Yesterday, we discussed one automotive journalist’s rather hysterical reaction to the Dodge Demon. That writer contacted TTAC shortly after the article was published to request a particular sentence be removed.
In the interest of complete clarity, I’ve elected (and Mark has agreed) to publish this correction instead.
Richard Truett writes,
I was a little annoyed to see this is Jack’s story: “To my recollection, he has threatened to beat me up at least twice.” This is not only NOT true, it is not even remotely accurate. I’ve never done anything of the sort. I have never threatened Jack – a person I don’t even know – with any kind of violence. I have been in 1 fight in my entire life. I don’t engage in or endorse violence – and certainly never would over a disagreement over cars.
We had words once on Facebook… If Jack can show me any of these threats that he is referring to, I will make an immediate $10,000 donation to the Dearborn Animal Shelter in his name.
Unfortunately for both me and the homeless animals of the Dearborn Animal Shelter, the disagreement to which Mr. Truett refers occurred on a super-secret little Facebook group for autowriters. Ninety-five percent of the time the discussion in the group consisted of nothing besides a) second-tier writers trying to beg their way into free trips, or b) a truly nauseating amount of mutual back-scratching. The dust-up between me and Richard was either edited or removed outright by the administrators of that group. I was then ejected from the group after having a couple of further arguments with dudes whose primary performance-driving experience consists of steering a Rascal mobility scooter around the buffet table at the Detroit auto show. Shortly after, I quit Facebook for good, which has greatly improved my quality of life and would also greatly improve yours if you could bring yourself to do it.
I cannot, therefore, prove that Mr. Truett threatened to beat me up. And the more I think of it, the more I think it was probably a case of him saying something to me that I wouldn’t say to someone unless I was totally willing to bop them right in the face. Everybody tells me that Richard is a really decent guy. Like, he’s so decent that if he went into a restaurant and said to the owner, “Nice business — it would be a shame if something happened to it,” he would actually be expressing a sincere concern about the restaurant.
The troll in me wants to challenge Mr. Truett to a charity boxing match. If he wins, the money can go to the animal shelter. If I win, the money would go to Claire Lind, a young lady who poses topless in front of custom vans from the Seventies. (Find out more here, but not if you’re at work.) However, I am currently following the example of my hero John Mayer and working on my personal spiritual growth. So let’s leave it at this: I probably misunderstood what Richard was saying to me. He seems like a very nice man. The Dodge Demon is a very nice car that also means no harm to anyone. Can’t we all just get along?
> Shortly after, I quit Facebook for good, which has greatly improved my quality of
> life and would also greatly improve yours if you could bring yourself to do it.
What is Facebook?
An activity where your fingers get lots of exercise scrolling past posts with phrases like “share if you agree” or “type Amen”.
The truth is strong in this one.
I’ve heard of Facebook but never visited that site
http://www.theonion.com/video/hostages-trapped-inside-walmart-insisting-they-nev-20362
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. – Mark Twain
This.
“I was then ejected from the group after having a couple of further arguments with dudes whose primary performance-driving experience consists of steering a Rascal mobility scooter around the buffet table at the Detroit auto show.”
You, ejected from a group? I don’t believe it. ;-)
Tempest, meet teapot.
Well, you certainly did waste Mr. Truett . . . but perhaps he deserved it. As a person of truly grandfather age (68), I can say on the basis of personal driving experience (back in the day) that your statements about the driving characteristics of vintage muscle cars are entirely correct. I remember driving a Dodge 440 Charger in 1969: the clutch felt like a leg press machine and the application of even a fraction of that engine’s prodigious torque would make the front end go all light and squirrely. The rubber on the bias ply tires of the time (including the “wide ovals” routinely fitted to muscle cars) would literally melt in any wheelspin, which made them slightly more effective than if they had been driving on 32 degree (wet) ice. I recall a review of the 427 Corvette that claimed, with only slight exaggeration, that it would “get rubber at any speed, in any gear.” That’s why the cars of that era have such seemingly pathetic 0-60 times. As for the brakes; typically they were good for one hard stop from 70 mph, assuming you could avoid locking up the rear wheels and going into a spin. Of course, even then braking distances were almost a whole number multiple of what they are today from the same speed.
I continue to be amazed at how tractable a modern pickup truck with 420 hp and 460 lb.-ft. of torque is to drive . . . pickups being notoriously light in the rear and prone to all kinds of exciting misbehavior.
But perhaps stupid statements like those you called out are better left in the obscurity they so richly deserve. ;-)
My ’68 Galaxie even with outrageously tall gearing could spin the tires at will from a dead start and would even break the tires loose at a 55 mph upshift into 2nd.
Even into the 80’s this was the mark of a true bad-ass-mobile. It’s odd that it never occurred to us to fit worn-out retreads to our cars in our quest for burnout glory (most of our worn out pony cars wore soft Eagle ST’s with huge white letters for extra awesomeness).
I find it funny that even today, when a car on television is in a hurry, all sorts of tire-torture noises are added into the soundtrack, even when the driving surface is gravel.
A friend of my brother put hard, low-grip tires on the back of his Chevy II specifically to make it easier to do burnouts. As an added bonus, the tires were cheap and lasted longer with his abuse.
I had a buddy who worked at a tire shop. This is before recycling became a thing. He’d rummage through the salvage pen and put tires on his car every few days. The guy was the burnout king.
