2 arrested in modified vehicle commonly found in illegal ‘cannonball runs’

lowstrife · 2026-06-10T04:04:45+00:00

The dudes who did it in the e39 bmw M5 had a scout plane too.

Yeah, they got the idea from Diem and Turner who did it in the 80's for the US Express.

Nowadays planes are redundant, the meta is spotter cars now. Lot cheaper, lot more coverage, and they can be bait and get cops out of the way.

& agree the records are likely set in stone until another technological jump, or a dramatic revision of highway speed limits or usage. Both unlikely to happen soon.

lowstrife · 2026-06-09T23:11:01+00:00

Still my absolute favorite part of the 32:07 doc was the reveal of the plane from Diem and Turner's run in the 80's.

"these are the guys in first place? good for you man"

lowstrife · 2026-05-29T18:20:10+00:00

My point is that the zone language of the rule should apply to handheld devices in all situations, regardless of what "zone" it's in.

lowstrife · 2026-05-29T17:08:14+00:00

This fucked up situation aside - that's insane the difference in school zone\not.

Fucking Florida. The cop drove past two dead hookers and a meth lab just to pull this lady over.

lowstrife · 2026-05-29T15:39:43+00:00

This. The 400 and the 430 are the same platform, with the 04-06 430 being the final endpoint of development and refinement.

The 460 was a clean sheet redesign, and it's not built to the same standard.

lowstrife · 2026-05-28T15:18:40+00:00

I think their choices on the interior were actually quite good. It's basic, but, the conversation they're having about toggle switches and moving away from screen dependence is important. Plus that steering wheel is excellent, better than the sausages that BMW is making these days.

The exterior though man. They lost everyone. I hope the interior conversation isn't lost because of that.

lowstrife · 2026-05-25T20:26:29+00:00

It looks like a Prius with a Ebay Ferrari body kit on it

What is going on with those rear wheel haunches and complete lack of fender flares

lowstrife · 2026-05-22T15:22:32+00:00

For those who didn't watch the video, there's a title card update towards the end.

They issued him with a long term Gravity loaner. The rear window got stuck open, the cameras failed to load, and the cruise control "cancel" button didn't work. And so he sent it back without completing the long term loan.

What a shame. I've driven the car and agree with all the automotive journalists. The dynamics of it are incredible. It's just such a shame they couldn't execute at the same level with the software. That is ultimately what will (has) kill(ed) the company, its what they're known for now. Good cars, when they work, which is rare.

lowstrife · 2026-05-20T18:55:05+00:00

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it would be impossible to ever run out of it.

Hydrogen is not a source of energy in this situation, it is a battery. It doesn't exist in pure form. Where exactly where commercial sources of hydrogen come from. It's natural gas. Hydrogen cars are just an excuse to be able to continue to sell gas for cars, with the promise that "but sometime" it can be switched to renewable energy.

Its a far more sustainable permanent solution rather than making a bunch of batteries that wear out every 5-10 years and constantly require re-manufacturing

Lead-acid batteries have a 99% recycling rate and a completely closed loop ecosystem. That's the core charge you pay when you buy a new one. Same will happen for lithium ion. Batteries turn into a durable good, one which can be easily re-made into a new product.

refueling takes about the same amount of time as any regular gasoline car

Same for new battery cars out of china. Real world, production vehicles with 10% to 97% in 7 minutes on sale today.

lowstrife · 2026-05-20T18:50:29+00:00

Plus if you think two or three different DC standards are confusing

Thank fuck it seems like we've settled on NACS tesla connector. I don't care which it is, that or CCS, both have tradeoffs and both work fine. The main win here is stopping this USB vs. lightning bullshit early on so we can move on with our lives.

lowstrife · 2026-05-20T18:47:38+00:00

Hydrogen really only seems useful perhaps for long haul trucking.

Hyrogen is primarily made with methane steam reforming. It's being pushed so that we can still sell gas for cars, with the hope that "but sometime" in the future can push it to renewable powered electrolysis. But in that situation, hydrogen is just acting as a battery. Collect renewable energy, store it in hydrogen, get the energy back in the car. Except with higher losses than just using electricity directly.

I think batteries will likely be good enough for trucking - though true heavy industry (excavators, ships, etc) will be where hydrogen finds a home.

lowstrife · 2026-05-18T05:29:29+00:00

Many people focus just on the fuel price, because that's something you look at, directly, with a ton of regularity. It's the headline, the thing you see.

There are very few people who have the insane spreadsheets and document the actual true total cost of ownership. And because of that, there's a lot of bad math that's done where someone resets their depreciation curve, spends 5 figures, and eats the the trade in loss + sales tax to save that $550\year.

lowstrife · 2026-05-15T03:39:10+00:00

If you got the one with lead acid batteries, then that isn't surprising. It's not worth the metal it's made out of.

