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Inspired by an impromptu meeting and discussion I had with Chris Bangle and Jack Telnack at the 2008 Detroit Show, originally published in Speed:Sport:Life three years ago, but I think it is equally true today —- JB

“…so we’ll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A Dark Knight.”

It feels more than a little trite and melodramatic to begin this column with a quote from a Batman movie, but if the auto business has any profession which lends itself to celebrity culture, it is that of the stylist. Harley Earl set the template: physically enormous and personally outrageous, he created our modern notion of the automobile as aesthetic object. And while there have been many flamboyant “superstar” designers who followed in his footsteps, from Tjaarda to Stephenson, history will surely acknowledge that a few men managed to accomplish more than merely sketching a pretty shape. Bill Mitchell brought us the 1961 Chevrolet, which set a visual template for modern sedans that persists to this day. William Lyons fathered the XJ6, perhaps the greatest sporting sedan design in history, even if he didn’t actually draw it. Alex Issigonis invented the “small car” as we know it today, and Giorgetto Giugiaro rationalized it into the unmatchable first-generation Golf. Marcello Gandini created the supercar; Jack Telnack revitalized the Mustang and with it an entire generation of automotive enthusiasm.

Years from now, when the smoke of history clears, another name will be added to that list of designers who were capable of re-imagining the automobile. Born and raised in the American Midwest, Christopher Edward Bangle joined BMW with a rather singular goal in mind: to create what would be only the second major design direction in the company’s history. His complete and utter success in this task has permitted BMW to become a major player on the global stage; along the way, he rewrote the design language for the entire auto industry.

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Another one from the vaults: 2007 to be exact! — JB

I’d like to start this week with a bit of an apology – not for what I’ve done, mind you, but for what I am going to do. Fourteen years ago, I was a flat broke, know-nothing kid starting at the bottom of a small-town Ford dealership’s auto (and light truck!) sales department. The hours weren’t great, and most of the actual minutes were even worse, as Douglas Adams would say. On a monthly “draw” against commission of eight hundred dollars, I didn’t exactly live like a king. Heck, I couldn’t even afford to eat a real lunch. Instead, I’d buy two fifty-nine-cent McD’s cheeseburgers and wander over to the used car department, where “old Frank”, the finance manager for the “used side”, would be telling stories. After forty-plus years in the business, Frank knew all the tales of the car biz, and he wasn’t shy about telling them, no matter how disturbing, slanderous, or just plain obscene they might be. One lifeless Tuesday afternoon, I said to him,

“Hey Frank, you oughta write a book about this stuff.” Frank reacted to this mild suggestion with unconcealed disapproval and what was very possibly contempt, as if I’d suggested that he put a firecracker in the dealership toilet. His lit cigarette – yes, you could still smoke indoors at a car dealership back in 1994 – dangled dangerously out of his stained hand. He “fixed me with his eye”, as the Ancient Mariner did, and replied v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

“I could do that,” he said, “but I won’t. I would never write or say anything against this business. I wouldn’t share our secrets, our business, our life, with people on the outside,” and here his glare became quite focused and intense as I shrank back in one of the used car building’s rickety old wire-frame chairs, “and neither… should… you.”

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Shall… we… play… a… game? How ’bout that old Sesame Street standard, “One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other – One Of These Things Just Doesn’t Belong.” I’ll name four people, and you tell me which one “doesn’t belong”. Ready? Setta? GO! (Read More…)

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To provide a little light weekend reading in the months to come, I will be syndicating some of the “Avoidable Contact” columns that I wrote for our friends at SpeedSportLife back in the day. At the same time, I will be restarting the “Avoidable Contact” series and publishing it here. Be aware that these are long posts, running from 2,000 words to twice that. You’ve been warned. Don’t forget to check out the nice folks at Speed:Sport:Life: their current lineup includes some great young writers and the well-known photographic excellence of founder Zerin Dube — JB

Gather ‘round, everybody. I have an epic tale to tell. It’s the story of how Fake Luxury Conquered The World. There are heroes, and villains, and sweeping vistas, and if we don’t exactly have a princess cooped up in a tower, we might have a few sexually liberated young women in airbrush-mural vans. Interested? Follow along with me as we return to the dark days of the early Seventies…

