The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has a mission: “Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes.” NHTSA also commits itself to “providing the most accurate and complete information available to its customers, the American traveling public.” While NHTSA’s progress towards its stated goals is (and always will be) a matter of debate, the agency has failed us. They’ve failed to tell the truth about ABS.

Obesity is rampant in America. Between the Center for Disease Control’s dire reports, documentaries like “Honey We’re Killing the Kids” and endless infomercials for every diet and exercise program imaginable, it’s obvious we’re becoming a nation of Fat Bastards and Sherman Klumps. Now the Environmental Protection Agency is sounding the alarm about our cars. The EPA recently announced that America’s vehicle fleet is the heaviest it’s been since Ford touted the Pinto’s “road hugging weight” as a safety feature. Our cars and trucks, like their drivers, are piling on the pounds.

After more than two years of free content, The Truth About Cars is about to accept advertising– despite the publisher’s apprehension about advertising’s corrosive effect on editorial independence. It’s an understandable concern. Browse the auto "reviews" in your local daily newspaper. In the main, they consist of regurgitated press releases juxtaposed with stock photos, buried amongst dealer ads. The monthly automotive “buff books” claim they’re above such compromise. They maintain that they provide objective assessments of their test subjects. At the risk of throwing stones from a house about to add a greenhouse, can any publication that features more advertisements than content be objective?

My name is Frank and I’m a NASCAR fan. There. It’s out in the open. I admit that I enjoy watching a race series based on what Jackie Stewart called "one big bloody left hand turn.” If I’m at home on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon the TV is always tuned to the pre-race shows on Speed or the race on whichever network crossed the France family’s palms with the most silver for the broadcast rights. Some people get addicted to soap operas. I’m hooked on NASCAR. To some motorsports fans that makes me a lost cause. 

The sound jolted me from my reverie at a stoplight in a small town just east of San Antonio.  It sounded like a weed whacker farting.  I heard it again.  I looked to my left.  In the lane next to my Z/28 sat a two-door Hyundai Accent with Beavis at the wheel and Butthead riding shotgun.  It had the obligatory coffee can-sized muffler hanging below the rear valence.  Bolted to the deck lid: an erector set-type spoiler that looked like it weighed more than the rest of the car.  Beavis (or maybe it was Butthead) had plastered the fenders and doors with decals of kanji characters and there was a bright red VTEC sticker splayed across the top of the windshield.  It looked as though they had just seen “The Fast and the Furious” and they were out to cop some street creds in their killer kimchee burner.

In 1988, Simon Bond published that seminal work, 101 Uses for a Dead Cat.   It pissed off cat lovers, became a best seller, and spawned a number of “101 Uses for (fill in the blank)” books and articles.  Today we’re faced with an even more haunting problem.  The streets are crawling with SUVs driven by rap star wannabees and soccer moms afraid they’ll get bogged down in a mall parking lot somewhere.  It won’t be long before the junkyards are overflowing with the rusting hulks of these once-proud symbols of excess and poseurship.  So the question plaguing mankind today is, “What do you do with a dead SUV?”

If you want to judge a restaurant, don’t order the chef’s specialty.  Go for the hamburger or the omelet.  If the man in the funny hat prepares these prosaic dishes with the same passion he puts into his Suprème de Turbot Rôti aux Asperges Vertes et à l'Ail en Chemise, you have a winner.  The same applies to cars.  If you want to judge an automaker’s prowess, check their basic models.  Scope the ones with standard engines and base interiors that hide in the back of the lots.  A few miles behind the wheel tells you more about the manufacturer’s passion for product than anything their spinmongers could ever publish.  Which brings us to the Impala LS. 

Everyone has deeply buried secrets they hope no one ever exhumes. You know exactly what I'm talking about– the gang banger who listens to REM when his posse's out of earshot, the televangelist who retains the services of hookers after darkness falls, or the occasional FBI director who enjoys nylons and high heels. Gearheads have their clandestine thoughts too. Your friends consider you an expert on all things automotive so you'd never want them to know your true desires. Your dark side is there just begging to see the light of day. Now is your chance to come clean and cleanse your karma. We want to know: What cars are you embarrassed to admit you like and secretly covet?

