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http://i.imgur.com/HbB0nwlh.jpg Everything gets so dusty just sitting in my garage. I hate it. Here it is on the tire rack wheels from my old car. I spent about 2 hours scrubbing them with HCl acid (Sure Kleen 600 masonry cleaner). All of my track wheels build up way too much brake dust, I need to clean them more frequently. May need some spacers, they look OK for now but the stock ride height is going to bug me eventually. I'm going to try to hold out as long as I can, I'd like to do at least 1 track day on the stock suspension, preferably 3 or 4.

It's a 2014. Had the optional (?) center console. Still cheap.

I know LiIon battery prices are tumbling, but I've read that the true cost of the 85 kWh battery pack is $45,000. That's the real sticking point. You could make a car with a 400 mile range and quad charging circuits that could recharge in under an hour today. The real question is how much are you willing to pay?

What's wrong with that?

I think you're overestimating the 110V charging rate, probably because you don't have to use it. My cousin said he gets 3 miles of range per hour charging at that rate; wiki says 3.75 miles per hour, and Tesla's own calculator says that 10 hours at 110V will get you a whopping 35 miles. 180 miles of range will take a ludicrous 55 hours. Plugging this thing into a wall outlet just isn't feasible. That same calculator says that a 40A charger like the ones he's having installed will get you 180 miles in 6 hours, so there your numbers match up. The 90 amp charger and/or 30 minute supercharger charging requires you to have paid for dual charging circuits in the car, right?

He has a charger installed at his farm (about 90 minutes away) so he can go there and back, and one's getting installed at the house in DC he's remodeling, which is something like 9 months behind schedule owing in part to his wife being a cheating whore. So whatever. At the moment, though, it's very inconvenient.

If you don't remember this eulogy for my Integra, I sold it after 8 years and 30 something track days to buy a Miata. And here it is! http://i.imgur.com/Ec1HFilh.jpg It's a 99 with 77k miles, sport package (springs, sway bar, LSD, bilsteins, some other stuff) with A/C and absolutely nothing else. Manual steering, crank windows, manual locks. There's a radio and some seats. I bought it last weekend from an older gentleman who ordered it from the factory and was sad to see it go. But he had another Miata and a '58 Alfa so I'm sure he'll get over it. It's got the roll bar, a racing beat header and cat back, and an aluminum radiator. Otherwise it's stock. The engine was replaced around 50k with a Mazda crate engine. 16 year old car, looks like this under the hood: http://i.imgur.com/euUoHxZh.jpg Plans are to learn how to drive it. First track day is June 1st, I have a few safety and driver comfort things that I'd like to do before then. I'm not a huge man, but the wheel sits on my knees and makes it hard to heel-toe.

His living situation is a bit complicated at the moment, but where he's staying he's only got access to a regular old 110V extension cord, which I think he said charges at a rate of 3 miles per hour. It's enough for him to get to work and back as long as he leaves it charged for 14 hours every day, but if he needs to duck into a supercharger station to do any real driving. Fortunately that's less than 5 miles away for him, but still a pain.

I hate Audi, with a passion, and I will never own a VAG product. But their interiors are hands down the best I've ever experienced. I will give them that. And the Tesla is no Audi. Even the fit and finish was bad, rattles and panel gaps. Cheap materials. Lackluster seats. I mean, the seats in his M3 were nice, and the Tesla feels like a Hyundai Sonata by comparison. Obviously this is all subjective, to each his own. But suffice it to say I wasn't impressed

I don't think that video's unusual other than someone was actually recording. I don't think I've ever been to a track day where someone hasn't left on a trailer. Spins and offs are common.

