Firebird Man

Truly Trivial Pursuit: Gay Nineties Edition

2011-12-25T11:13:00.005-05:00

The dumb marketing term invented to describe the styling language exemplified by this Mitsubishi Eclipse was:

a. bio-mechanical
b. geo-mechanical
c. retro-maniacal
d. morpho-genetical
e. steampunk

lɐɔıuɐɥɔǝɯ-oǝƃ ˙q :ɹǝʍsuɐ

Street Beat Fashion Watch: Custom Shades!

2011-07-20T18:20:00.010-04:00

Once upon a time, back before those plastic stick-on fender vents were invented, first thing anybody'd do if he was looking to trick out his ride would be to add some kinda custom windshield header, a practice that to my young mind reached its apotheosis when it was coopted by Pontiac for its Turbo Trans Am pace cars of 1980. Welp, if a couple of vehicles sighted over the weekend are any indication, this is one outdated trend that's poised to make a comeback!

This van seems to be suffering an identity crisis, but hey, at least it looks good. And while I'm not sure what precisely is being referenced here, if this Kia pilot's commitment extends to not being on the phone when I encounter him on the interstate, well then, more power to him!

Click for full-size

Shameless: Can You Picture a Pagoda-Roof Looking This Undignified?

2011-07-18T10:02:00.006-04:00

Seriously, Mercedes-Benz SL, what happened to you? Back in the day, you bespoke a certain masculine refinement, an understated glamour, a panache not at all frivolous, but underpinned by real substance. You were the car an aging Cary Grant would drive. Today it's easier to picture behind the wheel an aging Fabio.

Perhaps it's just a symptom of our age. It occurs to me that it's been years since the last time I heard the word that once perfectly summed up your character deployed without snark or sarcasm, as if the very concept has become as debased and obsolete as the idea of a hardtop convertible for two cultured grown-ups. That word? Classy.

Click for full-size booty-in-the-air SL action

White Whale: Unspoiled TT

2011-07-16T21:20:00.001-04:00

Remember the O.G. TT? Remember how, when the Mays/Thomas dynamic duo ran "Auto Union/streamliner Benz/bathtub Porsche" through their patented fin de sicle neoretropomo design generator, the only way you could tell whether the resulting four-wheeled SS helmet was coming or going was by the color of the corner lenses? That was kinda cool, right?

Then I guess there were some high-speed accidents or something, possibly due to the fact that when you design a car with pretty much the exact shape of an airfoil it might then behave as a lifting body, and Audi, not wanting to watch its brand reputation go down the crapper again, quickly slapped a spoiler on that back of that heretofore perfectly symmetrical rear end and, just to be safe, recalled every car that'd been sold to date and spoiled them as well.

Thus was born one of carspotting's great holy grails: the unmolested TT. A car common enough that it can easily hide in plain view, and yet so rare that in ten years of dedicating, ridiculously, some part of the vast unused acreage of my brain to perpetual lookout duty, I had not once encountered it. I'd come close, recently, thinking I might've spotted one in the pages of a fellow obsessive's blog, but it was, alas, a mirage, and the box went yet unchecked, even by proxy. Until yesterday.

Meadowbrook Parkway, Long Island, New York, July 15, 2011, approximately ten a.m. Nimbus gray convertible. No spoiler. Got 'im!

Click for grainy Bigfoot-style full-size

Day for Night: Insert Murcielago/Batman Pun Here

2011-06-23T17:12:00.008-04:00

Hollywood and Highland, Hollywood.

Click for full size

It Stood for Limited

2011-06-17T19:44:00.005-04:00

Shoreline, Washington.

Click for full size

In Plain Sight: Metro Self-Storage

2011-06-11T08:47:00.011-04:00

I've never been entirely able to get a handle on Buffalo. In large part it seems about what you'd expect: busted-ass and depressing as hell. But here and there amongst the ruins lie relics that whisper of what could only have been a glorious past, and one frequently stumbles upon things so at odds with their current surroundings that their presence defies all explanation.

Metro Self-Storage is on Main Street, about a mile past the Anchor Bar, where the city's eponymous wings preparation was famously supposed to have been invented. It is, to be blunt about it, not the best part of town. Not the worst, either, not by any means, but just your typical, somewhat blighted, urban post-industrial industrial strip. Lots of decaying signage, chain link, and buildings doing duty for purposes other than which they were intended. Looks like this.

The first thing that catches your eye driving past is the back half of a 1982 Buick Skyhawk, arguably the handsomest of the J-cars (admittedly, that's not unlike calling ________ the noblest of the sexually-transmitted diseases), suspended over the entry. But then in your peripheral vision you might catch a glimpse of what sits just the other side of the glass storefront: flashes of chrome grilles, gills, exhaust, and—WTF, was that a Cord?

It was. And next to it, on one side, a Rolls of 1950s vintage, and on the other, a '40s straight-eight Buick with original-issue plates.

Across the room towards the back, an ex-Little Al stocker and three—and perhaps four—curious Etceterini of indeterminate origin.

Working our way down further, what appears to be a late '70s or perhaps '80s Indy car under a tarp, a pagoda-roof 250SL, a couple newer, covered Ferraris, a C5 Corvette, and oh, hey, a Maserati 3500 GT, and a Merak behind it for good measure.

Mind you, with the exception of the few that are covered with dust cloths, no effort is being made whatsoever to conceal these automobiles. They're sitting right there behind full-length windows—as if in a showroom!—on a cruddy main drag in Buffalo. No sign of the rest of that Skyhawk, however.

Click on the pics for full-size

Black Steelies in the Hour of Chaos

2011-06-09T15:43:00.004-04:00

Click for full size

Scene Report: Great Britain

2011-05-31T15:16:00.004-04:00

It's always interesting as a carspotter getting out of one's native market and seeing the hardware on display in different parts of the world. Some observations based on a couple weeks traveling around the United Kingdom, accompanied by wholly unrelated and random Instagram snaps from the same period:

Last time over here, about nine months ago, I saw my first nuova Cinquecento. One of them. Now they are everywhere. Whatever its fate in the U.S., Fiat has a massive hit on their hands.

The idea of resurrecting the DS nameplate for anything less than a completely revolutionary design strikes me as slightly lame, but regardless, I gotta say the new Citroen DS3 looks pretty great on the road. What comes across as slightly gimmicky in photos actually reads playfully distinctive and contemporary IRL. Big ups for the lovely nonmetallic sky blue paint option, too. Color!

Less original perhaps, the Peugeot RCZ might not be much more than a Vichy TT design-wise, but it turns out that's no bad thing either. Another Frenchie head-turner.

Likewise, while the new Renault Meganes strike me as less interesting than the funky previous generation, they're still reasonably graceful and attractive, and refreshingly free from Angry Car Syndrome.

Speaking of which, those new Sciroccos? Picture a chopped Golf, or a truncated CC, and you've pretty much got the picture. Meh.

Finally, while undeniably (if blandly) handsome, the current crop of indistinguishable Aston Martins are about as rare over here as Camaros stateside, and elicit, in me anyway, about as much excitement. However. Twice this trip the Sprinter in which I was a passenger was overtaken on the motorway by a Rapide, aka the new four-door Aston. Twice I saw its long and lean and low and muscular flanks slink past with the beautiful and lethal authority of a great white shark, and twice I felt my eyes widen and my lower lip tighten under my front teeth to register an involuntary fuuuuuuuck! I didn't see it from any angle other than a slightly elevated rear three-quarter, and like I say, I kinda don't give a shit about Aston Martins otherwise, but god damn if that thing didn't look utterly fantastic and provide me with the biggest automotive charge of my trip.

At least until I saw a woman step out of this Bentley and into a kebab shop, evidently on her way home from a wedding procession during which her quarter-million-dollar ride developed a flat. Is that even possible?

Americans Abroad: Brighton Beach

2011-05-29T12:31:00.002-04:00

Click for full size

Boomer Follies, Part Fifty Billion: VW Introduces "Beetle for Nobody"

2011-04-18T15:39:00.005-04:00

Start with a car that is essentially a boutique version of an existing model; its sole reason for existing, to offer a cute, appealing alternative to the increasingly masculine, aggressively-styled cars in its class. Take its basic shape, strip it of the whimsy and formal simplicity that made people like it in the first place, and replace it with, well, masculine aggression. Congratulations, Volkswagen: you've just invented the PT Cruiser!

Need further proof that VW's marketers have their fingers on the (ever fainter) pulse of the sexagenarian set? Don't miss VW's "MTV World Stage Event" unveiling, featuring none other than the Black Eyed Peas, aka the band that nobody likes, either.

2011: The Year Brake Bling Broke

2011-04-10T09:46:00.008-04:00

Nowhere does brand awareness play a more savage role in defining social hierarchies than on the suburban playground. When I was growing up, in vapid 1970s southern California, every fourth-grader understood implicitly that coming to school in something other than Vans, a Lightning Bolt shirt, and OP shorts was tantamount to an open admission of subhumanity. Good news then for aspiring fashion police in the wastelands of western Ontario, Canada, where this kiddy cop car was recently sighted sporting a full complement of polished Brembos. Would your child be seen in anything less?

Click on the pics for full size

File Under: Schadenfreude

2011-03-30T16:43:00.002-04:00

Bowery and Houston, Wednesday morning, three a.m.

Click for full size

Ladies and Gentlemen: Jason Castriota and the Post-Functional World!

2011-03-03T23:19:00.004-05:00

Remember discipline?

For a while, from the late 1960s through the '80s, the notion played a role, at least. I'm talking super/concept cars here. Even the most outrageous, impractical designs adhered to a sort of inner logic. I mean, not to be a total dick about it, but there was an element of intellectual rigor at work there, an insistence on formal purity that kept these cars from being simply exercises in frivolity or vanity.

It's possible, I guess, that this minimalist philosophy represented something of a dead-end street: that by the time Giugiaro rolled out his Lotus Etna, for instance, pictured above, supercar form had been reduced to a degree whence there was simply no further place to go.

