“Dude, Jalopnik’s put a hit piece out on you.” The voice on the other end of the phone was on the edge of tears or laughter, I couldn’t tell which.
“What’s a jalopnik?” I responded.
“You know, that website that talks about airplanes, and ekranoplans, and tsunamis, and erotic male photography.” Oh, that Jalopnik. I’d recently offended the nice people at that particular branch of the Gawker Media octopus by pointing out that the fellow they’d praised to the sky for his ethical stance on auto journalism had a little credibility issue. Since the aforementioned fellow has now forgotten all this “ethics” crap and returned to his old job, one might even say I was ahead of America’s Favorite F-15-Crash-Centric Website on that one.
“What’s the name of the article?”
“The Seven Crappy Kinds Of Car Reviews.”
“Well, that’s not fair for them to discuss. I mean, they don’t even do car reviews. It would be like if TTAC did ‘The Seven Worst Kind Of Articles About Large Train Tunnels’.”
“Still, dude, they’re after you. They specifically talked about someone who races Dodge Neons and writes car reviews.” The tension drained from my face. Whew! What a relief. After all, I race a Plymouth Neon. I’ve also raced Mustangs, Mercedes-Benzes, a Supra, the Jalopnik V8olvo itself, the occasional Ford Focus, and a Grand-Am Civic, so I felt pretty sure that Ray’s minions weren’t taking aim at me. No website with Jalopnik’s historically admirable record of fact-checking would call me a “Dodge Neon racer” when I’m obviously a Plymouth Neon racer.
Still, just because I wasn’t on the hit list didn’t mean that someone else wasn’t being unfairly criticized. With that in mind, I’ve found seven people in the automotive world who raced Dodge Neons. Any one of them might be the very person about whom Jalopnik’s prodigal editor, Mike Spinelli, was complaining. Let’s investigate.
#1: John McElroy Yes! It’s true. Until I uncovered McElroy’s Neon-racing history, I was absolutely certain that he was actually a poorly-animated head on a screen, similar to “Max Headroom” but sans the wit and human warmth. No such luck. In April of 1995 McElroy competed in the Neon Challenge, racing a Dodge Neon coupe. No word on whether he won, but since he was facing Lorenzo Lamas and Crystal Bernard, we have to accept that he probably didn’t.
#2: Tiff Needell Starting out in the humble, grounded world of Formula One, the “Fifth Gear” television presenter eventually rose to the rarefied air of Neon-centric competition, participating in 1994. Amazingly enough, in at least one race Tiff found himself out-qualified by…
#3: Tony Swannnnnnnn Four years ago, I drove nonstop from the SCCA Solo National Championships in Topkea, KS to Flat Rock, MI to take a seat in the first-ever full-length 24 Hours Of LeMons. When I got in the car, we were in third place and Car and Driver magazine was leading the pack. I steadily unlapped us, pressuring the C/D guys until they decided to put their “pro”, Tony Swan, in the car. Sadly, after I lapped Mr. Swan a few times, he lost his temper and drove into the wall trying to teach me a lesson. I ended up winning by 52 laps, the largest margin of victory in the history of crap-car racing. Nobody’s seen Swan since, or perhaps they just haven’t checked all the “Applebees” restaurants yet. Or maybe they haven’t even looked.
#4: Denise McCluggage Denise gave the C/D and Motor Trend staffers a hell of a time in the Neon Challenge. To be fair, she was only sixty-seven years old at the time. A few years ago, I attended an Audi R8 event and noticed that only one other driver was matching the Jim Russell guys’ lap times around Infineon. No prizes for guessing that it wasn’t the Top Gear guys, but rather Ms. McCluggage, who was just about to celebrate her eightieth birthday. Honestly, Spinelli, I hope you aren’t messing with her. She’ll tear your head off.
#3: Steven Cole Smith: This guy’s done a ton of racing in the Neon Challenge and elsewhere. I can’t remember a single thing he’s ever written, but it might be because he writes for Autoweek, and I’m currently using the last few issues of Autoweek to protect the bottom of my cat’s litterbox from destructive urine.
