The title of today’s post originally appeared in the text that for a wallpaper image that was available for download from the first generation of this website and blog. And while I am not alone in my disdain for these vehicles, it wasn’t always that way.

Back in 1984, Chrysler (or whateverthehell they called themselves at the time) my wife and I saw a pre-production Dodge Caravan doing high altitude testing while driving on I-70 near Vail, Colorado and we liked what we saw. At the time, we were driving a Subaru 4×4 station wagon and the thought of having all that space for hauling our studio’s photo gear was appealing, much more so than a standard full-size van. But all that changed after the Caravan was launched and subsequent generations of minivans quickly became the default mommy-mobile.

It seemed like as soon a baby arrived in a family, the couple raced down to a car dealership and bought a minivan because that’s what they thought they were supposed to do having been indoctrinated by the happy, smiling families and their dogs in TV commercials for minivans. Flashback to the 1960’s when my daughter was born and I owned a first-generation 1964 Plymouth Barracuda. With its fold down seat and folding trunk partition the available storage space was copious and the car had a sense of style (at least to me) and I never, ever thought, “Oh I need a truck to drive our young daughter around.”

The obvious alternative to a minivan is a station wagon. Nowadays station wagons, along with hatchbacks, seem to be anathema to most Americans, yet Europeans buy them in equal numbers to sedans. Other than Subaru, no Japanese maker, that I know of, still offers wagons, while most European car companies still do. Instead of my (now sold) Mercedes CLA sedan, I really wanted to buy the company’s CLS wagon. But I couldn’t because Mercedes did not sell the wagon version (pictured aove) in the USA. Instead Americans were only offered the smaller—yes, there’s less room—GLA crossover that is, nevertheless immensely popular. Hey it’s a nice little truck but if you need more room, why do I need to buy a bigger SUV?

For all the minivan haters out there. there is good news on the horizon: According to The Truth About Cars, the American minivan category accounted for 408,982 sales in calendar year 2019 but Americans won’t acquire 300,000 minivans this year. With the effect of the pandemic influencing some car sales, “the minivan segment saw its share of the U.S. market crater”—to 1.5 percent. I expect this trend to continue into 2021 as more and more Americana get into crossovers, like the 2018 Subaru Crosstrek that Mary just bought*, which while it’s not a station wagon is, in a way, a much better option for many families than a minivan.

*Please note that this is Mary’s, so now she has three cars: a 2016 Beetle convertible, the 2018 Subie and, yes, her company car, a 2016 Ford Escape. Me? As of this writing, I still do not own a car but Mary lets me drive the Beetle and Subie from time to time. Look for a video with my driving impressions of the Crosstrek real soon now.

Microsoft charges a monthly fee to use the latest Office software, which is why I’m happily using Office 2011. Adobe charges a monthly subscription fee to use Photoshop, which is why I’m happily using Photoshop CS6.

And now PetaPixel reports that Adobe Creative Cloud for Photoshop and Lightroom via the $10 per month Photography Plan, is now $20/month. According to PetaPixel, Adobe originally offered a $10/month Creative Cloud bundle of Photoshop and Lightroom in 2013 as a special limited time deal but the plan was so popular  Adobe continued offering it as a permanent option. But now instead of $10/month including 20GB of storage being the most affordable plan, the new $20/month plan includes 1TB of cloud storage.

According to Gizmodo, the $9.99/month option still appears for many users and if it doesn’t, PetaPixel  confirmed that it can still be purchased by calling Adobe’s sales team, using the  online chat to talk to a salesperson or by contacting an official Adobe reseller.

In the automobile world, Apple CarPlay is included on a $16,190 Honda Fit and many manufacturers offer CarPlay into their vehicles as standard equipment these days; it was an inexpensive option on Mary’s company-owned Ford Escape. Since BMW began offering CarPlay on cars in 2017, The Verge reports that it’s been a one-time $300 charge. But that may change. BMW North America’s technology product manager Don Smith told The Verge that CarPlay will cost owners $80 a year.

The apparent reason behind that is $80 annually will be cheaper for people who lease the cars than buying it. Smith said, “This allows the customer to switch devices. A lot of people buy CarPlay and think it’s okay but sometimes stop using it or switch to Android.” Smith said the new plan would be free for the first year of ownership but after that, owners must pay $80 per year to keep it. The Verge reports that BMW doesn’t offer the Android equivalent to CarPlay, Android Auto, so I’m guessing that whole switching platforms analogy was just, as they say, smoke.

