atomic_fungus (atomic_fungus) wrote,
atomic_fungus
atomic_fungus

#6148: A lot less angry tonight

Kim du Toit talks about the New Beetle. Apparently Volkswagen is going to discontinue it, because it's not a sales powerhouse like its forebear was.

Well, duh.

The original Volkswagen Type I "Beetle" was successful for one reason: it was an inexpensive, durable car. Bugs lasted much longer than their American counterparts, and for all of that they cost less. The design hardly changed at all over its run, and there were so many of them you could get parts just about anywhere without the premium you paid for parts for most foreign cars. The only reason they stopped making them came from the fact that they simply could not be made to run clean enough for American smog laws, and converting it to water-cooled was cost-prohibitive. They continued to be made for the Mexican and South American market for a very long time after they stopped being sold in the United States.

The new Beetle was only shaped something like the original, had a water-cooled transverse I4 engine mounted to a transaxle in the front of the car, and the base model cost eighteen thousand dollars, which was above "economy car" territory. It was not better in any way than half a dozen other cars of the same size, and Volkswagen had long since lost its reputation for building long-lasting cars. And it was expensive.

The newer version looks more like the original air-cooled version, but it's even more costly now than the first "new Beetle" and still has none of the character of the original.

I do believe that if a manufacturer wants to sell a shitton of cars, they should build something like the original Beetle: simple, economical, without a crapton of horseshit, but which performs reasonably well compared to other vehicles. And price the thing low enough that people can afford to buy one without taking out a 10-year loan.

Might as well wish for the Moon, I suppose.

* * *

Sure, islam is just a bowl of cherries, isn't it? It was not lost on me that the articles talking about the abuse this 16-year-old girl suffered at the hands of her parents identify her as a "Texas teen" instead of "muslim teen".

But, hey! Who are we to judge, right? I mean, her parents were only beating her and burning her with oil because she refused to be sold to a man twice her age for $20,000. It's the religion of peace! Shut up, you haters!

* * *

That quote certainly sounds as if it came from Ronald Reagan.

* * *

Go down to the place where the mexican girl is tearing the US Constitution and folding her arms defiantly. Read from there to the graphic.

Instead of letting hispanic lesbians tear up the constitution of our country, let's just ship them back to mexico.

* * *

Pretty busy at work yesterday and today. Day off Wednesday, at least.

*

Either I'm experiencing the placebo effect, or else that Augmentin is jet-propelled, because I feel much better than I did yesterday. In fact, I feel better than I have in a while. Still a little woozy, though.

*

Now I'm going to go do something fun.
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