Driving my old 993 to work at 5:30 this morning, listening to the blat of the Billy Boat exhaust competing with Corinne Bailey Rae’s sublime second album for my attention, I had a pair of random thoughts. First thought: I will never own a Ferrari, and that’s okay. This represents a sort of satori for […]
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Posts By: Jack Baruth
Wherever the hollow tubes of the InterWeb may reach, there you will find the argument that “it’s always a better idea to buy a CPO used car than a new one.” The mean transaction price of a new car in the United States is about $29,000. That kind of money will get you a loaded-up […]
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“All I need is a nice basic car. Something like, maybe, a Saturn or something.” This unassuming, if perhaps ungrammatical, combination of sentences has come to be a long-running joke in my family. You see, one of my relatives married a woman back in the Eighties and subsequently provided her with a string of relatively upscale whips ranging from an Infiniti J30 to a Siebener BMW. Every time it was time to go looking for a replacement, however, she would ardently protest to anyone who would listen that “All I need is a nice basic car. Something like, maybe, a Saturn or something.” My relative ignored her and kept shoveling the Audis, Bimmers, and Infinitis her way, and each time she would accept the new ride reluctantly, reminding us about her preference for “a basic car”.
Some fifteen years after their marriage, this woman told me at dinner, “You know what I did today?”
“No. What did you do?”
“I rode in a friend’s Saturn to lunch. You know, I’ve talked about how that’s all I really want.”
“And?”
“It was horrible! It smelled weird, the windows rolled up by hand, it was cramped inside, and it was really noisy, like something was wrong with it.”
“So, what’s your opinion now?”
“Well, I still want a basic car. But now I think I’d be happy with just a basic BMW or Lexus.” I thought this was well-said, because it allowed her to continue to champion the usual liberal virtues of “simplicity” and “consuming less” without actually being forced to drive anything worse than a 328i. As it so happens, her current car is just that – a “nice, basic” two-hundred-and-thirty-horsepower, leather-seated, alloy-wheeled Bimmer sedan.
From the nice folks at Slashdot comes a story of police laziness that may end up resulting in the reversal of “hundreds, maybe thousands” of drunk-driving convictions over the past six years.
Multiple sources are reporting that Chrysler’s recent (and voluntary) SEC filing revealed something not normally found in those rather boring financial documents: EXCITING TRUCK NEWS!
A chat between Jack Baruth and Derek Kreindler discussing the Bentley EXP9 SUV. Because we love it so much!
Jack: The moment I saw this rude beast slouching towards Geneva to be born, I instantly stopped regretting not buying the Arnage Red Label I almost picked up in 2005. Yeah,that was going to be awfully hood rich of me, but this thing makes the dodgy finance of a used dinosaur look classier than Princess Grace.
It’s a strange, strange world out there. Image trumps reality, corporate positioning trumps national identity, the fake conquers the real. Want proof? Consider the Fiat 500 Abarth. The now-iconic television ad features some hapless beta male enduring a strangely erotic tongue-lashing at the hands of a beautiful Italian woman who then mysteriously turns into a […]
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A rare pro-Porsche article from the S:S:L days — JB
They call it “Trauma Bonding”, and although the exact definition is highly debatable, it’s generally understood to mean a situation in which victims come to identify or sympathize with their victimizers. It occurs in cults, domestic violence situations, and even hijacked airliners, but most importantly for the purpose of today’s discussion, it’s running rampant in the automotive enthusiast community. The most recent manifestation of the illness appears to be a fondness for outrageous fuel prices; it’s characterized by statements like, “I can’t wait until ten-dollar gasoline forces us all to drive small, economical cars,” or “The best thing for everybody would be if we were taxed into using (insert naive reference to diesel, soybeans, unicorn sweat, or whatever other smelly, sticky, low-power, improbably available fuel tickles one’s fancy). Then all the SUVs will be gone from the road and we’ll all drive the cars we need, instead of the cars we want.”
It’s a situation in which many an auto enthusiast has found himself: You go to an auto show, hoping to see the newest Krautwagen Alpha-Numerical-Alpha Extra Designation Denoting Actual Engine Size, and they have the car locked so you can’t rub your hands and body all over the interior to find out if said interior contains any deadly spikes, sharp corners, or sub-par LCD screens. What do you do? For most normal people, the answer is suck it up and go live the rest of your life. For self-proclaimed “wealth manager” Joshua Smith, however, the answer was slightly different: he sat right down and wrote a letter. Little did he know that Audi was about to make him approximately as famous as Kevin Federline… (Warning: plenty of NSFW language to come)
My name is Dr. Greg Gulbransen, and I am a pediatrician practicing in Oyster Bay, New York. I spend most of my time caring for the health and safety of children. I would consider myself to be a very safety-conscious professional and parent. My tragic story could absolutely happen to any family in America.
On October 19th, 2002, my wife Leslie and I returned home from an evening out. It was 9:30 p.m., and I went outside to put my SUV in the driveway. Inside were the babysitter, my wife and my two sons – or so I thought. While I was backing up the car into the driveway, I felt the wheel go over a bump. I jumped out of the SUV so I could figure out what I had hit. There on the driveway was my 2-year-old son Cameron, bleeding to death from massive head injuries.
I can’t begin to describe the shock and devastation. How did this happen? He was in the house and I looked where I was going. How could I have missed him? I had looked in the rear view mirrors, the side mirrors and out the back window, but I never saw him. I never even had a chance of seeing Cameron. He was too small.