Back on earth, the jellybean production cars of the '80s and '90s gave way to the new millennium's slab-sided crossovers, and vehicles grew ever taller and broader to accommodate their occupants' increasing girth and demands of invulnerability. Vast featureless sheetmetal planes cried out for relief. Which brought us where we find ourselves today, awash in a visual cacophony of comically exaggerated wheel surrounds , gratuitous sculptural elements, and, right, "flame surfacing."

It's not surprising that the pendulum has swung back from the form-follows-function restraint of Giugiaro and his contemporaries; the current of surfeit of automotive expressionism finds precedent both in the art deco flourishes of French and Italian coachbuilders of the 1930s and later, in the flamboyant kitsch of 1950s American designers, who, much like their current-day counterparts, seemed less concerned with beauty than with achieving a kind of maximum visual volume.

But something's different this time around, too. I recall reading about the F-117 stealth fighter back when it was initially declassified, about the way its freakishly multifaceted (and un-aerodynamic) radar-reflective surfaces were made possible by fly-by-wire systems capable of compensating for the airframe's inherent instability, and I remember thinking well shit: if computers are fast enough now to keep that thing in the air, how long before airplanes don't have to look at all like airplanes anymore? How long until we have planes that look like clouds, or birds — or toasters, or a hot dog?

Similarly, the technology of automotive design has seemingly rendered obsolete over the course of the last thirty years the purity of form that the move toward aerodynamic efficiency beginning in the early 1980s had made de rigueur. Back in the day, you wanted a sub-.25 drag coefficient, you ended up with something that looked like a pregnant porpoise. Now, though, mix in a little computational fluid dynamics and you can crank out something as overwrought and incoherent as Mr Castriota's latest "aeromotional" nonsense. Or, yes, a Cadillac that looks like a stealth fighter! It's like the shackles that have forever bound form to function have been loosed — we are living in a post-functional world. Cars can look like anything!

For me then it raises a simple question: why don't they look better?

In the Details: Saab PhoeniX Concept

2011-03-01T17:19:00.005-05:00

As seems prudent with most Castriota creations, I'm gonna reserve judgment on his first outing for Saab until I can get a better handle on it. The old-school airplane logo as CHMSL, however? Fucking brilliant.

Click through to view full-size, via Autoblog

Spotted: What's Wrong With This Picture?

2011-02-05T10:54:00.004-05:00

And please, no smart-ass "it's a Corvette" answers. You don't like a C4? You don't like Gatorbacks, clamshell hoods, and digital dashboards proudly illustrating their motors' 4000-rpm power peak? Well that's your problem, not mine. My problem, one that brings out my inner Monk and drives me absolutely batshit, is something else here. How do people pay this little attention to what they're doing?

Click on the pic for a closer look

Come to Think of It, It Does Look Faintly Like the Bell X-1: 1980 Citroen CX 25 Prestige

2010-11-19T15:12:00.004-05:00

"THIS CITROEN WAS ONCE OWNED BY CHUCK YEAGER WHO BROKE SOUND BARRIER I DO NOT HAVE PROOF OF THAT UNLESS YOU GO THROUGH THE CALIFORNIA DMV SYSTEM."

Click on the pic to check out the auction

Spotted: The Real Deal

2010-07-12T12:21:00.004-04:00

Now that we've all grown accustomed to the sight of two-and-a-half-ton parade-float neo-Challengers, you'd think the visual impact of the original would be diluted somewhat, wouldn't you? Yeah, not so much. If anything, this 'Cuda seems more radical and genuinely exotic in 2010 than it has in its forty-year history. (The rest of us should be so lucky.) Look at that freaking backlight surround, will you? Why did it take a crap re-do to make me appreciate what a truly stunning design this is?

(Note Don Garlits Museum license plate frame, btw. Big Daddy!)

Click on the pics for a closer look

Scene Report: Victoria, British Columbia

2010-06-01T23:27:00.004-04:00

The 1983 Pontiac 2000. Station wagon. In two-tone brown. Good times at Hecklers tonight.

Click on the pics for a closer look

The Giugiaro-Designed Isuzu Coupe That Doesn't Share Its Name With a Hall-of-Fame Catcher

2010-05-18T16:36:00.006-04:00

Everybody remembers the Piazza ("Impulse" in the U.S.), the stunning early '80s Ital Design showpiece improbably turned Japanese production car. But true Isuzu hardcores will point out that that car was merely a successor to the O.G. (Original Giugiaro) 117 Coupe that debuted all the way back in 1968.

Somehow this example found its right-hand-drive JDM way across the ocean to Canada, and into the hands of someone who recognized that the Italian master's work could be improved upon with the addition of chrome wire wheels (and spinners!).

Click on the pic to check out the auction

It's a Rupture

2010-04-27T21:33:00.003-04:00

Note gearshift placement. Somehow this strikes me as unwise.

We Pledge Our Sacred Honor to Defend from All Enemies Foreign and Domestic This 1987 Buick Century

2010-03-29T19:32:00.004-04:00

Besides the inexplicable Sisters of Mercy soundtrack, this video by the Michigan-based "Hutaree" militia—recently indicted on sedition, yes, sedition charges—is notable for what apparently constituted their primary assault vehicle: a late-'80s A-body Buick. No word on whether this car was among the tens of thousands assembled at the General Motors factory in Oshawa, Ontario, in, well, you know, Canada.

Unsprung Weight and A-Pillars as Thick as My Thighs = Indie?

2010-03-26T11:01:00.002-04:00

Is it just me, or does the presence of the phrase "indie cred" in a Camaro advertisement signify the precise opposite of indie cred? Where's the dipshit who wrote this? Come here so I can slap you!

Things that are stupid about the new Camaro:

1. Gigantic wheels with tiny brakes
2. Curb weight: 3780 lbs.
3. You can't see out of it
4. Cartoonishly updates lame Mustang knee-jerk rip-off first-generation design when it's the second-gen F-body that was truly inspired and iconic
5. It's a Camaro

AOR looks. Heavy Metal Parking Lot cred.

What's the Difference Between a Porsche and a Porcupine?

2010-03-25T15:51:00.003-04:00

One of them has the pricks on the outside.

As Mike Brady once sagely observed, sometimes a cliche becomes a cliche because it's true.

Pimping Eichmann's Ride: A Better Idea

2010-03-19T12:10:00.012-04:00

So yesterday I suggested that the Mercedes 540K that once belonged to Adolf Eichmann might be more deserving of the crusher than an award on some golf course lawn somewhere.

I've had a change of heart, though. It's occurred to me that there exists a better solution, one that would appease the automotive collector scum world and the ethically bequalmed alike. I'm keeping the Mercedes, only—for what gives the concours crowd a bigger boner than a custom-coachbuilt one-off?—I'm commissioning a rebody. Think James Glickenhaus with a moral imperative.

Who then to reimagine this iconic Mercedes in a way that pays solemn tribute to its checkered history? Pininfarina, Bertone, Ital Design? The dude who drew that goofy Mantide car?

No, no—I'm aiming higher. I'm thinking serious design-world cachet. Somebody with both celebrity star-power and a hard-earned reputation for giving physical form to humanity's darkest and most hideous impulses. Chris Bangle? You're getting warmer, but not quite. The reveal after the jump!

Daniel Libeskind! He's already shopped up an initial concept for me. See you at Pebble Beach!

"Architect of the Holocaust" Adolf Eichmann's 540K Takes Best of Show at Amelia Island

2010-03-18T10:47:00.007-04:00

Eichmann himself was sadly unable to attend, but thousands of adoring fans were on hand to celebrate his legacy, many of them gaily dressed in colorful period clothing. "I am truly thrilled to present this award," said 2010 Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance Honorary Chairman Joseph Goebbels, "recognizing a triumph of German engineering the likes of which the world may never see again."

Seriously, rich people? If I had the money I'd buy this thing and hire one of those monster-truck dinosaurs to turn it into the world's most expensive Holocaust memorial. Is it so hard to find something other than former Nazi baubles to cream your silk shorts over? Jesus.

2010 Amelia Island Best in Show Winners

What Would Dov Charney Drive?

2010-02-09T14:07:00.005-05:00

Seriously, what else would he drive? I wonder if whichever moustachioed would-be Guccione who picked this shot for American Apparel's in-store signage—Dov himself?—had any idea how perfectly, and I mean perfectly, appropriate his choice of this Mondial would be. By all accounts quite pleasant drivers, but I don't care: for me this will never not be the douchiest Ferrari of all time ever.

Click on the pic for a better look at the sock equivalent of Michelin TRXs

Spotted: 944 Dragon's Wing Edition

2010-01-31T17:11:00.004-05:00

A photo sent to my phone the other day by Rochester's finest bartender and unofficial moral compass, Herman Gatto. It's been a long time coming, but I think we can surmise from this that 1984's Best Handling Car in America may have finally reached the bottom of its depreciation curve. Time to go shopping!

Click on the pic for a closer look

Evidence That God Is Listening, Or Just GM?

2010-01-27T07:33:00.010-05:00

Yesterday afternoon, in the automotive corporate transaction equivalent of Franco Harris' Immaculate Reception or Kirk Gibson's walk-off homer, General Motors announced that it had reached an agreement to sell Saab to Spyker. Spyker!

That's cool. What's more than cool, what goes so far beyond cool as to be straight up breathtakingly inspirational, is what has happened in the month since a handful of foolhardy believers braved the elements to convene in the shadow of the Renaissance Center, as on successive weekends people around the world took up the cause in what participants diplomatically termed "support convoys." Thousands—literally thousands—of Saab enthusiasts, in virtually every corner of the globe, turned out with the sole aim of demonstrating to all players involved—sellers, buyers, government backers—that people cared, and that a deal to save Saab was one worth making.

It seems cute, doesn't it? Maybe a little trite? Then you look at the lists of places and numbers and scroll through the photos and you begin to get a sense what was actually happening. And then it just starts to seem kind of incredible.

Echoing a general tone of mocking derision among readers, the last comment posted to Jalopnik's story on the initial Saab rally asked, "I wonder how many Pontiacs would have showed up if they had a chance to save it? My guess, hundreds more." My question for you, dumbass: How many Pontiacs actually did?

