Miscellaneous Me

Canada Day 2011

2011-07-01T15:42:00.000-07:00

I am not an Accidental Canadian

Sport holds up a mirror to a nation, and one could hardly blame Canadians everywhere from flinching away from the image reflected by the Stanley Cup playoffs. Rioting, looting and general thuggery filled the streets of downtown Vancouver as the home team - Canada's adopted team - lost to the Boston Bruins after pitched warfare in seven acts. Today is Canada Day, and I'm afraid we're going through a bit of a rough patch.

Where once Canada stood as a beacon of progressive thinking and humanitarian ideals, we now face continual challenges to the character of the nation. Our government has cut funding for women's programs and aid to African nations. Canada's track record on environmental issues is frankly appalling. The enormous cost of our medical system continues to balloon unsupportably. The poorest are falling through the cracks. Our government groans under the yoke of excessive bureaucracy. The Prime Minister is a cat person.

How different from last year when, so the pundits said, Canada finally stood among equals; the year when we took our place on the world stage; the year when we grew up as a nation. To which I reply, in the patois of my Ulster forebears, “Catch yerself on.”

Admittedly, it was a good year. The vein of cautious Scots pessimism that runs through our various banking centers and regulatory groups had insulated us from economic collapse. Vancouver's Winter Olympics provided a much-ballyhooed showcasing of Canada to the world, principally in the person of our immensely talented, determined and gracious athletes. Who else but a Canadian gold-medallist would apologize for over-exuberance upon winning gold?

However, what everyone pointed to as the defining moment for the nation is, of course, Sidney Crosby's overtime goal in Men's Olympic hockey. It clinched victory over the Americans (always particularly satisfying) in our national sport, added a record-breaking fourteenth gold to our medal count, and unified the entire country in a whooping, hollering, lumberjack cheer. Every Canadian, regardless of race, creed, political affiliation, age or stance on the whole Starbucks vs. Tim Horton's debate, threw their arms up in the air like they just didn't care and partied like it was 1867.

Everyone except, and this is the important bit, for at least two people. As the third nail-biting period drew to a close with the promise of overtime, the game and our national pride hanging in the balance, my mother and father got up, switched off the television and went for a walk in their own little corner of heaven.

Their home, the place where my brother and I grew up, is a little country jewel in the Fraser Valley, ringed by snow-capped mountains. The winding, hilly roads are lined with either aromatic fir and pines or sussurating birch and ash. Curious horses and cows will walk over to greet passers-by, and the air is filled with the hum of busy insects and the bright calls of small birds. It is an unutterable paradise.

So my mother and father walked their usual route chatting, I would imagine, about small things: when to invite friends over, what to have for supper. It's not that they didn't care about the hockey, or the electric sense of national unity that was palpably charging the entire country. Very simply, they didn't need to physically participate in watching the event unfold to experience that sense of total belonging, of togetherness. This country, which they had chosen to call home, had chosen them back time and again.

In 1969, a young couple arrived in a wild land, leaving behind a troubled country. With charming naivety, they had drawn a line from their home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, all the way across to Prince Rupert, BC, figuring that, as it was at the same latitude, the weather would be the same. What they found was essentially a frontier town, and within a year my five-foot-one mother, who had lived in towns all her life, was hiking out of the bush with half of a dressed moose carcass strapped to a back-board.

But the where and the when is not important. What is important is that Canada welcomed them. The country was wide open. When they tried to return to Northern Ireland several years later, with the intention of buying a small farm, they found intolerance, small-mindedness, and very real danger. The contrast was unlivable. The Old World told you who to be based on who your ancestors were, and what you believed; Canada asked the question, “Who would you like to be?”

And that's why I refuse to allow either thrilling Olympic victory or ugly commercial defeat to colour my national feeling. I am not Canadian by accident: my parents chose this land for me and I have been a proud Canadian since the day I understood what this place truly is.

Mordecai Richler famously said, “Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with the disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples,” which is par for the course for that sour old goat. Consider me, then, well and truly gruntled. If my parents had stayed, the course of my life would have flowed down the same old valleys. Here, the rivers are young, and they carve their own way.

I love this country. I would no more emigrate to New Zealand, or America, or the U.K. than I would cut off my limbs, or carve out my heart. I owe Canada an unrepayable debt as not only the safe haven my parents found, but also the land where I grew, was educated, found friendship and love and limitless opportunity. Even though I have not a single ancestor buried here, my roots feel as deep as anyone who can go back several generations; Canada's soil is fertile, and will grow anything you choose to turn your hand to.

In eleven days, it will be July 12th, marching season in Northern Ireland. The old order is dying there, and perhaps this year will be quiet, with the usual posturing and sabre-rattling sounding less like approaching storm clouds and more like the receding footsteps of a retreating army. I certainly hope so. Either way, on the day, my Catholic father will likely receive a phone call from my Ulster Protestant godfather, who usually likes to sing “The Sash”, a marching song that might have been highly inflammatory in its place. Here though, it has no context, and as such, the pair of them will share a bittersweet laugh, both lamenting the idiocy of the conflict, and rejoicing in being well out of it.

Mom and Dad, your sons both thank you. You could not have chosen a better place for us. Canada, this day your son thanks you as well. When we stand on guard for thee, may it be to hold high the welcoming beacon of a better life.

As for my children, as yet unborn, if they choose to work abroad or marry someone in Australia, then so be it. In the meantime, if this is going to be the country I choose for them, then we've got some work to do.

At 7 a.m., the morning after those all-too-well publicized riots, a small army of people arrived in downtown Vancouver. They were armed with trash bags and some wore Canucks Jerseys; the city's streets were covered in debris and broken glass, but by 11 a.m. ninety percent of it was gone. A police cruiser received a spontaneous covering of Post-It notes thanking police and firefighters for their efforts to keep people safe.

I walked through the downtown core today where a diverse mix of people were wandering about the sunny streets, some striding purposefully, some stopping to listen to a street performer drumming outside the Skytrain station. The windows of the iconic Hudson's Bay Company are still boarded up, but above them flutters hundreds of flags. As I get closer, I can see that on each one is written a small message of kindness. Hundreds of strangers have come together to counter the destruction with a simple display of love.

You know what?

That's my Canada.

An Open Letter To My Wife On Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T05:48:00.001-08:00

It's 5:30 am and I've just popped the kettle on. In half an hour, I'll walk down to catch the first bus of a long public transit ride back to Victoria, where my car is waiting with the flat tire I got trying to get here. I see that it's raining, and I left my raincoat at home. Great.

Once back in Victoria, it's work until seven, ride home in the dark and try to make something reasonably healthy for supper without making too many dishes. Right around this time, I'll probably get a call from my wife. She'll have spent her day on Saltspring Island, dealing with patients (no coincidence that word's a homonym for "patience"), wrestling with recalcitrant computers, sorting through the four thousand emails she gets every day, and other fun things like that. She will tell me about her day, I will tell her about mine. We will both say, "I love you," and then we'll hang up and go to bed.

Now, I hope you appreciate me typing all this out at five in bloody morning, because it is the Greatest Love Story Ever Told.

At least, it is so to me.

Some time ago, two friends of ours got married, and the first sentence of the groom's speech has stuck with me like a little Post-It note for the soul. Peter, an individual with infinite charm, got up there in front of his new wife and assembled families and friends and said, "I know this is the part where I'm supposed to say how great my wife is and how crap I am but in this case, it's really true!" Cue big laugh from everyone. Cue quiet, "Holy shit, me too!" moment from me.

Now I'm not going to bang on here about what a useless, feckless, generally disorganized lump I can be, or wonder why my lovely, active, big-hearted wife continues to love a man who is basically Eyeore with red hair. Matter of fact, from time to time she can be imperfect too. What I will say is that there's always a little voice in the back of my head when she says "I love you," that responds "You do? Why?"

It's not that I doubt the love, it just staggers me. It's why it took me so long to get together with her in the first place. It's why I kind of flubbed my vows. It's why at least once today, somebody will walk up to me and ask why I have such a stupid grin on my face.

You may say the proof of love is in grand gestures, or quiet moments together, or the thousand small daily sacrifices that a couple makes for each other. For me though, it's like Paul McCartney said, "Baby, I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time."

I hope you have as good a Valentine's day as I will, but I doubt it.

Katie, love you, sweetheart.

-Brendan

Oh Canada

2010-07-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

Canada Day

Today is Canada Day, and already a newspaper may be waiting for you on your front doorstep, full of headlines crowing about this year's successes. Truly, so the pundits say, this is the year when Canada stood among equals; the year when we took our place on the world stage; the year when we grew up as a nation. To which I reply, in the patois of my Ulster forebears, “Catch yerself on.”

Admittedly, it has been a good year. The vein of cautious Scots pessimism that runs through our various banking centers and regulatory groups in some ways insulated us from economic collapse. Vancouver's Winter Olympics provided the much-ballyhooed showcasing of Canada to the world, principally in the person of our immensely talented, determined and gracious athletes. Who else but a Canadian gold-medallist would apologize for over-exuberance upon winning gold?

Also, this is the year that our medical system didn't collapse yet, and our robot Prime Minister continues wearing sweaters, which keeps the political cartooning industry busy.

However, what everyone will be pointing to and shouting about as the defining moment for this year is of course Sidney Crosby's overtime goal in Men's Olympic hockey. It clinched victory over the Americans (always particularly satisfying) in our national sport, added a record-breaking fourteenth gold to our medal count, and unified the entire country in a whooping, hollering, lumberjack cheer. Every Canadian, regardless of race, creed, political affiliation, age or stance on the whole Starbucks vs. Tim Horton's debate, threw their arms up in the air like they just didn't care and partied like it was 1867.

Everyone except, and this is the important bit, for at least two people. As the third nail-biting period drew to a close with the promise of overtime, the game and our national pride hanging in the balance, my mother and father got up, switched off the television and went for a walk in their own little corner of heaven.

Their home, the place where my brother and I grew up, is a little country jewel in the Fraser Valley, ringed by snow-capped mountains. The winding, hilly roads are lined with either aromatic fir and pines or sussurating birch and ash. Curious horses and cows will walk over to greet passers-by, and the air is filled with the hum of busy insects and the bright calls of small birds. It is an unutterable paradise.

So my mother and father walked their usual route chatting, I would imagine, about small things: when to invite friends over, what to have for supper. It's not that they didn't care about the hockey, or the electric sense of national unity that was palpably charging the entire country. Very simply, they didn't need to physically participate in watching the event unfold to experience that sense of total belonging, of togetherness. This country, which they had chosen to call home, had chosen them back time and again.

In 1969, a young couple arrived in a wild land, leaving behind a troubled country. With charming naivety, they had drawn a line from their home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, all the way across to Prince Rupert, BC, figuring that, as it was at the same latitude, the weather would be the same. What they found was essentially a frontier town, and within a year my five-foot-one mother, who had lived in towns all her life, was hiking out of the bush with half a dressed moose carcass strapped to a back-board.

But the where and the when is not important. What is important is that Canada welcomed them. The country was wide open. When they tried to return to Northern Ireland several years later, with the intention of buying a small farm, they found intolerance, small-mindedness, and very real danger. The contrast was unlivable. Ireland told you who to be based on who your ancestors were, and what you believed; Canada asked the question, “Who would you like to be?”

And that's why I can't embrace this year as being the year that Canada was elevated to greatness, or the year in which we could finally feel proud of this country, because I have been a proud Canadian since the day I understood what this place truly is.

Mordecai Richler famously said, “Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with the disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples,” which is par for the course for that sour old goat. Consider me, then, well and truly gruntled. If my parents had stayed, the course of my life would have flowed down the same old valleys. Here, the rivers are young, and they carve their own way.

I love this country. I would no more emigrate to Australia, or America, or the U.K. than I would cut off my limbs, or carve out my heart. I owe Canada an unpayable debt as not only the safe haven my parents found, but also the land where I grew, was educated, found friendship and love and limitless opportunity. Even though I have not a single ancestor buried here, my roots feel as deep as anyone who can go back several generations; Canada's soil is fertile, and will grow anything you choose to turn your hand to.

In eleven days, it will be July 12th, marching season in Northern Ireland. The old order is dying there, and perhaps this year will be quiet, with the usual posturing and sabre-rattling sounding less like approaching storm clouds and more like the receding footsteps of a retreating army. I certainly hope so. Either way, on the day, my Catholic father will likely receive a phone call from my Ulster Protestant godfather, who usually likes to sing “The Sash”, a marching song that might have been highly inflammatory in its place. Here though, it has no context, and as such, the pair of them will share a bittersweet laugh, both lamenting the idiocy of the conflict, and rejoicing in being well out of it.