Before becoming a parent, I would have described this fellow as “publicity-seeking douchebag egomaniac who used what was probably a semi-intoxicated speedbumping of his designer yuppie baby to stick his nose in the business of other people who have yet to negligently speedbump their own kids, attempting to get his son’s name on some intrusive legislation for the purpose of calming down his wife so he doesn’t lose his Chihuly collection in the divorce.”
Now, in 2012, as a parent of a nearly three-year-old child myself, I realize that calling him a drunk on a major website could get me sued, which could negatively affect my ability to pay off the parents of the first girl my son knocks up at a rave twelve years from now. So let’s assume that Dr. Gulbransen was totally sober after his night out when he tossed that pup in reverse and tragically killed his own son. Regardless, let’s discuss the “Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act of 2007” and what it now means as of this past Wednesday.
It was a weekend of ups and downs for your humble author. Up: meeting model and FIAT television-commercial star Catrinel Menghia in Las Vegas, albeit for a moment too brief to pitch my admittely unconvincing case. (“Yes, I know your husband is far wealthier and better-looking than I am — but I can play ‘The Blower’s Daughter’ on the six-string Ovation.”) Down: not receiving an invitation to attend the Camaro ZL1 launch at VIR. The flights back and forth to Las Vegas, combined with various activities once I was on the ground, meant that I received my news in short bursts of permitted cell-phone activation.
So. The Daytona 500 dragged out over three calendar days. Approximately ten million Facebook users made “image macros” featuring everything from ALMS prototypes to LeMons racers driving in the rain. Juan Pablo Montoya ran into a jet-engined track drier, prompting another ten million people to make jokes about “Hit the pace car, Cole” and “Don’t let the invisible fire hurt my friend!” About.com’s lead writer, Aaron Gold, shit-canned Chevrolet’s trailer-park supercar at VIR in what can best be described as “a completely avoidable incident”.
Let’s discuss.
Published in Speed:Sport:Life 26 months ago, but still true today, I believe — JB
This past Friday, I was seated in a long-lead briefing for another auto manufacturer when the whispered word was passed down the line of seated journalists: “There’s an emergency conference call regarding Saab in ten minutes.” Not too long after that: “Saab is dead. There’s no deal.” All around me, I saw men with their heads cradled in their hands, though I could not tell whether it was from sympathy, misery, or simple world-weariness. From the seat next to me, a sorrowful, poignant comment: “I don’t want to live in a world where the ES350 is a best-seller and Saab is dead.”
What a perceptive statement! For there were more than fifteen long years where people willingly deluded themselves into believing that this world was one where the Camry-by-Lexus could rule the sales roost and, yet, Saab could live. With evidence to the contrary literally surrounding them, Saab’s incompetent, careless stewards at General Motors continued to push the lie: Saab is premium, Saab is luxury, Saab can compete with the Japanese and Germans on equal ground. By the time Saab’s lifeless body finally thumped against the ground, the story had assumed the mantle of tragedy. And like most tragedies, it began with a misunderstanding.
From the Ecology Center in Michigan comes a whole new way to create Top Ten Lists: simply measure, and rank the potential for harm of, chemical compounds in automotive interiors. It’s hard to say how impartial or respectable they are — nota bene that one of their board members is a current Ford employee — but their lists of best and worst automotive interiors should be of interest to anyone who wonders what, exactly, the “new car smell” is. It also offers a potential answer to a question which has flummoxed TTAC readers for some time now…
It was a sunny day in 1994 when I fired up my 1990 Volkswagen Fox and took my newly acquired “Swedish Mauser” 6.5×55 rifle to the local range. At that point in time, the rifle was around eighty-two years old, having been manufactured at some point in 1912. It worked fine and was accurate to slightly under one inch at one hundred yards — the so-called “minute of angle” which is a basic standard of accuracy for long guns. Having satisfied myself that this time-worn gun was up to snuff, I went home and played some guitar. In this case, the guitar was my 1982 Electra Phoenix X130, already twelve years old but showing very little wear despite a harrowing four years following me around a college campus.
My mail had been delivered that day by a mailman driving a Grumman LLV, very similar to the one pictured at the top of this column. And although I didn’t know it, Porsche was less than three months away from building a certain white 1995 993 Carrera with factory-matched white wheels.
Approximately eighteen years later, my Mauser is doing fine service for another shooter, who reports that it has required no repair or maintenance beyond the basics. It will celebrate its hundredth birthday some time this year. My Electra rarely comes out of its case any more, but when I do play it there’s no evidence that it’s now a thirty-one-year-old guitar. My mail was delivered today by a mail lady in a Grumman LLV which could not have been manufactured any fewer than fourteen years ago. And my 1995 Porsche 993 Carrera slumbers in the cold garage dreaming of spring, shiny and corrosion-free.
The 1990 Fox I drove to the range that long-ago day? Gone, junked, rusted out, driven into the ground. In a story full of what they call “durable goods”, the Fox wasn’t truly durable at all. It was used and discarded, probably utterly worthless by the time the odometer reached the 150,000 mark. Surely VW understood how to make a consumer product as durable as a wooden Japanese guitar or a ninety-year-old rifle. The industry as a whole understood how to make durable items. My little white 993 still runs. The local mail truck still runs, although we’ll discuss later why Grumman’s understanding of “durable” differs from Porsche’s. The Fox’s lack of durability was almost certainly due to a particular decision or series of decisions made somewhere at Volkswagen. Why? What is the advantage of deliberately creating less-than-durable products? Put another way — why aren’t all vehicles “long life vehicles”?
Some interesting news on the Rare Earth front, courtesy of our friends at The Atlantic and Slashdot.
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