Its like a land yacht. Terrible...but functional for them admittedly. I would have went for a Ranger and frankly that would have worked well for them. They never use or need any of the incremental size but try explaining practicality to an 80 year old man.
 

heySkippy

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View attachment 82352

It’s not new, but it’s new to me. 2017 Chevy Colorado Z71, V6, 4x4, crew cab, long bed, and all the fun options.

It’s fun to drive, on road or off. And it can tow 7000 lbs!
I can't find any reference to a Colorado with a bed longer than 61". A long bed would be 8', no?
 

Arasirsul

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Looks good! And holy cow even a mid-size truck today looks massive.

It's because they are massive. It's not entirely image.

For many years, I drove a 1981 Chevy Suburban. You know, the Suburban: poster child for massive.

LengthWidthHeight
'81 Suburban219 inches79 inches72 inches
'24 Colorado ZR2214.1 inches80.2 inches81.8 inches

Mid-size trucks are now as big (or bigger!) than the full-size ones we grew up with. Sure, I cherry-picked the burly off-road Colorado, but I also cherry-picked the Suburban. :)

Of course, size ain't the only way it's hanging with the Suburban. The inline-four in the Colorado makes almost fifty more horsepower than the 350ci V8 in my old Suburban.

You could have bought a Suburban with a 454... but that's OK. The Colorado has a version of the 2.7L inline four that beats it by fifty horse, as well.

I can't find any reference to a Colorado with a bed longer than 61". A long bed would be 8', no?
That's the "long" bed. Sure, the mid-size trucks are massive, but the beds are tiny!
 
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yd

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Am reminded of how amused I am every time I step up into the car that a CX-5 is a "compact" car. With a cargo volume just shy of double of the Corolla I owned back in the 90s. Albeit with a wheelbase less than a foot longer. The definitions have certainly gone a bit haywire in the 21st century.
Step on down to a Z4 baby!

Or13aHK.jpg

Whenever I am near large trucks I think.....yea, this wouldn't end well for me. Top of that tire is my head level.
 
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Diabolical

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Whenever I am near large trucks I think.....yea, this wouldn't end well for me. Top of that tire is my head level.
Oh my word, yes.

And I’m halfway convinced they can’t see me in the Fiata, either. So driving through heavy traffic that is mostly big rigs and large American pickups and SUVs is always a bit nerve wracking.
 

Arkannis

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I can't find any reference to a Colorado with a bed longer than 61". A long bed would be 8', no?
2015-2022 Colorados can be had with either a 5ft or 6ft bed. And for some reason that’s actually 61 inches or 74 inches. But for a Colorado, 6ft is a long bed, and that’s what I have.

They got rid of the long bed when they refreshed them for ‘23, because they apparently weren’t selling very well.
 
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Arkannis

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My parents have an F150 they like. I can't stand it - it rides and has the handling of a sofa and the steering you can do with your pinky finger instead of grabbing the wheel like a man. Its like a land yacht. Terrible...but functional for them admittedly. I would have went for a Ranger and frankly that would have worked well for them. They never use or need any of the incremental size but try explaining practicality to an 80 year old man.
My dad is turning 80 at the end of this month, and… yeah. Yikes.
 
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yd

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My dad is turning 80 at the end of this month, and… yeah. Yikes.
Whats annoying, I was the one buying the vehicle! To get the crazy angle of 'well I can't spend more than X' when X is a number from like, 2010 at best and 'No, I don't want any extras' when the extras are what are likely going to be in MY vehicle for longer than his and 'well I need a big truck to tow the boat and in case I put the camper back on (subsequently sold)' when the boat gets towed 5km twice a year and that should be sold soon (hope hope).....yea, frustrating.

As is, that truck will get flogged instantly when it becomes mine - had it been a well kitted out Ranger, it would have stuck around I would wager.
 

Backstop

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Step on down to a Z4 baby!

Or13aHK.jpg

Whenever I am near large trucks I think.....yea, this wouldn't end well for me. Top of that tire is my head level.
Same in my C3 Corvette. I'm pretty low, and it doesn't have a center brake light, so I am always worried about any larger SUV or trucks behind me just blithely plowing into the gas tank that's right behind my hips.
 

yd

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Same in my C3 Corvette. I'm pretty low, and it doesn't have a center brake light, so I am always worried about any larger SUV or trucks behind me just blithely plowing into the gas tank that's right behind my hips.
I shall wager you would be thinking the same way I was today as I pulled up behind a dump truck. Its 'bumper' aka horizontal steel slab' was quite literally at my roofline. So, with the c3 and z4 we have a bit of engine/hood in front of us as 'bumpers' - aka our hoods are hitting the rear axle. Yee haw!

