Amphibia.
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Iâd ride that.
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Itâs been raining so much here in Rio that if this contraption is amphibious, this man will be rich.
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Add some outriggers with little skis on them and go global!
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Chrysler Insists Itâs Still A Car Company And Is Totally Developing New Cars You Just Canât See Yet
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Well thereâs his problem. He tried removing half of the coolant when he should have removed half of the oil. That should get the beemer up to temp in a timely manner. 
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Could be he hasnât renewed his engine temperature subscription for 2025. Not buying the lifetime package is false economy.
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Ah yes, âthe cold air intake keeping things too coldâ problem. Itâs a total rookie mistake.
âI paid good money for this gauge, I donât want to be using only half of it!â
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Today on âITâS NOT A BALLOON ITâS AN AIRSHIP !!!â :
A Brief History of the Goodyear Blimp, Which Celebrates Its 100th Anniversary This Year
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But seriously, there was a noticeable difference in coolant temperature when I installed an aftermarket radiator on my turbo Subaru. I donât know if that helped anything, but itâs a 2007 with way over 200k miles and itâs still going strong.
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Itâs always something, isnât it? None of my previous 3 Subarus (1 H6, 2 turbos) had any problems with engine cooling. The OEM batteries were garbage and I would always have to replace them with higher output AGM models. I have also had A/C issues on all of them at one point or another. Radiators, though? Great.
I seem to recall Subaru using some sort of special âunicorn tearsâ coolant blend, and deviating from that for the âgas station jug specialâ wasnât generally a good idea. It seems like every automaker these days has some âyou canât use some commodity consumable because ours is actually specialâ thing like that. I currently drive a BMW, and they are very particular about windshield wiper fluid as an example.
Subarus are interesting vehicles to own, for sure. As a car company, they have a definite sensibility with their designs that often favors having a rock solid drivetrain over things like creature comforts or luxuries. Subarus are constantly, and rightly, bagged for having outdated tech, crappy interiors, and poor fuel economy when compared to the competitors. On the flip side, some aspects are so overbuilt that short of bad luck in the engine lottery, they can run forever with just standard maintenance and upkeep. Maybe half of its functions wonât work, but itâll get you where you need to go. Sometimes having a car like that is great, sometimes not so much. Itâs definitely great for resale, as Subarus are spectacularly good at holding their value.
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Itâs enshittification, but for carsâŠ
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Absolutely! First thing I had to replace on each car. One was so bad that it constantly leaked acid and I had to sand down and repaint the platform under it. Went with AGM after that with no problems.
I voluntarily replaced one with a Koyo radiator, then kept the old one just in case. Good thing, because my other vehicle with the same layout had the FRP end cap separate on its radiator, but I was able to swap it out directly.
Yeah, I wouldnât say they are very reliable, at least compared to other Japanese makes. They tend to be easy to work on. I mainly love them for their capability. Living in the PNW and spending a lot of time in the mountains, they are by far the most capable vehicles for our weather. When the whole city has been shut down, hundreds of vehicles abandoned along the side of the highway, I just cruise along with no problem. I used to act as a snow taxi when I had an office job and picked people up on the way into work when no one else would so much as leave their driveway. Thatâs with proper tires, mind you, but itâs more than just the tires.
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My 2015 WRX was definitely not reliable â I blame most of the problems on owning the first MY of a new generation. Never a great idea. I could write an essay on all the work I had to have done on it under warranty (when I traded it in for my current car, the resulting CarFax report was voluminous from all the dealer work that had been performed over the years), and then the additional out of pocket work needed out of warranty. It was just a problem child, but I loved it all the same. The other Subarus Iâve owned have been pretty ok for reliability save for some non-critical issues that were resolved as warranty repairs.
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It really is. Many automakers are jumping on the subscription and/or DLC bandwagon these days.
My MIL bought a new Toyota recently and thereâs subscriptions for everything. Loads of features are gated behind subscriptions and packages. On her Toyota, if you want to use the nav, you have to buy the âDrive Connectâ package for $15/month. (This also adds a bunch of other stuff that you may not even want.) Thereâs a confusing array of other options packages and itâs very hard to figure out whatâs there by default, what you need to pay for, how long you need to pay for it, and so on. I assume this is all by design.
Then thereâs the whole DLC-style âsave money of the vehicle price by not getting certain features and paying more later to unlock themâ which I really donât like â all the HW is there so itâs not like any money was saved on manufacturing, youâre just paying to change a â0â to a â1â in the carâs computer to let you use it.
Iâm somewhat sympathetic to the subscriptions when youâre getting stuff thatâs not actually a part of the vehicle. Most vehicles these days have built-in cellular modems so I donât think itâs unreasonable to expect that if you want to use the cellular data and the back-end services that power those things that you would have to pay some sort of fee. Thatâs different than âspend $300 to get remote start now, or $500 to get it laterâ in my opinion.
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Especially since theyâve had problems with some of those systems staying on and draining the battery even when they werenât enabled. Starlink and the 3G sunset come to mindâŠ
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I remember that changeover. A lot of manufacturers were struggling with this at the time. My WRX didnât have any of those fancy telematics, but Mrs. Ficusâ Forester did. The dealer had to upgrade the telematics system to support 4G (at no charge at least).
It was supposed to just be a software update, but the update bricked the system and the hardware needed to be replaced as a result. It delayed things for several days.
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The blimpâs cinematic moment, and seriously one of Bruce Dernâs best performances.
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