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Last night, while driving out to look at a Heritage Golden Eagle archtop, I got into an argument with Motor Trend’s Ladyboy-In-Chief, Edward “Cop Killer” Loh. During that argument, Loh repeatedly refused to admit that he was proud of his work at Motor Trend. I have to admit that I can’t blame him: that’s the kind of job where you just lie there and take it. Having been bullied out of teaching by super-scary high-school children, Loh really doesn’t have much else he’s qualified to do. Jalopnik’s Matt Hardigree saw the slapfight and decided to test the adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

This whole thing is a bunch of inside baseball crap and not really worthy of TTAC’s readers. So, I’d like to use the comments section of this article for something else. Unlike Mr. Loh, I’m personally proud to be affiliated with my media outlet — TTAC — and I’m interested in providing content that our readers want to see. Tell us what you want to see, and we will do our best to provide it. Unless you want to see me taking a shot at little Edward’s mom. I don’t get paid enough to do that.

About a month and a half ago, a group calling itself “Consumer Watchdog” targeted Hyundai in what we indicated could be a shakedown operation. Their claim: Hyundai is gaming the EPA tests. Or faking them. I’m not sure, really. To get to the bottom of it, I set up a thinly veiled excuse to drive to another state and seduce a gorgeous single mother real-world test of the Elantra’s capabilities. I was satisfied by the results, but the folks at Consumer Watchdog, by contrast, were just getting started…

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I’m standing in the office of the New Orleans Guitar Company when I see it: a odd-looking, neck-through double-cut six-string, tossed in the corner and smothered beneath a completely opaque layer of sawdust. I pick it up, brush it off. It’s gorgeous; a combination of rare woods, mirror-matched and burnished to a gleaming finish. It’s easy to imagine this instrument occupying pride of place in some anesthesiologist’s home studio. Grasping the neck in one hand, I gesture with the other: How much?

Vincent Guidroz, who for all intents and purposes is the New Orleans Guitar Company, replies defensively: “Oh, that’s a primitive effort, really, compared to what I’m doing now… and it survived the flood here, I really couldn’t sell it, I want to keep it around, I’m sorry.” I can feel the frisson travel from the soles of my feet to my furrowed brow. In a world which has gone utterly mad for authenticity, this is weapons-grade guitar uranium.

I can just see it hanging on the wall next to my pair of Marv Lamb H-357s and my hand-made Korina Moderne, silently lending authority to my collecting savvy as I tell the story: “And, you know, when the water receded, and the looters were gone, this lone instrument lay on the floor of the workshop, perfect despise the immersion… I wouldn’t call it ‘immersion’ so much as ‘baptism’, really… You say you own a PRS Private Reserve? How, ah, financially impressive.”

No dice. Vincent won’t sell. As a consolation, he offers me directions to a “real New Orleans place to eat.” Authenticity on the half-shell. My companion, the infamous Vodka McBigbra, is already waiting outside in a car which offers a fair amount of authenticity itself: a 2011 Nissan Cube. After just three days, she loves the little box without reserve, but I’m personally afraid that, in this case, authenticity is something to be avoided. I will explain.

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The breadth and diversity of TTAC’s readership is such that I really cannot manage to offend you all at once. If I talk about evading the police at night, some of you just shake your heads and say, “What a scamp!” If I admit to selling a female friend’s body to a wealthy industrialist for five thousand dollars, most of you assume I’m either fibbing or just, well, allowed to do that sort of thing. Even my use (while quoting someone else, admittedly) of an infamous term commonly used to refer to a bundle of loose branches resulted in as many pro-Baruth comments as anti-Baruth ones. I admit it: the commentariat can’t really be trolled. You win.

Some people aim higher than I do, however, and Jalopnik’s Ray Wert is one of those people.

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I grew up in Germany during a time without speed limits on our highways. I probably drove 500.000 kilometers, always at the maximum, and thats the kind of school required to win Gumball. But even with all of this experience I felt that I could hurt someone if I made a mistake. And after 10 years of extreme driving I decided to quit street racing. Most Gumball participants don’t know the limits of their cars and fail to avoid obvious dangers.