Mom and Dad, your sons both thank you. You could not have chosen a better place for us. Canada, this day your son thanks you as well. When we stand on guard for thee, may it be to hold high the welcoming beacon of a better life.

Come on over: it's a really big country.

-Brendan McAleer, July 1st, 2010

The Mustang

2010-04-02T08:29:00.000-07:00

All right, stop, collaborate and listen: the Mustang's back in a brand-new edition. Yes, if you're a fan of rolling on by, even though the girlies were on standby (waiting just to say hi), then you'll be happy to learn that the iconic pony car is back in 5.0 form.

And it's not just good news for fans of the worst music white people have ever come up with since electric jazz flute; this new 'Stang rocks. The GT version sports the new “Coyote” V8, pumping out a thundering 412hp and 390 lb/ft of torque, and even the base V6 is now sporting 300+ hp. At the dragstrip, it's more than enough to light 'em up, stage, and wax a chump like a candle.

However, there's a little sadness this month for fans of one of the most enduring cars in history: Donald Frey, designer of the original “'64 ½” Mustang passed away March 5th, just over a month shy of his creation's 46th anniversary. One wonders what Don would have made of the 'Stang's latest iteration, with all that pavement-cracking horsepower, given the weird little mid-engined convertible that was his original prototype.

The date the world first saw the Mustang was at the World's Fair, New York, April 17th, 1964, and if you're a history buff, you'll note that the Mustang predates the official start of the Vietnam War. It's never missed a year of production since.

The first prototype wouldn't be recognizeable as a Mustang to anybody whose blood wasn't filled with blue, oval-shaped corpuscles; in fact, it looked very much like GM's much-later released Fiero. Like the Fiero, it was mid-engined, and like the Fiero, it never really got off the ground. Despite being widely-acclaimed by the racers at its introduction at the '62 Watkins Glen Grand Prix (where even Sterling Moss had a go behind the wheel), the design team was sent back to the drawing board.

Good thing too, as the wedge-shaped, two-seater, 90hp Mustang I prototype was nothing like the rip-snorting image that the name “Mustang” implies. Can you imagine Steve McQueen's “Bullitt” driving around in a four-cylinder doorstop? He wouldn't even have made it up those San Francisco hills, much less outrun the baddies in their Charger.

Round two was much better: taking their inspiration from Maserati and Ferrari coupes, the design team knocked out a second prototype that, with the exception of the bumpers, looked nearly identical to the production model that hit showroom floors in '65. With a long front end dominated by a running horse (rather than Ferrari's prancing horse), the convertible Mustang was a hit with everyone at Ford. Everyone except Henry Ford II.

The Mustang project ended up being cancelled four times before finally being ram-rodded through by those Ford execs who believed in the little car. Having completed the project in just 18 months on a shoestring budget, Donald Frey was told in no uncertain terms: if this car doesn't sell, you're fired. Of course, this being the car business in the early sixties, the exact wording of the threat was a little more, um, PG-13.

Frey needn't have worried. Ford would have considered 80,000 cars in the first year a sales success. They sold over a million Mustangs in two years. The little convertible showed up in Goldfinger, sold 22,000 units its very first day, and became an enduring part of Americana.

Initially powered by a peppy straight-six engine, the Mustang was quick, but not really a muscle car. With the introduction of the V8-powered GT, it really came into its own as a pony car. Carroll Shelby worked with Ford to produce the GT-350, first of the hi-po 'Stangs, and one that would forever tie his name to the brand.

The Mustang continued to be excellent throughout the '60s, most famously as the green fastback “Bullitt” '68 Mustang GT that McQueen piloted. Engines got bigger, horsepower got higher, and the little pony turned into a real musclecar. Most famous of the engines, and just mention this one to any guy in a white t-shirt with a bunch of neon Fords on it if you want to be bored for several hours, was the rare 428 Cobra Jet. This was the king of the Ford big-blocks, punching out an incredible 410 hp, a horsepower figure we've had to wait until now to see again from the factory (excluding superchargers).

And then, predictably, along came the '70s and everything started sucking. Compare the Gimme Shelter 428 Cobra Jet's 410 horsepower with the Debbie Boone power output of the Pinto-based '75 Mustang's 302 cubic-inch powerplant: 140hp. Somebody left the barn-door open at the ranch.

From time to time, Ford gets a bee in its bonnet about replacing the Mustang with something higher-tech or more efficient. So it was in the eighties, when they co-developed a front-wheel-drive turbocharged coupe with Mazda, to be sold under to Ford badge as the Ford Probe, which worked out about as well as trying to sell a colonoscopy to a guy who came in looking for a Johnny Cash record. Admittedly, the turbocharged-4-cylinder SVO Mustang was pretty good, but the public had spoken: they wanted their V8, rear-wheel-drive pony car back, and they wanted it to gallop.

Gallop it did, particularly in the '03 and up supercharged Cobra model. Get a good set of tires and shift fast enough, and one of these could run the quarter-mile in the mid-12s. Aside from that, though, the Mustang of the early 2000s was perhaps a bit too refined, which was why the retro-styled 2005 with its solid rear axle was hailed as a return to the true ideals of the original pony car.

Mustangs being what they are, this new 5.0 model won't be king of the road for long, as the new supercharged Cobra versions will put down even more power, and there'll be more Special Editions variants than the Lord of The Rings DVDs. There'll also be a slew of aftermarket parts to tailor your Mustang into whatever kind of steed you'd like it to be, whether it's a drag racer with pizza-cutter tires up front, an autocrosser with spherical titanium endlinks, or a drifter with a slammed suspension and an unnecessarily large wing on the back that makes it look like you've been rear-ended by a Cessna that was carrying a load of neon vinyl.

But I'd like to think that Mr. Frey would be proud of the new Mustang, as where the Model T brought mobility to the masses, the Mustang brought power to the people. Either way, if you see me on the streets in a dark-green Mustang GT with a six-speed, don't bother to wave.

'Cause I'll be rollin', in my five-point-oh.

Thievery

2010-03-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, I awoke to find that someone had gotten into my carport and made off with some small items like my wife's bicycle helmet and my riding gloves, and they'd also stripped the lights from both our bicycles. Needless to say, I was Not Amused at a level that even Queen Victoria would have considered impressive.

Seeing as this is a family newspaper, I will not directly outline the invective that issued forth from me upon discovering that I had been burgled, but suffice it to say that the air turned blue, a passing flock of seagulls dropped out of the air, stone dead, and God's stern and bearded face peered out from behind a cloud and boomed, “Knock It Off.”

Of course, bleeding hearts might say that no-one sets out to steal unless motivated by personal misfortune, and perhaps the thief or thieves really needed the few small items they took and that we should all be thankful that we have our health and the love of our friends and blah blah blah. Well, to them I offer the pithy retort, “Get stuffed,” and without wishing to have anyone think that I am less forgiving a person than, say, Mother Theresa or perhaps Elin Nordegren, may the miscreant who stole my stuff win a free trip to Sea World where they might fall in a tank and be eaten by Tillikum the killer Killer whale.

But such is life. You work hard, buy stuff, and then other people try to take your stuff away. Sometimes, this is called “government”. The rest of the time, it's just plain thievery.

Here in the Lower Mainland, the rate of automotive theft is the highest in Canada. Sure, there's the bait-car program, and sure, it's a great balm if you've just had your car broken into to log on to the website and see a few luckless buffoons get nabbed by the fuzz. But there's nothing that quite takes away that sick feeling when you come out in the morning to find a broken window, or a jimmied lock, or worse still, no car at all.

Don't expect things to improve either. The widespread use of immobilizer keys has resulted in fewer vehicle thefts, but while there's a great deal of technology put into keeping our cars parked where we leave them, there's just as much tech being developed to steal them.

Take the recently released Electronic Key Impressioner, for instance. This screwdriver-sized device can be inserted in any key-lock and instantly takes a 3D snapshot of the tumblers. It then sends the information via USB cable to an instant key-cutter so a replica key can be created. It's even capable of scanning a database and duplicating the digital signal that passive immobilizers use.

So, whether it's a fancy electronic scanner, or the universal key of A Large Rock, how can we best protect ourselves against thieves?

Well, the first thing to do is the simplest: don't leave valuables in plain sight in your car. Keeping an ashtray full of loonies in your car is the equivalent of rolling in bacon grease and then going for a run in Lynn Canyon, just when the black bears are coming out of hibernation.

Were not just talking money either. It's a pretty lousy idea to keep shopping bags of any description hanging about in the back of your car, and there're all sorts of apocryphal reports of thieves breaking in to cars to steal chocolate bars left in plain view. I wouldn't do it for a Klondike Bar, but somebody might.

But perhaps you think you've removed all the valuables from your car, and you can't imagine what there is in there that a thief might be interested in. Well think again; there's you. Specifically, your identity. Most people chuck the original registration papers for their car in the glovebox and forget about them, but those documents can potentially expose you to identity theft should they fall into the wrong hands.

It's a growing problem, so how do you protect yourself? One possibility is to carry a photocopy of your registration papers with the address blanked out. Should you get nicked for speeding or similar (and I'm sure none of my readership has ever strayed over the legal limit), you're usually given the option to produce the originals within a few days.

At this point, you're probably thinking: “What about an alarm system to protect both my car and the parking meter fund?” Certainly if you own an older car without a passive immobilizer, or factory alarm, it can be a good idea to have some sort of theft deterrence installed. There are multiple types available, the simplest being a shock-detecting alarm that will invariably get set off by a passing friendly cat, and cause your neighbours to despise you. Also, cheap alarms can usually be defeated by a professional thief in the time it takes to read this sentence.

Better yet would be to spring for a two-way pager alarm, which will send you a quick buzz when your car's being broken into. It's only a matter of time before this technology is integrated into the iPhone, so you might soon be sitting through Avatar 2's four hours of eyestrain only to receive a text letting you know your hybrid is being violated, and then you can rush outside and administer justice, West-Coast-style (I'm not sure what that would be exactly. Whack the culprit with a sockeye salmon and then appoint them their own social worker or something).

The bottom line is this: auto-related theft is just part of living in the Lower Mainland, and there's very little you can do to stop it; you can just minimize the risk by making your car less attractive to thieves, but if they want to get in, they're going to get in.

Consider this though, in Johannesburg, South Africa the problem is not so much theft as it is the much more dangerous issue of car-jacking. At the peak of the difficulties, as many as 16,000 car-jackings were occurring every year. Drivers were equipping their vehicles with illegal-but-quietly-condoned anti-carjacking devices like the Blaster, which shot blasts of flame out the side of the car, or a spring-loaded metal bar which sprang out and shattered the ankles of a would-be hijacker.

While it might be satisfying to think of having an anti-theft device that will barbeque the next guy who tries to steal your mp3 player, these medieval-seeming anti-hijacking measures did little to solve the problem.

Aside from taking a few preventative steps to minimize our risk, the fact is, we on the West Coast have to accept that automotive-related theft is going to occur at some point during our car-owning lives, and just be ready to deal with it. After all, blessed are the meek and so forth.

Having said that, if I ever get my hands on the guy who took my stuff, I'm going to put my foot so far up his backside that he'll be using Kiwi shoe polish for toothpaste.

Australia The Hoonish

2010-03-09T17:48:00.000-08:00

Well, we did it. Twenty-six medals, fourteen of them gold, thumped the U.S. in both the final hockey games, and (therefore) managed not to have any unsightly rioting. So what now, post-Olympic hysterics? Back to the daily grind, I suppose.

But, as Vancouverites, let's take a moment to salute our partners, the people of Whistler. And by that, of course, I mean the Australians.

It's true, you know. Try ordering a burger or trying on a toque in Whistler, and see how long it is before somebody with an Australian accent wanders over and inquires if they might be of assistance. I managed to get up there last weekend, and every single server, bartender, store clerk, or barista was from down-undah (with the exception of a ferocious gorgon of a Frenchwoman who chased us out of her store for daring to look at wares displayed therein).

Australians are a lot like Canadians in many ways, although they suspiciously always seem to be having a great deal more fun. Having been to Australia, I can understand why. I've got a special place in my heart for the people, with their flavoured salt for your fish-and-chips, their winding white-metalled roads, and their excellent wineries, staffed entirely by cheerful middle-aged women who, despite protestations that you are only a poor student and are certainly not going to be buying a hundred-dollar bottle of Chateau Cuivre Réserve Nuit San Wogga-Wogga or whatever it is, will pour you brimming glass after brimming glass with the instruction, “Now, get stuck into that.”

