The Rake Magazine

Like summer is upon us and will be gone faster than Flo Rida will be hot. With this in mind, I have to make a confession. I love women in convertibles (primarily) who shift their own cars. I want the summer streets filled with them.

So.

Here are my top three picks for the best mix of chicks and sticks forever.

1) Porsche Cayman (not a drop top but hotter than milk chocolate on assphalt). I think this may be the hottest chick car of all time. Calling it Caychick might move even more of them (not that they need it).

2) Alfa Spider. I dedicate this pick to Janet Car Chick Maximums Grangaard. You go girl.

3) Porsche Turbo 1987 convertible. The first generation Turbos are some of the wildest, most unpredictable cars of all time. Reminds me of my girlfriend the first year out of college. She could drive cars. She could drive this Porsche. She drove men crazy (primarily) because they could not negotiate its manic, mephistophelean turbo lag.

The woman was a devil.

On that note, I generally feel that a chick with a stick will kick a "bad" (superaccentuated air parenthesis) boy with a toy any day of summer.

Oi.

What's in a word?

More specifically what word makes a post zoom up the popular pole faster than others? Of course, there are the easy words like "porn" and "sex." Then there are the more inventive words (for professional writers) and happy accidents (for plebians like me).

I have come across one recently. I won't name the golden word, or perhaps the platinum-status proximity of two words. I have become superstitious about this discovery and don't want to jinx it before I figure out how to hold Tom Bartel over a bigger barrel.

Yet I must admit it feels delicious to be popular. Or at least it felt that way until my fragile literary ego was popped by a bigger man (in so many ways) and better writer than me.

"Your post is doing well because of the perverts out there. Why else does it score so high every morning?"

He is right.

Get the headlines just right and you'll increase traffic to your site. With an automotive blog, however, it seems that getting the traffic is far more contigent upon the headline than the vehicles it recommends for venturing into that real everyday madness you find on the street.

Then again I guess even perverts need a place to park online. Speaking of which, I think its only fair that I credit my good friend Tom for the teaser line on this post (so good I almost can't ask for money.)

In fact, I was going to make this the headline for this post unitl my other editor informed me that Prom is now past--and the event is no longer "sticky."

That was hardly my experience in high school.

Then again my world, and my words, have long since changed.

(This the car from its most umistakable angle. It looks even more like a nameless Japanese car from the rear and side.)

The Pax Britannica that led to a relatively peaceful 1800s (unless you were Irish) was imposed primarily by the glorious Royal Navy.

While it is politic to assert this prestige came from good government, passive politicians and the daring of former pirates made good, realists claim it was built on rum, sodomy and the lash.

Which immediately brings the new Jaguar XF to mind.

I drove this smallish land-yatch yesterday and I came away sore as hell. Because Jaguar has pretty much sunk its last hope for reiventing its once sexy (if unreliable) brand. (Think neutered--like this Lexus.)

So how bad are things? Let me count the ways:

a) While more trees were harmed in the manufacture of its exquisite interior this side of a Daimler, it still has too much Ford switchgear and soon-to-fail gizmodics.

Pictured: This gives you some feeling for the amount of wood lavished upon the new Jag interior. Real stuff. Rich. And far more modern that this picture.

b) The exterior.

c) The exterior.

d) The exterior.

e) The ext...what? I almost missed it because it looked like the Lexus E350 which is itself modeled on the Camry, for chrissake...erior. The most important new car in Jaguar's history (apart from the XJ) must be the new paradigm for sex on wheels, not a paen to sonambulism.

f) The performance is "comfortably numb" compared to its peers. Another dumb move from a brand once vaunted for pace and grace.

The buzz in the business is that Ford put all the money into the interior, then ran out of funds to adapt the hot XF show concept to production.

Poor Jag. While they are no longer drunk on their past elegance, someone still has this brand over a barrel, and this time I think it's finally going to sink.

With all the focus on small footprint cars these days, you'd think smart brands like Nissan would send us all their candy.

The "us" I am referring to would be, of course, the middle-aged lotharios that long for their youth. And few cars say "younger than you should be" than the Nissan Micra—arguably the cutest little button of a car ever made.

But we'll never see it here. Too small. Too tiny. Too darn cute — unlike the Germanic grocery cart called the Smart (which I hear is not selling well).

Having lived for a spell in Japan myself, however, I think there is something else at play. Older Japanese men (in particular) are obssesed with youth — more in a pulpish than a papal sense, but an obsession nonethelss.

In fact, the line between the automotive and the anthropological in Japan is frequently blurred. Salarymen read catalog-sized comics filled with pictures of doe-eyed characters that are overly-defined. Pop "artists" like Takashi Murakami craft nyphmetic sculptures nasty enough to make Jeff Koons blush.

And such is life.

Which is why Nissan can introduce a new, topless version of the Micra this year without furthering the fantasies of people who really don't belong in its seats. The effect might be totally different if rides like this were released into the puritanical yet pornographic pop culure we endure over here.

They may not be selling us this car to save us from ourselves.

Now go have a sucker.