I first encountered J.F. Musial as a liason for Alex Roy. At the time, I suppose he was about 19; a college student at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. We got to know each other better during Roy and Maher's 31:04 crossing of the United States and the year of secrecy where we had nobody else to discuss it with. I figured that J.F. would go on to some sort of junior-management level and work his way up to a senior management position rather quickly, trading in his B5 A4 for an S8 before the age of 35.

But then something remarkable happened. When I was in NYC a few weeks ago, J.F. was worrying about what he'd do when he finishes school. What he didn't comprehend — and what Alex and I had already figured out — J.F. is already doing it. It's called Thrill of the Road. And it's one of the best web-only shows for petrolheads yet — simply because it's got a fantastic loose charm to it. Take three early-twentysomething dorks with conflicting personalities, throw them in J.F.'s Audi, add a bit of music and see what the guys run across along the way. It's essentially the formula that Charles Kuralt perfected in his classic On The Road series, and it's been used to both wonderful and unintentionally humorous effect by native Tennesseean Huell Howser on the public televison travelogue California's Gold.

Kuralt famously dropped a sad bit of science: "Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything." Interestingly enough, the transcontinental highway system; a large part of which brought Alex to his initial modicum of fame and led to his meeting with Musial, hasn't so far been much of a big deal when it comes to TOTR. Instead, Musial, his good-natured loudmouth Samoan attorney/Ryan Dunn doppelgänger Tom Albrecht and their cameraman Ian Jenkins head off in search of Musial's platonic ideal of roads.

The first part of Episode 1, including a coal mine in Penna that's been burning for 45 years

Neither Musial or Albrecht are particularly comfortable in front of the camera — rank neophytes in fact. To compensate, Jenkins has taken to holding the camera up at all times, regardless of whether it's on or off. Every once in a while, amateur hour holds the kernel of brilliance.

It's not to say TOTR is by any means perfect — each episode only costs about $250 to make in materials, and it shows at times — but there's a measure of just-enough in the professionalism that lets it slip by. There's a palpable joy in the show; like discovering just how easy it is to whack a power chord on a distorted guitar and come up with a pleasing noise. The boys hop into J.F.'s Audi, ignore the terrible noise the car's first gear tends to make and just go. Some of the camerawork in the first two episodes is pretty dizzy-making when it comes to the traveling shots, but Musial assures me that they've got a gyrostabilizer for Ian's camera now, which should make the new episodes more watchable.

There's no pretense; no bullshit; nothing really in the way of posturing; although Albrecht does have his hammy, antic moments, he ultimately comes across as a goofy kid-brother type while Musial plays the straight man. Somehow, the show is more than the sum of its parts; it's heartfelt and earnest without really trying to be. At the end of the episodes, the guys simply point out how long they were gone; there's no moralizing; no grand conclusions about what the great American pastime of the road trip means. It's just, "Well, we went here and we did this." It's just honest, and for that, I love it.

When your co-workers are the reason you reach for your revolver; when a Max Ernst fever dream leaves you trapped beneath Père-Lachaise dirt alongside avian hallucinations of Edith Piaf, Marcel Marceau, Seurat, Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, it might be instructive to remember that you can just get in your car and drive somewhere you've never been. Some people run. Some people walk. Some people pump iron. Some meditate. The trick is finding perspective in the old and the new; in discovery and change. And to be honest, for that mission, there's no better steed than an automobile.

Fast as a Shark is an electronic broadside aimed at what's historically right and gut-wrenchingly wrong with the automotive industry and culture. We're betting that while Udo Dirkschneider has at one point owned an Audi, he probably finds Mission of Burma "Kind off veird."

Welles, having checked the books, realized that there was no law in New York that stated one had to be ill to ride in an ambulance. He proceeded to do just that, utilizing one to travel between CBS and NBC, simply to dump money into the coffers of his Mercury Theatre. Six or seven decades later, Roy talked to his lawyer on the eve of application for the 2003 Gumball 3000 and realized that he might legally be able to get away with disguising himself as a German police officer.

At the end of Bullrun 2006, I was out of cigarettes and bumming off of Haller and Herr Roy. Since that year's rally had run from New York to Los Angeles, the classic metric for such records as established by Brock Yates in defiance of the double nickel and in honor of Erwin G. "Cannon Ball" Baker, I asked Alex if he thought the 32-hour, 7-minute record set by David Diem and Doug Turner in their Ferrari 308 during the 1983 running of the U.S. Express could ever be bested. Roy gave me the stock answer; one I'd heard from Brock Yates four years before regarding the 32:51 record set by David Heinz and Dave Yarborough in an XJS on the final Cannonball. There was no way. With today's traffic congestion and the current excellence of police technology, there was simply no way. He was lying through his teeth.

A couple of months later, sitting in my hotel room at the Marriott outside Charles de Gaulle airport, I got one of Alex's typically-frantic text messages. Curiosity piqued, I called him back. He asked when I'd be back in LA. I replied that I had a vacation scheduled after the Paris Auto Show and I'd be home on October 8th. He faxed a non-disclosure agreement to the hotel told me that I needed to get to Santa Monica as soon as I landed. He was going to break the transcontinental record. Oddly enough, I'd flown to Europe on Aer Lingus flight EI 144. I'd be flying back while crossing his path somewhere in the middle of the country.

Cory Welles (as far as I know, no relation to Orson), the director behind the as-yet-unfinished (but coming) documentary 32 Hours, 7 Minutes and Alex had decided to see what it would actually take to do what Diem and Turner did over two decades ago in a modern environment. And as such, I found myself at dinner with Cory's family and journalist Gary Jarlson, who'd witnessed the end of numerous runnings of the Express, including Diem and Turner's epic marathon drive.

Jarlson noted that there was construction on the 15 on the way in from Barstow. We tried in vain to get in touch with Cory, Alex and Dave Maher — Alex's co-driver during his inaugural Gumball in 2003 — in the vain hope of rerouting them. We gathered in the rented suite to wait. Around midnight, we walked down to the pier where we were joined by the crew of Polizei Air, the spotter-plane crew who'd been known during the run as both "Cowbell Air" and "Ozzel Air." The film chase car (a Cayenne Turbo) headed off to the intercept point on I-10. I stayed behind. I wanted to see that blue E39 come over the rise. And at 1:30AM, it did exactly that, with one headlight out — right into a rat's nest of bored police officers who had no idea how many laws had been broken in the last day and a quarter. Maher jumped out of the passenger side and shoved the time card into the battery-powered punch clock Lelaine Lau had flown out from New York after the start.

Alex got out of the antenna-festooned M5 and declared, "I'm never driving again."

Some might call a forward-observation/chase airplane a cheat, akin to Carrie Bradshaw never removing her brassiere during moments of fleshy union while working as a sex columnist. But in 1983, much to the consternation of the other U.S. Express contestants, Diem and Turner did exactly that. After all, if the police can use a plane to spy on drivers, who's to mandate that drivers can't utilize an aircraft to watch for them? The plane — coupled with Alex's expertly-programmed scanners — saved them in Oklahoma, where the previous April, during the first attempt at the record, the trusty Polizei M5 took a dirt nap due to a clogged fuel filter. The authorities took an interest in the machine at a local BMW dealer after Alex was overheard at the airport talking about the failure of the run. By some dint of luck, the M5 was returned to New York unsearched. He vowed not to drive in the state again. But in a classic Dante Hicks "I wasn't even supposed to be here today" twist of Murphy's tail, an earlier-than-anticipated fuel stop forced Alex into the driver's seat. Shortly thereafter, the police started to take an interest in the German sedan with a "Storm Chaser" sticker on the bumper. Diem and Turner survived an encounter with an officer in 1983 Zanesville, Ohio. Roy and Maher would likely not survive one in 2006 Oklahoma. They slipped into the pocket behind a semi as the officers watched the eastbound side of the freeway, convinced that the nuts in the BMW had turned around in an attempt to elude them. The relative safety of the Lone Star state line was within sight.

Maher began to zone out on his next leg, giving it his all and then succumbing to hallucinations. By far the faster of the two, Maher's formidible all dwindled while Roy stood watch helplessly until the next fuel stop. If they were to definitively break Diem and Turner's record (which they felt they needed to do by at least an hour, given the milage differential between Santa Monica and Newport Beach — the terminus of the '83 Express), Alex had to turn off his inner nanny and essentially hoon it to the pier. Which is exactly what he did. From the Interstate 15/10 interchange to the finish line — 54 miles, Roy averaged 99mph — at one point taking an 360 Modena by surprise. The Fezza driver never caught up. And the cops never caught on as the M5's V8 roared through the jacket-weather chill of an early-fall Los Angeles night.