Currently, the wife is watching an Austalian television show called McLeod's Daughters, a programme of such overwrought melodrama, it makes Grey's Anatomy look like Waiting For Godot. Everybody on it is spouting off about brumbies and jumbucks, pronouncing the word “No” like “Naiue”, getting into tangled relationships generally involving fighting over horses and sheep, and tearing off in a cloud of dust in their modern El Caminos.

Which brings me in a meandering way around to my point. This is loosely a car column after all, and having spent last time chatting about the uniqueness of the Canadian motorist, let's contrast our tight-fisted appreciation for the cheap and cheerful with the sunny Australian driver and their mania for whacking great V8s.

I'll put this out at the start: if your only experience of Australian-style driving up to this point has been watching Mad Max, it's not like that at all. For one thing, there are only two or three mutant cannibalistic biker gangs, and they're fairly easily avoided.

Picture instead a winding tarmac road, freshly laid and curving through the gum trees, around a veranda-skirted pub, and off towards the distant ocean. Imagine the sun beating down upon your dashboard, and lizards skittering off the road at your approach. Imagine semi-suicidal wallabies bounding along beside you and then suddenly dashing out in the road, forcing you to shift a foot to the brake pedal everytime you spot one. Imagine seeing, off in the distance, the shaggy form of an emu: a bird the size of a donkey with the intelligence level of a particularly stupid budgerigar.

Now imagine, and this is the really important bit, that every single car that passes you (as you drive on the left, remember) is infinitely cooler than the lame stuff we get here. Enjoying your Camry? Well how about the Australian option: the supercharged TRD Aurion, perhaps the most powerful front-wheel-drive car available. Yes, it's a family sedan, and yes it has the same horsepower as a Nissan 370Z.

Oh, you've got a nice comfortable Ford Fusion, do you? Well in Australia you might have a Falcon. It'd be rear-wheel-drive and available with either an inline-6 turbocharged engine or a big V8, both of which produce around 420hp. The same goes for the offerings from GM, which in Australia are usually Holdens, and you can get all of these as either station wagons, or half-pickups, or with bare frame rails out the back if you're going to bolt on a flatbed and really terrify your sheep as you drive them to market.

Great big engines are all well and good, but what are you supposed to do with them when you're not outrunning the cannibal bikers or turning cute little wallabies into fine red mist? You go racing, and in Australia that's more fun too. I regard F1 racing as being extremely difficult and technical, but it's not very exciting to the casual bystander. NASCAR is just plain terrible unless you're a fan of turning left and marrying your cousin. Australian V8 racing is like the two previous forms of racing had a baby, and then that baby grew up listening to the Rolling Stones on vinyl and watching The Terminator, and rebuilding engines in the bathtub.

It is sheer, unadulterated awesome, with the demandingly wiggly racetracks of F1 combining with the bullish shunting and rubbing of full-contact NASCAR. The Bathurst 1000 is the big one, Australia's Indianapolis 500, and here's a little tidbit to give you an idea of what such events are like: a police “crackdown” has restricted fans to a limit of no more than 24 beers. Per day.

So, if you have a mullet, move to Australia ASAP. But not everything in Oz is so shouty. Yes they produced AC/DC, but also Dame Nellie Melba. Consider Ford's Fiesta EcoNetic. This small but excellent family hatchback (the Fiesta will be available in Canada later this year) makes use of a 1.6L turbodiesel engine with a little less horsepower than a Honda Fit, but gobs more torque. It will handily trump a Prius for fuel economy, getting a combined mileage of about 3.7 L/100kms, 35% better than the more-expensive Toyota.

Australia also has a much better grey-market import system than ours, so it's even cheaper to get a Nissan Skyline GTR or a Mitsubishi Delica 4x4 Diesel, and the steering wheel's on the correct side. Japanese manufacturers often release vehicles in Australia which are essentially the same as the ones available in the Japanese home market. There are far more engine choices available, including diesel versions of just about everything.

I'll leave you with this little anecdote. After driving from Adelaide to Melbourne and kicking four kinds of hell out of our poor rental car (including me backing it into a concrete mailbox), my wife and I flew up to Brisbane, and spent a few days lounging around with the in-laws before getting a little bored and deciding to drive into the rain forest. We headed for a resort called O'Reilly's, and it was lovely and full of parrots and giant ferns and so forth. However, to get there required the traversing of some seriously narrow roads, with hairpin turns and unguarded drops, blind corners and steep hills, and it took us a good few hours to get there.

When we arrived, slightly seasick from all the corners, we all piled out of the car to go for a recuperative stroll. I wandered around the corner and promptly went back in time a century as there was a man in brown coveralls working on his 1912 Rolls Royce. Turns out it was the semi-annual get-together for the Classic Rolls Royce club of Australia, so I chatted to a few of the nice gents – most near the same vintage as their cars - who had all driven their priceless vehicles up that looping road.

One of them turned out to have driven his Silver Ghost all the way from Tasmania, a distance of 2500 kilometers! When I asked him, with a look of disbelief, what possessed him to drive essentially a rare museum piece all up the Eastern Coast of Australia, he grinned, and patted the flank of his car affectionately. “Well,” he said, with that peculiar Tasmanian pronounciation that's quite like a New Zealander's accent, “It's a great country for driving.”

Indeed it is.

Canadian Cars

2010-02-23T08:22:00.000-08:00

I must confess to a certain malaise when it comes to putting out this week's column. Quite simply, I've come down with a pretty bad case of Olympic Ebola, and I'm finding it hard to come up with anything interesting to say about cars. Between Bilodeau's jinx-busting first gold on home soil, hometown hero Maelle Ricker's (once a classmate of my wife's) thorough domination of the field, and the perfection of that first goal from Jarome Iginla, I've got it bad.

Not good for my readership prospects this week then, if even I'm not interested in cars this week; I, who have found myself explaining the inner mysteries of how a clutch works to the entire partry of dinner guests, each of them with the same glazed look on their faces like they just got hit with a lithium-filled blowdart.

Still, my editor relies each week on my small contribution to be tucked away at the back of the paper, filling the weird spaces around ads for lube-oil-and-filter specials, and who am I to disappoint? Also, it's 3 o'clock in the morning and there's nothing new to watch anyway.

Admidst all this Olympic patriotic fervour, it's easy to be a proud Canadian. Yes, we are admittedly deferent and polite nation, and yes, we pride ourselves on a tradition of sportsmanship and fair play, and there's nothing quite like a little winter sports competition to get the (maple) sap rising and the blood boiling. So, I'm certainly proud to be a Canadian when I see the Olympic Women's Hockey team trounce their opponents, but then even prouder when the crowd gives the opposing team a standing ovation.

That's part of what makes us Canadian, that and the fact that Canada's really big, and we have a terrible/amazing healthcare system, depending whom you talk to. But what of our cars?

Oh yes, don't be fooled into thinking that Canada's just the same as our southerly neighbours when it comes to our transportation choices. For one thing, we pinch pennies so hard you can hear the Queen shriek.

Best-selling cars in the USA? The Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. Best-selling cars in the Great White North? The Honda Civic and the Toyota Corolla. We're not going to accept anything of lesser quality than our revolutionary neighbours, but we just don't need quite as much of it.

I'm going to borrow a Russell Peters bit here, and say that when a Canadian hears themselves being described as cheap, they say, “Thank you.” We're not being polite, we just choose to interpret the word differently. “No, no no. He pronounced it, 'cheap', but what he was really saying was 'smart'.”

That's why we get cars you get nowhere else in the world. Companies like Acura take a look at the Canadian market and realize that there's no way in hell we're going to fork over the dough for a great big RL, so they'd better make a Honda Civic with leather seats. Their 1.6 and 1.7 EL and the CSX aren't sold anywhere except Canada, and over here they sell like igloo-shaped Eggos.

In Canada, you can buy a Mercedes B-Class with a four-cylinder engine for under thirty grand. You can also step up to the C-Class without breaking the bank by getting a C230 with a smaller V6 not available in US offerings.

We're not just interested in cheap luxury either. Inexpensive cars like the Hyundai Pony weren't expected to sell more than 5,000 units a year. In Canada, Hyundai sold 50,000 Ponies in 1984 to take the best-seller title, and one need only look at the upswing in sales from Hyundai and Kia to see the trend continuing. Toyota's tiny Echo hatchback was also a Canuck-only favourite whose success paved the way for the Yaris, the Nissan Versa and the Honda Fit. We got the Smart Car here long before it was available Stateside. Why? Because we're “smart”.

Our money may look like it came out of the Monopoly box, but just try prising it out of our hands. It's why our average period of ownership is around seven years, about double that of the US. We spend a great deal more time researching our purchases, and we tend to drive them until the wheels fall off.

Which brings me to the Automotive Journalist Association of Canada's pick for their Canadian Car of the Year award. Down south, they might be making snide comments about the best choice being a snowmobile or a moose on rollerskates, but I think the pick this year is particularly great as a car that embodies Canadian-ness.

It's the 2010 Volkswagen GTI, and it might not be the cheapest car out there, but it's certainly got the highest rate-of-return for smiles per dollar. The perennial hot-hatchback beat out supercars like the Porsche Panamera Turbo and muscle like the Chevrolet Camaro, despite having buch less power and being front-wheel-drive.

So the underdog won. How Canadian. But it's easy to see why, as the little VW is a little terrier in the corners with its fizzy four-pot turbo and the excellent DSG dual-clutch gearbox. It's also quite conservative to look at from the exterior, but there's a little tartan flavour on the inside, a little zip hidden behind a plain exterior.

It's a great car to represent the Canadian driver: heck, it's even an immigrant. For choice, I think it'd look best in red, or white with a big maple leaf on the hood.

Oh, who am I kidding? The only colour we're all interested in these days is gold, eh?

Toyotal Recall

2010-02-05T09:27:00.001-08:00

Wer it at all possible, I would be more than happy to not mention a thing about the current imbroglio Toyota's gotten themselves involved in. Unfortunately, after the third worried-looking person stopped me in the street to ask me what I thought about the whole situation, I could keep silent no longer.

First off, let me just point out that there's no need to go flying off the handle (as much of the media has been doing for the past little while) with wailing and gnashing of teeth and casting into outer darkness, and a general attitude that a defective Toyota accelerator pedal is a portent of the End of Days. Well, it's not. Recalls are a fact of life in the motor industry, it's just that they're usually for minor annoying things like window switches and wiper blades. The problem here is how the manufacturer is alleged to have dealt with the recall of a more serious safety-related issue.

Here's the facts for those not already in the know: certain models made by Toyota are known to have a throttle assembly that can stick open under certain wear conditions; the problem seems to be fairly rare, but has allegedly been responsible for several fatalities in the U.S.; Toyota had already issued a recall based on accelerators jamming open due to floormats earlier last year; a stop-sale order was issued on all affected models last month and the fix for the problem (a metal shim) is currently being applied by dealerships working around the clock.

So far, all fair and above board. The throttle assemblies are outsourced from a supplier that also provides parts for other manufacturers (Ford, for example), so really, it's hardly poor little Toyota's fault, and they really are doing their best to fix the problem. Or are they?

Here's where things get a little murky. According to a recent piece of investigative journalism in the Los Angeles Times, Toyota has a apparent history of keeping a tight lid on any safety problems, to the point of appearing to be sweeping them under the rug. There have been eight recalls for unintended acceleration since 2000, which is more than any other manufacturer. The company also is alleged to be slow to to issue safety-related recalls, and is currently being sued by a former company lawyer for engaging in a “calculated conspiracy to prevent the disclosure of damaging evidence.”

Well, of course they bloody well are: they're a company! If you're in business, you don't run around trumpeting every problem that pops up in your products. You get the engineering department on the case, and you try to get things sorted out with minimal expense and minimal bad publicity.

The problem, in my estimation, is two-fold. Firstly, Toyota has carefully cultivated an image of reliability, dependability, safety, and with their Prius, of being a company that cares about the environment and likes fluffy kittens and gumdrops and long walks on the beach. Problem number one is that some people have started actually believing the propaganda, and so are naturally disappointed when Toyota turns out to be just like every other auto manufacturer out there: all about the bottom line.

The second part of the problem is that Toyota managed to become the largest auto manufacturer in the world in a very short time. I don't care how good your quality assurance department is: when product is flying out the factory doors to meet demand, things get missed. Toyota's reputation for build quality and reliabilty was forged while they were a niche player in the market and could afford to take the extra time that GM and Ford couldn't. Now they've taken on all the problems that come with being a big player, including taking a major beating due to the recession.

