Precisely. Fixed rear windows were just a particularly vivid example of a general contempt for the customer that would not have been remotely possible had the Big 3 not been protected from foreign competition by a tremendous legacy of brand (and domestic manufacturer) loyalty—a legacy they spent most of the 80s…

“Blue collar cosplay” is too good a turn of phrase not to steal.

Your description of that road trip made me *hungry* for the road man.

I see there’s already a lot controversy in this thread but this one really doesn’t seem that hard to figure out in a reasonable, experience-based way.

“When I crossed the Colorado River into the torrid, overpriced hell that is Needles, California, the blazing hot hand of Apollo slapped me back to Okie reality. My heart bled for those long-ago refugees, who had struggled over endless miles of indifferent high plains only to arrive at the doorstep of the somehow…

But he gained an advantage by going off track—and wasn’t penalized! Good heavens, what we will tell the children?

Dear Honda...

Yep. The Pacific Surfliner isn’t particularly fast for a short-hall line (the average speed is low even compared to the not-very-fast Acela, and I’ve been sidelined waiting for a freight train to pass more than once). But compared to North SD/Orange/LA traffic it’s not bad, vastly more relaxing than driving up the…

Love that town.

Whatever VW now is, it’s most assuredly no longer a producer of anything like that 1st generation Scirocco: reasonably-priced, 2000 lbs sport coupes with sharp reflexes, excellent visibilty, world-class styling, and just enough power to be fun on twisty back roads, when kept on the boil.

Paid a bit more than that for an AP2 with 25K on the clock. As a result, I don’t imagine it has much if any room to appreciate in value. But that’s cool. They’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands anyway.

That, incidentally, is the film’s male lead in the passenger’s seat.

At first I thought the driver might be his uncle, Le Mans and two-time Monaco GP winner Maurice Trintignant, who had retired the previous year, finishing out his career with (surprise, surprise) Ecurie Ford France. (Another uncle, Louis, who raced…

So of course I recognized the iconic heroin-bearing Lincoln from the French Connection right away (not a French film, exactly, but one of the very best of the 70's neo-noirs, so close enough!).

But the Mustang had me foxed. I thought: must be one of Jean-Louis Trintignant’s blue oval rides from Claude Lelouch’s…

A very impressive technical achievement, no doubt. And also a foretaste of the end of motorsport as we have known it.

It’s been clear for some time that the “fragile meatbags” were destined to become the weakest link in the chain of technology, organization, and commerce that is modern motor racing. Here we see the…

The 1994 federal crime bill was a piece of compromise legislation that was unquestionably flawed (as Bill and Hillary Clinton have both acknowledged), but its role in the rise of mass incarceration has been grossly exaggerated, and the support for it (which extended to a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus) has…

What a lovely thing.

It’s still more astonishing when you realize that this was neither Hitchcock’s best film starring Cary Grant (that was either Notorious, nine years earlier, or North By Northwest, four years later), nor his best film starring Grace Kelly (either Dial M for Murder, or Rear Window, both of which, amazingly, came out in…

Indeed. Mine was a second-hand ‘77, in gold, with go-faster stripes down the belt line, and a dark orange interior that seemed the height of 70's style to me.

True, but actually the GT86 was more or less driving itself at that point.

Well, to be fair, normally there would also be jaloptastick mechanical failure, intramural sabotage, and/or heavy equipment involved.