LocostUSA.com

Their businesses suck because you and I won't buy their cars - they make cars we don't want. Not to be detoured, they're going to get our money anyway by going through the goverment. No doubt they'll add the phrase like GM did, "We're too big to let fail." That's almost a threat... The nerve.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081107/bs_nm/us_autos_12

I swear, our country is eating itself alive - where does everyone thing all this money is coming from? You and me, and we just keep printing more. I just heard the the 2009 budget has us spending $1 Trillion dollars more than we make. Individuals can't run a household this way - we're seeing that in spades this year, but the government doesn't get it.

This mess has me so ticked off I can't even talk about it...

Why anyone would want to be President right now I don't know... they have more courage than me. "Here, stand on these railroad tracks, and here comes the 90mph train with all our problems on it. Good luck!"

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Midlana book: Build this mid-engine Locost!, http://midlana.com/stuff/book/
Kimini book: Designing mid-engine cars using FWD drivetrains
Both available from https://www.lulu.com/

DId you see his expression during his last speech. He did not look like a happy camper. "Be careful what you wish for, you may get it"!

I hope the people at the top of this mess pay. We're all somewhat to blame though. I think the FBI has some huge number of cases open now trying to get to the bottom of the financial stuff at least. What a shame the big three got where they are now though. It didn't have to be that way...

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
Car9 Roadster information - models, drawings, resources etc.

Don't get me started.

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He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

You're not kidding. I got so tired of waiting for automakers to build a car I'd actually want to buy that I just decided to build it myself.

As for the state of the world, well I'm stockpiling canned food and ammunition. It's getting uglier.

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William Conway
Building the Spartan 7 - Build Blog
LocostUSA Build Log
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time...

I'm going to make my wife read this post. I told her I was going to do the same thing.

You never realize just how hard it is to buy 00 12 gauge shells in bulk until you try.

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He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

Maybe the Russians should bail them out.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081107/ap_ ... 1JVMhn.3QA

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He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

What if China and/or Russia starts bailing out banks? The incredibly irony is that the capitalism that we beat them over the head with for years is coming back to kick us off the #1 position. We spend our money at Walmart which gets sent to China, then they turn around and use our/their cash to buy us up. Same thing goes for world money paying Russia for oil.

The irony... We may very well be living through the height of American power. The slide down the other side might not be much fun.

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Midlana book: Build this mid-engine Locost!, http://midlana.com/stuff/book/
Kimini book: Designing mid-engine cars using FWD drivetrains
Both available from https://www.lulu.com/

Who do you think owns all of our debt?

horizenjob is right, it's as much our fault as it is the big businesses. The "people at the top" could only make the deals that they made because we kept wanting our 401k, stock portfolios, and homes to increase in value faster than they should so we turned a blind eye to what they were doing. The first sign of this, the IPO bubble, should have thought us a lesson. In order for hedge-funds to make money, and investors to make money, people have to get screwed, that's the way the world works. There is a limit of supply, for you and I to live where we live, and build a car (no matter how cheap) someone has to live in a "house" with a dirt floor. Add to this the fact that we live a "consumable" lifestyle, which only makes the poor poorer, the rich richer, and the middle class more buried in junk and we have a nice little pot stewing.

It's time to have pot lucks again, it's time to share quality tools again, and not just buy the cheap stuff from HF and ebay. It's time look at everything we do, buy, sell, and make, and try to find ways of doing it more efficiently, and of higher quality, not cheaper with more profit.

I was reading Kimini last night and Kurt's statement regarding lightness:
This is what we have to do with quality, with our money, with saving, and with being ecologically minded. We have to constantly be on guard, it's not fun, but we do it to make our cars preform better, and we should do it to make our lives and our bodies and our earth preform better. It's time to stop wasting, it's time to stop letting others waste, and it's time to stop allowing ourselves to be taken advantage of. No one is going to do it for us, certainly not our government, despite who we put in power.

</soapbox>

Milo

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I realize that what I said might have had a little negativity regarding the "build our cars / dirt homes" line.

One of the reasons that this hobby is so captivating is that we are building something ourselves, out of recycled materials, that will get better gas mileage (usually) than what we started with, and be lower impact than any of the alternatives. In many ways we are taking trash and making something that costs much more, but we are doing so with time and effort, and with craftsmanship.

