Author: Chris Birt

Ford is essentially a truck company. That is why in spite of calling 2005 “The Year of the Car” they could not muster much more than a reskinning of the Volvo 80 platform to create the unpowered, boring as butter Five Hundred Series (which have sold poorly).

Sadly, Ford of Europe manufactures cars that people want–namely the new Focus ST. But for now, in America, its all trucks.

On the other hand, if you really care about their contribution to our economy and the like, then you might appreciate the fact that Ford can spin out the best truck concepts (at least) around. If you really, really care, then write to them and tell them to produce the following truck–The Super Chief. I am told it is more economical than Neil Young’s bio-diesel powered Hummer and consumes enough steel to put Cleveland and Youngstown back on the map.

P.S. The interior is made from a solid piece of wood. Think land yacht. Why not?

Yo, the namesake of this cinematic masterpiece has been resurrected. The “Fairlane” nameplate will return as a 2007 Ford SUV with sheet metal slicker than fistful of Alberto VO5. A word of caution to Ford, however, if the interior receives the typical tupperware treatment it will bomb like the Dice Man.

(I’ll be sending you pictures that I can confirm are production-ready.)

Little Big Car

A journalist once asked Truman Capote after a hard days work just how many words he had committed to paper. “One,” said Capote. “After working all day, just one word?” asked the journalist. “Yes,” said Capote, “but it was the right word.”

I may never be able to define a “Chick Car” so laconically. I am efficient, however, a defining what it is not and never will be. It will never be big. However once chooses to define the word, “big” will never be associated with a Chick Car.

That point was pounded home last week as I test drove a cute little Mini Cooper with some Road Rakes.

As of last week, the Mini Cooper had still escaped Any formal pronouncement as a chick car. As we Spirited the little cupcake around the Southdale parking lot (the dealer is inside the mall), I was feeling pretty nifty about its wonderfully linear torque curve, tossable handling and extremely well planted stance (the wheels are pushed far out to the corners for exceptional stability.)

Nothing, it seemed, could shake this car.

Nothing, until the world’s largest portable boom box pulled into view.

To be clear it was the world’s largest road legal SUV with a truck stereo loud enough to scare half the Galleria (except the women in Chicos— nothing shakes them). This beast is made by International Harvester. It looks like a shrunken semi. I guess it makes the ideal billboard for the Vault beverage drink it was promoting that day. It also made the Mini look Lilliputian.

I am not up to speed on my Jonathan Swift. I recall Gulliver’s Travels, however, is satirical. Which is a fairly accurate description of the picture you see attached to this blog. The monster truck, which is too much and the diminutive Mini, which is too much for too little.

When I viewed the two, er, vehicles side-by-side, I was struck by the difference in size and price. The IH truck is about 50k more than the Mini. It is also thousands of pounds larger, more powerful and more excessive in every way.

It occured to me that if I ran a manufacturing plant attached to a salvage yard, I could junk just one IH truck and re-manufacture 15 Mini Coopers for half their current price (35k) and still make a handsome profit.

That’s thinking big. Which is something the Mini does not encourage you to do.

So, is the Mini Cooper a Chick Car?

I still can’t say. I only know its very small and that the International Harvester SUV makes Kevin Garnett look like Truman Capote. The definitive answer, as with all the really big questions in this world, lies somewhere in-between.

The Peugeot looks good, and boy, will it back up!

As a “Car Guy” ages it becomes important to maintain a certain dose of what Henri Bergsson called “elan vital.” This can be translated to mean a spirit for life. I could find a suitable substitute in English but this would betray my continental bias toward culture. Our country is just too young to have perfected the art of enjoying life. The French seem to exhibit a remarkable capacity for doing nothing but.

It is in this spirit, therefore that I wish to offer a Francophilian perspective on what ails my all too many American “Car Guys.” For some reason they seem to feel that ecological sensitivty is important when buying an automobile. So they buy hybrids with small engines. The true car guy will always keep a Porsche (or similar subsitute) in the garage to remain both suave and sensible.

It is when his little automotive appliance becomes his sole mode of transport that I begin to feel like merde for mon ami. At this moment in his life, he should be striking back at life instead of settling for the “approximated” driving experience of his Prius.

