I swear I just took this screenshot a few seconds ago. What on earth was happening that was so exciting?
Given that sales today have been wholly unremarkable, I shall have to hazard a guess at a deluge of spambots. Damn, for a moment then I thought I was going to be able to afford that Camaro I’ve been lusting after!
IROC Z-28. Oh yeah.
Funny. Over here it is EU cars that folks want. Bentley. Rolls. Jaguar. Camero? Eh. BMW M6 would be more to my liking.
Now that Jaguar is owned by Tata, who are apparently allowing them to redesign Jaguars rather than superannuated Fords, they may be once again desirable; as for Rolls Royce, since BMW took over the marque, they have turned them into ugly great lumps of metal … Bentley they have managed to keep looking decent.
What do I want … a Landrover IIA 12 door diesel. None of your Range Rovers, Freelanders, etc. … not even the Discovery. The IIA was a real Landrover.
Mark
The whole auto industry was really consolidated there for a while. Come to think of it, it still is. The depressing part is when you think you are buying a nice car only to realize that is really is just a division of one of the worst auto manufacturers ever…
I still laugh at the demo of the volvo automatic braking.
Believe it or not, I not only have a wife and two kids, but an entire extended family. At one holiday meal there was talk of “we should get a chassis from a neon and …” Now keep in mind I am the computer guy, one brother in law is an actual auto mechanic and there is a machinist father in law. By about the third round of idea the women collectively kicked us all in the shins and threatened to complete the process of our emasculation.
Personally I want to take a Supra (rear wheel drive), replace all the electronics with linux/bsd based controls then replace the entire drive system with a gasoline powered electric. Think the volt but with lots more torque and the ability to do donuts in parking lots.
Or a poor man’s Tesla.
Now that sounds an awful lot like Ignatius J. Reilly. 
I can just see it. You and you hot-dog shaped cart, stood outside some New Orleans PC emporium, berating all the Windows users for not heading to the Apple Store, seeking the Holy Grail.
I’ve never lusted after an American car. Probably the most remarkable car I ever owned was an Alfasud. Quite extraordinary – it is one of only two cars I have ever driven that actually went where you pointed it (the other was a Lotus Elan). It was surgically precise, which meant that you could go through gaps that really looked too small, and it went round corners absolutely flat with no trace of roll that I could detect. I’ve never felt to secure – and that was driving in Italy (admittedly in the north, which is not the same world as the south).
I did mean a 12-seater, how it ended up with 12 doors, I don’t know … Put it down to the air in Lijiang, Yunnan … 7874 feet above sea-level (2400 metres), so not as much oxygen as I’m used to, living normally at approximately 100–150 feet above sea-level in Xiamen.
Mark
Ah, that explains a lot about Italian driving!
Mark
Ah, Alfasud. Makes me go all Top Gearsy.
Back in the Day, I drove an Alfa Romeo GTZ1, which required 100 percent of a small inheritance to buy, and 60 percent of my US Navy salary to keep running. But I’ve never, before or since, driven anything that left such a smile on my face. Except maybe the 1978 Freightliner with a 475 cat that would chirp the tires in all 13 gears, back before I learned to right real good and no longer had to actually work for a living.
Now I drive a sedate and practical Tacoma, but I still dream of Alfas–if they made a model you could stuff full of firewood or seaweed or hen dressing.
Pah!
No car has ever been better than the old deux-chevaux.
I have vivid memories of my dad’s Nova SS sliding down the Appalachian roads. I can describe the car in detail, interior and exterior, even though only one picture of it exists and it was sold when I was two. While I am not old by most measures of time, it has dawned on my that the generations beneath me has very little to admire in the way of “automobiles”. Other than limited editions and emasculated versions of previous generations of muscle car ('80s Mustang anyone) driving seems to have turned into less of a … hobby? … passion? … and into a dreary requirement for most folks. My fondest memories of of my early child hood picnics are not about the picnic, but the planning of the drive to get to the picnic. Finding a new road, exploring some pavement leading through a valley, the stomach churn of weightlessness cresting a rise at irresponsible speeds. The drive was a much part of the weekend and the vacation as the beach or the mountain top. Now it is all four lanes moving as straight and as fast as possible with mountains leveled and valleys filled to maximize fuel economy and minimize travel time.
My recent purchase of a new car caused more than one salesman to stutter when my wife and I, she has fond travel memories too, asked “doesn’t your company make a care with larger windows?” They didn’t understand that we actually wanted to drive. No destination. The local “auto club” are all about parking your car at the local diner and looking under hoods. When I asked about what trips were planned they looked at me as if I just suggested that they all made of jello and I was a hungry man. Drive their cars? On the road? with other people? Oh the horror! then inhumanity!
But I digress. The 2012 Ford Focus is my last “family car”. Maybe “practical car” is better. I won’t buy another car, disaster free life assumed of course, until the kids are out of the house. The wife and I are already making plans. '70’s vintage Jeep CJ series. The latest BMW Z series (depends on when the kids actually leave!). And an old pickup truck for hauling wood and birds. Nothing with more than two seats. Hopefully I will have the house paid off by then. I will need the mortgage payments for fuel.
Mr. X, this is thread the perfect example of how to get OT.
I had one of the bi-coloured ones - my “mature-student” car. Much earlier I owned a close relative a bit like this, the “luxury” version:
It sipped petrol, taking me and a friend to Greece and back, for what? Tuppence ha’penny?
Goodness me, you’d need to be in a good mood in the morning to open the door to that floriferous vision parked in the driveway! 
Wouldn’t it put you in a good mood?
I’m not sure. The car looks as though it might have too independent a personality. On a grim, grey, rainy Monday, as I trudge through my duties while it floats around in an aura of floral euphoria, I think the car might mock me with knowing irony and a sense of superiority. 
It was also the subject of the only successful car advert ever – the only one that didn’t make you immediately vow never to buy a car from than manufacturer…
[i]FASTER THAN A FERRARI
Traveling flat out @ 71.5mph the Citroen 2CV will easily overtake the Ferrari Mondial traveling @ 65mph.
AS MANY WHEELS AS A ROLLS ROYCE
The £55,240 Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit. How many wheels? Four. The £2,584 Citroen 2CV. How many wheels? Exactly the same.
MORE ROOM THAN A PORSCHE
With a possible 30cu. ft. boot space there’s no need for one of those plastic luggage racks on our little run-about.
CENTRAL DOOR LOCKING
You can easily reach all the doors from the driver’s seat.
THE £2,584 CITROEN 2CV
All you’ll ever need in a car.[/i]
Now that’s what I call advertising…