Report from Detroit: We Bear Witness

2010-01-07T14:41:00.008-05:00

To be awake and outdoors at four-thirty in the morning in Rochester, New York, in January, is kinda like being at the bottom of the ocean. Once familiar notions like "light" and "warmth" are like distant rumors, intimations from past lives, fuzzy radio signals, just beyond your grasp, not quite capable of penetrating the murky depths. Layered, coated, booted, gloved, I'm brushing the night's accumulated snow off the car, checking its vital fluids.

At the gas station there is one other vehicle besides mine, the only other vehicle on the road: a plow. I fill up, zero out the trip odometer, calculate my mileage from the last tank. 12.87? What? Once or twice in the year I've owned it I've dipped below twenty, but just barely. I scroll through possibilities in my head, ignore the troubling ones, settle on the idea that I must've filled up the tank half-way last time and not noticed. It's five a.m. and I'm westbound.

Nearing Buffalo I'm faced with a decision. An extra hour if I stay on I-90, or the hassle of border crossings and possible delays short-cutting through Canada? I go conservative. Slow and steady.

At some point I glance down to gauge my progress, and the answer to the mileage mystery reveals itself. The trip odometer still reads zero, the main still stuck on the 194,899 it read at the gas station. Sonofabitch. If you've ever shopped an old Saab you know that about three quarters of them have odometers that stopped functioning at some point, but I'm still disappointed. The car had 180,000 on it when I bought it. I was proud of the 15,000 miles we'd covered together—Chicago and back, Boston and back, North Carolina and back, twice, New York City and back more times than I can remember—and I was looking forward to the 200,000 milestone, maybe even doing something special to celebrate, a bottle of Champagne like when the Miata turned 100,000. Much as I still love that car, though, with the Saab and me there's something different. An unnamable sympathy. And just a couple weeks shy of my fortieth birthday, and even more loathe than usual to make any sort of plans for it, I completely understand. Forty years, two hundred thousand miles? Fuck it. I'm not counting any more either.

Not far past Buffalo the snow starts falling. Serious snow. Lake-effect, stick-to-the-ground, piling-up-between-lanes, seriously-compromised-visibility snow. I hear myself reassuring my mechanic, the real-life inspiration for the overbearing and hyperprotective "Saab Nazi" of Seinfeld fame no less, that my snow tires were good for another season, and I hear him berating me—"Don't fuck around, Peter!"—and I see myself in the garage a couple months later, looking the snows over and deciding, you know what, crap, the tread's pretty shallow after all, maybe I'm better off just sticking with the high-performance all-seasons I got this summer, just for this winter, you know. Fuck. Lesser vehicles spinning off onto the shoulders all around me, buried past the sills in snow, hopelessly stuck. Gently, now. Every input gradual, deliberate. Slow and steady.

Hours pass. Stop to eat outside of Erie and the snow is so deep that cars are getting bogged down in intersections. A while later the unpleasant discovery that the Ohio roads budget apparently doesn't cover salt. Even the parallel lines of tire tracks are covered in the white stuff. Thick slush. The driven wheels feel like Arctic icebreakers now as forward progress slows to 40, 35, 30 mph. Audi Quattros sail past in the left lane, followed by Escapes and Escalades. The SUVs will be passed again in due time, idling in the median to stay warm, awaiting rescue. The Saab soldiers on, impervious, dutiful.

Entering Cleveland the road improves, and on the other side the weather does too. I'm able to make up enough time that I'm only half an hour late rolling into Detroit, through downtown, under the Renaissance Center, and into the parking lot where, for the first and likely only time in my life, I am applauded for driving a 1988 Saab 900 Turbo SPG. Literally applauded. Pulling to a stop, I am instructed not to get out as the car is quickly surrounded by photographers kneeling and standing, guys with HD camcorders and microphones, flashbulbs and clicking shutters, people waving signs. Because? Well, because I'm a guy who just drove a 22-year-old Saab from Rochester, New York. Should this elicit some other reaction?

The funny thing is, I don't have much in common with most of the people here, as friendly and good-natured as they are. For one thing, all but one of them—a dude in a totally sweet four-door 900 beater—are driving GM-era Saabs, about which my opinions are already on the record.

And unlike some of them, I'm not petitioning my elected representatives to intervene on behalf of an insolvent car company. Kinda for the same reason I'm not praying to God that the Green Bay Packers beat Arizona this weekend. My senators and congressmen get enough shit from me about healthcare, stupid wars, and corporate criminals getting rich off the backs of the poor and middle class that you know what? I'm not going to bother them about something that ultimately doesn't affect anyone but a few thousand people who have the good fortune of living in fucking Sweden, where getting laid off from your job does not necessarily mean losing your home or dying of a curable but untreated illness because you can't afford to go to the doctor.

But I keep my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself, as someone secures a "Save Saab" placard to my windshield. Because at the end of the day, I am here, just like them. Not in the hopes that it will make a difference—it won't—or to express any sort of outrage or even indignation, particularly.

After all, if we're talking Shameful Episodes in General Motors history, what they've done to Saab probably doesn't even crack the top 100; in the context of American Corporate Malfeasance, it's gotta fall somewhere outside of, oh, the top ten thousand. But there's something symbolic about this that speaks to issues larger, I think, than the ones immediately at hand. You've got a wealthy, powerful, arrogant entity that decides it knows what's best for a tiny, modest, troubled entity, and carelessly imposes its will, consequences be damned; a decade or two worth of incompetence, neglect, and hubristic denial later, the former is bankrupt and the latter is in ruins. Huh. Remind you of anything?

There are those who would have us believe that terrorists, those all-purpose boogeymen of the 21st century, "hate our freedom." I disagree. I think it's the entire rest of the world that hates us, and I think it's less our freedom they hate than it is our arrogance and tendency to fuck shit up wherever we go. And here we have a perfect example: a giant American corporation—the giant American corporation—preparing to snuff out of existence no less of a national institution than itself, one from a country that never did anything to the world except give it some awesomely depressing movies and turn out a lot of well-designed furniture. Why, guys? Shouldn't we be giving the world fewer reasons to hate us, and not more? Isn't that what we're all about now, with our new and thoughtful president, the one who, by the way, bailed out your fucking asses with our fucking money, which is the only reason you still exist?

Of course, at this point, nothing is going to stop the General from doing what it's going to do. That's kill Saab, because selling it is too much hassle and ultimately GM just doesn't give a shit. Me spending a day driving through blizzards isn't going to change that, nor are any of the well-intentioned, sign-waving, GM-Saab-driving folks assembled in the shadow of GM's corporate headquarters on this cold, gray afternoon. But I'm glad they came, and I'm glad I did too. It may seem a small and inconsequential and even pathetic thing, but I think it's important that when the history books are written, the record will reflect that somebody—anybody—was there to say bullshit. This is wrong. We bear witness.

Million SAAB March is Go!

2010-01-02T15:01:00.002-05:00

The complete and utter futility of this—not to mention the fact that there are about a billion causes in the world more deserving of our outrage, and concomitant time and energy—strikes me as so ridiculous that I might just have to participate. No justice, no peace!

An Open Letter to General Motors

2009-12-20T11:47:00.002-05:00

It would be disingenuous of me to say, in the wake of your announcement this week that Saab, the once proud marque you've spent the last two decades running into the ground, would be "wound down," that I will never buy a GM vehicle so long as I live, when in fact there was nigh unto zero chance that I would ever buy one of your shitty cars anyway.

So instead, on behalf of Saab drivers the world over, I simply say: May you all drive Buick Enclaves in hell for a hundred thousand eternities, you worthless fucking piece-of-shit motherfucking assholes, each and every last one of you.

Or how about this: May you all work shitty desk jobs for an insolvent, taxpayer-funded joke of a corporation, in perpetual fear of coming to work only to find your position, your department, your division eliminated, your 401k worthless, your pension vanished, for the rest of your godforsaken lives.

Oh wait, you say that's already happened? Good! My pre-GM Saab and I give you the finger and spit in your face. Baaahahahahaha!

Cars I Don't Give a Shit About, an Ongoing Series: Mercedes SLS AMG Gullwing

2009-12-20T11:37:00.007-05:00

Fifty years and this is what you come up with? Seriously?

Apologies to Andrew Hime, not that he gives a shit either I'm guessing

The Answer to the Question, What Are You Rolling On, Bitch?

2009-11-03T10:32:00.003-05:00

Click on the pic for a closer look

I Guess I Was Wrong: Somebody Does Need a BMW SUV

2009-10-27T21:46:00.004-04:00

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Spotted: Dwight!

2009-10-04T14:55:00.005-04:00

It doesn't get much more Firebird Man than this.

Click on the pic if you can't read the tag

My Favorite Things: Watkins Glen Festival 2009

2009-09-13T13:19:00.006-04:00

You hear about Monterey, you hear about Goodwood. You never really hear about Watkins Glen, and that's just fine. This ain't about megabucks jetsetters and multinational corporate sponsorships. It is instead an annual pilgrimage to the ancestral home of sports car racing in the United States, and something sacred would be lost if it were opened up to nonbelievers.

Every September, on the Friday before the vintage races at the track proper, the tiny lakeside hamlet of Watkins Glen is overrun by an unparalleled gathering of automotive awesomeness, the city streets and country lanes that made up the original 6.6-mile road course awakened and put to their most noble purpose. Consequently, it's as easy for a spectator to wander around downtown, taking in your requisite perfect examples of perfect cars, spectacularly original, magnificently unrestored examples of same, and the odd heretically modded, avert-your-children's-eyes terrormobile, as it is to hike back to the remotest (and completely unpopulated) parts of the course and live out one's Jesse Alexander fantasies as those same cars hurtle past at arm's length. Does it get any better than this? Maybe, but not in my experience.

This year's honored marque was Morgan. If you've bothered to read this far you're probably familiar with Morgans, but just in case, I'll try to explain. It's one of the unwritten laws of the universe that at any gathering of vintage cars, or sports cars, or vintage sports cars, or just car enthusiasts generally, there will invariably be one guy, and almost never more than one guy, with a Morgan—just as at any college dormitory there must be one guy with a unicycle. (They're the same guy.) Morgan is a quintessentially British maker of sports cars. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that during Morgan's hundred-year history it has built exactly two models. The radical advance that distinguished the second model from the first was the addition, in 1936, of a fourth wheel. Did I mention that they're made out of wood? They are.

