 You don't lose it in the Costco parking lot; you do donuts with it in the Costco parking lot. I’ve had many four-wheeled crushes over the course of my quarter-century-plus on this giant nugget of cosmic dust, but I guess the one that has endured the longest (even though it hasn’t always been right on the top of my head) is GMC’s resident two-pedal-NSX-slayer, the Typhoon. Continue reading What’s Your Eleanor? – Edición Tomsk  There will be no Vanilla Ice Jokes Bear with me for a second. I know an ‘88 Mustang GT 5.0 drop-top has not weathered the last 22 years well in terms of cultural identity. The good news is, I don’t care. This is the car that introduced me to the concept that cars could be awesome. Not just to look at, or hear, but that they could move so fast you felt it in your chest.  Where it all began -- now an ornament on my parents' Christmas tree When I was just a wee young lad, my father gave me a toy car that had been his favourite when he was younger. I’m not entirely certain of the story behind the toy, but I can’t help but notice that the toy was issued in 1961, when my father would have been 16. Knowing his family, and knowing how cheeky they can be, I have to suspect that might factor into the story. My father was one of the youngest of nine children, and he told me how his oldest brother had bought his own Model T Ford when my father was a young boy; I’d guess dad probably mentioned that he’d like a car of his own when he was old enough to drive, and most likely received this Jaguar Mk2 as a joke gift.  She had been born with a face that would her get her way. He saw that face and he lost all control. . . One of my buddies lives in bohemian confines of the Hollywood Hills. While out walking his dog, he came across a natty frogeye sprite with a somewhat improvised tonneau cover.
Seems like a lot of our “Eleanors” have dated from our awkward high school eras, and my “Eleanor” is no different. I grew up in a solidly Japanese car household, where four cylinders were more than enough and velour interiors were a gaudy and ostentatious display of excess. Vinyl burns on your legs were a sign it was summer, and having to turn off the A/C going up a long hill was the norm. However, when I unintentionally gave our ’84 Toyota Truck (model names were too bourgeois for Toyota, or for us!) a sheetmetal nosejob courtesy of a VW Fox just after getting my license, my father fixated on the idea of safety. And safety meant Volvo. Of course, the pitiful amount of cash I’d managed to save from my grocery store job had gone to a mountain bike and a Clarion head unit, so I could barely scrape together a 4-figure number. Continue reading What’s Your Eleanor? – A Galaxy Far, Far Away Edition  It's not one of these... but probably could have been. As this site’s resident rambling idiot, it may come as no surprise that I don’t have an Eleanor… that is, if you take the article “an” to mean “one”. I actually have two three! And all for good reason, as I’ll explain. First, a little back story…. |
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