And so it seems that every greedy corporation that offers products and services will nickel and dime you to death at every opportunity. My bank, Wells Fargo, charges a fee if you make more than four withdrawals a month from your savings account. When I did that the first and only time, I was charged a fee and called the bank yelling at them saying, “what’s next charging for deposits?” And yes it’s true. One of our advertisers, LensPen, is Canadian, and Wells Fargo charged me five bucks when I deposit their check for an ad on this site.

(From Jalopnik) Earlier this year, BMW was widely called out for the pettiest of price gouging by charging owners $80 a year to use Apple CarPlay, a feature that is often included in infotainment packages on much cheaper cars elsewhere. To save some face, BMW has decided to not do that anymore.

UPDATE: According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median American worker annual income is $46,800, while the average photographer makes about $30,000 a year. The average Adobe employee makes $108,000 annually. Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s CEO’s total compensation is $17.89 million. These facts are just something to think about when you pay your monthly Adobe subscription fee.

NEW UPDATE: It seems like I was not the only person who though subscriptions for cars was a bad idea. According to Automotive News:

The Access by BMW subscription pilot launched in April 2018 and never expanded beyond its initial Nashville market. It was targeted at affluent customers willing to pay high monthly fees for two tiers of service starting at $2,000.

“Our intent with the pilot was to learn about the viability of the subscription model and gauge customer interest,” a BMW spokesman told Automotive News Thursday. “We are in the process of developing the next iteration of the program,” he said, declining to elaborate on details.

Audi Select, a similar program offered by the Volkswagen Group premium brand, will be discontinued on Jan. 31, according to a notice on the service’s website. It was billed as a new interaction with Audi dealers when it was launched at five Dallas-Fort Worth stores in Sept. 2018.

Rival Mercedes-Benz ended a similar pilot last summer after seeing lackluster demand for the mobility model.

Because I am a Lego enthusiast, every now and then, this blog takes a look at Lego built cars. But with the new book How to Build Brick Cars, you get to build cars that Lego doesn’t offer as kits.

Author Peter Blackert works in Ford’s Asia-Pacific Canters focusing on powertrain and chassis system and his expertise is put to work for the designs in this book. He’s also a life long Lego enthusiast and that shows through in the text as well as the detail and complexity of each car’s specification and even in the cars he selected to model.

The beautifully designed and printed book is divided into three sections:

• In Foundation there are four cars ranging from a 1932 Ford V8 hot rod on to a Jaguar E-type with plans for coupé and roadster versions of each car. The designs in this section are what Lego fans call minifigure scale, so they can be used in cities and layouts, like mine. My favorite design in this section, however, is the legendary Citroën 2CV Charleston that only requires 249 parts. (More later.) The book also includes the Ferrari 488GTB and Spider. While Lego offers many Ferrari kits, they don’t offer this particular model in their Speed Champions series.
• Intermediate is the largest section of the book and the scale bumps up to 1:20 too. Here you’ll find everything from a Ford Raptor to, my favorite, a BMW i8 that’s on the book’s cover. Build difficulty for the cars in this section is up too: The relatively Z car, for instance require 499 parts but the cars in this section also have working suspensions so the build are slight more complex but obviously fun to construct.
• In the Advanced section, the car size remains at 1:20 but difficulty is ramped up too, so a parent might want to work with their youngsters to build these cars that include an awesome Plymouth Hemi Cuda and a Bugatti Veyron. These cars also use Lego Technic parts in order to create functioning internals.

The book works hard at being accessible and includes a detailed parts list for each car, including the Lego part number, color number and number of parts required. Building these cars won’t be as inexpensive as buying a Lego kit and even parts for the Citroën 2CV could cost $25 or so, although most Lego enthusiasts already have a stock of that should include some (or many) of the parts.

There are detailed sections showing how to actually build the cars but they do not use the simple and easy-to-understand format used by Lego in their instruction books. Because of space limitations there are short cuts that are explained in the “How to use this book.” So don’t just blast through to the cars you like and start placing parts order. Take a few minutes to read this section and the build will go smoother.

It’s obvious that How to Build Brick Cars was a labor of love for the author and Motorbooks has spared no effort producing a book that is just as lovingly crafted. If you like cars and like Lego, you need this book. And, hint hint, it’s not too early to order a copy for Christmas giving.

• Flexibound: 192 pages
• Publisher: Motorbooks
• ISBN-10: 0760352658
• ISBN-13: 978-0760352656
• Dimensions: 9 x 0.6 x 10.2 inches
• Price: $21.47 Prime