1974 Super Beetle: Car & Track

original url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyvcPXcTK2U

CNN n' winter driving

Added On February 6, 2010
CNN's Reynolds Wolf visits a winter driving school and picks up some tips on how to navigate safely in the snow and ice.

another F1 video- Jean Pierre Beltoise '68

The original is here.

René Arnoux in 2008

I always liked René Arnoux. Arnoux raced in F1 from '78 till the end of the 1989 season, and while his stock had fallen considerably by the late 80s, it's easy for people today to forget how much he was regarded as a rising star around '79-'81. If I recall correctly he even held the record for most pole positions in one season at one time.

He left the Renault team when they were on top to go drive for Ferrari, presumably seduced by the legend. After two more seasons with Ferrari, the first good, the second somewhat less so, he was canned at the beginning of the third (1985) season after only one start-- and not allowed to drive for anybody else for the rest of the year because the Ferrari people wouldn't release him from his contract. Peering into the psyche of a famous person you've never met is probably silly, but it's difficult not to think that this may have soured him on the sport a bit and hurt his confidence.

After that he spent his last four seasons with Ligier, 1986-'89, and like Arnoux, Ligier didn't have the same form as in the early 80s, especially after their engine supplier (coincidentally, Renault) left F1 at the end of '86 and they had to make do with lesser equipment.

F1 1950-1967

The youtube link is here.

The Real News talks to UAW retirees

Retired Auto Workers have their say, pt 1.

Part two is here;
Part three,
Part four, and
Part five.

22 Feb 2009

photo:David Sutton, mptv.net

Some odds and ends:
UNT's CyberCemetery to preserve Internet sites from Bush administration. The UNT Libraries will preserve all federal government agencies' web sites that were created during the Bush administration.


Allison Kilkenny : "Obama’s War on Terror May Resemble Bush’s in Some Areas"

from Mark Kleiman's "Same Facts" blog: Jonathan Zasloff,
The Politics of Child Poverty

Admittedly this is from some three months ago, but I've been meaning to mention it.
(And it hasn't suddenly lost relevance in our post-GWB era of goodness and light.)

Happy Birthday Ronald Reagan (Thanks for Ruining America)By William Kleinknecht,AlterNet.

The Onion:"Nation's blacks creeped out by all the white people smiling at them"

from The Motley Fool:
"This bailout is great" and

"This bailout is terrible", both by Richard Gibbons.

Why this photo? The Oscars were on tonight but I didn't watch them. I generally did watch in my teens and twenties when I still thought they were relevant, but that was then. The girls are still pretty, of course, and I imagine they still do the luminaries-who-died-last year bit, so I thought that apropos of that I'd include this b&w image of Charlton Heston, who passed away in '07, seen here in his snazzy Jaguar E-type. I didn't care for most of his politics but it's hard to criticize his choice of wheels. Cross-posted at Dead Horse.

Buick follies

I found this strangely compelling.

20 Nov 08

1956 Lincoln Continental Mk II, classiccar.com

I've been under the weather of late, hence the dearth of posting. However, Rob Payne has been doing a lot of posting recently at Dead Horse, HZ's sister site.

Triumph 2000

This is a 1949 Triumph 2000 roadster, a slightly more powerful version of the Triumph 1800 that preceded it. According to our wiki friends at Wikipedia, contemporary road tests of the 1800 and the 2000 indicated the clear superiority of the larger T2000 engine, as it could rocket off the line up to 60mph in under 28 seconds, whereas the 1800 required a little over 34 seconds to do so, and the 1800 could maintain a top speed of 75mph, while the 2000 could do 80.

Nevertheless I suspect that imposing a "hotrodcentric" preoccupation with acceleration numbers is probably missing the point with these cars, as they look truly charming. I also imagine they're a joy to drive on a sunny day in the country, especially if you're not afraid of a nonsynchro gearbox.

