Drove a 3.9 second 0-100 kmh car last night :D

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you sure know a fair number of rich people.

He’s ~53 years old, about to retire as a fire captain w/ a near six figure pension. He owned a few rental properties, sold 2. Has his house (worth $2M maybe?) and a cabin on a lake.. where he can land his 2 seater float plane. besides fire fighting, he has almost always worked a second job or run a business. Work every day, save, invest = make money. The last couple years or so he’s also been a Free Mason. He’s one of the most successful people I know.

It’s not hard to know rich people here. Average house prices are $1.4M. People make low wages and salaries, but IF they were lucky enough to buy a home before ~2000 they’ve all made real estate equity. Very nice neighbourhoods are tens of Millions/house - those ppl don’t work jobs.

Also, even (actual) poor students know rich people. UBC is known as the “University of Beautiful Cars,” because there are 20yo Chinese students with new drivers licences driving around in Supercars.

Working people are relatively poor here. Low pay, high rent. But there is a LOT of money here thanks to wealthy Chinese money launderers & druglords.

My friend with the Tesla and car modifying business had to partner with his parents to buy a cheap condo 15 years ago when he was poor. He worked his job and ran his business. A year or so ago he expanded and bought his new 5 unit building for $6M, plunking down $1.3M in closing costs in cash. His business has grown big time - it’s near world wide and expanding. He’s deaf. Even disabled people can get rich if they focus & do the work.

wish i had that kinda entreprenurial talent.

You and me both!

Oh well. If I fail at everything else I can at least make a six figure income with my trade if I try. If I’m lazy and just go to work for The Man I’ll make $60-70k + benefits, so around $85k. Add some side jobs and hit $100k+, or go out solo and easily do $100k solo or $130-140k each working with a Good partner.

But it’s very difficult to expand a hands on artisanal type craft into a global empire. Hard enough to just find one or two other talented people to partner with because most people who do it aren’t very good at this trade tbh - and that’s why walls in multi-Million dollar homes look like kindergarten art projects compared to my work and anyone better than me.

But w/e, even if I do fail at all other pursuits I’ll work myself into an above average income and at the very least live very comfortably as a single man with zero dependents.

Over half way there now. Just have to work faster/smarter, more, And charge more for my work - flat rate market prices vs by the hour. Once you’re good and fast at this there’s no more working for hourly rates unless you want to give a friend a deal. Just flat out pay me the $1000 the job is worth and I’ll do it.. get it done in 10 hours or so and boom, money in my pocket. Whereas a newbie might take all week and still have things looking like crap.

Tesla is like a kids radio controlled car! Zoom! Haha.

The Volvos were around 8 ish and the 740 was much quicker. The 740GLT was a straight line car. Not so great in the corners. Yet the 360 GLT's had wonderful handling. The GLT versions of both cars had their top of the engines (Overhead cam and twin overhead cam on the 740's) designed by Porsche and Porsche designed improvements and lowering of the suspension on the GLT versions of the Volvo 360's. The 360's also naturally had a good weight distrobution with their engines at the front and gearboxes at the vack and an n-shaped petrol tank just infront of the rear wheels under the rear seats. The 360's also had long aluminium drive shafts to make them rev freely which were encased in a tube incase the drive shaft broke. Some panels on Volvos were aluminium like the trunk lids which were very light (Not sure if it was only the GLT that had the aluminium trunks and may have been the bonnets as well).
Both cars were very light in weight for their size. The 740 GLT's were 1200kg in weight which is light for such a large car. Little Ford Fiestas weighed more then that! The 360GLT's were even lighter.
The non-GLT versions were heavier but they were actually lighter then other makes in their class despite having side impact bars and other featurws like electrically heated seats on all their cars since the 1970's.
But those 360GLT's could handle. Rear wheel drive and even though it as back end out, they were soo predictable. So predictable that one got into the habbit of not slowing down and drifting the things around roundabouts which gave one some looks. I could go down a straight road at an angle of 45 degrees with the rear wheels spinning and hold it there dead straight for the length of the road if I wanted to. They were that easy to control! I remember a young Ford enthusiast who had grown up with Ford Escorts, Capris and Cortinas and he also had a few Minis, and he had to have a GL version of the 360 to keep him on the road inbetween cars which he could not believe how the Volvos handled. He said "It just goes where you put it!"
And that was one which was not improved by Porsche.