Last night, I talked to La Carrera Panamericana Unlimited Class co-organizer Kevin Ward about the run. Ward took La Carrera outright in 1995 and has won in Baja and a number of other grueling desert races held in furnace-like conditions. On motorcycles. His dad, Jon Ward, won his class at the Daytona 24 and built a noted Trans-Am car made famous by Jerry Titus. Ward and Haller also did the Bullrun in '06 with the ill-fated Stude he'd used to win La Carrera. Needless to say, Ward knows a thing or two about traveling very fast for long periods of time. His words? "I'm impresssed. I'm way, way impressed. To do it for mile after mile, hour after hour? He was like a pit bull."

Back in 1982, toward the end of his life, Welles opined, "I think there has always been an England; an older England, which was sweeter and purer; where the hay smelled better and the weather was always springtime and the daffodils blew in the gentle, warm breezes. You feel the nostalgia for it in Chaucer, and you feel it all through Shakespeare." And you feel that longing's New-World analogue in America; Yates felt it. The Cannonball guys felt it. There was never a time in America when one could do whatever one wanted. But we like to believe there was.

But for all of those fictions we cling to that make the impossible possible; for the longing for a daffodil that must've wafted sweeter on the breeze or glowed hotter against the springtime green before one was born; for Alex's admiration of Diem, Turner and the rest of the Cannonball/U.S. Express drivers; for his rivalry with Richard Rawlings; for Maher's dedication to running flat out; even for Herr Roy's lifespan-shrinking worry about the danger of legal apprehension, followed by his must-accomplish speed bender of the last 54 miles, the numbers stand alone, and the effort behind them trips over the line and makes a sheer and spectacular faceplant into the splintered board parking lot of the staggering — hanging perilously over the Pacific like Manifest Destiny on a megadose of Adderall. Unlike the drug prescribed to folks who find coke dealers unsavory unless they've got a date to impress — but just like the best French champagnes — Alex Roy and David Maher's coast-to-coast blast is vintage dated: October 7th, 9:26PM EDT-October 9th,1:30AM PDT, 2006.

Why do I feel this way? The same reason I don't like knockoff Gucci sunglasses, or BMW's recent "car in every garage" marketing strategy, or the Porsche Boxster, or overexposed couture logos on $10 tee shirts. Mass merchandising cheapens a brand. Would we hold Koenigsegg or Bugatti in the same esteem if those companies were producing watered-down, entry-level versions within the reach of the unwashed masses?

It's not just about availability or price, either. It's mostly comes right down to aesthetics. Much of the Hello Kitty stuff I come across is done so poorly or is so blatantly cheesy that it just kills the cuteness that is Hello Kitty (which includes the photo of the pink Testarossa floating around the "Internets"). I'm sure there's a better way to execute $900 rims. Personally, a small etching of Hello Kitty on the hub would suffice. Subtlety speaks volumes. Come on, people. [Kitty Hell via Autoblog

My mother marks my reading of On The Road when I was 18 as the precise moment when everything started to go wrong in my life. I prefer to say it's the book that turned me from a mid-day anonymous undersexed teen on a sugar crash into an unwitting writer. Without getting florid or farther into a navel-lint mining expedition than I already am — it's the piece that taught me where writing comes from. It was a manifestation of Gutenberg-wrought Awesome. Last week, Slate published an interesting installment of The Book Club by Walter Kirn and Meghan O'Rourke. O'Rourke had never read On The Road before; for Kirn the book stood as an absolute totem; a part of him. What's more, he reads it like an elegy for a time Kerouac already knew was past.

I tend to traffic in elegies. But to twist a hoary old cliché, life is what happens while you're mourning something else; excessive short shrift; the kisses you're half-assing while suckling at the teat of another memory of liplock that may not have been as wonderful as what's dripping down your chin at that very moment. But who's ever gotten rich betting on my prognostications besides my bosses? I've never been much good at predicting the new.

I figured nobody'd buy the Prius because the Insight was cooler and got better mileage. And that since the original Avalanche was bad, I assumed nobody'd go for a Cadillac version of such an already unappealing vehicle. After all, the Cimarron was an atmosphere-inhaling wound of a joke, right? I am, however, a little too good at mining time gone by. I blame teenage ownership of that Rites of Spring record for it. I may be in love with the future, but I have no clue how it'll pan out.

The new comes from relentless optimists with a fuck-you, can-do spirit. Guys like Kelly Johnson, René Panhard or Ferruccio Lamborghini. Visionaries like Soichiro Honda or John DeLorean. And while I'm a relentless proponent of the future, I want the goddamn future I was promised. I want my verdammt Soylent Green, and I want it now, you wobbly-arsed prognosticators of always-impending wonder! Kerouac was either smart enough to know (or too dumb to realize that there was another way) that — like a similar icon who died a quarter-century after him — his ticket out of the cult he'd created by crafting a genuinely sensitive and genre-defying work was simply to meet his end ASAP. Kerouac grew up inky-fingered in a print shop. He could've pressed the book himself and sold it to friends. Cobain could've continued releasing records on Sub Pop. Karl Benz could've built the Patent Motorwagen and stopped there.

Instead, they all took a shot at the big leagues — and for better or for worse — inspired their respective generations to all manner of endeavor. Lest we forget, DeLorean did the same thing (twice, in different ways) and met an ignominious end himself. Sure, the profiteers are ultimately the Warren Buffetts, Sumner Redstones and Rupert Murdochs of the world. (Although we have to give Johnny Z. some props for ripping off Mrs. Thatcher.) As Thomas Frank points out in his still-relevant 1994 essay "Why Johnny Can't Dissent," "The basic impulses of the countercultural idea, as descended from the holy Beats, are about as threatening to the new breed of antinomian businessmen as Anthony Robbins, selling success & how to achieve it on a late-night infomercial."

Frank makes an excellent point. But what can't be co-opted is the particular cultural flashpoint that something creates in any genre. Star Wars, the GT-40, the Cosworth DFV/DFX, the Hemi, Never Mind the Bollocks, the "I Have a Dream" speech. Colin Chapman. Don Garlits. The smart money banks on aping and repeating. The could-give-a-fuck money goes with its gut and often flames out spectacularly. More often than not, silently. But now and then, the paradigm simply eats shit and dies. Isn't that the moment that self-styled rebels live for? And wasn't this nation built on the thrill of rebellion?

Not long after Kerouac published On the Road, John Steinbeck took a road trip of his own. In Travels With Charley, Salinas' favorite son mourns the loss of the Monterey County that raised him. The people he lost it to come out every August to celebrate the period when they took it away from the likes of the original denizens of Carmel; folks Steinbeck initially characterizes as "starveling writers and unwanted painters" and goes on to extrapolate that "if Carmel's founders should return, they could not afford to live there, but it wouldn't go that far. They would be instantly picked up as suspicious characters and deported over the city line." The Monterey Peninsula has been picked clean of the early-century charm it once held for the children of pioneers. Once a year we all gather there to ogle the shining, patina-stained history that such wealth and provenance afforded a half-decade ago; a vintage coin whose face has been religiously buffed while its flipside remains firmly encrusted in blooming algae. The locals are powerless to anything about it but don a straw boater, hit the links, brave the stench and grin at their winnings.

Steinbeck went home to New York and died ten months before Kerouac did, having lived 20 years longer and published a more impressive and eminently readable body of work. SCRAMP built Laguna Seca, which coincidentally, also turned 50 this year. Typically, people bemoan every change made to the track. Just as people who first encountered the facility in its current state will bemoan any future changes. As poet Robinson Jeffers wrote: "You people with the cleverer hands, our supplanters/In the beautiful country; enjoy her a season, her beauty, and come down/And be supplanted; for you also are human."

But it's largely the point where one starts that defines nostalgia; that dictates what we believe needs to be changed. I can gander at the Napier-Railton Brooklands record car and walk away absolutely flabbergasted and dumbfounded. But ultimately, as astounding as it is, it's too heavy and old. Magnificent, yes. Perfect? Quite possibly. But it exists outside the aesthetic worldview that makes my peninsula dingle in that absolutely personal way. On the other hand, when I see a T-Bucket, a '70 Buick Skylark or a Ferrari 308; watch a video of Joe Strummer talking, hear a Stooges song on the jukebox or sense the death-has-arrived thump of a Hayabusa's idle through a wall, something wells up in me — a genuine happiness.

In a world where cars are increasingly designed by lawyers and the way we use them dictated by greedy developers and shady financial institutions; as we slouch toward a state of over-regulated perfection, we've lost something. In Kirn's view — and I agree — Kerouac essentially felt the same way. But he presented something new in mourning the time he spent both with Neal Cassady and without him. And fifty years on, we're still attempting to process the life and loss of a man who launched a million road trips. We bide our time waiting for the next great new thing to happen. As Strummer said to me nearly a decade ago, in that all-knowing umpteen-pack-a-day crackle he perfected before the age of twenty-five, "Punk's only followin' the Beats. And the Jazzers. And the Smokers. And anyone else who was centrally slamming on the main deal." It's happening somewhere right now. We just don't know it yet. But a half-century from now, some car; some great race; some book; some wonderful thing from today will stand; an epochal green-and-white milemarker of an age. And life will be all the more interesting for it.