Now before you get too hot there Iron John, recognize that the Road Rake will never cut anyone down to size simply because they prefer driving a sewing-machine sized (and equivalently powered) car. My vendetta is against all those who fail to test drive a brilliant new alternative called the Lexus GS 450h. From the advertising, “Working seamlessly together, an invigorating V6 gas engine and a dynamic electric motor produce 339 horsepower – equivalent to many V8s.”

Better yet, the Lexus GS 450h is available now for 51k (less than a 540) and does 0-60 in 5.2 seconds–right up there with the Porsche in the garage. This Lexus is proof that stereotypes can be shattered in seconds (to borrow again from the ad).

Speaking of stereotypes, I have had quite enough about the French, as well. When I get around to it, I will paste in the ad that inspired this little blog. It was an ad for a brilliantly-styled new Peugeot with the headline “Men are back.” While it suffered from the akward translation that French car ads often fall prey to in Italian fashion magazines (I think I saw it in Vogue) it struck me as just right. A French car company, at least, would say something like that and might even deliver on it (they’ve designed some great cars lately, and they don’t care what you think.)

I am sad that I cannot say the same for GM or Ford. Their advertising lacks any form of inspiration (remember any?) Their cars are so bad they put people out of work at alarming rates (sorry to hear about the Ford plant, but what did you expect?) Most of all, they lack vitality.

I hestitate to call these companies “American.” The 89-year Carrol Shelby is an American. He has talked about building a 500 plus horsepower hybrid next year. He is a devotee’ of Colin Champan, an Englishman, who designed perhaps the seminal small sportscar of his generation, the Lotus Elan. The type of car (in addition to the above Lexus) that could prove vital to both aging car guys and companies alike.

Got it? Good.

Thrust as a concept is covered frequently on the internet. Car guys struggle to define the automotive equivalent—or that sock in the lower back that occurs under hard acceleration.

There are many modern day muscle car that deliver this g-force experience. Yet if it’s thrust you seek, it’s not how fast you go, but how you go fast. This means, technically speaking, that you are looking for torque instead of raw horsepower.

I won’t explain difference between torque and horsepower here. More horsepower almost always means more speed. More horsepower does not directly translate into more thrust, which is why you’ll never see “stump pulling” and horsepower appear in the same sentence. For earth-moving pull (with what feels like a push) you need torque.

Thirty years ago, at the height of the first muscle car craze, buying torque was simple. You bought a muscle car and went for the biggest block engine you could find. Monstrous muscle car engines generated maximum torque and for brutal g-forces off the line, there will probably never be nothing like a 454, 455 or 426 Hemi.

But what the heck. These cars and engines had some issues. There were inherently inefficient, not much fun over 4000 RPM, and were fairly nose heavy, which dampens the sensation of speed.

Today, surprisngly, you have more options than you did thirty years ago. Once you are willing to face a few realities, you’ll end up with a lot more car than anything you could get back then.

The first reality is that engines today are much smaller. They also tend to be multi-valve, aluminum block overhead cam designs. In most cases, achieving maximum horsepower from these engines requires either supercharging or turbocharging—which both tend to pull rather than push you forward.

The second reality (related closely to the first) is that carmakers no longer build push-rod engines (outside of GM.). For some reason push-rod engines do a better job of generating low-end torque. They are, however, more thirsty and tend to lose power over 4500 RPMs. This is the main reason that carmakers have abandoned them.

(All but GM, that is. And here GM has stuck with two engines that continue to defy the laws of physics, or the 3800 V6 and the 350 V8.)

The third reality is that cars are getting heavier again, due to really egregious electronics. This is especially nasty, but not limited to, German cars. Unlike Mercedes and most Audis though, BMW continues to insist upon normally aspirated engines which delivers a more natural throttle response (i.e. you push down the accelerator and you move).

The final reality is that you may need to wait one more nanosecond off the line today to achieve the g-force acceleration you are looking for unless you want to go straight to the track (which is the subject for another blog). The accelerative rush you get at slightly higher RPMS fortunately can be just as brutal as anything from the 60s—and often more terrifying (German Cars and centrifugal superchargers are especially adept at high-end acceleration).

I have assembled a fairly lengthy list of cars to make the job of spotting the g easy. It is currently passing censorship and being vetted by local car dealers to assure that the cars will be available for you to drive. I have on hand–twenty five cars in three different price ranges.

The good news is that 80 percent are under 35k–well under. Some will even save you gas (comparatively speaking).