This is not to say that the unintended acceleration is not a serious problem, and that Toyota can't be blamed for not figuring out the problem earlier and taking care of it before anyone got seriously hurt. But it's a giant company these days, and you can't do handbrake turns in an oil tanker.

Toyota will be punished for their failings, whether they were intentional or not. Their problems are only just beginning. No longer will people just automatically assume that a Toyota badge means unassailable reliability and rock-solid resale. There will be those, of course, who realize that any car manufacturer is going to have a few issues here and there, and that by and large, the majority of Toyotas are trouble-free and built with a high degree of quality. After the dust settles, many people will return to Toyota as the safe option. But there will be a lot of lost sales, and the company's image will never be quite the same.

Personally, and with all consideration for those of you who are struggling with having bought a vehicle that falls under the recall, and of course, compassion for anyone who's been unfortunate enough to be physically hurt, this is good news for Toyota fans. The company can no longer afford to rest on its laurels, and will have to return to its roots: hammering out better products than everybody else is what put Toyota on the map in the first place.

In the meantime, we can expect to see a barrage of lawsuits (and if you want something sorted out quickly and cheaply, let's get lots of lawyers involved), constant media coverage partially spurred on by both competing manufacturers and politicians looking to score points, and about one story a week of someone getting in an accident due to their own inattention and blaming it on their Toyota. Just last week, a Louisiana man repeatedly rammed the dealership where he'd just bought his new Toyota when they wouldn't take the vehicle back. He cheekily claimed that the pedal was sticking.

So get ready for months of this stuff. I've just received an email from a gentleman with a 2005 Prius that's been suffering from unintended acceleration, and that's not a vehicle involved in the recall. He may be interested to know that Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, claims that his 2010 Prius does exactly the same thing, and that it's software-related. I just think this whole mess is all Toyota's bad karma for killing off the riotously delinquent Supra.

Land Rover (How did I miss it? One of the very best.)

2010-01-20T08:46:00.000-08:00

Over the years, my father’s garage has become an elephant’s graveyard of corroded metal, faded wiring diagrams, desiccated gaskets and various other relics of a lifetime of Land Rover ownership. Buried somewhere amidst the artifacts is an old Punch magazine with a cartoon showing three British Leyland workers clustered around the company magazine, contemplating a picture of an Austin Mini with its speedometer mounted on the hubcap. The caption reads: “Cockup of The Month.” Amen. The Land Rover was the “best four by four by far” ever built by lazy English Communists.

Not many vehicles are as immediately and inescapably iconic as the Land Rover. Its cheerful boxy shape provokes a strong desire to don knee socks and a pith helmet, and go bouncing around the landscape, interfering with the simple quests of Kalihari Bushmen. Alan Quatermain would have driven one. David Attenborough did. It’s British pluck personified, like an all-terrain steak-and-kidney pie.

Perhaps that’s what made Dad buy one: familiarity. My parents emigrated from Northern Ireland to the Wild West coast of Canada in the late ‘60’s. After a brief dalliance with uncouth colonial pickup trucks, they plumped for the Jeep with a plummy accent.

The Land Rover’s aerodynamics-are-a-bloody-Jerry-plot design gave it the drag-coefficient of a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood. However, its simplicity meant that it could be taken apart like a huge Meccano set. No need for doors? Off they come! Mind you, just try and get the confounded things lined up when you want to put them back on again.

Bolting a tire to the bonnet made frequent underhood excursions an exercise in avoiding ending up with Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ fingers, or Charles the First’s haircut. Still, it gave me and my brother, perched on the front fenders, something to hang on to as we hurtled down a potholed logging road.

That's another thing. I don't know what it was exactly, but for some reason the Land Rover brought out the inner eejit in all of its drivers. My mother’s only speeding ticket came at the helm of the ‘Rover, which, considering its rather chelonian turn of speed, was roundly applauded by the rest of the family. My father managed to get it stuck attempting to ford a stream, within twenty feet of a perfectly serviceable bridge.

Performance? Imagine Winston Churchill in a sprint. Cornering? The QEII on wheels. Interior noise? Like being topside in the Blitz. Kit? All your essential mod cons: windows that open and close (sort of), black vinyl seats like the surface of the sun in summer, a dashboard that’d literally dash your brains out, and a steering wheel of a diameter that wouldn't have been out of place on the deck of a man-o’-war at Trafalgar.

Childhood memories of the Land Rover run the gamut from sheer terror to slight nausea. Whether it was teetering on the edge of a narrow mountain path or nearly bisecting me with the lap belt in the rear-facing back seat, the ‘Rover always gave the impression that somebody from the Spanish Inquisition had been hard at work in the design department.

Keeping it on the road was no picnic either. Countless hours were also spent holding the trouble light and passing wrenches to my cursing father (Dad once asked a teenager wearing a “Rage Against The Machine” t-shirt whether he too owned a Land Rover).

After one particularly involved overhaul, we put everything back together - only to be left with a margarine container filled with an assortment of important-looking nuts and bolts. In a fit of genius, my father affixed a masking tape label marked “Spares.” Problem solved.

By the time I got my grubby little paws on it, we were on our second ‘Rover (the first still sits on the driveway, eviscerated to keep the second one mobile). For a developing gearhead, this was a monumental disappointment. Having been taught to drive in my Dad’s mid-eighties 535i, one of the best-handling sedans you could buy at the time, I was informed that all future solo flights would be at the helm of Rosie the Riveted.

I was to discover that the Land Rover had more Achilles’ Heels than a Greek centipede. For instance, there was the day when, late for work, I leapt into my chariot and put the transmission into reverse. Ba-kunk! Off broke a two-foot section of gear lever. Two years later, we were still driving around with a set of vice-grip pliers attached to the stump.

Then, having fixed the throttle linkage’s tendency to fall apart at stoplights with baling wire (Land Rover Aspirin), I experienced the joy of having both half-shafts (their ends crystallized to protect the differential) snap and leave me stranded on a rail-crossing.

The big green monster currently resides on gravel at the ancestral manse, where wintertime duties compel it to sally forth and plow the drive. Unfortunately a recent frame-off restoration has resulted in a driver’s-side door that can’t be closed. Chariot of the Gods? The Gods Must Have Been Crazy.

Bonus: Unpublished 10 Worst List

2010-01-17T14:08:00.001-08:00

10 Worst

1.] Chrysler Sebring
There are many things I would rather be driving than a Chrysler Sebring. For example, a ox-drawn dung cart.
Besides being uglier than botched botox, the Sebring has no personality, a rough engine, an flimsy plastic interior like the inside of a chocolate box, and steering which feels like it's communicating with the front wheels by Morse code. Or possibly carrier pigeon.
Worst of all, the Sebring was touted as the successor to the flawed-but-interesting Chrysler 300C, which is a little bit like Ice Cube's change from scary West Coast gangsta rapper into boring cuddly star of straight-to-DVD family movies.

2.] Saturn Ion
Some people have mourned the passing of Saturn. Well, both of you can lay the blame for the company's failure on this excrable econobox. The Ion took Saturn's reputation for making quirky, fuel-efficient automobiles with dent-resistant doors and blasted it from orbit with a beam of pure, concentrated ugly.
The plastic interior in the sluggish, unreliable Ion is of such a poor quality, it makes the previously mentioned Sebring look like Versailles, and the rest of the car is alternately boring or goofy-looking. Good riddance.

3.] BMW 7-Series
Early on, the BMW 7-series was like a Saville Row tailored suit: reserved, stylish, and projecting a sense of wealth and affluence. Then, a man named Chris Bangle came along and ruined everything.
Channeling the pure evil of the Dark Side of designing, Bangle turned the business suit into something Flavor Flav wouldn't wear. It took years for the horrible “Bangle Butt” to wear off, with its weirdly raised trunk lid.
Also complicating things was BMW's abysmal iDrive system, which auto-journos quickly renamed iDriveYouCrazy. Yes, using a single mouse-like controller for all vehicle functions is great, but not when changing the radio station requires a trip through twelve submenus and a skill-testing question.

4.] Pontiac Aztek
I almost feel sorry for the poor Pontiac Aztek. Yes, it's ugly and slow and horrible, but it's like the ugly duckling, always getting picked on; always the butt of jokes.
On the other hand, it is really, really, really ugly, and the only way it's turning into a swan is if someone melts down all that plastic body cladding and pours it into a mold.

5.] Pontiac Sunfire
Is it any wonder they don't make Pontiac anymore? Like a hamfisted and myopic plastic surgeon, GM's “sporty and fun” division seems to take a perfectly bland, slow and unreliable Chevrolet product, and “improve” it by adding non-functional vents, spoilers and other plastic bits. But that's not important.
What is important is that the Sunfire was coarse, ugly, plasticky and uncomfortable, and received a crash-test rating of Certain Death. Do not want.

6.] The Jaguar X-Type
Jaguar may have built itself a reputation over the years for supreme excellence in the field of unreliability, but at least they were also luxurious. When you did get the Jag to run, it purred and roared, and the interiors were lovely places to wait and have a nice hot thermos of tea while you waited for the tow truck.
Then along came the X-Type Jaguar, the Jag that mewed. Everybody knew that a cheap Jaguar was a bad idea, especially with Ford at the helm. No matter, the businesspersons scoffed at the dissidents and cheerfully steered the HMS Jag towards Bankruptcy Rock by releasing a slow, cramped and shoddy product, which didn't sell.

7.] Ford Focus
I'm talking strictly about '05 and up here, as the Focus of the early part of the decade was not that bad. Sharing a lot of its DNA with the Euro version, the Focus was nippy, fun-to-drive, and nearly reliable.
But then those same businesspeople stuck their noses in, preventing the next Focus from being a twin to its European cousin (which, incidentally, sells like pannekoekens overseas) and instead choosing to make the North American Focus, bigger, fatter, and slower. Just like us.

8.] Dodge Caliber / Jeep Compass
Believe it or not, these are the same cars, and they are both deeply, deeply terrible. The Caliber is boring and unreliable, and manages the trick of being a reverse Tardis: huge on the outside, cramped on the inside. It also has acceleration times normally associated with plate tectonics, unless you buy the SRT4 version, which will try to kill you with torque steer.
The Compass takes all these excellent features and adds a facegraft to make it look like a Jeep. It should not be possible to buy a front-wheel drive Jeep that gets stuck if someone spills a Big Gulp on the road, but the management at Chrysler thinks that's what you want.

9.] Kia Amanti
Every well-designed car has a “face”. Just look at the mischievous headlights and grille of a Mini Cooper to get an idea of its playful nature and fun-to-drive qualities. The Kia Amanti looks like a Koala Bear with brain damage.
It's also quite expensive, unless you were to work out the per-pound price, which is the only way the 4100 lb curb weight is helpful. It's a big flobbery idiot of a car, and an embarrassment next to some of the highly improved products Kia's been putting out lately.

10.] Hummer H3
Ever notice how a lot of cars on this list are made by companies who've either disappeared or been sold off? There's a good reason for that.
Witness Hummer, the company that's a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to Mother Nature's face. All three models are pretty bad, although the H1 is at least fairly unpretentious, but the crown of anti-excellence has to go to the H3. Visibility is poor. Fuel economy is poor. Power and acceleration are poor. You will be poor if you buy one, because the resale is poor. Just terrible.

10 Best Cars of The Decade

2010-01-17T14:06:00.000-08:00

As the decade draws to a close, we cast a jaded and cynical eye across a vast array of automotive products that were designed, engineered, built and shipped out to be shined up and placed in the showroom, and ask the all-important question: “What the hell were they thinking?”
But then there are the bright spots. Several times I found myself ruminating, “Why don't they make them like that anymore?” and occasionally, “Why do they insist on calling it the 'Noughties'? Sounds like nougat-based lingerie line. Hmm... May have to write a letter to Victoria's Secret.”
Well anyway, the end of any era deserves a good solid Top-Ten list, so here's the 10 Best Cars of 2000-2009.

10 Best

1.] Honda S2000
Some people, myself for instance, aren't allowed to have motorcycles because their spouses know they will be run over by an octogenarian in a minivan, and somebody will end up getting their liver. For those people, there's the Honda S2000.
Granted, the engine has less torque than an electric pencil sharpener, but it redlines at a stratospheric 8300rpm, and the handling dynamics are razor sharp. Not just a coupe with the roof cut off, the S2000 was designed from the ground up, and as such, it's a purpose-built smile generator,
It'll also never break. Unless you hit a tree.

