A week in a proper car. Answered

Is this laughable?

In the UK, it would be illegal.

Why?

Wheels have to be enclosed by arches.

Well, what's the point of that?

Some little thing about not tangling pedestrians in your running gear if you hit them.

Don't you think they would get hurt anyways? Lol

Compare the bruises and contusions of bouncing off a wing to the inconvenience of having limbs stripped of their flesh and/or ripped clean off.

Not really. No, I knew the answers I was just confirming them.

I'd take loosing the limb. :)

That actually looks pretty good!

Dude, my first car is an 88 reliant k. stop complaining.

Thats the one I am driving, it has fantastic mileage (22mpg) even though I floor it on the way to school, I'm a gas waster with my little 4 cylinder is hammering away. True the odo doesn't top 85, it will still get going fast, I just haven't had a long empty strip to fully test that on. All in all, even though it doesn't look sweet (yet) on the outside, I can still put a mattress and some curtains in the back ;-D

it has fantastic mileage (22mpg)

You can tell you live near Detroit! I get more than that in the Mini, on pure urban cycle, and Kitewife's Focus gets around 40mpg on her mixed (urban/rural) driving.

How many litres is a gallon? Australia's a bit out of wack with the rest of the world.

The rest of the world (aside from the US and some other country) uses the metric (base10) system, we americans you the imperial system (grrrrr metric is sooooo much better)

1 US gallon = 3.78541178 liters

Ahh thanks, I thought England used imperial as well. :P Thanks for clearing this up.

I am not old enough to drive, I am not complaining, Kiteman has 99% convinced me to drive old school cars, but I am just afraid people will laugh.

If its a cool old school car, people won't laugh.

OHHHH, ok. Yeah, people wont laugh, at least not directly.

Since when is 1998 an old school car?

Well, I was just saying it works just like Kiteman says his car works above. No fancy driving helpers, no weird gizmos, etc.

Heh.

My first car, when I turned 17, was also a Mini (a 998cc Mini City), and was also old. Nobody laughed at it, partly because I was one of only two daily drivers in the school, and partly because I, in my 998cc Mini, could beat the other driver across town in his three-litre Capri Sport.

I want to drive a 98' Honda civic when I can drive. It does exactly what you want, and I can mod it to look frickin awesome.

Speedometer

If you need a sensor-reading to know what the car is doing, you are too isolated from the driving process, and treating it like a video game.

Sensor-reading would be more accurate...

Define accurate- a ruler will let you judge distance more accurately than your senses alone, but a ruler isn't much good for judging distance when I say "here, catch this brick".

that is entierley different...

No it's not different at all. When you catch or throw something your brain does the calculations with absolutely no numeric relation what so ever because it can FEEL the weight and judge the speed and angle required. If you can feel how fast your car is going or feel the RPM's and the grooves in the road you can respond alot better as you have more direct inputs that can help your brain make a decision without looking and converting numbers in your head to a logical decision.

You clearly have NO idea what your talking about and doubtfully any experience with standard or older cars.

Well, it's an analogy so will never be identical, but I hope you appreciate the point I am making- sometimes you need to be able to quickly judge something without using a meter to actually measure it. I'd rather have my sense of balance to ride a bike than a spirit level on the handlebars. When someone pulls out in front of me on my motorbike, I don't look at the speedo to see how hard to pull the brakes, I can tell how fast I'm going by sense.

Can you double-de-clutch non-synchro gearboxes? L

I've never had to, but I may have to soon - the synchro is giving up in second gear, and it's a big/expensive job to fix.

They're around - 25,000 on UK roads.

Windscreen? Wow that is strange, Over here it is called Windshield.(and ironically both are spelled right by my spell checker O_o)

I think so.

You like your EVs, huh? :)

I like that car you linked to- with four wheels that wouldn't look at all out of place on UK city streets- apart from the bullet-train nose and "unusual" factor it would hardly warrant a second look. The back end looks suspiciously Suzuki Swift/Geo Metro... sadly I doubt it will ever do that well here because three-wheeled cars will forever have their reputations tarnished by the Reliant Robin and Reliant Regal. It's rather a shame, I'd quite like on of those Xebras otherwise.

It seems that they don't ship outside the US yet. The chassis is built in China, then they are shipped to California, where the electric components are installed. If you happen to stop by Topeka sometime, we'll gladly give you a turn. ;-)

the old presses from the mini plant in england were bought up and are doing good as original parts still, don't know about shipping to US though. Don't know about Mexican mini's but they're still churning out beetles as I understand it. Every old beetle or camper waves at my girlfriend when she's out in her bug. I used to get the same from mini drivers when I owned one. Even the odd porche waves at her! air cooled is awesome :) as for bikes, I think there was a time when bikes were cheap and all people could afford and that probably brought together a sense of community. Enduring the elements together. Now that weekend riders have them as toys to kill themselves on and give us all a bad name, hand waving head nodding gestures seem to fading out. Go to france and they shake there leg at you! its a crazy country, no head nodding for them :D