June was a good month. Summer finally arrived, I got to hang out with fellow enthusiasts for the first time in ages, and Oppo stickers were cut, pulled, and shipped out to Opponauts everywhere!

In the interests of full transparency myself and our glorious leaders, @Curators, decided to present the data and metrics to Oppo at large. As-promised, profits from this endeavor will go to keep the lights on here at opposite-lock.com.

BUT FIRST, let's look at some fun metrics.

In the month of June there were 238 visits to the Etsy listing for the Oppo decals

123 items were sold in all those views

Orange is by far the most popular color, and to my surprise the smalls are more popular than the larges for all colors.

Between all the stickers sold, I pulled 2196 dots off all of them. (Etsy and I are +/-1 for our totals, but I'm not going to worry about that because the error is likely in my spreadsheet, and I don't want to fight Excel any more than I already do). This does not count the stickers that are on the shelf right now, nor the ones I have to pull to get stock numbers back up.

And now, the important numbers... The American pesos and Canada bucks that have been transferred as trade for these fine, hand made, premium Oppo stickers.

Curators and I agreed on a $2/sticker "KITT profit" number back when we agreed on pricing for these. Using such things as 'math' and 'formulas' the long and short of it comes down to three numbers:

Total revenue: $757
Oppo Profit (sticker price -$2): $513
KITT take-home ($2/sticker): $244

Proceeds will be donated after review. I appreciate the generous support for myself and for Oppo. I feel good in the investment I myself have put into Oppo as you have given wonderful support, excitement, and gratitude for the stickers and my effort.

Oppo-on you glorious weirdos!

And if you needed any reminder: Normal-mount decals here, and Reverse-mount decals here

And now I own FOUR of them!

For years I have been searching for GM part number 22649423 based on the thumbnail image. Every now and then I'd try to order from a dealer, or check ebay. Well, it's finally paid off. I have four in my possession, and I am definitely going to be holding onto them.

But why does such a thing exist? Is it because of the Pontiac Vibe, which I own and am highly involved in the community of? Well, sorta. But also not sorta. Allow me to introduce you to (or remind you of) the Toyota Cavalier!

For some odd reason, likely something to do with Toyota building a GM-badged Toyota for GM, Toyota got this RHD captive import straight out of the USA. And since it came from a GM factory, GM needed Toyota badges for it. Thus: PN 22649423.

Bonus: Toyota made a TRD package. So your Cavalier can be a turd in more ways than one!

God Bless whatever both parties were on way back then...

@flatisflat Tl;dr:

Aside from that, I am not a fan of the accusation that all NEW cars look the same. Because as far as I can tell, even when there were more design freedoms, they weren't always taken...

But it means decals are coming! The little holes in the steering wheel are the worst. There's 18 per decal, I printed off something like 70 decals in white, black, and orange, and this is only the first page of it.

I also have to weed a BUNCH of decals for the GenVibe store.

So yeah. This is going to take all week most likely.

Time to fire up the podmachine and get to listening! First on the list:

(hopefully that doesn't timestamp to where I am)

Indeed it is! After a lot of time peeling (and some time nursing my neck) we have a restock! What's in stock right now may not meet the demands from my poll earlier in the week, but that's actively being worked on. Large oranges, small oranges, and small whites are top-priority to get more of.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1022845906/opposite-lock-oppo-decal

Get 'em while they're in stock!

My old winter tires were burned up a couple years ago, so I found the cheapest, and best, set of winter tires already mounted I could find. They were up for only a few hours when I messaged them, and picked them up the next day. They had been plain black, but I figured... Why not paint them?

I went ahead and sprayed them a shade of silver, bought some Chevy Beretta center covers (somehow the Vibe and Beretta share a 5x100 bolt pattern - I'm mildly interested in Beretta GTU 16" alloys if I can find a set), and slap some Pontiac badges on the center.

I love the "cargo van" look. It's distinctive and doesn't look too bad, IMO. Another plus: I can sell these center covers to a Fiero enthusiast if I ever get rid of these!

I've printed out packing slips, printed out return labels, bought International stamps at the Post Office, spent about half my credits on Stamps dot com, and rubbed my finger dry applying them to envelopes.... But the stage is set for an envelope stuffing spree tomorrow. SOOON!

I need to figure out the best way to get a normal 8.5"x11" sheet of paper into a 3.75"x6.5" envelope, but still, SOOOOOON!

Once these are sent I maaaaay get to the reverse-cut decals for you dozen or so folks in need.

I geeked for this even though I've never really been a Honda person. Just seeing one, especially a clean one, seemed special.

Yesterday between 4p and 9p I pulled 810 dots off decals. 45 large, 5" decals done in the three offered colors.

Many more printed yet to be weeded. Mostly smalls, some large oranges. I'll let you know when I'm ready to take more orders.

I've acquired a new tool that should help with the little dots. Sucker's sharp.

And finally the first batch of stickers are in their envelopes ready to be sent to their new owners. Some of these are also from my Vibe group, but most are Oppo orders (Opporders?)

They'll be marked shipped once I drop them in a box tomorrow morning. I DID have a few spares from the first batch, so I'm hoping I counted incorrectly when stocking instead of packing for shipping. If you get your stickers and are missing some, let me know preferably via Etsy.

Between what's ready for sale and what's ready to be weeded, my Stickers Interest - A Poll might be covered. If you haven't made your voice heard there, do so - it'll help me out. But once I finish this second "batch," I'm going to a made-on-demand model to hopefully not run the store out of stock again... Thanks for the patience, your awesome stickers will be riding on LLVs throughout America (and parts of Canadia) soon!

