— FEATURED —
— FOLLOW US —
Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.
— POLICIES —
Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution
— FONTS —
David Pescovitz at 8:43 pm • 
• 
Over at Apple, Jony Ive is reportedly pulling back on the skeuomorphism for iOS 7. I'm glad. I don't care for skeuomorphism except in a very few instances, like the 1982 Chrysler Town & Country seen above with Ricardo Montalbán.
Maggie Koerth-Baker at 1:59 pm • •
The answer lies in another question. How can PVC — polyvinyl chloride, a commonly used type of plastic — be the stuff that makes tough, rigid sewer pipes and, simultaneously, be the stuff that makes floppy vinyl signs and cheap Goth pants?
"PVC is hard stuff. But if you put in a lot of plasticizer, you can get it to be soft," explains John Pojman, a chemistry professor at Louisiana State University. At a molecular level, PVC is a dense thing. Imagine a slinky in its stiff, compressed state. The plasticizers are chemical compounds derived from coal tar. Mix them with PVC and the small molecules of plasticizer shove their in between the densely packed PVC molecules. Imagine stretching the slinky out so that its coils are now wobbly. Same thing happens here. The more plasticizer you add, the less rigid the PVC.
And it's the plasticizers that produce that smell — the one we associate with the vinyl interior of a new car.
Image: 365:37 - Mar 29 - that new car smell, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivative-Works (2.0) image from waldengirl's photostream
David Pescovitz at 9:17 am • •
In 1952, LIFE published an article about Louie Matter, a gearhead who tricked out his 1947 Cadillac with a shower (seen at right), drinking fountain, tape recorder, washing machine, stove, "and a bar with spigots for whisky, water and soda." Oh yeah, and a dashboard hookah too. This, my friends, is the definition of "bow-tie classy." "Shower? Check. Washing Machine? Check. Hookah? Check. Let’s Ride"
David Pescovitz at 9:58 am • •
In Dubai, the fuzz drive Lamborghinis. Also, BMW 5 Series, Chevy Camaros, and Dodge Chargers. (Laughing Squid)
David Pescovitz at 11:42 am • •
Unfortunately, all three of the new limited edition Lamborghini Venenos produced for sale have been pre-ordered, but I'm going to keep my eyes out at CarMax. (Motor Trend)
David Pescovitz at 10:23 am • •
My friend and noted vernacular photo collector Randall de Rijk turned me on to the excellent blog "Darrin's Car Photos" that consists solely of great vintage snapshots of various vehicles!
Mark Frauenfelder at 10:17 am • •
And here I am complaining about the rain in Los Angeles. (Via biotv)
Mark Frauenfelder at 5:07 pm • •
Matt Richardson says: "I've never seen a license plate flipper before, have you? From the video's description: 'This is meant to be used off road or show room for show cars and not meant for use to avoid red light camera or avoid toll camera.'"
(Via Boing Boing G+ community)
Rob Beschizza at 9:45 am • •
A calendar of men posing with 1970s cars while wearing underpants is said to be a big hit in Germany. You may view this calendar in its entirety online. [h/t The Awl]
Mark Frauenfelder at 3:19 pm • •
I want to own all of the gemlike microcars of the mid-20th century seen here on Fine Car's flickrstream.
Mark Frauenfelder at 10:34 am • •
This futuristic concept car from 1957, designed for kittens, was one of Ford's bolder experiments. (Via X-Ray Delta One)
Mark Frauenfelder at 12:45 pm • •
Jason Torchinsky of Jalopnik says: "I have a post up that I though BB people may be interested in, about if it makes sense to standardize UI for cars -- most of our car-folk readers are against it, but I think a more general audience might feel differently."
1. Common Controls
Really, we're just about at a standard for these, but not quite. It's being so close but not quite there that makes this category so annoying. Since I drive a good number of different cars as part of my work, I encounter many, many different dashboard and control layouts. It's not really a big deal to adapt to a new car's controls, but it's not entirely seamless, either.
For example, I'll sometimes drive off in an unfamiliar car, and a minute or so into my trip realize I need to defrost/defog the rear window. So I can, you know, see. This particular act is almost always confounding — the rear window defogger/defroster is by far the most randomly placed control in all of motordom. Sometimes it's snuggled up with the HVAC controls, all indistinguishable from the windshield defogger, with its magic rising snakes icon. Sometimes it's over on the left, near where the mirror controls sometimes are, sometimes it's stuck on the center console, and I've even owned a car where it was an unmarked switch under the dash. Nobody has any idea where to put the damn thing. From what I can tell, where they end up placing it seems to be dictated by wherever the guy who realized they forgot it slapped it on.
Read the rest
