Reasons why I should never read Hotrod while drunk

[hirez]

http://www.hotrod.com/thehistoryof/53078/index4.html

180+ mph in an ugly American garden shed of a car that destroys a rainforest every time it crackles into life. A thing nearly as old as me that's had a hatfull of money spent on it to make it stop and go around corners in a manner that the original designer never intended.

I should hate the thing and lust after howling Italian metal like sensible people. Or hate it for its fuel hoovering and terrible waste like even more sensible people.

Bollocks to that. Fuck the lot of them.

See, I could probably blame exposure to Bullitt and The Dukes at an impressionable age (oh, and seventies footage from Santa Pod on World of Sport's Sports Special One) but I suspect it was the lungful of nitromethane (don't stand downwind of a fuel-car when it sparks up. You go deaf and the unburnt fuel works just like teargas.) that I experienced in 1990. At the time, I'd every intention of buying some Detroit iron while I was still young enough to have a laugh with it, but as is the way of these things, poverty got in the way.

A few years later, while house-hunting in Bristol, I met a chap with the same ambitions. He'd settled for scale models of the things in display cabinets in the living room.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers. 'Settling' is an anagram of 'mediocrity', and that's a terrible place to live.

(And in the meantime, the car-hacking movement called 'pro-touring' had become popular. Take V8 shed of a car, make it stop and go around corners, profit! And with any luck make the Clarksonistas shit themselves with hatred.)

Comments

[grega.livejournal.com]

Is it me or does the photo make it look like there is zero tolerance between the front wheels and the wheel arches? How does it turn and not have a blow out?

[quercus.livejournal.com]

I presumed those tyres were from the amphibious version. Have they never heard of sidewall flex ?

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Oh Stalwarts to you !

You think you've got a problem? I've now _twice_ seen jarkman turn down perfectly fine insane vehicles when he probably had the necessary (and very modest) wedge already in his back pocket. At least you had an excuse.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Guilty as charged, m'lud.

I can only blame it on my naturally conservative nature, my instinct for economy, my abhorrence for technical fripperies and wonkeries that serve no great purpose in the onward march of human progress.

[thunderbox.livejournal.com]

If you built a car like that and painted it pink, you could fuck off the Clarksonistas and the Hotrodistas in one all-conquering fashion statement.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I've thought hard about it, and I still don't see a downside to that plan.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I know it's a classic piece of Americana but it just makes me think of a Capri on steroids, or Basil Fawlty saying "I'm sorry if the motorway wasn't wide enough, a lot of the english cars have steering wheels."

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

nono, the capri is a pathetic little neutered copy of the charger. i suppose it's alright if you *like* them small and weak, but i prefer them big and powerful.
*end of car as cock metaphor*

[hirez.livejournal.com]

IIRC, it's the other way up. Ford UK hacked about a Cortina floorplan to make something that had the vague air of a US musclecar. If you were feeling very charitable and looking the other way at the time.

Like this: http://www.libeljournal.com/album/phonepix/random/Crapi.jpg

[steer.livejournal.com]

*grin* Oh yes, of course the heritage runs the other way but I'd never seen an American Muscle car at the time that the Capri loomed large in my consciousness as the cool car to have (well, it was the 1980s, very very awful things were cool then).

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

And now I once again have car lust ... Damn!
Then again, my desktop background at work is the black Charger from Blade ...
At least the original Charger had somewhat more serious anti-roll bars across the back than most US vehicles ... but then with the Magnum drinking 1/4 gallon every mile and giving you 400bhp and 400lb/ft in return, hell ... spin those wheels* and roll those dice, and put the champagne on ice ... oh for the V8 rumble and the six-pack carbs ...

Of course, you know Richard Hammond from Top Gear bought himself a Charger when he was filming over there, because he too fell in love with the things?

* And yes, I know the original version referred to roulette, but ...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

(I am not in this picture because I was behind the camera. Fortunately, there's no audio record of my whimperings.)

http://www.gothpat.me.uk/album/chicago/70scar3.jpg

Mind, all of those were from the 'require a body-off rebuild' end of the yard.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

[plaintive whining noises]

Damn.

[girfan.livejournal.com]

Yes, a few miles from my brother's house...and they take plastic.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

[even more plaintive whining]

Then again, I don't have plastic, nor do I have the personal oil-well required to run a decent muscle car, unfortunately ...

[amanda-pink.livejournal.com]

You can keep yer hotrods, pistons and Yank muscle. I'll take a Japanese rotary any day of the week ;)

If I was going for something with Yank presence then I'd pick Australian metal. Ford Falcon XB GT, circe 1976-79.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I had a similar conversation at the weekend.

Last of the V8 Interceptors, eh? I think I'd better add that film to the list of terrible influences.

(Although a late 80s Nissan Q45 might be fun.)

[jendama.livejournal.com]

Not all garden sheds are ugly ...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Absolutely not. That was yer dramatic overstatement for the purposes of making a point. Late sixties musclecars rock my world. Baybee. (As it were)

With the exceptions of Novas and some versions of GTO.

[jendama.livejournal.com]

I've always wanted a 1967 or 1968 Nova Super Sport, myself ...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Good. Things would be boring if everyone thought the same. And there'd be fights over the last example of any one thing.