How ironic. I was staring at the (admittedly beautiful new version 2.5) “Write Post” page in Wordpress, wondering what to write … and I discovered that Ginny had tagged me in her latest post. Never shying away from a challenge, I submit henceforth.

The rules of this particular tag are:

• Post 10 random things about yourself
• Choose five people to tag and a reason you chose them and make sure to tell them
• Don’t tag the person who tagged you

And without further adieu …

1. I’m neurotic about mail. Within seconds of arriving home from work I get my mail and flip through it with feverish delight.
2. I have a “piece” of ever car and bike I have ever owned - including the ignition key to my ‘61 Ford Falcon, the grille emblem to my Volkswagen Golf Diesel, the “Scirocco” emblem from my Volkswagen Scirocco, the ashtray from my ‘97 Volkswagen Golf, the handlebar cover trim from my Honda motorcycle and the old rear wheel from my Harley Davidson Sportster.
3. As much as I hate the idea of people owning guns, I love going to the range and shooting paper targets. The bigger the caliber, the better.
4. I only watch television when I’m traveling and staying in a hotel room. And for some reason, I gravitate towards crime shows like CSI and Law and Order.
5. When I was 19 I had a removable retainer (made by my orthodontist) to help keep my teeth in place after I had my braces removed. Out of the blue I stopped wearing the retainer one day, and I never went back to the orthodontist again.
6. I technically have (had) two sisters. One is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto. The other died seconds after birth.
7. I only wore track suits and running shoes until I was 15. Overnight I became the Doc Marten, blue jeans and white T-shirt phenomenon that I would remain until my estrangement from Doc Martens many years later.
8. My first cellular phone was a Nokia 121 that I bought in 1995. The first call I made on it was to 911 to report a rather serious car accident I witnessed on my way home from work.
9. In 1995 I put a personal ad in a newspaper and got a single response. We went on exactly one date. I still have that letter.
10. We had to recite the Lord’s Prayer for the first few years of my public school career (a practice they thankfully abolished). Keeping in mind that I was only 5 or 6 at the time, I actually thought the first few lines were “Our father, who does art in heaven, how be thy name?”

The following friends may consider themselves tagged:

• Mini Nerd
• Stacey
• Mel
• Bianca
• Jen

My last Stupid Vehicles post from 2006 still garners a fair bit of traffic (and has resulted in a few nasty emails from dedicated Ford Escape owners), so I figured I’d follow up with my top-10 list of stupid vehicles for 2008 - complete with my sarcastic, acerbic commentary you know and love.

1. Cadillac.  I don’t normally give the stupid award to an entire brand, but they deserve it.  Let’s briefly look at the offerings:

• The EXT.  A Chevy Avalanche starts at $34,335.  The EXT starts at $58,465.  It’s the same truck, but for an extra $24,130 you get the “bling” factor of America’s most repulsive, garish brand name on the radiator grille.  And who the hell buys a Cadillac truck, anyways?  Don’t want to rough it in the back 40 with cloth seats?
• The ESV.  I think there’s a special spot in hell for Cadillac SUV owners, and those who pick the ESV over the equally-ugly-and-no-more-practical Escalade get priority on the bus ride to purgatory.  What better to scream “I’m a rich bastard who enjoys conspicuous consumption” than this 7200 pound, 18′ 6.4″ long monstrosity.
• The Escalade.  It was on my original stupid vehicle list, and maintains its title for all the same reasons.  Rappers and wannabe gangstas take a lesson from the Liberace school of refined style in this particular offering.
• The SRX.  This baffling vehicle suffers from the same identity crises as most other crossovers.  Big and bulky on paved roads and about as off-road worthy as a pair of roller skates, the SRX is about as unremarkable as … well, pretty much everything else from Cadillac’s stables.
• The XLR.  “I wanna be a Mercedes SL so badly”.  Something tells me they aren’t feeling much fear in Stuttgart.
• The DTS.  Your grandfather’s Cadillac.  The same car you’ll see for sale on the side of the road in 6 years for less residual resale value than a rusted out Korean econobox.
• The CTS.  Your mom’s Cadillac.  Trying so hard to compete, and still looking like it was styled by Lego.
• The STS.  This is the successor to the Seville - that magnificent Cadillac that creepy, self-assured guys drove who thought they were God’s gift to women.  Still cheesy, still tacky and still delightfully laughable to the rest of the automotive world.

But enough of Cadillac; I’m sure the bit above will garner plenty of hate mail.  Let’s get back to the list.

2.  Mercedes Benz GL550.  OK, so I admit to having an irrational love with most things Merc … but this one just baffles me.  From the Escalade school of excess and grotesque proportions comes the GL550; another vehicle destined never to see anything more offroad than parking on the lawn.  I can almost live with the ML320; it’s a piddly-lame little thing of an SUV (with remarkably un-Mercedes like ergonomics), but the GL confounds me.

