Santa's Helper

As we slide into the inevitable Christmas shopping season, it occurs to me that I tend to receive automotive related gifts.  This is no surprise to the people that know me, I'm sure.  People that know me, and I am a real person, not a Russian bot attempting to sway your opinion, know that I like cars.  Gearheads, petrol heads, car geeks, grease monkey, whatever ambiguously insulting term you may use, indeed that's what I am.

So gift buying should be easy, right?  Just get any car-themed item, and I will be happy.  Because I like cars.  The truth is, I really do like (some) cars.  However, things that are not cars, but are shaped like cars, I probably don't like.  For instance, I don't like cologne.  Bottling it in a Duesenberg shaped container doesn't help. I probably don't need gummy candy in the shape of tires.  Coffee doesn't taste any better in a cup with a Mustang on it.  My vestibule is clean even though a Chevrolet bowtie doormat is missing.  My hair stays out of my face despite my lack of a '49 Mercury bandana.  I sleep fine, even though my pillow is not adorned with a Jaguar Sovereign pillowcase.  And the next time you are in Target, slide on past the Armor All gift pack.  See, I like cars, not necessarily random daily items somehow imbued with the greatest hits of automotive history.

I am not saying that I only want cars for Christmas.  Actually, I am saying that I only want cars for Christmas.  But since everybody I know has not recently won the lottery, that's probably not an option.  And if I did receive a car, it would probably be something stupid like an Audi, or a pickup truck.  I would have to ask for a gift receipt so I could return it for store credit. 

But to the savvy shopper, there are some items a car guy might want.  Tools are always an option.  But there is a specificity to tools that can make a seemingly simple gift idea shockingly complicated.  For one thing, they are excruciatingly expensive.  Unless you get cheap tools.  And that is insulting, so don't bother.  I can buy cheap tools for myself and rationalize it away.  But to receive them as a gift is just as problematic as receiving fruitcake.  You don't want to seem ungrateful, but my god, fruitcake?!  While any quality, useful tool is a welcome gift, finding the right, useful tool is difficult.  After all, there are only so many flat head screwdrivers a person needs.

So, if not car shaped cologne or tools, what then?  Meaningful conversation?  There are many reasons I like cars.  Included in that list is the fact that a car is essentially a tiny little room with two comfortable seats and a loud stereo.  Conversation with one person is possible, but not recommended.  Besides that, people tend to clam up about the same time the rear tires lose traction.  Something about lateral G-forces forcing the Broca against the inside of the skull.  Besides that, most of the things I think are total crap.  Nobody needs to hear that.

This gift thing is much more complicated than I ever thought.  Kinda like healthcare.  Who knew?  I knew that's who.  I guess it comes down to this: don't give gifts.  Greeting cards are a joke.  This consumer life we live is pointless.  Instead, make those who mean something to you understand every day that they are loved.  Tell funny stories, listen when you are spoken to, solve the problems you can, don't stress about the ones you can't, and above all, be kind to one another.  All I want for Christmas is you.  To think for yourself.  Happy Holidays from The CamFollower.com

Cheese

Even being mostly Vegan, I must admit it.  Anything can be improved with cheese.  After all, it’s not called elbow shaped pasta and ambiguous yellow sauce, it’s called mac and freakin’ cheese.  Ham sandwich?  Meh.  Ham and Swiss?  You can create an entire culture around the basically infinite possibilities of a ham and cheese.  Pasta is inedible without Parmesan.  Even apple pie could stand a little cheddar on it.  And in much the same cheesy way, almost any car is better with rear wheel drive.  Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Lotus, and Bugatti have never built a front wheel drive car.  But look in any random parking lot and all you see are front wheel drive cars.  If rear wheel drive is so great, why aren’t there more rear wheel drive cars?  Because it’s more difficult to make a rear wheel drive car, and as a result, they cost more.