I agree completely about the muscle cars from the past. A high school buddy bought a 2-year old Dodge Charger 440 Magnum. He stopped by my house to take me for a ride. The Charger immediately sprinted to about 70 mph on a narrow residential street. My friend tried to stop at a fast approaching stop sign by putting both feet on the non-power drum brake pedal. We sailed past that stop sign and half way down to the next one before coming to a halt. Quite an eye-opener. My 69 Mach I has power disc brakes and stops like a modern car..once or maybe twice. Then brake fade takes over.
My car stopped reasonably well with front discs and read drums. But yes, heat fade was atrocious.
Hmmmm…I owned both a 69 and 70 Charger RT, and both had disc brakes on front, drums on rear, as did my Dart Swinger 340 of the same vintage…never any real issues with stopping that were not self imposed…as in braking way too late. I also owned a 69 Mustang 428 Cobra Jet…loved it, but it was one squirrely SOB both under power and braking…
Is that lead image a reference to Malcolm X, in the infamous image of him standing by the window with an M1 Carbine and taped magazines?
It is, in fact!
It’s an album cover and the album title is also a reference to Malcolm X.
An M1 is *far* more useful for that than a Micro-Uzi, too.
Great album.
I met Kris back in 1989. Cool dude. Doubt he remembers meeting me…
Were you delivering “forget me dust”?
A Demon made it to Gingerman last weekend for the LeMons race. My dad, my 6 year old, and I had a nice moment admiring it. I’m glad it exists, even if it was parked across from a Tesla charging quietly.
Now I’m going to spend all day figuring out who was having fun this weekend at Gingerman, instead of working. Thanks.
I didn’t find the driver, but it had a Cali M plate.
The Gingerman Lemons events attract a bunch of M-plated goodness because many of the teams work in the industry.
Jack, glad to hear you were ale to kick the facebook habit.
I did it several years ago when I realized it was enabling people, including myself, to sound off in cowardly ways.
And for some reason, it made people think they could say anything they wanted and doing so on my page made it and themselves feel legit and I had to accept.
I decided that after deleting or removing “friends”, I was actually friend free!!!!
Tough reality to face, huh?
“Shortly after, I quit Facebook for good, which has greatly improved my quality of life and would also greatly improve yours if you could bring yourself to do it.”
Unrelated to anything cars, I last logged onto Facebook about a month ago. Zuckerface and I had a disagreement about the name I was using there and I refused to provide “papers, please”. So my account was locked.
I haven’t been back, and Mr. Baruth, I have to say, your assertion is absolutely correct.
“Shortly after, I quit Facebook for good, which has greatly improved my quality of life and would also greatly improve yours if you could bring yourself to do it.”
I haven’t quit Facebook entirely, because I kind of like seeing everybody’s new babies and hearing about the big events in their lives. But I very rarely post there, and when I do it’s saccharine stuff about my own babies. I totally ignore all the activism in my feed. Everything interesting I do on the internet is either on Twitter or discussion websites.
Being active on Facebook is nothing more than a recipe for destroying relationships.
Funny thing about when I ditched Facebook back about 8 years ago or so. Nobody, and I mean nobody, on my friends list wrote and asked me why I wasn’t on FB any more.
That’s how much impact FB had on my life. The real friends weren’t on FB anyway.
Two minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
.
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Were you referring to your username, or Jack’s article?
That’s the only hip-hop album I can probably still extemporaneously recite all the lyrics to by heart these days.
I still listen to it quite a bit.
I’m surprised to see it referenced here, particularly by Jack, who I always guessed was more of a blues and rock guy, based on the occasional musical references and his guitar playing I have read here.
I think this is the only rap album to ever sample Deep Purple, which earns extra points from me.
I have a reasonably deep grounding in Eighties rap. I’ve met Kris during a speaking engagement that he had at my school and I’ve seen most of the big names of the era live. My brother and I watched Dre pause halfway up a small set of stairs on “The Chronic Tour” because he was so out of shape that he couldn’t rap and climb stairs at the same time!
Too old to listen to that stuff now, for the most part. But I still have a lot of that Def Jam 12″ vinyl with the plain breakbeat on the backside.
Yeah, I’m the same way in the “Too old to listen to that stuff” dept, mostly, when it comes to rap.
I still have the vinyl copies of the stuff I like, although I did get the CD versions later. I have the seminal Public Enemy stuff of that era, as well as RUN-DMC, and the first 3 BDP albums.
I saw Chuck D. speak at Lehigh University when I was in HS. I lived within walking distance of the campus. Met him. Smart, a bit intimidating to my 15 year old self.
But ‘By All Means Necessary’ isn’t just my favorite hip-hop album of all time, its one of my favorite albums of all time across the board. Right up there Matthew Sweet’s ‘Girlfriend’, Metallica’s ‘Ride The Lightning’, ‘Who’s Next’, ‘Appetite for Destruction’, Badfinger’s ‘Straight Up’, etc.
I just never get tired of it.
I still have my original 12″ copy of Rappers Delight on Sugarhill Records. I’ll sell it to you for a million dollars.
I’ve never had an account on facebook (I wonder what percentage of the adult population can claim that?), so I commend your decision. I just feel it has nothing to offer me that I can’t get through other outlets.
Jack, to me you sound like the guy who hears a warning on the radio about a ghost driver and starts to shout: ‘One? Thousands!’.
Not gonna lie, I do love these little exchanges that happen from time to time. Solidly in the Jack camp on the Demon, and I can sympathize with being booted from facebook groups for sure. I might have a bit of a side hobby in poking the bear in some of the less agreeable ones I’ve come across. Is it good for my mental health? Probably not if I took any of it seriously. Screwing around on there can be quite fun, but there are definitely times where I’ll take a week off or so.