This, n' that, etc

I was excited by the doings of "Blogroll Amnesty Day," and enjoyed poking around and finding sundry similarly small blogs that struck me as interesting.
I've added (and been added by),
Rotus,
Rob Singleton,
Jon Swift
Skippy
Art of Peace

In addition, I asked Barbara O'Brien of th' Mahablog to add me, even though she was already on my blogroll and she did, which was exceedingly nice, especially as she's kind of a bighshot, like Skippy and Jon Swift. And I've corrected my previous error in not linking to Josh Buermann of Flagrancy to Reason.

There are a few I have missed that I've been meaning to add, which I will shortly.

Incidentally, I left a comment at Rotus asking him(?) if he was aware of the defunct US kit car company by the same name that used to manufacture a Lotus 7 replica in the 1980s, designed to take Toyota or Mazda mechanicals(hence the slightly impolitic pun of "rotus", suggesting the stereotypic Japanese person's pronunciation.). I think they were based in Maryland. Caterham Cars in the UK makes a pricey but officially licensed replica, and lots of other companies in the US and UK and elsewhere still make unauthorized knockoffs.

Technically the Rotus was a knockoff of the Lotus Super Seven that replaced the original 7, but I won't burden you with too much auto pedantry, just refer you to the links below should you be curious. Also, pictured below is Patrick McGoohan in KAR 120C, the most famous Lotus 7 ever-- which was actually made by Lotus, and featured in The Prisoner.

Wikipedia's Lotus Seven article,

BBC on the 50th anniversary of the Lotus 7


photos:Rotus Cars, BBC

it's the Saturday before Christmas

I'm tired of politics for the mo', so here's a photo of a '72 Dodge Charger. I think I still liked Christmas in 1972(when I was eight), and I had no idea who Nixon or McGovern were or where Vietnam was. But I'm pretty sure knew it was a place, and was far away, and it was something grownups talked about.

Pike's Peak

putting the zooom in Hugo Zoom. The Pike's Peak hillclimb used to be held on the 4th of July, but now it's held later in the summer. I know it's unrealistic, but I'd like to imagine that if Peugeot sold cars like this to the general public they never would've left the US market.

Monaco 1936-37

1942 DeSoto

photo via ned

from "learn to say ain't"(2005)

(via mike gerber)

John Rogers:
let's talk image. When I first started out on the road, I was a skinny guy with a big nose, a Boston accent and a Physics degree telling jokes in bars out West. I was hitting a wall of resistance in a lot of rooms. One night in Rawlins, Wyoming, the headliner -- a sweet road comic named "Boats" Johnson -- took me aside.

"You're a good joke writer. I mean, damn, there's some smart stuff in there."
"Thanks. But, uh..."
"They don't like you much." Boats handed me a beer. "Second show. Longneck. Always a longneck. Bring it on stage. Sip from it every now and then."
"I don't really drink on stage --"
"Fine. Fill it with water. Don't bring attention to it, just sip from it."
I shrugged. "Anything else?"
"Yeah. Learn to say 'ain't'. Don't change the jokes. Just learn to say 'ain't' every now and then."

The shows went, much, much better after that. I told the same gun control jokes, the same pro-gay marriage bits, the same making-fun of the culture wars jokes. But now I was killing.

There are two lessons to be taken from "Learn to say 'ain't'." First, the fundamental dynamic in all crowd interaction is us vs. them. Period. It's sad. Oh well. Get over it and win.

Now, the fine line here is that, the audience also always knows when you're being dishonest. That's worth hitting again. When you are on stage, the audience's collective mind can tell when you're not being yourself. And even more importantly, they can tell when you're lying to be one of "us". (Like Kerry hunting, or Dukakis in the tank). Changing yourself to fit the audience would be the wrong lesson to take from "Learn to say 'ain't.'" No, the lesson Boats was teaching me was that there's no problem with relaxing a bit and showing that you're not one of "them." He was teaching me that connection is a half-way game -- just extend out a little, and the audience will come the rest of the way. They will extend the boundary of "us" if you advance toward it.
[...]
Kerry was so, so far outside of "us" that, frankly it was a testimony to how badly Bush has screwed up that he even got THAT close.

there's a lot more and you should go read all of it.

all electric, no bills

photo(andreadoria.com) of the Ile de France leaving New York Harbor, circa 1936.


