Scamming sleezebag alert, counterfeit art being sold at car shows... help out my friends in the hot rod art scene, don't buy from anyone but the real artists.. not Joe Werner. He's selling copies from low-res bad quality images

 Joe Werner, sleeze bag at the Essen Motor Show this weekend in Germany. Deny him your support, keep your cash from someone stabbing a hot rodder in the back.

Want good art? From good artists? Hell yes you do, you want pinstriping from a pinstiper, not a roll on pizza cutter. You want lettering and race car numbers from a artist, a letterer, a sign painter. Not a decal you print at home.

Why? Pride. Proud that you are a hot rodder, an amatuer race car driver, a drag racer... a guy who is living his life with a real passion for the best you can achieve, the best speed, the best lap, the best car, the best parts.

Just like BOMONSTER, who wants just his best work getting into your garage, your bumper, your tool box... not a cheap imitation.

If I was going to ESSEN this weekend, I'd bring a bottle of tempura paint, and spalsh it all over his display. Then hold up a sign, that reads "FAKES SOLD HERE"... cause I'm that kind of guy. I got your back.

The foot resting on this Shelby Cobra Mustang convertible trunk spolier should be chopped off as a warning to others.

filthy feet to make it worse. Tattooed? Really? What, aren't your feet stupid looking enough already?

Dan, in Norway, is a far better PhotoChopper than I am, so he took her legs off!

Thanks Dan!

Even cars come with warning labels. What a stupid warning... it doens't mention the explosive force of a 1/2 tank of gas, or the battery having so much electrical power it can explode if shorted directly across the terminals

It's all about birth defects, and cancer. Nothing about the gas, exhaust fumes that kill (suicide in garage), ability of homicidal maniacs to use the vehicle as a deadly weapon, and that bit I mentioned about the power in a ordinary battery.. plus the deadly antifreeze that pets find tasty. What a stupid warning sign, it isn't complete, is single minded, and obviously due to a lawsuit

'Cuda rolls in a high speed DUI down Ashley Street in Ramona (near San Diego).. .neighborghood idiots request the speed limit lowered (no logical cause or effect but lots of kneejerk reactions)

So what my complaint is, simply... idiots are everywhere, and so are drunk drivers. Neither drunks nor idiots look at the speed limit, and if the residents who want the 45 mph reduced to a 35 mph think that will prevent another DUI, they prove themselves morons.

Harold... the inside scoop from Mike is that he had a awesome 440 six pack 1970 Challenger back in the 70's and after finally getting it near perfect, he wrecked it. This isn't Harold's first wreck of a fine Mopar. Why don't reporters get to the driving history of DUI drivers? It's obviously relevant.

"what an idjit maroon" I think Bugs Bunny would call this driver, drove 1/2 way into a sand trap at Pebble Beach Concours

Full story and more photos including this one at http://jalopnik.com/5832839/a-lamborghini-gets-sand+trapped-at-pebble-beach and I was thinking it would have been on Hooniverse!

This blind jackass shouldn't be behind the wheel

Could only afford to look half stupid, and only replaced one brake light lens

So try to figure out if they bought the drivers side (normal) or the passenger side (stupid)

The first time I've seen yellow brake lights... stupid people are out there sharing the road with us... look out!

Parking where you don't fit in

Not really a compact car... but seeing expensive cars parked anywhere they'd prefer doesn't surprise me

Women, and the automotive world... specifically the Islamic/Muslim country of Saudi Arabia, which outlawed women drivers (male chauvinism, no religious text from their holy book, or decree from Muhammad spoke of cars, nor of women drivers)

So.. .  why don't men let women drive in Saudi Arabia? Women have been riding horses since before written history in Suadi Arabia... and the main bullshit line the Saudi govt ( the Saud family) give is that women are (by religious decree) supposed to modest... and sitting in a car behind the wheel is less modest than sitting a horse?

Chauvanism and religion have no logic, nor intelligent answer to a question that asks for facts.

This year of the Arab Spring of revolution the women in Suadi Arabia are protesting the nonsense and risking persecution, prosecution, harassment, and jail time with unreported indignities.

Show some support to those women... they are someone's sister, someone's mom. They don't deserve this crap simply because they were born in a country run by assholes.

