“Like Miles Davis, I’ve Been Swayed by the Cool,” or, “An Expose on Retro Styling.”

Retro styling is a pretty big deal in the automotive world right now. Car companies like Jaguar and Aston Martin are constantly trying to remain true to their heritages while continuing to design their cars on the cutting edge of modernity and companies like Dodge simply repackage their old cars and resell them because they’re out of good ideas. No matter who you are, if you’re an automotive designer, you need to give some serious thought to the “retro” concept.

This is How Everything Used to be Done. With Mustaches.

Personally, I’m somewhat averse to retro and classic cars. First and foremost, if a car is referred to as “classic” this is simply code for “broken.” Odds are good that you will be spending your daughter’s college fund on a rusting Charybdis of automotive misery and toil that will never be as good as your dentist neighbor’s Toyota Prius. And that alone might make you want to kill yourself.

Disturbingly Accurate.

Retro cars aren’t much better, as evidenced by everything that Dodge currently makes. Let’s look at the Challenger for example. Its fuel economy is worse than an aircraft carrier, it’s slower than glacial drift, and it has a suspension setup that was considered revolutionary and exciting during the siege of Troy. It’s too big to fit on the moon, much less a side street or your driveway.  All things considered, it’s awful. And yet, people continue to shell out a premium for this ghastliness.

I'm Sorry. I've just been sick.

This is because they don’t have any taste.

However, this diatribe isn’t meant to scare you away from the looks of a classic car. Some cars with classic looks are much better than many other modern cars. For example, let’s compare this year’s Shelby Mustang GT with a Morgan Plus 8. You can walk out of your house and head to a dealership right now and buy either one of these cars.

Beauty Incarnate.

A Device For Turning Money & Gas Into Noise

Let’s start with looks. The Morgan is, there’s no other word for it, exquisite. The Mustang is vulgar and disgusting. Point for the Morgan. The Morgan is also $10,000 cheaper, and that’s before you start adding options onto the Mustang. The Morgan is handbuilt from wood in a forest in Great Britain. The Mustang is assembled by some robots and an overweight man named Bill in Dearborn, Michigan. Both are completely road legal in the United States.

But here’s the good number. Both will do 0-60 in under 5 seconds. That’s right. This Morgan, which looks like it’s from 1949 and was built in a British shed from wood is basically as fast as this roided out muscle car.

If you’re truly interested in classic looks, why would you buy a Challenger or equally moronic modern muscle car? 

Do yourself a favor and give Morgan or an equivalent marque a serious look.

"Give it Guns...and Vampire Bats," or, "Let's Head Back to Design School."

The past year has been huge for Italy’s fourth most recognizable export (after Ferrari, debt, and the Prime Minister’s prostitutes.) That’s right. I'm talking Lamborghini.

2012 saw the mainstream production of Lambo’s new flagship supercar, the Aventador, and what a car it is. With its vicious lines, starter button that was lifted from a fighter jet, and glorious noise, the Aventador was able to make an immediate splash in the automotive world. Just last week the company celebrated the sale of model 1000.

Audi Takes Italy. Kourtney and Kim Unavailable for Comment.

Much of this success is down to Lambo’s parent company Audi. Although Lamborghinis have always had radical, eye-catching styling, before they were bought out by Audi they never really…uh, how to put this delicately…worked.

This is because they were designed, engineered, and constructed completely by the Italians. Consequently, they would sit in your drive looking menacing and furious and when you decided that you wanted to hit the road, they would refuse to start. All attempts to remedy this usually led to the car exploding in an enormous inferno of death and despair.

Many people, including me, were very pleased when Audi unveiled these newest models. Designed by the Germans (so they work) and styled by the Italians (so that they have some personality) the new cars seemed to be perfect.

However, I saw a Lamborghini on the street yesterday, and I’m quite afraid that I’ve completely changed my mind. This is because a Lamborghini shouldn’t work properly. Ever.

This is for the same reason that you must never order a Lambo in a color that is not Fluorescent Orange or Lime Green. Unless you’re George W. Bush. His is, admittedly, okay.

Black on Black on Patriot Act

Ultimately, Lambos are far too ostentatious and preposterous to be treated as normal, functioning cars. The vulgarity and excess of a Lamborghini is the entire point. I find a person that is driving down the road at 45 mph in a Lambo to be positively yawn-inducing. What they should be doing is going 1500 mph. Backwards. On fire. Screaming.

Old Fashioned Lamborghini-ist.
Image From Google

This is why, if I were to go out and buy a Lambo today, money being no object, I would seriously consider an older model. They weren’t encumbered by German precision and brilliance. They were utterly mad. If you walked up to a Lambo designer in 1980 and suggested that the next model be outfitted with machine guns instead of headlamps and vampire bats instead of an engine, he would most assuredly nod sagely and give the matter some serious thought.

Sure, it wouldn’t work worth a damn, but then again, that’s not really the point is it?

"Lamborghini Mercy, Your Cars Are Thirsty," or, "The Folly of The Green Movement's Latest Iteration"

In recent years, the Green Movement has positively exploded. Societal pressures to be "environmentally friendly" have increased at an unprecedented rate. In between inventing the internet and losing the 2000 Presidential Election, Al Gore began to make waves in the media with his controversial statements about the dangers of the car and its role in the death of the Greater Banded Moroccan Face Leech. By 2007, a film titled "An Inconvenient Truth" had won an Academy Award and was causing many to seriously consider their role in the inexorable warming of the planet.

Something was done here.

Now, the environmental craze has hit Lamborghini. Yes, you read that correctly. Lamborghini, the company whose cars run on a fine mixture of Myrrh, Rembrandts, and the tears of the 99%, is attempting to be environmentally friendly. 