#2: Frank Beard. That’s right, the Frank Beard. As in the guy who played drums on “Gimme All Your Lovin”. There’s no record of Mr. Beard ever participating directly in automotive journalism, but given that every autowriter between the age of thirty and forty-five can vividly recount a dream in which Frank showed up, tossed us the keys to the “Eliminator Coupe”, and smiled approvingly as we drove off with two chicks en route to Our First Threesome, it’s possible that Mr. Spinelli, who has never, ever, had a threesome, is taking out his personal disappointment on the Sharp Dressed Man himself. Seriously, Spin, don’t get so worked up. Having two girls at the same time isn’t so great. I mean, you have to keep them both busy, and there’s the matter of who sleeps where afterwards, and… OH WHO AM I KIDDING! IT’S AWESOME AND I PITY YOU FROM THE DEPTHS OF MY SOUL.
#1. You know who this is.
And now we come to the most likely target. Maximum Bob himself. The man who issued a ten-second beatdown to Ekranopolopnik in the CTS-V Challenge. The fellow who kicked Wes Siler right in the ass of his too-tight pants despite the wet conditions and complete lack of Geritol in the vicinity. The alpha male before whom all auto journalists bow. Except for yours truly, of course. I went out in wetter, colder conditions and still beat the old guy. My advice to Jalopnik: don’t mess with the Dodge Neon crowd. It takes a Plymouth Neon racer to do that.
Fix the kerning in your splash image. It looks terrible.
It’s a ligature, Ray.
No, between the “B” and the “L”, not the “L” and the “A”, although that too can be fixed by changing the kerning.
And to think that I never knew why Photoshop “Elements” was so cheap before.
In b4… whoops, never mind.
Cool, I now know what “kerning” and “ligature” mean. Thanks, Ray and Pete.
@cole, who?
We can’t help if our format doesn’t allow certain html coding, but you better damn well believe our kerning in splash images is gonna be tighter than Niedermeyer’s editorial budget.
Fix the layout of your website. It looks terrible.
A man who’s not smart enough to cloak his IP when he goes trolling under pseudonyms on other car blogs is hardly one to be giving out advice, y’know.
Fix the flame war in the responses to the first post of your article. It’s… oh, who am I kidding; this is awesome. Keep at it, guys.
Ray, before you remove a kern from your brother’s eye, you must first take the wholly-convoluted-redesigned-mess from your own.
Once you’ve decided to go back to your own website to fix that un-navigable steaming pile of pixels, you may want to change the name to Jezapnik to more accurately reflect the content available there.
Wow, how lame is this. Anyways, Jalopnik’s new format is so terrible I stopped going there.
Ray, fix your entire website, it looks beyond terrible.
Neevers said: <I>Wow, how lame is this. Anyways, Jalopnik’s new format is so terrible I stopped going there.</i>
Jalopnik’s new format is so terrible that it went back in time and kept me from ever caring about Jalopnik <I>before they even rolled it out</i>.
When I crashed my Plymouth Neon, finding the right badge was a problem. I made the shop to peel the old one and reinstall. True story.
And Maximum Bob was running Chrysler when the Neon was developed/built. He didn’t just drive Neons.
More to the point, he ONLY drove Neons because he was at Chrysler. Not because he wanted to. I know he does not personally still own one.
Yes, it’s quite clear from the products developed under Lutz’s watch that he prefers his cars big and heavy.
I heard him tell a female Japanese reporter (who he charmed) that his daily driver was a ZR1. He told me that he had an Lotus Evora on order – perhaps it’s compensation for being on their board.
Lutz has enough money to buy pretty much whatever he wants, and owns many cars.
But the cars aren’t really the point here. One way Lutz bonds with journalists is by showing them his collection of cars. Ray’s letting us know he’s been inducted into the “Lutz club” — and that Jack hasn’t been
Well, of course Ray’s in the club. He delivered hundreds of thousands of eyeballs to GM in their darkest hours, he regularly promotes GM, and he serves as an arm of General Motors PR whenever it is in his personal interest to do so.
All I did was show up, borrow Bob’s car, (and props to the man for permitting it) and do the best I could on an unfamiliar course.
Michael, I haven’t seen his cars. I’m not in his “club” or whatever — but I do have a copy of his vehicle insurance records that I obtained through a source who received it through dubiously legal means.
