Is it legal to buy a new car in Mexico and bring it back to the US?

[1995hoo]

Regarding the spelling of México versus Mexico... This is a fuzzy topic when it comes to what's "right."

Don't forget Hawaii versus Hawai'i. One of my friends is ethnic Hawaiian and insists on including the apostrophe, which represents a glottal stop.

It's called an "okina", and is an essential part of Hawai'ian.

I can finally correct everyone at school and all of those maps that it's really "Hawai'i". And that Google auto correction software is always wrong.

Maybe hold off, though, unless you're prepared to also insist that the maps show "Deutschland"...

Yep. The legal state name is Hawaii. Spelling it with an apostrophe is incorrect. That said, the islands are legally the Hawai'ian Island, and the big island is Hawai'i. But the state name? Hawaii.

Spelling it with an apostrophe is incorrect either way because an apostrophe is not the same thing as an okina, although of course a particular keyboard or typeface (or turning off so-called "smart quotes") can render the distinction irrelevant in some situations.

It's similar to how it's all too common these days to see people incorrectly using an opening single quotation mark instead of an apostrophe when they're truncating the beginning of a word, such as on the sign here at a UVA football game some years ago. This is why I said "so-called 'smart quotes'" in the previous paragraph–MS Word doesn't handle this situation correctly and most users assume that whatever formatting the software applies is correct.

[Rothman]

It's similar to how it's all too common these days to see people incorrectly using an opening single quotation mark instead of an apostrophe when they're truncating the beginning of a word, such as on the sign here at a UVA football game some years ago. This is why I said "so-called 'smart quotes'" in the previous paragraph–MS Word doesn't handle this situation correctly and most users assume that whatever formatting the software applies is correct.

Thank goodness there are those willing to fight the wars that so many of us are not.

[lordsutch]

Relevant to the subject of this thread: why the Tsuru is being taken off the market. http://jalopnik.com/horrifying-crash-test-against-a-modern-car-shows-why-me-1788423100

[formulanone]

Yeah, that's quite a deformed A-pillar on the red car...The odd thing is that result was probably "average" for the crash-test ratings of its time (1991-92), although the variety of required crash tests performed a the time were minimal compared to today.



As a number of race drivers, motorcyclists, and bicyclists have said before: it's okay buy a $20 helmet if you have a 20-dollar head.

[US 41]

Here's what I don't understand. How can we have such strict emissions standards, but yet the rednecks can put chips in their diesel trucks to make them blow out a ridiculous amount of black smoke? How is that not illegal?

[J N Winkler]

Here's what I don't understand. How can we have such strict emissions standards, but yet the rednecks can put chips in their diesel trucks to make them blow out a ridiculous amount of black smoke? How is that not illegal?

It is illegal.  It is against federal law to disable an emissions control device.  However, enforcement is left up to the states, and tuners get around state-level enforcement regimes by temporarily restoring the factory settings before taking the car in for inspection.

[lordsutch]

It is illegal.  It is against federal law to disable an emissions control device.  However, enforcement is left up to the states, and tuners get around state-level enforcement regimes by temporarily restoring the factory settings before taking the car in for inspection.

And most states don't require inspections except in EPA non-attainment areas (some of those have even been phased out, like in Memphis). Even states that do require inspections don't always look at emissions; I don't think any of the southeastern states that require inspections check for emissions issues statewide (I know LA, MS, TX, and VA don't).

Editorializing, I tend to think the inspection stickers in most of the southern states are largely there to target poor and minority drivers and give law enforcement another excuse for pulling people over; I don't think there's any real evidence that they have a meaningful positive safety effect overall.