As a kid, I instantly "got" James Bond: look cool, kill the bad guys and the girl's yours.  I was a little vague about what you did with her afterwards, but the British secret agent still made perfect sense.  Dean Martin's riff on 007, Matt Helm, was a different story.  As far as my crew was concerned, the American booze hound super spy lech didn't even qualify as a junk Bond.  In fact, I got the same feeling watching Matt Helm movies as I did I seeing local Catholic boys dress up like girls for their "father."  And while Bond's Aston was the business, I didn't know until this morning which wheels Matt Helm graced with his cinematic presence.  Well, here it is: a George Barris modified 1966 Mercury station wagon.  Figures.  A station wagon is about as cool as The Carpenters, maybe, no, definitely, less.  My mom drove a station wagon.  (There's that icky thing again.)  Turns out the Volo museum snagged this formica and plexiglass shag palace for their collection.  Lucky them.  I rang up the museum and spoke to their Director about Dino's Sex Wagon and the museum's more, um, salubrious whips.  

Once a pistonhead, always a pistonhead.  Even as the paramedics were dragging my sorry ass through the meat wagon’s side door, I felt a scalding blast from the turnouts and thought there’s got to be a better way to vent the big rig’s exhaust.  Even as I thrashed on the gurney like a freshly-landed marlin, I wondered why the manufacturer hadn’t fitted the ambulance with air suspension.  And then a nice lady gassed me up so a bunch of highly-trained anal retentives could cut my stomach a few times, insert some surgical steel, dice my gall bladder, suck out the remains and dump the diseased bits into a bio-hazard bag.  Ah, but did they leave me with enough bile to lead TTAC into battle?

Frank Williams came to TTAC's attention after he cc'ed us on an email to Car & Driver.  The long time C&D reader was all het up about Brock Yate's summary execution– I mean, dismissal.  Reading Williams' take-no-prisoners diatribe against the banal buff book, I immediately recognized Frank as a kindred spirit: a car guy with fire in his belly and an itchy keyboard.  Since his TTAC debut, Frank's gone on to become one of our most prolific and entertaining talents. Today's anti-nostalgic deconstruction of a 70's icon offers yet more proof that the net is giving voice to a whole new generation of automotive writing talent– even if it's not exactly a younger generation.  And speaking of voice, here's Frank's…

I’m not a big fan of segregation.  Obviously, US car culture splits into distinct niches: hot rodders, low-riders, urban gangstas, tuners, etc.  Equally obvious, these niches attract adherents from specific ethnic groups.  But just as communities throughout my home state meet down at the markets as they root around for fresh ingredients for their ethnic cuisine, there is an element of respect and inter-mingling between these petrol-powered fraternities.  Anyway, I don’t get the male – female automotive divide.  I seriously doubt that there’s a female automotive perspective– even when it comes to child safety and minivanning.  So when I saw a press release about a new female-oriented automotive website, I decided to do what it said on the tin: ask Patty.  Turns out “Patty” is a male invention and the company producing the website makes its money sensitizing dealers to “women’s needs.”  I quizzed Jody Devere, President of www.askpatty.com, about the statistical justification for the segregation.        

After carefully considering the potential benefits of a GM – Nissan – Renault alliance, auto industry analysts have concluded that the deal makes about as much sense as Finnegan’s Wake.  Well duh.  Anyone even vaguely familiar with GM’s current crisis knows there’s only one thing the General needs right now: vehicles that people want to buy, at a price that makes the company a profit.  This they don’t have.  And guess what?  Nissan – Renault can't give it to them.  Even if Nissan and GM and Renault could work together (a completely preposterous concept), you’d see a second gen Chevrolet Camaro long before you’d see a hit product.  No, there’s something else in play here…

The moment I dropped the hammer on the Porsche Cayman S, an entirely unexpected emotion welled-up inside: fear.  I was holding the wheel of the world’s best sports car on a perfectly-groomed country road and I couldn’t fully commit to a corner.  I wasn’t afraid of crashing— the Cayman is far too accomplished and forgiving and electronically mindful for that.  I was afraid of the unknown.  What if some dumb ass pulled out of a hidden drive without looking?  What if a child’s bike suddenly appeared just beyond the apex of a turn?  My sightlines were good, but my nerves were shot.  I suppose that’s what happens when you spend too much seat time in a Honda Odyssey.  

I know, I know; there's been a lot of Ford and GM bashing on this site as of late.  All of it deserved.  As long as car companies make crap cars– and that's ANY company making ANY crap car– The Truth About Cars is ready, willing and able to provide a no-holds-barred reality check. But here's the important bit: every TTAC writer would love to see the former Big Three produce the world's best automobiles.  It literally pains us that they don't.  If and when America reclaims its mojo and produces world-beating product, be it a Chevrolet Corvette or a Ford Freestyle, we will give its maker its due.  To wit: Lieberman likes the Freestyle, Big Style.  [His review goes up tomorrow AM.]  It's both sad and symptomatic that Ford doesn't share JL's enthusiasm enough to dig down and make something more of a potentially great vehicle.  By now, Toyota would've been busy on gen II.  Will this misery never end?  Oh, and if you could please suggest a photo caption in the comments, I'd be much obliged. 

