Letters & Words
A journey of a thousand automotive reviews begins with a single letter. In this case, that letter is A. See previous sentence.
I’m not kidding. People who know me will inform you that I’m crazy about the automobile, yet I’ve been scared senseless to write about them. I’ve written about Assurbanipal, bumblees, Cro Magnon Man, dinosaurs, ee cummings, the Federalist Papers, and so on down the alphabet, but never found the time or courage to expunge upon something so vastly complicated as your family car.
What is there to think about? Well, there’s the soft crackle of rubber on gravel when you turn the steering wheel in a parking lot. There’s the On-Star button. There’s the key location on Saabs, in-between the front seats instead of behind the steering wheel, set there so that your keys won’t puncture your legs during a crash. There’s the new generation of GM’s big trucks, which is so vastly superior to the last generation that you’d never believe the same company made them. There’s Colin Chapman’s vision of Lotus; instead of subtracting important features he felt he was “adding lightness”, a principle that brought the tiny carmaker in Hethel, England from its halcyon days of Formula 1 to the knife-edged trackday monsters of today, and maybe even to the lightweight fuel-sipping cars of the future.
This is an exciting time for me, you see, because the global automotive business is groaning and cracking at its foundation. Britain’s car manufacturing industry, once vast and proud, is now barely populated by tiny handcrafters like the previously-mentioned Lotus. New automakers spew forth from China and India like rising magma. They splatter and scorch whatever they touch in the “old” auto industry, itself barely cooled after 100 years, consisting of the household names you know and love like Ford, GM, Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, Nissan and Toyota.
The problem? In this half-caf, double-mocha, part-skim latte age, Americans don’t like to think about their cars, the companies that produce them or what goes into them. There is no reason to care. Our cars are throw-away consumer items. We just want whatever’s good.
The problem, part two: BS about cars is plentiful, and facts are few. Talk to the guys at the automotive section of the newsstand sometime.
I’m afraid that I won’t have an audience.
It’s my responsibility to ensure that I’m wrong about that.
Posted by David S. on August 5, 2007
Filed Under personal, history, first post | 5 Comments | 