It is such a shame Volvo stopped making them. They were actually designed by Daf who Volvo took over in the 1970's and Daf had not put them in production but had most of the tools etc ready apart from the engines. When Volvo took them over they wanted an engine to fit straight away so they turned to Renault and put their 1400cc engines in them with Dafs excellent variomatic automatic gearbox and launched the car in the mid 1970's. The Renault engined cars were all badged as Volvo 340's. As the cars were designed for the rear mounted variomatic gearboxes, there was not room under the hood to mount a traditional manual gearbox, so Volvo developed a rear gearbox (Manual stick shift 4 speed) to go in the 340. The petrol tanks were right at the back on the 340's. Then Volvo used Renaults 1700cc engines so one had a choice of a 1400cc manual or an automatic or a manual 1700cc.
Then in the late 1970's Volvo managed to cram in their 2000cc engine by taking the rotor arm and mounting it at the front of the engine and came out with the 360's. They also had the petrol tank mounted in front of the rear wheel in an n shape to fit over the drive shaft which had a small thin rubber hose to link the two bottom sides of the tank so they remained equal in the fuel level but they did not all slosh the fuel to one side like a standard tank has, and therefore preventing the weight of the fuel from throwing the car over in a corner.
The first 360's offered were the GL and GLS. The GL had a carbaretta and the GLS had fuel injection.
Later the dropped the GLS and kept rhe GL but introduced the GLE (Fuel injection) which was the luxury version, and the GLT which was the sporty version with the lowered suspension and also had fuel injection etc.In the early 1880's Volvo upgraded the 360's gearbox from a 4 speed to a 5 speed on their upper spec cars like the GLT and then eventually all the 360's were 5 speed manual. There was also a power steering option though few cars had this.

Volvo had introduced fuel injection in their cars as an option from about 1958 if I recall correctly with the Amazons. Volvo never did rallying as they had a policy of not entering into competitions, but they would sell complete rally ready cars to the public. These were famous for their performance. The old PV's and then came the Amazons in the form of the 123GT etc... They were very quick for their day and on historic classic car events they have the same average times as Jaguar E-types as the E type tops out at 145mph (Officially 150 but none of them reaced 150 without taping up all body seams etc!) and the Volvos with the overdrive could only top 140 on a good day BUT the Volvos had the edge on handling so were able to make the time they lost on oong straights up on the corners. Volvos were very lightweight despite their elderly appearance.
Mine was a 1800cc carbaretta version known as the 131 but it was the same car. The exposed body panels were galvanized. The front wheels had disk brakes. The rear had massive drums. The steering was light despite having no power steering and the braking was excellent. The acceleration was brisk and despite a long gear stick, one could change so quick that one had a sudden forward surge when changing when accelerating which is the opposite to what one expects.
Other fetures on my old 1965 Amazon (Saloon) were rear blow heated windows (Later Amazons had electric wires on the glass but the older versions worked so well with the heated air hitting the front and rear windows one dis not need electric demisting. The air worked better and quicker. It had windscreen wiper speeds of fast, slow and very slow. Very slow was ideal for drizzle and misty weather and I far preferred it to modern intermittent wipe cars. It was just the right speed! It had electric screen wash. Rare for those days. It was just a good handling nice old car which the only thing I did not like was the floor mounted dip switch for dipping the lights. All old cars had that. I did not get on with it.
The acceleration was around 0 to 60 in about 10 to 12 seconds foe my car. The rally version did it in 7 seconds.

you still have the BIG BIG BIG advantage of universal health care, if you were amuuurican you'd be saddled with average health care costs, somebody your age [gets much more expensive as you age] of at least $2 grand per annum [all copays and deductibles]. if you make it to my age, expect that to quintuple.

Up until sometime last year we still had to pay every month. $900/year max for a single person - less if you’re low income. But we still paid premiums in BC up until the end of 2019. Now we don’t - they just take it out of general revenues.

^^^still far better than our deal south of the border. cheapest insurance (if it can even be obtained) for oldsters down here is 4 figures per month (over $1000) with $10k+ deductibles and copays. if i lived where you live in terms of stratospheric cost of living, i could not survive with this medical cost burden. from my viewpoint, being a canadian is only a blessing.

What does it feel like to drive that fast?

depends on the car. a typical american car is designed for good stability at american highway speeds, and at high speed will be tippy and jittery, with tiny steering wheel movements magnified. a typical autobahn cruiser OTOH will be like being on rails at high speed.

To accelerate that fast? It’s fun! Throws you back in the seat like an amusement park ride. When I really launched it good and we took off my friend laughed from the passenger seat and was like “Yeah! Good one!” instead of telling me to slow down in his brand new car lol

I didn’t go thaaaat fast of a top speed in it.. I mean, I’ve driven a fair bit faster, but I did get up to 152 kmh.

I've never driven before. I'm afraid my reaction time would be too slow.

Yeeeeah, I wouldn’t recommend anyone drive a FAST car for their first time driving. Definitely safer in a regular slower car because you can’t accidentally go too fast too soon. But even regular slow cars could be trouble if something happens and your reaction time is too slow.. you could crash or someone else could crash into you etc.

and safer yet in an autobahn cruiser and not typical amuuurican pig iron.