Relax.  The news that GM stockholder Kirk Kerkorian has been playing footsie with Renault/Nissan doesn’t represent some kind of paradigm shift for GM or global capitalism.  When assessing Kirk’s secret plan— selling a minority share in GM to the Franco-Japanese automotive alliance— remember whose interests The Quiet Lion serves: his own.  This is not about GM.  It’s about Captain Kirk’s spectacularly bad investment in the world’s largest automaker.  But don’t take my word for it.  "Sometimes the news in itself is already the purpose," DaimlerChrysler's CEO announced upon hearing the news.  In other words, multinational automotive conglomerator Dieter Zetsche thinks Kerkorian is just talking-up GM’s stock price.

It’s been while since I’ve written about The Truth About Cars (TTAC).  As you may recall, we were preparing to turn TTAC into a subscription site when we re-launched.  When I discovered that our payment software wasn’t ready for prime time, and the site design needed tweaking, I put the move on hold.  I’ve used the interregnum to ramp up our content, familiarize myself with the new site’s back end, commission a few improvements and… think.  I’ve re-read all your emails, sent out a survey, talked to a bunch of financial folks and come up with a new plan.  Here’s how I see it…

“Small is Beautiful” was released immediately after the ’73 energy crisis.  German economist E. F. Schumaker’s collection of essays tapped into the prevailing gestalt: a growing fear that the institutions that defined capitalism’s success had become economically and environmentally unsustainable.  Contrary to popular belief (i.e. the people who used the book’s title as a mantra without reading it), Schumaker wasn’t predicting or recommending the end of big business.  He simply believed that large organizations work best as small, independent groups acting in harmony.  Someone ought to tell Dieter Zetsche.

Ron Tadross.  Say it softly and it’s almost like crying.  If you’re GM that is.  The Banc of America Securities analyst isn’t exactly what you’d call bullish on GM.  Unlike his evil twin, analyst John Murphy, Tadross sees GM heading for a cash burn flame-out.  "We believe GM management is glossing over the current and future cost of rightsizing the business," Tadross declared.  More to the point, he recommended that investors sell their GM stock, with a target that’s literally half of its current price.  In other words, when Merrill Lynch talks, nobody should listen.

With all the talk in these parts about what it means to be an American automobile manufacturer, I couldn't resist Chrysler's press release about arranging some 200 employees to spell out the words "O Say, can you see" (complete with human punctuation).  Chrysler Group Spokesperson Jodi Tinson stepped into the podcasting breach, challenging my de-PR-speak abilities and facing the inevitable questions about Francis Scott Key's magnum opus (set to a bawdy English drinking song) and Chrysler's Americanosity.  The two-legged vowels and consonants will assemble on the front lawn of DaimlerChrysler's Auburn Hills Headquarters on Friday, July 7 during morning drive time.  According to the press release, the employees will sing the national anthem loud enough to be heard across I-75.  Here's hoping the DUB car show isn't rolling into town at the exact same moment the crooning begins. 

In my last post, we examined your basic alpha nature, your need to dominate other people.  Did you read the comments after the post?  Wow.  Not very happy are they?  No surprise there.  As you know, most people think car salesmen are the scum of the earth: cheating, lying, arrogant, ignorant, over-aggressive sumbitches with their own circle in Hell (where they try to sell each other five-year warrantees for all eternity).  Are consumers wrong to hate you so?  Nope.  But don’t worry about that.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with your innate desire for interpersonal dominance.  It’s what you do with it that matters.

This weekend, a conspiracy of  VeeDub owners will assemble in Roswell, New Mexico for the seventh annual New Beetle “2K Car Show Weekend."  According to VW PR flack Clark Campbell, this bizarre intersection of dead aliens and live Bug owners began with a VW ad claiming that the new Beetle was reverse-engineered from an alien spaceship.  Needless to say, TTAC has uncovered previously classified government documents that prove that the commercial was created by an ad exec who'd been kidnapped by aliens, given the usual complimentary colonoscopy and returned to earth to spread disinformation: an ad that claimed that the new Beetle was reverse-engineered from alien craft to make people think it wasn't reverse engineered from alien craft, when, of course, it was. You know, this stuff practically writes itself. How spooky is that? 

First, relax. You hate your job because you don’t know what you’re doing.  Face it.  You, a car salesman, have no quantifiable methodology for selling a car.  At best, you think customer "conversion" depends on your personality, product knowledge, perseverance and luck.  At worst, you think it’s a simply a matter of bullying the customer into buying a car.  You want to hear something funny?  Bullying IS the most effective sales technique.  I’m not recommending it, but if you really want to master car sales, you’ve got to understand the non-PC realities of human nature.