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Poorly Designed Cars ... and I Have Owned Several of Them

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 By Bruce Shawkey No one wants to drive a lemon. You know, the car you buy, then as soon as you take it off the lot something fails. The engine goes kaput, or the brakes don't work. The worst thing that could happen goes wrong, and you're left with a huge repair bill, in many instances more the car is worth.  What is there to say about the Peel Trident? It was launched in 1964 at the British Motorcycle Show and was intended to be used as an "occasional two-seater." By 1966, the Peel Engineering Company ended production on the strange little car. The Trident might be gone, but the legend lives on. On Monster Garage, Jesse James got his hands on one and tried to fit it with a motorcycle engine and new frame. The experiment failed and James destroyed the car for his television audience to see. As soon as the Pontiac Aztek was announced, it was universally hated by car lovers. Critics claimed the design of the car itself made no sense, especially its oddly-shaped front en...

42 Tropical Fruits ... Many You've Probably Never Heard Of

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 From a 1947 report titled Tropical and Subtropical Fruits The larger cultivated fruits of the northern temperate zone, apples, pears, quinces, plums, peaches and their varieties are not included in this listing. Instead, you will find the principal edible fruits of the tropics. Many have been cultivated since early historic time or before, such are the fig, the date, the pomegranate, the common spiny jujube, and perhaps also the lime. Scarcely known in northern Europe and not capable of being cultivated there, these did not reach our North American shores with the notable exceptions of oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit which can be cultivate in the South. Of other exotic fruits brought from Mediterranean countries, the principal ones were figs and dates. Though introduced repeatedly in various places in the United States, it is only recently that they can be said to have been well established. The first figs grown in California were black mission figs brought by Franciscans fr...