Fact: I've always wanted a Honda S2000. The car is perfectly proportioned and just dang cute!



A year or so ago there was the beautiful one above for sale near us. My husband said I could buy it if I wanted to. After all, he owned two cars for years!

So I considered it for a day or so but then decided that I really didn't need a second car. But, I REALLY wanted to ride in it. I contacted the owner, a woman who LOVED it but was selling it to buy a larger car to cart her grandkids around in, and asked her if she would help me check off an item from my Bucket List and give me a ride.

She asked me if I wanted to drive it! Heck yes! So, as I got in, I proceeded to put my right knee into the steering wheel! OUCH! I put the seat back as far as it would go and still I had my knees half way up and couldn't stretch them out all the way. I'm only 5'6" but I have long legs... And, the steering wheel was nearly in my chest!

But, I drove the car around for a few minutes and realized that it was just too small even for me. It was built for really small people...

I did like that it was a manual transmission and it had a lot of get up and go! So at least I finally got to drive one, and they still catch my eye when I see one on the road.

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"There is never enough time to do all the nothing you want." Calvin & Hobbes

That is NOT a car you want to give to a beginner! With the acceleration and top speed, it is practically a two-liter (122 cu in) relative of the Shelby Cobra. Stomp on the accelerator at the wrong time when you’re NOT driving arrow-straight, and you’re going to experience some serious oversteer, up to and including a bad (multiple) spin. And anytime you exceed 200 kilometers per hour (124 mph), even many sections of the vaunted German Autobahn suddenly seem like twisting mountain roads, as I have experienced with my 134 cu in 148 hp Opel Astra with its certified top speed of 214 kph (133 mph). On a very, very long straight stretch of the six-lane (three in each direction) Autobahn A3 not far south from Frankfurt (the one in Hessia) I had the opportunity to keep the accelerator floored for … I really don’t know, felt like a long time, may have been less than a minute, certainly less than two. Indicated speed 225 kph, or 140 mph. 62.5 meters or 206 feet per second. Or, in the minute I may have been able to keep the speed up, 3.75 kilometers – or two-and-a-third miles per minute. Let me tell you, those three lanes on my side looked like a *bleeping* country lane. Even Porsches keep their distance and are in no hurry to pass you at that speed. And just forget mileage – the engine is binging like college students on a spring break in Florida!

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Hanasian
Annalist, Physician, & Historian
of The Black Company of the Dúnedain,
The Free Company of Arnor
~ ~ ~
Durian: Dúnedain Ranger of the North: Rhudaurian Lineage
- - - -
Roleplay Repository

My top three dream cars have been for a long time the 1950s Mercedes 300 SL gullwing, the early Jaguar E types (I think it was called XKE in the US), and the Shelby Cobra. Totally impractical toys for millionaires, but that’s why I call them dream cars. I actually once saw a Cobra parked somewhere in the town where I went to high school. It looked quite small (in the early 1970, US cars were still land battleships), and it was the 427 cu in monster. My 1985 coffee-table book “Muscle Cars” states that only 356 of them were ever built by Carrol Shelby. A car that very definitely belonged only in the hands of experienced, licensed race drivers, especially considering the suspension and steering of the time. It was good sports car stuff for the time, but it wasn’t until much later replicas (I read about one with a 451 cu in engine once) that state-of-the-art sports car suspensions finally caught up with the brute power of the engine.

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That's a cute run-about, Hanasian!

Gandolorin, I always wanted a Jaguar XKE coupe, not the fast back. When I first met my husband, we discussed getting one and putting a better engine in it. But then we learned that it has a monocoque body, which meant that if I happened to wreck it, (not that I planned to wreck it...), it would cost a LOT to get it fixed, since the body was basically one piece wrapped around the interior.

Instead, my husband bought a 1970 MGB at a repo sale, bought the Ford 302 engine from our old 9 passenger station wagon that was sitting in a field at my folks, and put that in the MG. He worked on that car for the last 39 years, improving the handling and mostly removing everything that was British. At the time, it put Corvettes and Porsches to shame. And it just looked like a stock MG.

We had a LOT of fun in that car! But when it came to him not being able to easily crawl out from underneath it after fixing it, he decided to sell it. Got top dollar too.

