California: Sports Car or GT?

Finally, the voice of scientific reason. At least on the tree conundrum!

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I don't know if it's a sports GT or not, but I just got back from a 100 mile Sunday drive and it sure is a lot of fun to drive!

T

 

GT is 1950s marketing, subset of sports car, 1920s marketing. A falling tree reminds us the woods, are in fact trees; whereas neither the egg nor chicken came first since evolution is incremental. OTOH, God would have made the chicken first.

 

Yes, I get what you are saying and it's wonderful that you actually built your own sports car. However, you also mention (your) "...skills have deteriorated to a point where (you) can no longer safely take advantage of what (your car) is capable of...". I suspect your car demands a lot of respect for most drivers to safely enjoy. So I think there lies some degree of justification for modern "conveniences" like the DCT gearbox, Manettino...etc. from the performance and safety standpoints. Although others conveniences like full electric seats, premium stereo, ...etc. are really just geared towards appealing to a broader clientele.

As for more purist sports cars like the 4C and Elise/Evora, my main beef about them is that while they are fun, there are also much better cars, even if they are more expensive. Therefore while they do serve a purpose, their appeal is limited because they are not the best for the purpose.

 

Ive owned a 355, a 360 and now a California. The California is by far the best daily driver. It does everything well, but as mentioned its not a mid-engine sports car nor is it a 12 cylinder GT. Its a multi-purpose tool. And a fantastic one. I never drove my 355 or 360 as much as I drive the California.

 

So true ... I racked way more miles per month on my Cali 30 than I did on my F430. I actually changed the TFT display to always show the range instead of miles so I wouldn't think about it. What a great car.

As for the chicken vs. the egg, the answer, of course, is the egg that held the mutation that produced the proto-chicken.

 

Yes, you are arguably right in that a (fertilized) egg does have to exist before it becomes a chicken. However, the question "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" can be viewed as a scientific exercise or a (logical) conundrum.

In your interpretation, you say it's the egg because your proto (first) chicken had to have first existed as a (fertilized) egg. So your view of the question is on evolution, a scientific exercise, the same way I initially answered the question. However, you are then scientifically incorrect and here's why.

The scientific process of speciation is acknowledged to occur within a population, not within or from a single individual organism. What makes a chicken different from its acknowledged precursor is not one gene or one mutation, but rather a whole set of genes, mutations which occur and evolve when a group from the precursor species becomes separated and evolves separately from its precursor species. This is the process of speciation. It is a process and not an event. You can confirm this by looking at the acknowledged evolution of human beings. We do not acknowledge an "AHA!" moment when a pre-human suddenly became a human (male or female) through a single individual. We are a mish-mesh of various gene combinations.

This is the reason why I said evolution is incremental. It doesn't happen with one egg, one birth. It happens over many years, generations, within an isolate population.

At any rate, the other more common way to view the "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" question is as a conundrum with no right answer. To that end your answer would be correct in a layman's sense, and to that same end I offered the religious approach, creation.