So yeah: amusing, then, in a single day, to double (and possibly triple) the total number of Morgans I've seen in my entire life. The big revelation, though, was how ridiculously awesome the old three-wheelers (which continued in production through the early fifties) look at speed, a missile-like fuselage trailing the front axle like a windsock in a hurricane, the hidden rear wheel creating the unshakeable impression that the body is just floating, landspeeder-like. Unbelievably cool.

I'll take a light rain over the usual late-summer heat, too. Slideshow follows:

Scene Report: El Salvador, C.A.

2009-08-15T15:44:00.009-04:00

I just got back from two weeks in Central America, in girlfriend Patricia's native El Salvador to be specific. For all the traveling I've done, it was my first time venturing outside the safe, comfortable, privileged bubble of the first world, and I fully expected to have my mind blown in all sorts of ways. I did not, however, expect to have my mind blown by cars.

That's what happened, though. It's a fascinating and beautiful place, El Salvador. Largely rural and undeveloped through most of the last century, it spent the duration of the 1980s immersed in civil war and in the twenty years since has invested heavily in infrastructure and modernization. The result is a small country with a big city, San Salvador, filled with glitzy malls that could've been airlifted directly out of the O.C., surrounded by mountainous villages where you see kids and old women roadside, making their way up treacherous hills with giant jugs of wellwater balanced on their heads. Suspended somewhere in between these divergent cultures—between old and new, traditional and modern, the hardscrabble poor and the striving nouveau riche—is one of the most remarkable car cultures I've witnessed anywhere in the world.

Much has been written about Cuba's fleets of pre-1959 American cars, miraculously kept alive through a combination of their keepers' resourcefulness and necessity. El Salvador is kind of like that, except that instead of the cars our parents grew up with, it's full of the cars that you and I grew up with: the '70s and '80s Japanese cars that were ubiquitous through my childhood and adolescence, anyway, and have all but disappeared from the American landscape. The North American landscape, at least. And while there are plenty of Hondas, Mazdas, Mitsubishis and Subarus to go around, make no mistake: in El Salvador, it's Nissan and Toyota and then everybody else, the twin titans still going at it as if it were 1982.

This in itself would be interesting; what makes it fucking amazing is the state toward which many of these vehicles have deteriorated/evolved. It's almost as if decay itself has been appropriated by the cars' owners as a form of customization, an element not to be fixed, fought, or eradicated but instead cultivated and integrated, along with tinted windows (and windshields), hand-painted stripes, chrome hubcaps, colored hubcaps, additional, ornamental rear-view mirrors (mounted as often as not in such a way that it would be impossible for them to reflect anything but sky), sun shades, roof racks, fog lights, driving lights, windshield-washer lights, flashing multicolored license plate frame lights, mud flaps, spoilers, wings, vents, various ground effects, prayers, blessings and benedictions applied via holographic foil, and multiple, randomly-affixed badges—denoting the car's marque or that of another maker entirely, at the owner's discretion. Similarly, body panels themselves are mixed and matched as convenience or opportunity dictates: you need a new grill for your '83 626? Got one from an '81 Colt? If worse comes to worst and you can't replace a fender, it's no problem: just paint the exposed underbody a contrasting color, it'll look awesome. (And it does!) Just be sure to list all your sponsors down the leading edge of your door.

Here's the other thing that's fascinating about cars (and driving) in El Salvador: freedom. Most freedom-loving Americans would be shocked if they knew how much less freedom they enjoy than the citizens of a country that just elected as president a member of the very same FMLN party that their U.S. tax dollars, funneled to a murderous anti-leftist regime during the civil war, once helped suppress. A country of radical, socialist, healthcare-wanting dirty pinko commies, in other words.

Near as I could tell, these people enjoy every single freedom you and I do. Here are some other freedoms they also enjoy: The freedom to ride in the back of a pickup truck, standing up, at highway speeds. The freedom to throw every member of your family, infant to abuelita, in the back of that same pickup truck. The freedom to invite every resident of your pueblo into the back of your pickup truck and drive them around wherever they need to go. The freedom to drive around with your child in your lap. The freedom to honk at anybody who steps out into the path of your vehicle and know that if they don't stop it's not your problem. The freedom to walk, pushing a cart, down the side of the freeway. The freedom to tint your freaking windshield and mount flashing blue lights all over your goddamn car. The freedom to work on your car anywhere you fucking want to, even if it's out in the street blocking an entire lane of a twisting, downhill stretch of highway and it's raining and it's at night. The freedom to pull more lateral gs through a series of high-speed sweepers than I would ever have guessed possible in a forty-year-old schoolbus packed to the absolute rafters. The freedom to hang onto the outside of that bus and ride along even though the bus is full. And I'm just getting started.

And okay, okay, I'm not advocating against child seats. I'm not saying any of the above is a particularly good idea. But goddammit, look at the grin on this kid's face:

Is she smiling because she isn't growing up in a culture that continuously bombards her with images of luxuries she could spend a lifetime trying to acquire, constantly reminding her of what she doesn't have? No. She's smiling because she is riding in the back of a pickup truck, and she is having more fun than any American child—born under George W. Bush or Barack Obama—will ever know again.

Full slideshow, and settle in (and hit full-screen), 'cause this shit is awesome:

America, Fuck Yeah! 2009 Syracuse Nationals

2009-07-19T11:38:00.006-04:00

As far as car shows go, this weekend's Syracuse Nationals offer a distinctly different experience from June's Victor outing. For one thing, it genuinely is huge, with six thousand-plus cars (in non-numerical terms: more than one can realistically see in a day) arrayed upon the sprawling New York State Fairgrounds. For another, this is a hot rod show. Which means, one, you won't find a lotta furrin' autos here (I counted one exceptionally maintained P1800ES and two horrifyingly modded '70s Rollers on display and that was it), and two, you will find a whole lot of really, really, really bad taste.

The way it plays out, in fact, is that for every lovingly preserved example of American awesomeness on view you will find roughly one corresponding example of utterly worthless and contemptible automotive ineptitude that should've been carted off to the crusher decades ago. And for every tasteful and appealing application of contemporary technology and aesthetics to an older vehicle, you will find roughly two such applications so misguided and grotesque that you instinctively start looking around for the nearest bucket (yes, those are Prowler headlights; yes, on a '38 Chevy; no, God will not answer your cries of why? why?!?).

Noteworthy:

Contemporary custom coachbuilt Packard inspired by a period illustration the guy described to me in detail of a Packard streamliner racing a "Lionel standard gauge train" (I think he might have meant something else). Proportions a little stubby from the side, but interesting and well-executed.

Mammoth Buick seemed even bigger and more terrifying riding on massive blackwall tires; an absolute behemoth.

Most persuasive argument in defense of the screaming chicken I've ever seen.

Hey look! Another Amphicar! Er, scratch that ... AMPFICar. Kinda makes that Quattroporte look like a sweet deal.

Jury prize winner, Car Most Likely to Be Driven by Someone Who Will Rape You category. Actually this was my friend Herman's best in show: he plans to buy it and restore it to mechanical perfection while leaving the exterior untouched. Clearly the only thing to do here.

More ridiculously inappropriate wire wheels. Why do people do this?

Guy was asking $2200 for this straight six Suburban, claimed to be "mechanically 100%" (no indication whether that includes the canoe). How is this not sold in five minutes?

Seventies Olds Starfire. Astonishing that even one of these still exists, let alone in this kind of condition.

Conventional wisdom has it that the new Challenger "corrects" the original car's design flaws, that its proportions, overhangs, and overall stance are objectively superior to those of its predecessor. I call bullshit on this, and while I'm not crazy about the actual choice of wheels here or the particular paint treatment, this otherwise artfully presented example of the latter makes my case pretty forcefully I think.

"As always, some of the coolest cars on view were to be found in the parking lot." What?

Full slideshow:

In Bloom: Victor Car Show 2009

2009-07-18T10:24:00.013-04:00

One thing about the long winters here in western New York is that the landscape turns into an automotive wasteland. Unless you're really into '90s shitbox beaters (the '80s ones all returned to the earth some time ago) or Outbacks, Quattros and X5s, for about five months there's precious little of interest to be seen on the roads. Right around the time you've forgotten that there ever was, spring arrives, and with it, the pleasant realization that among this region's many splendors are an intractable group of eccentrics who can't wait another day to bring the Daimler Dart out of storage, and so that's what you see sitting next to you at the intersection, idling loudly, top stowed, on a brilliant 40 degree morning in April.

By early summer the automotive ecosystem is as diverse and colorful as any in the world, and nowhere is this more evident than at the annual Sports Car and Vintage Auto Festival hosted jointly by the MG Car Club of Western New York and the Victor Lions Club in nearby Farmington. They boast that it's "the East Coast's largest one-day car show," which is really just a fancy way of saying that it's big but not that big, because, really, it's not. But in its all-inclusive and dizzingly random scope—where else are you going to see a 1923 Bentley, a pair of Renault Alpines, an Amphicar, a hundred-point body-off restoration '49 Hudson Commodore convertible, and a Ranchero-ized Lincoln Continental Mark IV all in the same place?—the Victor car show, as most people refer to it, is pretty hard to beat.

Some other highlights:

Lots of pretty Jags, but this sinister fixed head coupe might have been my personal best in show. So gorgeous, and so evil.

Sweet Lancia Fulvia driver.

Not generally a fan of '50s T-Birds, but this one, sans portholes and typical fat whitewalls, just looked awesome.

How much more charismatic is yesterday's baby Lambo Jalpa than today's generic, dime-a-dozen Gallardos?

And what could be more ghastly than a Mondial with wire wheels? Answer: a Mondial with chrome wire wheels!

My dream car, sitting there with a for sale sign right in the window. Super nice guy. He wanted six for it. (Cough.) Said he had a guy who could fix all the rust for a grand. (Cough, cough.) Riiiight. I'm going to buy a Quattroporte someday, but it won't be this one.