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"There is never enough time to do all the nothing you want." Calvin & Hobbes

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Hanasian
Annalist, Physician, & Historian
of The Black Company of the Dúnedain,
The Free Company of Arnor
~ ~ ~
Durian: Dúnedain Ranger of the North: Rhudaurian Lineage
- - - -
Roleplay Repository

(Maybe we do need a car thread?)
All right, enough about cars, already!

Erm …
Any “Hell’s Angels” here? I mean (motor) bikers.
My total experience is tagging along on the back seat of a smallish thingy (no Harley or Gold Wing or stuff like that) once, in maybe the mid-1970s.

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My "boyfriend" in high school had a Kawasaki 300. I wasn't allowed on motorcycles but he and I would sneak out anyway. He did always make me wear a helmet, even though it wasn't the law yet.

Right out of high school I had a boyfriend who had a Harley sportster. That was a really nice ride. We didn't wear helmets -- it just wasn't cool and not yet the law. One day I didn't braid my waist-length hair and let it fly... It took my Mom about an hour to comb out the tangles.

A vehicle thread you say?

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"There is never enough time to do all the nothing you want." Calvin & Hobbes

Well, you certainly helped keep this thread in the “vroom-vroom” lane, so who knows. As a contrast, football (soccer to the ignorants) has been something I just couldn’t care less about (my wife has picked up the slack) since the 1978 World Cup final between the Netherlands and Argentina in Argentina. As this is not the Rant Thread, I will now Cease and Desist on this topic (I need a PG-33 site to do what happened then justice).

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Yeah, well, I try to do my part...

I watched the Worlds a few years ago but the Vuvuzelas drove me nuts!

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"There is never enough time to do all the nothing you want." Calvin & Hobbes

That was almost certainly the 2010 one in South Africa.
For some strange reason, the next one in 2014 in Brazil elicits fond memories for me ...

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Hanasian
Annalist, Physician, & Historian
of The Black Company of the Dúnedain,
The Free Company of Arnor
~ ~ ~
Durian: Dúnedain Ranger of the North: Rhudaurian Lineage
- - - -
Roleplay Repository

Well, especially the Spaniards were frustrated because their team, as defending champions, got the boot right at the beginning in the group phase. But they and the French didn't have a chance, as all of Brazil was probably rooting for Germany. The only thing worse for them than not getting their sixth title (they were also beaten decisively 3:0 in the “small final” for third place by the Netherlands, though it was not the 7:1 thrashing they got from Germany in the semi-final) would have been their arch-Rival Argentina gaining its third title in Brazil!

The Argentines had played quite defensively in the WC, despite having mega-star Lionel Messi (and a couple of other world-class strikers), but Germany’s 2014 team was probably one of the two best German teams ever fielded - the other was the 1990 Wold Cup winners for the third title - and may commentators felt that Germany was almost a logical winner for its fourth title that year. Took down Portugal with mega-star Christiano Ronaldo 4:0 in the first game of the group phase. Portugal duplicated Argentina’s emphasis on defense in the 2016 European Cup, with the “slightly” better result in taking the title against host country (and they were certainly no slouches) France. It was Portugal’s first major title for the national team. They had been favorites in the European Cup final 2004 at home, but were beaten 1:0 in overtime by Greece, the biggest upset in football history.

(Maybe we also need a dedicated sports thread? Be warned, I can pontificate endlessly on baseball – at least about things forty years or older!)

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Yes, it was the 2010 one in South Africa. They tried nearly successfully to ban them in Brazil.



Sounds good to me. On another site, we had a Sports/Olympics thread. A lot of it was talk about hockey. I love sports of most any kind. Not fond of basketball, but I'll watch most anything else. I played a lot of sports too, so I'm somewhat aware of what it takes to play them.

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"There is never enough time to do all the nothing you want." Calvin & Hobbes

I'm assuming you mean ice hockey, as the rest of the world which manages to get its sports terms right calls it (this is "soccer" / American Football territory ). And on that sport, Evil~Shieldmaiden could probably post us to death. Maybe a general sports thread where we can meander from one sport to the next is best, it doesn't seem like we have enough users active to keep specific sports threads afloat. Except for duos or perhaps trios who do the posting with the rest of us only reading with a "say what?" feeling.

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Tevildo, Prince of Cats