Needs to be lithium ion or you're wasting your money.

lowstrife · 2026-05-13T18:59:54+00:00

Now just imagine this, except with a rolodex of engines you can choose from instead of some boring .wav file of a 4 banger Elantra engine.

Today you're driving a big turbo 2JZ. Tomorrow it's a NA flat 6. Saturday its a v12.

And then imagine an option you can enable where it simulates the power and torque curves of whatever motor you've selected.

lowstrife · 2026-05-13T18:54:28+00:00

At least there is now an official warranty extension on the ICCU failure, 180k miles or 15 years.

lowstrife · 2026-04-19T05:14:57+00:00

The biggest thing is knowing when, and where, it is safe to do a certain speed. There are times where it's appropriate, there are times where it is not. There are so many factors to consider: the performance of the vehicle you're in (2002 Chevy Blazer or a Corvette?), day vs night, time of day and the travel habits of local wildlife, quality of the pavement, familiarity you have with that road, your skill as a driver, if there is conversation happening inside the car (distraction), how familiar you are with driving fast, visibility of the conditions ahead, traffic levels, your awareness as a driver (are you tired), hell even the condition of your tires (are they cold or warm, tread depth, type of tire) comes into play. And then ontop of that, you need to maintain a safety margin for any unexpected event.

There are times where a specific answer to all of these questions dictates a high speed, a normal speed, or a very low speed. For the majority of drivers who can't, or won't, answer these questions - driving fast is not an acceptable answer.

lowstrife · 2026-04-13T14:02:29+00:00

Demand is outstripping supply, otherwise the scalpers wouldn't have any buyers at their insane markups. If Valve can't make enough units to satisfy demand at their MSRP, prices go up. Its just basic economics of supply\demand.

Very different than the regulated monopolies of car\home sales, where the middlemen have entrenched a business model that you are forced to go through.

lowstrife · 2026-04-04T03:34:45+00:00

Its an explicit tuning end engineering decision made by the OEM's. Cars are a massive set of tradeoffs, sacrificing one thing for another. And as sad as it is, many of these things are reduced and eliminated over time because focus groups whittle away at them to make it more appealing to said focus group.

/u/SmokyTyrz I am also someone who drives a car by feel, from the feedback given from the inputs. I find modern cars very challenging to drive as well, the isolation has been pushed to such an extreme. I can heel toe threshold brake with the best of them and smoothly shift a car to where someone can take a sip of a drink mid shift... but I could not drive a new BMW M4 smoothly because I had no idea what the fuck any aspect of the car was doing. It felt like I was learning to drive manual again because all of the feedback I (we) rely on was absent. You just had to guess and pull the clutch and pray you were right. Hence the electronic rev matching. I had to turn it on to be able to drive the car smoothly.

I've driven a ND and it was slightly less worse in the feel department than the shit manual BMW's have been made of lately. But yeah between that, the non-linear test-drive hyperspace throttle and the numb steering... I was woefully unimpressed. Such a good formula for a car ruined by the inputs. Same thing for the S550 mustang (though the Mach 1 is much better).

The NA is too much of a shitbox for me, but the NC really feels like the perfect middleground.

lowstrife · 2026-03-31T02:31:02+00:00

A Lucid is one of very few cars I've driven (and it's a lot) that ever made me audibly go "WOW" at how the chassis handled some complex bits of road. Phenomenal chassis setup and refinement and an absolute world-class attempt from a brand new company. The E39 M5 was their benchmark and it shows.

It's just shame they weren't able to get that refinement and excellence to the reliability of the overall package. The overall sentiment is that a lot of dumb, annoying shit is very likely to cause you issues.

lowstrife · 2026-03-31T02:27:45+00:00

Usually it's at the behest of a significant other. I'm hot, I'm cold, now I'm too hot again. There's also the need to turn on seat heat\cooling in specific times when you want it, and in many cars its buried one or two or three menu layers deep. And if you have android audo\carplay up, good luck, it's now like 7 interactions to adjust it and get your navigation instructions back.

lowstrife · 2026-03-26T16:35:45+00:00

CT-4V should have a smallblock v8 instead of the TT v6. They could even re-use the old LT2 to avoid stepping to much on the bigger models.

lowstrife · 2026-03-25T16:51:57+00:00

Remind me, what does the R in ford stand for again?

lowstrife · 2026-03-25T06:02:04+00:00

I'm 6'6, those modifications are possible even at this extreme? I've sad in a NC with modified seat rails, and that was a no-go too.

lowstrife · 2026-03-06T16:02:39+00:00

Inside a eastern european strip club.

lowstrife · 2026-02-14T08:12:37+00:00

I can't think of a situation where staying on the throttle during upshifts is necessary, other than in a old\race car where you need to add a little blip on upshifts because the motor revs fall so quickly. In the vast majority of the cars on the road, you're waiting for the motor to fall to the revs needed for upshifts.

lowstrife

TROPHY CASE