"Fast as a Shark" is an electronic broadside aimed at what has been historically right and terribly wrong with the automotive industry and culture. Udo Dirkschneider likely has little time for the Beats.

In late adolescence, I heard a song. It was called "Los Angeles," and it was by an outfit called X, who were quite possibly the greatest band to come out of this town in the late '70s-early '80s, and still proudly stand as one of the city's all time great groups. It appealed to my shambolic state at the time. I was often the smartest kid in the room, almost rock 'n' roll, and hopelessly out of step. I was also loud, fast, obnoxious, and fancied myself poetic. My El Camino had Torq-Thrusts with BFGs, white letters out, with the rear slightly jacked up. I had long hair a la Chris Cornell, but even attempting one of his shrieks would rip my vocal cords out.

I wish I could say that the moment I heard that song, I cut my hair, my bad poetry improved, I ditched the truckcar and started getting laid regularly. But no, that didn't really happen. On the other hand, tooling around in said El Camino, with X on the eight-watt-per-channel JVC, crusing the East Bay from Richmond to Martinez to Moraga with eight (admittedly weak) cylinders underfoot; a sense of ass-lightness and derring-do inspired by the glory of Camino-ness and hormones with no sign of calming down personified the ultimate calm-plus-anxiety equation of driving.

Bumbeck and I were talking about why the drive from LA to Monterey and back left us tired, when all we were doing was sitting on our asses. Why? Because we were fighting for our lives. The act of driving takes it out of you, even when you the car lulls you into feeling like you're not doing anything. It can be a fantastically pleasurable experience, the likes of which nothing really compares to. But when you have to worry about cops and/or death, especially when you're poor, it livens things up a bit.

Also, we're old. In the grand scheme of things, we're not the do-anything twentysomething punkers we used to be. And Bumbeck even exercises, which is largely more than I can say for myself. Regardless, we were both fatigued. Riding along on the Gumball 3000 was a masochistic wet-nightmare of such shenanigans. Strangely, the Kia Sorento we were in was so dirt-simple to drive. Its quirks weren't endearing; they were annoying. The interior fit and finish was frankly wonderful for the price — the amenities were things you were lucky to find in a near-luxury car a decade ago. Overall, feature-wise, how could one beat it? It could be beat because the thing felt like it was trying to kill us in entirely improper ways. Take its atrocious insistence on hewing hard left under emergency-stop conditions. No modern car has an excuse for that sort of behavior. On the other hand, my El Camino once power-oversteered across I-80 in the rain. Why do I love it more, then? Because it actually tried to kill me instead of just kind of tried to? The Sorento will outbrake and out-accelerate a basically-stock '75 El Camino. It's also a safer vehicle, despite the center-of-gravity disadvantage. On the other hand, it doesn't smell as good. It doesn't say anything about you. "I banged a stupid-hot Misfits-loving teenage French exchange student in my Sorento," just doesn't pack the same je ne sais quois, either in a poem, barroom bullshit session, or an essay.

In essence, the perfect car is a totem — a stand-in for one of those perfect times in your life, no matter how screwed up it is or was. I was born in 1975, and tellingly, most of my perfect cars hail from the hoonpower-wacked '60s or the exceptions to the Malaise Era. The AMG Hammer, the all-iterations 308, the F40, the Countach, the A&E-bodied 340 'Cudas, the Buick GS, the Starion, the Lotus Europa, the 240Z, the Pierre Cardin AMX, the E36 and the CRX. Today's face-melting cars may disfigure one's visage faster, but they refuse to melt it harder than their ancestors. On the other hand, you young bucks and oldsters may well —- and validly — hold a different opinion. The perfect car is subjective. It is a matter of time and place. And when it grabs you, it never quite lets go. Craig Jackson's made a mint off of that very fact and earned my eternal ire in the process.

Eventually, I did cut my hair, ditch the truckcar and get up to my ears in sniz. Today I drive the most dangerous car I've ever owned. And it's not really fun unless I'm in danger of killing myself or everyone around me. It makes me miss a time when a frozen spoon applied to the bruise as a way to ease appearance of the hickies was a crafty, innocent, perfect salve; when Kim Coletta of Jawbox would write back about my young meditations on perfect things because it was the punk thing to do — even after they were signed to Atlantic — or Joshua Clover would send my Creative Writing teacher a Jawbreaker record and it would thrill me for weeks when Blake Schwarzenbach would sneak me into sold-out shows or when the aforementioned mid-to-late-'40s prof drove around proudly with a Screeching Weasel sticker on her bumper.

Those things don't exactly last in the way one first experiences them. One's world grows larger and more complex, and it's a good feeling as you age. (I was born in '75.) My dad was right about continually having one's head stretched and punching every ticket that came along. The older one gets, paradoxically, the more those opportunities come up, and often, the more one has to pass them up. But the perfect car remains, frozen in time, like the aforementioned bruise-quelling spoon. It will always smell right. It will continue to sort of try to kill you. It will frustrate you. But it will always be perfect. Even if you didn't know it at the time.

"Fast as a Shark" is an electronic broadside aimed at what has been historically right and terrribly wrong with the automotive industry and culture. Udo Dirkschneider's car is always perfect.

Why? Partially because I'm a rank contrarian and love the underdog. I will go at you all day as to why Jawbreaker was better than Led Zeppelin. Mainly making the argument that hobbits are ridiculously silly unless Peter Jackson is involved, but being busted up over a girl or singing Sonoma-Coast-evocative songs with lashing, slashing guitars and punk rock's version of Bonham on the drums is just, well, better. Sometimes you just don't need "The Immigrant Song." Which is, oddly enough why I'd rather have an E-Type Lightweight Coupe. I've been in the presence of a 250 GTO. It's an unintentionally imposing car. If somebody offered me one for free, I'd take it without hesitation and then drive to my sellout job in it every day. The 250, essentially, comes off as a disposable car. Not all Ferraris do.

Take, for example, the 500 Superfast. It has a stately grandeur. Or the 308 GT4, which might be the perfect Bertone wedge that isn't a Countach. Or of course, my all-time favorite Ferrari, the 308 GTB.

It seems a cop-out to have what's probably the cheapest Fezza on the market besides the awkward 400i or hideous Mondial rank as one's favorite example of the marque. It reeks of casual Magnum P.I. enthusiasm. The car that'll score you big-haired, spandex-clad, mindless poontang. But truth be told, I like my birds with bigger brains and less spandex. And aside from the hardcore tifosi, I have likely been around more Ferraris than you, unless you're an inveterate showgoer.

The GTB isn't a classical Ferrari. It's not a front-engined V-12 car. Nor is it much of a Dino (although I'd argue that the GTB/GTS were more true to the Dino's heritage than the angular, four-place, angular GT4.

Sure the 308 had problems. Excess gasoline in the cats leading to catastrophic fires was/is the most notorious. But I like the 308 in the way that I like London Calling, 24 Hour Revenge Therapy or New Day Rising. It's that perfect transitional moment. The 206/246 was the original try and is magnificent and valiant and groundbreaking. The GT4 was the awkward but lovable second album. The GTB/GTS was the masterpiece, and the 360, well that was the record with the number one hit song — see Combat Rock. The analogy runs out of steam with Cut the Crap and the 430, but hey, "Dirty Punk" was still a pretty good track.

Years ago, I worked for a guy briefly. He had a lot of books about how to enjoy being rich on his wall. He subscribed to The Robb Report. He lived in Blackhawk. His real-estate-agent wife drove a loaded Suburban because she felt it would be safest for their two unruly, spoiled brats. I wish his name was Donny, because I would've loved to have screamed at him, "You're out of your element!" He had a V-12 SL as a daily driver and an older Ferrari (which I never saw) as a weekend car. He invited his ne'er-do-well brother around to do stuff around the office. His brother loved Ferraris. The Monterey Weekend was an ultimate vacation for this guy. He loved working on them; he loved driving them. In a sense, the guy was absolutely a Jalopnik hero; a purist with an appreciation for greatness and an eye for the diamond in the rough. He hated the newer, luxe-oriented cars. And he drove a first-gen MR2, because he felt that it was the closest a broke-dick artist-type could get to driving a Ferrari.