My cousin has more money than me and lets me drive his things. Prior to the Tesla he had a chipped 335i and then an E92 M3. Both were damn fast to my FWD econobox sensibilities, but neither made me want to run out and buy one. About a month ago I visited him just after he bought the Tesla, and riding around in it I was completely underwhelmed. The interior is understandably spartan (you get a 17" monitor and 4 vents, basically), but what surprised me was how cheap it feels inside. It's like a $20,000 Chysler in there. Which isn't to say it's bad, but I was left feeling like $100 grand should get you a little more. A lot more, really. Driving it, though, made me not give a shit about the interior. Two big things. One, there's zero lag between pressing on the accelerator and feeling the shove. Zero lag. It's like you think about going fast and then you're going fast. The shove peters out at normal driving speeds, but just rolling along about 20mph and mashing the pedal made me giggle out loud, like a little girl getting licked on the face by a puppy. Every single time. It's just instant. I don't think I would ever get sick of it. Second thing is that having instant torque on tap to adjust your speed on corner exit makes it feel way faster than it probably is, and will make chumps feel like rockstars as they blast through the twisties. You can basically loaf through every corner and then the power just pours on as soon as you think about it. I wouldn't drive it without traction control. Makes me appreciate the current F1 cars even more. If this is what having giant electric motors gets you, then bring 'em on. I can't say I'd want to pay $100k for it, especially since we had to take a 2 hour diversion from our intended route so he could go charge it up at a mall, but it was certainly a blast to drive for a day.

Depends on what kind of car, but I think anything over 150whp for a normal small car isn't worth it. Also, it's too easy to put too much tire under cars now. Getting anywhere close to the limits of a good summer tire on public roads is dangerous. In other words, when the designers of the GT-86 picked a target of 200hp and put it on skinny little Prius tires, they knew what they were doing. I know my opinion is in the minority here, but I'll pick slow car fast over fast car slow every time.

The Protege5 is one of the best economy hatchbacks ever made. Is that what you're driving now? It's not clear from your OP.

There's also a difference between an individual and a population. If unemployment is high and your cousin Billy is out of work, you might preach to him about hard work and bootstraps and how there are jobs out there if he's just hungry enough. But if you're the governor of Ohio it's silly to look at your unemployment statistics and just dismiss it by saying "there are jobs out there if people work hard enough to get them, they need to take personal responsibility for their situation." The governor is going to be interested in comparing his state's unemployment with neighboring states; if it's higher than, say, Indiana, does that mean that Indianans are just better at taking personal responsibility? Do Ohians just need to be more accountable for their own actions? This isn't an ideological debate, otherwise nobody would be blaming the president, whoever it is, for unemployment rates, ever. Fundamentally everyone accepts that there are things governments can do to affect the unemployment rate, either for better or worse. We differ on what those things are, of course, but if you think that bad government can make it hard for people to get jobs, then why would you put 100% of the blame on the unemployed? Certainly some of the blame would be on that bad government, and if that's true, then certainly good government (i.e., good policy) can make things better for people. Tying this in with the income gap, it's reasonable to tell Billy that he needs to live within his means so he can save more money, but that's not a particularly useful solution for a governor looking at keeping an educated workforce in his state. How ridiculous would it be if a major employer was debating pulling out of Ohio because of an increasingly unhappy and uneducated workforce, and Kasich just threw his hands up in the air and said, "The workforce needs to take personal responsibility for their own income and education, it's not my problem." Only the staunchest of libertarians would vote for that guy.

Sold.

Put it in terms of dollars and it makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

If the seller stuff is notarized, though, you should be able to fill in the buyers' name on the spot. That's my plan, at least. You always run the risk that the buyer won't actually title it, but I've taken to making duplicate bills of sale so I at least have some record that the thing is no longer mine. Although as I look at this title I realize that the previous owner is not the person I bought it from, and I remember that I had gotten the signed title she had given him and he'd just never registered it. I hate that. Fortunately there weren't any problems. I sold my motorcycle in Texas last fall and did this -- don't believe the title needed to be notarized, but apparently it's common for the title to change hands multiple times without ever seeing a government employee. Things work differently there, registration is for a set time and can transfer with ownership.

Shit, complete brain fart. Yes, meant to say buyer information. IIRC in the past, I've had the seller part filled out and notarized and just handed the title over to the buyer for him to fill in his own name. Not sure what state(s) that's like, though. I did most of my buying/selling in Nebraska.

Went to my bank this morning to have a title notarized, and the guy wouldn't do it without the *buyer's* info filled in. It's been a while since I've sold a car in Ohio, is that normal? I suppose it does say as much right there on the title, but I don't remember having to do that. (Edited to correct stupid mistake)

Right, that's the thing... if we get actionable evidence that ISIS is operating a camp in Mexico, it will be blown up post haste. So I'm not particularly worried. Why is this breaking news, then? Ah, because ISIS in Mexico means Obama sucks. Thanks for spelling that out, Infowars. Right, Obama sucks. Thanks Liberty News. Even though they're not quite able to explain how this is an Obama scandal, Newsmax is right there suggesting it. Obama sucks. Thanks Newsmax.

I'm skeptical, and not just because every source on this is a nutjob site. ISIS's fight isn't in the US. They're not al-Queda, who want to remove Western influence from the Middle East. They want to create an Islamic State in the holy land, and attacking sites in the American Southwest doesn't do much to advance that goal. Plus their hands are kinda full right now. I could be wrong, but like I said... skeptical.

Bought my last bike at Retagit, prior to that I picked up a nice hybrid on CL. Personally I wouldn't buy a kid a new bike unless I couldn't find anything suitable used. http://www.retagit.com/Catalog.aspx?categoryid=142200 As you say, they don't take care of them, they outgrow them, they beat the shit out of them... easy to watch them do that to a used $250 bike than something you dropped $500 on.

When it comes to corporate tax breaks, you're willing to let governmental bodies "do the math" to figure out if lowering taxes will make a stronger economy. But when I suggest that those same governmental bodies should do the same math to figure out if wealth inequality will make for a weaker economy and a less competitive country in the long run, you start ranting about personal responsibility? And then there is a chorus of agreement from people who have benefited from a strong government and a healthy society who just want to make sure that none of their tax dollars go to over-extended entitled leeches because you all busted your ass and were never handed nothing. As though you would all be living comfortable, middle-class lives in a country with a terrible, corrupt government like Haiti because you're just that plucky. Someone asked why people might be concerned about wealth inequality and I tried to give an answer that did not appeal to bleeding heart liberal ideals about fairness and humanity and instead focus on the economic benefits of policies that might help to keep equality in check, and do I get an honest debate in return? Not really. Instead here comes the "welfare queens are ruining America" brigade, falling over themselves to demonize lazy entitled liberals more than the next guy. It doesn't seem to matter how many times people point out solid facts showing that welfare isn't really a big deal in terms of our total tax burden. Facts get ignored because powerful people have a vested interest in diverting attention away from the real sources of our national debt and deficit. Blame welfare! And then I get accused of drinking the kool-aid. Seriously.

Right, I think that's part of the problem with this debate. Let's imagine 3 alternate universes where wages climbed 15% for the top 10% of income earners since the 1970s. (Numbers may not be accurate) Universe A) Wages have climbed 7% for the lower and middle classes Universe B) Our universe, with only a 3% wage increase Universe C) Wages have actually shrunk 1% The differences in these 3 universes is not major. Maybe jump-in-jive had to spend 3 years saving to start his business in universe B, but 3 years and 3 months in universe C and 2 years 9 months in universe A. Maybe kirks5oh had to take an additional summer off from schoolwork to earn tuition money in universe C, but in B he was able to just scrimp a little more and in universe A he was able to plow through. In all of these universes, people are generally going to feel that they were able to work hard and achieve their financial goals. It's really only the edge cases that will be affected -- the guy barely able to afford a 4 year degree in Universe A might become a community college grad with a slightly lower paying job in Universe C. So as you go from A to B to C, maybe a few more people can't afford college, or can't save up for that business they want to start, or save up for that career change that would make better use of their talents. We'll never know who these people are. And we'll never know how many of them are in that 40% that you're so eager to blame. It's all a bit academic, and it requires us to look at data which frankly is lacking. Personally, it seems like a no-brainer that we'd want to live in Universe A. It's not without drawbacks -- maybe the increased wages just led to more inflation, maybe the "job creators" had less money. I suppose we can debate all of this. But simply because individuals might not feel the pressure doesn't mean there's not an effect.

Well this is certainly something that we can all agree on, yes!?