Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "Ed's Auto Reviews" channel.

Certainly! There would never have been any intention to actually make cars with assymmetric lights - licensing authorities would not permit it, as it would confuse other drivers at night, leading to accidents. Sometimes, clay models were made as only one side of the car. You don't really need both sides.
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@2015dwayne The Chrysler XNR concept car you directed me to pretty much confirms what I said, doesn't it? The only real asymmetry is the presence of racing-car-like body bulges in front and behind the driver. To make it road licensable the lights are not asymmetric. The chap taking in the video made me laugh - he said "even the engine is asymmetric". Of course it is - it's an inline 6 - all inline 6's are asymmetric. the carby can only go one one side. The slant 6 common to vast numbers of Chrysler cars looks more asymmetric because it is a slant engine with that distinctive intake manifold. Concept cars are often a bit weird. It lets the designers test the reaction at car shows.
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@2015dwayne : The XNR/Asimmetrica was of mild interest (and I did quickly read the Wikipedia article you referred me to - Dwayne, I thank you for alerting me to something I didn't know about). Almost all of the asymmetric features you mentioned stem from coordinating the design with the racing car-like bulges before and after the driver. The statement that asymmetric clay models, used by many manufacturers, does not generally imply an intent or possible intent to put asymmetric cars into volume production (and asymmetric lights wouldn't be allowed anyway) as given by me and others, is not invalidated by the XNR/Asimmetrica.
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@2015dwayne : Thanks - I had not seen it. Jay having fun as usual. I do enjoy Jay Leno's Garage episodes though. I wouldn't mind his money - I wouldn't mind a tiny fraction of his money to spend on restoring and restomoding old cars. I have a friend who owns a PT Cruiser - he loves it. But he also has a BMW-made Mini which he uses when he's in a more hooning mood and his wife is nowhere in sight. There would be some tension in that family if Chrysler brought out an XNR-style retro car.
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An Australian here. When my father was a young man, he bought a "ute'' as they have always been known as here. It was made by Essex in Detroit in 1926, in right hand drive form for the Australian market. Which is further proof that that old nonsense about Ford Australia inventing the ute in response to some farmer's letter is just that - nonsense. A farmer did write a letter. He just wanted a cheap alternative to the imported American utes. Many of my father's farmer contemporaries here bought the Ford T or later Ford A in a version sold by Ford under the description coupe/utility. Those old pre-war Ford Australia utes were built from Ford Popular kits sent out from England. My uncle had one. It was an utterly hopeless vehicle due to having a tiny side valve motor that could only reach about 40 MPH unladen. This motor was, by British standards, barely adequate for the Popular sedan, but way too small for a load carrying vehicle on Australia's long roads, where time was money. And it had English made Lucas electrics, which meant that it broke down a lot. My uncle gave up on the starter motor's high failure rate. He just crank-handle started it - as the motor was so tiny with a low compression ratio it was real easy to crank.
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In the 1960's, designers wanted their cars to look unique and be brand recognisable at night as well as during the day. Hence, about as many ways to install lights - singles, or twins, vertical twins, horizontal twins, sloped twins, etc, as it was possible to imagine. Back in the day, I thought those Chrysler cars looked pretty. But I never considered buying one, as they had a lot less room inside than their rivals. And the quality control was not as good. GM cars had better all-round visibility for the driver. The Chrysler styling was not the problem.
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So, did Lincoln, and Ford generally, survive despite McNamara? When he became secretary of defense, he was full of really dumb ideas that led to the USA loosing the Vietnam War despite a humongous investment of money, men, and materials that just went on and on for years. For example:- # Recruiting retards into the US Army - "McNamara's Morons". # Putting General Westmoreland in charge of the War. Westmoreland was an incompetent "rock painter" who lived in his own world divorced from reality - but right up McMamara's alley as Westmoreland was a numbers obsessed man.
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Hardly anything in this video is correct. In about 1968 the Australian weekly magazine "Post" printed an interview with a retired Ford Australia engineer, (Brandt) who still had a copy of the factory drawings for the first Ford Australia ute, which was adapted by Brandt from the Ford Popular sedan and assembled from knock-down kits sent out from Britain. Somehow from this story of Australia inventing the ute got momentum after this story in Post - I am surprised that any non Australian assigns any credit to it. Sure, a farmer did write to Ford Australia, not because utes didn't exist, just that they were imported from America and were too expensive. My uncle had one of these Popular based utes. It had a tiny sidevalve engine, 30 BHP or so, so gutless that with the slightest incline or load, top gear was unusable. But it was cheap. My father owned an an Essex ute - yes, a 2-door vehicle with a rear cargo space, based on a sedan. It was made in Detroit in 1926. US Ford even made a ute version of the enclosed style Model T, after they noticed a lot of dealers had been converting T's into utes. They even called it the Ford Coupe Utility. The reason why sales of utes went way down in Australia was the introduction of Japanese vans, such as the Toyota Hi-Ace, Mitsubishi L300, and the like. Better durability, much lower fuel consumption, and way more cargo capacity - both in volume and in weight. Before these, the only alternative to a ute for light tradesman use was the VW Combi, an unsafe gutless heap of junk, or the imported English Commer van, which was a very fault prone gutless heap of junk. Most of us in Australia are mystified by the popularity of the Ford 250 in the USA. It's really just a big fuel-gobbling car, built to car standards of toughness - i.e., it doesn't have the toughness for light truck work.
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Japan sold us cars with better quality, but due to Japan's city densities, their vehicles were always small. The drop in sales of US-based station wagon designs caused by the competition has led to no station wagons available now. For me that is a great pity. I had a Ford Falon XC (1977) wagon, and it was a most practical and useful vehicle. The comfort of a large sedan. The cargo area to carry the luggage of my whole family on camping trips. Big enough in the back with the rear seats down to carry standard size plywood and sheet metal for my various hobbies. And that 2-way drop-down/swing out tailgate made it real easy to load heavy objects, lawn mowers, gensets, etc. Tradesmen these days buy vans such as the Toyota, but these are nowhere near quiet and comfortable enough to do duty as a sedan to go shopping to a restaurant in.
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@2015dwayne : Agreed.
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@2015dwayne : Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv8ffn8NpsY at 1:10. Those visible rear leaf springs - ugh!
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