I’m not throwin’ down that I’m friends with “Maximum” Bob, I’m throwin’ down that I have good sources for information. You know, like a journalist and stuff.
@Jack, you’re being ridiculous again. I don’t “regularly promote GM.” You should know by now that the only things I regularly promote are my site’s stories, my writers and myself. In doing that, I have never found it to be in my “personal interest” to “serve as an arm of General Motors PR” or any other PR entity for any other automaker.
Mostly because I can’t think of a reason why. Can you give me an example of a time where it’s been in my “personal interest” to do so? Even looking at the CTS-V Challenge, it would have been more in my “personal interest” to see “Maximum” Bob beaten at the hands of a better car. Hell, it would have been more in my “personal interest” to see someone put Bob into a wall. Why? Note again the listed hierarchy of interests. Obviously, because it would have made for a better story for me.
Ray,
You did all of that just to check whether he had a Neon?
Why not just ask him which cars he owns? He’d probably love to tell you. (Though maybe he wouldn’t admit to a Neon.) The quasi-legal sleuthing reminds me of My Cousin Vinny, where Vinny was trying to figure out how to get hold of the prosecutor’s files–when all he had to do was request them.
I first realized the “Lutz club” existed about ten years ago. I was at a birthday party for one of my daughter’s friends, and some auto writer I’d never heard of before (and have never heard of since) couldn’t stop talking about the personally-guided tour he and a few other journalist’s received of Bob’s garage. He dripped of infatuation with the man.
Alex Taylor in his recent book confirmed that this sort of thing is Lutz’s M.O. Managing the press, nobody does it better.
Some Lester Bangs line from Almost Famous would be apt, but I’m not the best at the cultural reference thing. Just watch the whole movie.
Since Wert personally banned me at jalopynik, I’m probably the last person to take up for him. HOWEVER, calling him a GM shill is a pretty big stretch. I attribute it to this site’s deep-seated hatred for GM. It’s kinda like when left-wingnuts bitch about Fox News. They’re not that far right…everyone else is just so far left that middle-center-right-leaning-just-a-tad looks like the John Birch Society. Same thing with this place and GM. So much hate can cloud the judgement.
Jack, please, I beg of you, enough. This Jalopnik “hate” needs to stop. Please, write something, anything, not about Jalopnik. We’re all car crazy. Isn’t that enough? I’m no fan of Jalopnik, but this constant ragging is really getting tiring. Constantly ragging on them brings you down to their level. You’re too talented for that. Please stop.
+1
It’s amusing that you found 9 other drivers of neons with Maximum Bob being one of them, however I find your other subjects to be far more interesting.
But without this piece and its attendant comments I’d still be in the dark concerning “kerning” and “ligature.”
A link to the Jalopnik article, in case others are interested:
http://jalopnik.com/#!5784671/the-seven-kinds-of-crappy-car-reviews
I fear my Acadia Denali review was most certainly guilty of #3. Spent an ungodly amount of time on it, much of it trying to cut words, and still ended up near 2,400…
Yeah, I agree in general that the beef-between-rap-stars thing is generally not the most interesting thing in the world, and often downright silly. but this is my best laugh of the week so far. no-one, to my knowledge, does beef better than Jack.
I really like how Jack has numbered the seven drivers; in order: 1,2,3,4,3,2,1.
Jalopnik B Lasts TTAC. TTAC B Lasts Jalopnik. Where does it end?
IN TEARS!
Barüth races Neons? I had no idea.
+Respect
+Respect
+Respect
Jalopnik B Lasts TTAC. TTAC B Lasts Jalopnik. Where does it end?
Well, we’ll know for sure that the Moshiach (note to Ray, “messiah” in Hebrew*) is on his way when Jalopnik links to Cars In Depth. Spamming their comment threads with any possible link to Cars In Depth is taking up way too much time.
Ronnie Schreiber
Executive Editor and Director of Shameless Plugs
Cars In Depth
*was that too condescending? or just condescending enough?
Jalopnik B Lasts TTAC. TTAC B Lasts Jalopnik. Where does it end?
Well, we’ll know for sure that the Moshiach (note to Ray, “messiah” in Hebrew*) is on his way when Jalopnik links to Cars In Depth. Spamming their comment threads with any possible link to Cars In Depth is taking up way too much of my time.