That's how much of a watershed the Dino/308 actually is. It subverted the way people thought the Ferrari experience. And the 308 GTB/GTS cemented in people's minds that a V-6/V-8 could be a goddamn Ferrari. Tom Selleck may have sold a bunch of those cars, but the 308 was magic all on its own. Most people who call it garbage have never been in one. The 250? It was meant to be disposable. To win races? Sure. To crash? Fine. It doesn't have the raw guts of a Cobra, even though the Daytona may have been hastily cobbled. But the 250 lacks the soul of a lot of Ferraris. And I realize that's a completely counterintuitive argument to make, because it was a finely-sorted, lost-tech car. It had freaking wire wheels! It may have actually been the ultimate example of its breed. But like the F50 and Enzo, and unlike the F40 and 288 GTO, it lacks soul. In a sense, the 250 GTO is somewhat German. The 308, however, is as Italian as osso bucco. And that's what makes it a perfect Ferrari.

Plus, they're still cheap.

"Fast as a Shark" is a weekly electronic broadside aimed at what has been historically right and terribly wrong with the autmotive industry and culture. If Udo Dirkschneider ever drove a 308, it probably featured a turret bristling with Flak 88s.

We noted earlier that Chrysler has killed the Imperial. You know, generally, we're for V8, rear drive cars. Success, after all, begets success, so we were thrilled to see the 300, Magnum, Charger and revised Mustang lead to the Challenger, the Interceptor, Camaro and G8, but after the inital "What is that?" shock wore off, the car seemed a half-baked Hail Mary, and given the troubles that have come to light in the year and a half since the concept's debut in Detroit, that impression's gained a lot more in the way of context. According to Chrysler mouthpiece David Elshoff, bringing such a machine to market in today's climate would be "irresponsible." Instead, the Imp's place on the Brampton production line will be taken up by the next-generation 300. Please boys, don't crackrock it up with Sebringesque styling cues. Killing the Imperial means that there might still be some signs of life in Auburn Hills. Let's hope so.

When the DS debuted, it was essentially from space. Sure, it carried over the prewar Traction Avant's front-drive layout. It also maintained a genuinely French sense of logical-yet-oddball style and engineering. If one is willing to adapt to the French mindset, classic French automobiles aren't particularly weird — they're uniquely French solutions to common problems. Possibly baroque and/or psychedelic, yes. After all, they did hand us a strange green femmelossus of a statue with spikes sticking out of her head. And yet, I'd venture to say that of any stable nation on the Continent, the French embody the "Fuck you, we do what we want" nature Americans prize so more than any other country.

Besides the United States, what other nation so consistently pisses off the rest of the world, yet is universally so revered and adored for its contributions to global culture? And don't argue for the UK. Just because they gave us Top Gear Life On Mars and Monty Python doesn't mean they've actually done much worthwhile since The Clash released the last album with Topper. Plus, they saddled us with the stifling cult of Jane Austen and the infuriating spectre of Joe Lucas. That, then should be reason enough to visit Westminster Abbey, read the fart-joke passage of The Canterbury Tales aloud and hop the next flight to Dubrovnik.

Which is why, possibly, the Déesse's successor had to come from another quirkily-rational, oddball land whose own bloodlusty bout with imperialism ultimately resulted in its citizenry holing up on their native soil and getting back to doing. Yes, Japan. If you can't co-prosper with Greater East Asia, why not out prosper them? And if you are a nation that depends on other countries for resources to keep its autonomous transport system running, why not maximize efficiency?

When Japan dropped the first Prius on these shores in 2001, it was largely viewed as a curio. It also had similar proportions to the unloved and unfortunately-styled Echo. I, personally, was more excited by the Honda Insight. It looked like a CRX that'd been shaped in a wind tunnel/blast furnace. It delivered superior numbers to the Toyota in a niche that — at the time — was about nothing but numbers. And it was a Honda.

I didn't care for the second-generation Prius, but it did have this going for it — it was from space. Toyota made a calculated ploy on the car. They incorporated enough JDM gee-whiz geekery to attract the attention of engineering geeks like C/D's Patrick Bedard. They even gave one to the magazine for the express purpose of running it at Bonneville. The new "Look at me! I'm driving a revolutionary vehicle!" vehicle caught on with Hollywood types. And it was useful, unlike the Insight, which was a geeks-only machine that Honda kept producing past its natural lifespan to shit in Toyota's green salad. The Prius, then, like the DS, was a proper car; a symbol that technology can lift us past conflict. Ten short years after the cessation of hostilities in Western Europe, the DS was a comfort to the French populace; a panacea. An affirmation writ large that although in fact France had been overrun by the Germans, the nation was definitely back in the business of being France.

Our president has a back-asswards approval rating. After the Good War Where Nobody Died on Our End, our nation is caught in a morass in the Middle East. A three-dollar bill spent on a gallon of refined sweet, light crude is bringing back cultural memories of the Malaise Era. A Prius then, is an investment in America; in being chuffed that we're recognizing inconvenient truths. Slap on your yellow-ribbon magnet with pride, Bunky, because by driving a Prius, you're helping to bring our boys home. And you stand as an iconoclast. If you bought early and often, you could even run solely on internal combustion in California's carpool lanes!

In 1979, Ozzy Osbourne — depending on which side of the story you believe — was either booted from Black Sabbath or left of his own accord. To replace him, the band recruited the diminutive Ronnie James Dio, late of Ronnie and the Rumblers, Ronnie and the Red Caps, Elf and Richie Blackmore's Rainbow. The result was Heaven and Hell, the best album Sabbath had dropped since 1973's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Coincidentally, the D-series Citroëns died at the same time thoroughly-brilliant Ozzy-inclusive Sabs records did.

The Prius, however revolutionary, is not the gut-punch the DS was at the time. It is a global phenomenon, alternately adored and reviled, much like heavy metal. It is a harbinger of possibilities to come, but it's not an out-and-out fuck you in your fucking face. It is polite, even if its drivers are often not. Its electronics are elegant, but it is ultimately a very impressive and polarizing shade of beige.

Japan has given the world mecha and tentacle rape, dekotora, giant rubber monsters, futomaki, affordable, reliable digital watches, Starlets, Starions and dorifto. They also insist on pixelating genitals in pornography, although the uncensored workarounds include some acts highly unlikely to be found in American smut. Meanwhile, American Marines rape women on Okinawa on occasion, Roosevelt signed off on Executive Order 9066, we stuck 'em with a Disneyland and there's that little issue of Hiroshima, Enola Gay, Nagasaki and Bock's Car. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Nihon and the complex, symbiotic relationship America has with that particular island nation has been one of the foremost axes of socioeconomic/cultural thought over the last seven decades.

Since Admiral Perry forced open the gates of trade with Japan over a century ago, we've liberated France twice. The DS, however, didn't allow a broad swath of Americans to feel that they were somehow unfettering themselves from something they hated. It was a quirky, personal decision that made no rational sense in an era of cheap gas. The Prius may not simplicate. It may not add lightness. It may well oversell itself. But it is a cultural boot up the jacksie that's palatable to the average schmoe. It's alternative rock radio to people who call conglomerate-owned stations and lament "People who don't know what music's about have no business listening to the radio." It is the car from space that finally seduced the populi and their attendant vox. So no, it is not the Ronnie James Dio of cars. It is not brash, ridiculously willful or flat-out silly enough. The DS was a perfect Hail Mary in a small stadium. The Prius is a calculated punt that put the Super Bowl into overtime. In concise, proto-metal-type terms, Toyota's look-at-me hybrid is yet another unfortuate Black Sabbath reunion now that we're likely to see "Paranoid" on The Singing Bee any week now. After all, we've all got something to safely define ourselves as rebellious with these days.

Joey Fatone, your roadborne spacecraft is here. And yes, we've burned you a Loudness/Serge Gainsbourg mix CD. Thank us later.

"Fast as a Shark" is a weekly electronic broadside aimed at what has been historically right and terribly wrong with the autmotive industry and culture. We would be surprised if Udo Dirkschneider ever owned a DS or a Prius.

Call me "Ich-Manni." Here in the electron-bright pages of tha Jalop, I have often implored manufacturers to bring back a simple, lightweight RWD sports coupe. We collectively have bemoaned the lack of availability of certain European models built by American manufacturers but not sold on our shores. And of course, I have professed my love of the Opel Manta so many times that it borders slightly on the ridiculous. Kind of like the time in college when I used to piss off the guy in the Doobie Brothers shirt by playing "Louie Louie" incessantly on the guitar while he attempted to extoll the virtues of Dave Matthews. But I have hit upon an idea, and if General Motors does not grab hold of it and run like a 400-meter relay medalist with a lit roman candle protruding from his keister, they're hopeless. And here is what I propose: Mssrs. Wagoner and Lutz, bring back the Manta.

Think of it. Fuel prices are rising, but the hoons still need to play. You've got a small, RWD platform that you've already shown is somewhat extensible (the Chevy Nomad concept of a few years ago). There's a hole in the market for such a vehicle that comes in below the V6/V8 ponycars or tanklike Japanese iron in the form of the 350Z. You could easily build this car, GM. And what's more, we believe you should.