To give them encouragement and support, let them know on Facebook and Twitter, or tell the US State Dept to keep hounding the Suadi Govt. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/21/hillary-clinton-saudi-female-drivers

Saudi woman aren't alone in dealing with dumb ass men keeping them from equal rights, General Motors in 1957 hired 9 women to be designers, and paid them less than the men. Indianapolis Motor Speedway didn't give women access to the pits til 1971

I just got motivated to write about this from the new issue of Automobile Magazine, Oct 2011

US government owned car companies (GM for example) used taxpayer dollars to lobby against government regulations for higher fuel economy standards

That has to criminal, and politicians and bureaucrats should be fired. What a waste of money.

The politicians finally had the control of the car company, and didn't force the issue when they had the chance. What a bunch of corruption. 

Lessons learned from yesterdays total blackout of San Diego county... from Orange County to Rosarita Baja California (Mexico) the power plants were tripped offline

Whoever designed and approved the electric system should be shot for gross stupidity, as it took just one person, one moment,.... and about 6 million people were out of electricity http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/us/10power.html .

It took 9 hours to get power back. http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/data-drive/article_dc4aabe6-db5b-11e0-97ba-001cc4c03286.html

No gas stations were able to operate. No grocery stores, no businesses. Of course, that is their fault for not having a backup generator to keep the pumps, fridges, and cash registers operating. Stupidity is contagious among busniesses it seems. Costly too, because if any had power backup, they would have been the only source of gas or food around.

No ATMs, no fast food restaurants, no air conditioning, no trolleys (public transportation in San Diego) and all the elevators are designed by nimrods who don't mind that on loss of electricity, the elevators trap all people riding.

Roadside assistance was called by a Marine, and they told him that they weren't going to show up, cause they are not going to waste gas. True story, he called the local radio station to spread the word.

Stop light intersections, they aren't as high a priority to get power to as the carpool lane monitoring equipment.

Traffic cops, never at the right intersections, but any intersection they are directing traffic at, moves faster than all the rest of the powerless intersections that all lanes have to stop at, car by car.

The wastewater treatment plants don't work without electricity, neither does the water dept. About 2 million gallons of sewage spilled into the ocean.

Most dispatched fleets switched to laptops and Nextels... neither worked with no power to the repeaters, cell phone towers, etc etc. This includes tow trucks, ambulances, taxis etc etc

The airport (San Diego International) doesn't have generator backup, and all that post 9-11 security is useless without electricity, so no planes were loading and leaving, no-one got scanned, no luggage was searched, the whole airport shut down. The port authority - the airport manager is also an idiot... across the street from the airport is Solar Turbines.. and guess what they make? Big ass tubine generators from 1 to 22 MegaWatts each http://mysolar.cat.com/cda/files/100588/7/dssolar.pdf ... and they have some in use, ready to deliver, and others ready to test. Bet you the Mayor or Govenor could make a couple calls and get a bit of cooperation to happen and have those megaWatts doing some good in this blackout

My advice to lessen the problems of being without power...

leave your fridge closed... it can keep things cold for hours without power
It's a good idea to have an extra gasoline... about enough to fill your car twice. ( You'll need a small tank, a 50 gallon barrel ought to do)
Flashlights and batteries are way better than candles.
a small inverter and an extension cord with a surge protector - really good at making 120 ac from car batteries to keep your cell phone charged, or house lights that plug into the walls lit. It gets really, really dark after the sun goes down... but even better would be a small RV generator, and Honda makes a really quite line of generators (again, some gas is good to have stored safely in your garage or storage unit... or siphon some from your car to keep your generator going)

the Beau James, 1975 GMC truck. What idiot thought that was a good name to increase sales? Could have been the ad guy competing against the "Gentleman Jim"

found on http://www.flickr.com/photos/baga911/favorites/page1/?view=lg

thanks Mika!

Thanks Steve!

Chrysler owes GM a big favor

If GM weren't such run by inept idiots, Chrysler would no longer exist.

GM could have bought Fiat a couple years ago, but changed their mind, and had to pay 2 billion for some reason because they backed out in 2005.

That gave Fiat the cache it needed to buy Chrysler and keep it afloat. 

"Not in the Bike Lane" another Public Service announcement from Casey

In a nutshell, Casey was ticketed by NYPD for not riding in the bike lane, and he made this video to prove that the bake lane isn't safe, because NYPD doesn't enforce the laws that are in place to keep the bike lane free of obstructions, constructions, cop cars, trash cans, etc etc. Bravo Casey!