Ronnie Schreiber
Executive Editor and Director of Shameless Plugs
Cars In Depth
*Was that too condescending? Or not condescending enough?
Comment by Ray Wert deleted for name calling. Ban to follow at next instance
@ Bertel: “Comment by Ray Wert deleted for name calling. Ban to follow at next instance”
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Jack! C’mon, it’s me!
That wasn’t a hit piece, it was a little tweak on the nose. If i’d wanted to do a hit piece, you’d be in your back yard in pajamas, holding the neck of your Studio Zephyr, wondering why there’s a crater where your house used to be!
C’mon!
It’s great how he can dish it, but can’t quite stomach the inevitable backlash when he constantly rags on everyone’s apparent lack of Baruthness.
I mean, we can’t all be God’s Gift — I mean, Baruth’s Gift, pardon my blasphemy — to racing, writing, and women.
Denise McCluggage is a very cool broad. A very nice and classy lady who has real credentials to back up her opinions.
Denise has won at Sebring in a Ferrari and at the Monte Carlo Rally in a Ford Falcon. She didn’t just write about racers like Stirling Moss, Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby, Dan Gurney, and Juan Manuel Fango, she raced against them.
+1
Have to respect her abilities. She held her own with the big boys.
You know what surprises me the most? Is the relatively short amount of time it took Jack to write this. Impressive.
Also, had to look up what “kerning” was – learn something everyday.
Oh, you have no idea. I had to work my real job until 3:45 then drive an hour home. It took me five minutes to do the image (and mis-kern it!) and twenty to write the article. Sadly, I’d already done the Neon racing research a long time ago!
I love it when Spin and Ray get all Woodward and Bernstein. Even better when it flames out fantastically.
Why?
What a joke. After that whole crusade over a hack like Scott Burgess, Jalopnik decides to make fun of…hack writers? I don’t know how they can even do that with a straight face, considering I can’t remember the last time they reviewed anything.
Thing is, they’d be totally justified in making fun of Baruth, since he’s been on a vendetta against them, lately. But in what’s become typical behavior for that site, they’re denying any ill-intent and Wert’s over here defending the farm while playing grammar/JPEG nazi. Again. Stop lying, Ray. Nobody’s going to take the whole irreverent hipster attitude Jalopnik’s desperately trying to cultivate when you’re constantly bullshitting your readers.
Also, Jack…stop writing about Jalopnik. It was kinda cute for awhile, but that site isn’t worth the PR or page views. Although you’ve succeeded in reminding me why I deleted them from my bookmarks.
Actually, a lot of the ideas came from going back over things I’ve written, and one came directly from a conversation I had with… Jack! Of all people!
It’s just some funny shit I was thinking about. But I’ll go now and leave you to your hate and paranoid rantings.
I vote that TTAC and Jalopnik drop this creepy competition. There is nothing gained. Mildly annoying at best.
“It all started when he hit me back”
Spinelli says that it was all in good fun, and I take him at his word, but he didn’t deny that he was specifically parodying Jack. Spinelli’s parody made reference to a supposed “careerist hack”, undoubtedly a reference to Jack’s criticism of Jalopnik’s coverage of l’affaire Scott Burgess.
Except, you know, page views…
Actually Ronnie — and thanks for making this such an unnecessarily shady situation, by the way. Remind me to thank you for being such an efficient middleman — of course I was tweaking Jack.
But — strangely enough — I wasn’t talking about the Burgess incident, I was generalizing about Jack’s continued digs at journalists, which to me is getting a little tedious. I wish he’d write more stuff that contributes to good auto writing and spend less time trying to change the world. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I kid because I love.
It all started when I reminded Spin that I owned a copy of this CD and he didn’t:
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Kind-Soul-Hall-Oates/dp/B0002M6AO6
Remind me to thank you for being such an efficient middleman — of course I was tweaking Jack.
You’re welcome, but Jack knew about it before I did. I was just trying to boost traffic for all involved. Did you know that Jack also writes for Cars In Depth?
http://www.carsindepth.com/?p=659
Jack, we’ll always have “Live from Daryl’s House.”
Personally I find it gratifying that Wert takes the time to respond to queries and discussions on TTAC. He has little time for the same via his email on his site.
Ray posting here shows how TTAC punches above its weight. Jalopnik gets many times the traffic that TTAC gets. Ray’s straining against a relative gnat. His posts here do show that TTAC is widely read by influential people, like the editors of Jalopnik.
Whether it’s Jack personally or this site generally, there’s something about TTAC that gets under Ray’s skin. I don’t necessarily mind it, there’s the potential to draw in new readers in any controversy, but I think his comments here benefit TTAC more than Jalopnik.
Ronnie: Pat TTAC on the back all you want, because you’re a very relevant site, but the reality is I came over to this post because I pay attention to mentions of “Jalopnik” in Google News, Yahoo News and Twitter. If this story were at cars!cars!cars! or “BobaFett.blogspot.com,” I’d still head over to read it.
I haven’t been here for awhile, but I was really disappointed when I saw that Jim threw his hat in this ring…nobody who gets into this looks good and he looks just like me. Look for a twin fight…
The “what’s a jalopnik?” question hasn’t been answered to my satisfaction. I still don’t know.
At its simplest “jalopnik” is a mash-up of “jalopy” and “beatnik”. To my mind, Murilee most exemplifies this, which is ironic since he’s no longer on the Jalopnik staff.
Actually, it’s a portmanteau of “Jalopy” and “Sputnik” — we’re really supposed to be a site about space age cars.
My favorite space age car was the Mach Five. Powerful. Truly.
Well hell you should just turn your site into a place to discuss Soviet cars. Sputnik? ORLY?
Ronnie, could ‘nudnik’ be part of the answer?
Thanks for the explanation, Ray, but what’s a portmanteau?
@mrhappypants –
It’s a suitcase, isn’t it?
Whatever it is, I know the number of Gawker employees that have ever used it: Exactly one.
Jalopnik was a site with off the cuff truthful reviews of cars and car news. I can’t say that either is really true anymore. It’s not the format that’s making me leave, it’s the content. It’s become a failblog of remotely car related stories. I’m sure I’d hate Jack Baruth in real life, but at least he writes about cars when he isn’t patting himself on the ass.
I raced Neons. And a guy in the same Neon with an automatic has beaten me (his name was Keith, not Jack). I only drive cars with a slushbox ever since.
P.S. What I meant to say, having racing Neons does not make anyone any good. Only winning does.
Oh yeah! This is what I come here to read. Jack and Ray sniping at each other.
Really, it’s getting old. It’s not particularly clever and it stopped being funny some time ago.
I’m not a fan of personal attacks in general, but the latest pair of articles was quite funny.
It comes across as good-natured towel snapping to me. Carry on.
If I could sit through all the trolling you did on Slashdot and k5 — and I did — you can sit through this!
Oh please, not K5. It’s like… I don’t know. Only 4chan is worse.
So K5 isn’t a site for Blazer fans? This is getting confusing. I always thought Jalopnik was for commies who don’t understand why they shouldn’t be car fans.
Keep up the Jalopnik hate as much as you like, rivalry makes good entertainment. I’ve never enjoyed that site as much as most other car blogs, (‘specially this one) too much pop-culture. Jalopnik is Family Guy to TTAC’s South Park, (that’s a huge insult to Jalopnik btw).
@joe thousandaire…….Exactly, I read for entertainment, and this is entertaining.
Yeah, I never got into Jalopnik at all.
I like Autoblog because it’s the best place for car news, even if it’s often quite boring. When I want a little bit of humor I go to TTAC, even if their news reporting is lacking the speed of Autoblog. I have accounts on PickupTrucks.com, Allpar, The Ranger Station, and JeepPatriot.com, all of which I go to for more specific news on the vehicles I like the most.
Jalopnik I just never found particularly interesting. Less news than Autoblog, not as entertaining as TTAC. There were some good articles, though. I remember one talking about Internet trolling where somebody made something like a 5000-word post on the 100 reasons the greatest car on Earth was a Mustang Cobra. I enjoyed that one.
Hey, whaddaya know, found the post:
http://jalopnik.com/#!5141417/auto-forum-troll-of-the-week-chuck-norris-is-a-mustang-cobra
Are you kidding? This is more hilarious than watching Csaba Csere fall asleep at a press conference.