3.  Scion Xd.  What - a Toyota economy car in the dumb vehicle list?  Now, I give Toyota props for producing phenomenally reliable, efficient vehicles, and I’m sure the Xd is just as capable of a performer as the other X-series Scions.  My beef here isn’t actually with the car; it’s the stupid high-school-kid advertising and hype around it.  I ain’t buying a Scion because I want to be the pinnacle of automotive styling and performance; I’m buying it because it’s a cheap car - and no glittery paint job, no set of low-profile tires and no window tinting will make it anything but a cheap car with a bunch of tacked-on junk.  So please - leave the gaudy accessories to Cadillac.

4.  Volkswagen Rabbit.  My regular readers will think I’ve lost my cork on this one.  A Volkswagen on the dumb-vehicle list, from the original Volkswagen man himself?  Let me explain.  Many years ago, Volkswagen turned the world on its edge with a little car called the Rabbit (for the non-North Americans reading, it was originally the Golf).  This was back in the 70’s, when Detroit reigned supreme with huge-ass cars, and gas was starting to go up in price.  The Rabbit proved that little cars could be good cars, and Volkswagen has done a remarkable job of keeping the Rabbit / Golf equation in check.  But the latest iteration leaves me feeling cold; the base Rabbit ships with a rather lackluster 5 cylinder engine that won’t win any races (a remarkably pedestrian 0-60 in 7.8 seconds) and won’t leave you bragging like you did with your old Golf Diesel (22/30 MPG).  It’s a pretty car, yes, and it handles well, but it’s not as sharply delineated from the competition as it used to be.  All in all, it’s an unremarkable car from a company that’s capable of a lot more.

5.  Ford Flex.  From the Scion Xb school of styling comes the Ford Flex.  I’m not sure what Ford was trying to do with this, but it’s not cheap (starting at over $27,000), and it looks big.  The advertising makes me cringe, though - here’s a bit about the chrome rims: “Nine spokes of polished aluminum can say a lot about a person.  We’re thinking words like confidant.  Good taste.  Attention getter.  (Feel free to jump in at any time and start free-associating.)  Slick.  Attitude.  High roller.  Anyways, they’ll definitely say a lot about you.”  I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many high rollers pimping it in their Ford Flex.  Looks like another mommy-taxi-cum-wanna-be-off-roader to me.

6. Buick Enclave.  Taking shots at Buick is like teasing the retarded kid in class … it’s almost too easy.  From Buick’s own literature: “… the visceral allure of an enticing machine.”  I don’t know how enticing a pimped-up Saturn Outlook is, but I know that the Enclave seems about as visceral as Chinese calculus.

7. Pontiac is CAR.  I’ve been kind of rough on GM in this list, and I’m not going to single out any one Pontiac - but I will single out their new slogan.  “Pontiac is CAR”?  I close my eyes and imagine hundreds of guys with gold chains and tight jeans waving clubs and tire irons in the air as they chant this visceral mantra.  Now, I’m going to let the brain trust at GM in on a little secret: most of us know that Pontiac is CAR.

8. Dodge Hemi.  Quick - without looking on Google or Wikipedia - what does hemispherical mean?  If your mind is drawing a blank (and instead thinking of those cool Hemi badges on the back of some Dodge vehicles), you’re in good company - most people don’t know a darned thing about what a Hemi actually is.  These days, bragging about a hemispherical head is a bit like bragging about having spark plugs, since most engines these days have hemispherical heads.  So please, Dodge - lay off the Hemi stuff.  It’s just not cool anymore.

9.  Jaguar XJ.  A few days ago, an old 1970’s Jaguar V12 sedan passed me, and it struck me how mundane Jaguars of late have become.  Jaguar was the epitome of British class and style for so many years; now, I could easily mistake it for any other mid-sized luxury car out there.  And what the hell is up with the fuel door, anyways?  I thought Jaguars were supposed to have two fuel filler caps just in front of the trunk?  It’s this sort of disrespect for heritage that irks me.  Hopefully Tata Motors can un-screw-up Ford’s whitewash job on a once-grand marque.

10. Hummer.  Once upon a time, a little company called Hummer produced an amazing off-road vehicle that was built the way off-road vehicles should be.  It drove like a tank (thanks, in no small part, to its close association with the military), it was not comfortable, and it was virtually indestructible.  A few years later, Hummer is turning out the H2 and the H3 - veritable junk for the prissy masses.  Or - penis envy for those who don’t want Cadillac’s shiny opulence.

Enjoy!

In 1991 I was in high school.  One of my friends had come into possession of a car stereo of dubious origins, and he wanted to install it in his car.  Having a talent for installing stereos, I was summoned to perform the installation.

