Cars of 2024

Meanwhile, Trump and Tesla 2025

Happy New Year everyone. I hope that 2025 is going well for you so far. I thought this was a good point to look back at my 2024 when it came to cars. It has been busier than I had realised. I don’t think I will be this motored again as I now seem to be pretty sorted for wheels. Potentially 2025 should be super busy with loads of buying and selling on a professional level, but we will have to see how that scheme finally pans out.

First departure of the year was the Baby Shark. That’s what I called my 1979 E21 320 automatic. This was a terrible shame, I really didn’t want it to happen, except that I had seen which way the wind was blowing. Already I had written in Autocart magazine back in 2023 that the Classic Car market was over, or at least fairly unwell. To summarise, I said if you want a Stag, go and buy one, they are as cheap as chips. Want to restore a classic car? Then you must be nuts, unless that is you want a hobby and can afford it. So what I had now was a classic car which needed restoring, rather than the everyday long distance runabout that it had been.

Swapping the Solex carburettor for a Weber solved a lot of problems and it was lovely to drive. Trouble was, after grinding off the back end of the sills it was clear that welding was required. Not only that, there were bubbles elsewhere and a hole in the boot. 2024 was getting tricky for me and I thought I really don’t need to take an old German car to bits. It ran well, still looked good, but interestingly a couple of agency sellers I contacted were not interested in doing their job, on commission.

I stuck it on Ebay with all the gruesome rust pictures and it all went quite wild. A lot of idiots got in touch, but a few were relatively normal. The bottom line is that I cancelled the listing and dealt with the one bloke who really wanted it. What I needed was my money back and I got that, plus a bit on top. It was collected early on a Sunday morning and it took a couple of hours to sort out the remainder of the payment, but the collection driver was a lovely geezer, younger and madder than me. I miss it and nothing comes close to the driving experience and that it looks so handsome in a parking space.

Next up for the chop was Mrs Bangernomics Lexus LS350. It had become damp. Really damp. The carpets were absolutely sopping. We do have a ford at the bottom of the road and it does rain a lot, but this was just daft. A mechanic mate turned up and reckoned that it was paddling pool. We drained it off then I even got the hose out and soaked myself in process of trying to find exactly where the water was getting in. No luck. The solution was simple, dry it out and then take it to We Buy and Shed.com and make it their problem. They paid a reasonable amount and their appraisal routine was shockingly lacking in any rigour. Missed everything really, but it has gone to an auction somewhere and I doubt it made anywhere near what they paid me.

That left a problem, Mrs Bangernomics was now without a means of transport. Not good as the only way of getting about is the Mini Cooper, or Land Rover neither of which she wanted to drive. From a terrible Discovery 2, via a Euro import Shogun, a brilliant BMW X5 then a patchy, but rather adored Porsche Cayenne, she had spent a few decades riding high. Now though a Mercedes C-Class is in the mix. An M-Class or two had been test driven over the years and not really found any favour, especially as the early ones are quite grim and an absolute basket case of trauma. Anyway, she wanted a Mercedes and although an old 190E was a possibility, comfort is required. We looked at a lot of modern stuff and ‘modern’ a decade plus old in my Bangernomics world.

For a while we fixated on a 2013 Mercedes C180 at a dealer that just kept on reducing the price presumably because it had been in stock for months. 80K miles but just a tad scruffy. Drove it. OK but never seemed to have been loved. It was due a service and few other things like tyres, which the dealer didn’t feel they could be bothered to sort out. Meanwhile, another dealer half an hour away had a previous generation C180 which had the same mileage, but the owner had really looked after it. Apart from cracking the door mirror, so I had to get a new one of those. The tyres were new, it was serviced and MOT’d before sale and has been faultless ever since. The other week we popped into a Merc main dealer for recall work which involved brand new airbags. They kindly did a video detailing all the work they could do to make it perfect for just £2500. We did not take them up on that. After suffering marginal SUV mpg figures for decades this Blue Efficiency engine cut petrol station visits in half. Very comfy and hugely quick as well.

Mostly the Mini Cooper doesn’t cause problems, but it is starting to crumble at the edges. Only in a minor way though. I did a load of anti rot prevention and application of some ancient Waxoyl on the underside. Actually I was trapped for the purposes of a video, underneath the Lorry doing this and it is a rather relaxing and enjoyable experience. I took the front end of the Cooper to bits in the late summer then had to reassemble it niftily to journey in the direction of Wales to write the BMC vs Polestar and BL vs EV stories. There is painting still to be done (I got some Almond Green paint mixed and in a spray can) but I am waiting for the weather to warm up before applying the top coat.

Then I realised that two old cars was going to be a problem if I was going to be covering long distances on a regular basis for various business reasons. I was happy to do the journeys in the old crocs, but if I don’t know where I would be parking that would be a problem. Hence the arrival of Valhalla that you can read all about here. Since then, the part owned by a mouse Volvo has needed a fresh cabin filter to replace the one soaked in rodent pee. Obviously I wore gloves. Oh and a light has come on and it

has just decided it wants a service…

To cap off the year the Lorry, that Land Rover Series 3 was due an MOT, well it isn’t. Now well over 40, it technically does not, but we all really should. Interestingly, the DVLA owe me a rebate on the vehicle excise duty already paid, which I am in an ongoing battle to recover. The MOT did not go so well. These era S3s still have a fairly marginal electrical system which does the lights and heater, yes it has a blower and even some infotainment (a marginal CD player with added ‘90s TV system speakers). The cluster that operates the fog light and hazards stopped working and after fiddling with the wires only actual replacement would do. Bloody expensive little switches, or pull knobs. Got some second hand ones and also bought a new indicator stalk as the old one stopped cancelling years ago.

