motorchrome

Ford Motor Company recently proposed a policy that dictates that employees working at the Dearborn facility who do not drive a Ford vehicle will not be allowed to park in the main employee parking lot. Employees can park any Ford-family car in the lot - so those union clowns can park their Aston Martins and Jags up close and personal. Anyone else better bring snow boots, because they will be parking a half-mile away in a secondary lot.

I applaud this move. If you work for Ford, you should have enough pride and confidence in the product you are supporting to own it. What kind of message does it send if someone works for Ford and drives a Honda. Ok - maybe if you did not factor in the discount that employees get, you could make a convincing argument that Honda makes a better car. That does not matter in my eyes. If the employees are not supportive of the company they work for... well, I think they are getting off easy with an extra exercise requirement.

I have been toying with the idea of getting rid of my car. My GS 300 has 151k miles on it, and I am starting to think it will not have much value or will be hard to sell as the mileage gets high. Then, the other day when I was driving back from the Washington D.C. Navy Yard, a similar vintage GS as mine drove past me. This thing had a gigantic spoiler on the back, a 'body kit' that appeared to be hand-painted with the cheapest brush available from Home Depot, a couple mobile phone sytle antennae on the rear window, and some serious 'dubs. It also had the requisite TV screens in the rear headrests. I am not sure who these are for. A movie (maybe Scarface) was playing - but the car only had a driver. Upon further research on AutoTrader, I came to the conclusion that my car might always have some bling-appeal for the $100 Hood-rats that could care less about the mileage - just as long as they can fit 20" rims on it and it was featured in a rap video (for the uninitiated, reference was made to the GS3 in the 1994 Notorious B.I.G. album, Ready to Die). Here is another pic of a local GS... it is absolutely disgusting what some people can do to ruin a classy car.

I guess it is thing that American drivers are just not able to understand. Fog lights are designed to increase visibility during fog and/or other inclement weather. There are two flavors of fog lights - front and rear. The front ones are for you, the drivers, to use to better pilot your sled. The rear fog light(s) are designed to increase the distance that a following driver will be able to see your car in the nasty stuff. You know - so as not to unexpectedly plow through the back of your car at high speed. Rear fog lights are fairly rare and seem to be a European tradition. To my knowledge, the only manufacturers to equip U.S. bound cars with rear fog lights are Volvo, Audi, and Mercedes Benz. Some cars have two in the rear, while others have one. If the car has only one light, it is situated on the passing side of the car.

As I drove home the other [crystal clear] night behind some fool in a A4 1.8T, I noticed that he had ALL fog lights blazin'. I guess, with all those lights on, he was going for that "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" look or something. I am not sure. I did not have too much time to get into his head because the HAL-like beam that was shooting out of the rear of his car was searing my retina. To accomplish the mission stated above, rear fog lights are basically pointed straight out. They are much brighter than even brake lights. This is where the searing comes in.

I will admit that front fog lights add an air of sportiness and are generally non-offensive, but this is not the case with the rear lights. I wonder why people would do this. Is it to irritate people? Maybe people just do not understand what they are for. Surely you don't read your owner's manuals. Maybe you had a seizure in your car and just started mashing buttons? Whatever the reason, please, for those of us driving behind your uber-cool ride - turn your fog lights off!

Mini Cooper has just come out with a pretty edgey ad-campaign featuring a fetching leather-clad dominatrix explaining how the the mini will whip icey road and how the rubber (tires) create pleasurable friction. I just had to shut my office door for about ten minutes.

You can click is hard as you like, she says, but everytime you enter the site you are given a "safe word". Mine was anit-lock. Oh my! Check it out at Mini.ca.

Some may scoff at clever ads, saying that no one buys a car because of the advertising. While I would not buy a POS, I would at least pay attention to the ad. VW, both recently and long ago, had great ads. So does Mini. If those ads generate buzz, then they are succeding.

I found out about this campaign through Autoblog, another great automovive blog. Check them out.

I really hate it when that happens. What do you think hurts worse - his ego or his wallet? I guess it is better to take your Lamborghini airborn through a fence than to die.

Check out more no-talent ass clowns on Wrecked Exotics.

Is this the '60s muscle car renaissance? While Pontiac has had tepid response to its Nuevo GTO, Ford has hit one out of the park with its redesigned Mustang - solid rear axel and all. Looking to cash in on the stompin' V8 retro-glory, both Daimler-Chrysler and the General have introduced concepts of their own: enter the Dodge Challenger and Chevrolet Camaro. The Camaro nameplate is undoubtedly the more illustrious of the two new potential contenders, but GM has had an on-again/off-again commitment to developing a new RWD architecture for US consumption. Who knows if and when a new Camaro could materialize? The Dodge, on the other hand, is far more likely as it is built on the exiting LX platform (think 300, Magnum, Charger) and, well, the boys over at Daimler-Chrysler have a history of following through with production cars that are very close to the concepts. Plymouth Prowler anyone? Then again, the Challenger was never a wave-maker on the musclecar scene. While the fist couple years were beasts, the car arrived too late in the game and was quickly strangled by mounting emissions requirements. Few were sold, which is what leads to the stratospheric auction prices for Hemi Challengers/Barracudas.

I have a more basic question, though. Is there room for all these choices? While the boys from Michigan want to relive their golden years, I fear that there is an element that needs to be considered here. Once upon a time, a Mustang coupe was the 'it' car for a young (maybe urban, maybe not) professional, and Americans bought American cars. Now, I can tell you as much as I want that I am only interested in the car itself and not the image, but around my neck of the consulting-woods, "Camaro" is not necessarily the eye-on-the-corner-office car I would choose. My slower cousin is wanted for stealing a Camaro if that tells you anything. Will there be a built-in Skoal holder? If I had to choose, I am going jet-black Challenger all the way - but I am not sure I would put this above, say, a BMW 3 Series or Infiniti G35. They are different cars for sure. They have different images too. It is most certainly a different time. Can these muscle coupes make American cars 'cool' again?

I want to be positive. Seriously. I really do. I have to admit, though, that I will [ocassionally] use this blog as a venue for my ranting. I do not want to start off that way, but there is something I have to set straight right now.

The acronym 'RPM' means 'Revolutions Per Minute'. Take a minute to notice that the plural is already built into that first word there. Take two minutes if you like. This is NOT up for debate.



I have seen many so-called 'enthusiasts' spout about this and that, and talk about their running at X 1000 RPMs. If you are tracking along so far, you would assume that this means 'Revolutions Per Minutes'. Good grief Charlie Brown. I pity the fool who has to do that calculation. How many revolutions and how many minutes are we dealing with? I personally like to cruise at about 6,000 RPMs in my car. Sound high, you say? Not at all. That is only 3,000 revolutions every two minutes. If you have crazy math skills (as opposed to nun-chuck skills or computer hacking skills) you will see that there are too many variables.

The saddest part of all of this is that I see "professional" writers make this mistake. We are not talking about Better Homes & Gardens either. The chief editor over at Sports Car International, Gustafson if I remember correctly, has put this down in print himelf. How embarassing for him.

To recap, there is only one way to discuss engine speed - and that is by RPM.

When I was very young, my father tried to teach me how to say the word "motorcycle". We did this phonetically - he would instruct me to say "motor" and then "cycle", and I would respond in kind with "motor" and "cycle". When asked to put them together, however, I would respond with only one non-sensical word - "motorchrome!". "MOTORCHROME, MOTORCHROME, MOTORCHROME !!!". We would start over and over, with familiar results each time unit the dance with anger ended. Was this a game meant only to frustrate my father? The world may never know.