About eighty days ago, I spent most of a week driving a BMW i8 from Los Angeles to Woodinville, Washington state. Along the way, I stopped everywhere from the Chateau Marmont to the Nipomo, CA swap meet to See See Motor Coffee in Portland to the RainSong Guitars factory. I also had the chance to talk about design with the fellow who penned the BMW i3, Richard Kim. The resulting story is about as far as it’s possible to get from the NEW MUSTANG TELLS THE CAMARO TO STEP OUTSIDE! stuff that keeps Motor Trend at the top of the YouTube charts, but if you are of a slightly more intellectual bent than the average MT reader, I think you’ll enjoy it.
It was a real privilege to see how the entire West Coast responds to the i8. The best way to explain it is that Portlanders and the like are as excited about the i8 as people in Ohio were about the Z51 Stingray when it debuted. It’s the eco-supercar and it somehow avoids the new-money gold-chain image that comes along with driving something like a Huracan or 458 in Cali.
There were more highlights to the trip than I could possibly cover in 3,700 words, and some of the things I did get to cover would have been worth an entire story on their own. For me, the highlight of the trip was visiting RainSong, meeting their production team, and ordering my own “Black Ice” guitar for them to build and ship to me in the following weeks. Given that I’d brought my own RainSong all the way up the coast to visit its birthplace, it was also neat to talk to the people who’d built and and tell them all the stories from my travels. Some of them even stayed awake for the discussion.
I hope you’ll enjoy the story. While I’m sure it will eventually be available online, clearly the best thing for you to do would be to go to your local bookstore and help Road&Track disappear from the shelves. After all, if this kind of stuff doesn’t sell, we’ll be back to doing ten months a year of MUSTANG VS CAMARO ROUND EIGHTY-FOUR!
Is it sad that I would rather read what you and Bark write than pretty much anything on TTAC anymore? The Ram Rebel “review” Aaron Cole barfed up yesterday sealed the deal.
“Our Ram Rebel came equipped with the optional 5.7-liter Hemi V-8. The 395 horsepower mill bests any option from Ford (for now), but falls short of the 6.2-liter V-8 offered by GM by 25 ponies — if the tale of the tape is the sort of thing matters to you.
2015_Ram_Rebel_(16_of_18)Ram’s 5.7-liter V-8 is getting a little long in the tooth and isn’t my favorite all-around application in the Ram 1500 anyway”
so it’s more powerful than anything from one brand, and slightly less powerful than the top offering from the other brand, but is “long in the tooth.” What a bunch of meaningless word salad.
Ditto on that. If I only have time to spend a few minutes before bedtime on one site, it is usually here these days, for the same reasons, though i do try to keep up with TTAC enough to see the real topics that appear. But they are interspersed, or perhaps overrun would be a better word, with inanities.
But the click is king, especially there, so like Pokemon, TTAC feels that it has to catch them all. Which leads to its being mostly booooor-ING@
I really feel like I need to start policing what I click at track more often, a lot of the new content they’re bringing in is garbage. Case in point “leaked 17 fusion refresh” is a blatant ploy for clicks
There’s definitely a different vibe going on there these days, isn’t there? Of course, other than a few of the “standard” articles, like Junkyard finds, that give the site continuity, every editor seems to change things,
The last iteration was car focused, but also more, if I may be so bold as to say, literate. I think thee was a focus on writing and story telling. It was a little like the best shows on ESPN, where sports are the nominal topic but where the conversation can run just about anywhere. It makes for a more interesting dynamic.
Now TTAC is more industry and less hobby/enthusiast focused. They’ve tried, I think, to shift the enthusiast conversation over to the forum but I think that just shows a lack of understanding of the audience. We don’t need a forum, the comments are our forum. There’s nothing wrong with that, by the way, it just isn’t all that interesting.
I found the RAM Rebel article hard to read; the opening paragraphs are confusing, the business about the HEMI being an old, terrible engine is far from correct, and the final conclusion (that the Rebel is somehow a Jeep pickup when everybody understands that a Jeep Scrambler would be a Jeep pickup and companies like AEV already make a Brute and a modern half-ton pickup is very far from anything Jeep has done in the last forty years) hard to swallow.