A '70 to my dad's '69, but otherwise nearly identical to the car that is indelibly embedded as my earliest automotive memory. An absolutely awesome and bafflingly undercelebrated vehicle.

As always, some of the coolest cars on view were to be found in the parking lot.

See above! Full slideshow below.

Dear Six Months From Now: This Is What A Pontiac Dealership Looked Like

2009-07-14T11:04:00.006-04:00

A eulogy in photos to the division that gave this blog its name. Let the record reflect that the end was an ignominious one. Nevertheless, a world without Pontiac is a poorer world, if only infinitesimally so. Star Chief to Sunbird, Grand Prix to Grand Am, GTO to G8, Fiero to Solstice, Firebird to Firebird to Firebird Man. You will be missed.

Click on the pics for a closer look

Adventures In Incredulity: New Car Shoppin', 2009

2009-07-13T17:09:00.007-04:00

Or, No Wonder All You Dumbass Motherfuckers Are Going Out of Business

It's one of those things the undeniability of which forces me to acknowledge, however grudgingly, the fact that my personal world view does not extend to the entire universe: Not everybody wants an old car. Not everybody wants an interesting car. Not everybody wants a two-thousand-dollar car they then have to spend two thousand dollars annually to keep on the road. Despite a veritable cosmos of ebaymotors awesomeness at their fingertips, many people want nothing more than a car that is economical, runs dependably, and provides them some small modicum of comfort.

What the fuck, right? It's weird. But my girlfriend Patricia is one of those people. And with her '98 Sentra having reached a state where it resembled less an automobile than just a heavy, noisy, somewhat portable oil sieve, she enlisted my aid in finding a car that would be something different than one I would buy for myself. I grilled her about her priorities, likes and dislikes, what she was looking to spend. One by one my candidates fell away. The QIII Maserati was out. Ditto the Milano. This wasn't fun at all.

Eventually we winnowed the field down to a few possibilities. She liked newish small Volvos. She liked the last-generation Mazda 3. And she could see herself in a Civic, even though she hates the idea of driving a "teacher car" (she's a teacher). Those are all great choices, I assured her. You can't go wrong with any of them. Let the shopping begin.

First stop: Dick Ide Honda Pontiac. We spot a brace of late-model Civics out front of the Pontiac showroom and wander over. Salesman approaches, is friendly, not pushy, offers to get keys if we want to test drive anything. We sample a couple of four-door Civics, both low-mileage trade-ins. It's the first time I've driven a new Honda in more than a decade, and it's hard not to be impressed. The Civic in its current U.S. four-door form is to my eye one of the most handsomely modern small cars on the road, futuristic in a way that is largely disguised by fundamentally pleasing proportions and smart detailing. Getting behind the wheel only reinforces the impression of otherworldliness hinted at by the exterior: it feels strangely perfect, as if delivered from some more advanced civilization. So refined in its manner, so seamless in its presentation, it seems less a conventional vehicle than some sort of sexless Marilyn Mansonesque automotive android. Patricia isn't thrilled exactly but likes it well enough and feels comfortable behind the wheel. This will be our fallback.

Next up: Mazdas. The guy at the dealer down the street explains apologetically that Mazda doesn't give their own dealers first shot at cars coming off lease and sends them instead to auction. So if we want a low-mileage, last-generation 3—which we do: Patricia isn't interested in spending another ten grand for a brand new car and doesn't like the new 3s' weird Jim Carrey grin anyway—our options are limited to ebaymotors and those sketchy Auctions Direct places. When we'd kinda like to, you know, actually drive the car first, and have a place to take it for warranty work when something goes wrong. Mazda 3 is out.

Onward. Local Volvo dealership has hardly any used models and none that we're interested in. Little mom-and-pop Volvo place out in the 'burbs though has a small lot full of possibilities, including one so understated that I didn't notice it until we were walking away: an '05 V70R. Three hundred horsepower, four wheel drive, gunmetal gray with a gorgeous orange leather interior, 70,000 miles, asking mid-teens—less than the Civics we were driving. Ummm...? Patricia loves it. Total wolf in sheep's clothing, the exact opposite of a teacher's car. I'm soft-selling, pointing out that the mileage is a little worrisome for something with this kind of power and complexity, at least as far as her priorities are concerned, but really I just want to drive the freaking thing. Only problem: nobody's around. I call the number listed on their web site. No answer. No voicemail. Well okay then.

I find something for us to test drive at a Mercury-Dodge-Jeep emporium instead, a late-model, low-mileage S40, asking high teens. I've driven these before and they're pleasant and competent, if unremarkable, cars. It takes a while for the smarmy salesguy to notice us nosing around the lot but eventually he does and I explain that we'd just like to take the Volvo for a spin. Instead he brings us inside and sits us down in his office and starts going through the rigamarole of what we're looking for, what kind of payment we can swing, etc., all the while apologizing and explaining that he's really a terrible salesman and doesn't really know that much about cars and has only been doing this for six months after getting laid off from his job in manufacturing. Nothing like the fine edge of desperate pathos to polish off your typically douchey car-shopping experience. After dutifully taking down what information we're willing to give him, he disappears to get plates and the keys. He will not return for twenty minutes.

Plenty of time to savor the all-pervasive stench of death that is the signature of a Chrysler dealership circa 2009. As a trio of proud Challengers stand sentinel out front, salesmen mill aimlessly about the showroom, muttering to each other and trying to look busy. "What's a 'Caliber'?" Patricia asks me, brow furrowed. Sigh. You don't want to know. Just as we're about to bail, salesguy comes back looking harried and realizes he also needs the keys to the car that's blocking in the Volvo. Another ten minutes. Now he doesn't have the right kind of screwdriver to put on the plates. At this point we've been here almost an hour and still haven't so much as sat in the car. At last this joker hops in the back with us and we're off.

The Volvo is exactly as I remembered it, pleasant and unremarkable. What is remarkable, however, is salesguy's insisting on making conversation throughout our drive, even though that conversation consists almost exclusively of him pointing out how little he knows but that he can definitely check up on my few, trivial questions once we get back (not that I actually care, or couldn't check on those questions later myself if I did). Patricia isn't particularly impressed with the car. Back at the dealer, despite our protests that we're not looking to buy today, he pleads with us to come back inside and look at numbers with him. It's like dealing with a special needs child. We play along.

The sticker is totally reasonable but still a little more than Patricia was looking to spend and we tell him so. This is when he busts out the line that I honestly thought had been retired with dot matrix printers: "What would it take to send you home in this car today?" Completely earnest. Wow. Really? I tell him we're not buying the car today, that we're not buying the car at all, that we only came because we were curious to drive it. He persists: "At what price would you consider buying the car?" This is ridiculous. Why am I having this conversation? I quote him a number thousands less than what they're asking, in the hopes of gently pointing out the absurdity of his question. He jumps up! "Let me talk to my manager!" Good Christ. Now it's just morbid fascination that's keeping us here. We stare in mute horror at a Dodge Avenger poster until he comes back.

Tight-lipped, shaking his head, he sets a piece of paper in front of me. It's a print out (not dot matrix) showing listings for four or five similar cars for sale regionally, each of them at prices ten to twenty percent over what they're asking for theirs. Scrawled across this in green hi-liter is the word MINE, which has been crossed out, and then, underneath, the words MY PRICE and, again, the exceptionally reasonable sticker, underlined several times for emphasis. I look at him sadly now. Part of me resents being bullied, but this is bullying of such a pathetic and ineffectual nature that I almost feel compelled to apologize for not being affected by it, and a larger part of me just feels pity. I pocket the paper and thank him for his time and tell him we have a lot to think about.

Over the next few days we do some cursory recon of the larger dealerships in town just to compare deals, during the course of which I discover that Patricia's anti–one-box bias ("I don't like cars that look like shoes") does not extend to the Honda Fit. Back to the Honda dealership then. They don't have any used ones, but a new Fit costs the same as the used Civics we'd been driving. It looks smart, with a huge and ridiculously reconfigurable interior, and suddenly this is a serious contender. The drive is a bit of a let-down, though: it feels merely like a very good small car, the Honda sheen of perfection marred by just the slightest hint of road noise, engine buzz, sluggishness. The Fit, alas, is no Civic, and the Civic, almost by default, is looking more and more like our winner.

That night a thought occurs to me, and I put the question to Patricia: "What do you think about Subarus?" She's game, and next day it's down to Van Bortel Subaru in Victor, America's Number Two Subaru Dealer, famously founded twenty-five years ago by a (gasp) woman, the eponymous Kitty. Our salesman is friendly and helpful and quickly fetches plates for the Impreza we're curious about. It's a last-gen four-door RS, low miles, cheap, and looks great in WRX Jr. fender flares; it's undeniably cool in a way that nothing else we've looked at has been (the V70R place still isn't answering its phone). It drives cool, too. It's quick, responsive, tossable, fun even. "It makes me feel like a guy," Patricia says. I'm filled with visions of four-wheel-driven drifts through the snow next winter. We're both into it. Like, a lot. Our enthusiasm is tempered, though, by an overall feeling of cheapness. The interior is flimsy and plasticky and the flipside of that responsiveness is a coarseness that doesn't feel all that different from Patricia's decade-old Sentra; indeed, it's all too easy for both of us to imagine what this car is going to feel like five or ten years from now.

Back at the lot we wander idly toward a row of Legacies and I can't help but notice that the stickers are considerably lower than I would've guessed. We stop by a pretty blue one, an '07 with under 30,000 miles for about the same price as our now benchmark Civics. It's roomy where the Impreza felt cramped, plush where the Impreza felt cheap. It's loaded, with a sunroof even (one of the few non-reliability-related things on Patricia's wish list). We drive it. It feels great: the same revvy flat four as the Impreza but with just enough soundproofing that what gets through to the cabin provides a pleasant reminder, not an intrusive announcement, of the work being done at your right foot's behest; the ride is crisp but supple. It feels grown up. It also feels like a hell of a lot of car for the money. We go home to think it over, but Patricia is pretty much sold.