In Europe, Manta is a storied marque. Sure, it's got a kitsch culture attached to it, but so does the Camaro, and that didn't stop people from collectively flipping their wigs and requiring a change of undies when you decided to resurrect that nameplate, did it? The Manta is Europe's Camaro, and we think while Americans weren't quite ready for it in the 1970s (and given the atrociousness of the Kadetts that beat it into Buick dealerships a few years beforehand), there's a wide open market for such a car right now, and Hyundai seems like the only company willing to do something about it.

The current Ecotec mill is an evolution of Opel's "Family" series, developed by a global team of engineers from Rüsselheim, Detroit and Trollhättan. Referred to as "Family II," its lineage can be traced back to the the engine originally designed to power the Ascona B, which, of course, was the basis for the Manta B. And the Manta B, of course, begat the Manta 400, which of course, raced in Group B. What's more, the current iteration of the General's corporate four-banger is capable of making staggering amounts of power, having crested 200 numerous times at Bonneville. And die Mantafährer love tinkering with their rides.

And what of Oz? Clarkson absolutely loved the Vauxhall Monaro that you tried to sell us as a reborn GTO. Seems to us that fuel-price-conscious hoons with tired Silvias would love to slip into something like a new Manta. We know you've said that it isn't cost-effective to make Kappa in an RHD configuration. But if you had a world-beating, segment-defining car that the rest of the automakers have left behind, wouldn't it be worth it to make sure it was available around the globe? You'd need to stretch the platform somewhat to make sure Egon, his girlfriend, her parents and little brother could come along, so while you're at it, figure out a way to sell it to the wacky nutters who continue to drive on the left. After all, it's not a Manta unless we can see it on Irish roads.

As it's probably too much to ask in this day and age to sell the car as an Opel the world over, we will accept a Saturn Manta, which would make the Opelization of the Spring Hill Chicken brand truly complete. And we're sure the Aussies wouldn't turn their noses up at a Holden Manta. Just do us a favor and don't ever sell it as a Vauxhall Manta. Somehow, that's tantamount to sacrilege.

So what say ye? Come on GM, let's turn dining back into eating. – Davey G. Johnson

"Fast as a Shark" is a weekly electronic broadside aimed at what has been historically right and terribly wrong with the autmotive industry and culture. We wonder if the song was originally, "Fast as a Manta," but Udo decided that it worked better with a monosyllabic cartilaginous fish.

More Mantas; Manta - der Film: Total Geil!

I've known my girlfriend for years. We met as teenagers and immediately connected. We kept in touch sporadically, went through a lot of parallel experiences and a multitude of different ones. Way back when, she thought I was a goofy punk rocker with bad taste in motor vehicles, but she wrote about my cars and I anyway. We danced around each other, intrinsically knowing that the other one had things to do. And since I'm seeing her tomorrow, and I figure that she needs more punk rock in her life at this juncture, I've made her a compact disc in place of the mixtape I was too shy to to give her over a decade ago. There's a freedom in letting go of seductive romance and saying, "Okay, the plays are over and here's where the collaboration begins." Not that I'm not a sucker for participating in seductive romance. After all, I did own an El Camino.

The only thing that truly kicks me in the ass like a kickass woman (which I have) or a kickass car (which I don't currently have) is an absolutely kickass song. And one song that made the playlist is Avail's cover of Mellencamp's '80s chestnut "Pink Houses," which, much like Springsteen's "Glory Days," is an incredible slice of American life undone by overproduction. It's a song I remember listening to as a kid and enjoying although it never rocked me. But in the hands of Tim Barry and Co., it comes out note-perfect. Smacking, thwacking drums, barely-controlled, killer guitar work, and Barry's rail-riding, whiskey-gargling, three-point-stance bear-hug of a rough and warm growl.

It may be to '90s punk covers what Hüsker Dü's "Eight Miles High" was to '80s versions of urgently-written songs originally performed too quietly. And more to the point of this story, it gives me the same yummy chills that my relationship with my girlfriend gives me. It's a continual piece of my past recontextualized, yet still classic.

Which finally gets me to the point of this essay. I interrupted the Loverman in the midst of a game of online poker this evening to ask him which longish-form spot, between the fantastic Ferrari/Shell spot and Honda's incredible "The Impossible Dream" piece (the making of which is show above) was the better advertisment. He called Ferrari/Shell hands down and proceeded to bust out — set of Jacks cracked by a runner, runner flush. Quoth the Loverman, "Dicks!" And we were about to start referring to him as "The Lovermaker."

He also suggested we add the Ferry Porsche two-minute commercial we ran a few days ago to a poll. All three ads tug at one's heartstrings. They are all masterpieces of promotional history illustrations. Watch 'em all. Six minutes of your life, and no matter what your taste, we can positively guarantee it won't be time wasted. We then request you vote for which one you'd most want to marry over a decade after the fact.

Shell/Ferrari
Pros: Racing Ferraris out the freaking wazoo — which makes "bad thing" an impossible phrase to use unless you're a complete and utter know-nothing asshole. Amazing freaking camera work. Exotic locales. A cute kicker. Almost makes you believe that Shell gasoline could turn a Dodge V8 into an Italian V12.

Cons: Oil companies are manipulative, evil monstrosities. It focuses on F1 cars to the exclusion of Ferrari's incredible sports-racer and road cars. It makes you realize how rad racecars were before they took the lead out of gasoline.

Ferry Porsche
Pros: One of the most lucid, concise explanations of the philosophy of Bruce ever set to tape. Ferry Porsche. Rallying 959s. Sliding 928s. Not being afraid to show their racing cars falling apart.

Cons: Cars falling apart. Ferry's dead. The fact that they don't run a Cayenne in the Dakar Rally. That the GT3 RS hadn't been invented yet.

The Power of Dreams
Pros: Brilliant song selection. Note-perfect actor and wardrobe selection. Illustrates the company's progression via both competition and road vehicles. The soundtrack syncs wonderfully with the engine notes selected. Builds to a crescendo, hits a tense, freaky pause and then drops "Holy crap! Hot air balloon!" on you like an Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe locomotive.

Cons: The boat goes over a cliff. Some people don't like Andy Williams or Miguel de Cervantes. Hondas don't have the cachet of a Ferrari or a Porsche.

So there it is. Which one does it for you? Which one, if you owned one of the cars in question, would make you feel you'd finally scored the woman you'd wanted since you were a teenager; make your thighs tingle like rabbit-ear static made flesh? Which one is a great song perfectly recontextualized for now people? And how soon are now people anyway? Which one will make you give up vacationing on the Gulf of Mexico for a shot at making California? – Davey G. Johnson

"Fast as a Shark" is a weekly electronic broadside aimed at what has been historically right and terribly wrong with the autmotive industry and culture. And no, we don't know of any bootleg U.D.O. John Cougar covers. Thanks for asking.

Related:
Fast As a Shark: The Problem With Words [Internal]

Denizens of the Motown are proud of their city. And we understand why. It's a great place with plenty of friendly people and lots of good food. But Detroit has one problem — when it comes to cars, it still thinks that it's the center of the universe. The Brucemeisters at Porsche obviously don't see it that way, leading Peet to totally castigate the company. But we ask you this, while Detroit is unquestionably still the king of the North American auto shows, LA saw a vast improvement this year. We wouldn't be surprised if the LA show begins to steal more and more of Detwa's thunder. Because who wants to go to Detroit in January when one can be in Los Angeles in the late fall? Will LA take the crown from Detroit? Discuss amongst yourselves. – Davey G. Johnson

Porsche cuts off its nose. [Autoextremist]

Related:
Porsche at the Detroit Auto Show: Less Precision or World Domination?; Porsche to be a No-Show in Detroit [Internal]

Truth be told, my Manta fixation goes back over 25 years. As a kid visiting Northern Ireland, I was inextricably drawn to GM's Euro ponycar; it seemed the most American thing on the road, coiffed, as it was with cues that spoke of Yankee muscle. Camaro ducktail here, Monza curve there. Okay, fine. I was influenced heavily by 1970s muscle-appearance cars. But the Manta just looked like the baddest-ass thing on the road in what was then a fairly poor country. That said, I knew that Manta drivers, even back then, were revered for their manliness and reviled for their loutish nature. Eleven years ago, eight years after Manta production ended, I studied in Germany. Although nobody mentioned Mantas, per se "Manni" was shorthand for your stereotypical Bitburger-swilling, mulleted hoon. Which brings us to Manta - der Film.