All this journo bashing is making both sides the equivalent of glorified professional wrestlers. Hmmm… which brings on the all too obvious question. If car journalists were wrestlers, who would they be?
A few that come to mind…
Jack Baruth: Rowdy Roddy Piper
Mike Spinelli: Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka
Ray Wert: Leaping Lanny Poffo
Murilee Martin: The Junkyard Dog
Sajeev Mehta: The Great Khali
Michael Karesh: Kurt Angle
As for me… I guess I’ll have to take Ron Simmons… Damn!
By the way, I have yet to meet Bob Lutz. But I did get drunk with Bobby ‘The Brain’ Heenan back in my college days. Between hanging out with a car guy and getting drunk with a professional wrestler, I will ALWAYS take the later. Unless we’re talking about Chyna…now that’s one mamasita you definitely don’t want to mess with.
I always liked Macho Man Randy Savage’s voice: “Ohhhhhhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
FYI don’t google image Chyna with the safe search off. What has been seen cannot be unseen.
Why, what, she’s a bit muscular, what could be so baOH MY SWEET LORD, NO!!!!
Playboy had to order a few extra gallons of airbrush ink when they did the Chyna pictorial, y’know what I’m sayin’?
I remember reading a quote along the lines of, “Every morning when I get up, I brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue”. I get the feeling that Mr. Baruth has a similar routine – before, of course, spending the 45 minutes it must take to brush his hair.
You rock, Jack. Infantile flame war or not, if it results in writing like this, I’m all for it.
Hey Ray,
Jalopnik 5.0…Nice site or crack pipe? :^)
I do like your new “Morning Shift”.
OK, now back to the war.
(insert picture of crazy Libyan rebels here)
http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Slideshows/_production/gss-110307-carnival/g-cvr-110307-libya-6a.grid-8×2.jpg
And the war for who gets the #2 spot in automotive blogging – in itself a third tier media – rages on
Automotive blogging is a third tier media? I didn’t even figure it had a tier. I didn’t think that the tiers went down that far. I mean, there’s a point where you just can’t fit in any more tiers.
Wait, so there’s a fight between Autoblog and TTAC? Because in January’s ComScore data, we had more uniques than they did — by about half a million. So, you know, keep at it kids.
Also, didn’t you hear? We’re not a blog.
Wasn’t January before your UI change?
It’s weird to see Ray brag about his journalistic chops. I get that a big part of his job is p.r., but doesn’t effective spin have to be . . . plausible?
This has become quite the lulzy little flame war. Please redact my earlier BAAAWWWWING. Now when can we see a race off between Messrs. Wert and Baruth? Neons at high noon?
I still loved Spinelli’s writing where he could explore car culture beyond what we usually see when he was at 0-60. His writing is too artsy-fartsy for a conventional mag (I may be accusing him of trying out tactics on his own list here), but I’d love to see more pieces closer to the style of his work from the mag days. Truthfully, that mag was in completely the wrong market, with the wrong timing for a paper mag, and it did not have the greatest advertisers for its target market. But at least the writing was good. I have to ask if anyone knows if Harris Publications knew how to advertise for a relatively demographically-widespread audience (unlike a lot of their offerings). I’d love to meet Baruth since he lives within miles of my family. His work lately has been hilarious and biting.
These spats are getting really entertaining. Keep it up, TTAC-J.
Last warning: ANYONE who calls ANYONE an idiot, an ass, or similar will be banned. No STFU either. Fire away, in a civil manner, or get fired.
Awww, don’t be such a similar.
The fellow who kicked Wes Siler right in the ass of his too-tight pants.
This article really needed a picture of those spray on pants.
You’d think with all the UI problems (that will become a case study for future IT professionals for what not to do), the jalops would not have the time to get involved in this kind of mud slinging.
MM should have turned off the lights over there when s/he left.
“…caroming athwart a dewy ribbon of Spanish pavement at 9/10ths…. yada yada ” ROFL.
Got to give this match to Jalopnik w/a resounding TKO.
Love it when competing car blogs go all cat-fight on each other. …plus I learned something about kerning and ligature.
