I was at Toys R Us with my clone, shopping for a drift trike, and I spotted a very familiar-looking logo. It was attached to the Avigo Neon. I suppose the “e” is different enough from the original to keep Avigo out of trouble, and if they do get in trouble — hey, it’s just a quick-bake Chinese import brand. You let the company go bankrupt and come back with the same products under a new name. Ain’t globalization wonderful, for non-Americans at least?
This raises the question, however: if you’re going to go through the trouble of stealing someone else’s name and logo design, why not steal something that commands respect? Sure, I happen to have a very high opinion of the Neon, since I own and race one. I have to be the exception that proves the rule, however. Why not call it the “Avigo F12berlinetta” or the “Avigo E-Type” or, just possibly, the “Avigo Barracuda?”
What do we have here? Well, it’s a Mustang. But what’s that in the upper left-hand corner? Why, it’s only the flippin’ sweet new logo for Avoidable Contact. The previous logo, a detailed medieval-style woodcut depicting your humble author writing a $6,000 check to NASA for disciplinary purposes, was too complicated to accurately reproduce, so I’m very happy with this.
It’s attached to a pair of columns this week: an analysis of the Mustang’s surprising sales success in Germany and a further discussion of ESC and its discontents. The website also reprinted my Elan NP01 test from the May issue of the magazine.
For TTAC, I told a tale of three Ubers and made fun of the half-wits at Motor Trend.
Brother Bark was uniquely productive this week: he discussed a recent high-profile road-rage incident that just might have been a premeditated murder, drove a FIAT 500X, answered a full list of your questions, and fulfilled the expectations of his harshest critics by saying nice things about a V6 Mustang.
Bark and I, along with three Road&Track contributors and a world-famous sheetmetal worker with an Alice-in-Chains beard, are girding our loins for the AER season opener at Watkins Glen next week. Right now I’m too fat for my race suit, I kid you not, so if you need me I’ll be binging and purging. Have a great weekend everybody; I’ve got a date with an Indian Chieftain and maybe a few other things on the agenda.
Cool logo, man. And I always love when you get a chance to sink your teeth into those boys over at Motor Trend. Speaking of which, I accidentally bought an issue once and in it Ed Loh took a Mazda 6 to Laguna Seca, put a wheel in the dirt, broke a suspension piece and concluded a Mazda 6 wasn’t fit for track duty. Very insightful stuff!
I’d say that the Mazda6’s fitness for track duty drastically exceeds that of Ed “On The Down” Loh
totally the car’s fault.
totally.
Jack, with regards to your R&T articles on stability, do you think there’s a grain of truth that the myth has built upon? Like, were early stability control systems really kind of lousy (think early fuel injection systems) and people wrote them off and haven’t bothered to update their opinions? I remember when I first started driving, people complained a lot about ABS and how it actually made things worse. I assume that was probably 90% BS, but maybe in the early days of the technology it really was (I wouldn’t know as I pretty much jumped straight from non-ABS beaters to “modern” cars with useful traction and stability control systems).
things like ABS and stability control almost never make things worse (you might find a couple of anecdotes to the contrary, but they’re anecdotes.) the people who bitch about them are mostly bitching because they resent the “loss” of control.
There’s always a cost-benefit analysis: I can go this much faster, at this much cost (here, cost is crashing, amortized). Some people refuse to do cost-benefit analyses, on principle. Some people misjudge risks. And some people over-value the benefit…
In this case, we seem to be talking about track days, personal records, etc.-not racing! I think that training is fundamentally not the same as competing; hurting yourself, or your car, while training seems worse to me than doing so while competing.
Jack, I definitely think the global Mustang tapped into a demand that already existed in Germany. I arrived in Germany in Oct 2005 with my, then brand new, S197 Mineral Grey Mustang GT and quickly found out how much Germans liked the “Moostang”. There was a sizeable niche following of Mustangs that definitely existed well before I ever showed up. And this was still back in the early S197 days with all the requisite solid axle lack of refinement.
So I am not surprised one bit by the sales response that the Mustang is enjoying in Germany. Especially now that Germans can purchase new Mustangs at Ford dealerships instead of buying them used off of soldiers like me and/or imported by specialty dealers like Geiger Cars in Munich. Incidentally, my 2005 Mustang GT now belongs to a mechanic in Hanau.
I also found that there is a pretty healthy following for American V8 cars in general. All you have to do is look up Hockenheim Public Race Days (one weekend a year where they run drags on the Hockenheim Ring) or the Bitburg Drag Races on Google to see all the old and new American muscle cars that crawl out of the woodwork.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t wave the corvette banner for a second too. There are very large corvette meetings in Suhl, Germany, and Prague, Czech every year.
Anyway, I often suspect that most of the disdain for American cars comes more from our side of the pond than theirs. There may be barriers to entry for American V8 cars in the European market, but I didn’t find any lack of interest in them during my German sojourn.
“Anyway, I often suspect that most of the disdain for American cars comes more from our side of the pond than theirs.”
I think so. there are a lot of us who seem to be tryhard snobs.
I wonder how many of the very early ACR Neons - the SOHC 4-doors with A/C Delete - are floating around out there in decent condition. I loved those cars.
I put one of them into the wall at Mido and killed it unfortunately. Ex neon challenge car too
Cool Thunderhill story, bro. I never mentioned this, but it turns out that the GoPro was left running in the neon at the end of that race. We unknowingly recorded your donuts-on-the-skidpad-at-One-Lap story back in the paddock!
That’s worth real money to the right person. I’d pay you three bucks to delete it!
Hi Jack, I’m not sure it’s within your purview, but Mr. Steph Williams erroneously labeled Palo Alto as ‘SoCal’ in his piece on the Audi service cokehead joyride over at TTAC. I offered a correction in the comments, and then some weirdo decided to argue against it actually residing in NorCal. It’s stupid, but it’s driving me fucking crazy!
it’s not SoCal, but I wouldn’t call it northern either. more Bay Area.
If you look at a map, yes, it’s not in the top half of California. Everyone in California calls the Bay Area/Valley ‘Northern California’. If you asked someone from LA they’d say the same thing. Everything above Redding is basically Oregon. Bringing it back to cars, how does every local car commercial end: ‘Go See Your Northern California Honda/Jeep/Chevy/Ford/Toyota dealer.’ I fucking live here, we all call it Northern California! Fuck, I’m sick of arguing this!
Palo Alto is definitely Bay Area, but the Bay Area is NorCal. I grew up in Modesto and FWIW I probably would consider everything north of Bakersfield NorCal.
THANKS ROCK36!!! BINGO! I live in Stockton, grew up in Tracy and I’m with you, either Fresno or Bakersfield.
He’s Canadian. He doesn’t know shit. Nice guy though
Damn Canadians are ruining TTAC!
Where exactly do we get to email you questions for the “Ask Jack” column series? They’re MUCH better to its doppelganger “Ask Bark” 🙂
Jack@calamarco.com
as an aside, Gawker seems hell-bent on torching anything good about the few worthwhile sites they have.