Ask The B&B

On Monday, we issued a challenge to the B&B to submit their best efforts in the first-ever Car Name Game Challenge. There were 26 submissions, all of which went in front of our judges for review. So now it’s time to announce your top five winners, in ascending order. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Today we’re going to play a little game. It’s the sort of game where all are called and few are chosen. The winner (or winners) of this game will receive lavish virtual validation from the staff at TTAC and fellow members of the B&B. And isn’t validation the best prize of all?

The title of our challenge today is The Car Name Game.

TTAC commenter gimmiemanual writes:

I was living in China in late 2009, and decided to take scuba classes so I could dive the Great Barrier Reef.

My open water course was done in Qiandao Lake, outside of Shanghai, and this picture was on the wall of my (terrible) local hotel room.

I offered to buy it for what everyone with me considered a ridiculous amount, but the owner absolutely refused to sell it to me. I’ve lazily looked through the internet, but have been unable to figure out what it is.

Last week I offered you, the man or woman in the street, a chance to own a “TEXAS EDITION” badge at my expense. I asked you to tell me what you’d do with such a badge. After an exhaustive selection process consisting of me having a couple shots of Ketel One Citroen and picking shit at random, I’ve come up with the “winners.” I’ll be contacting each one of you via email in the next week. If the email address associated with your username is no longer valid, now would be a good time to update it or to contact us via the various links to the right of this page.

I’d like to thank all of you who came up with ideas. Unfortunately for you, some of those ideas sucked and frankly I’m insulted that you’d even think that I’d give you a $2.87 badge for something as stupid as that. You must think I’m rich enough not to care just because I own four PRS Private Stock guitars and a bunch of motorcycles and rare books and stuff, when in fact those are the very reasons that I am not rich enough to not care.

Enough about the losers. As they say, winners aren’t losers. So let’s get to the winners.

These photos are of a vehicle that recently visited my driveway for a week. I’m not going to tell you what that vehicle is — yet — but it does raise a very interesting question.

Are bad panel gaps an indicator of a poor quality product? And what “quality” are we talking about anyway?

We tend to armchair quarterback what’s wrong with specific automotive brands quite a bit in the TTAC comments. Meanwhile, there are people in the real world who get caught up in what’s actually wrong with some of these brands’ products by buying them — for example: the Buick Regal GS.

Jeremy writes:

I owned a 2013 Regal GS manual, bought brand new in Jan 2014 and sold (at a loss) on December 31 2014.

This should be good.

Over the past five years, my home has often resembled the fabled Island Of Misfit Toys, with various people coming and going as fate decreed. That would make me King Moonracer, then, and it has made the infamous Vodka McBigbra the island’s princess. In the near future, however, she’ll be moving out to spend more time with her family. This will reduce but not eliminate her ability to call on my fleet of random cars for backup when her well-traveled 2005 Hyundai Accent requires repair.

It’s new-car time, then. She has the ability and willingness to buy a new 2014 Mitsubishi Mirage DE with continuously variable transmission — having driven a stick-shift M35 truck during her stint in the Army, Vodka’s done with clutch pedals 4 lyfe, yo. I’m inclined to agree with her proposed purchase, John Pearley Huffman’s unfriendly Times review aside.

But surely you have other opinions.

It’s been suggested more than a few times on TTAC, most recently in conjunction with an incident where police shot a mentally ill man to death, that stories regarding police interaction with motorists are, or should be, outside the purview of this blog.

It’s not clear exactly just which weak hitting infielder named Mendoza unwillingly gave his name to baseball enthusiasts’ term for batting mediocrity or who coined the phrase. It’s also not clear if the line is Bob Uecker’s .200 on the dot, career minor-leaguer Minnie Mendoza’s .188 in 16 at bats for the Minnesota Twins in 1970, or Mario Mendoza’s .215 after nine years in the bigs. It’s most likely the latter, attributed to Hall of Famer George Brett. Either way, Wikipedia tells us that the Mendoza Line is the cutoff point below which it is hard to justify keeping even an outstanding defensive player on a Major League Baseball roster.

Today we inaugurate a new series: As the Best & Brightest. Many sites dispense advice, and you know what they say about the free variety. At TTAC, we unleash the massive power of our readers and commenters to answer tough questions, for which there is no easy answer.

Today, John Lunbeck asks whether his brother-in-law (and by default John’s sister) should start a luxury car dealership.

John writes:

“My pretty savvy brother-in-law has the means and ambition to become a franchisee here in the US for some luxury makes. My question is, is that wise at this point?