Jalopnik has procured a copy of this fine example of Teutonic cinematic excellence. I cannot exactly call it Bruce on Film. I can, however, call it a fantastically kistchy coming-of-age fable that parallels my own. At age 14, I inherited a 1975 El Camino. I admit, I've always loved El Caminos, but '75 wasn't what one would call a prime year for such vehicles, especially in 1990, when California smog regulations mandated regular engine swaps if one wanted to extract a modicum of performance from the 2bbl, single-exhaust, early-cat vehicle. My dad, recently able to afford mechanics, had had enough of dropping his own transmissions to save a few bucks and the paltry recompense earned from mowing lawns would have put me on schedule to buy a TPI motor in roughly an eon. Some friends thought my El Camino was awesome. Most of them were guys. Dorky guys. I wished I had a GTI numerous times. But the El Camino had an "I-will-hit-you" factor that no GTI could possibly hope to hold a candle to. And in the end, "My first car was an El Camino" carries way more cred than "Daddy bought me a GTI."

Manfred Grabowski (Sebastian Rudolph) ultimately learned the same lesson. At film's start, he's daydreaming at driving school, imagining his hottie classmate, Tina (Nadja Therese Brennicke - who looks eerily like a blonde version of my teenage French girlfriend with less in the way of T&A) menaced by a Manta in a parking garage. He sweeps in, rescuing her in a white GTI, when his gold-chain, Mantafahrer instructor shakes him out of his reverie just as he's about to get some. Through some turn of events I don't quite get (Mein Deutsch ist rusty), Fred — as he refers to himself — wins a Manta.

At his eighteenth birthday party, he's showered in foxtails, snakeskin low-cut cowboy boots and of course, the all-important foxtail. Meanwhile, having won Tina's affections after rescuing her from a bunch of lecherous GTI drivers scoping her in the shower at the squash court — after which the Manta drivers are goaded into a chase by Phil, the lead GTI-driving soft-core pornographer — Fred goes to meet Tina at work. She happens to be a hairdresser (apparently a Mantafahrer stereotype in-joke) and has just cut Phil's hair. She's also completely distraught that Fred shows up in a Manta, to the point of forcing him to drive down the street past her salon before she'll be seen getting into his car.

A scene at a club follows, where a couple of sartorially-challenged bouncers force Fred unknowingly into Mantafahrer attire, leaving him to be heckled by a horrendous lounge singer in front of Tina, who runs off with Phil to take sexy, sexy pictures at his place. Fred keys obscenities into Phil's hood. Tina catches him, slaps him and runs off. Despondent and furious at the hand the Automotive Gods have dealt him, Fred breaks out the Jerry can and attempts to set his Manta ablaze. At the last second, a six-wheeled Manta appears to push Fred's steed out of harm's way, reversing away as quickly as it arrived.

The next day, Fred swings by Sascha's garage, and the Russian emigré wrench hammers the bent bumper into place with his bare hands. The driver of the Glorious Mantamino teaches Fred some sort of lesson.

Later, a scuffle ensues, Fred ends up inducted into the Manta Club, he donuts an Opel logo into the gravel in the Manta Club's lot, and ends up chosen to compete against Phil in a Manta-vs.-GTI race. Having pleaded with Sascha for help, Fred gains use of the six-wheeled Übermanta, dons a foxtail-adorned Manta jacket and becomes "Manni." Phil tricks him into a crash during the race after luring Tina into the car, on a quest to retrieve the negatives of her sexy photoshoot. The Übermanta is halved on its longitudinal axis, but somehow still operational. In the end Phil's goons accidentally blind their leader with a banner and send the GTI into an end-over spiral that culminates in Golf flambé. Manni sets the three-wheeled Manta down, rescues Tina and carries her off to a refinery backdrop where, bruised and battered, he lives his fantasy from the beginning of the film, truly embracing his inner Manni. In the interim we're treated to a lavender Mantamino, a Polizei Manta and best of all, an amphibious Manta hatchback with questionable rear suspension. Seriously, this has to be one of the greatest automotive films of all time. If you're a fan of bucks-down Kraut hoons, that is. And what individual with any self respect isn't?

Sorry I was so long on plot, but for our Bruce-deficient readers, I thought it prudent. And ultimately, it brings me back to the reason I've fixated on both Mantas and El Caminos for much of my life. They may be dorky. They may be mulletmobiles. But they carry an inextricable aura of awesome about them. And they always have. The same cannot be said for the Camaro. Or the Firebird. Or the Mustang. All three of the latter have had fantastically amazing moments. Boss 302. COPO 427. SD455. But Mantas and El Caminos? They're always rad. They just require embracing your inner metalhead. And in some cases, your inner Teutonic mullethead. Might we recommend starting with Restless and Wild? – Davey G. Johnson

"Fast as a Shark" is a weekly electronic broadside aimed at what has been historically right and terribly wrong with the autmotive industry and culture. Somehow, we like to think that when Accept was first starting out, Udo Dirkschneider drove a Manta.

Related:
Mein Gott! Manta, Der Film! [Internal]

To Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, the Gates of the West may have been New York City. Or Saint Louis. Or San Francisco, where they holed up to record overdubs and vocal tracks for Give 'Em Enough Rope with Sandy "More Cowbell" Pearlman. But for many returning soldiers at the end of World War II, the Gates of the West were the breakwaters of San Pedro Bay, at the dangling, southwesterly tip of Los Angeles. Last night, Kasey Dubspeed and I did a runner from the coast up to Cole Coonce's place in Eagle Rock (or "Buzzard Boulder," as Cole perennially refers to it) for his annual Memorial Day barbeque. Cole's backyard is somehow an odd nexus of Los Angeles culture of the city's Golden Age. I spent much of the evening chatting with fashion-and-film-industry people, but at Cole's, one may just as likely end up in a conversation with a Top Fuel driver, a cycling fanatic or a random person who saw the Germs like 48 times and lived to tell the tale. The Second War, as Mike Watt refers to it, gave the world Los Angeles — a diverse, wonderful, maddening, depressing, stunning, sick megalopolis. The GIs who stepped off the boat here after the cessation of hostilities gave us hot rodding.

As I've stated before, hot rods were one of the first things that captured my imagination as a child. T-Buckets were common in Sacramento in those days, and I grew up a mile from what was the largest speed shop in Northern California: Tognotti's Auto World. Now and then, my dad would go up there to pick up a mundane part for our Belvedere or Catalina and I'd stare at the Weiand blowers on the wall and wished he was buying one of those; that it'd stick through the hood of the oxidized Pontiac that his students in the ghetto referred to as "Mr. Johnson's rustproof car."

The girl down the street, my first kiss, had a couple of older brothers who bought, crashed and sold musclecars like it was nothing. Years after they left home, there was still an Edelbrock sticker in her mom's garage window. Spun your SS396 Chevelle into a light pole? No problem. You could pick up a GTO next week for under a grand, and living at home with mom as a teenager, it was no problem. The guys who'd picked them up ten years before had wives. They'd become sensible.

But it was the same thing with the rodders after the war. They came home. Got off the boat in San Pedro. Bought homes in Burbank, Bellflower and Long Beach. Everyone had a used car. And in '47, when automotive production began again, 1930s cars were being offloaded; the new now thing was required immediately. And even with that, Ford was on the verge of coming apart at the seams until '49, when they dropped the archetypical shoebox, one of the most important cars in the company's history. But the mechanics who came home from the airfields in Okinawa, Truk, Tarawa and England gravitated here, flush with skills honed working on Merlins and Wasp Majors, some of the most powerful reciprocating engines ever built. They directly benefited from being up close and personal with the bleeding edge of accelerated powertrain technology, with access to plenty of war-surplus scrap. Drop tanks that hadn't been jettisoned when a Focke-Wulf 190 came into view became raw fodder for the construction of Land Speed Record vehicles.

For a lot of guys who came home, it was something to do. They'd gone out and been part of something impossible; the subjugation of two aggressors who'd had a flaming head start on us. And they pulled it off in less time than we've been in Iraq. Asses kicked; names taken. Is it any wonder that they came back and started wondering how they could apply both their bravado and skills to their cars?

The Big Three actually picked up on this pretty early on, and speed companies like Iskenderian did a lot of backdoor development work for the major automakers. For the small cam-grinders and manifold manufacturers of the world, who were in with the guys on the lakes and the dragstrips, it was a boon, as they got access to the latest engines from Detroit. Detroit, however, got something far more valuable — bona-fide ears to the street that served them well a decade-and-a-half later at the beginning of the musclecar era.

My uncle is in his 70s now, and his days in retirement are spent hanging out, wrenching on a couple of Deuces and a Model A panel. When I saw him over Easter, he said to me, "Dave, do you think the hot rod thing is falling off? Because it seems like it to me."

Very few people into rods are under 30 these days. Inexpensive, serviceable used iron is too scarce, and good-quality aftermarket stuff is too pricey. Hot rods were anachronisms when they first happened. But for guys my age and older, they were always around. Now, they are anachronisms, full-stop. They're not so much a shared cultural touchstone, but rather a touchstone of a bygone era.