Lambo has forked over $14.3 million to build a new prototype facility in Italy that, if the hype is to be believed, will not only refreeze the ice caps and bring the Greater Banded Moroccan Face Leech back to life, but also end world hunger and replace all CO2 emissions with little puffs of happiness. 

The unique construction techniques and power devices allow the structure to produce zero CO2 emissions. The facility will also use only 8 KW/hr/M, which makes it absurdly simple to power. These factors have combined to earn the facility Italy's first "A" environmental rating, which makes Lambo a legitimate contender in the green subsection of the automotive world.

Despite the green production facilities, it seems a bit unlikely that Lamborghini will actually change their cars enough to return the same MPG ratings as the Toyota Prius. The culture of excess associated with Lamborghini is, to many people, their main appeal. Just ask Kanye. 

Lamborghini Mercy. They really are thirsty.

Yeezy spits truth. 

Video From Youtube

"A Treatise on the Proliferation of The Most Popular Brand in the World," or "Why Do People Buy Toyotas?"

Numbers don't lie. Common sense dictates that this is because they can't write, speak, or otherwise communicate. This is not only a remarkably obvious statement, but is often a very simple approach to take when analyzing brand strength. These aforementioned numbers are currently sitting on my desktop, informing me that Toyota is the most popular brand in the world. This is where I take issue with the idea that numbers don't lie. In this case, the numbers are evil, lying bastards, because nobody in their right mind would willingly purchase a Toyota.

The Camry, resplendent in an invigorating shade of beige.

Take the above Camry for instance. This is the 2012 model, which is more expensive than the much better 2012 Ford Fusion. It also is made from cheaper materials, gets worse gas mileage, and will inevitably accelerate uncontrollably and run over your dog.

The story is much the same with the rest of the lineup. As a matter of fact, the only car that Toyota currently makes that I even remotely like is the FRS, which is sold as a Scion. The only other car that I even come close to understanding is the Prius, which I hate more than anything else on Earth.

Although it's true that a Prius will return spectacular fuel mileage, you could get almost double the EPA rating with a diesel. This will allow you to continue your stingy habits at the pump and it will also prevent you from looking a bit...disturbed, which you would certainly be if you chose to drive a Prius about town.

You see, the Prius is driven almost exclusively by those that want to be seen. You know the type, Hollywood celebrities, rich socialites, the dentist that lives across the street...they all drive Priuses because they like the idea of being seen as they "save the planet."

In reality, the Prius is one of the world's most environmentally unfriendly machines (take a look at how it's produced) and is completely substandard when compared with a less hideous and more spacious diesel competitor. 

From this, we can gather that the only reason that a rational human being would purchase a Toyota is that they have completely lost the will to live and assisted suicide is illegal in their state or nation. 

Although it's a bit more expensive, even with a government credit, I'd much rather have one of these.

Happy Independence Day

"The Doritos Locos Taco is Ruining My Life," or, "Why Driver's Aid Technology is A Menace."

While driving down the highway today, I saw a large billboard that proclaimed, "Your Doritos is Tacos." This declaration caused me to almost ram my truck into the artfully bearded hipster driving the Chevy HHR in front of me. My indescribable shock was not a result of the grammatical sacrilege that had been committed by the sign, but by Taco Bell's temerity in insinuating that a Doritos taco was something desirable. Something that I wanted. Frankly, I have no desire to eat a Dorito taco. If I want a Taco, I will damn well have a taco, not a poorly seasoned corn chip with elephantiasis. 

Stay out of my lunch! And my car!

The foisting of a revolting chip taco on the public made me consider a similar situation in the automotive world. Every model year, car manufacturers unveil the newest generation of technology designed to "aid" your driving experience. Mercedes, for example, is quite fond of a little gadget that will stop your car for you if it senses danger ahead. I'm sorry, but would it not be more prudent to maintain your road speed and simply swerve around the log in the side of the lane? How are you supposed to drive safely when a machine is intervening every time something is in the road ahead of you? 

It's the same story with modern supercars. In the olden days, supercars were impossible to drive. If you turned too aggresively, they would oversteer massively, and you would hit a tree and die. If you used too much throttle, they could understeer OR overstter wildy, and you would hit a lampost and die. If you missed a shift, the transmission would explode and send half of what used to be third gear through your face, and you would die. Sometimes, you would start them and they would explode. You would then die. On occasion, the brakes would inexplicably fail, causing you to launch off of a cliff and die. In sum, old supercars were devilishly tricky. Just ask James Dean.

Although this ended very badly for Mr. Dean, it created what was undeniably a pure driving experience. When everything came together properly on the road, you were in driving nirvana: a perfect synthesis of man and machine. If you knew what you were doing, you were a hero. If you didn't, you died horribly in a flaming wreck. 

The experience itself was completely different as well. The interiors of these old cars were sparse. Stripped down. Facing you was an array of gauges, a steering wheel, some pedals, and a shift lever. Now compare that to the driver's view in a new Ferrari 458.

It's a mess of mind-numbingly complicated gadgets. Happily, this picture doesn't show the back of the wheel, which has even more buttons. Consequently, every time you try to park, you activate twelve different functions, all of which are so distracting that you can't park your car, you look like an ass, and Keira Knightley gets out of the passenger seat to go cozy up with the man who almost died in his old Porsche on the drive in.

At the end of the day, all of these add-ons, although initially palatable, are simply diluting the driving experience for those of us that actually care. Like the Doritos Locos Taco, they are well-intentioned attempts to please consumers that simply fail.