Spring Break Shark Attack, Or, How to Drive a Ticking Time Bomb

The sun is shining, the birds are gently calling out, the sun is slowly melting the dirty snow, and the days are growing longer. Dear readers, Spring is here. For many of you, this means that you can finally stop hounding your children to put on their snowpants. For others, this means that you can finally go to that dusty corner of your garage and wheel out your old convertible. Yes, Spring is a glorious time of sunshine, awakening, and peace for the majority of the population.

Unless you are between the ages of 18 and 23. In your case, Spring means one thing and one thing only: Spring Break.

For those of you who aren't a member of the rebellious youth or a raging alcoholic, here's a brief visual of how your kids spend your paycheck.

Panama City Beach Hotels 35% Off This Week, With Complimentary Room Service & Chlamydia!

Surprise!

When boiled down, this equates to a week or so of very questionable decisions. Naturally, my friends and I had to take part. So, with dreams of terrible lawsuits in our heads, my buddies and I packed our bags into a 2007 Saturn Outlook and hit the road.

Beauty. Power. Refinement. Sex Appeal......These Are Not Actually The Words That Come To Mind...

Our route was long and perilous. The GPS on my phone informed me that our journey would take roughly 17 hours, assuming we never had to stop. After estimating that we would have to tack on an hour and a half or so for gas stops (because that's how cars work...) and bathroom breaks, we estimated our overall drive at about 18 and a half hours.

We were so wrong. So terribly, terribly wrong.

The first few hours of the drive passed by without incident. We quickly left the ice and wind of Michigan behind us and, apart from a minor detour, crossed the Sixth Circle of Dante's Hell (Ohio) with time to spare.

It was only when we hit West Virginia that things began to go amiss. 

While driving through the winding mountain roads of coal country, we began to notice that the car had begun to shift a bit...violently. By that I mean that whenever the transmission attempted to swap a cog, it was accompanied by a terrifying lurch and a bang like a gunshot.  In addition, the tachometer was informing me that the engine was running at 5,500 RPM. To provide a bit of context, we were doing 74 and were, by my reckoning, in sixth gear. Commence your wincing.

Now, this could be caused my a number of issues. The gearing mechanism could be faulty, the clutch could be slipping, something could be on fire, and there was really no way of knowing without checking it out. As sensible, well-educated men, we immediately pulled over to examine the transmission.

By that I mean that we're a group of guys in our twenties and simply pushed a bit harder on the accelerator pedal, hoping that whatever foul witchcraft was occurring within the bowels of the Saturn would simply go away with added speed.

Happy Happy Happy, The Car is on Fire, La Dee Da Dee Da!

Spoiler alert: It didn't go away.

When the entire dashboard suddenly lit up with warning lights like the surface of the sun, we finally decided that we may need to examine the car.

Pulling into a service station near the Virginia border and consulting the manual, we determined that the car would be fine, given some time to cool down. This particular car had over 120,000 miles on its odometer and therefore, we reasoned, it made sense that it was struggling with the hilly terrain. Google also told us that our particular transmission, GM's Dexron VI, had a history of mild overheating and that it should be just fine, given time to cool down.

We simply ignored this. The dire pronouncements of "catastrophic transmission overheating" and "idle engine immediately" were treated like the pathetic warnings they were: designed for weaker men than ourselves.

Shockingly, the car's symptoms did not dissipate. As we rolled slowly into service station after service station, the shadow of the car grew longer as it flickered across the endless expanse of tarmac. Night was coming and the temperatures were dipping perilously close to zero.

Ominous.

Complicating our situation, we are all avid cinephiles and, in accordance with our cinematic educations, we knew that we were about to be kidnapped and murdered by the mutants from the Hills Have Eyes.

A Free Luke Bryan Concert, a Bad Tan and a Crappy Tank Top Weren't Worth This!

As the day grew shorter, our stops grew longer. Google informed us that there were no rental car agencies within 100 miles (primarily because there was nothing resembling civilization within 100 miles). We sat, disconsolate as the sun gave up its last desperate twinkle, and dipped below the horizon. 

Realizing that our combined mechanical prowess was nowhere near sufficient to fix a transmission, I decided to simply kill and eat my friends, so as to prolong my struggle against the inevitable mutant assault.

It's a Lie. Everyone is Fair Game.

When hope was all but lost, we finally decided to "fix" the transmission. This meant pulling into a truck stop in Southern Virginia, opening the hood, and checking the transmission fluid. When the dip stick informed us that the fluid was at the proper level, our mechanical expertise was officially exhausted, and we climbed back into the car, reasoning that if we were going to die, we might as well be warm for as long as possible.

This was when the Great Miracle of 2013 occurred.

While wandering through the aisles of the truck stop searching for a bathroom, we discovered the small bottle that you see below. Reasoning that our transmission couldn't be in worse shape (NEVER ASSUME THAT), we purchased it, and proceeded to simply dump the entire bottle into the transmission.

The Label Should Actually Read: "God Fluid"

This is the part of the story when, by rights, my writing should trail off into agonized screaming as the car completely dies and I am pulled from the burning wreck by terrifying hill mutants.

But that isn't what happened.

Surprisingly, the problems immediately disappeared. This was surprising because, by this point, we truly though that the car was dead. Transmission problems are very rarely something that one can fix on the side of the road. Although the engineering behind a transmission isn't overly complicated, the level of detail to which they are built and the numerous small parts make a roadside repair the stuff of nightmares.

