Ed Kim

My thoughts on @cnbc.com about the return of the V8 to the Ram 1500 pickup!

Oh wow thanks!! I didn’t know it had already been posted - thank you. :)

So we legitimately can call Teslas Nazi cars now.

Yes. That’s absolutely a big part of it.

Best Star Trek movie of all time with the possible exception of First Contact! And perfect recital of that scene. Funny thing, I just rewatched that movie as the Star Trek discussion group I’m in decided to revisit.

Which basically means today’s new cars are a screaming bargain? Hard to say that with a straight face but maybe it’s true. Maybe they just feel expensive because everything else is so expensive now and we can’t afford shit.

It's true. The new car affordability issue has more to do with the cost of EVERYTHING rising. My family's 1990 Honda Accord LX cost $15,000. Today, that's almost $37,000 for a car with plastic wheel covers and few modern safety features. Today's Accord is a relative bargain by comparison.

And to continue that thought, most consumers shopping at new entry level vehicle price points would rather buy a nicely equipped used vehicle than a new stripper with no AC and crank windows. Modern car durability enables this.

Size is only part of the issue. The additional sheetmetal and glass and carpet and plastic actually only add very moderately to the cost. It's more about feature content, both in terms of mandated safety and emissions content and consumer-demanded comfort/convenience/tech features.

Mind totally blown. One of Porsche’s first vehicles was an EREV. 125 years ago.

🤣🤣🤣 TikTok video by briantylercohen

My take on that parade is that it was such a disservice to the US Army. All it did was to make the US Army look weak, sad, and pathetic. The US Army didn't deserve such humiliation. The orange clown disrespected the US Army in the most Trumpy way possible. The silence, sparse crowd, and the squeaks!

PEOPLE WHERE ARE THE LOCAL LA-AREA PROTESTS??? I know they’re everywhere because I see pics posted after the fact but that does me no good. Scouring BS and Google turns up literally nothing. Numbers are important but I can’t be present if I don’t know where my presence can be of value.

Absolutely. I remember that everyone in the area was proud of that anthem. Even though we lived in Irvine, we were in LA so often that it did feel like an extension of home to me.

I need to do this. I do remember the line “Look at that bum over there man, he’s down on his knees.” For some reason, that’s the one lyric I remember. And yeah, that hasn’t aged well as the tone of that line was humorous, and the actual homeless situation in LA today is anything but.

Looks like Google may be hiding the effects of the ICE raid and subsequent protest at the Home Depot in Paramount? Apple Maps is showing the area completely affected but Google Maps shows the area like nothing ever happened.

I meant Monday. He closed on Sunday

That hits all the Gen X nostalgia buttons!! I’d have called the Fox Package though since Toyota literally right now is launching the Corolla FX Edition, which similarly recalls Gen X performance nostalgia. This means there are two FX special editions recalling the “rad era” at the exact same time.

Omg it’s Anders!! Gonna see him on Sunday for the latest Saab story. 🤣😭

We’ve got a long long way to go. And I’ve been saying forever that it’s a mistake to for Hyundai Motor Group to switch their 800v EV models to NACS so quickly when charging these models on Superchargers is much slower than using a proper 800v charger. That’s a rare but big misstep from them.

Haha @robbydegraffap.bsky.social as per our conversation. 🤣

I’m sure we probably did! That’s all I ever got there. I still like them. Did you used to go to the one off Culver and Michelson? That was our go-to. We went like all the time because my dad loved it. He was all about the Famous Star.

I mostly agree save for one: the Western Bacon Cheeseburger is as good as it always was.

Dude, I remember the baked potato bars!! Also, the one by my dad’s old office next to John Wayne Airport sold beer. 🍺

It looks good on collapsed suspension! 🤣

Actually, it’s probably just in its lowest setting for loading stuff. We have a neighbor with one and it always looks like this in their driveway.

I know it because the wife’s side of the family hails from Michigan and Ohio!

WOW. TIL that not only did Honda borrow Isuzu’s Rodeo/Pickup platform for the Passport, but they also borrowed Isuzu’s pickup too for Southeast Asia! So yeah, there was once a “Passport” pickup.😮 #weirdcarbs www.instagram.com/p/DJ-cA6ghTZ...

I remember that! I thought it was so cool, especially in a non-luxury car.

Come to think of it, they were getting brave with color and trim even before NF f/l. I had a Tiburon GT (the one with a six-speed manual and Pioneer stereo with aux input - the main reason I chose it bc no other Hyundai could play an iPod) company car that had brown seats in a mostly black cabin.

NF facelift was particularly neat. That’s when they started getting brave with color and trim: it was available with a lovely brown and gray interior at a time when anything outside of gray or beige was radical in non-lux cars.

Accent, Elantra, Sonata, Azera, Tiburon, Tucson, Santa Fe, Veracruz, Entourage. Genesis Coupe and Sedan may have overlapped with Veracruz briefly. Veracruz was sort of a proto-Genesis in that the material quality was definitely lux. Squishy soft-touch materials in places you’d never even notice!

Having been a product planner there when it came out, I can confirm it was indeed Infinity!