When I was a kid I loved animals, and big motorized machines of every type, whether it was an airplane or Jackie Stewart's Tyrrell Formula One car or the big ocean liners of yesteryear. It never occurred to me that my holding these parallel interests might somehow be ironic.

I wanted, for example, to someday fly on the Concorde, which last flew in 2003, so I guess I missed my chance. The big ocean liners are mostly gone too, but like the Concorde they're strictly a niche consumer good for the wealthy. I wonder sometimes if the ghosts of Concorde and the old gran luxe ocean liners are a sort of D.E.W. line for a society that still believes that technology will rescue us from today without requiring us to do anything about our multiple bad habits.

Speaking of French things (and motorized machines, etc.), the 24 hrs of Le Mans is taking place this weekend, and there's a pretty good chance that a diesel-powered racer will win it outright. The rules have been finessed for this year to allow a diesel powered car to be competitive, and Audi and Peugeot decided to field diesel-powered entries to meet said rules.(The scuttlebutt, incidentally, is that because of the massive investments these two companies undertook to make competitive diesel racers, they're concerned that the rules stay the same for a few years so as to not render their cars obsolete in 2008. After all, only one company team can win Le Mans at a time.) I still love motorsports like I did when I was a kid, even if I can see the politics I wouldn't have understood when I was seven or eight.



photo: greatoceanliners.net

addendum: oh yeah-- Audi won.

All those years ago

magnum photos from the 1967 war

some recent anniversaries, courtesy our wikipedia friends:

June 5th,1967 - Six-Day War begins: The Israeli air force launches simultaneous pre-emptive attacks on the air forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

June 6th,1944 - The Battle of Normandy begins. D-Day, code named Operation Overlord, commences with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France. The allied soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history.

June 6th,1982 - 1982 Lebanon War begins: Forces under Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon invade southern Lebanon in their "Operation Peace for the Galilee," eventually reaching as far north as the capital, Beirut.

June 7th,1981 - "Operation Opera":The Israeli Air Force attacked and disabled Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor.

June 8th,1967 - The Israeli Air Force attacked the U.S. Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty in international waters, killing 34 and wounding at least 173.

Now, keep something in mind: none of these things actually happened. I'm not saying this because of the faults that many people lay at Wikipedia's feet-- the wikis held up their part of the telling, at least here. But if you watch the nightly news on TV, whether on CBS or NBC, CNN, etc, you won't hear about these things. I am lying of course; they did talk about the Battle of Normandy. CIA chief defense secretary Robert Gates was in Normandy, attending the ceremony, perhaps because the French discretely requested that it not be Cheney, after his dress code faux pas in Poland. Who knows, maybe they even scheduled the G8 shindig when they did so that George Bush,jr not be there either. The Europeans are subtle like that.

Katie Couric talked about how the father of one of the CBS nightly news staffers fought at Normandy, and they had a nice story about how dad went back to the little French town where he helped take care of a sick cow in ‘44. I’m actually not making fun, at least not in this instance-- it was a nice story.

The problem is not the story itself, nor occasional sentimentality-- but the lack of context. Television insists that we regard life as lacking context. Stuff happens, then, inevitably, other stuff happens-- not because of prior incidents, but because each day is a new day, requiring new content. And when anything bad happens it’s genuinely shocking, unpredictable, and unimaginable-- just like the last shocking, unpredictable and unimaginably bad thing.

Although I try my best to avoid keeping up with “dancing with the stars” or the latest misadventures of Paris Hilton, etc, I don’t think of myself as a snob who looks down on his fellow Americans for being dumber than a can of paint, as Xymphora very memorably suggested we were.
Yes, it’s difficult sometimes. Millions of us still believe Saddam was responsible for 9/11. Millions more voted to re-elect George Bush,jr in 2004, and supposedly over 50 percent of the US population believes the planet is no more than 6,000 years old .