“The older I get, the better I was.”  Those of you who were in high school before Neil Armstrong baby-stepped for mankind know what I’m talking about.  Time has a remarkable way of enhancing our memories of days gone by.  More specifically, we tend to idolize automobiles whose once questionable joys have been filtered and sanitized by the mists of time.  Occasionally we need a good old whack from the reality stick to jar the truth loose from the cobwebs of our cloudy minds.  I got mine today.

Remember when you got your first 64-count box of Crayola Crayons?  After inhaling the trademark smell, your eyes were dazzled, your left brain inspired by an eye-popping kaleidoscope of colors.  You never knew there were so many different shades of blue and yellow and red and green.  You could draw anything you wanted and you’d always have just the right color.  And when you started drawing cars – man!  That’s when you’d pull out all the best hues.  Never ecru or black or white or gray, though.  No way!  You always drew your dream cars in the brightest Technicolor hues you could find.  Too bad today’s designers don’t remember those fun times.

Way back in 602, the original Pope Gregory introduced the concept of the seven deadly sins.  His text Moralia in Job was designed to help lay people differentiate between venial sins, which could be forgiven through confessions, and capital sins, which are Hell to pay. About a millennium and a half later it looks like the management at Detroit’s Big Two automakers should have paid more attention in their catechism classes.  They seem to be harvesting a whole carload of karmic grief for their past corporate indiscretions, and wonder why it’s happening to them.  Let’s run down the Big Seven in ascending order of purported theological severity and see how they stack up.

PSST… Hey you!  Yeah, you over there with the shiny new Corvette…  I have something to tell you…  C’mon over…  Now stand close so I can whisper something in your ear.  No, really… it’s a good thing.    Be sure to listen carefully.  I don’t want you to miss this.  It’s something you really need to hear about your baby.  Ready?  OK, here it is… HEY BONEHEAD!  THAT CORVETTE IS A CAR!!  TAKE IT OUT AND DRIVE THE HELL OUT OF IT!

Dear Mr. Nasscar,

How the hell y’all doin’?  I was down to the barber shop the other day when me and the boys got to talkin’ ‘bout cars an racing an stuff.  Clarence sed how he’d red that NASCAR was fixin’ to change all the cars all over again.  He said y’all was fixin’ to make all the cars the same, and the engines the same, and on top of that, they’s ugly.  He said they’s all gonna be slower too.  Then Earl piped-up and said that meant there weren’t gonna be no more good crashes no more.  Why them crashes is the only reason Ida Mae goes to the races in the first place!  Jake sed y’all gonna kill the sport ded.

Last Wednesday, Mark Fields spoke at a Competitiveness Forum sponsored by the United States Chamber of Commerce.  Fields has an impressive title: “President, The Americas, Ford Motor Company.”  He also has an impressive international resume: Managing Director, Ford of Argentina; CEO of Mazda; Executive Vice President of Ford of Europe, and Chairman and Chief Executive of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group.  The auto exec’s speech touched all the usual bases: ethanol, currency manipulation, health care, tax credits, etc.  When Fields turned his attention to issues of national pride and policy, his remarks were measured and concise — and made about as much sense as a Ford GT entering the Baja 500.   

Remember Joe Isuzu?  In the late 80’s, the brand’s spokesman was an actor (David Leisure) playing a pathological liar who’d say anything to sell an Isuzu.  He claimed the Trooper could carry “a symphony orchestra” or “hold every book in the Library of Congress.”  The Impulse was “faster than a [catches a speeding bullet in his teeth]… well, you know.”  While Joe’s commercials-– and for that matter, the Isuzu brand– are busy fading from the American automotive landscape, his spirit lives on.  The main difference between Joe and no-Joe car ads: today's disclaimers are smaller.  You have my word on it.