The clearest example today is the Toyota 86 / Subaru BRZ.  To an auto enthusiast on a budget, there is a short list of cars they want.  So short in fact that if you want to leave the showroom with a new, relatively simple and lightweight rear-drive sports coupe for less than $25K, the 86 stands alone.  But almost any car is faster than an 86.  Hell, most delivery vans will embarrass it in a stoplight drag race.  You can get much faster cars for that money, but you can not get a rear-drive performance car without spending more.  So what is so special about rear-drive, and why is it so hard to find?

The second part of the question is easier to answer – why is it so hard to find a rear wheel drive car?  Cars are made by companies that exist only to pay dividends to investors, line the pockets of crooked politicians, and provide crap coffee to their employees.  As such, soulless engineers conspire with unimaginative bean counters to ensure only efficiently produced products see the light of day.  Safety, packaging, weight, and production efficiency are more important than any perceived advantage rear wheel drive may provide.  The economies of mass production dictate front wheel drive cars.  That is one reason why the Honda Accord Sport is quantifiably better than a BMW 320i in every way, even though it is $10K less expensive.  It is so much harder for BMW to produce the drab little 320i than it is for Honda to churn out the Accord that it pales in comparison despite a large price gap.  In all empirical measures, and to most people, the Honda is the better car.

Or is it?  To answer the first part of the question – what’s so special about a rear wheel drive car – I’m forced to employ hyperbole and bad metaphors to illustrate very complex physics.  Moving a two-ton object across the face of the planet requires a lot of energy.  The simplest example of this would be a sizable chunk of rock rolling down a hill.  As long as there is enough momentum to overcome friction, the rock will continue to roll.  In order to change the direction of the rock, a small Alpine village must be placed in its path.  Several crushed chocolate kitchens later, the rock has gained a new heading, but somebody has to clean up all that cocoa.  That is basically what the front tires of your car do.  They don’t really care about spilled cocoa, but they do determine the vector of a two-ton object.  It’s hard work to move that kind of mass around, but it is achieved easily enough with the same steering mechanism that has been around since the invention of the wheel. 

However, not only must the front tires determine the direction of travel, they must also perform most of the car’s the braking duties.  Rear wheel only brakes are great to a ten-year-old on a BMX.  However, the idea of pullin’ a bitchin’ 180 would terrify the average driver.  As a result, not only do the front tires tell the car where to go, they determine the speed at which the car may travel.  So of the three possible motions of a car – turning, braking, and accelerating – the front tires are totally awesome at the turning and braking stuff.  Two out of three ain’t bad.  But asking them to be responsible for everything – turning, braking, and accelerating – would be like asking you to make love to a beautiful woman, in front of your mother, while defusing a bomb.  Something is going to go horribly wrong.

So, if asking the front wheels to be responsible for every motion of the car is such a bad idea, why are there so many front wheel drive cars?  Because until you go really, really fast, most people can not tell the difference between any car, be it front wheel drive, all wheel drive, or warp drive.  Why invest the extra money in a rear wheel drive car when there are no practical benefits?  Most people who buy a BMW or Mercedes do so because they are able to, and have no idea which end of the car is driven.  But they have some idea of what successful people drive, and many times it is a car that is expensive enough to be rear wheel drive.

But in reality, none of this matters.  When it comes down to it, the combination of modern tires and computers defy physics.  Even those of us who drive aggressively enough to realize the benefits of rear wheel drive usually end up with front wheel drive cars.  A case in point, the Ford Fiesta ST, probably the homeliest of all sporting cars, is an absolute riot.  It’s a playful little puppy of a car.  It’s fun all of the time.  It is fast enough to enjoy the sense of speed, but not so fast that you can never use its performance.  Meanwhile the Dodge Challenger, in all its Honest-to-God American Hemi V8 glory, is an absolute pig.  Excessive weight and size combined with a chassis that dates back to the Reagan administration conspire to eliminate any rear wheel drive advantage.  It is simply horrible to drive, despite its available power.

So what is the point?  Maybe that it doesn’t really matter which wheels are driven.  Back before the late 90’s Honda Prelude SH, real sports cars were rear wheel drive.  Period.  But cars like the old Prelude SH, and modern cars like the Fiesta ST, Civic Type R, and Golf GTi prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that front wheel drive can deliver attainable performance without the added weight and complexity of rear wheel drive.  Regardless, find something you like and learn to drive it in a way that you may have an opinion on such things.  Then go online and realize just how wrong you are.

Fan Boy

I am of that age that I can remember seeing the first Star Wars movie.  I know, I know, it is actually the 4th story in the series, but back in 1977 none of that mattered.  What did matter was Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and that adorable Princess that refused to wear a bra.  It was a big deal.  We didn't stand in line to get in or any of that silliness.  We saw a matinee (most likely with popcorn coupons) weeks after the premiere because that's how my dad rolled.  Anyway, I loved the movie.  No surprise there.  But I didn't LOVE the movie.  I didn't collect all 243 Kellog's Star Wars cereal boxes.  Eventually, a few birthday and Christmas gifts were indeed Star Wars related, but I didn't get all the toys.  I had friends that had everything they could force their parents to buy for them.  Star Wars figures, vehicles, posters, toothpaste, candy, underwear...  I found that all a little unsettling.  Sure, it made life a little easier when birthdays rolled around.  It's hard to get a gift when you don't know anything about a person.  But for my best friend Sam's birthday?  One random Star Wars trinket coming right up.  I didn't understand why he loved Star Wars, but it made gift giving, conversation, even a friendly relationship relatively simple to maintain.

I'm not making fun of Sam here.  He was a very good friend.  The point I am trying to make is that sometimes there is no reason for the popularity of some things.  Star Wars was somewhat spectacular in 1977, but it wasn't all THAT.  In the automotive world, there are countless examples of mediocre cars garnering a massive following, while some truly spectacular machines are largely ignored.  The Mustang, for instance, has generally been a horrible car.  It was a cheap sedan-based coupe with wheezing engines designed to separate dollars from rednecks.  But don't say that to most Mustang owners.  Even the base 4 cylinder 1980's Mustang was cool, at least to the people that had them.  And that is exactly what Ford was going for.  Ignoring for a moment the chassis dynamics of a river barge, pinto engine, and Rubbermaid interior: it had a chrome running horse on the grille, just like Steve McQueen's green car in Bullett.  Of course, neither car actually had a horse on the grille, but I digress.

Another prime example would be the Porsche 944.  It was slow and expensive, but it was cool.  So cool that in some circles they are revered to this day.  Your Grandmother's ancient Ford Tempo V6 (with an automatic) would easily outrun the 944 in a drag race.  "The best chassis in the 80's" is what I've heard.  How would you know, the damn thing never built up enough speed to test the simple strut / trailing arm suspension.  There was simply no way the 944, even with a hairdryer strapped to the motor, was anything but a fashion accessory.  Meanwhile, the brilliant early 90's Sentra SE-R was loved by nobody.  Sure, the press sang its praises constantly, but there were no waiting lists at Nissan showrooms, despite generally embarrassing most "sports" cars of the day.  It looked too much like your librarian's car for anybody to notice how wonderful it was.

What I'm getting at is that from time to time I may be asked about my opinions on cars.  In fact, that is the whole basis for this nonsense wasting your time right now.  When asked, my answer is commonly misunderstood.  An example of a real conversation I recently had:

Not a car guy: "What is the best car in the world?"

The CamFollower: The Series 1 Jaguar XK-E coupe.

Not a car guy: "Hmmm?"

The CamFollower: It's old.

Not a car guy: "But that thing is small, fragile, slow, unreliable, smells funny, leaks oil, and has wire wheels."

The CamFollower: OK, then.  Honda Odyssey.

Not a car guy: "A Honda Odyssey is the best car in the world? But that's a minivan!"

