You know what hasn’t happened at BangShift Mid-West in quite some time? Project car work. I’m ashamed but I’ll admit it, there hasn’t been a wrench spun in longer than I care to admit. So, starting this morning, as you read this, I’ll be picking up the Imperial’s transmission and the torque converter that likes to play hide-and-seek and will get to work on slapping that pile back together again! So enjoy the air conditioning while you read some of last week’s random tidbits of news that were just interesting enough to roast and pile together for another plateful of Scrapple. Enjoy!

1. Still came over on a boat, still applies.

The Buick Envision is one of the few Chinese-assembled vehicles sold in America. It does sell pretty well (we suspect that most buyers don’t know or care about where it comes from) but it does have one major flaw that cropped up last July: it was one of the products that was hit with a hiked tariff. GM filed for an exemption the second the hike was announced, but last month the U.S. Trade Represenative’s office produced the response: “nope”. So, if your Gram-Gram was inspired by the “That’s Not A Buick!” ad campaign and liked the small, upright little box, you might want to go with her to the dealership.

2. Don’t worry, the scary car won’t get you.

We’re big fans of the Cadillac V-series around here. It was nice to see well-optioned cars that could switch personalities and become violent brawlers at the drop of a hat. The CTS-V is a legend, the ATS-V a V6-powered ripper, and both could come with shift it yourself manual transmissions…what wasn’t to like? Well, to some Cadillac owners, it was the power part. During an unveiling for the new Cadillac CT4 and CT5 (the replacements for the ATS and CTS, respectively) GM President Mark Reuss noted that “When we did a V-series, they were hammers…there’s some intimidation there.”

Right, because a softer, fluffier duck-badged pseudo-luxury Audi-like sedan is the answer?

3. R.I.P. Ford Fusion Sport

The death of the regular car marches on at Ford. Sadly, a very under appreciated and potent combination is gone: the Fusion Sport, a 325 horse all-wheel-drive under the radar flyer. It’s not outstanding in any regard and it doesn’t capture the imagination like a Mustang does, but if you don’t want anyone to pay attention to you while you blast down the road, this was a solid choice. To read more from a test drive we did a while back, CLICK HERE.

4. “Free”, you say?

The good news: Volvo is offering up a program called “Tow For Life” and it does mean that if you own a Volvo, any Volvo, you qualify for a free tow to a Volvo service location. There are catches, though: First, that free tow is only good for 25 miles. Second, you will have your car repaired at the Volvo service facility or you will be paying for the tow. But hey, it’s a Volvo…how bad can life be?

5. Does that qualify as a blessing or a curse?In another round of, “I can’t believe I’m actually typing this”, we have what might be the strangest injury that you could suffer while operating a moped. A 35-year-old man in the United Kingdom had to visit an emergency room nine days after he fell off of his moped and bruised his perineum that caused him to endure a rare form of priapism that was not painful, and according to the ER report, maxed out on the honest-to-God real scale of stiffness. In laymen’s terms: After bashing his taint, this guy had a nine-day erection that could’ve been used to break up concrete. I actually had to type that out. Doctors actually had to go in and create artificial blood clots to stop the flow of blood into the organ to fix the problem, which is a very simple way of explaining the serious amount of science that went into saving this man’s manhood and functionality. After a year, the man is back to normal.

It’s also introduced a new term to my lexicon after reading the medical report: “traumatic coitus”.