Your call on that referee’s decision might be too hasty. I’d say it’s a draw. This post got Instalanched today. Ultimately, TTAC’s coverage of the Scott Burgess resignation and Baruth’s commentary on Jalopnik’s own coverage will boost traffic here. Will it spike traffic here as much as Jalopnik got out of Wert hyping the Burgess story? I’m not privy to Jalop’s stats. I do know that controversy and blog fights can spur traffic, for both sites involved in the debate. Since I have links to my own site in this thread, I expect to get some spinoff traffic there as well.
I think everyone is missing the point here..
Someone needs to do a slideshow of “Maximum Bob” pics set to Carly Simon crooning Nobody does it better.
/Tangential thought..
OK, i read jalopnick pretty mich every day, much like TTAC. I dont reacall talks about “airplanes, and ekranoplans, and tsunamis, and erotic male photography”. Erotic male photograqphy? HAHA I wish! Where is it??? I’m sure I would have noticed.
Search for Steve McQueen. The Jalopnik staff’s man-love for McQueen knows no bounds.
Then I suppose you don’t read it everyday. The first time I checked out that site, there was an article about the Lockheed Super Constellation airliner! I enjoyed it thoroughly, as I previously asked Paul N. if he had one of those up in Eugene for a “CC” article! Haven’t been back more than three times since. Nothing to see there, move along, now!
This thread is epic entertainment! One of the best ever. Now let’s focus Jack back to writing about cars and racing, and focus Ray Wert back to fixing Jalopnik and return the universe to normal, please…
I came.
I read.
I was entertained.
Props to Jalop and TTAC for making my morning <3.
Ugh, Jack please get back to cars and OEMs rather than this. There’s little Truth here other than nit picking. Good for Ray for responding initially but this has no Awesomeness either.
I love Dodge neons. Why don’t we hear more about them?
They’re affordable, the First and Middle models have soft seats, and they are a decent drive.
Love this site, so fucking much.
@JAck… I love how you don’t think Jalopnik was dogging you, (not that I know that conclusively, I stopped caring about ekranoplans) because I’m sure they totally were. But what I love more is that one if their mail-boys is on here defending his romanticized automotive drivel with such zeal! Who has more butane!?
Colin,
Regarding the Dodge-vs-Plymouth conceit which underpins this particular article, you may want to check to see if your iron-i-meter is broken. Try holding it next to an American Apparel shop, or near any speaker playing music by “Electric Six”, and seeing if it moves to the eighty-percent mark. If not, don’t be surprised that it didn’t move while you were perusing my opening paragraphs. :)
This is fun!…. Jack you have just become my auto writing hero, at about the closest you can get from Clarky…all that is left is for you to punch the guys a J-a-l-o-p-n-i-k and throw some water in their face… of and get a pie thrown in yours…
I read a pretty eclectic mix of websites, and I’ve bumped into links to this very article twice today already:
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/117410/
http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/03/neon-fights/72985/
Anybody seen any others?
Seems pretty clear that there isn’t a lot of Jalopnik love out there in the blogosphere, and that Ray and his project aren’t exactly held in the highest esteem. I personally haven’t been all that anti-Jalop, but gotta admit that the site redesign is a complete turn off and (on the rare occasion I decide to go to it) brings my browser to its knees with its ridiculously overwrought interface and equally excessive advertising foolishness (ads actually covering up the content? Smooth…)
I also have to say that I haven’t been the biggest fan of Ray’s online conduct either here or at Jalopnik. There were plenty of comments at Jalop that made reasonable observations about how the redesign screwed up so much of what was good about the site before, and Ray has been way too thin skinned in response. All in all, it amounted to an unpleasantly dictatorial showing on a site whose comments section had once been of an unusually high quality. And now, having initiated some back and forth between TTAC and Jalop, Ray’s looking a bit unhinged here as well.
#3: Steven Cole Smith: This guy’s done a ton of racing in the Neon Challenge and elsewhere. I can’t remember a single thing he’s ever written, but it might be because he writes for Autoweek, and I’m currently using the last few issues of Autoweek to protect the bottom of my cat’s litterbox from destructive urine.
Yes, my stuff is very hard to find. Google hits: 486,000. Jack Baruth Google hits: 40,700. (Cough.) Don’t forget, Jack, I have a carry permit, and you don’t.
BTW, if you haven’t tried Feline Pine for the litterbox, you should. My cats have never stunk so minimally.