Tom Albrecht (front) and J.F. Musial, hosts of Thrill of the Road.
I always felt at home when we entered Colorado, where the plains became arid, the rabbit bush prolific. (Occasionally we would take "the southern route," heading into the harsh rocks of northern Texas or New Mexico.) Our search was for elusive river…
The Other Side of the Wind: The Trials of a Transcontinental Record
Ahhh, the French champagne has always been celebrated for its excellence! Alex Roy doused with bubbly upon successful breaking of the transcontinental record.
Orson Welles once spoke of "the confidence of ignorance" in terms of the beginning of both his stage and screen careers. Henry Rollins once remarked that he…
Fifty Years of Kerouac's "On The Road"
Fourteen years before the United States mandated exit numbers on Dwight Eisenhower's brainchild of a road system, a Lowell, Mass native of French-Canadian extraction named Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac published a novel that would change countless lives; a mash note to an already-dead America living under the weight of…
Rolling Nirvana
Imperfect perfection as a child is rarely equaled as an adult. Why do we remember games of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" more fondly than some random hookup with a hottie picked up in a bar? Adult perfection is just more complicated. Spouses, jobs, locales, children of our own that we want to stuff so…
I Voted No on the 250 GTO
While the Loverman and I agree on a great many things and have quite possibly slept with too many of the same women (all before we knew each other), now and then there is a great schism. DAF vs. FAF, Evo vs. WRX. Killdozer vs. Dave Matthews. Okay, so the last one was a complete and utter lie. But the 250 GTO
The Toyota Prius — Is it the Ronnie James Déesse?
When I was twenty, I studied in Germany. Bonn, to be exact. I had a friend there named Kai who loved techno and had just received his first car, some sort of Citroën hatchback. It was red, and he hoped someday to buy an Audi with an S in front of its numeral. But at that point, he had what we all ended up calling Kai's …
Return To Us Our Manta! It Shall Save GM!
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…
The Way It Hits You, Or a Three-Way Tie For First
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…
Manta - der Film, Total Geil!
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…
Standing at the Gates of the West: So-Cal Hot Rodding and the War
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…
