I've never really been much of a car guy. I know it's not something that, as Dr Evil said, one dude should say to another dude... but it's true. I (sort of) know what torque is, and I (more or less) know where to locate the engine, but drive any distance beyond that and I'm lost.
But I still know a cool car from a lemon. And - Prius-driving petrol-pumpers be damned! - I still love those gas-guzzlin' big bangers from days of yore. I wish, wish, I could've lived in the lead-paint world of the old Pontiac Bonneville, before some idiot decided that we should all drive bollocksy, cardboard-cutout, run-of-the-mill, mass-produced plastic autos like the Citi Golf or the Toyota Tazz. Give me a 5-litre engine and an impossible fuel bill over these new 1300 runabouts any day.
PJ O'Rourke - who's one of my favourite writers and should be one of yours - agrees. And with General Motors about to drive itself off a cliff, he's written a piece for the Wall Street Journal about the American love affair with cars. It's less of a newspaper article and more of a love letter:
"Thus cars usurped the place of horses in our hearts. Once we’d caught a glimpse of a well-turned Goodyear, checked out the curves of the bodywork and gaped at that swell pair of headlights, well, the old gray mare was not what she used to be. We embarked upon life in the fast lane with our new paramour. It was a great love story of man and machine. The road to the future was paved with bliss."
It's enough to make even an automotive ignoramus like me cry.
