Over the Labor Day holiday, I journeyed to the wife’s homeland in Northern New Mexico, and spotted cars and motorcycles.

The common vehicles of this area include the following:

• The Ford F250 4X4- Both turbodiesel and Triton V10 abound, usually equipped with aggressive tires and coated in dust. No crazy lifts, no fancy chrome wheels.
• Subaru Outback – also coated in dust.
• Toyota 4Runner topped with $4,000 of Yakima racks – amazingly, not so dusty

When exploring the neighborhood that my wife grew up in, we turned the corner to an amazing display of the automotive unusual. Multiple projects parked on the street, in multiple degrees of completion, including:

• Volvo 240 – with a wide body kit.
• Volkswagen Scirocco 16v – with racing stripes!
• Numerous sport bikes from the 90s to 00s in varying stages of undress.

In another neighborhood, an absolutely menacing 1959 Buick Electra deuce and a quarter finished in oxidized black crouched under a split level’s carport.

Since it was a long weekend in a geographic concentration of the most amazing roads in the world, there were plenty of motorcycles, including more KTMs than I’ve seen in years. Harleys were represented according to the sales in the US, i.e., there were a ton of them, but sprinkled in were the occasional BMW GS, Suzuki Savage, and more than one Dr. Big.

Closer to home, it’s been a little on the light side for the wild and wacky in transportation. My long term plan is to acquire an electric vehicle to replace the Mercedes as a daily driver and occasional road trip machine. I’ll probably wait to pull the trigger until I can test drive the Korean entries (Ioniq 5 and EV6), but I have spotted a couple of Polestars and they look good. And I spotted a Volvo XC40 Recharge in Stormtrooper Helmet white and lord that was not good, which is funny because the XC40 is not a bad design. The big white plate over the grill put me less in the mind of a PV544, and more in the mind of a Maytag. Maybe it’s better in black.

I did spot and snap these electrified beasts while either at a full stop or as a passenger.

Here’s the first Ford Mustang Mach-E I’ve spotted, making a left hand turn. Not bad, but I’d probably spec mine in a color. There’s too much grey, black, and white on the planet.

Later, I spotted a fresh Jaguar I-Pace.

Ehhh. It reminded me of the Land Rover Evoque. It’s a crushed, lead sled version of a truck, or a silly putty stretched sedan. The mailbox slot rear window and extended hips give me the feeling that it would be a pig to maneuver in traffic.