Thus spake Kim Schmitz, later known as “Kimble”, and then finally as “Kim Dotcom”, regarding his decision to stop participating in the Gumball Rally. As many TTAC readers know, Mr. Dotcom recently found out the hard way that there is one thing more consistently dangerous than “500,000 kilometers at the maximum”: endangering the fiscal interests of the corporations which own the United States Government lock, stock, and barrel. It’s one thing to be Roman Polanski yucking it up in Paris for three decades after he sodomized a child and fled the country. Quite another to allow someone to download Katy Perry’s newest CD without paying for it. That’s Justice, American Style.

It’s a shame, because Kimble was a car guy, even if he wasn’t quite the kind of “car guy” we normally get here at TTAC… and when it came to wrecking hyper-expensive vehicles, nobody did it better.

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TTAC’s initial review of the current Ford Focus was an enthusiastic one, and a year later I’ll still stand by that enthusiasm. Today, there’s a new reason to be enthusiastic about Ford’s chic, Continental, and cher compact.

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TTAC readers, like TTAC writers, go everywhere. On Day One of the Detroit Auto Show, I happened to run into one such fellow, accompanied by his lovely wife. This reader had been invited to attend “The Gallery” and had also received passes to the media days at the “regular” show. I asked him to write up his impressions and share them with all of you… so without further ado, let’s hear what he has to say.

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Poor Editor Derek. I would hound him all the way to the grave for calling the Ford Fusion a game changer, but let’s face it: he is likely to outlive me by some thirty or forty years. Perhaps I will leave a note in my will instructing my son to keep bothering Derek, and also to talk up my estate auction a little bit.

So here’s the Ford Fusion for NASCAR’s 2013 season. It shares absolutely nothing several important aesthetic ideals with the new street car. Click the jump for another photo and a few quotes from Ford regarding the new design, which to be fair does look like the biggest departure from common-template stock cars in some time.

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I was thumbing through the latest issue of Living Blues magazine, looking for authentically bluesy phrases, both musical and lyrical, to repeat as if they were my own invention, when I saw this cover.

Putting crapwagons on the cover is a bit of a hipster-esque affectation nowadays, but I get the sense that Mr. Bailey has that ’93-96 Regal on the cover just because, you know, that’s his car. It’s always been hard to make a living playing music and nowadays it’s tougher than ever. Nor is the blues customer particularly interested in seeing some sort of Scott-Storch-esque lineup of recently-purchased, already-in-stock “exotic” cars.

I’ve been working on cover ideas for my personal blues/rock album, to be released when I get around to it. My best idea so far has been unfairly criticized as derivative (warning: image contains explicit language and Jeff Beck-related sarcasm). Perhaps I need to find a Regal and stand in front of the thing. What about you? What car would be on the front cover of your album?

When I was a young pup working the approvals desk at Ford Credit, we called it “First Payment Default”. New car buyer takes delivery of new car and just, you know, never gets around to sending in a check. Most first payments were due between thirty and forty-five days after delivery. By the fifty-day mark, we were either on the phone with the person listening to excuses or furiously skip-tracing. Happened more often than you might think. Some people simply aren’t cut out to be on the debtor side of an automotive loan.

The trackday equivalent to this is the “one and done”. New guy shows up. Sometimes he is full of braggadocio, other times he is a church mouse in a motorcycle-spec helmet. Doesn’t matter. By the end of the day, he will be on the wrecker, having destroyed or seriously damaged his rather expensive and sporty daily driver. With any luck, he’ll be unhurt, but regardless, he won’t be coming back. One-and-done stories are the Beluga caviar of lunch-break stories among seasoned instructors and racers: short and delicious.

Here’s mine.

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An in-development Microsoft smart phone app designed to help drivers and pedestrians avoid unsafe neighborhoods is proving controversial among some minority rights groups that find the software potentially discriminatory.

Well, it sure would have helped Sherman McCoy and Reginald Denny, but is it good for society?

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