Random Thoughts... [Automotive Edition]

No. Neither does Pontiac.

Back in the era of Detroit dominance, however, it was very much like that like that.

My Impala, for instance, was bottom rung. Want full instrumentation? Buy a Caprice Classic. Want Bucket seats? Buy a Pontiac. "Premium" interior fabrics or real wood trim? Oldsmobile or Buick. Standard Cassette player? Cadillac.

Oddly enough, these discrepancies were sometimes driven by demographics. The Cadillac Fleetwood based on my car had an old-style floor mounted high beam switch. The Impala has it on the indicator stalk. No B-Bodies have flash to pass until 1985. These sorts of things is why the 80s sees the downfall of the American auto industry.

Well, that and this:

Fortune-cover-GM-A-bodies.jpg
 
Hol up. A REV COUNTER being optional? I get that most US cars are auto so it’s not that essential, bur really, that still exists as a paid option?

My 10k Citroen had that as a paying option 10 years ago, I don’t know if you can even get one without in Euro country
I just walked out to the shop at 3am in freezing weather to take this picture of the greatest gauge cluster of all time for you. It was in a car I harvested a manual transmission from.
 

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Coming from a family that traditionally had cheap Fords there's a wave of nostalgia when I see a gauge cluster that consists of a speedo and shitty analogue clock. I never considered Subaru as lazy but that takes the cake.
 
That is brilliant. Not even an analogue clock, but something LESS useful.
 
Hol up. A REV COUNTER being optional? I get that most US cars are auto so it’s not that essential, bur really, that still exists as a paid option?

My 10k Citroen had that as a paying option 10 years ago, I don’t know if you can even get one without in Euro country

I was talking about 1980's GM.

1988-Chevrolet-Caprice-Wagon-Interior-003-Streetside-Classics-Blue-dashboard-steering-wheel-fr...jpg
 
Coming from a family that traditionally had cheap Fords there's a wave of nostalgia when I see a gauge cluster that consists of a speedo and shitty analogue clock. I never considered Subaru as lazy but that takes the cake.
Literally every other Subaru I've ever been in has had a tach - including automatics. Far as I can tell, that cluster is specific to the Brighton trim second gen Legacies, which appear to be some sort of ultra-crappy stripper spec.
 
And I just realized I missed some replies earlier today and posted a picture of an 80's GM dashboard many posts after the issue had been sufficiently dealt with already.
 
I just walked out to the shop at 3am in freezing weather to take this picture of the greatest gauge cluster of all time for you. It was in a car I harvested a manual transmission from.

So today, by complete accident, I stumbled upon this:

kia-pride-1.3-slika-154682101.jpg


A pic of a Kia Pride from local classifieds (also known in other parts of the world as Mazda 121 and Ford Festiva).
 
Our Peugeot 205 had a spedometer and a fuel gauge. No trip odometer.

Obviously being a Peugeot from 1984, neither of the two gauges worked.
 
BL would give you something that looked like a clock but actually wasn't anything on base model cars

c6ac2ee782a9a69cb62189d0342615f2.jpg


That was 50 years ago though, and on anything a bit fancier (Triumph, Rover, etc) the dash would be change so your lack of instruments didn't leave a big gaping hole. The Subaru cluster looks rather newer than that, proper poverty spec.
 
Been watching a youtuber called rainman’s auto repairs. He’s a tech at a napa garage somewhere in the southern parts of the US, judging by the palm trees. He posts pretty much every day, working on customer vehicles.

I have no idea how his boss lets him show customer vehicles on youtube. He’s also wrenching one-handed while holding the camera. He’s probably wasting an hour of every day doing his youtube thing.
 
Unless I’m misunderstanding things, there should still be a customer service person in charge of scheduling the jobs for the techs. If the two four hour jobs he was assigned for the day takes five hours each because of youtube, he’ll be working two hours after closing and their customer will be stuck at the shop waiting for the car that wasn’t done on time.

Not that I mind, I enjoy watching his stuff. But doing what I do for a living, I can’t help wondering how he gets away with it. Especially when he does a bare-minimum oil change on a misfiring minivan full of rotten food leftovers and the resulting bug infestation. Someone owns that thing and they might not want their disgusting habits shown on youtube. ?
 
Someone owns that thing and they might not want their disgusting habits shown on youtube. ?
I always wonder that with all of these channels about car cleaning, carpet cleaning or even plumbing. I watch a channel called Drain Addict and he unblocks pipes. He isn't shy about blaming the house owner for the faults and if he finds non-flushable wipes he'll splat them against the wall. Do the owners realise and does he get many complaints? Oh yeah he also seeks out undigested corn. :ROFLMAO:
 
Unless I’m misunderstanding things, there should still be a customer service person in charge of scheduling the jobs for the techs. If the two four hour jobs he was assigned for the day takes five hours each because of youtube, he’ll be working two hours after closing and their customer will be stuck at the shop waiting for the car that wasn’t done on time.

Not that I mind, I enjoy watching his stuff. But doing what I do for a living, I can’t help wondering how he gets away with it. Especially when he does a bare-minimum oil change on a misfiring minivan full of rotten food leftovers and the resulting bug infestation. Someone owns that thing and they might not want their disgusting habits shown on youtube. ?

I can't speak on your first point too much. I'm not 100% clear on how that works. I will say, unless it was something simple, like an alignment, I've never waited on a car. Dropped it with them and waited for them to call that it's ready to pickup.
 
Hol up. A REV COUNTER being optional? I get that most US cars are auto so it’s not that essential, bur really, that still exists as a paid option?
My 1997 Ford Ranger pickup (with a manual transmission) had the tach as an option. I remember my lease payment was $99/mo rather than the advertised $97, because it had the optional tachometer.

Top: standard
Bottom: with optional tach

maxresdefault.jpg
 
My 1997 Ford Ranger pickup (with a manual transmission) had the tach as an option. I remember my lease payment was $99/mo rather than the advertised $97, because it had the optional tachometer.
When you break the costs down like that, I'm sure many people would save the $2 and just go with the poverty cluster. Most people including me are blissfully unaware that each and every "standard item" in our cars add to the monthly payment. And at least I like it that way. :p
 
The funny thing is that the rev counter is also called tachometer, which is the German word for speedometer...
Well a tachograph only records speed, just to make things more complicated.
 
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