Do cars have souls?

This happens to me a lot. Just last week I was in San Francisco, walking along Market Street in the twilight hours of the evening, when from behind me I hear the unmistakeable burble of a V8 barely at idle. As I turned and before my eyes could reach the source of the sound, I knew what I was about to see.

And it was a 1967 Pontiac GTO in Candy Apple Red with the optional Ram Air scoop on the hood that marked this example as the Hi-Output 360HP version with the 400 Cu in. engine. Now that's 6.5 litres of displacement, to you metrically inclined folks, and that engine powered this heavy car from standstill to 60mph in 6.6 secs. All you VW Golf GTi drivers may not think this is much.

But remember, this was a car made 40 years ago. Even the exotics from Europe had trouble matching that performance back in the day. "The Goat" as the GTO was known in its day had Soul. The new 2007 GTO which is a rebadged Holden Monaro, while being wickedly powerful at 400HP does most emphatically not have Soul.

We don't need to go into how the Ford GT40 humbled Ferrari in the Le Mans 24 hour race in the 60s, but the GT40 had soul too. Not A soul perhaps, but certainly Soul. The current Ford GT while being quite attractive is decidedly derivative. The result of an intellectually bankrupt company raiding its history to breathe new life into its waning fortunes. No Soul.

Lest you think I am asserting that only powerful and fast cars have Soul, I would suggest to you that the original Mini designed by Alec Issigonis had Soul. The original VW Beetle had Soul. Neither of them were powerful. They were both built as popular plebian transport and a testament to their Soul-fulness is the fact that they were both built for over 30 years with only marginal changes and were beloved of millions.

The Citroen 2CV had Soul. Even though it had the most awful suspension and seats made of canvas stretched over pipe sections. The large Citroen DS had soul. Not least because the French called it the Goddess. (Diesse is Goddess in French, get it?). The current crop of Citroens are just crap French cars - including the C5.

And this is not just nostalgic melancholy about old cars. The new Aston Martin DB9 has great heaping ladlefulls of Soul. The current Mini has Soul. The Ferrari F430 has tons of it. The Enzo is riddled with it. The Porsche Carrera GT is Soul personified. But the Maserati Quattroporte has none.

The Lamborghini Miura had Soul. The brutally fast Diablo didn't. The angular Gallardo does.
The Morris Minor had Soul. The soporific Marina didn't.
The Porsche 911 in all its incarnations has had and always will have Soul. The Cayenne doesn't and never will.
The BMW 2002Ti had Soul. The 850 had Soul. All M3s have Soul. The current 5 Series is completely bereft of anything approaching Soul. The old (80s) 635 CSi had Soul. The new 645 with its swollen rump has none.

I could go on forever, but you get the point. Soul is that inexplicable, ineffable essence of the car that's either there or it isn't. And there's no point getting all meta-physical about it.You either feel it or you don't.

So the next time you're out and about see if you feel cars with Soul. Write me about what you felt.

I warn you, I will strangle with my bare hands anyone that suggests that the Pontiac Aztec has Soul.

The Pious Prius Posse

Are you one of those people who sneers at anyone neaderthal enough to drive an SUV, or that current favorite of the gangsta rapper - the Hummer H2? Do you feel oh-so ecologically correct driving your Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid because you feel you're doing your bit to rid the world of harmful greenhouse gases and help the country kick the 'imported oil habit'?

Not so fast. While the Prius is the darling of the hollywood greenies from Larry David to Cameron Diaz, they may well be doing more harm to the environment than Arnold Schwarzenegger in his Hummer. Do I hear sharp intakes of breath and cries of "Heresy"?

Consider these facts:

1. All hybrid engines require batteries. Big honking ones that can store the energy required to power the car when it is on the electric cycle. These batteries are expensive. About $6800 for a Prius battery. So much so, that a hybrid car costs about $5,000 more than its conventially powered equivalent. Even with the current price of oil and given the average mileage driven by most people it would take more than 15 years for anyone to recoup the additional cost of the hybrid.
(Myth #1: Hybrids are cheaper to run: Exploded)

2. The average life expectancy of a battery such as the ones used in hybrid cars is 6 to 8 years. Less in colder climates. Nobody has yet figured out an environmentally friendly way to dispose of these batteries when they're dead. Since hybrids caught the attention of the eco-knuckleheads only about a couple of years ago, driving up production and sales, we are yet to come to the point when loads of hybrid cars are at the age where they need new batteries. That day is not far away, and when it comes - and come it will - we can expect to see tons of discarded hybrid batteries in our landfills leeching lead and acid into the earth.
(Myth #2: Hybrids are kinder to the earth: Exploded)

3. If hybrids get excellent gas mileage, it is because the gasoline powered internal combustion engine provides only part of the power. The battery-powered electric motor provides the rest. How are these batteries charged in the first place? By plugging them into a battery charger that is connected to the power grid. The hybrid battery requires a lot more energy to charge it since it's used to run the car, not just start it. So where's all this power coming from anyway? From power plants, which in the US are mostly fuelled by coal! Yes, that horrible black rock they dig out of the ground in West Virginia and other places. Places where people who dig the stuff out of the ground die because they get trapped underground. Yes the black stuff that when burned gives off carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and lots of sooty unburnt hydrocarbons in the from of thick black smoke. Not very pretty. Just because the smoke isn't coming out of your exhaust doesn't mean that an equivalent or greater amount of smoke isn't coming out of the smokestack of a power station that is generating the power to charge the battery in your hybrid.
(Myth # 3: Hybrids pollute less than gasoline powered engines: Exploded)

So what's a body to do? Here's my prescription: If you like cars and driving, buy the best car your money will get you, and then enjoy driving it. As for Larry David and Cameron Diaz, they both have enough money to go live in a bubble on the moon (maybe even together), when the earth becomes uninhabitable from their batteries.

Porsches and the art of going ack basswards

Let me state at the outset that I love Porsches. I love them so much that I have two 1/18th scale models (one of 996 S - the last of the aircooled 991s in the slightly tweaked S configuration, and one of the early Boxter before the Boxter S came out) which I keep close at hand to aid in my day-dreaming at work. I would have at least one of the full scale items were it not for the fact that my desires and aspirations far outstrip my financial wherewithall. Putting a kid through a good liberal arts education and unleashing a talented and educated writer on the world, has cost me the equivalent of a new Boxter every year. Worth every penny spent in my opinion.

I have for long admired Porsche's fluid lines and thrilled at the sound of their tappetty horizontally-opposed engines. Much ink has been spilt on the "iconic" nature of Porsches, and how the rear-engine, air-cooled configuration of the traditional Porsche power plant is the only one purists really respect. In recent years Porsche has made glacial progress to drag its design into the 20th century - moving the engine forward of the rear axle as in the case of the Boxter and the Cayman, and finally succumbing to the advantages of water cooling as in the newer 997 iteration of the 911. But we have already witnessed another fin de siecle.

But let's call it for what it is: Porsche had for long been a company that had grown fat dumb and happy on the outrageous prices it could extract from its legion of slavish followers who would pay any price to have that shield from Zuffenhausen on their hoods. Porsche did not innovate because they didn't have to. They served up essentially the same car for nearly 30 years from the early 70s to the early 2000s with minor changes - the headlights were sloping back, they sat up straight and then they went back to the reclining position. I exaggerate, but in essence that was the sum total of the changes that Porsche wrought on the 911 in the thirty years before it awakened Rip Van Winkle-like from its slumber. Oh wait..I forgot the whale tail that came and went.

But the thing that assails my sensibilities about Porschephiles is the fact they will accept the tail-happy handling dynamic of the 911 (even a GT3, which is as close as you can get to a full-on race car licensed for the road) as an endearing idiosyncracy in a $100,000 car. It is well documented that a vast proportion of 911s that crash, leave the road facing whence they came - in other words they exit stage backwards. This kind of behavior from a Subaru WRX STi costing amost exactly a third of the 911's price would be excusable, but what you get from that car is solid straight line traction with the 300HP from its horizontally opposed engine being fed to all of its four wheels. The Subaru even edged out the GT3 in the 2004 Car and Driver Best Car spot.

So for my money, would I buy three Subaru WRX STis or the one 911? I can drive only one car at a time, and since I don't wear Birkenstocks with socks as a rule, it'll have to be the Porsche for me. Oh, and did Steve McQueen drive a Subaru in LeMans? Not so much.

The ubiquity of idiocy

My friend Jim asserts that everyone he meets is "such an idiot". Now if we we are to parse that statement, there are many troubling things that emerge.

Let's take this down two lines of reasoning:
1. Everyone that Jim meets is an idiot.
2. Everyone that Jim meets is not really an idiot, but Jim merely thinks so.

Line of Reasoning 1: If everyone that Jim meets is really an idiot, Jim needs to meet new new people in the hope that he can find someone who is not an idiot. But Jim is not going to see 40 again, and he is a well travelled and sociable man. So Jim has in the course of his life, met a great many people. If every one of them has turned out to be an idiot, then one despairs for his chance to ever meet someone who is not an idiot, well into the afternoon of his life. So what should our Jim do? Give up the quest for the elusive non-idiot, or shun all social contact secure in the knowledge that everyone he meets will for certain, be an idiot?

Line of Reasoning 2: If everyone Jim meets is not really an idiot, but Jim merely thinks so, then this causes us to question Jim's veracity. Is this just hyperbole? Is Jim merely saying 'Everyone I meet is such an idiot' when he really doesn't mean everyone, but a lot of people. And when he says someone is an idiot, is he really saying that person is not really an idiot but rather just not synchronous with Jim's own sensibilities?
I cannot for a moment doubt that my friend Jim is saying anything other than that which he means.

So where is all this sophistry leading? Just to the fact that when we express ourselves, we tend to exaggerate to illustrate the point. Hyperbole. To take hyperbole literally is to miss the point.

In my earlier post on the Nikon vs. Canon DSLR Wars my intention was not to suggest that everyone was to go out and buy 3 Nikon cameras for every Canon EOS 5D, but rather to illustrate the relative price performance of the 5D to other cameras. Biased? Maybe. Insane? Not so much.

That said, why is everyone that Jim meets such an idiot? Have they all bought Canon cameras?

Does the world need a four-door Aston Martin?

I think Aston Martins are among the most beautiful cars in the world. All the way from the lascivious haunches of the DB2 to the curvaceous Vanquish and the DB9. So why the new four-door Rapide concept that Aston showed off at the Detroit Auto Show?

Yes, Maserati did the Quattroporte, Bentley has done the new Flying Spur, and of course Porsche is considering the Panamera - all four-door cars from vaunted super-car manufacturers. Let us say nothing of the execrable Maserati Biturbo, but I think stretching a sports car to accommodate two more doors for the sake of "brand extension" is akin to the folly of Volkswagen thinking that people would pay for a luxury car with a W12 engine called a Phaeton, from the one-time maker of conveyances for groupies of the Grateful Dead. Brand Extension. More like brand extinction if you ask me.

All of that doesn't alter the fact that Aston Martins are among the most beautiful cars on the planet. Even with four doors.

The Nikon vs. Canon DSLR wars

While the eternal leap-frog game between Nikon and Canon plays out in the photo enthusiast magazines, Nikon appears to have stolen a quiet march for now. The launch of the D200 has brought 'near-professional' capabilities to enthusiasts at a price point under $1700.

Although Canon sidestepped this particular salvo, the EOS 5D with its full frame sensor has got the Canon traditionalists crowing. A 12.8MP full frame camera for under (just) $3,300!! This is the end of Nikon, they cry! Spare a thought for the Canon hordes that hurtled headlong into buying loads of EF-S lenses that are strictly for the smaller APS-C sized sensor.

Has it escaped everyone that (assuming you have no brand loyalty or that you're not tied in to one or other brand due to a massive investment in lenses) you could get the Nikon D200, the D70S and the D50, and still have enough money left over for a nice SB 600 flash for the same money as the Canon 5D? But then what do I know?