With the car no longer shuddering and sounding like something from the Industrial Revolution, we were able to get back on the road. Six hours after our original estimated arrival time, we rolled into the driveway of our condo, exhausted, but triumphant.

You're All Damn Lucky That Amerigo Vespucci Made The Maps and Not Me.

If I can say that I learned one thing from this experience, it would be that man always triumphs over machine.

Or not.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you are depending heavily on a vehicle, don't ignore the signs that something is amiss. Check it out, get it to a service station, and have someone who didn't waste a couple grand on a liberal arts degree look over the flaming wreck that used to be your car. 

That's the smart thing to do.

Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Swiss People, Oh My: The Return of the Auto Intern

I will begin this post with a heartfelt apology to you, dear Slovenian reader. Google analytics tells me that you comprise an increasing share of my readership and I haven't updated this blog in roughly five months. Well, fret no longer, because readers in Ljubljana and perhaps even some Western cities can go back to enjoying (read: screaming furiously at) my automotive commentary.

I could list the reasons for my lengthy absence, but research tells me that we live in a visual society and that none of you have the attention span to read something as prosaic as a list, so I've provided some visual representation of my activities.

Yep that was basically it. Either that or exams. Not entirely sure. Can't remember.

But now it's time to delve into the reason for this post: Geneva.

Geneva is a gorgeous Swiss city that sits nestled at the foot of the Alps. It is one of the world's most important financial centers and has gained some renown for manufacturing hideous watches. 

This will make women think that I have large, fully functioning genitalia! I just know it!

But each March, as Winter recedes back to the mountains and the flowers bloom, Geneva is home to a very special event: The Geneva Motor Show. How special you ask? Well, Porsche, Lamborghini, and Ferrari all chose this event to roll out new models. We also got to see the convertible Corvette Stingray, the new Golf, and some great new prototypes. So, all in all, important event.

Let's start with the Golf, as that's what most of you don't care about. It's a basically the exact same thing as the old Golf, but it offers a much wider variety of powertrain options that lead to better fuel economy. That's about it. Oh, and odds are good that it will only be available in Europe for the time being. That's good for you industrious lads in Slovenia, but bad for the majority of my readership, which is still American.

Check yourself VW.

The Lambo is much more interesting. It appears as though the design studio finally took Audi's memos to keep it safe, mildly interesting, and rather normal and fed it to the army of vampire bats that they secretly keep in the basement. This car would not look out of place with some Bond-esque torpedos. It would not surprise me if it released fireballs every time you open the doors. I would be stunned if it was powered by anything other than a dying star. Quite simply, it is an amazing throwback to the insane Lamborghinis of old.

No caption is really necessary. 

Simply astonishing.

Now, this segways very nicely into the new Ferrari. Typically, the Italian supercar manufacturers are...a bit competitive. By that, I mean that Enzo Ferrari and Ferrucio Lamborghini's meetings over cocktails used to go something like this...

Sound business practice.

And by "something like this," I mean "exactly like this." So, it goes to reason that the latest Ferrari should be even more insane, even more rabid, even more completely unhinged than the latest Lambo right?

Eh, not exactly. Let's start with the name. Ferrari's new offering has been gracefully titled, La Ferrari. Yep. That's it. They had the entire developed world breathing down their necks, waiting with irrepressible excitement for the successor to the famous Enzo, and the gave us La Ferrari. The name of their company, with a "la" tacked on. For those of you who aren't fluent in Italian, Spanish, or any other language that loves to place the letter "L" in all of their articles, let me enlighten you as to the translation of this name. "La Ferrari" is translated to English as "The Ferrari."

Now, Ferrari has been very hit or miss with its naming conventions ever since it debuted the Scuderia (Team) in 2004.  Ferrari has produced some great names, such as the F12 Berlinetta, but this definitely falls under the "Why Even Bother" category. This was unveiled on the same day as a rival company produced a car called "Veneno." That brings to mind images of snakebites, adventure, poison, and death. "La Ferrari" calls to mind images of a slightly depressed, overweight man named Ricardo sitting in a cramped cubicle in the bowels of a Ferrari satellite facility who has been made to generate a name before he heads home to hang himself.

Good idea guys. Put Milton in charge of naming a multimillion dollar flagship model.

Don't get me wrong, the La Ferrari has some amazing technology under the hood. It's the first car to employ the HYKERS system, which pairs an electric motor with a gasoline motor to create a hybrid supercar. The electric motor not only allows for better fuel economy and increased range, but it also provides a stratospheric amount of torque off the line, which enable this car to go from 0-60 in well under 3 seconds. For those of you who don't grasp the significance of that number, know that it will basically peel the skin off of your face if you floor it from a standstill.

...to this.

Your face goes from this...

Remarkable stuff, no doubt. But the rest of it is a bit...lacking. It hits a top speed of 205 mph. That's 3 mph more than the current Ferrari 458, which costs significantly less. The design is relatively pleasant. Some aspects, such as the sloped roof, are a clear homage to departed Italian designer Sergio Pininfarina. Those aspects are incredible. But the rest just appears to be recycled from old Ferrari bits.

For a company that claims to be the vanguard of automotive brilliance, that's a bit annoying.