There’s a lot of negativity in the world. Go to just about any social media platform and you’ll find people bickering, sometimes over pointless car things. Dig deep enough and you’ll find toxicity that makes you check a calendar to make sure it’s still 2022. But there’s still a lot of good out there, and you’ll find some of it right here in our comments.
Welcome back to Comment Of The Day! Every day, we read every single comment posted on our site and pick the one that made us laugh, get informed, or feel warm inside. You don’t have to go into our comments sections and write thousand-word stories about why you love a car so much, but a lot of you do, and that means a lot to us. So we’re highlighting some of the most excellent bits of thought that you’ve formed into words and digitized onto our website.
Today I’m cheating a little. We don’t usually work on the weekends, but sometimes we get that writing bug and just crank something out in our off-time. And yet, even when something is posted on a Saturday, you read it. On Saturday, resident rust tamer David Tracy revealed the four cars headed with him to Los Angeles and the fifth staying in storage. I have to give some credit to David. He’s long been my inspiration in collecting the cars that make me smile, and he’s actually working through the tough decisions in paring down his fleet.
One thing that outsiders may not understand about this hobby is that your cars imprint on you. It’s just a box of glass, steel, and plastic, and held up with rubber. For most people, it’s an appliance. But for us, these cars are inanimate friends, beloved like a good dog or cute bird. And the magical thing is that you can love a $350 pile of crap just as much as someone loves a $1m one-off. But there comes a time in life when you have to let go. David managed to overcome the hurdle a bit, and has made a number of his fleet disappear, including two Jeep FCs and a mint-condition Grand Cherokee. Heck, he even got rid of a pretty cherry Lexus LX 470.
Now, it’s time to get what’s left to Los Angeles and start a new life. Of course, we are talking about our fearless leader, lord of the rust, and king of the wrench here, so of course two of the vehicles heading down don’t run. David has devised a plan to drive the Ford Mustang and the Jeep J10 to Los Angeles. But his EV project Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle and overland project Jeep Grand Cherokee 5-Speed are currently immobile. How does he get them down there?
The Autopian community showed its kindness in the post. But for me, the one that really made me smile, and thus is our COTD winner, is reader Redneckvolution:
David, just throwing this out there – I have a 2012 Ford F150 XLT 4×4 with the long bed and the heavy-duty frame/seven lugs and the towing package. I can tow 11k pounds with my truck.
I live in Cincinnati, so not a far drive from your Detroit digs. If you can find a suitable trailer, I can get at least one of the rigs out to LA for you, and I’ll cut you a deal on the drive. I’ve been a professional hotshot logistics driver since 2017 and have proper insurance and such.
The only catch is that I want to co-write an article with you about transporting the rig for you. I also have a B.A. Degree in Journalism and am a photographer/videographer and have low-key been wanting to be a contributor for a while, but just been too busy working to get serious about it.
Lemme know, Lord of the Rust.
It looks like David and Redneckvolution may be brewing something up. And in our typical reader fashion, the replies were fun. Albino Kangaroo suggests a reader convoy, while BMWEEEEE has an idea for a raffle betting on what cars will fail, and where. StillNotATony has my favorite idea yet, and it’s following David like we’re Immortan Joe’s War Boys from Mad Max: Fury Road. Yes to all of this, please! This sounds like the road trip of a lifetime.
But really, Redneckvolution‘s comment warmed my heart. Between all of the bad that you can find on the internet and sometimes in the car world, this comment is a reminder of the good that’s out there. You don’t have to do any of this, and yet, here are strangers offering our lead man some help on his journey out west. I can’t speak for David, but I love this. You can still find places of awesome car culture (one place is Opposite-Lock) and I’m happy to say that we have it here, too.
My hope is that with time, this community will continue to grow, and accelerate car culture in a positive direction with it. Thank you, Redneckvolution!
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• Remember When Automakers Offered Many Different Body Styles Of The Same Car? COTD
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YES YES YES, this is awesome! Thank you Redneckvolution. One step closer to filling the first floor of David’s new Carvana home.
There you go, plus I’m surprised that David doesn’t own a car trailer already.
David Tracy’s trailer would be so rusty and broken-down, he’d need bum another trailer to haul it.
A well deserved COTD. And a pretty chill offer too. Sounds like a road trip to me.
I liked this article. Especially for the Mad Max references. David needs to convert at least one of his fleet to electric. I can help him come up with a parts list.
Dude, we ALL need a guide to converting cars to electric – it’s only getting more and more viable but a lot of us wouldn’t know where to start, what’s good or bad, etc.
I wrote such a guide more than 15 years ago, but it’s way out of date and the parts available today have a much larger variety and generally are of better quality than the parts from back then, but these new parts are also much less plug and play and require software tools that are often uncooperative.
I hope Redneckvolution and DT can make it happen. I also hope they go on a taco truck crawl through Boyle Heights, get matching “Fe2 O3 4EVA” tattoos in Venice and get kicked out of Disney for trying to modify one of the Autopia cars.
As the great Pam Poovey said, “Thank God for them internets.” The car community is a very giving community, and its interwebs off-shoots are often no exception. I’ve met a lot of great people through Opposite-Lock. Some of them are my best real life friends now.
I’m not a bit surprised that people in the community are willing to help. I’d love to help too, but the trade off that comes with the outstanding number of days off I get in my line of work, is I do not get to choose when they happen.
: ) 🙂 🙂
This site hasn’t even been around a year, yet it has already formed a great community brought about by our love of motorized transport. It’s so great to have a group of people who can be friendly to each other and able to bond with others. I am so glad that this site was formed and it allows this community to thrive on joy rather than negativity.
I saw that comment earlier. Definitely cockle-warming. Someone even further east said he’d be willing to help as well. Good community growing here.
So,
‘cockle’ should be plural-at least for what I was aiming to reference. Singular would be a type of mussel, or, possibly (is this a ‘literary setting’?), a small open boat.
I don’t see a problem. I had to look up what the cockles of a heart are, but (heart)-cockle warming works perfectly well in the singular.
Do like a freshly caught cockle of the seafood variety, though.
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/what-are-the-cockles-of-your-heart-and-why-do-they-need-warming-20050212-gdkogx.html
As the wonderful Betty White once said, “That warms the cockles of my heart, and we all need a warm cockle now and then.”
Sir, this is a family site. We don’t need to read about your cockle whether it’s warm or cold!
Paging $kaycog to the white courtesy phone, $kaycog to the white courtesy phone. A new website, perhaps a new award system with photos of dream cars, dream accessories, cars keyed to the quality and nature of the comment?
As soon as we can post pictures, we need to lure $kay with pictures of Ford GT’s and that actor she fancied.
Dempsey?
I was trying to remember her nickname She sould be here
Lord of rust, David Tracy!! Witness Me!!!
(image of David huffing a can of PB Blast’r goes here)
“See you in Valhalla!” he shouts after the huffing.
That’s a suburb of LA right?
“Where he will ride eternal, shiny and chrome.”
mediocre!
All things pitted and orange!