That said, limiting the hot-rod spirit to pre-'49 cars seems silly these days. I was talking to Richard Rawlings last week. He picked up an old Auburn and is mechanically restoring it and modifying it, but basically leaving the body as is. He wants to take it to Pebble Beach just to fuck with people's perceptions (knowing full-well it'd never end up on the green at the Concours). I told him that he should put a Ford dash in it. Rawlings got the joke, but I realized that these days, there are fewer and fewer people who would. Installing an Auburn dash in a '30s Ford was a common modification for guys who wanted to add a little class to their rides. It's a funny in-joke between two guys of a dwindling number.

Nevertheless, those soldiers who stepped off the boat in Southern California after the war, or the men and women who came down here seeking work at the plants from El Segundo to San Diego; who picked up an after-school job at a neighborhood machine shop that supplied those plants as a way to buy his first car? We have those guys to thank for the spirit of hot rodding.

I have little use for the blanket-propagandist term, "The Greatest Generation." I absolutely hate it when I get one of those, "If you can speak English, thank a veteran" mass e-mails. It smacks of grotesque, ignorant jingoism. If I'm giving thanks to people for the language that allows me to make my living, I thank the Indo-Europeans, Noah Webster, generations of OED staffers, William Shakespeare, various Anglo-Saxons, Saxon and my mom and dad. Plus, although it's rusty now, I suppose I should thank Otto von Bismarck for spearheading the standardization of the German language; a codification that allowed a spastic Austrian with funny facial hair to rally a nation to a sinister end through propaganda and terror.

However, geopolitics, thumbs in the eyes of those who venerate our current administration and rah-rah Americanism aside, if you're driving a modified car today, thank a veteran. – Davey G. Johnson

"Fast as a Shark" is a weekly electronic broadside aimed at what has been historically right and terribly wrong with the autmotive industry and culture. And yeah, we're pretty sure Udo Dirkschneider never flew an Me 163. Rocket Flea Skyward!

Related:
In Soviet Russia, Pobeda Customizes YOU! [Internal]

It's a fait accompli Aston Martin and Porsche are launching a pair of low-slung, coupe-like sedans — the Rapide and Panamera, respectively — and whispers of a similar BMW peaked on arrival of the company's CS concept. Does that mean a new sub-class of touring sedan will be the latest must-have for sport-minded automakers? Probably. But a four-door Corvette? This week, Automotive News's Rick Kranz makes a case for Chevrolet to join the four-door coupe soiree by limo-izing its signature sports car. Purists would balk, he says, just as Porsche devotees will likely roll their eyes at the Panamera (though they've already had their first fainting spell with the Cayenne). And he even quotes GM's Bob Lutz as making the connection between the Porsche and Corvette brands, though no plans are in the works to follow its lead. What's more, if GM ever did stretch the 'Vette platform, Kranz says, it could be used for a desperately needed Cadillac flagship. But while it's not a completely hairbrained idea, we're going to have to side with the purists on this one. But the Cadillac? That's the one to build. – Mike Spinelli

Related:
Shanghai Surprise: BMW CS Concept; Aston's Future: Rapide Stays in the Pipeline; Spec'ing the 2010 Porsche Panamera [internal]

Alex Roy, Gumball organizer Julie Brangstrup and Michael Ross just before the cars are released at at the airport in Athens.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If that glory can be killed, we are lost.

There should have been something in place. Morocco, 2004, on the running of the fifth Gumball 3000 should have been a warning. A Ferrari 360 ate it in spectacular fashion. The Reyland Escort Cosworth nearly took out Team Polizei. Jerry "Torquenstein" Reynolds survived what looked to be a death blow of an accident when the ass end of his Viper got loose on a North African road. But Gumball organizers Maximillion Cooper and Julie Brangstrup got off easy. Single-car pileups, as it were; no fatalities, and only Reynolds' bandaged head at the finish line to illustrate that anything had gone wrong.

So when an elderly couple pulled out in front of Nick Morley's Porsche in an old Golf, the ultimate result wasn't a surprise to anyone. I talked to Dan Neil not long before I left and he cautioned me, "Be careful. One of these days, somebody is going to get killed on one of these rallies." The worst case scenario, of course, was that said somebody would happen to be a civilian.

Yes, the Gumball is a rally, not a race, but let's step back a moment. It took me twenty-two hours to get from Tirana, Albania to Bratislava, Slovakia. Around an hour and a half was spent in a police station in Montenegro with Team Polizei and a few completely confused real police officers. Another couple of hours passed in Croatia waiting to hitch a ride in a VW Sharan support van after the Dubrovnik checkpoint. If you've laid out around 40k in entry fees, had your car shipped from points unknown to London, been shut down around 50 miles from a checkpoint on the first day of the rally, been held in a Turkish airport bar while your car is diverted to Athens, you're going to be anxious to hit the fucking road.

Part of the problem was with the ALK CoPilot nav system handed out by the organizers. Instead of being held responsible for setting their own routes via their own GPS units or by good old-fashioned paper maps, the CoPilot — a system designed to work with mobile phones — was obscenely unreliable and required a great deal of attention to work with any semblance of accuracy. Nevertheless, Cooper defended the CoPilot's accuracy at the driver's meeting in Albania. Later that day, the CoPilot directed Team Polizei and numerous other drivers to a blocked-off tunnel. Who should come up the road but Maximillion himself? Roy leaned out the passenger side window and commented, "So there's no problem with the CoPilots, Max?" Admittedly, in short order, the under-construction tunnel was unblocked for our convoy, but problems with the units were legion during the rally, and time lost (a Kuwaiti team in a Murcielago en route to Albania ended up routed to within 300 km of Turkey before they realized that everything was wrong and sped back) led to fatigue and fast driving in situations where it may not have been prudent.

Interestingly, I don't believe that Nick Morley was engaging in wanton speed-freakery in Macedonia. I was in the support van called to the scene; according to the CoPilot people, we were the closest support van to the accident. Reports were mixed. Serious inuries. Wait. Gumballers walked away. Oh wait, a death. Rumors started flying. We debated de-stickering the Sharan and hiding Gumball-related articles of clothing. We worried that we'd get into Macedonia and not be able to get out. We sent the van behind us forward as bait, telling them to wait for us at the border while we ate at a rural gas station. We hoped they'd be unable to resist testing the border in their urge to spank us in the unofficial Crewball 3000. Somehow, the knowledge that we weren't going to be left to fester in a Macedonian prison outweighed losing a stage to the other Sharan. I immediately developed a stress-related cold that I've yet to shake.

We passed the accident site somewhere in the night, having missed it as the result of some wrong turn, we suppose. Kemal Sadikoglu of the Turkish Taxi team pulled into the Albanian border checkpoint a half-hour after we did and claimed that they'd held Nick Morley's brother Oliver up once the authorities called out that shit had changed when word came down that Vladimir Cepulyoski had died of a heart attack after Morley and Matthew McConville's TechArt Porsche had T-boned their Volkswagen. Although the information I've been able to glean is muddy, the #19 M6 piloted by a Russian couple pulled up and Morley and McConville hopped in, only to be yanked out at a border checkpoint, while the Russians were allowed to continue.

The next day, Roy, Ross and I were detained for an hour and a half by Montenegrin cops due to the use of the Polizei M5's use of lights and sirens in traffic. They pulled the Russians in simply because they were in a stickered BMW that happened to be stuck in traffic while they were taking us to the police station. I can't tell whether the Russians were dumb or just stereotypically Russian, but I'm guessing that you don't get to own an M6 in Russia by being dumb, although playing ignorant and foreign is an advantage in plenty of Gumball situations. It got us the hell out of Montenegro, after all. I honestly can't say one way or another that the Russians knew what they were involved in. Their English was too bad; yet I don't know if it was on-purpose bad.

What I do know is this. The Macedonian roads on the proscribed route would be hell on cars like that TechArt Porsche. Our diesel Sharan was as fast as just about anything on those byways. And if, as the CoPilot people suggested, we were on the route that ultimately claimed the lives of the Cepulyoskis, I'm willing to believe Cooper's claim that Morley was in the neighborhood of the speed limit. The aforementioned Kuwaiti Murcie had been purchased brand-new for the rally; its crew had been directed up and down a dirt road for over an hour before we showed up. The car was fucked-up, dirty and making unfortunate noises. Macedonia is no place for a purebred supercar, and a TechArt Neun-Elf is essentially that. And beyond that, a Mk II Golf is no match for a modern Porsche in terms of safety systems. It's not particularly surprising that an elderly couple in such a machine would succumb to their injuries, however sad and tragic the circumstances may be. Nevertheless, the oncoming vehicle they pulled out in front of could just have as easily been a truck, and the world media never would have heard about it.

