Apparently, Keef’s old Dino is on the market:
There’s no way I’d ever pay over $400 grand for a Dino — even if it is the car of my dreams — and especially not if it’s been home to Keef’s hairy ass. (Because you just know he drove it whilst naked, at least once.)
Every so often one will come across a question to which the answer is self-evident, but someone’s going to ask it anyway. Here’s an example:
1. “When you find a rusted-out old kitchen knife, why not just toss it out and buy a shiny new one from Williams-Sonoma?”
— because nothing looks as fine as a well-restored blade, not just in appearance, but in its intrinsic history. Need proof? See here, where some guy with mad skillz goes after an old cleaver.
Here’s another one:
2. “Why would someone spend $170,000 on a replica of an old car?”
— because as long as the replica has been manufactured by engineers with all respect for quality as well as heritage, it’s worth it, and not the least because the originals require not just stupid money, but insanely-stupid money available only to Russian oligarchs, software company founders and parvenus like Jeff Bezos (also criminals, some overlap with the aforementioned).
(watch the second video at the link…)
Here’s another question of this ilk (but by no means the final one):
3. “Why is The Repair Shop such a popular TV show? All they do is restore old junk.”
…it’s not “junk”, it’s heritage, history, treasured artifacts and sentimental objects. To watch Steve Fletcher fixing an old clock, Will Kirk restoring an old piece of furniture or even those two old pink-haired biddies bringing wrecked toy dolls and teddy bears back to life is to see and feel the joy of a miniature triumph of life over death. If you are not moved by that, you are a foul, crass and cynical human being.
The overall answer to all the above questions can be summed up in one word:
Craftsmanship.
It’s a rare talent (and becoming rarer still when so many people are seduced by cheap, fragile and nasty knock-offs from China or Eastern Europe), and if we hold on to no other custom, craftsmanship is worth everything. To quote Oscar Wilde’s words from Lady Windermere’s Fan :
Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.
I know I’m always teetering dangerously close to the latter, but all I can say is: guilty as charged. Especially where beauty and craftsmanship are involved.
…in which Iain Tyrrell falls in love with the Iso Grifo (and who wouldn’t?). American V8 engine coupled with Italian Giugiaro styling…
It’s not really my cup of tea — too bulky — but watching the normally-imperturbable Iain lose his heart (during the first time he’s ever driven an Iso) is absolutely worth the price of admission.
And for the well-heeled, here are your options.
This is not one of those rants that “the world’s getting too damn complicated” (although it is, in my opinion). However, allow me to draw your attention to a couple of videos that illustrate my point, which is that simplicity does not mean “shoddy” or “primitive”, or anything like that.
Here’s the first video, about the wonderful Vespa scooter/moped and the men who created it.
Towards the end of the video, the narrator draws the very apt comparison between the Vespa and the Mini, which Jay Leno lovingly describes, in his inimitable manner.
And is there place in the modern world for simplicity, as Richard Hammond describes by the experience of driving the Mazda MX-5 Miata*? Of course there is.
*Why, I wonder parenthetically, did Mazda go with such a long mouthful of a name for so simple a car? “Miata” would have been fine; “MX-5” likewise, even if less evocative, so why concatenate all those descriptive terms into a string that only boring motoring journos will use anyway?
Note too that I’m talking of simplicity of use, i.e. as experienced by the end user. A bolt-action rifle is far simpler a piece of engineering than its semi- or full-auto counterpart, but even I — a die-hard boltie fan — will admit that an M1 Carbine is far easier to use than a Mauser K98k: load it up, pull back the bolt, and it’s trigger time, compared to load, work bolt, pull trigger, work bolt, pull trigger etc.
Or, to wrench this thesis back on topic, it is undeniably simpler to drive a car with an automatic transmission than one which requires rowing through a manual gearbox, as long as one prefers steering over actual driving. And if one is doing the daily morning commute to the office in stop-start traffic then yes, it’s a lot easier with an automatic.
Inside each of us, though, is a fundamental need not to have to tax our intellect or bodies to perform mundane tasks, although I think that choosing complexity over simplicity is a fundamental and personal matter of wanting to be in control of mechanical devices. Nobody would be buying bolt-action rifles or cars with stick shifts otherwise, given the facility of the alternative.
Paradoxically too, as the world becomes more complicated and more complex, there is a persistent urge amongst people to “simplify” their lives, to cut back on both material possession and activities. I think that’s a good thing, especially as one gets older. When parents become empty-nesters, the hassle of maintaining a large house often turns into a desire to move to something more fitting [sic] to the altered circumstances — not just for cost reasons, but once again, for a life of fewer complications.
Nothing wrong with that. I’d never contemplate buying a Vespa, of course, because I don’t live in a built-up urban area and I don’t have a death wish. And I already possess a little Fiat 500 with a stick shift, so if push came to shove I’d be perfectly happy to use that as my only means of transport (I “borrow” it from New Wife every chance I get).
But I’d still rather shoot a bolt-action rifle than a semi-auto (other than in times of errr urban unrest, when the old AK or SKS would obviously be preferable), and I’ve already expressed my preference for revolvers over pistols, recreationally speaking.
Just a simple soul, that’s me — but it’s a simplicity by choice rather than by governmental edict.
I told you all that so I could tell you this.
Allow me to introduce yet another rancid bitch (in the Hillary Clinton mold) who wants to tell us how to live our lives.
President Joe Biden’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Friday unveiled new fuel efficiency standards, which acting administrator Ann Carlson said will “reduce harmful emissions.” Carlson has long stressed the need to force Americans to live climate-friendly lives. As an environmental academic at UCLA, for example, Carlson published a 2007 piece titled, “Only by Requiring Lifestyle Changes,” which argued that people would not reduce their energy consumption “voluntarily.” As a result, Carlson wrote, the U.S. government must “induce behavioral change” by implementing policies that “make the bad behavior more expensive.”
In a similar 2009 blog post titled, “Save Us From Ourselves,” Carlson called on Americans to “use less electricity, take more public transportation, consume less, live more simply and so on” to fight climate change. Carlson argued that most people “could benefit from a simpler life” but will not “engage in dramatic behavioral change unless forced,” highlighting the need for government intervention. “Governments and markets need to take steps to make us pay for the full costs of the behaviors in which we engage … they need to limit our infrastructure choices to energy efficient ones,” the Biden administration official wrote. “In other words, we need to be saved from ourselves.”
My immediate thought is to have this foul watermelon bitch dragged from her “temporary” office and hanged from the nearest lamp post, but of course that’s never going to happen.
Alternatively, Congress could reduce the NHTSA’s budget by fining the agency per day the equivalent of her annual salary as long as she remains as the “caretaker” administrator — although that’s about as likely to happen as my first suggestion.
What, I ask, is the point of not confirming someone for a position when they can simply act as a “temporary” head of an agency and de facto determine policy and regulation in the absence of de jure? Or did I miss something here?
Anyway, I’m so sick of all this “coercion” talk emanating from the mouthpieces of our beloved government. Forced to wear masks, forced to stop using gasoline-powered engines, forced to quit using incandescent light bulbs, and forced to submit to any number of horrible and senseless rules and regulations that would make Gulliver in Lilliput look like a free man by comparison.
Most of all, I’m really fucking sick of being forced to pay taxes which fund the salaries of all these petty gauleiters.
All appearances to the contrary, I’m actually a very patient and tolerant man, but I have to tell you that my patience and tolerance are wearing very, very thin.
And I bet I’m not the only one.
So much for electric cars, then:
Is the electric car really as green as it appears?
Executive summary: no. Not even close. Here’s the true cost of manufacture (even granting ad arguendo that CO2 is all that bad for us):
And here’s the pesky particulate pollution comparison (see article for explanation):
So, as we all knew, the risible NetZero goal is a waste of fucking time (the true executive summary).
But, as Sage Commenter Butch put it yesterday:
“The objective is not to get us all into ‘cleaner’ EVs. The objective is to deprive us of personal transportation and freedom of movement.”
What he said.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to drooling over Kim’s Lotto Dream Car, the 2002 BMW Z8 with manual transmission — which on a good day gets 15mpg from its 5-liter V8 gasoline-powered internal combustion engine:
…and that only if you don’t floor the gas pedal. [exit, drooling]
We’ve done the Mille Miglia before, so why not the Tour de France?
I know, the TdF is a bicycle race, but that’s an exercise for young men, fitness freaks and fools [some redundancy]. Also for soldiers of foreign extraction:
…but let’s not go there.
This time, we’re going to do the thing in cars.
Now annoyingly, the course changes every year (unlike the Mille Miglia) because it’s organized by Frenchmen, but let’s just go with the one below (don’t know the year, maybe 2008):
You’re going to start in Brest on the west coast, take a huge loop around the country, and then up to Paris for the finish. Assume the dotted lines will be roads.
Now the fun part: I’m going to divide it into three stages, and you must use a different car for each stage. And you can only use cars made in Europe (including the U.K.). Also, no GPS devices or software like Google Maps are allowed: paper maps only.
Stage 1 will be the road from Brest to Le Creusot. It’s largely flat, some rolling hills but nothing that a car of any vintage couldn’t handle. So: nothing made after 1960.
Stage 2 will be mountains, mountains and still more mountains, from Le Creusot along the Alps, thence above the Midi coast to the Pyrenees, ending in Mourenx near the Atlantic coastline. (I’ve done a tiny part of the lower stage along the Midi, and it’s both beautiful and taxing.) Speed, therefore, is not a premium, but roadholding most definitely is. As for the car: anything made between 1960 and 1990.
Stage 3 is from Mourenx to Paris — a flat-out dash over flat land along mostly straight roads which can be taken at any speed. When you get to Paris, you’ll have a celebratory dinner at one of Paris’s finest restaurants. The car: 1990 until today. (Indulge yourself, if you want, in a modern dream car, something that would look good as you show up at the George V or Ritz hotels.)
There are a couple of caveats: the TdF does not do highways or even wide roads. They are narrow, sometimes run through small towns (much like the MM), and the road signs can be baffling — sometimes, U-turns may be necessary. It’s an adventure, and more often than not, the shortest way is not necessarily the prettiest.
Finally, you’ll probably want a French companion, for translation etc. purposes. A different one for each stage, so as not to get sick of their nonsense.
I’ll start the ball rolling with my choices: