obsession with automotive excellence
Living with cars, keeping them, choosing them and the meanings enthusiasts attach to them.
Interesting Times
Porsche wants to move further upmarket. The ordinary 911’s prices and used-car market show what that ambition could mean for its traditional buyers.
Read the essay : Porsche Thinks It’s Leaving Money on the Table: True Enthusiasts Priced OutAutomotive Excellence
The California-designed Z30 Lexus SC combined Japanese engineering with two compelling powertrains. Its used prices make the case for a second look.
Read the essay : America’s Lexus: The California-Born Lexus SC is the Hidden Bargain in Japanese Sport CoupesAutomotive Excellence
Six decades of racing, engineering, and continuous development turned an unconventional rear-engine coupe into the reference point against which sports cars are still measured.
Read the essay : The Sports Car: How Porsche’s 911 Came to Represent PerformanceInteresting Times
A familiar silhouette conceals several markets, a few real shortages, and a surprising amount of arithmetic performed against the wrong sticker.
Read the essay : The Price of Knowing Which 911Automotive Excellence
Chapron’s DS Décapotable did more than remove a roof. Longer doors, cleaner flanks, structural changes, and the DS’s covered rear wheels turned an already remarkable shape into…
Read the essay : Have You Ever Seen Anything as Lovely as a Citroën DS Décapotable?Automotive Excellence / Interesting Times
The manual transmission is disappearing from ordinary cars, but scarcity, margins, and enthusiast demand can preserve it where buyers will pay for mechanical involvement.
Read the essay : Gatekeeping: Profits Will Save the ManualsAutomotive Excellence / Interesting Times
A luxury car becomes absurd when its engineering, theater, or commercial logic travels farther than the benefit it delivers. Some of the best cars ever made score…
Read the essay : The Absurdity IndexInteresting Times
Cars are unusually public possessions. They invite strangers to infer taste, status, identity, and intent from an object that may have been chosen for entirely different reasons.
Read the essay : You Are What You DriveInteresting Times
Luxury pickups combine the sedan’s private comforts with a body that publicly signifies work, capability, and preparedness. That combination changed what expensive American transportation looks like.
Read the essay : The Pickup Killed the Luxury Sedan, Then Wore Its SkinAutomotive Excellence
The W140 treated passenger isolation as a complete engineering problem: structure, suspension, glazing, seating, closures, electronics, and a V12 all served the same unusually expensive brief.
Read the essay : Mercedes W140: The Last Heirloom Luxury CarAutomotive Excellence
BMW’s first production V12 sedan combined speed, quiet, and everyday usability. The generations that followed gradually changed the case for twelve cylinders.
Read the essay : The BMW 750iL Changed EverythingAutomotive Excellence
America has not lost every wagon. It has largely lost the ordinary wagon: the useful long roof that did not require a raised body, an AMG engine,…
Read the essay : Requiem for the Wagon