We can sit at a light, next to an AMG Merc, in 110 degree heat, and smile, because the "energy" and the "cost" that was put in to our car, would only make the AC system of the Merc. and when the light turns green we can blow it's doors off.

Locost is not just a pun regarding money.

British Leyland here we come

Cheers, Milo. Good on ya!

-dave

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...nowadays people are so intellectually lazy and lethargic that they can't build ANYTHING with their hands. They'll spend hours watching whiny people marooned on an island, but won't spend a second adding anything to the world. -weconway
Visit my [Locost 7 build log]

If they get bailed out I vow never to buy a new car from them again as those tax dollars will be the last they ever get from me. My household keeps one "nice" car, it's my wife's. It's fairly new, comfortable, under warranty and most importantly safe for my wife and three children. I've been driving 15 year old crapboxes for the last few years instead of a new vehicle. Not because I can't afford one, but because I've been waiting on something better, and it hasn't come yet. I don't want to buy a new car just for the sake of having something new. A new version of the same old thing is not acceptable to me. It's pathetic that in this day and age they can't (or wont) make something better than what the foreign auto makers where building 15 years ago. I'd still rather drive my 16 year old Volvo 240 than a Cobalt or Malibu, Fuzion or whatever.

What's really scary is that we don't make much here anymore. Our manufacturing capability is what has won world wars for us in the past. Heaven help us if we ever have to manufacture ourselves out a crisis. Nearly everthing we used to build here has been outsourced to a far away land. I get the feeling we are in a more vulnerable position than we have ever been in as a nation. Greed has killed this country.

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He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

Give me a 240 any day. As if that wasn't obvious from my avatar.

We don't manufacture much anymore. One of the major reasons for that is that we don't have many raw materials anymore, and mining the ones we do have is either cost prohibitive due to labor, or due to environmental controls. However we still "manufacture" ideas, and I hope that we keep doing so. The UK went through this a while back, all of a sudden it's manufacturing and it's agriculture were too expensive, it was just cheaper to have other people do it. Now the UK is a tourist spot, their major industries are service industries, ones that just provide comfort and living for those who live and visit. I think that works with a place the size of the UK, but I don't think the US is small enough to survive off just service industries.

I think we need to export ideas, we need fantastic schools to create exceptional scientists, artists, musicians, etc. We need to be the ones who come up with every new idea that helps mankind. Alternative energy, space exploration, medicine. We do all of this already but we need to be so good that we are not just copied but called on as consultants. In some ways we are already on that track, we just need to pour everything we have in education, energy reform, and going to space.

I think I broke my soapbox, been standing on it too much. Now i am done! [/i]

I very much agree there is no one to blame for this mess but ourselves. I heard a great quote from a minister, attributing every thing wrong with the world to selfishness - could be.

About the whole credit thing, people are pissing and moaning that the government, or Clinton, or Bush, should have never allowed these zero-interest loans. I look at this with another of my infamous analogies.

Imagine being at a party, lots of drinking and such, everyone having a good time. Walking by a table you see little envelopes of white powder. You know what it is, it's free, so what do you do? You could go crazy and take some, or you could walk on by because you know where that leads. Same thing with these loans. I hear people claiming that they were misled or didn't think they'd get hurt... like somehow reality just won't apply to them... where's the personal responsibility, where if you take the risk, stand up and say "I effed up but I accept full responsibility for it and won't be a burden on anyone else" I'll eat my hat (if I had one) when I ever hear someone say that.

My brother sadly noted that he's officially upside-down on his home loan. He also noted that how the neighbor's home that just foreclosed was owned by people who bought all sorts of toys, motorhome, boat, jet skis, dune buggy. He wondered out load, "Can I sue them for dragging down everyone's home value because of his shortsighted stupidity and selfishness?"

No, there's no one to blame but ourselves; we can't stop hitting the crackpipe of easy credit, running up credit card bills, and buying all the crap that makes our economy strong. I recently heard that there are two bubbles, the housing finance bubble, and a much bigger credit card bubble that's popping now.

The amazing thing is how the government seems to want to put everything back the way it was.... Yes, that's it, go back to spend, spend, spend, that'll fix everything. I really wonder how things will be in 10 years, all due to our own selfishness.

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Midlana book: Build this mid-engine Locost!, http://midlana.com/stuff/book/
Kimini book: Designing mid-engine cars using FWD drivetrains
Both available from https://www.lulu.com/