The CamFollower: Yes, but it is roomy, economical, safe, fast, and reliable.

Not a car guy: "But it's a minivan."

The CamFollower: Then I'm afraid you don't understand your question.

Actually, I am quite jealous of people like Sam.  He did not question why he liked Star Wars, he just did.  He didn't question many things, come to think of it.  Certainly not the big things like life, the universe, and everything.  Still, he was certain about the things he liked and disliked.  It must be blissful to face life with certainties.  I, on the other hand, question everything.  An existential crisis is my normal state of being.  Or maybe it's hyperbole, I'm not sure.  I don't have even have any idea what the best car in the world is.  Probably the Porsche 944.

Experts

I can't stand "experts".  Because most of the time "experts" turn out to be "salesmen".  Want the best fridge in the world?  Don't ask the guy that sells them.  You will end up with the one that makes him the most money, regardless of your needs.  Want to protect your family from financial disaster?  Don't ask the guy that sales life insurance.  Want the best car for your needs?  Well, you get the picture.

I will be the first to admit I don't know everything.  Sure, I know most things about cars, but I have a very limited notion of, for instance, fashion.  My closet is split into cargo pants for work, and cargo pants for days off.  Oh, and cargo shorts for warm weather.  I know what a suit is, but I do not own one.  If I am required to buy a suit, I am at the mercy of the salesman.  Luckily, here in the artsy-fartsy southern town in which I live, finding a dude to fashion me all up is easy.  Some guys live for that crap.  And when I need that particular skill, I am willing to pay for it.

But when the guy at True Value pounces on me right inside the door just dying to know why I came in today, I get a little frustrated.  See, I know why I am at the hardware store.  I am there for a 3/4 hose thread by 3/4 MPT fitting so that I can connect a garden hose to the ball valve I just installed.  And I don't want to explain why I used a ball valve instead of a hose bib.  Or why it has to be brass instead of galvanized.  Or that it is on an industrial machine, and not my house.  Or that the weather is nice today, or that I don't care for any free popcorn, or that I don't need a new kink-proof garden hose, but thank you anyway.  Once having successfully navigated the plumbing department exchange with my new best friend, I am again forced to explain why I don't have a rewards card to the adorable cashier.  Only to find that the girl at the register has to talk into her little walkie-talkie because the barcode won't scan.  And the very same guy that wouldn't leave me alone just a minute ago has to literally run up to the register so he can take the fitting back to the plumbing department and contact the Swiss Guard, who inform the Holy Father of the shortcoming, which requires a gathering of the College of Cardinals to find the correct passage and verse in order to process the request for an override so that I can hand over my money and leave the store with the fitting that absolutely nobody in the history of True Value believes, in their heart, is the correct fitting for my application.

The problem is not that the helpful hardware folks are anything but, rather, the guy that actually knew what you needed has closed his hardware store and retired, because he can't possibly compete with mega stores full of products whose purpose eludes the very people there to help you purchase the product in the first place.  And hardware stores represent only a fraction of the problem.  Speed shops do not exist anymore.  I don't mean auto parts stores, I can see three of those from my house.  I mean speed shops where the guy behind the counter not only knew timing specs for your Windsor (it depends on the cam, carb, and exhaust, by the way) but could also recommend a good BBQ place (12 Bones down by the river).  He would also not look at you like you were CRAZY for wanting to put an LS in a Cobra replica.  Speed shops were places where creativity and ingenuity were not only accepted, but expected. 

I am sure this online world has eliminated any possibility of a local specialty automotive store, along with your local Hi-Fi retailer, or even a Radio Shack.  But it has created a situation where almost anything you ever wanted to know about almost anything you can think is at your fingertips.  Most of it is crap (I place this blog fully in that category) but from time to time real nuggets of insight are found.  It's just too bad that it is not possible to make a living peddling parts for obscure European cars anymore.  Unless it is online.