2.] Subaru STI
With a giant hoodscoop and ludicrous rear spoiler, the rumbling offbeat of a turbo flat-four, and the blue and gold livery of a rally champion, Subaru's STI is about as subtly as Spinal Tap's leather pants. On the other hand, there's not many family sedans that can chase down an M3 on the track and then drive straight up the side of a mountain, going mostly sideways.
By essentially taking one of their race-winning WRC rally cars and chiseling off the decals, Subaru created a year-round yahoo: the sportscar with snowshoes.
I'm going to give a nod at Mitsubishi's EVO here for its superior electronic wizardry, and better on-tarmac driving dynamics, but the Subaru is like a big friendly golden retriever: lots of fun, likes to get dirty, goes anywhere, kind of gassy.

3.] BMW M Coupe
What happens when a bunch of lunatic German engineers work evenings and weekends, and have help tricking stodgy management types into funding their mad experiments? You get something very special, and very weird: the M Coupe.
Basically a Z3 roadster with a hardtop and the M3's big straight-six shoehorned under the hood, the M Coupe is one wacky-looking car. Even afficionados call it “the Clown Shoe.” On the other hand, you'd better have big shoes if you're going to kick this much ass. The M Coupe corners like a mongoose and zips down the straights so fast you expect it to say “Meep-Meep”.
Sure, it's got flaws. That long nose means a cramped cabin, and the short -wheelbase/big-power combination means driving in the wet will make you wet yourself. Still, M Coupe owners have reported an easy fix: remove the windshield wipers and move to Death Valley.
If you need any further convincing of the greatness of the M Coupe, which car do you suppose the head of BMW's M division took home for the weekend most often? He could have taken anything, but he always grabbed the keys to the M coupe.

4.] Corvette ZR-1
I'll probably never own a Corvette, in the same way that I'll never own any gold medallions or giant, diamond-encrusted pinky rings, and never have chest hair like a shag-pile skin graft. But the 'Vette's not quite as medallion-y as it used to be. Somewhere along the way it morphed into a real Ferrari-killer, and the ZR-1 is the current king of the hill.
Admittedly, the 'Vette doesn't appear to be the pinnacle of engineering, what with its plastic body and much-scoffed-at leaf springs. Somehow it doesn't make any difference. The Porsche 911 might be a delicate road-scalpel, but the 'Vette is a sledgehammer, and driving one, every other car out there starts looking like a nail.
There's a video out there on the interwebs of a menacing, battleship-grey ZR-1, shot from a camera mounted on the rear of a mystery car. The ZR-1 paces the other car easily, surging foward in a split second every time a gap opens, and even getting a little air time. At the end of the video, it's revealed that the 'Vette just hunted down the new Lamborghini Murcielago LP-640 SV, a car costing half a million dollars.

5.] Dodge Challenger SRT8
The new Mustang might have better sales figures, and the new Camaro might be more popular with Transformer fans, but there's only one car that properly distills that ol' muscle car moonshine. The Challenger is big, wide and dumb, like Moose from Archie. Also, that big V8 puts out a better noise than Three Dog Night ever did.
It ain't a sportscar by any means: y'all kin turn layft, or raight. But get that big nose pointed at the horizon and pull the trigger, and boom, you're in Las Vegas.
With a pistol grip manual shifter for preference, and in Hemi Orange with those big black stripes, it's retro done right.

6.] MINI Cooper S JCW
Speaking of retro done correctly, here's one of the few times where the sequel is just as much fun as the original (probably because Mark Wahlberg wasn't involved). It might be extremely pricey, especially for a subcompact, but BMW's re-imagining of the original Cooper means that the MINI is a hoot and a half.
There's always been some rumbling over the excessively cutesy interior with its cartoon gauges, and a modern MINI Cooper will loom over one of its diminutive ancestor like a Heffalump towering over Piglet. However, the reincarnated MINI seems to shrug off those extra pounds, and the only thing cartoonish about the grippy handling and the go-kart driving feel is the idiotic grin it'll put on your face.
The John Cooper Works version is the best and fastest (and most expensive), but the whole lineup is a pleasure to drive. Up until they bring that ruddy crossover out, that is.

7.] Audi R8
Audi has never had a problem building fast cars or luxurious cars, but no-one expected their first foray into the world of mid-engined coupes to be this good. The R8 isn't the fastest car you can buy, but it just might be the best.
Audi's supercar is as quiet and comfortable as their A8 limousine, but it can dice it up with the 911s at the track, and while the jury's still out on those carbon-fibre sideburns, the styling is at once restrained and futuristic.

8.] Nissan GT-R
But let's suppose for a moment, you think luxurious restraint is like pink fuzzy handcuffs: best avoided. Might I interest you in possibly the most technologically advanced car on the market?
The GT-R is not subtle. It doesn't draw from retro inspiration or make concessions to niceties like sound levels or comfort. It is a weapon, purpose-built for speed, and is the closest thing most of us will get to piloting a fighter plane.
With a hand-built, twin-turbo engine feeding just under 500hp through a multi-clutch transmission and twin carbon-fibre driveshafts, the GT-R needs more computing power than eBay to avoid liquefying the pavement beneath its massively sticky tires.

9.] Bugatti Veyron
There's a good chance you might never see a Veyron. Being so rare and expensive, most of them are bound for the Middle East or Hong Kong, where they will be preserved and polished, but rarely driven.
Volkswagen resurrected the Bugatti nameplate, but lost money on every Veyron they made. The car was the Apollo Mission of automotive engineering, unlikely to be repeated.
There'll probably never be a car like it again, what with the shifting focus towards alternative fuels and greater efficiency. It is a 1001hp, 400km/h, one million dollar one-off.

10.] Toyota Prius
And now, as John Cleese would say, for something completely different. Ordinarily, I have little time for the Prius, with its fairly boring driving dynamics and that faint sense of smugness you get from hybrid drivers, who in most cases should really be using public transportation instead.
But Priuses (Priii?) don't seem to break, and they hold their value, and they get good mileage, and they're a perfectly acceptable four-door family hatchback that just happens to be a high-tech fuel saver. Also, you can sneak up on people in the silent-running battery mode, which is helpful if you're a ninja, or the captain of a nuclear submarine.
Hybrids may only be a band-aid solution to climate change, but the Prius proves both that manufacturers can be innovative, and that consumers are willing to take a risk.

Top Gear

2010-01-17T14:04:00.001-08:00

If, for the last seven years, you've been living in a cave, on Mars, with your eyes shut and your hands clapped over your ears while humming the theme to Hockey Night in Canada as loudly as possible, you may just have avoided hearing about the most popular motoring television program in the world: Top Gear. But probably not.

This Sunday on BBC Two, three middle-aged British men will blow things up, powerslide around corners in inconceivably expensive exotic machinery, engage in pointless races pitting cars versus purebred greyhounds and downhill skateboarders, force a celebrity guest to lap a test track in a horrible little economy car, make fun of each other's haircuts and crack wise with off-colour commentary of the kind that usually results in the convening of a Human Rights Tribunal.

At no point will the teensiest iota of useful consumer advice be imparted, and a viewer may be expected to be insulted at least once based on their country of residence or choice of cars. The entire hour will be as bright and noisy as a Saturday morning cartoon and I am looking forward to it with a level of anticipation akin to that of a shipwrecked sailor finally coming home for Christmas to family, friends and a pair of twin Swedish supermodels. Both of whom are also part-time yoga instructors.

I'm not alone. Immediately after broadcast of the first episode of Top Gear's fourteenth series, you should expect the Internet to get a little sluggish, as every single person in the universe without access to BBC television begins downloading illegal copies of it. Regular viewership in all forms is estimated in the hundreds of millions.

That's a staggering number of people for a show about cars, so what's the attraction? Well, consider this recent review of the Ford Fiesta, a subcompact car becoming available in Canada sometime in 2010.
Lead host Jeremy Clarkson, a man recently forced to apologise to the British Prime Minister for calling him a “one-eyed idiot,” begins by testing the practicality of the hatchback by seeing whether a stuffed Zebra head will fit: it does. Then, having answered the questions of, “Is it easy to park?” and “Is it fun to drive?” Clarkson tackles the important issue of, “What if I go to a shopping centre and get chased by baddies in a Corvette?” by doing just that.

Having completed the Blues Brothers-style indoor demonstration of the Fiesta's nippy handling, Mr. Clarkson addresses eco-concerns by pointing out how green the little Ford is (it's painted green) and sums up its affordability by saying, “...if you have eleven thousand pounds to spend on a car, then yes, you can [afford it]. But if you've only got 40p, then no, you can't.” Then, and this is the mark of a truly thorough road test, Clarkson and his bright green hatchback take part in a beach assault with a Royal Marine Commando unit.

That's not a metaphor for something, the review really does end with the tiny Ford being packed with armed men (Clarkson notes that the smoke grenades fit nicely in the cupholders) and placed on a semi-amphibious landing craft. Then with full air support and naval support, the Fiesta storms the beach, driving ashore through two feet of breaking seas admist the crackling of automatic gunfire, the popping of smoke canisters and the triumphant blaring of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture.

So there you are, absolutely nothing worthwhile learned and a good part of the scenery blown into smithereens, but what a piece of television! Can you imagine such a thing being attempted by the CBC? Their complaints department gets deluged by letters every time Red Green uses non-biodegradable duct-tape, never mind putting on an explosive display designed to appeal to eight-year-old schoolboys.

Much of Top Gear is in the same over-the-top vein, although it initially started as a dull factual program. The original series was a half-hour show running from 1977 to 2001 and provided the sort of dry consumer-information fare up until the aforementioned Mr. Clarkson arrived in 1988. Gradually, the focus moved to much more humourously critical reviews, until the old format faltered completely, to be re-launched in 2002 as an hour-long show.

“New” Top Gear has well-established formula: three squabbling hosts, a sprinkling of exotic steel, some generalized mucking about with old beaters and plenty of blowing things up. There is always a guest, and they are always forced to complete a flying lap of the Top Gear Test Track. Ardent fan Jay Kay of the band Jamiroquai currently holds the record, having soundly beaten a smug Simon Cowell, which was pretty satisfying for everyone who's not a self-important music-industry git.

The current host lineup has been the same for the past six years, with James May joining Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond in the second series. The triumvirate found instant chemistry. Clarkson is easily the best-known presenter, and the show has developed around his characteristic boisterous reviewing style. Richard Hammond, youngest of the three, is every bit Mr. Clarkson's equal in opinionated squabbling, although he stands a mere 5'7” next to Clarkson's 6'5”. James May, nicknamed Captain Slow for his cautious driving style, brings a little common sense to the table, but where he lacks the others enthusiasm for reckless speed and noise, he is every bit the iconoclast when it comes to his weakness for ratty old classic cars.

Also integral to the show's success is their “tame racing driver,” a mysterious, white Nomex-clad figure called the Stig, who never appears on film without his helmet. Numerous rumours about the Stig's identity were fanned last year, when a picture of the film crew caught the Stig unmasked. Top Gear's response was to “reveal” a new identity for the Stig almost every other day, claiming at one point the the Stig was actually Barack Obama. In a televised segment, the Stig removed his helmet to reveal that he was in fact retired Formula 1 racing driver Michael Schumacher, but this was also overturned when Schumacher-as-Stig turned out to be completely hopeless on the track, unable even to drive a manual transmission.

Top Gear also features possibly the most highly polished cinematography and editing to be found outside of a summer blockbuster. Think Blue Planet with a snarling V8 soundtrack. There exists no better example of the car as art form, with lingering shots caressing the the curvaceous flanks and swelling hindquarters of a Ferrari 599, even as the throbbing soundtrack of an Italian V12 at full chat fills the oh bugger I've spilled my pint.

Highlights of the past fourteen seasons are nearly too innumerable to list. My personal favorites include the transformation of an early-nineties three-wheeled Reliant Robin into a space shuttle (it blew up); an attempt to cross the English channel in three amphibious cars (one burnt, one sank, one made it); five-man-a-side car football with racing drivers and Toyota Aygo city cars (a full-contact sport); and repeated attempts to destroy a diesel-powered Toyota Hilux pickup truck by dropping a caravan on it, setting it on fire, letting it get swept away by the tide, setting it on fire, and placing it atop a 23-storey-high apartment building that then underwent a controlled demolition (it survived everything and is preserved on a plinth in the Top Gear studio).