If our current needs could be applied backwards in time, I would prefer a used diesel G wagon for Hong Kong over the z4/m2 combo. We have a really nasty local road with a partially obscured view and dropping off a curb with cement trucks and the like coming at the last second from our parking lot. Its nasty. The later pair would be much better suited for our place in rural Ontario or my dream places of Tasmania/Mauritius/NZ.
 
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vassago

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Speaking of F150s...? (I very much like mine, but only for doing actual truck stuff) I drove mine ~7 hours/~500 miles yesterday and then turned around and did the same thing today. Picked up an Aluma 8220 Tilt trailer to tow my Evo. Got home, showered, fired up the Evo and put it on the trailer just to gauge how it works and whatnot. I was parked facing downhill a little and didn't have a spotter so I didn't pull forward far enough for actual towing. 20' is pretty long relative to the car (couldn't even see the trailer in the rearview without a car on it), but the 18' is super hard to find even new and 16' is too short.

Now it's time to change oil, transmission, tcase, rear diff, and brake fluid, plus corner balance and alignment, then get the Evo out racing again. Will probably need to replace my front brake rotors before a hillclimb or track day and I'm 95% sure I need to replace my water pump (why coolant wasn't listed earlier... it's gonna happen) but I should be good for autox in the meantime...
 

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Possibly breaking the intent of the OP...My folks sent a package of stuff, included some old pics. Yeah, my first car was a 'Vette. This was taken, um...a couple years ago. Yeah, we'll go with "a couple".
That's not you.

That there is a young human.
You're a Fraggle.

For reference:
Wembley_Fraggle.jpg


;)


And anyway, is it a car? Is it (was it) your car?
Then you're fine!

And that car is... brown.
Very brown. And I see the name of the image... is that the name of the car? If so? You brave, brave Fraggle. Man.
 
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Demento

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So many people in my high school had one of that type of car. Some eight or twelve year old tiny hatchback that seats six and got thirty or forty cents of gas at a time. Brown was a good color because you couldn't see the rust as well.

It was so terrible, why am I thinking of it sort of fondly?
Because there is something to the car you give no fucks about. You don't worry about scratches, or smells, whether someone bends the door a bit when they get out. It is what teenagers everywhere crave most - freedom.
 

Backstop

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Oh man, I worried about my car all the time back then, though it was nothing special. It was a brown Mustang with the smallest motor, automatic transmission, and a combination of electrical issues and mis-aligned starter that meant for every 20 minutes of driving I had a 1d20 chance of the engine just quitting and then a 1d6 chance of nothing happening when I tried to re-start it (often while rolling through an intersection or something).

But, like, my girlfriend skidded the keys across the top of it and I was furious. Her brother was shooting hoops near it and broke the sunroof latch, someone sat on the hood and wrinkled the shitty paint... I was so mad about that car getting incrementally worse on my watch.
 

sword_9mm

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Don't listen to them. Today's most unreliable car (which is probably a Merc) is like orders of magnitude better than 50 years ago's least reliable car. Even bad cars are good now.

Well now they have limp mode right?

Back in mah' day 'limp mode' was getting some dudes to help push the piece of shit off the side of the road out of traffic. :)
 

pasorrijer

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Back on "Rental Cars of Europe", I got talked into taking an electric rental.

Now, the day before we had gotten a ride in a NIO ET7. It was basically the pinnacle of Chinese electric cars, and if it came to Canada I'd buy one on the spot. It was sleek, smooth, comfortable, flawless.


.... The rental electric was uh, the opposite. It looked great! Nice colour, cool lines. Classic brand name.


And within 15 minutes I broke the cruise control, when it tried to apply autobraking to a car three countries away. It came back after we turned it off and back on again, but not a good starting sign.

Everytime you'd turn the turn signal on, it'd turn the cameras on... Which then broke Android Auto. Every. Single. Time.

But, it took us where we needed to go, no range anxiety, and it definitely solidified that my next car will probably be electric.

I give you... The MG ZS EV! The finest in British Chinese engineering
1000007033.jpg
1000006987.jpg
 
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