Spotting thread! Did you see any special cars on the road today?

Today I saw a Lucid in a beautiful shade of brown. Also saw a Fisker Ocean just 5 minutes later.

I was in a rented Nissan Sentra at the time. It's been a long time since I drove one of those, and I came away with a pretty good impression of the car. I think Nissan woke up and realized "Oh crap! We're Nissan! We'd better pack these cars with features if we're going to stay in business!"

One way or another, it was a pleasant small sedan packing a lot of modern technology done right. I did not like the bulky center console, but... they're popular with lots of other drivers. I really like the ultra-tiny one in our Prius c.

 

I saw a BMW i7 the other day. Good looking apart from the grille. I think BMW has partially recovered their styling groove but they're still stuck with ugly grilles.

 

I saw a Jeep XJ on the ride to the airport this morning. Couldn't say which year but it looked early, so 1984-1988ish.

That isn't terribly rare, but this one was pretty special for the details: Factory suspension height. Factory-sized wheels and tires. Body and paint in very good condition- most of these are nasty rust-pits by now. It really looked like a barn find.

I never liked them as much as the SJ series but they certainly developed a following of their own. Neat blast from the near-past anyway.

 

I've been working in San Francisco for a few days.

I spotted a beautiful Porsche Taycan this morning. The dark green paint finish was just amazing.

Also I've noticed many Waymo robot cars driving around, more empty than occupied. They seem to have excellent driving manners. I also saw a car similarly festooned with sensors that said it was Nuro brand. It was suspiciously still in the middle of a street.

And this morning I had my first ride in a Tesla Y. Much more comfortable than a 3 with lots more leg and headroom in the back seat.

One thing puzzled me; it had a very noticeable *THUNK* every time the driver accelerated from a stop. It reminded me of a Prius starting its engine on acceleration, but if anything it was harsher. It seemed out of place.

 

Those were known as the Rabbit Pickup in the USA, but in Europe it was known as the Caddy and now that they are all old classics the Caddy name has become more popular worldwide.

Introduced in 1979 and offered through 1984. The optional diesel was quite weak, either 48hp for the 1.5L or 52hp for the 1.6L. But they were wonderfully simple and turned in fantastic fuel economy. They were fairly prone to corrosion so most were lost to rust rather than mechanical failure.

USA models were built in Pennsylvania to dodge the chicken tax.

They were quite slow and had terrible crash safety compared to anything modern, but compared to other vehicles from the early 1980s they were actually pretty good. Nice spot.