I’m hoping that as he has time to settle into the job, he’ll produce more compelling work.
I’m sadly going to have to agree that TTAC has sucked balls lately.
That’s not a personal dig at the new editor or any of the writers, either.
It inches closer to Jalopnik with each passing day.
You really need to do some new “Watery Big Bang”/”Letter to Lincoln”/Bentley Marketing/”How To Save Cadillac From ATS Doom (circa-2012 and spot on in predictive value, btw) stuff, Jack.
Jack - on a side note - seeing as I usually only go to TTAC to find what you write - any way you could add some sort of feed to this site?
“Jack’s weekly round up” or something to that effect. Going to R&T, and esquire, and TTAC is fine - just wanna find your stuff quickly.
I will work on that. I appreciate the suggestion and your readership. Thank you!
Ken, long ago I abandoned a general TTAC bookmark and specifically made it http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/author/jack-baruth/
Hey! Some other writers over there aren’t so bad 🙁
I think I know what TTAC is doing; they’re attempting (at the demands of VS) to expand readership and daily visits by trending more towards the Jalopnik route, which itself is full of clickbait of the Gawker style.
I’m not faulting Mark S or any of the current writers for this as they likely have no say in the matter.
I maintain that quality over quantity and substance over sensationalism are better tools for long term growth and sustainability, however.
On a related note, I was remiss to fail to mention Jack’s Porsche-related essays written for TTAC (the Macan & Cayenne essays were particularly excellent).
It seems obvious that Mark and Aaron are trying to take TTAC more casual (explaining that Audi’s AWD system is known as “Quattro” is a good example) and are working harder than any previous editor to get unique clicks.
I don’t really like it and I don’t think it will work because the usual TTAC commenter doesn’t fall into the camps of people that post GIFs or ask beginner questions or “my dads camaero will own ur Fagstang” kinds of things. I’m expecting a new comment posting system soon that will attempt to marginalize the old guard (or banish them to the forum) and play up the more shlocky stuff.
Taking automakers or the automotive press to task is pretty much history on TTAC (and honestly a lot of even the older members of the B&B seem okay with that). Really the hardest hitting stuff these days is when Jack posts a broader “What does ‘XX’ say about society?” piece or when commenters go off on their own tangents.
Great write up in R&T Jack. After seeing both you and the designer of the i8 in clear frames, I think they may have reached over saturation and it may be time to retire mine.
Ha! I just replaced mine last week. You’re free to keep yours. 🙂
A noble gesture, thank you.
Why should I buy a print magazine? Aren’t they pretty much given away anyways? I am pretty sure I didn’t even pay for my last one or two subscriptions. If they want anything to be read anymore they better figure out a way to get it online and make money from that. Check out Speed on the Waters online mag for an idea.
“If they want anything to be read anymore they better figure out a way to get it online and make money from that.”
R&T’s circulation is up for each of the past two years.
Mostly from airport sales.
Take that as you will.
I subscribed to R&T as soon as I found out Jack was writing for them. I believe it was around the time of the Tail of the Dragon article. That was a great one! Digital format is fine, but I still get a thrill when a new magazine arrives in the mail (and I subscribe to several different ones, from cars to music to sports), because I look forward to reading them cover to cover. I’m old school - still prefer an actual book over Kindle, holding a newspaper in my hand rather than trying to read it on my iPad, etc. I fear that my kid’s kids will grow up in a world with no bookstores, no print media, etc. so I try to support it as often as I can.
I felt pretty proud of myself that I immediately recognized the coffee table. Another great article Jack, you’ve definitely elevated R&T along with the better photography.
JB, is there any way that a new subscriber can indicate to R&T/Hearst that one is subscribing because you’re contributing to the publication?
I wish there was…. maybe dropping an email to
RTLetters@hearst.com
is probably as close as you can come.
I forgot to renew my R&T subscription when Peter Egan went into semi-retirement. I’ll be renewing because of features like this.
Glad to have finaly found this site. It will save me trouble finding Barithian meandetings in digital formats. Very much enjoyed the design/auto review of the i8 in context.
Glad you’re here!