Of course, the tools I had for the task included such high-tech gadgetry as a pencil, a spiral-binder, and perhaps a few pieces of rock from the parking lot.  Despite the odds, I managed to get the stereo “installed”; a word we use loosely because the wiring job was questionable, and the lack of proper mounting hardware meant the stereo bounced around on top of the dashboard.

For that day, though, I was heralded a genius, and earned the nickname “Spock”.  It stuck throughout the remainder of my high school career, until I was nicknamed “Speaker Man” - fodder for another blog post.

The word “junkyard” is a misnomer. Junkyards are beautiful places; a mingling of machinery and nature at the most elemental level, and a place to inspire the imagination.

We were on a mission to find a late-model Chevy 261 stovebolt-6 engine, and found our first candidate in this truck. Through the rust and the missing bodywork, the crisp, classic 1950’s lines can still be seen. Amazing to think that this truck is well over 50 years old.

Bodywork isn’t the only thing to be admired at a junkyard. This Ford flathead V8 is evidence of Henry Ford’s genius. Born in an age when the elaborate casting techniques required to mass-produce an engine like this were still in their infancy, the flathead motor was the kind of engines that legends were born of. It’s the same engine that powered Bonnie and Clyde, and one can only imagine how many early “street rodders” were inspired by its elegant simplicity and potential. This particular engine isn’t completely gone; a dedicated mechanic and a replacement for the missing head could turn this into a viable motor.

The truck that housed this flathead V8 wasn’t the prettiest truck of its era, but it still had plenty of potential. The bodywork was a shade on the rough side (anyone who has spent time around these trucks know how vulnerable the floors and the cab corners are), but again - a mechanic with vision and patience could do something with this ancient iron and steel.

The lucky donor for today’s project was this late 50’s Chevy truck. The nearly-complete 261 straight six only took us about 30 minutes to remove. It must have weighed at least four hundred pounds and took a decent sized tractor to lift out, but it reminded us that good design and engineering didn’t always mean lightweight and concessions for mass production. The solid cast iron parts assured us that they had plenty of life left in them.

We’ll see what good things come out of this.

With the exception of my wife’s new Honda Fit, the only non-German car I have ever owned was a 1961 Ford Falcon. Painted in delightful puke-green, it was a sight to behold.

I started to feel the urge a few years ago when I realized that German cars don’t give me a lot of room for interesting road trips. Unknowingly buoyed by a friend of mine who had an amazing broken-down-Chrysler adventure in Northern Alberta, I decided that my fourteen years of staid German reliability needed to come to an end.

And yesterday, I found myself at a local British car show, looking around with some rather serious intent to purchase.

British cars are the antithesis of German cars. With a German car, you get in it and go. You know that a bevy of engineering doctorates have poured over every square centimetre of the car, and you know it’s going to work regardless of the weather. You pay for the privilege, but it has its long-term benefits. With just over 70,000 miles (~112,000 km) on the clock, my Mercedes doesn’t even squeak when it goes over a bump. The only repair I can recall is having the radio replaced because one of the volume buttons would occasionally stick.

In a British car, we’re rather pleased that it works at all. German cars don’t drip oil. English cars don’t believe in keeping oil for much longer than a few hours. When I was pulling out of the show yesterday, I noticed one fellow in a Lotus who was waiting to check in. There was green antifreeze streaming out from under his car. I jogged over to tell him; he brushed this off as a regular thing, and said they always travel with a few extra gallons of antifreeze in the trunk.

So why on Earth would I want to induce this kind of unreliability that would give most German car owners seizures? The answer is simple: British cars are just charming.

True, most of them have engines with the engineering deftness of a prewar John Deere. True, most of them rust profusely. True, most of them have poorer acceleration than my old Volkswagen diesel. True, most of them have convertible tops that are baffled by even a few meager rain drops. And true that the electrical systems in most British cars are considered a fire risk (there’s some truth to the old saying: “If Lucas Electric made guns, we wouldn’t have wars.”)

But who can resist the charm of an MGB?

The truth is, the owners I met at the show yesterday displayed one marvelous trait lacking in German car owners: they were incredibly relaxed. That they made it to the show in one piece was itself a cause for celebration, and there seemed to be an unspoken understanding that with a British car, you’ll get there when God intends for you to arrive. If you make it, you’ll arrive in tremendous style (as the gentleman in the Rolls Royce Silver Cloud demonstrated), and if you don’t make it, people will understand why.

I have a serious hankering for an early model MGB - the ones with the chrome bumpers. I also get weak in the knees when I see the original Triumph Spitfires. Of course, the Jaguar 120’s that were there were enough to cause spontaneous marriage infidelity, but I’m not quite ready for that.