Somebody at my son’s school had the ridiculous idea of putting on a play and giving my son, who is six years old, over 100 lines in said play. Amazingly, he managed to do his part last night. What if the kid ended up becoming an actor? I suppose there are worse jobs, particularly when it comes to meeting attractive young women.
While I sit around and daydream about John being the Steve McQueen of the year 2038 and all of the brilliant merchandising opportunities I could create as a result — think of how much his 993 would fetch at an auction! — the rest of you can catch up with what Bark and I got published this week.
Bark was the prolific Baruth brother this week, coming up with an “Ask Bark” about choosing a nostalgia-mobile and one on replacing an old Lexus ES. Today, he’s busy trollin’ the B&B with an innuendo-laden Durango Review.
I had just one article published at TTAC, but it was a traffic and comment blockbuster. It also served as further proof that many of my readers, particularly my most devoted critics, take me a lot more seriously than I take myself. I don’t think there is any level of self-parody to which I could descend that wouldn’t still be read with a straight face by some of these humorless mooks.
For Road&Track, I debuted our Web-only review of the McLaren 675LT. It’s been remarkably well-received, with the primary complaint that I didn’t provide more track data. Well, half of the course had oil-dry on it and there was traffic in every lap, so I didn’t think that the raw numbers would be representative of the car. What I am going to do in the near future is write a quick piece for these pages about my adversary in that Corvette. Some of the photos of his racing career are beyond awesome.
I should also point out that this piece was considerably improved in the edit process. I never hesitate to bitch when I think I’m ill-served by editing so I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that Andrew Del Colle’s sharp rebuke of my first draft led to a lot of changes for the better.
The other thing I did for R&T was a think piece on vision and motorcycles on the road. I probably could have listened to Andrew a little more on this one; he said that some of the readers would absolutely fixate on the paragraph where I talk about “winding out” a GSXR-1000 and use it to rail about motorcycle riders breaking the law. Was he ever right. Ugh.
Come back next week — brother Bark’s been renting a variety of interesting vehicles and I’ve been watching a few fascinating videos that might deserve some caustic comment!
“brother Bark’s been renting a variety of interesting vehicles”
Someone needs to put Bark into a cooler vehicle to review.
If necessary have him put on some stilts and seven extra layers of clothes so people think he’s you.
Bark is getting a pretty interesting vehicle to review next week…
It looked comfortable at least.
I saw “Durango” and skipped right over the rest. I didn’t see that it was written by Bark! Time to go read that one!
Why was the Gene Haas F1 article not mentioned? I just happened on it, Gene Haas is a remarkable story, regardless of the whole tax evasion/jail time thing. Then again industrial machinery is my work world, so maybe I am more interested in it than most.
I didn’t realize it had been published yet…
Regarding your ‘No Fixed Abode’ article, an alternate reason to consider one (especially the way you’ve been getting dinged up): The Forester XT is the STi for men with knees too shot to want to try and climb into an STi.
In the generations where the XT is any good, though, it’s not that much higher up 🙂
Dude, after seven surgeries on one side, every little bit helps.
But you’re right, the first gen XT is far better than the later, uglier, fatter versions.
Even you don’t like facebook but your Moto article only accepts comments from it .
Boy howdy was the Moto / blind spot article ever dead spot on ~ I’m a Motocylist for over 40 years and I’ve had so many that ‘ didn’t see me ‘ and once , in 1973 , I turned left in front of an on coming Moto , he had to make a wild evasive manoever to avoid impaling my right rear fender/bumper and came over to scream at me ” ?!WTF?! ” as I stupidly stared at him wondering where the hell he’d come from….
I glanced at the ‘ nostalgia - mobile ‘ article but there’s nothing nostalgic there for a geezer like me .
-Nate
Thanks for posting and answering my question, Bark. I was very surprised at the positive feedback for replacing a vehicle with nearly none.
Good article on motorcycle invisibility.
When folks here ask me, after having watched videos of crazy traffic in India, just how everyone survives (especially the hordes of motorcyclists), I tell them:
1) they really don’t survive all that much; newspapers are so full of fatality reports that the eye-brain-complex “simply doesn’t see” them when scanning a newspaper, and
2) I chalk the survival of those who do escape narrowly to the very frequent use of horns. Horns are used as a non-offense-giving, location information beacon.
The advisory use of horns is something I wish folks did a little more of in the States. And to which we took less offense. Unfortunately, a honk is the automotive equivalent to screaming “FU** YOU, YOU FILTHY MOFO”. In place of this, we’re thinking up extravagant, complicated, invasive, vulnerable vehicle-to-vehicle communication, and vehicle data logs that will be made available to authorities without warrants (after, uh, avoidable contact).
Jack - I’ve been reading you since “Maximum Speed…”; and in my opinion, the review of the McLaren and the ‘Settlers’ editorial are two of the best pieces you have ever written.
And contrary to the commenters in the McLaren article, I am glad you didn’t post Lap times or speeds. It reminded me of what a Blackwater Instructor said about the difference between an Operator and a WannaBe.
Props for the Peter Hathaway Capstick reference.
I try. I referenced Jeff Cooper more than once, this is the one I remember: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/08/trackday-diaries-the-vision-thing/
I propped you for that reference, too.
Jack almost bought a 430 and I almost banged the prom queen . I kid I kid. But seriously, she was into me.
Well, at one point I had three new cars with a total sticker of $207,000 plus access to company cars with a total sticker of close to $400k.
A 430 was $165k or something like that. Far from impossible.
That brings up something I’ve been contemplating. I sure would like to a have a 550, but is it really 10-20x the car an 850i or ZR-1 is? Or 4x a DB9? Which is how much more it is. I’d say the 550 is probably built better to drives better.
But the amount it impresses people sure is different, at least we think it would be. There’s a guy driving a 599 around town and I’m not particularly jealous of that. So maybe that’s up for debate too.
I sure would like 37′ midnight express, but at 3-5x my current boats value that just doesn’t seem like a good deal at all. I suppose if I were to buy a midnight or a Ferrari 550 (I can’t right now), I’d really be banking on some other buyers down the road maintaining that same perception of the value down the road so I don’t lose my ass.
Now considering the collector value the ferrari may be the best bet of them all!
It would be hard to lose money on a 550 or 575 in terms of what you paid versus what you’ll sell it for.
But if you read Sports Car Market you’ll see that a 550 can cost upwards of
FIFTEEN DOLLARS A MILE
to operate 🙂
Wow I’ll have to start reading that. Damn you 🙂
I really wish I could edit the drivel I post here sometimes.