Car Week, Day 3 - Kari-Keen. A real contribution to human service.

Good-morning, motorists! Have you a motor-car? Do you toil and fuss over the manner in which you transport your stowage, in addition to persons, in your motor-car? Behold the solution to all your problems! Kari-Keen is a real contribution to human service. Please find it at your motor-car dealer's in a splendid array of colors. Also full particulars.

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Car Week, Day 2, - Sunoco Lola-Chevrolet T-70 Mk II

This week we're celebrating the Annual Chicago Automotive Disappointment Parade, so here's a June 1967 ad for Sunoco. If you like reading, that's fine. or, you can just ogle the too-small picture of the mouth-watering car. I loves me some velocity stacks. It got my attention because I'd never heard of it. Also, it gets me motivated for this year's season of vintage races we'll be attending, like last year. I can't wait.

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Car Week, Day 1 - Plymouth Cricket.

The Chicago Annual Automotive Disappointment Parade is going on all this week, so we'll be posting a bunch of car stuff. What's the CAADP? That's when auto manufacturers trot out their new "concept cars", drumming up enthusiasm for designs that will eventually be watered down by product managers and sold to the public in a form that carries through none of the dynamism or inspiration of the original. Hooray!

Case in point. The Chevy Volt. It was Chevy's must-be-a-success electric car that had to get people excited to pay (originally) forty-one grand for an electric Corolla. So, they made it look desirable.

On  the left, the Chevy Volt concept. It was electric, so it needed to look futuristic and capable. It looked like something you could actually want to drive. On the right.... "Where's the Volt? Maybe it's behind that Corolla.... Oh no." The product manager could excitedly point to the black plastic dealie just in front of the wing mirror that surrounds the "Volt" badge, insisting "See? See? Carried over completely intact!". The crowd failed to go wild. The lesson to learn but never ever learned: Don't show it unless it's final. This is why I don't even bother going to the Chicago Annual Automotive Disappointment Parade any more. Waste of my time.

Anyhoo, this ad was plopped on my desk this morning. The 1971 Plymouth Cricket! WTF's a Plymouth Cricket? You got me. Let's find out! Summon the Internet!

Aaaah, I see. The Plymouth Cricket was a badge-engineered Hillman Avenger - an English compact made during The Seventies, when "English" and "Car" translated as "buy" and "something else".

What's badge engineering? Say you're a car company and you have a hole in your lineup, to compete in a certain market segment. You get in bed with a car company from (usually) another country, and license one of their models to sell in your own showroom, but you give it a new name and pretend it's a totally different model. It's lazy, cynical, and deceptive, and involves no engineering at all, which makes the term "badge engineering" inherently sarcastic.

The Cricket doesn't seem to be terrible, on paper. Rear wheel drive, front disc brakes, and nearly a hundred horsepower might have made it fun to drive. You'd expect the Cricket to have done well, considering the whole gas crisis and everything, but it was killed off in '73, to be replaced in Plymouth's lineup by the Colt, which was a rebadged Mitsubishi Galant/Lancer. Apparently, Plymouth either didn't know or what to know how to make small cars in the early Seventies, so they phoned it in. Good thing the Japanese didn't. the Colt can look pretty cool with the right wheels and color.

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Unofficial non-post placeholder - Failed teas.

Well, the staff at GO! Tower has the day off to re-balance their wheels to compensate for all the ice frozen into the rims while their cars were parked (Top tip: hockey pucks and Gorilla Glue!). So, here's a post-that's-not-a-post.

When shopping for food-stuffs, avoid purchasing these industry-wide worst-selling packaged teas:

• Pasture Farms' Honey Lemon Flopsweat

• Ponceberry Wingwang

• Dr. Placebo Q. Doonothing's Acai Rejuvenator

• Herbal Twig Splash

• Nature Farms' Midnight Movement Excellent Digestive

• Qang's Super Number One Lucky Best Luck Tea

• Barely-There Premium Wind Tea

• Mrs. Wheatbale's Meadow Sweeper Tea

• Fern Gloop Zinger... With more pistals.

• Nature's Fallacy Extra-Bogus Preparation

• Wet Monk

• Official People's Republic of Probably Tea

• Phish's Phavorite Mushroom Whoop-De-Doo

• Placid Rectum Super Cleanse

The Birth of the Cube Farm

Critical Science Development news now, from 1950! Partitions may be attached to edges of desk to form private offices, abandoning noisy "bull pen" type open office plan.

DuPont has gifted the idea to furniture companies, who are working on marketable names for this office plan. Proposed names include:

• Labor Lounges
• Kozy Krates
• High-Density Diligence Units
• Workoids
• Seclusion-Alls
• Omni-Efficient Focusment Chambers
• Superatomic No-Hear-Ums
• Work-O-Mats
• Snugglestalls
• Hyper-Efficient Opti-Cells

Fashion Racing Season Warm-Up!

Hey there, speed freaks! It's time to shake off that cabin fever and get ready for racing season... fashion style! This year we're all about burning rubber in the world of couture, so let's smell some smoke in '67!

These three are under starters orders and ready to turn some heads this spring with their zippy ensembles featuring stripey or checkered gloves by Kislav for just $108 in temporally converted currency. At that price, they're going fast in more ways than one! The Herbert Levine pumps have numbers on the toe and heel to get you feeling racey. They're just $271 in 2014 bucks, but that's so far away, that'll ever happen!

This dotty deb has MY pole in position in her Andrew Woods polka dot linen romperbag dress with elasticized limb exits for just $983 in converted future money. That's so affordable, you'd be an asshole to spend the fifteen minutes it'd take to make one yourself! And those Herbert Levine shoes are the ultimate winners with stand-up eights on the toes for just $271 in those crazy future-bucks. That's winning fashion, 1967 style! Va-room! Suck it, losers!

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Science News - Your news... scienced!

New transceiver allows persons born without head bones to hear selves. Microphone sends sound
of own voice to ear. Can be switched off or destroyed to allow privacy from self.

Bank of alarms easily monitored by barely mobile man. May someday be replaced by bank of barely mobile men constantly shouting numbers.

New emergency flotation suit is boon to seasick survivors. Is inflated by vomit. Design currently
hampered by unsatisfactory buoyancy of vomit.

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