A couple odd things give us pause, though. When we come back from driving the Legacy, standing around talking to the salesman, we pop the hood, more out of a sense of ritual than anything else. I notice that a vacuum hose to the intake manifold has come loose and is just floating around in the engine compartment unmoored. Mechanic comes over from the garage and casually reattaches it, as if to say, you know, they all do that. A few minutes later, staring idly at the Impreza we'd driven, I notice something weird about the tires: they're unidirectionals, and while the V formed by the tread is pointing upwards, looking from the rear, on the left-hand tires, as it should be, on the right-hand tires it's pointing down. Thinking it must be an oversight, I check the front tires and they're the same. Not only that, but the Impreza next to it is wearing identical tires, and they're mounted exactly the same too! Hydroplane much, Van Bortel Subaru? We stop at the supermarket on the way home and there's a Forester parked across from us, left tires pointing frontwards, right tires pointing backwards, license plate frame proudly proclaiming—you guessed it—Van Bortel. These people don't understand how directional tires work. Not that this could be potentially dangerous or anything. Not that having water drawn under your tires at high speed rather than expelled from underneath them could result in any kind of life-threatening harm or anything.

So yeah, there's that, too.

Undaunted—the Legacy we'd driven did not have directional tires, as it happened—we go back the next day to do the deal. Given the drivable-but-just-barely state of the Sentra, Patricia's eager to get this done. We talk turkey with the salesguy and he explains that the way they do business is no-haggle so the sticker is pretty much the deal. Fair enough: it's about a grand cheaper than equivalent cars elsewhere already. He shuttles us to the loan guy who politely takes stock of Patricia's financials—essentially: solid paycheck, middling credit score, big chunk of cash to put down—and points out that as it's Friday afternoon before the 4th of July weekend he probably won't be able to get an answer until Monday. No problem. Nice to meet you, talk to you then.

Weekend comes and goes. No word from them through Monday afternoon. Finally Patricia gets the loan guy on the phone and it's clear from the conversation that he doesn't remember her. She reminds him and he says oh right, we're still working on that. No word for another couple hours. Astonished, I call the salesguy thinking maybe he can light a fire under loan guy's ass. After all, you'd think he'd have a stake in this, right? Instead he tells me their internet has been down all day, assures me that both loan guy and his loan-lady assistant are on the case, and rather patronizingly informs me that what's probably best right now is just a bit of patience on my part. Again, wow. Okay? I guess? Dick?

Another day goes by with no word from these people. The people to whom Patricia is trying to give her money in exchange for one of the cars they are presumably in business to sell. She calls again and this time talks to loan lady, who sounds exasperated and asks if there's any way she can put more down. I'm out of town by now and only hear about this later, over the phone, and I'm incredulous. Fuck those people! "I just want to go back to the Honda guy," she tells me, defeatedly. Go back to the Honda guy! She does, the next day. She drives a blue Civic, 20,000 miles, same price as the Subaru. It's not as fancy but it feels as if it came from outer space. They do the loan business. She's approved within the hour and can come pick up the car tomorrow. Unbelievable. Somebody in this monumentally fucked-up desperate pathetic hemorraging-money laying-off-workers shuttering-dealerships-left-and-right hanging-by-a-thread-in-the-worst-economic-climate-in-eighty-years business still actually wants to sell a car.

Imagine.

Nissan Cube Officially Awesome

2009-07-13T09:44:00.003-04:00

Not like I'm gonna go out and buy one or anything, but I saw one on the street for the first time the other day and it made me smile. Anything that strikes this kind of blow for automotive heterogeneity gets my vote.

Spotted: Alfa Romeo Pepto Bismol Edition

2009-07-09T09:28:00.003-04:00

"Right ... yeah, I'm in the Alfa Spider ... no, the pink one ... no, the pink one with flowers on it ...."

Click on the pic for a closer look

Spotted: Intense Rims

2009-07-09T00:07:00.003-04:00

There is no denying the commitment of this Brooklyn 318ti driver. A commitment to rims that are fully intense. These rims bespeak full commitment. Indeed, there can be no ambivalence where these rims are concerned.

Click on the pic for a closer look

Spotted: Corvette Jungle Graveyard

2009-07-03T11:20:00.003-04:00

Click on photo for full size

El Camino, El Ranchero, El... ¡Volvo!

2009-07-01T20:32:00.007-04:00

Shame about the '90s rims (and crap pics) but there is no denying the genius at work here. And rare was the original Camino fortunate enough to benefit from a fully functional rear wiper. Bonus points for multiple P1800s and Swedish flag in background, too. If only it were a turbo....

Click on the pic to check out the auction

Jacked Up: 199X Ford Probe

2009-06-23T17:46:00.003-04:00

No comment, except that I always thought this was one of the more elegant and underrated designs of the nineties.

Jacked-up Probe stalker

What's Swedish for Deus Ex Machina?

2009-06-22T07:41:00.010-04:00

Honestly? I was fine with Saab going the way of all things. Because the Saab of the last fifteen years was an embarrassment, plain and simple. And it made it so I couldn't even go on Saab boards because they were full of people who seemed not to notice and to point it out is just being a dick.

It's like the music genre fan. The guy who just likes Brit-pop or whatever. Never mind that eighty-five percent of Brit-pop is garbage, just like eighty-five percent of anything is garbage. That's what he's into, and his enthusiasm doesn't discriminate. Pulp? Awesome. Ned's Atomic Dustbin? Equally awesome. People who drive GM Saabs and hang out on Saab boards are essentially Brit-pop Guy, completely oblivious to how much their cars suuuuuuck. I know they suck because I owned one and it was a turd. There was nothing Saab about it. It drove like a Buick. Because it was a Buick.

Better just to put this thing out of its misery than carry on as a purveyor of badge-engineered Chevy Tahoes, was my thinking. And then the great GM implosion, and the concomitant sell-off, and who knows, maybe somebody buys it up and restores Saab to some degree of respectable autonomy. Some group of investors, or the Swedish government or something. Measured optimism. And then this.

Freaking Koenigsegg??? Are you kidding me? Radically engineered, environmentally aware, uncompromisingly Swedish Koenigsegg? (Yeah, so it was founded by a Norwegian. Whatever.) How brilliant and awesome is this? How much more insanely cool than any outcome anyone could possibly have imagined? And how perfect? Sit a Koenigsegg next to a Veyron in your mind's eye and how obvious does it become that this is nothing less than the Saab of supercars?

Things go this astonishingly right in the world seldom enough that when they do we kinda have a moral obligation to sit up and recognize. A toast then to the marriage of Saab and Koenigsegg. May their union be long and happy, and may it bear many beautiful children!

Revisionist History: The DaimlerChrysler That Could've Been

2009-05-25T15:06:00.004-04:00

Remember when Chrysler and Mercedes merged in the early '90s and they plastered a Spirit grill across the front of a W124 to make the Dodge 300E? These guys do!

Click on the pic for a closer look!

WTFIT?

2009-05-10T12:58:00.004-04:00

What The Fuck Is That?

Hint: it's like a Cord, but not!

Click on the pic for the answer

Coolest Car Ever in the World, 22,500 Miles, $12,500

2009-05-09T18:18:00.011-04:00

How is this shit even possible? People are still paying six figures for dumb old muscle cars and you can buy one of these for the price of a used Kia? Not only would I argue that this is the coolest car ever, it might actually represent the purest and most extreme form of anachronism extant in the world. Think about it: what other fifty-year-old object seems so bafflingly like something returned from fifty years in the future?

Maybe this is truly the onset of pussed-out middle age talking, but seriously: Testa Rossa? GT40? XJR-5? Aston Martin Lagonda? As of this moment I take this over all of them.

(Okay, maybe not the Lagonda.)

Click here to check out the auction

Not Hummer Too! Nooooo!

2009-04-28T16:47:00.005-04:00

To quote this blog's best-ever comment: "What are assholes going to drive now?" Sad times indeed.

Click on the pic for the story from U.S. News & World Report

A Perfect Six: 1993 Lexus SC 300

2009-04-06T09:29:00.017-04:00

Other engine layouts may claim prizes for ubiquity (inline-4), durability (V-8), sexiness (V-12) or eccentricity (V-4, inline-5, flat-anything), but to my mind at least, none of them can compare with the essential, Fibonacci-like rightness of the straight six. There are sound, physics-based explanations for this, but more importantly, just pause for a moment and meditate on this: how many of the coolest cars ever had straight sixes? The coolest Jags. The coolest Astons. The coolest Benzes. The coolest BMWs. The coolest Maseratis. The coolest Datsuns, coolest Toyotas, and about a billion of the coolest American cars ever, too. And what is a Ferrari V-12 – the coolest engine ever – but two straight sixes sharing a crankshaft?

And yes, by the way, I did just apply the modifier "cool" to the word "Toyota." It's easy to forget that once upon a time Toyota actually built cars that were interesting. Even if most of us failed to recognize them as cool at the time, it's undeniable in retrospect that the Celicas and Supras of the '70s and '80s were exactly that: compact, sporting, rear-wheel-drive, these were bona fide Japanese pony cars, more faithful in many respects to the original concept than many of their bloated American contemporaries. And the Supra? Straight sixes, all down the line. Never mind that the last generation was largely robbed of its dignity by basket-handle spoilers and the 2 Fast 2 Furious crowd. When you think about what cars have become, how much cooler does this seem now? Who wouldn't want to tool around in a '86 Supra, preferably in black? Who wouldn't prefer that to a 4000-pound cartoon Dodge Challenger? I would, anyway. Sorry Chrysler.

I see these early Lexus coupes as being the last of the Supras, the dignified, grown-up Supras – direct descendents of those elegant late '70s Celicas – before they took that weird turn toward boy-racism. And I'll take mine, thanks, with a five-speed and that sweet six, just like this one.

Click on the pic to check out the auction

Lap' Dance: 1966 Volvo L3314

2009-04-05T11:49:00.003-04:00

"The purchaser has options to leave the Puppy as is or design and restore it in any way to his or her dream." What other vehicle can you say that about? What do you mean, "all of them"? Psssh. Well, look here then: "It has undercoating, is mobile and suitable for any kind of travel." Did you hear that? It's mobile! Okay, I'm not going to argue with you. I'm also not sure that this is worth $8000 to me. It'd still be fun.

