They are here to help...

[lil_Blue_Ford]

This just kills any remaining desire to ever own another new vehicle. I’ll keep rebuilding the old stuff, thank you. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the shop…

 

[Blmpkn]

Gen beta are going to grow up with no concept of what privacy, freedom and liberty actually are.

This song released 31 years ago. Incredibly relevant. Lyrics below in case you don't have an ear for chucks vocals..

Absolute banger really..

Crossing the line into the other side
Emerging as prisoners
To the emptiness of time

To the left and to the right
From behind - they're out of sight
Plunging into a new found
Age of advanced observeillance
A worldwide, foolproof cage

Privacy and intimacy as we know it
Will be a memory
Among many to be passed down
To those who never knew

Living in the pupil of 1,000 eyes

Was it overlooked in front of all our faces?
Now, all the mistakes and secrets
Cannot be erased

Viewing the blind complexity
By which laws were justified
To erase simplicity

To the left and to the right
From behind, they're out of sight
Plunging into a new found
Age of advanced observeillance
A worldwide, foolproof cage

Privacy and intimacy as we know it
Will be a memory
Among many to be passed down
To those who never knew

Living in the pupil of 1,000 eyes

We are enslaved now...

 

[rusty ol ranger]

Just wreck something into the back of it, they were self-igniting cars, right?

My dad had a pinto....a 75 IIRC...he rear ended another pinto....neither exploded

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

i bet not. you cannot turn off auto start/stop with forscan on the new rangers

That is a bummer, I did it with our Bronco and it is glorious.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

My dad had a pinto....a 75 IIRC...he rear ended another pinto....neither exploded

Oh I’m well aware that they were not the exploding cars that the media would like you to believe. Much like the bad reputation for the Explorer and Firestone was more user error than exploding tires and rollovers.

 

[pjtoledo]

Sorry to sound like an old crank on this fine Tuesday morning, but I genuinely think Gen beta are going to grow up with no concept of what privacy, freedom and liberty actually are.

"big brother is watching everything you do"
my first recollection of that was in the mid-early 60s when main frame computers were getting started.

main frame??? PCs and laptops had not yet been invented/developed.

 

[pentode]

"big brother is watching everything you do"
my first recollection of that was in the mid-early 60s when main frame computers were getting started.

main frame??? PCs and laptops had not yet been invented/developed.

If you're interested in tech- or philosophy- it's fascinating to see how spying and corporate capitalism have combined to create this data economy.

We've all heard the old saw "if you don't know what the product is, you're the product." At this point, I think we can just shorten that to "you're the product." I don't lose sleep over it because I can only do what I can do .. but I think we do need to push back. A great way to do that is not buy these products, which is just paying them to spy on us - and commodify us.

 

[djfllmn]

as much as i like the new tech on my F150, the ranger, is so simple that its fantastic. no power anything, three pedals, and very little modules

This just kills any remaining desire to ever own another new vehicle. I’ll keep rebuilding the old stuff, thank you. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the shop…

 

[superj]

i went and looked at a 62 beetle yesterday. if it wasn;t so rusty, i would have brought it home. the dude wants 5k but you can see into the cabin from in front of hte rear wheels where the fenders were once attached to the body. it runs good though. someone put a 1600 dual port into it with a pic3 carb, which is good. at least its got the 40hp engine instead of the 22hp

 

[superj]

That is a bummer, I did it with our Bronco and it is glorious.

i ahd to buy a little dongle on amazon to turn it off. no one has yet figured out how to do it on forscan and the dudes in europe and south america are really really trying.

i tried a little to but i am afraid of the auto start becoming permanent auto stop if i mess with it

 

[ekrampitzjr]

Some of you might laugh, but I'll bet most of you will nod in agreement at these observations.

I worked for Mazda's reman facility for over 10 years, but after a two-month furlough during the pandemic, it was clear that it was time to make plans to leave. What happened once could happen again, or maybe the facility would close, etc. One thing that had to be done was getting rid of my dad's old junker Silverado that I had inherited and getting another personal vehicle that would hold up for a while. That led to getting the 2011 Ranger in 2022 as my only vehicle. After handling other personal affairs that had been put off too long, I left the company in 2023. We parted on good terms and I still visit.

While I was working there, I was able to drive new Mazdas on employee leases for one year or 15,000 miles, whichever came first. The monthly cost was minimal, and the company covered insurance, maintenance, and everything else except fuel. In later years I would simply get a new CX-5, so it was easy to monitor how the vehicle changed year on year. One of those changes was the nanny tech, which got more prominent after about 2017. Eventually it was impossible to turn it all off, as most of us here would have preferred. Just before leaving, I was able to borrow a new CX-90, the three-row SUV, for a weekend and was appalled at just how much of that nonsense was built into it, especially things like cameras that could sense and read road signs.

Knowing about the intrusive tech in newer stuff and wanting something more old-school were the big reasons I wanted an "older" Ranger, that is, not one of the new 2019–on Ranger models. I also had had a 1990 model briefly some years ago and liked it a lot, so I got the best Ranger I could find after looking at a lot of them (and not walking, but running away, from many of them). Mine had 101,000 miles when I bought it and now has 190,000.

You should understand two things about these trends with new vehicles: (1) the automakers aren't the ones behind installing this tech: governments are; (2) the US is actually behind Western Europe and East Asia in requiring the intrusive nanny and tracking stuff. Also understand that all governments are working toward being able to do things such as shutting down vehicles remotely, as Elon Musk has been able to do with Teslas. "Sorry, you can't drive your new car today because [give bureaucratic reason]." The excuse is safety, and "connected cars" that can communicate with each other on the highway and automatically avoid accidents are the goal. What goes with that is what gives many of us here concern.

The unstated agenda is to get people out of vehicles by (1) making them unaffordable and (2) making ownership and driving an expensive hassle. The Euro excuse is to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. That will entail ending new vehicle production altogether and getting as many of the remaining vehicles off the road by then. This ain't a conspiracy theory. They're open about it. Some people in North America are too. This isn't really a "political" issue because it's a global effort.

And that's why you're seeing all these mandates on new vehicles. Note that no one in the market is actually demanding or wanting much of this tech.

 

[RobbieD]

The unstated agenda is to get people out of vehicles

"Before the Motor Law"

Yep; Red Barchetta is almost here . . .

 

[pentode]

By the time I left France with my little 1.1 liter Renault, it wasn't legal to drive on the roads of the city I lived in. They just picked a date (1996 as it happens) and passed a law that said "anything older than that produces too many emissions". This despite the fact that the had yearly emissions testing in place and my car measured lower tailpipe emissions than half the cars on the road. Not to mention old diesels, which are still legal.

I'm all for protecting the environment, just stop greenwashing policies that are measurably something else.

Edit: as a car guy, that's really my nightmare scenario - just banning all cars of a certain age or type or that don't have backup cameras.