Found on http://bikerscafeblog.com/

ever forget something? On your car? It's bad, but when a cop puts a semiauto ar15 on the trunk, and another doesn't bother with the required vehicle inspection, and drives out into public... it's worse

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015452756_coprifle29m.html has the full story, here is the essential info

According to two sources with knowledge of the incident, it began when one officer was inside the secure parking garage at the West Precinct and unloaded his equipment from a police cruiser. The officer placed the rifle on the trunk of a nearby patrol car, forgot about the rifle and walked off.


Another officer then went into the garage and drove away in the patrol vehicle without realizing the rifle was on the trunk lid, the sources said. (it's procedural requirement to do a walk around pre operation, make sure the lights and siren work)

The patrol car was parked a few blocks away from the West Precinct in front of the Roosevelt Hotel on Seventh Avenue around 9 p.m. Monday when at least two people spotted the rifle on the unattended vehicle.

A man who identified himself as Nick Gonzales confirmed he snapped a photo (this photo above) of the unsecured weapon.
Police said he then flagged down a couple of nearby bicycle officers.

Ford dumped toxic sludge in Ringwood New Jersey, into mines and the watershed, never cleaned it up

In the late 1960s, Ford used the Ringwood site as a dumping ground for paint sludge and industrial waste generated by a manufacturing plant it operated at the time in Mahwah. During that period, the factory produced millions of gallons of paint sludge.

Four times the federal Environmental Protection Agency ordered a cleanup, and four times the community was told their land was clean. Each time, residents found paint sludge — gooey waste that weathered into gray slabs — in parkland, in their hunting grounds or in yards.

Ford has removed nearly five times the amount of pollution it hauled out in previous cleanups of its old dumpsite. But despite government assurances that the work will finally be done right, Ford may once again be allowed to leave contamination in an area that serves as the watershed for 2.5 million North Jersey residents.

In one place in particular, the abandoned iron mines that honeycomb the area, it appears that the government may allow contamination to remain without ever determining the extent of the paint sludge that was dumped there.

In the last six years, Ford contractors removed more than 47,000 tons of paint sludge and tainted soil.

Realize that 47 thousand tons is not the total they dumped into the area, illegally, immorally, and obscenely... it's just how much they've been forced to clean up in the last 6 years. A lot remains in the abandoned iron mines Ford used to dump the millions of gallons mentioned in the article. A million gallons weighs 8 million pounds, is 4000 tons. Check all the math to see that 47k tons is 94 million gallons.

94 million gallons has been removed, and they aren't finished. The area is a cancer causing mess due to Ford dumping paint sludge into a residential area, not a hazardous material toxic treatment facility.

information found on http://www.northjersey.com/recap/121210ringwoodrevisited.html from an article at http://lostinjersey.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/ford-payouts-dont-make-up-for-the-damage-they-inflicted/
and Lost in New Jersey was found from a favorite non automotive blog I'm addicted to reading http://www.scoutingny.com

Demonstrating that some people can't even park into a ordinary parking spot, the simple spot, not a parallel parking situation

What do you think was their malfunction? Abject stupidity? Loss of their bifocal glasses?

California Smog test... not much interested in tailpipe emissions

If you have had a jump start, replaced your battery, or removed your battery to replace engine parts like I did yesterday, your newer model vehicles with computers will have lost some memory that the smopg test requires as so important, you fail the smog test

What the hell is so essential about the computer memory of my Grand Am? How much time I've spent over the speed limit? How much I've spun the tires to the extent the computer kicks in the idiot light for "Loss of traction" ?

The smog test guy tells me that it's the history of the computer tuning the fuel and exhaust parts that can vary to keep the emissions clean.

I told him that if the emission out the muffler is clean it is good enough for me. I have to come back once I've added a lot of miles to the history of the computer, so the state of California can see that my car doesn't have to work too much to keep the emissions in check

When countries evict the president they hate, and they leave in a hurry, they forget the Ferrari... but the mad countrymen that evicted him didn't

20 years of running Tunisia and making enemies, while abusing the position of power, and gathering personal wealth including this Ferrari 599 GTB ... finally resulted in him running for his life, and these smart guys with a forklift going in and getting his Ferrari

the first 12 seconds are all that show the forklift cruising away from the palace with the Ferrari, the rest is footage from inside the trashed palace.
learned about it on : http://carscoop.blogspot.com/