It hardly needs saying that Top Gear is not without its detractors. While Jeremy Clarkson is enormously funny with his hyperbolic metaphors and buffoonish on-screen persona, he's also unrepentantly politically incorrect, refutes the idea of climate change, and is outspoken about his contempt for the nanny state's crackdown on speeding. The BBC has endured numerous complaints about comments made both on and off the air by Mr. Clarkson. He has faced rebuke for making fun of the Germans, the Dutch, the Belgians, the French, the Americans, truck drivers, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the British car manufacturing industry, caravan holidaymakers, motorcycling accidents, the blind, the deaf, women, various celebrities, the environmental movement, and pretty much everybody everywhere.

Top Gear itself has been under scrutiny for showing pipe-smoking on air, the destruction of the fragile salt flats of Botswana, and drinking and driving en route to the North Pole. Risky stunts are constantly coming into conflict with workplace health and safety concerns, and the hosts' propensity for setting fire to almost everything has environmental groups outraged with clockwork frequency. Richard Hammond suffered serious brain injury when a rocket-powered dragster he was piloting crashed at over 450 km/h. A common complaint is that the show is a waste of British ratepayers money and that it perpetuates a culture of reckless driving and wasteful consumption.

Certainly, the critics are not making things up. Top Gear's anti-social behaviour is pretty much indefensible on any other grounds other than that it's just jolly good fun to watch. But in these times of shrinking economies, crowded roads and dwindling oil reserves, there's nothing to dispel the blues like a day-glo Lamborghini doing a smoky powerslide, an exploding caravan, and taking the mickey out of ze Germans. See you Sunday, gents.

Love The Beast

2010-01-17T14:03:00.000-08:00

Normally, I'm not big on documentaries. There's nothing more disconcerting than going to the movies only to realize, halfway through a bag of mediocre popcorn, that, “Hey! You sneaky buggers are trying to educate me!” No thanks. When I want to learn something, I'll go look it up on wikipedia and get it mostly wrong.

Last weekend though, I watched a documentary that didn't teach me anything new, it just put into words and pictures something I already knew: you can fall in love with a car.

The film (I've donned my black turtleneck of pretentious reviewing) is actor/director Eric Bana's “Love The Beast,” and despite his rural Australian roots, it's not what ewe think. The Beast in question here is a 1974 Ford Falcon Coupe that Bana has owned for over 25 years, and he's completely nuts about it.

Spoiler alert, as they say on the interwebs, but the plot is your usual Boy meets Car, Boy restores Car, Boy and Car get into unfortunate love triangle with large, unyielding Tree. Midway through the Targa Tasmania, a multi-stage racing event on the beautiful, twisting roads of that tiny island, Bana loses control of his painstakingly restored and race-prepped muscle car and has a nasty crash. He then interviews such gearhead luminaries as Jay Leno and Jeremy Clarkson and this Dr. Phil fella, who I think is famous for knowing somebody called Opera and making statements that would be patently obvious to the most blithering of idiots.

But that's not the point of the movie (turtleneck discarded). This flick is about how a inanimate object constructed of steel, glass and rubber, which costs huge amounts of money to insure and fuel, that ruins the environment and makes you fat and lazy: how something like that can have a soul.

And they do have souls, you know. Not all cars, obviously, but some do. They have personalities. They begin to become part of your memories, good and bad.

The appeal of classic cars has never been a mystery to me: I knew they had personalities from a very early age. My dad has an MGB and a Land Rover, both of which have the personality of crotchety old men who hate the thought of anyone with intact knuckles. Even now, with a full restoration done, the MGB requires a great deal of fiddling about with the carburettors to get it to start, and I personally find the brakes to be alarmingly ineffective. But Dad loves it. He keeps talking about selling it. Never gonna happen.

That's why I understand the grins on the faces of people driving deeply flawed cars. Sure, the steering column may come thrusting through your chest like a Zulu assegai if you so much as tap the bumper of the person ahead of you, and sure, the roof leaks like a mid-nineties condo, but it doesn't matter.

It's the same thing when it comes time to shop for a new car. Everyone pretends to make a science project out of it, consulting checklists and safety ratings, fuel economy and features. For most of us, what it comes down to in the end is how the car makes us feel. We love to pretend that we buy cars just using our heads, but most of us end up listening to our hearts.

The car parked outside in my garage right now has a special place in my heart. Sure, she's not perfect, but I love the way there's a little lag to the larger turbo I had installed, and the occasional playful pop from the exhaust when the throttle plate closes. I can count each scratch and remember where we got it, whether it was in a parking lot or barrelling along gravel roads in search of the hot springs south of Pemberton.

I remember my wife and I cramming the back full of camping supplies and driving the coast to Los Angeles, cruising through pitch-black redwood forests and curving coastal roads. I remember a crisp fall morning driving the Sea-to-Sky highway and catching that first view of the snow-covered Chief. I remember catching that pack of M3s on turn seven at Mission Raceways. I remember waking up to toonie-sized snowflakes and rushing out to drive down the abandoned roads to Jericho beach. I remember that the bloody dashboard clock is broken and I have to try and fix it.

I sometimes wonder if non-car people will ever understand the attachment gearheads develop with their cars. It would seem to me that falling in love with a driving appliance like a Corolla would be as weird as feeling affectionate towards your toaster, or becoming good friends with the dishwasher.

But on the other hand, maybe you don't have to be the typical car-guy-or-girl, boring all your friends with talk of camshafts and compression ratios. Maybe it depends how you see your car. If it's just the bus or taxi that takes you on an unpleasantly congested commute to your semi-boring job, then you won't get it. If it's the faithful steed that brought home your first child from the hospital, then maybe you do.

For me, the little wagon out front is a part of the family. It's taken us places, hauled our stuff when we moved, been full of friends and their bicycles. Mostly though, it's just there, reminding me that if I wanted, I could go downstairs, jump in and drive to Newfoundland.

Not that I'm going to, you understand, but I could. If I did, my car would take me there, no complaints, no questions asked. Just don't ask her what time it is.

More Cars We Don't Get

2010-01-17T14:02:00.000-08:00

All right, I'll just come right out and say it: I want a Ford Focus. Yes, I'll happily give up the keys to my modified, 300+ horsepower WRX with all the time, effort and money I've spent tweaking it (and all the money I've spent paying professionals to undo the tweaks), and drive away in a Focus.

You're surprised? Well, just to be clear, I'm not talking about any old econobox Ford here. No, I'm talking about the Ford Focus RS, which you can't get here. Not yet anyway, he added hopefully, with an expression of wistful longing and a large measure of pointless optimism.

The RS is at the current top of my list, but idly leafing through any Euro car magazine reveals even more great cars that manufacturers just won't sell in North America.

The Ford Focus RS:

So let's start with this one, shall we? First of all, the RS is based on the excellent Euro-Focus, which is pretty well universally regarded as the most fun-to-drive hatchback you can get across the pond. It makes the VW Golf look as pointless and stodgy as... well... golf, I suppose.

Ford takes this spirited platform and then pumps it full of eight Barry-Bonds-worth of anabolic steroids and four Lenny-Bruce-worth of amphetamines. Its enormous exhaust pipes make the Chunnel look like a juicebox bendy straw. Its rear spoiler creates so much downforce, it can actually move the Earth out of orbit. Its wheelarches are flared in the same way that Bruce Banner's pants are flared when he changes into the Hulk. 300Hp. REVO-knuckle suspension. Terrier-like reflexes and attack-dog savagery.

And what kind of Focus do we get here? Oh look, a fancy iPod dock. Well, that's just perfect for my Anne Murray playlist, but I'll happily go without if you'll just bring the RS here, Ford. Do it. Do it now.

The Volkswagen Scirocco

Don't feel like wrestling with 300 rampaging horses constantly trying to wrest the steering wheel from your hands? What about a nice VW GTI, the perennial favourite for its hot-hatch lively driving, a beautifully-made interior and that Germanic level of precision in the build quality?

No thanks, I'll have a VW Scirocco instead. Why? Well, it's a GTI underneath, but it's lighter, prettier, slightly more powerful, prettier, a little bit faster around a track, and prettier. And it's cheaper too. And prettier.

If VW didn't hate us all so much, they'd bring this gorgeous coupe/hatchback cross over the Atlantic and sell it instead of the 2-door GTI. You could still buy a 4-door GTI if you only wanted a Golf, but the Scirocco is a hundred times better. I'll even stop making cracks about electrical problems if they do it.

The Fiat 500 Abarth esseesse

Another hot hatchback we don't get, although this one is so fashionable it makes the MINI Cooper S look like a sweatshirt with sequins and an airbrushed wolf on it. Fiat's 500 is pure excellence, and probably the best retro-based car you can buy in Europe today.

The Abarth takes that retro-excellence and adds a dash of hot sauce, but not too much. With a 1.4-litre turbocharged engine producing just 160hp, it's unlikely to set any landspeed records. But, with a hummingbird-light curbweight and a sport-tuned suspension, this car should take to the curves like only an Italian can.

Best news yet, we might actually get some form of the 500 as part of the Fiat-Chrysler merger. I, for one, would happily set fire to ten thousand PT Cruisers if we could make just one of these little firecrackers.

The Toyota iQ

Not everything has to have the turbocharging turned up to 11 or be riding around on huge alloy wheels. Some normal people might actually appreciate having a car that's efficient, easy-to-park, and cleverly optioned. If you're in the market for a micro-sized car here, you buy a Smart. If you wanted something a little cleverer overseas, you'd get an iQ.

The tiny iQ (har har) is a four-seater, two door car that has the short wheelbase of a Smart-car, but with way more interior room due to innovations like a flat fuel tank and rear-angled shock absorbers. With a tiny 3-cylinder engine, the iQ consumes just 4.3L/100kms, but it also has a 5-star Euro NCAP crash test rating.

I suppose I'd like to see a modified version of this little car, just to hear someone say, “Hey, I just lowered my iQ!” but really, just bring it here Toyota.

Canadian demand for big sedans is shrinking rapidly. Sure, a lot of us still need a highway car that's going to gulp down the miles and have a trunk big enough for haybales, but that's just the Albertans.

The era of the Small Car is upon us already, and it doesn't make any sense to me why there aren't even more choices for the small car buyer now. MINI's success should have proven that people are willing to pay more for less, as long as it's a nice less.

The real test though, will be the Euro-Fiesta that Ford's currently experimenting with. If that little car can do well, expect to see the Euro-Focus hot on its heels, and then (just maybe) I might be able to get my RS.

On the other hand, if anyone at Ford wants to send me one right now, please be assured that my journalistic integrity cannot be purchased. And I like the blue.

GM's Worst

2010-01-17T14:01:00.000-08:00

Want to know what the best-selling car in North America was last year?
Honda Civic? Good guess. Toyota Corolla? Seems obvious, but no.
Cobalt? Not even close.

The car that captured the sales title for 2008 was none other than the
domestically produced Little Tikes Cozy Coupe. Yes, those tiny, bright
red, egg-shaped cars sold a whopping 457,000 units last year, easily
besting Japan's finest with excellent fuel economy and a low, low
price. So why should you care? Because this car, which costs around
fifty bucks and is stamped out in a mould in Ohio, has better build
quality and a less plasticky interior than most GM products.

"Oh sure," you say, "Kick 'em while they're down." But let's face it:
When hasn't the General been down? The company's been a paragon of
poor product and mismanagement since the late 14th century, and as
nice as it is to reflect on the great cars they somehow managed to
build, like a roomful of monkeys bashing out Hamlet, GM has built some
real stinkers over the years.

We're not just talking poor reliability here. We're talking seats
designed by members of the Spanish Inquisition, dashboards made out of
the same flimsy plastic you find in chocolate box trays, engines that
couldn't be any less modern and efficient if they ran on coal, and
styling done by a committee of 400 people who couldn't agree on
anything except that they hated beauty so much they probably went
around on the weekends beating up swans and stomping on butterflies.

Here are the worst offenders (and there's plenty to choose from):

The Hummer H2

Given its Americatastic image, the fact that Hummer has now been
more-or-less officially sold to the Chinese seems poetic somehow.
Sure, they were great off-road, and sure, if you wanted to let
everyone know that you were a drug dealer or the Governor of
California, you couldn't pick a vehicle with a clearer image. On the
other hand, owning a Hummer was a little like going to the pet store
to get a puppy for the kids and coming back with a hippopotamus. With
tapeworms.

I must confess, I have a particular and nearly unwarranted hatred for
the H3 as a badge-engineered excrescence; the only nice thing I can
say about the engineers behind it is that they managed to make the
Chevy Trailblazer even worse, which is quite an achievement. However,
as much as the H2 was actually a much more capable and respectable
vehicle, it's the one that will have to take the lion's share of the
blame.

