I was tip toeing thru the tulips of past car talk discussions last night and discovered an amazingly self righteous and self important rant by a fellow called turek2, I think.
he was apparently the boyfriend of a woman in quebec who had a car talk show on at the same time as tom and ray. he could not understand that they provide entertainment, not an auto repair school. you would have thought that they were the most horrid guys in the world to hear him tell it. it was hilarious. I wasted a perfectly good hour , almost, reading his foolishness. he reminded me of a character in the old bugs bunny cartoons, …BUT I AM NAPOLEON!!! (sp?) anyone know any others I could enjoy?
I have to say my Drum brake rant got some feathers ruffled.
Well, the Robert Gift rant about heating his SUV with flood lamps in his garage instead of a simple electric heater or block heater comes to mind. So does the extended rant about how long the transmission will keep turning the engine if the ignition is turned off… And there’s been quite a few of the “dino” vs. synthetic oil rants.
The dinosaurs were so heavy they just sank into the Earth. They were also so slippery with all that oil that they had trouble moving anywhere due to their awful coefficient of friction. That’s why they died out 
I try to avoid answering any rant. As soon as you do you get a progressively longer rant by the ranter explaining why the rant was not a rant at all.
^
+1
As soon as it became apparent that the “DUI” thread was turning into a rant/taunting contest, I decided that my original comment was the only one that I would contribute to that thread.
We had some pretty good rants way back with the old Car Talk Rant and Rave. Especially durning the Bush election. Got pretty heated at times especially from one disabled post man that I can’t remember his name. All those have been wiped out several times by now though. Current rants are nothing.
I recall a particularly heated thread on the old R&R, Bing. The comments kept piling on when the thread was many pages down in the hopper. I think it became a contest as to who would be the last to post on it. In the forum’s original format it was not necessary to register and a post could be made using any name so often the moniker used would be part of the message. But personalities became apparent and regulars could be easily identified in even a few lines of text. At that time the iATN forum was through an ISP in England and it took 15 minutes to get through the maze of the toll free system to call through London and get on line. There’s been a lot of changes since then.
I believe the threads that drew the most controversy, as in the number of heated exchanges with posters going to the very limits of civil discourse (some going over the line here) were the threads on increasing the tax on gasoline, the rant on the current educational system and the one about the caller who could not decide whether to buy her daughter a BMW M3 with an automatic transmission or a manual transmission for her 16th birthday.
the gun control debate …
“…and the one about the caller who could not decide whether to buy her daughter a BMW M3 with an automatic transmission or a manual transmission for her 16th birthday.”
@keith, you’re just jealous. I know I am.
And that reminds me. A friend of my daughter received a gift from her mom: a late model BMW 3 series convertible. Mom has 2 cars, and thought it would be nice for her daughter to drive it to school. Mom’s a medical doctor, and they can afford these choices. But after only a few day’s on the school parking lot the car was keyed. Mom took the car back and daughter drive something else. I don’t know what, but it certainly wasn’t as remarkable as the Bimmer.
Government mandates always create long, often intense, debates. And that’s a tribute to the freedoms that our founders fought and died for. I include in the term “founders” the colonialists that fought and died for freedom from the tyranny of the british government of that time.
But i don;t think of those as “rants”. To me, “rants” are meaningless tirades against someone for no good reason, like the mentioned rant about the brothers by our northern neighbor that was the subject of the original post. That one still stands out in my memory. That was a doozie.
A little off the topic but after the last two posts with guns and Canada, I’ll just comment. I used to think Canada was a very free and open country (of course under British rule, but free anyway). In my early years and family friend moved there to start a resort and we visited. Everyone hunted, fished, and enjoyed the outdoors. I was about 9 when I picked out a nice 9" hunting knife for $3.50 with no permit or parental permission slip needed. I still have it.
I don’t know what happened in the last 20-30 years but on another site the topic of having a hand gun while hunting came up, and one of the guys from Canada complained about how hard it was to get a permit to buy one. Then even if you could buy one, it was very hard to get the permit to carry it to the gun range to use it, let alone have it with you in the woods. Then of course the whole bi-language thing. Something has really happened up there. Maybe its the European influence or something and maybe there’s a big split between east and west, but it kind of makes you shiver when you look at how much they have changed.
yeah, debates are good. … but that was a “doozie”, wasn t it? 
Someone here was claiming that car wax companies have a conspiracy and make you put the was on the car when it is moist so it would make the paint rust through or something to that effect. I never followed the thread.
Don’t forget all the “Cash for Clunkers” rants…
One other big rant was the poster who claimed that oil in an internal combustion engine didn’t need to be changed and claimed he drove at least 100,000 beyond what was already on a used car and never changed oil, just added oil. This had a lot of us upset who do like to maintain our vehicles.
Around here something seems to be considered a rant if certain people don’t agree with what you are saying. Then you are labeled as troll on a tirade. IMHO
Then there’s the people who let their engine run out of oil, want to blame everyone but themselves, come on here and don’t get the agreeable answers they expected.
Remember the person who put a performance mod on their new turbo diesel truck, towed the heck out of it and blew the engine?
@keith: I was intrigued by the call you referenced, and I spent the better part of today trying to find it (don’t tell my boss…). It was episode 9839 (yep, way back in 1998), and the call, along with the letters that followed, are in fact still posted here: http://www.cartalk.com/content/janet-and-bmw-z-3.