Yet it was a sticker-covered sports car driven by two wealthy Britons. It's news. Because those two Britons were scared shitless of a Macedonian jail, even if it was the elderly couple who pulled out of them when the Porsche had the right-of-way, it's not hard to understand why Morley and McConville ended up running. In such an accident in the United States or the UK, one generally knows what to expect. People have posited that the guys deserve to die in prison for running. On the other hand, I'd ask our readers, if they thought they had a chance to get out when everything turned to shit and they faced rotting in a second-world jail, if they might not attempt to get away as well. I'm not calling their runner the right decision, but I'm not damning them for it either, given that from what I've been able to piece together, it apparently wasn't their first instinct.

We got into Tirana at 4am. I walked into the hotel and found Herr Roy at the hotel bar. It had been a brutal day for everyone. I slept on a hardwood floor with a bathrobe for a mattress and woke up three hours later. Max proclaimed at the drivers' meeting that there a ton of rumors flying around Gumball and urged us not to talk to the press; to let the Gumball PR machine handle things.

Not long afterward, at 7am EDT on Thursday, May 3rd, Team Polizei's support guru J.F. Musial called the Macedonian embassy in London and confirmed that Cepulyoski was dead. That's noon in London. 1 or 2pm in Eastern Europe. If some 21-year-old college student in Hoboken, New Jersey could verify that the accident had resulted in a fatality via government channels, one would think that the rally organizer would certainly know well beforehand. Yet the morning briefing in Tirana was essentially a plea to keep a "first rule of Gumball, don't talk about Gumball" code of omerta in place with not even a slight whiff of death's maddening stank.

Just past Dubrovnik, Team Polizei tendered their resignation from the rally. On the road to Split, in a Sharan with a number of green Gumball volunteers in their early twenties headed by Kitty Cooper, Max's younger sister (who, by the way is a total sweetheart) we ran into a number of Gumballers on the side of a suburban road. We chucked the people-carrier halfway up a driveway and hoofed it back to the huddled crew. Cooper's flat-black vinyl-wrapped XJ220 sat two driveways behind us. For the first time I'd seen, Max wasn't wearing his sunglasses. He seemed a small, tired confused man. He laid out to the crew what I'd set down an hour earlier from my experience in the support van the day before. He asked me to remove the posts from "that website." Kitty played dumb. But she knew. She'd known.

Of course she'd known, as one of Maximillion's own. The other crew boys, who'd signed up as volunteers as a way to collect foreign poontang and see exotic cars were shocked and pissed that they hadn't been informed. They were crew, in their minds. The drivers were trying to piece together what'd gone down from reports from those who'd happened on the scene, the news media reports and word from drivers close to the Morleys. Kemal recalled Oliver's face going sheet-white when the authorities said that Vladimir was dead and that Nick and Matthew needed to stick around. Bear in mind that Oliver Morley is an irrepressible individual who generally arouses the ire of anyone he decides he doesn't like.

At the morning-after press conference in Tirana, Max announced that we were indeed going to Germany; that there would be a police escort to Berlin and to get back to the UK, every team would be provided with safe-passage papers for every German state on the route. For most drivers, that fell apart somewhere in Croatia. The word had gotten to the mainstream media. Although the polizei roadblock outside Hahn was apparently the work of one overzealous policeman, it was obvious at that point that the whole mess would be spun in his favor, despite the last few days of work the Gumball staff had put into getting everything re-sorted. Sadly, though, more effort had gone into that than informing the drivers and crews of the accident, its aftermath and Morley and McConville's attempt to escape Macedonia.

A tad more Steinbeck: "Christ, I wish they hadn't killed off all the grizzly bears. In eighteen-eighty, my grandfather killed one up near Pleyto weighed eighteen-hundred pounds." But what if? What if the grizzlies set themselves up to be killed by doing the only thing they knew how to do? And if Gumball 3000 is the eighteen-hundred-pound grizzly of open-road rallies, it stands to reason that Max and Julie — only knowing how to be Max and Julie because they'd gotten by on being Max and Julie for years — didn't blink in the face of the small man with the rifle, because how could he possibly hurt them? How did it all come undone? Simple. They'd nearly bled out before they realized that the wound was serious. Thanks for listening. We'll see you again Wednesday. – Davey G. Johnson

"Fast as a Shark" is a weekly electronic broadside aimed at what has been historically right and terribly wrong with the autmotive industry and culture. And yes, Johnson's iPod is engraved with an Accept reference.

Related:
More Gumball 3000; Fast as a Shark: Living on Chinese Rocks [Internal]

As some of you know, the NHTSA has mandated that all new cars sold in 2012 have stability control as standard equipment. And trust us, during the Mayan apocalypse, you're going to need it. However, it turns out that stability control is just the beginning. Newer regulations will begin mandating technology like always-on adaptive cruise control. Or cars that steer for you in order to prevent a collision. The NHTSA's current leader, Nicole Nason, explains "automakers may have a hard time selling cars that automatically detect a dangerous situation and override the driver's commands." They may have a hard time? Gee, you think? The future looks bleak, my pistonhead brothers and sisters. Remember what O'Brian said to Winston towards the end of 1984, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever." Or in this case, a boot stamping on your brake pedal - forever. – Jonny Lieberman

Giving Up Control [autoweek.com]

Related:
Safest Cars: Insurance Institute's Stability Control Requirement Hurts US Automakers' Safety Scores [Internal]

I can't in truth call my Shanghai trip a comedy of errors, although there were errors, one of which resulted in my flying home first class. And while some of the Engrish I encountered was laugh-out-loud gut-busting. I can't quite refer to it as a tragedy, either. What it was, however, was a slightly nebulous, inchoate paradigm-fucker of a time/history/distance shift.

Pudong, the area of Shanghai where Audi put us up, didn't exist in any way, shape or form resembling what it is now a mere fifteen years ago. The government laid a bunch of nightsoil in anticipation of a flood of foreign capital and a thousand skyscrapers bloomed. We joked after Chairman Li's speech in Detroit that the Changfeng press conference was an example of the Great Leap Sideways. Having seen Shanghai, I'm not so sure.

For most of us, the Chinese auto market seems far-off and regrettably goofball. And it is that. It's also the second largest in the world. Bear in mind, the first mass-produced Chinese car debuted in 1958; Henry Ford had over half a century on it, having founded FoMoCo a mere two years after the quelling of the Boxer Rebellion. Today? The market ranges from double-dutied $500k Rollers to $3,000 domestic copies of outdated Suzuki Altos. The Jin Mao Building is the fifth-highest in the world, yet won't-take-no-for-an-answer hustlers hang just outside attempt to pawn genuine faux Rolexes off on you.

Leaving Shanghai, fellow autojourno Jon Guzik and I were strolling through Shanghai Pudong airport. Guzik had picked up a faux Louis Vuitton bag the day before and was using at as a carry-on. Then the strap snapped.

The problem is, that's the reality of much of China — the reality that springs to mind when we're not thinking of Mao posters, little red books, subpar working conditions or the death vans for inveterate cuties. But the reality of the Chinese auto industry is that there will be a day — and that day is rapidly approaching — that the strap won't break. Brace yourselves. Shanghai '07 may well stand as the first drops of a watershed that could flush the colon of the auto industry to the point that we'll no longer recognize it. It wasn't in the cars we saw. It was in the actions; the attitudes. The propaganda was at times laughable, but the grasp on what it takes to compete primarily has to do with Western tastes in marketing. No American shopping for a heavy-duty truck will want to buy "The Floating Aerodrome on Land," but cut-rate goods built to a solid standard are coming — while not as luxe as the A8L we rode in, the Chinese-built A6L's interior panel fit was actually better.

The show may have been somewhat provincial and the air-conditioning non-existent; English-language press kits may have been few and far between; the models may have been beautiful but ill-trained, but there was an undeniable import inherent in the event that I didn't see in Paris, Detroit or New York. Only Los Angeles came close, although it'll be a few more years before it truly regains its footing. Nevertheless, LA and Shanghai are shifting while the others are riding the status quo so cluelessly and intently that they may as well have had the In The Army Now album cranking full-bore for the length of the exhibitions.

A Japanese automaker overtook GM for the first time in first-quarter sales; Japan is an aging population with less and less of a workforce; China is growing exponentially, geometrically, algebraically, ballistically and without regard for your interpretation of integers. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere may be seven decades overdue, but it is coming. And don't be surprised if in 50 years, the big players end in "-eng" rather than "-a."

Thanks for listening. We'll see you next Wednesday. – Davey G. Johnson

"Fast as a Shark" is a weekly electronic broadside aimed at what has been historically right and terribly wrong with the autmotive industry and culture. And yes, a pretty girl once kissed us for singing an Accept song at karaoke.