Enthusiast Car Culture is Being Killed - Change My Mind

In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :

That's a BMW I8.  Our (car enthusiast) mechanic has two.  Not cheap, and not pure electric, but probably the fastest 3 cylinder car at the moment...

nocones said:

When if ever has any "enthusiast" vehicle been in the top 25 on an annualized sales basis?  

Half a million Mustangs in 1966.

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

nocones said:

When if ever has any "enthusiast" vehicle been in the top 25 on an annualized sales basis?  

Half a million Mustangs in 1966.

 

 

That's about half the number of Impalas sold that year. I'm having trouble finding US-wide sales numbers for that year, any idea where the Mustang lands overall?

Were Mustangs enthusiast cars at the time, or just snazzy runabouts? I'd love to know the demographic breakdown.

APEowner said:

  Of course the K swapped Civics will be in the vintage class, driven by old men and women and will be seconds off the pace of the new stuff but there's still going to be a culture surrounding them and they'll be just as legit as the kids with the Teslas with wire wheels and hydraulics at the nearby low rider show.

Now I kind of want to see a Model 3 with crazy paint work, whitewalls and 100 spokes 3 wheeling down the street. 

Electric vehicles with be fully cemented in my psyche when we have electric aircraft with range. That will be awesome. I suspect in the next decade I will see just that up at Oshkosh. 

Enthusiasts? A kid, (yes, kid. I think he was maybe 20) built his own using R/C building techniques. He admits that it doesn't fly all that well, but it flys. He had the balls to design,  build, and fly his own electric aircraft.

Enthusiasm is far from dead.

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

nocones said:

When if ever has any "enthusiast" vehicle been in the top 25 on an annualized sales basis?  

Half a million Mustangs in 1966.

 

 

A lot of those were 6 cylinder automatic 'secretaries cars'. Ford made them with a back seat so they can be family cars. The 289 4 speeds were a bit more rare and the Shelby GT 350s were even more so.

Keith Tanner said:

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

nocones said:

When if ever has any "enthusiast" vehicle been in the top 25 on an annualized sales basis?  

Half a million Mustangs in 1966.

 

 

That's about half the number of Impalas sold that year. I'm having trouble finding US-wide sales numbers for that year, any idea where the Mustang lands overall?

Were Mustangs enthusiast cars at the time, or just snazzy runabouts? I'd love to know the demographic breakdown.

Total sales were 9M, so 500K is definitely in the top 25.

As for the second question it's going to have to depend on your definition of "enthusiast car".  They weren't all being raced, certainly.

(And I'm not pretending this has anything to do with the original topic, I just thought it was an interesting question in a vacuum)

Keith Tanner said:

The mistake we all make is assuming that all car culture is OUR car culture.

"People who don't like the things I like in the same way that I like them are part of some faction of people different from me who are ruining the world."

Shockingly, an attitude which extends even beyond car culture.

New York Nick said:

I feel like this whole thread is an elaborate trolling.

Its obvious trolling, he does nothing but make 5 new accts, soft troll to build up his post counts, then change his screen name and get totally inappropriate.  He then waits 6 months and changes his SN and starts posting again. 

I haven't read an entire post in this thread, but I can tell you for a fact that he's posted under atleast 2 different accounts in this thread.

Please stop feeding the troll!

johndej said:

Ok boomer

Really? How's that any better than any other slur?

Ok boomer isn't funny or clever, its a slur, no better than any other.

If you think the guys a berkeleywit, tell him so, but resorting to  a generalised slur if pretty damn ordinary. 

In reply to daeman :

No better than any slur? I can think of a dozen or so that are a lot worse. I agree name calling isn't great but let's not get all "any bad thing is as bad as all bad things" here. Instead let's focus on how cool fast cars are. 

The problem with electric vehicles is that they need to make cooler noises.

I'm waiting for aftermarket modifications so that when I accelerate at WOT, I can choose whether the my car sounds like the Enterprise engaging warp drive or the Millenium Falcon making the jump to light speed.

An Ominous Hum when engaging launch control at a stoplight would also be desirable.

My contribution to the thread:  I get to share my new sticker on the '93 Lightning.

Electric cars are nice...for other people.

And the Mach-E is not a Mustang.

You may now go back to discussing the term 'boomer'.