I almost ended it all there except that in December, just when it seemed as though it would become a permanent fixture on the Bangermomics compound, it moved. For the second time in 2024 a Golden Shark (this time a fully grown one) left the building on the back of a trailer.

That’s it for now. Hopefully there will be lots more personal car based nonsense in 2025 to write and moan about.

Here’s a think/prediction piece which is also live on Free Car Mag and features a more relevant image cyber taxi image, as Drive Baby Drive. The point is, things seem rather more positive across the pond when it comes to energy, driving and their economy. Do you agree?

Well this is interesting. The richest man in the world and the 45^th President of the United States, soon to be the 47^th, became jolly good friends during the run up to the election. Now it seems they are set to work together on making America Great Again. Again.

First though it is important to dip our toes into the Area 51 of unconfirmed Conspiracy nonsense by suggesting that just possibly the 47^th presidency may not happen. You can discount all this and I will probably delete this paragraph on January 20^th, but there is just the chance that the Trump/CEO of Tesla and Mars rockets dream team may not happen. Alien invasions, martial law and all sorts of shenanigans could get in the way of Trump, despite all those votes, being in charge again. They managed it in 2020 by fortifying the results and this time it has been observed that dodgy President Biden has been alarming co-operative and that isn’t simply because he hates cackling Kamala. Never mind, let’s proceed on the basis that Trump gets crowned King of America again, what exactly is happening with him and best mate Musk?

First off, Donald Trump is not the biggest fan of the Electricity Car. Among Trump's campaign promises is a plan to dismantle the Biden Administration's EV tax credits, which reduced the cost of EVs. Also the so-called "EV mandates" the result of the Inflation Reduction Act designed to boost EV sales.

However, any student of how Elon Musk has prospered will have noted that he has managed this on the back of rather a lot of government subsidy. His Model 3, is one of the few EVs that still qualifies for a $7,500 tax credit. Not only that, the fuel economy requirements have been good for Tesla's credit-sales business to car companies struggling to meet requirement to reduce emissions. He has emissions to spare, (making more than 2 billion in 2024 alone) strange then that he now believes all that should end as he made clear on Twitter X to "end all government subsidies, including those for EVs, oil, and gas."

That seems to be the price he is paying for being appointed as head of the proposed DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Meanwhile, The Alliance for Automotive Innovation has warned of competition from "heavily subsidised electric vehicles and technologies exported from China."

Trump is certainly the bloke to do just that. He called Biden-era electrification efforts part of “the Green New Scam.” He said he would “end the electric vehicle mandate on day one,” referring to a recent vehicle emissions standards rule from the Environmental Protection Agency that requires U.S. car makers to significantly lower their vehicles’ emissions over the next decade, rather like our Zero Emission Mandate which is quietly killing European car production.

Mostly though he wants to increase tariffs on foreign goods, especially Chinese cars. However, with no government subsidies to win over new car buyers it would be up to the manufacturers to discount the cost of what are unprofitable products. That would be interesting and possibly wipe out EVs that don’t have Tesla badges.

Although previously against tariffs Musk said as recently as May that they could work, as without protection, the Chinese would destroy the home market. Certainly American automotive businesses have been looking on in some horror as manufacturers like BYD begin to overrun the European car industry with cheaper electric alternatives.

So what is Trump going to do and what will happen? The simple truth is that we won’t have to wait very long to find out. We can be pretty sure that there will be tariffs on vehicle imports irrespective of where they come from. It will hit China and any company which makes vehicles nearby, like Mexico. Ending that $7,500 EV tax credit will put electricity cars out of reach for many consumers and that means petrol and diesel car sales should be boosted. Rescinding the emission standards rule, taking some of the pressure off the major car makers to continue their expensive electrification efforts. Tesla’s have the production scale and history of making ‘profitable’ EVs, means that smaller domestic competitors such as Rivian will struggle to keep up, or just compete.

Another important reason why Musk is totally on board with what Trump wants to do is this. His transition team has recommended the elimination of a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rule about collecting data from crashes of cars equipped with automated driving systems. The agency requires all manufacturers to report certain collisions of vehicles with advanced driver-assistance systems. Tesla’s so-called “Full Self-Driving” feature, along with a more limited system called “Autopilot,” are at the core of Musk’s long-standing promise to make human drivers history with cars that can autonomously drive themselves. Tesla’s FSD and Autopilot are classified as Level 2 Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, which means that crashes must be disclosed if these features were in use within 30 seconds of the crash and the accident.

The two seat Cybercab you can see on the cover has no steering wheel and is a tease to Tesla’s promised self-driving future. Slackening the crash rules, might speed that up.

To make all this happen it will be a case of drill baby, drill, a full on frack and oil prospecting fest. Fossil fuel is the only way to make Musk’s self driving dream come true and boost Tesla sales. Then they can all Drive, Baby, Drive.

Meanwhile as Europe relies on windmills and widespread solar harms, the view across the Atlantic could become rather enticing.

Interestingly, we will find out soon enough.

See you next time.

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