(simulated image)

I found a neat page on Etsy with some good analytics and figured I'd share some of my findings as of today.

Here we can see visits from a week ago when these went on sale, and the number of items sold. There's more visits than orders, but it's pretty close... There was a smaller spike yesterday after my restock, which is to be expected since most of you know about the stickers already, but it appears about 1/3 of the total views were yesterday to today.

The two spikes of sales correspond with the days the stickers have been posted here, and they're about even in size. Last week they stopped quickly due to stock. This time we're not yet out of stock, or I've restocked quickly enough that nothing is out (yet). This shows that the initial rush could be over, and we may enter a good stasis for these.

Here be the revenue spikes. I'm going to hold onto actual numbers, but of note is that the second spike is slightly smaller than the first despite items sold practically matching the first spike. This is probably down to the small decals being the hot-ticket item (specifically, small oranges).

Orange line is visits, blue bars are orders. This shows that there was a huge number of visits but not orders last week, due to quickly going out of stock. This week the numbers line up, likely due to those missing out first time finally getting what they wanted.

The vast majority of visits have been driven the direct link here on Oppo. The twenty driven by the Etsy app & pages likely don't know what Oppo is... If you suspect you're one of those 20 I'd love to see what got you to view these.

Then, curiously, there's 1 that found it via search. What did they search to find this?

... Okay.

Here's the total views for my whole shop from the last 30 days. I think you can see the Oppo spikes.

Here's store items sorted by most views in the last 30 days. My Vibe keychains are kind of a hot commodity right now, which is awesome, but Oppo launched itself to first place.

So, there's some fun giraffes graphs for you to view. I may or may not do similar stuff at the end of the month for full-transparency Oppo business.

@davesaddiction I can accept one manufacturer building a car for another. Even if the OEM on the grille had minimal involvement (gestures vaguely at my Vibe)

But the BS the Toyota people peddled during launch just spoiled a lot of it for me. "My mentor said all sports cars have two hood latches." The fuck he did, it has two latches because BMWs have two hood latches. Be honest about what you have: A damn fine sports car, not The Second Coming.

My friend having to work on them while actively hating them helps make up for it, though...

@bison78 I'd say Toyota's position has been fairly reasonable. While everyone else is making the grand statements and transitioning now, industry analysts say there's going to be more supply of EVs than demand by 2030. I'd bet Toyota's super conservative culture also came to the same conclusion, and wants to use their battery supply by hybridizing EVERYTHING (yes, even the upcoming Tundra) and investing in what makes sense back home in Japan. They've also been working on solid-state batteries, seemingly wanting to jump a generation ahead before doing anything too dramatic.

I will also say I call BS on anyone that says hydrogen is a dead-end (if you dare say infrastructure, I'm going to point at EVs and stare at you judgmentally), and I will also say this article comes in with a bias.

BUT if Toyota is really pushing back with such force, maybe they don't deserve so much leeway. Maybe their corporate culture is TOO conservative in this case, and the market is moving too fast for their traditionally slow pace.

@streetsofperth I think we should be happy if it has a cohesive shape, as opposed to.... Whatever this shape is on the Crosstrek

@highlander That's Fred. He's pretty nice.

@classicdatsundebate As someone with a new neighbor that has a loud bike, and regularly comes and goes at nearly midnight... I'd really appreciate some moderation in noise. This, domestic situations, and subwoofers are why I want to move to the countryside.

@huzer said in Obnoxious BMW Owner Ordered to Pay Over $5,000 to Annoyed Neighbors:

. Can't say the same for the adult that had a newer GT350 clone that hammered it every morning at 5:30.

Funnily enough the worst noise I've ever heard was a straight piped Mustang...

@mocamino said in Obnoxious BMW Owner Ordered to Pay Over $5,000 to Annoyed Neighbors:

If I can swing it, it will get a more reasonable exhaust setup. I can't hear myself think over about 50 MPH.

I put a quieter muffler on my Vibe (because I made mistakes when I was younger) and it's one of the best things I've ever done. I'm mad it's so hard to find a quiet muffler.

@mark-tucker Mine got a REALLY good video of a minivan getting broadsided as it just decided it wasn't going to wait at the red anymore. Impressive, too, because it was at night.

Little camera proved its worth right then and there.

@just-jeepin This website is better than my fluids class.

@skyfire77 I think someone did push Musk off the Model Y. It's such a sensible way to make a better selling version of the Model 3 with basically nothing additional, someone HAD to either be holding Elon back or doing the project in secret.

Of course this means Elon lets loose on the Plaid (still hate the name and always will) and the """Cybertruck.""" Got to make up for lost time, of course...

@davesaddiction Jason does hate that California sound law and long gears, but it's interesting to me that it's completely glossed over that autos these days have more gears than their manual counterparts, and can be geared shorter. So of course that will affect acceleration. The car in the video that doesn't have more gears in its auto? Miata - 6 speeds in either flavor.

@old-busted-hotness All the way. Grommets, split loom, connectors... It doesn't look OEM, but dammit, it looks GOOD.

@urambo-tauro said in Yay Wiring Shenanigans!:

@kitt222 said in Yay Wiring Shenanigans!:

magnetic zip tie holders

Whoa, I had not seen these before. That's a pretty slick idea!

Oh yeah. They're great. Perfect for setting up a loom without drilling holes.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BFH3Z1H/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Also, I'll make a bigger post explaining myself, but I think it's done...

Best part? You can't even tell...