The first response should have been-

"how about you prove your point instead of trying to dissuade you from that point"

Especially when one got deeper into the reason the OP came to that conclusion was so very flawed.  Extrapolating the entire world based on two people getting an EV, who didn't get the vehicle for their EV virtue, but it was a better fit for them- yea- the conclusions were meaningless.  Or just making up reasons to get upset.

ddavidv said:

My contribution to the thread:  I get to share my new sticker on the '93 Lightning.

Electric cars are nice...for other people.

And the Mach-E is not a Mustang.

You may now go back to discussing the term 'boomer'.

I had a dog named Greta once. She liked riding in the XJ.

There is a Mach-E in my parking garage at work. Parked next to my Ecoboost it looks more like every other crossover made, except with Mustang tail lights. Not sure what all the fuss is about.

I mean, I really don't give a single damn about the environment and fuel costs are something that I've accepted.  I'm driving a 10 cylinder Excursion for crying out loud and I get pretty excited when I'm able to actually get double-digit mileage.  I think they've named a street after me in Riyadh.  Well, it's really more of an alley, but you've gotta start somewhere.  When I'm next to something with a loud exhaust, I'll wind the windows down, turn off the radio, and hush my passengers so I can enjoy the sound and smell of the exhaust.  If I could buy a candle to burn in my living room that smelled like catalytic-converter-free racing fuel exhaust and/or Jet A, I'd get a whole box of them.

But damn do I want an electric car!  Thanks to tuition, I'm not in a position to drop the kind of money that they want for a Rivian or a Lightning so that gets me thinking about what it would be like to sell off the truck, the trailer, the Neon, and bring a generator on a trailer behind something electric to Rallycross.  An electric motor is just better at providing rotational power than trying to convert the up-and-down motion of an explosion.  Why waste all that effort to do something that doesn't make you go any faster and gives you more things to break?  Isn't a race car about compromising everything in the name of increasing reliability and reducing lap times?  (And protecting the occupant, but that's not germane to the conversation)  So if you compromise the sound and the smell in order to get something that goes faster, requires less maintenance (faster pit stops!), and lasts longer (endurance racing!), how is that not "enthusiast"?

Boomer is a slur? I thought Boomers were the greatest American generation. So, how is it a slur?

yupididit said:

Boomer is a slur? I thought Boomers were the greatest American generation. So, how is it a slur?

No, Boomers are the children of the greatest American generation.

The greatest American generation fought and won WWII, then came home and got busy.  The result was the Baby Boom, aka Boomers.

wae said:

 If I could buy a candle to burn in my living room that smelled like catalytic-converter-free racing fuel exhaust and/or Jet A, I'd get a whole box of them.

Race fuel scented candle not sure how good it is, first link that wasn't amazon.

I remember talking with a buddy about how I am seriously considering getting a Tesla Model 3 as my next car. I do a lot of highway driving, so it makes a lot of sense to me. There was some joking around about man cards and what not but he even said it would make a lot of sense for me since I do have a lot of highway everyday. He's admitted to wanting to find something smaller and greener just for his small in town trip to work and home everyday.  

Beer Baron said:

An Ominous Hum when engaging launch control at a stoplight would also be desirable.

Yeah I could get behind that. The pedestrian safety noises many of them make are pretty silly.

Dumbasses blocking intersections to do donuts and rolling coal and E36 M3 will do more damage to car culture then EVs. 

In before thread lock 

Beer Baron said:

The problem with electric vehicles is that they need to make cooler noises.

I'm waiting for aftermarket modifications so that when I accelerate at WOT, I can choose whether the my car sounds like the Enterprise engaging warp drive or the Millenium Falcon making the jump to light speed.

An Ominous Hum when engaging launch control at a stoplight would also be desirable.

They actually make a pretty cool noise when you get on it. They don't broadcast it to the neighbors, but you get this tense high voltage whine when it's deploying many electrons at once. It's fun.

The Teslas do have an external speaker that you can use to play other noises. Wouldn't be that hard to hijack it and have it play your Ominous Hum or Enterprise noise based on what's coursing through the CAN data.

93EXCivic said:

Dumbasses blocking intersections to do donuts and rolling coal and E36 M3 will do more damage to car culture then EVs. 

Unless that IS your car culture. Which, alas, it is to some people.

I feel like there has been many deletions and can't follow......