Should the nightly newscasts be teaching history? Yes, insofar as current events inevitably occur in an historical context, the news readers’ reluctance to note this notwithstanding. People make fun of the news readers, although I suppose they’re a pretty easy target, shooting fish with really good hair in a barrel. We’re often told they’re excessively ambitious, possibly stupid, probably amoral.


Imagine a young reporter at a smaller-market tv station, say, in Terre Haute or Columbus or Buffalo. She isn’t exactly crazy about her job, but she’s young and maybe even comparatively naive idealistic, and even regards TV news as real journalism. So she appreciates her opportunity to gain experience and hone her skills. They ask her to do a bunch of “man in the street” interviews about some topic or other. Maybe it’s for opinions regarding a bill being discussed in congress or the state legislature. She needs to go back to the station with 3 or 4 good ones, whatever that means. She likes talking to people, and talks to well over 3 or 4, and submits 4 clips that struck her as thoughtful yet unpretentious, and edits that. The very next thing she knows, her producer is livid, chews her out, explaining that they’re all wrong, that wasn’t what she was looking for at all. The smart people make viewers self-conscious about their failings.

The producer wants, well, lunkheads. People you can laugh at for their sheer ignorance. Our young reporter reflects on all the people she talked to, and she doesn’t think ordinary people are uniformly stupid, but she also recognizes that her opinion isn’t exactly valued in this equation, and would like to keep her job(at least for now.). So she re-edits, and considers herself lucky that she did talk to some lunkheads, and doesn’t have to go out and shoot again, and manages to meet her deadline-- barely.

I’ve never worked as a tv reporter, and I don’t know if it actually works that way, but I can well imagine it might. Like our hypothetical young reporter, I don’t believe that Americans are uniformly unreflective and stupid, although distressingly many are. What’s even more distressing, however, is how big-time journalism seems like a hermetic, tightly-coiled mechanism, purpose-built to reinforce our sense of ourselves as unreflective and stupid. And apart from people getting most of their news from teevee, it seems like the other stations and programming are part of the mechanism.

A couple of examples-- one I wrote about before:
“they were the greatest generation, blah blah blah...”(feb 2003)

What is it with the History Channel? I just got back from the gym where the teevee was tuned to a documentary of sorts about the Normandy invasion entitled "Then and Now". They had the customary business of cutting between modern-day experts and stock footage of the events in question, only one of the experts sure looked like Dwight Eisenhower. ...Later they talked to Rommel's son, then eventually to Montgomery's son, and eventually cut back to the Eisenhower look-alike who turned out to be-- yes, Eisenhower's son.
(Apparently he wrote a book about the war too.)
How many documentaries about D-day already existed before this one, I don't know, but there must be many. Why this particular reshuffling of stock footage, at this time? What is this, Pavlovian conditoning? Are we supposed to respond to this procession of WWII sons as a suggestion about how "righteous" George W. Bush is, readying to liberate Iraq, the wheeling and dealing with Turkey and the counsel of the house of Saud notwithstanding? How about a program about, say, the My Lai massacre in the coming weeks? Do you think we'll see it on the History Channel? I'm not even asking about a show on the US role in Mazar-e-Sharif...

I will say one thing though. It would be nice if we had a president who was as articulate in English as Manfred Rommel is.

The second item is from the Speed Channel(which I believe is owned by Murdoch)from some time in 2005; they had a program about cars of the US presidents, including of course the fateful Lincoln Limo convertible JFK rode in. They discussed various personal and white house autos, with the customary cutting to car experts. At one point they discussed a Ford V8 convertible that FDR drove, which may have been the first car with hand controls for a paraplegic driver, and which is preserved today. Then the expert they cut to offered, just in passing, that “FDR gave people hope, even if he didn’t actually do anything about the depression.”

SON OF A BITCH. What, this car guy is suddenly an expert on the New Deal? If he was, they failed to discuss his credentials. I swear, the more you watch tv, the more you want to throw something at it.