Click on the pic to check out the auction

Damn It!

2009-04-04T18:25:00.006-04:00

How did I not know about the J. Mascis Edition Toyota Yaris auction?

Click on the pic to see what you missed

Specific Motors

2009-03-31T11:29:00.008-04:00

So now that dad's home from work and it's time for the kids running GM to face the music, the focus is again on "restructuring," and the General's plans to streamline its branding. No more Saturn. No more Hummer. No more Pontiac. No more Saab. Fair enough. That leaves a lean, focused line-up, right? Each clearly-defined brand delivering quality product to a specific, established demographic, with no redundancy, right? Let's look:

Chevrolet. The heart of GM. The heart of America. The heartbeat of America. Like a rock. Value value value. America. Corvette. Trucks. Hard hats. USA #1!

Cadillac. The Standard of the World. The Cadillac of automobiles. The Escalade of SUVs. Aspirational vehicles for executives and pimps. Bling. Sophistication. Technology. Fuckin' Cadillac, yo.

Buick. Golf. Dentists. NPR membership drive. Antiques Roadshow. Comfortable suburban affluence. Quality. Dignity. Unassuming vehicles for the rest of us.

GMC.

GMC.

GMC?

What the fuck is GMC still doing here? What is GMC's excuse for existence? What the hell does GMC sell that Chevrolet doesn't? "We are professional grade." That's their slogan. What the fuck does that even mean? "We're the Buick of trucks"? They're getting rid of Pontiac and keeping GMC? Who in the entire world gives a shit about GMC? Who would shed a single tear if GMC went away?

Do it, Executioner Obama! Kill GMC!

Now Let's See It At 1:1: El McLareno

2009-03-30T07:07:00.000-04:00

Just because it never happened doesn't mean it still shouldn't. This + this = love.

Click on the pic for more photos and the builder's account of divine inspiration

Vintage When It Was New

2009-03-29T10:08:00.002-04:00

Great collection of vintage '50s and '60s race programs from Watkins Glen, Road America, Mid-Ohio and parts west.

A Living Language: 1969 AMC Rebel SST Wagon

2009-03-28T11:25:00.004-04:00

I love how the term "rat rod" has evolved to mean pretty much anything with faded paint. But then how can you fault a seller who begins his description, "Here you go," as if he's just been waiting there for you all along, certain in the knowledge that you'd show up eventually. And who, on the subject of that faded paint, explains that it's "starting to show a real nice natural patina – some folks think it has been painted flat red." Right. Check out the five-thousand-dollar matte paint job I just got for my AMC station wagon! Wait, you thought it was a Lambo? Nah man, it's an AMC! Yeah, really! Still, ultimately dude is one hundred percent correct: this thing is freaking awesome and worth every penny of the (less than) three thousand bucks it's gonna go for.

Click on the pic to check out the auction

Fashion Friday!

2009-03-27T08:47:00.005-04:00

From the April 15, 1967 issue of Vogue. Shot at Irwindale (!).

More – including Twiggy on the cover – here

Spotted: A Proper Hubcap

2009-03-26T11:39:00.004-04:00

I would not have guessed that a late-'80s Cutlass Ciera could be made to look cool, but white steelies with chrome hubcaps go a long way.

Ciera Stalker

Today's Cars Not As Cool As Yesterday's Cars of Tomorrow Predicted

2009-03-25T19:28:00.003-04:00

Not nearly. How is that fifty years later the world is still struggling to catch up with the Citroen DS?

Follow the link for the rest of the brochure and tons more

Let's Say You're Sophocles: 1983 Plymouth Scamp

2009-03-24T19:48:00.008-04:00

Let's say you're Sophocles, and you write some plays. Your plays are good enough that 2,500 years later they're still being read and performed. Or maybe you're Bach, and you compose some music. Your music is good enough that even after 250 years people still haven't gotten tired of it. That's staying power. But let's face it: these are tiny spans of time from the perspective of cosmological history, and there's little to suggest that a billion years from now, or even a million, anyone will remember these so-called immortals. Viewed through a long enough lens, even the accomplishments of a Sophocles, a Bach, a da Vinci, the ancients who built the pyramids or the soldiers who raised the Great Wall collapse to a significance that is indistiguishable from those of the men and women who contributed a few months of their careers to the creation of the Plymouth Scamp. Remember this.

Click on the pic and despair

Activities for the Developmentally Disabled

2009-03-23T12:54:00.002-04:00

Like a lot of slacker artist types, I spent a good portion of my twenties substitute teaching. Mostly high school, in my case. Sometimes I'd get sent to do special ed, which I loved, as these were kids who actually had a legitimate excuse for acting retarded. One of their favorite activities was vocational training. Each kid would get ten nuts, ten bolts, and a laminated sheet of paper with ten circles drawn on it. They would eagerly set to work screwing the nuts on the bolts and placing each completed assembly on a circle. Upon finishing a set, a child would raise his or her hand in triumph, and I would come around, collect the results, pat 'em on the back and say "great job!" and parcel out ten more nuts and bolts. Then I'd go back to my desk, unscrew the nuts and bolts, and put them back in their respective bags.

Friends, may I present the Ford EXP Interactive Coloring Book.

Will Trade for Guns! 1974 Maserati Bora

2009-03-22T10:46:00.003-04:00

Man these do look great with the stainless steel roof. But I just don't see myself parting with my beloved MR73 Manurhin. Sorry bro.

Click on the pic to check out the auction

Rescue Saab Update: €4 Million in Pledges!

2009-03-21T17:18:00.011-04:00

Latest dubiously punctuated dispatch from these guys:

Dear Rescue Saab-Community,
In our last newsletter, we asked "How much is Saab worth to you?". Until now, 3.200 "Rescuers" participated in the survey. Currently, we have a sum of 4 Million Euro. Like we said, all of your answers are of course non-binding. We are waiting a few more days.

My personal commitment is limited to the eight hundred dollars I just spent replacing a bad wheel bearing and a couple worn out rotors on the SPG. (Saving Saab, one Saab at a time.) I fucking love this so much though: "We are waiting a few more days." For what, exactly? And, "all your answers are of course non-binding." You mean you haven't yet collected the four million euros? People haven't sent in their checks? Ah, well. Maybe wait a few more days.

Not a Misprint: Jag, Buick Tops in Dependability

2009-03-20T16:26:00.016-04:00

So says JD Powers & Associates. Which means those eighty-thousand-dollar Jaguars you'll be able to pick up for ten grand ten years from now (or sooner, the way things are going) might actually be decent cars. Less shocking but still plenty weird is Buick, a marque that exists at this point seemingly only because of its brand equity among the Chinese. I had to go and look at the Buick web site to remind myself what they even sell these days. Three cars. Or rather, two cars and an SUV. There's something called a Lacrosse, which looks like this:

Slightly fancier but otherwise indistinguishable is the Lucerne:

And then there's the range-topping Enclave:

Finally, the site trumpets the arrival, forthcoming, of the 2010 Lacrosse, which looks kinda like the Enclave but with a Z4 parked in front of it. (Am I right?)

Using these images as a self-administered Rorschach test produced the following words: dentist, golf, NPR membership drive, and Antiques Roadshow. Also Pep Boys. (Must be those sweet fender vents.) I guess it's good that they're dependable. I can't for the life of me imagine another reason that anyone would buy one of these.

The Hitler Channel

2009-03-17T16:18:00.001-04:00

Okay, maybe I'm the last guy in the world to find out about this, but oh my fucking god is it funny. Well done.

Spotted: Putting the "bent" in Bentley

2009-03-12T12:12:00.005-04:00

It's 2009 and you used to have more money than you knew what to do with and now it's like, can something please go fucking RIGHT for a change? We feel your pain, two-hundred-thousand-dollar Bentley driver. Or rather, we note your pain, and cruelly mock it. Hahahahahaha!

Bent-ley stalker

Magnum Force: 1978 Dodge Magnum

2009-03-07T22:05:00.005-05:00

The dark horse of the seventies personal luxury sweepstakes still looks a hell of a lot more badass than its contemporaries. Think about it: Monte? Graceful, yes; intimidating, no. T-bird? Hm. Yeah, not so much. This thing, though? Run for your life. I never realized those headlight covers were retractable, but they were. Cool!

Click on the pic to check out the auction

Spotted: 1986 Cadillac Cimmaron

2009-03-04T16:00:00.017-05:00

While people with short memories are acting all surprised and shit that General Motors is on the verge of going out of business, long-time car nerds have known it was inevitable for decades. Remember 1982 and the borrowed hype surrounding the "J-cars"? Why does it only occur to me now what an obvious swipe at Chrysler this was? J comes before K, get it? Clever, guys. Let's go down the list: Chevy Cavalier, everyone knows that. Slightly more obscure: the Buick Skyhawk. Pontiac? J2000! (Later simply 2000, later still the 2000 Sunbird, and finally just Sunbird. Why is this information taking up useful space in my brain?) And of course – of course – the Oldsmobile Firenza. Remember Oldsmobile? Remember Pontiac?

And then there was this. The one variant anybody remembers, if only for the embarrassment factor. People were used to GM cars being garbage by this point. After years of Vegas, Chevettes and Citations, nobody was surprised by another shitbox Chevy. The name Cadillac still put one in mind of better days though, and so when the crest and wreath was slapped on the J-body it got people's attention, and not in the way the marketers had hoped. A shitbox Chevy was one thing; a shitbox Cadillac something else. Didn't Cadillac use to be "the standard of the world" or something like that? Didn't it symbolize all that was once admirable about America? The Cimmaron was a reminder of just how far we'd sunk.

Ironic then – cause for cautious optimism, perhaps? – that Cadillac is one of the few things GM needn't be embarrassed about in 2009, ignoring the Escalade for the moment. The same company responsible for the Cimmaron now tests its cars on the Nürburgring. Go figure. Time will tell if that's enough to save its corporate parent from oblivion.

