250,000th Corvette and Other Things

On this day in 1969 a Corvette convertible in Riverside Gold rolled off the assembly line that was the 250,000th Corvette produced. It probably looked a lot like this:

From topclassiccarsforsale.com a picture of a 1969 Corvette convertible and, hopefully, that color is Riverside Gold. Unlike many Corvette enthusiasts I am not able to tell what color a Vette is by sight, in part because I suffer from partial color blindness.

Even though the 250,000th Corvette was produced this late in calendar year 1969 it was a 1969 model. A strike interrupted 1969 production. After the dispute was settled, production of Corvettes, and only Corvettes, was allowed to run four “extra” months. Not surprisingly, 1969 Corvette production was much higher (38,762) than that of 1968 (28,566) and 1970 (17,316).

1969 was the last model year for the legendary L88 engine (an option costing a whopping $1,032.15 in 1969 given the base price of a coupe was $4,781); 116 were made that year, 216 in total from 1967-69. 1969 was also the only year for the super-rare ZL1 engine, which was an all-aluminum version of the L88. Two were made and the option price was…$4,718.35. Although officially rated at “only” 430 HP these engines had outputs of at least 100 HP more.

Given that the Corvette almost didn’t survive past 1955 reaching a quarter million in production was quite a feat. The car didn’t reach 10,000 units in a model year until 1960, its eighth year of existence. Of course, the front-engine Corvette is no longer being produced and the two-millionth Vette is, hopefully, just a few years away.

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One might be surprised that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is not a believer in totally autonomous vehicles. In this article “The Woz” is quoted as saying, “I stepped way back [on] this idea of Level 5. I’ve really given up. I don’t even know if that will happen in my lifetime.”

“What we’ve done is we’ve misled the public into thinking this car is going to be like a human brain to be able to really figure out new things and say, ‘Here’s something I hadn’t seen before, but I know what’s going on here, and here’s how I should handle it.’ A human can do that.”

Wozniak believes that, at this point in time, such technology will be better used as a safety net for certain situations. Once again, too many people are seduced by the cult of the new, in my opinion.

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One reason I left Twitter is I grew tired of reading asinine comments like this, “Charity is anti-democratic. All decisions about allocating money should be made by our elected officials.” I have to admit my response was not my finest hour. Do you want to know what I wrote? OK, I replied, “You need an operation to have your head removed from your rectum. Coercion is anti-democratic.”

I suspect most of this blog’s readers are not socialists or communists and are, in general, in favor of markets and capitalism. What frightens me is that so many Americans seem completely willing to totally cede economic freedom to the government. Be careful what you wish for because you may get it. Making rich people poorer will not make poor people richer.

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From The Müscleheaded Blog comes this remark by Somerset Maugham, “To do two things at once is to do neither.” Multi-tasking is a myth as every scientific study has shown. Human brains are serial processors, not parallel processors.

During a job interview I was once asked how well I multi-tasked. I replied, “Multi-tasking is a 21st-century myth. People cannot truly multi-task.” I was actually offered the job and accepted, but left after nine miserable months.

#250000thCorvette

#MultiTaskingIsAMyth

#somanycarsjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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