Not since the Cadillac Escalade has there been such a ludicrous
example of conspicuous consumption, and as the H3's release coincided
with the crushing of the last of GM's EV-1 electrical vehicles, it
pretty much turned the General into a scapegoat for environmentalists.
Not that they didn't deserve it too, but the H3 allowed Toyota to get
on the green-wagon first, despite the Japanese company's own
gas-guzzlers like the Lexus LX-series.

The Saturn Ion

A popular idea in science fiction is the idea of an orbital ion
cannon, capable of delivering a pin-point strike with a destructive
energy beam of unimaginable power. Should one ever be developed, I
propose the first set of targets to be wiped from the face of the
Earth should be all examples of this horrible economy car. That's of
course assuming their owners haven't already set fire to them by that
point.

Released in 2003, the Ion was supposed to be the "New Saturn" that
would take on the Civic and Corolla and run, ahem, rings around them.
Unfortunately, its success was blunted by weirdly confused styling, a
woefully underpowered engine and, without a hint of exaggeration, the
worst car interior in the History of Mankind.

They'd eventually make a Redline supercharged version, but as far as
I'm concerned, the Ion was all Flatline, and if you're a Saturn fan
you can blame it for the death of your favourite company.

Chevy minivans, any of them

Woe is you if you ever traded in your hot little coupe for one of
these things because of a burgeoning family. Uplander, Montana, SV6,
whatever you called them, they were basically purgatory with sliding
doors: sliding doors that frequently broke.

Early models were just barely OK, but they suffered from having a
crashworthiness level slightly higher than that of a cardboard Pampers
box. This did not go over well with those soccer moms who didn't want
their offspring to die horribly (i.e. all of them), so GM glued a
four-foot nose to the front. Crashworthiness problem solved, styling
problem aggravated. On the other hand, it's a minivan. Who cares if
it's uglier than Quasimodo on a bad hair day after being relentlessly
attacked by wasps?

Buyers care, apparently, and what's worse, they surprisingly don't
want unreliable vehicles. A quick search of a consumer-based-reviews
website popped up two representative samples. One began, "We've had
lots of problems with our minivan. Very disappointed and would not
recommend." The next one started, "What could possibly go wrong
next??!?" Uh-oh.

I stopped reading before I got depressed.

The Pontiac Aztec

Here it is: the auto journalist's favourite whipping boy. It takes a
special type of car to be the one that always gets incorporated into
the tagline, ". . . but at least it's not as ugly as the Pontiac
Aztec." As in, "The new 7-series BMW looks like it was designed by
pushing the old one down the stairs and then jumping up and down on
the wreckage, but at least it's not as ugly as the Pontiac Aztec."

Shame really, as the bizarrely-styled trucklet wasn't too terrible
elsewhere. Beneath that weird exterior beat a heart of pure . . .
arthritis, actually. However, on a kinder note, the looks were
something of an anti-theft device, and you could bolt a tent on the
back. That's it, I can't think up any more nice things to say.

The Chevy SSR

I think this takes the cake. GM's built some bad, bad cars and worse
trucks, but the SSR takes terrible to a whole new level:
ultraterrible.

For starters, it's a production convertible pickup truck. What? Who
needs a convertible pickup truck? Cattle ranchers in Malibu? Guys with
really big hats? Elvis's re-animated corpse?

Worse, because it has a folding hardtop, there's no space in the truck
bed. And you can't tow anything with it. And there are only two seats.

Still, it looks cool, in a sort of retro-futuristic way, although the
bifurcated headlamps kind of resemble bifocals to me. But for a
whopping, no, make that insane $80,000, you could just have easily
bought four classic hotrods and your own tow-truck service to take
care of them, and another pickup to carry stuff. It's not like the SSR
was any more reliable than a worked-over '48 Chev. Plus, the hotrods
wouldn't have crappy plastic interiors.

That's not even the worst part. The worst part, and something I can't
abide in a car that claims to be a factory hotrod, is how slow this
thing was. It's a two-door convertible with a 350 horsepower,
5.7-litre V-8 engine. Should be pretty nippy, right? Wrong. This thing
got to 100 km/h in about eight seconds and ran the quarter mile in, at
best, 15.7 seconds. You can do that in a Buick Park Avenue. You can do
that in a Dodge Neon, for crying out loud, and this truckvertible cost
more than $80,000.

I suppose the performance is not surprising when you look up the
curb-weight of the SSR and find that it weighs the same as that
blasted H3 or the combined moons of Jupiter. Still, it's the perfect
vehicle to point out GM's current problems: Bloated, underachieving,
off-target, and far too costly.

Give the Little Tikes people a call, GM. They'll help you out.

Racing Greats

2010-01-17T13:59:00.002-08:00

This year's Spanish Grand Prix was touted as being a triumph of pit strategy and clever planning by team leader Ross Brawn. However, aside from one fairly unimpressive accident right at the beginning, the race might have been dubbed the Curious Case of Jenson Button, as it was long, tedious, and predictable.

By now I'm sure rabid F1 fans are foaming at the mouth, racing to their Ferrari-branded keyboards and writing huge tracts about the many ways in which I should be disembowled with carbonfibre wings. Fair enough I suppose, but I would challenge anyone to be excited by Formula 1's chess-like strategies after reading, as I did before watching the race, anything about racing in the '30's-'60's.

In particular, I had been reading about the last variant of Mercedes-McLaren's SLR supercar, a homage to Sir Stirling Moss, and stumbled across this quote from the fabled racecar driver: “Jenks [navigator Denis Jenkison] had given me the signal that it was OK flat and we went over the damn thing [a humpbacked bridge] at 150 or 160 [about 250km/h] and the bloody thing was flying. It was a dead straight road, but I knew it was a bit dodgy. We were airborne for quite a few seconds.”

A bit dodgy indeed when you learn that this was on a narrow, tree-lined Italian road in an open-topped Mercedes with drum brakes, and nobody was wearing seatbelts in case the car caught on fire. Oh, and Sir Moss preferred shortsleeved shirts so he could work on his tan. Next to lunacy of this calibre, Formula 1 is like paintball compared to the Normandy landings.

That's not to say F1 is really boring, it's just been designed to be safer and safer, and rightly so. There's no way that the antics of the past could be allowed, and it's not like there still isn't a great potential for danger. But my fear is that the greatest racing stories have been told, Lewis Hamilton notwithstanding.

Sir Stirling's achievement, for instance, in the 1955 Mille Miglia, a 1600km gruelling endurance race, is nothing short of superhuman. Blasting through narrow, winding Italian country roads, throttle-steering the big Mercedes around blind sweepers with spectators leaping out at you, Moss averaged 160km/h over a ten-hour period, beating his closest rival and teammate by 30 minutes. His time of ten hours, seven minutes and forty-eight seconds would never be beaten.

Epic surely, but for the greatest racing victory of all time, we have to look to the Italians. Tazio Nuvolari was a successful motorcycle racer in the 20's and early 30's but by 1931 he'd decided to move into four-wheel racing. He had some success and engaged in the usual staggering stupidity of racecar drivers, racing once with a broken leg in a car specially designed to be driven with only one leg, but then came the 1935 German Grand Prix.

Every good story needs villains, and who better than the old standbys, the Third Reich. Yep, here come the Nazis in their two state-funded teams with the supercharged 400-hp Mercedes W25s and the rear-engined Auto-Union (later to become Audi) Type-Bs, also with well over 400hp. These enormous silver beasts were to be piloted by the best drivers out there: Hans Stuck, Rudolf Caracciola, Manfred von Brauchitsch, Achille Varzi and the amazingly talented Bernd Rosemeyer.

Nuvolari was in an hopelessly outdated and underpowered Alfa Romeo that looked like a chicken coop on bicycle tires. He was 43 years old, grizzled from years of racing and partially crippled by the injuries he had sustained through his career. The track was the fabled Nürburgring, a course that even today takes a dozen lives every year. The nine big German rocket ships lined up on the wet track in front of 300,000 nationalistic fans, one of them with a funny moustache and a bad haircut.

They're off! And already there's a serious injury as a mechanic rushing to help a stalled Hans Stuck gets clipped by one of the big Auto Unions, fracturing his skull. The slick track is no match for Caracciola, an expert in the wet, and he opens up a significant lead, but here comes Rosemeyer, drifiting his car through the corners at over 160km/h. The two racing greats duel for the lead, while von Brauchitsch and Varzi are battling with Hans Stuck who has somehow caught up after his disastrous start, and in fifth place it's...

It's Nuvolari! Yes, the 5ft 4in Italian in his tiny soapbox-racer of an Alfa Romeo is somehow keeping up to all that German horsepower. He's grimacing, chatting away to the car and patting it encouragingly, wringing every last ounce of speed and handling out of the little Alfa.

By lap nine, the Germans were still leading and the other two Alfa Romeos had predicably broken, leaving only Nuvolari battling alone against eight cars, Rosemeyer having pitted to change out his shredded tires. The little Italian was still hanging on, and then he wasn't just hanging on any more. He was winning.

Recording the first-ever sub-11 minute circuit of the Nurburgring, Nuvolari passed an Audi, then a Mercedes, then another Audi, and then suddenly he was past Caracciola for the lead! The crowd went deathly silent.

But then disaster strikes! Von Brauchitsch sets a blistering 10 minutes 32 seconds lap to catch up, and he, Nuvolari, Rosemeyer and Caracciola all enter their last pit stop at the same time. With military precision, von Brauchitsch's team gets him out first, then Caracciola and Rosemeyer. Nuvolari? Stuck in the pits, with a broken fuel pressure pump. As the mechanics attempted to fuel the car by hand, the time ticked away until he was right back in sixth place.

Sensing victory, von Brauchitsch pushed harder and harder as Rosemeyer and Caracciola fell back, charging to a comfortable lead of one minute 30 seconds. But then that lead started shrinking. And the car in second place, gaining precious seconds? It was the number 12 Alfa Romeo of Nuvolari.

Over the last three laps, von Brauchitsch's lead was cut until the final lap only left him a 30 second lead, not enough time to change the tires he had worn through pushing so hard. The cars disappeared out of sight, and the announcer had become so frenzied and unintelligible there was no way for the crowd to know what was happening. They waited for the winner to appear out of the light mist.

Finally a silhouette emerged. It was boxy, small, and there was a jubilant Italian at the wheel. The crowd sat in stunned silence.

Tiny Nuvolari looked ridiculous in the huge victory wreath that had been designed for the taller German drivers, and the race organizers hadn't even bothered to bring a copy of the Italian national anthem, but there was nothing taken away from the jubilation felt by the Alfa Romeo team, especially by its young leader, who declared that Nuvolari was the best driver that had ever been. The leader's name? Enzo Ferrari.

So you can have your clinical Formula 1, but I think I'll let Sir Stirling have the last word:

"To me now racing is - the dangers are taken away: if it's difficult, they put in a chicane. So really now the danger is minimal - which is good, because people aren't hurt. But for me the fact that I had danger on my shoulder made it much more exciting... And I think with driving a motor car, the danger is a very necessary ingredient. Like if you're cooking, you need salt. You can cook without salt, but it doesn't have the flavor. It's the same with motor racing without danger. For me.”

Me too.

Auto Show

2010-01-17T13:59:00.001-08:00

Recession? Perish the thought.

At least, that's what all the crowds at this year's Vancouver International Auto Show seemed to be indicating. Sure, more people were there to find bargains on fuel-sippers, but the throng packed around the new Camaro shows that a gearhead is still a gearhead, even when they're shifting up early to save gas.

With a huge number of new and re-designed cars revealed this year, there's plenty to get excited about, from matte-black supercars to game-changing hybrids.

For cool cars that'll warm up the planet, you've got to head straight to the supercar paddock and check out the gorgeous curves of the Aston-Martin DBS and Ferrari 599 GTB. Maserati and Bentley have put in an appearance too, but the filly that really caught my eye was a black Lamborghini Gallardo LP 560-4. I don't know why they bother with all the numbers as all the brain remembers is “Lamborghini,” but it's a thing of beauty with its perforated tailpipes and bio-hazard symbol brake lights.

Nutcase of the show goes to Dutch manufacturer Spyker, whose new Calgary-based dealership brought in two of their wild convertibles. These cars are a riot of quilted leather and more chrome than all the rap videos between 2003-2005, and the bizarro double-rod gear linkage is insane enough to make you cut off your own ear. By comparison, the Lotuses looked like sensible econoboxes.

