Category: Stuff I wrote

Guessing the future is a tricky business; just ask any of the major media collectives that predicted a President Hillary with certainty ranging from ninety-four to ninety-nine percent. As the man once said, the future’s uncertain and the end is always near. Another example: Back in August of 2015 I ruled out the possibility of a Wrangler pickup with such certainty that I blush in retrospect at the contemplation of it. About this time last year, I admitted defeat and tried to figure out who would buy the Gladiator. Having seen the specs, I’ve revised my ideas about the potential customers just a little.

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This month’s issue of R&T serves as a perfect illustration of why I wanted to work for a car magazine when I was a teenager. Two tests, one West Coast and one East Coast, featuring two transcendent sporting automobiles and one pretty good one.

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I could take or leave the whole Singer Por-sha phenomenon, but Preston Lerner does some great work tracking the development of their newest take on the air-cooled engine. What’s depressing about the article is that Porsche themselves should be able to do anything that Williams F1 can do. We were told 20 years ago that EU noise regulations were the reason that the air-cooled engine could not continue. The real reason was, most likely, cost. The M96 engine costs half as much as its predecessor, and the current mill is probably cheaper still. Can you imagine a modern GT3RS with the Singer/Williams engine? It’s enough to make me a Por-sha fan again.

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This is the ADVENTURE issue of R&T so naturally it features an ADVENTURE BIKE doing ADVENTUROUS things. If you’re not ready for that level of adventure, however, may I show you something from our Milder Adventure Department?

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The ever-perceptive Mr. Klockau found this Fleetwood Talisman for sale in Amarillo. Those of you us listen to George Strait — that did not include your humble author until he met a country girl from New Mexico — will no doubt be reminded of the relevant song.

If you’re bored today, here are some links to my last Fleetwood Talisman adventure:

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For various inside-baseball reasons which do not merit discussion in these pages, I have been working hard over the past year at diversifying the outlets to which I contribute. The first fruit of this was my inclusion in the rebooted Issue One of Cycle World. Here’s another example.

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This month’s issue has all sorts of supercar and superstar stuff in it, most notably another sentimental and fascinating piece on Alois Ruf and his work by Sam Smith, but the dedicated reader will eventually work his way back to page 56 where you can read my investigation of a thoroughly diverse luxury trio. Each of them is impressive in its own right but it was the Navigator Black Label that made the strongest argument for a space in my driveway. It could replace the Silverado and a luxury car to be named later. Of course, for the $100,315 sticker price, you could get my Silverado plus a gently used Lexus LS460 or Mercedes S550.

Life is full of tough choices when you’re rich! Since I’m not rich, I’m going to keep the fleet just the way it is. My days of running a pair of brand-new full-sized Germans at any given time are long gone. On the other hand, one of my readers just alerted me to a couple of leftover 2017 Accord V6 6MT coupes in California. Surely there’s no harm in having three of those, right?

If you have not yet read the ZR1 review, it’s up at the R&T website. As always, thank you for reading and for participating here at Riverside Green.

If you’re tired of reading “ride-along” reviews of the 2019 ZR1 written by people who weren’t allowed to drive it, today is your lucky day. Last month, I spent two days driving the ZR1 around the NCM West circuit. Was it fast? Yes it was!

How fast was it?

Go look at last year’s Performance Car Of The Year testing. See how fast the AMG GT-R was? It was very fast. The ZR1 is faster. How much faster? I can’t say, at least not yet.

There are plenty of other things that I can tell you about the ZR1, however. They can be found on page 24 of the May 2018 Road&Track. Check it out, why dontcha.

For years, Cycle World shared an office with Road&Track on the West Coast; they also shared the crowd-pleasing privilege of publishing Peter Egan’s musings. Today, both magazines continue to release work by the individual oft-acclaimed as the “new Peter Egan”, an obscure former BMW mechanic and not-quite-six-foot-tall manlet who writes under the deliberately generic nom de plume of “Sam Smith”, chosen in tribute to the English pop singer whose music is rivaled only by the soulful work of Darius Rucker for center stage in Sam’s heart.

Unfortunately for the readers, “Sam Smith” commands a remarkably stout freelance fee due to the immense number of exotic cars and motorcycles that pass through his grasping fingers at a torrential rate. Therefore, to save money on their newest issue, Cycle World called on yours truly, the Lowest Cost Choice Of The Low Priced Three.

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