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Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. Mini Removes A Pedal Over Supply Chain Shortages You wouldn’t think that manual gearboxes would really be affected by the fragile state of supply chains, but Mini is pulling out a pedal over the global shortage of everything....

In the beginning, there was Bizzarrini, the man. Giotto Bizzarrini wasn’t your average kid from a wealthy background. He aspired to build cars, and build cars he did. After studying engineering and having a brief stint at Alfa Romeo, he joined Ferrari and started having a hand in some of the finest cars the world has ever seen. Bizzarrini was involved in the 250 Testa Rossa, the 250 GT SWB Berlinetta, and the 250 GT 2+2....

Don’t believe me? Look at this: Tell me that doesn’t work incredibly well. You can’t, because it does. Bleep bloop bleep blonk. https://blog-imgs-95.fc2.com/r/o/u/route0030/Daihatsu_V150_Wrecker_1.jpg Yes, that is a 1.5 ton truck. It is powered by a 1.5L engine producing a whole 68HP. And no, the frame has not been shortened.

But, at the same time, I can’t look at this commissioned artwork meant to make me want to buy a 1964 Oldsmobile Super 88 and not know what garbage these things were in snow like that. Big, rear-drive, front-engined cars with all the weight as far from the drive wheels as possible, sitting there on what look like all-season bias ply tires with no chains; that big red beast is going to spin wheels and pirouette slowly around, getting absolutely nowhere....

Normally, I do nothing with this list but wish that I had purchased that Volkswagen Phaeton W12 instead of another Passat TDI wagon. Sometimes I make half-baked plans to buy something far away. Much of this is hardly productive, but I’ve found another use my list, and it’s sharing it with you, dear reader. So buckle up! I’ll warn you right away, some of these may be downright stupid or crappy cars....

It’s been far too long since we Detroit-area Autopians (here’s the Facebook group) have gathered in a Walmart parking lot, stood around for three hours, and talked about cars while eating greasy pizza. So let’s take care of that with a meetup tomorrow, Friday. A post shared by David Tracy (@davidntracy) Here are the details: What: A meetup for Autopian readers When: Friday, October 14, 2022. 6:30 P.M. (or, as many in the comments will likely call it “Too soon and with not enough advanced notice”) Where: Walmart in Troy — 2001 W Maple Rd, Troy, MI 48084 Why: Because everyone else in our lives is tired of listening to us talk endlessly about cars....

Let’s do this in chronological order, why not, from oldest to un-oldest. Ready for a swarm of Hornets? 1905-1906: Hornet The first car to have the good sense to be called Hornet happened way back in 1905. I haven’t been able to find an actual picture of this car, but it sounds wonderfully strange: transverse, vertically-set inline-twin located, somehow, under the seats. That car up there was sold by the same Horner & Sons firm that sold the Hornet, but is actually a Queen....

But first, we need to strap on our winged shoes and fly back to Mercury for a moment: Looks like most of you prefer the younger Cougar to the one that’s lying about its age. Make of that what you will. It took a while to decide how to end this week. I thought about going with a more modern dead brand and looking at Saturn or maybe Scion, but I just couldn’t get inspired by them....

Remember GXP? Pontiac’s special sauce treatment for vehicles as varied as the G8 tire-frying wonder from down under and the Torrent crossover? More power, more rubber, more brakes, bigger wheels. The GXP line may have spawned the most ridiculous whale tail ever to grace a midsize coupe, but it also was a high water mark for retail-grade performance cars. Take the Grand Prix GXP for example. While it never quite shed the Grand-means-big-and-Prix-means-pricks, Juggalos-crushing-Faygo-while-screaming-down-the-Lodge image of its GTP sibling, the Grand Prix GXP was a great exercise in trying to make a car do stuff it was never designed for....

This week I’m bringing you a shiny bus, an amphibious car, something from a video game, and more! I search the entire country for a good balance of price and vehicle condition. But sometimes, some really cool cars end up for sale with really high prices. It’s disappointing, of course, but there’s nothing wrong with window shopping and dreaming. So join me in looking at some fun cars, motorcycles, and fantasy military hardware from the future....