Of course, outside of the latest Gran Turismo game, I'm pretty sure a supercar isn't going to make it into my garage anytime soon. Still, there's performance bargains aplenty to be found over at the Subaru/Mitsubishi corner. I guess now that both companies are out of the rallying game, it's safe to put them side-by-side, but I'm still surprised not to find the reps flinging mud at each other. Subaru has their new 265hp WRX on display, but the crowds were even busier checking out Mitsubihi's newer 5-door Lancer Sportback. The new Lancer is by far the prettier car, and is a great compromise between wagon and sports-sedan.

Over at Nissan, plenty of crowds attracted by the still-popular GTR supercar stayed to paw all over the brand-new Z car: the 370Z. This year, the rear-wheel drive, V6 icon brings more power, better handling and lower weight to the table, and (even more enticing) it has a lower price. If the GTR is a half-price 911 Turbo, then this new car takes aim at the Porsche Cayman S, and Stuttgart should be nervous.

However, when it comes to performance bargains, the show-stopper was definitely Hyundai with their Genesis coupe. The 3.8 litre V6 model is a worthy contender to go up against that 370Z, although it has a little less power than the Nissan. However, the real deal is the 2-litre turbo model that can be picked up with a manual transmission, 210hp and 18” rims for just over $26,000. My prediction: it's going to be nearly impossible to find these for the first year as they'll all be getting snapped up as fast as Korea can make them. Don't be fooled by the V6's greater power output either; that 4-cylinder turbo sports a very similar engine to the one found in the Mitsubishi Ralliart. Expect to see 400hp+ tuner versions in the upcoming months.

However, we can't tear around all the time consuming petrochemicals like a Kuwati oil fire. Luckily, this is one of the best years for providing the eco-concious driver with a wide array of choices. The new Prius is here, somehow sporting more power and better fuel economy through some Toyota black magic. But the Prius had better gird its leaf-loving loins for battle because Honda's new Insight hybrid was garnering all the attention. Both cars seem to be jelly-beans from the same pod, but the Insight is touted as having that classic sharp Honda driving feel. It'll be cheaper too.

Eco even got a bit sexy over at Dodge, where their massively over-engined Challenger was parked next to a little yellow bumblebee of a car: the Dodge EV. Based on a Lotus, this little full-electric sportscar would happily outhandle the big bruiser in the corners, and the ludicrously available torque from an electric engine means it would out-drag it to 100km/h too.

Speaking of electric powertrains, this year's show boasted a whole array of electric vehicles on the upper mezzanine, from mini-dumptrucks to converted Toyota Rav4s. Parked right next to them was the Alé concept, a BC-homebrew that's competing for the automotive X-Prize of 100mpg. The spec sheet on the Jetson-looking podcar seemed a bit far-fetched but apparently it's nearing production.

More practical transportation for the rest of us was provided by pretty much every manufacturer there, but don't equate economical with boring. Nissan debuted their funky little Cube, a box-on-wheels that will redefine cheap and cheerful, Kia's Soul is already selling like hotcakes, and Ford even had the audacity to display a bright green euro-spec Fiesta hatchback. They'd better not be teasing, as this little car could provide serious competition on an even footing with the Yaris, Fit and Versa.

Every year it's tricky to pick a must-see car, but this year I had an easy time finding the star of the show, even though it was tucked away on the mezzanine with little fanfare. In the sparse Porsche booth, right between Lexus and Land Rover, there was a 911 that I just instantly fell for. Sure the Lamborghini was the sexiest car, and sure the Insight will probably be the biggest sales success in the coming year, but away from all the fanfare and fins there was a deep green 911 Carrerra S with a tan leather interior.

I've seen plenty of 911s in red, black and silver, but that particular colour combination immediately transported me twenty-five years into the future, where all our cars are pod-like affairs that whirr along in silence and comfort, connected wirelessly to prevent accidents, with AI-controlled navigation systems and automatic pilot. Somewhere in all that oil-starved sterility, someone is going to open their garage on a Sunday morning and pull an old sheet off this car. It'll fire up with that classic flat-six rumble and its driver will ease it out into the spring sunshine in search of some looped ribbon of lonely country road. I hope that driver is me.

Jaguar

2010-01-17T13:57:00.000-08:00

As someone who's spent a great deal of time in (or more accurately, underneath) British cars, I find the word 'Jaguar' to be synonomous with luxury, style and great suffering. Thankfully, my dad never expressed any interest in owning an XJ or XK, and it remained a sort of Holy Grail of mechanical difficulty. “At least,” I'd say to myself, when some important part of the Land Rover had gone fatally 'sproing', “At least we don't have a Jaguar.”

But that doesn't mean I don't drool all over an E-Type whenever I come across one in a parking lot. They're like automotive goddesses with the curves of Aphrodite and the mood swings of Shiva. And you have to remove the rear end just to change the brakes.

Actually, the E-Type is perhaps a bit too obvious a choice. Everyone loves that thing, even people with hemp pants and communists. If I had to pick a favourite Jag, it'd be the big saloons: the '66 Mark IIs and the '68 420s. For me, these big cats are all about flash cockney villains, jewel heists and Italian Jobs, Michael Caine and John Osborne. They're cool enough to turn a Roger Rabbit into a Roger Daltrey.

And here's the thing: when I see a big Jaguar on the street, I think to myself, “That's the business.” With the exception of the excreable X-Type, every Jag is a true icon, an undiluted expression of the marque.

Founded in the '20s as a motorcycle sidecar company, Jaguar began producing sports cars in the thirties. However, it wasn't until the late forties that Jaguar really came into its own with the XK120 sport-saloon. Developed during war-time fire watch on the factory floor, the XK120 was a revolution in speed and luxury.

For instance in 1952, during a high-speed trial, a team of three drivers lapped an XK120 for 168 consecutive hours at 210 km/h, covering over 27,000 kms and stopping only for fuel and driver changes. In a time when most British cars would have struggled to break 100 km/h, this was like driving non-stop at double the speed limit from Vancouver to St. Johns, Newfoundland, and back again, twice in one week.

It was this sort of ridiculous achievement and numerous racing victories that built Jaguar's reputation for speed, while their burled wood and leather interiors were building a reputation for luxury. Sadly, by the late sixties, the actual cars were being built by British Leyland, which had built a reputation on being bad at building things.

Still the indisputable character of Jaguars remained untouched, if a bit rusty, up until the Ford Motor Corporation snapped them up in 1989. Between '89 and 2007 Jaguar earned Ford a profit of nothing, zero, nada, while turning out beauties like the XKR coupe, and yawnfests like the Mondeo-based X-Type.

Jaguar is now owned by India's Tata motors, which is probably the best thing that could have happened to them. Modern Britain is all chavs and ASBOs, David and Victoria Beckham, lager louts and football hooligans. India on the other hand, is proably the greatest preserver of English culture in the world. The P.G. Wodehouse appreciation society has more members in India than any other nation.

Combine this with the recent modernization of the country, and you have the perfect ownership for a company that's always lived on a heritage of speed and old-world charm, combined with modern technology. Consider the new supercharged XKR with its classic long-nose short-tail profile and E-type oval grille. With over 500 horsepower and a trick suspension, it brings supercar speed to the table, but it does it with a refinement and character only an Aston-Martin could match (at twice the price).

With the current economic turmoil, Jaguar remains one of the only luxury automakers that doesn't have a cluttered, diluted lineup. BMW has nearly ten model lines with various trim levels, and cheap financing. Mercedes has three different SUVs and the A-Class entry-level vehicle. Lexus's I250 is a luxo-badge at a Toyota price.

If you're in a Jaguar though, there's none of that cheapness. You might not have the one with the biggest engine, but it's going to be something very special nontheless. Perhaps this excusivity will mean a rebirth for Jaguar, an upswell in sales and a return to profitability. Either way, any time you see an old XJ or XK on the road, be sure and give them a salute.

Saying a few Hail Marys for their powertrain wouldn't go amiss either.

Toyota

2010-01-17T13:53:00.002-08:00

Well, it finally happened. This week, Toyota officially became the world's largest auto manufacturer with 2008 car and truck sales of 8.97 million besting GM's paltry 8.35 million units sold.

Most people consider Toyota to have surpassed GM last year when they produced the most vehicles in the world, but Detroit denial stipulated that the sales crown was more important. And now that crown rests upon the brow of a beige Corolla with one missing hubcap.

More bad news for GM then as their whopping 77 years of market domination comes to an end, but perhaps its better to see things in a more optimistic light and cheer Toyota for their success. Maybe if we're really nice to them, they'll bring back the Supra.

Toyota sprang into being in the mid-thirties as an offshoot of a manufacturer of automatic looms. Kiichiro Toyoda was the enterprising son who had been sent to America and Europe to examine automotive production there, and he brought home what he learned to a Japan hungry for domestic car production. Early models were sold as Toyodas and were so similar to Dodge and Chevy products that some parts were actually interchangeable.

The Toyota company was given its name largely as the result of superstition. The homonym “Toyota” requires eight brush strokes to write in Japanese, which is both lucky and visually simpler than the symbols for “Toyoda”. Additionally, the literal translation of Toyoda is “fertile rice paddies,” and the modern company was eager to distance themselves from old-fashioned farming, especially when you think about what fertilizes rice paddies.

Early small cars from the Toyota motor company were sold under the name “Toyopet,” which didn't go over very well when they went on sale in the U.S. in 1957. The name was changed back to Toyota for export models, and in what may have been foreshadowing, the first model to show up on North American roads was the Toyota Crown.

You can still buy a Toyota Crown today, as it's roughly equivalent to a Lexus E350. You couldn't buy one by 1960 though because the car was a major failure. Its puny four-cylinder engine was no match for its truck-based frame on the interstate highways of the United States, and on a publicity stunt coast-to-coast trip, it barely made it from L.A. to Las Vegas. Toyota pulled the car from the export lineup, leaving only the jeep-like Land Cruiser and the Tiara, which initially sold 318 units and was considered a runaway success. Eventually the Crown was re-launched in the mid-sixties with a six-cylinder engine and the Tiara (which soon changed to Corona) began doubling its sales every year.

Really though, all that sales figures stuff is incredibly boring. The moment anyone actually started caring about Toyota was the moment they saw Akkiko Wakabayashi roll up in a white Toyota 2000 GT open-top to help James Bond escape from the bad guys. Yes, You Only Live Twice was a pretty silly movie, and yes, Sean Connery's Japanese disguise was pretty laughable (“domo arrrigato, Mishter Rrroboto”), but the swooping Jaguar E-type lines and Porche 911 performance of the 2000 GT made everybody sit up and pay attention. That was a Toyota?

Proving they could build an interesting car helped Toyota's sales, but it was the '73 oil crisis that really kicked down the doors for Japanese companies and their small, fuel-efficient vehicles. By the early 80's there were Toyota badges everywhere, particularly the Corolla, which would go on to be the best selling car nameplate in the world.

For me, the 80's are really the time where Toyota's trucks came into their own with the nigh-indestructible Hilux (or Tacoma) and Land Cruiser. If only groups like the Taliban were forced to drive around in trucks produced by Fiat or Alfa-Romeo, all the hotspots of the world would be a lot quieter, as they'd spend most of their time either walking or pushing. With a Toyota pickup truck though, they can go pretty much anywhere, and it'll run pretty much forever even without maintenance.

In 1989 Toyota pulled another trick out of their bag: they introduced Lexus. The LS400 flagship was launched after years of prototypes and customer focus groups, and it was a smooth-riding success. BMW and Mercedes sneered at the idea of a Japanese luxury car, dismissing it as nothing more than a fancy Camry, and suggesting that no Toyota product would ever be a threat to the high-end German marques. Look how well that prediction worked out.

By the 90's things were in full swing with the outrageous twin-turbo Supra, the pocket-rocket Celica GTS and the if-it-were-any-slower-it'd-be-a-Ferrari Turbo MR2. All fun to drive, but the most interesting vehicle Toyota launched wasn't. In 1997, Japanese roads were introduced to the bulbous, slow, and incredibly important Prius Hybrid.

Toyota has championed its Hybrid-Synergy drive over the last decade, making it available in everything from the SUV Toyota Highlander to their flagship sedan Lexus LS600h. In typical Toyota fashion, it spent millions on research even before the market existed for the vehicles it was intending to build.

Toyota now comprises three companies: Lexus, Toyota, and the “Youth” brand Scion. It also has its tentacles in Subaru, Yamaha and Isuzu. But even with its huge resources, great management and high sales volume, