For this week, I've compiled an automotive "love/hate" shortlist. Enjoy.
Things that make me just want to up and move to Canada:
1.) Bodykits.
You know, the aftermarket plastic drapery on every other Tiburon in a McDonalds parking lot after midnight.
About half the time it's a dull primer grey, while the remaining stock body panels are whatever color they were painted on the assembly line.
Real classy.
If there's ever been a bodykit that actually enhanced the stock look of a vehicle, I haven't seen it, and you'd better believe I've seen all sorts of gonzo bodywork.
What grinds my gears even further into frothy oblivion is when the kitted-out car in question hasn't had any sort of mechanical work done to back up the fins, gills, fake NACA ducts, and sideskirts.
What is the point?
2.) Brand-new cars.
Here's an example: replacement oil filters for new cars are smaller than the replacement filters were for the same model 10 years ago because the manufacturers want you to replace them more often. Honestly, it seems like all auto execs understand anymore is profit.
Your 2009 model is going to need a new oil filter every other week, and by 2012, it will be broken. The whole car.
Go ahead, call my bluff.
3.) Automated manual transmissions.
Look here, if your car doesn't have a clutch pedal (which is to say, a pedal to the left of the brake), it is not a manual. I don't care if your automatic PRND-stick has a "+/-" setting, or if you have paddle shifters behind your steering wheel. No, not even if you've got "flappy paddles," as Jeremy Clarkson calls them, in your Ferrari.
If your car shifts for you when it feels you've mashed the throttle quite enough, thank you, and if the only thing for your left foot to do is hang ten, you are not in a vehicle equipped with a manual transmission.
For the record, the new Nissan R35 GT-R, in automanual form, is too mindlessly complex and overweight for its own good, which is a shame because GT-R' used to be so good.
Kind of like Marlon Brando in his later years.
Things that very nearly make life worth living:
1.) Crazy Ray's Pick-n'-Pull junkyard.
Only because whenever anyone finds out what I do for The Towerlight, nine times out of ten, they ask me if I've been to Crazy Ray's.
Yeah, I have, and yes, it is simply jaw-droppingly lovely.
For the record, there are four locations, so chances are there's a Crazy Ray's near YOU!
2.) Sleepers.
Yeah, sleepers… Google Ford Taurus SHO, Eagle Talon TSi. Factory sleepers rule, because no one knows about 'em.
You might have one and not even know it!
See also: Volvo V70 T5, Toyota Cressida, Volkswagen Corrado.
3.) Manual transmissions.
Bow down and worship at the altar of exciting driving.
Even your gramma's moldy '96 Contour is fun, and it's all because of five forward gears.
It might also be the fact that she ended up with a Contour SVT with a throbbing V6, and didn't even know it.
See number two above.
Until next time…
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