One of my favorite things to do in both a car or on a motorcycle is just go on a random drive. Over the years I’ve found that driving a car or riding a motorcycle is the perfect counter to a rough day or hearing bad news. It’s just the open road, a soundtrack, and your vehicle soothing your soul. But living in the Midwest does come at a cost for this activity....

On Tuesday morning, I departed my apartment in my 2010 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI. This little black wagon has been my preferred road trip car since I got it. While my 2006 Smart Fortwo CDI gets far better fuel economy, the Volkswagen has more creature comforts, better seats, better suspension, and oh, working air-conditioning. Plus, it has an engaging manual transmission, which is why I bought it in the first place....

You know, every time I think I’ve seen the end of weird custom RV-type contraptions, I keep on getting surprised with more. Jason found an ice shack Chevy Cavalier thing that’s like what would happen if someone described an RV over the telephone. Now we’re going to take a look at something on some other end of the custom spectrum. A pilot has turned an airport catering truck into a tiny house, and this thing is pretty sweet!...

I like to think I’m an overlanding adventure truck guy, but what I mostly am is a guy who likes to drive hundreds of miles to sleep inside a fancy camper at an interstate rest stop. But since I sold my last truck camper about four years ago, I’ve been sampling some other automotive lifestyles. Which is why instead of a truck, I now have a 2014 Porsche 911. A new truck is in the cards, but until then, I’m trying a little experiment: turning the 911 into a long-distance camper....

The SAE Automated Driving Levels One crucial problem that I’ve discussed before is that fundamentally, the classification system used by the SAE is flawed. The level system used suggests some sort of qualitative, hierarchical ranking, with higher levels being more advanced, when this really isn’t the case at all. For example, here is the current SAE J3016 Levels of Driving Automation Chart: If you actually really look at what the criteria are for each level, you’ll realize that these are not gradations of the ability of a machine to drive, but rather are descriptions of how the driving task is shared between the human and the car....

This is going to be a hell of a trip, and I hope I get to see a lot of readers out on the road. More importantly, this is enough of a reason for me to post this iconic road-trip-to-Los-Angeles song from The Muppet Movie: You know what? Fuck the rules, I’m gonna stick the Steve Martin waiter cameo in here, too: Also Muppet-car-related is this, your reminder that Gonzo the Great drove a Citroën Mehari, as you can see up top there, inverted on the Studebaker....

Wow. Only a two-vote difference. I’m guessing that’s because they’re both awful, no sane person would bother with either one, and you all just flipped a coin? Yeah, I thought so. For what it’s worth, in good condition, I’d rather have the 850, but between these two I think the 1100 is the more viable project. Now then: If you’ve never experienced a winter in the upper Midwest/Great Lakes region, you have no idea just how miserable it can get....

So we’ll just keep that ball rolling for a bit. The truth is, there are still bargains to be found, even with the used car market all haywire like it is now. $2,500 isn’t a lot to work with, but you can still find something that will get the job done. So today, we’re going to look at two very different ways of moving seven people around, and then you get to decide which one is more suitable for the job....

Finding ways to criticize the looks of Elon’s late-to-arrive pickup concept is like shooting fish in a barrel. However, despite the endless assault on the design, it’s not that basic form is necessarily bad; it’s just misused. A fez, for example, is a fine thing to wear to a Shriner’s convention but attempting to use the design for a crash helmet would be ill advised. Trying to turn something that looks like an architect’s vision of a modernist metal-clad residence into a motor vehicle is an equally poor choice....

You know about the Type 34 Ghia, right? Also known as the Type 3 Ghia, or the VW 1500 Ghia, it was another take on the Karmann-Ghia formula: take a mass-market car chassis and stick a much prettier body on it. VW did this with the Beetle chassis and the original Karmann-Ghia, which I once talked about on video: …and then they did it again, in a more up-market version, on their Type 3 platform, and with new, crisp, “razor’s edge” styling, as you can see in a page from the same 1963 brochure I got the packaging picture from:...