FDR's 1938 Ford

I want to offer a solution, but I don’t have one. I don’t think it’s just an abstract problem, something for bloggers and op-ed writers to bemoan. Conditioning people to reject a sense of historical causality could help enable the nitwit-in-chief to launch a war against Iran, for one thing, and will very likely have more pernicious effects in years to come.

The other day I discussed some of these ideas with Arvin Hill, who is singularly pessimistic about it all. I tell myself that ordinary people had it far worse circa 1890, when Grover Cleveland sent federal troops to smash the railroad unions(which were still illegal), and he was the only democrat elected president from 1860 when Lincoln was elected, until Wilson came along in 1912, a period of even greater 1-party dominance.

Of course today’s 1-party state is slipperier, as it require large numbers of democrats to be shadow republicans, and the dynamic of what the parties(ostensibly) stand for today is very different from what it was in the 19th century. 21st century oligarchs have done their damnedest to learn the lessons of economics and the various social sciences, to make sure that they’ll never be caught unawares by a great depression or other phenomenon that might cast the obstacles they set for ordinary people in sharp relief.

Still. If there are any bright spots, maybe it’s found in discontent. Large numbers of people know something is wrong, even if they have a hard time articulating it. They can’t blame Paris Hilton forever-- eventually they’ll notice she never raided anybody’s pension fund or took away their health insurance. Will it happen in time? I don’t know. Will Americans look at the immigrant rallies, quit bitching about the Mexicans, and realize the illegals are doing a better job of being Americans-- demonstrating, causing a ruckus, demanding to be heard-- than most Americans?


also, see Gary Farber: “God Help Us”

Sarabeth, at 1115.org, "mirror, mirror"

Skimble:"desperate to kiss and be touched"
and the follow-up, "deleting the love"(and no, it's not worth noting just because he references me!)

Jonathan Schwarz(2005):“Now More Than Ever, It's Critical That We Learn Nothing From History”
in which he notes that Mike Gerber refers to it as the Learn Nothing From History Channel.

and, as one of Schwarz’s commenters reminds us,
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."--Philip K. Dick

Jeffrey St Clair, Counterpunch:"Israel's Attack on the USS Liberty, Revisited"

Κέρβερος

William Blake's Cerebrus, the mythological hound of hell.

from channel 8 in Grand Rapids:
"Chrysler workers skeptical of Cerberus' motives in Chrysler deal"

DETROIT -- Billy Boyd, a Chrysler worker for almost 34 years, is so skeptical about Monday's sale announcement that he might not stick around much longer.

Like many of Chrysler's roughly 80,000 employees, Boyd, 51, a machine operator at the automaker's Kenosha, Wis., engine plant, isn't sure what to make of the unusual deal. Parent company DaimlerChrysler AG is paying as much as $650 million to walk away from Chrysler by turning over the keys to his company to Cerberus Capital Management LP, a New York private equity firm.

"It sounds good," he said before work Monday afternoon. "Are they buying us to help us out or to suck the blood? It's kind of scary."

At many Chrysler plants, workers also worried about what it will cost them as word spread about the $7.4 billion sale. Many are fearful of private equity buyers, which in the past have sold off companies in pieces to make a fast buck.

As well they should be. I note that the UAW guy quoted in the Channel 8 story sounded upbeat, so we probably don't need to worry overmuch about his future. On the other hand-- while the democrats are carefully calibrating their response to GWB so that they seem to care about ending the war without seeming "vindictive" or "mean" or any of the other countless things they might be accused of by the millionaire anchormen whose approval they tremble before, couldn't they have thrown in an extra seven billion to protect a few thousand American jobs?


For much, much less than the cost of the damned Iraq war, the US gov't could have bought Chrysler outright, and federalized American healthcare, therebye making each of the big three more globally competitive. But, no, we can't do that, that's what crazy European leftists do. So much better to run our country into the ground proving we're macho.

also:Andrew Leonard, "Chrysler at the gates of hell"

Alvis TE-21

photo: the "mousehole"

Alvis was a British auto manufacturer(1919-1967). The TE-21 was one of their last models, built from 1963-66. Only 348 or 349 TE-21s were made.

1971 Matador ad

automotivechronicles.com