What is this automotive blasphemy?

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No kidding about those spark plugs...mine were a work of art!

At the top of the plug was a brass 8/32 stud that a knurled acorn nut sat atop (to hold the #10 gauge stranded copper spark wire with a ring terminal) and then the porcelain started with a series of "stacked" art deco rings that cascaded into a six-sided body, terminating at the wide steel base with another ring dividing the steel from the insulator. The porcelain was a hunter green with the edges of the concentric rings painted in a bright red.

There was more detail and craftmanship in a single spark plug than an entire modern automobile...
 
my first car was a 68 jeep wagoner...327 AMC engine and a 3 speed manual on the column. on my honeymoon I tired to teach my new bride how to drive it.....yeah right. it was on the corner lot for sale by the end of the week....

ahhh sparkplug tech. do you remember "fire ring" sparkplugs?? there was no curved ground electrode...the whole threaded side was what the center electrode shot the spark to. then there the triple electrode ones....the gold palladiums which had a center electrode about the size of straight pin. and don't forget the sparkplug "non-fouler" adapters....you can still get them.
 
By the time the Model T appeared in 1908, the steamers and electric cars had already reached their peak and their popularity was already dropping. They might have been popular because of the difficulty of starting early gas powered autos, but not the Model T .

And with the electric cars and steamers being in the $3000 region while the Model T was $500 ( later reduced to $250) they were hardly going for the same market.

The Model T finally got a electric starter in 1919.
 
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So a funny story about automatic vs. Manual. My wife had a friend visit from the UK. We met her at the airport where she rented a car. Having never driven an automatic before she was not too sure about it. But my wife informed her it was easy and she would ride with her.

They climbed into the car, I sat nearby in our car watching for them so we could travel home together. I saw the car start, then saw it move ever so slightly. Then all of a sudden it shot in reverse across the parking row and slammed into another rental parked opposite.

Turns out when she first gave it some gas to reverse out the car did not move, my wife told her she had to "really give it the gas" to get it going which is what she did, she stomped on the gas peddle and it did indeed get going.
 
Over in Europe most people still learn on manuals, and many still drive manuals.

Most cars in Germany are standard manual, and you have the option to pay for automatic.

Most laugh if you ask if they want an automatic.

When I went through German driving school, I learned on a manual BMW 5 series. Was a lot of fun cruising the autobahn in it.
 
My Sky has its own telephone number AND emails me every month with all of its performance data like oil life, miles driven, average speed, miles per gallon, ect., AND the pressure in each of its tires. There's no humidity sensor but it does turn its own headlights on and off depending on light levels. And yes it is a 5-speed manual
 
and most all of them now have a chip that acts like a blackbox on a plane. if there is a wreck they can tell how fast you were going, when you touched the brakes..if your turn signal was on..etc.
 
Yea, there have been a number of court cases where that data was subpoenaed to prove fault in the accident. Something like 10sec is recorded.
I'm waiting for the computers data, GPS (my car knows where it is) data, and its telephone to be combined. Doing 80mph on the interstate my car calls the State police and turns me in. Speeding ticket in the mail!!
 
Most cars nowdays are "fly by wire", everything going through both the ECM (Engine Control Module) and BCM (Body Control Module) - as is the case of my 2008 Scion. Everything in the car was controlled by the BCM, from the doorlocks to the sunroof to the rear hatch release and so on.

At the moment of impact, during the wreck, the battery was annihilated along with the ECM, causing the gauges to freeze where they were, the speedometer reflects a slight drop in speed before it froze, as I was doing about 50mph at the time of the collision.

So this is an indication of what the onboard systems can show to investigators - not just the gauges, but what the BCM (and ECM) was registering at the moment of collision.

 
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