I'm calling this an '86 because that was the first year, near as I can tell, for those sweet-ass Euro-style flush headlights. Love the tasteful two-tone and ribbed lower body moulding, too. And the red rub strip, very GTI. Actually I kinda do like that. Sue me.

Cimmaron stalker

Rescue Saab! Join our web site!

2009-03-01T22:03:00.006-05:00

Not exactly sure what the point of this is, but what the hell. I'm number eleven thousand something. Anybody else? Also, yes, the tagline is completely ungrammatical and doesn't really make any sense. I think they're Germans. "Soon you'll find here more information about our idea to raise funds to send a signal for the Saab rescue." Funds for a signal! Awesome. This'll fix everything.

Click on the rescue Saab thing, to, uh, rescue Saab

Objets d'Lust: 1956 Triumph Motorcycles Manual

2009-02-27T11:13:00.005-05:00

Full disclosure: I'm helping my friend Trudy sell a bunch of her stuff on ebay. Among the many barn-find treasures she's rescued from estate-sale and thrift-store oblivion: this hauntingly beautiful example of mid-century graphic design and technical illustration. I kinda want to keep it.

Click on the pic to check out the auction and more typography porn

If Only I Had the Money I Spent On a Garage: 1983 Datsun 200SX

2009-02-24T12:25:00.006-05:00

I would buy this:

and turn it into this:

SAAB declares bankruptcy! Whoooo!

2009-02-20T12:30:00.004-05:00

Couldn't come as better news, if you ask me. Now the disgraced marque either gets put out of its misery or gets a chance to reinvent itself without interference from a clueless megacorp. In the meantime here's what $2,500 buys, and why no one with an ounce of sense would ever buy a new Saab, in 2009.

I'VE GOT A GARAGE NOW MOTHERFUCKERS! AND I'VE GOT AN '88 SPG! WHOOOOOO!

Saab is dead! Long live Saab!

I Liked It So Much, I Bought the Company

2009-01-09T08:36:00.005-05:00

Saab is for sale on ebay. No, not a Saab, although there are plenty of those, but Saab, as in, the company. Although if you scroll down a bit the fine print reveals seller is just offering his "consulting services" to General Motors for a day. Mhm.

It raises a fair question though. I can't really imagine spending ten grand on a Saab, not with the SPGs I'm looking at going for between two and three, but the whole company? Is ten grand worth the headache of inheriting a hopelessly irrelevant product line and the responsibility of rescuing this proud brand from extinction? How hard would it be to retool all the factories and just start building 99s again?

Click on the Saab logo to check out the auction

Ultimate Aussie Dealer-Installed Option

2008-12-16T03:00:00.005-05:00

They're called, for reasons that should be fairly obvious, "roo bars." After failing to get photos of the late-model Holden Commodores and (maybe) Ford Falcons I kept seeing fitted with slick, flush-mounted, body-colored ones, the real prize turned up parked in front of a foofy restaurant in Brisbane: this W124 Mercedes outback-burner with the full road warrior treatment. Roos beware.

Click on the pic for a closer look

"They Don't Make Em Like This Anymore": 1978 Volvo 280E

2008-12-10T20:16:00.005-05:00

Indeed, they never made them at all!

Click on the pic to check out the auction

It's a Wolseley ... why?

2008-12-04T22:05:00.007-05:00

Scene Report: Island of Valiants

2008-12-04T21:54:00.006-05:00

American flavor...

...and homegrown.

Scene Report: Ute-opia

2008-12-04T20:42:00.006-05:00

Why do I have no sympathy for the plight of the American auto industry? Because if you totaled up all the money those jackasses forfeited by not selling these things in the U.S. for the past two decades you could bail 'em all out twenty times over.

Spotted around Sydney during an hour-long walk this morning:

Holden or Ford, take your pick (they're virtually impossible to tell apart). This one even has its Chevy bowtie already in place!

No Accounting for Taste Department: 1984 Lotus Turbo Esprit

2008-11-29T16:15:00.004-05:00

Presumably Giugiaro wasn't responsible for the typesetting.

Click on the pic to check out the auction.

I ♥ the 80s: 1982 Ferrari 400i

2008-11-22T16:07:00.002-05:00

Ferrari has yet to build a prettier four-seater. A bargain at twenty grand, and you'll only have to pay fifteen more for the engine overhaul. I'd still prefer a five-speed.

Click on the pic to check out the auction.

O.G. "Four-Door Coupe": 1963 Aston Martin Lagonda Rapide

2008-08-28T10:35:00.003-04:00

Am I the only one who finds the whole "four-door coupe" meme completely retarded? And not helped at all by the tacky Mercedes for which the marketing goons invented it? Not that there's anything wrong with a low-slung sporting four-door sedan, mind you. I'd take this one in a heartbeat. Just don't call it a freaking coupe.

Click on the pic to check out the auction

I Know That Someday Will Never Come: 1957 Lancia Aurelia

2008-06-10T13:56:00.006-04:00

"Q: 25.000 USD to buy your car"
"A: Bidding STARTS at $25,000.00 USD. I do have a reserve set. The reserve price is NOT $1 million dollars like the buy it now price."

Cheeky.

Honorable mention to the guy asking if a small-block Chevy would fit. Except he seems to be serious.

Click on the pic to check out the auction.

Fishy: 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit Diesel Pickup

2008-06-03T15:05:00.006-04:00

As has been established on these pages, there seems to be no little enthusiasm for old diesel Rabbits at present in this country, and even more for the diesel Rabbit's unibody pickup variant, so when this newly listed craigslist ad, showing a seemingly immaculate example and asking less than three grand, caught my eye I was ready to head on down to the bank for a cashier's check with the sole intention of immediately flipping it.

Curious though, I thought, looking closer, that the ad listed no location (usually a tip-off that something's less than kosher in craigslistland). Still more curious was what I found over on ebaymotors when, just to see what kinda windfall I could be expecting, I searched on completed auctions for Volkswagen Rabbits: a listing for the same truck, with the same photos, clearly written by the same person, ending five days ago with a winning bid of over eight thousand dollars.

Huh?

Somebody wanna email the guy and find out what the deal is?

Fresh from the Göteborg 500: 1986 Volvo 240 DL

2008-05-13T17:30:00.004-04:00

I've never been much of a raised-white-letter guy, but c'mon, how bitchin' does this look?

Click on the pic to check out the ad

If Only I Had a Boat

2008-05-13T14:52:00.006-04:00

Click on the pic to be confused

Scene Report: Eugene, Oregon

2008-03-01T18:04:00.017-05:00

V-12 E-Type Jag outside local NPR affiliate, two a.m.

Eighties 7-series. Something quaint now about top-of-the-line German luxury sedans from this era, at least to me; now they all seem like Imperial Battlecruisers or something, almighty techno-behemoths, but then there was something still human about them at least. I have a hard time imagining a current S-class seeming like that, even twenty years from now.

Alfasud? Fiat? What is this? Parking garage, two a.m.

Next day, another late XK-E, this one a convertible. The bumpers and bulbous headlights are unfortunate, but they're less awful in real life, and some of the detailing around those fugly headlight bezels is even kind of elegant. Love the redline tires.

Scene Report: Portland, Oregon

2008-03-01T04:50:00.005-05:00

Seems like you hardly ever see original Hummers around anymore. Obnoxious, sure, but it at least requires a certain degree of commitment on the part of its driver, unlike subsequent progeny.

No such sacrifices necessary for the owner of this vintage Datsun King Cab.

Scene Report: Vancouver, British Columbia

2008-02-29T22:28:00.004-05:00

Spotted: the elusive Toyota TercEl Camino! Sadly I could only get photos from the back.

Scene Report: Anchorage, Alaska

2008-02-19T17:24:00.008-05:00

Spotted! O.G. Audi Quattro in totally cool stealth-mode no-stickers silver. Nice.

Not just a Miata being driven in Alaska in February, but a Miata that's apparently been driven from Pennsylvania to Alaska. A veteran of more than one transcontinental journey-by-Miata, I'm here to tell you that hardtop or no, if dude actually drove that car here he is very macho indeed.

Finally, from a souvenir-shop storefront downtown:

Department of Inappropriate Memorials

2007-12-17T19:33:00.000-05:00

WTF people.

Click on the pic and wonder what happened to America's dignity

Spotted: 2007 Mini Cooper Braveheart Edition

2007-12-17T18:33:00.000-05:00

A Mini with a Union Jack on the roof ain't exactly news, but apparently in the U.K. you can get one with a St Andrew's Cross too. Kinda cool.

Mini Stalker

"8-Track Player Not Included": 1973 Reliant Scimitar GTE

2007-12-09T15:41:00.000-05:00

Like a Volvo 1800ES, only ugly, and terrible.

Click on the pic to check out the auction

"Looks Good In the Pictures, Doesn't It?": 1983 Mercedes 380 SEC

2007-12-09T15:20:00.000-05:00

"Well…it's not!" Still, no reserve, and at £500 it's a steal (assuming it runs). Can't you imagine Hooky driving this? I can.

Click on the pic to check out the auction

If Only I Had a Cornish Garage: 1972 Lancia Fulvia

2007-12-09T14:52:00.000-05:00

Cheap and rad. "Waxoyled" though? Anyone?

Click on the pic to check out the auction

Past the Leisure Centre, Left at the Lights: 1986 Ford Capri Laser

2007-12-09T14:20:00.000-05:00

I know what you're thinking: they were still building Capris in 1986? But don't you just wish we lived here and could buy something like this? With a "1.6 pinto engine" and a new exhaust "to replace the rotten old one"?

Click on the pic to check out the auction

Phenomena Science Cannot Explain Away: 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit Diesel Pickup

2007-12-07T20:44:00.000-05:00

Okay, lemme get this straight: a Volkswagen pickup, a diesel Volkswagen pickup, a diesel Volkswagen pickup with a hundred and sixty-seven thousand miles on it is looking like it's going to crest the five-thousand-dollar mark. A freakish anomaly, or is this the market pointing out a gaping hole in the line-ups of every manufacturer currently selling automobiles in North America? When's that new Mini pickup due, anyway?

Click on the pic to check out the auction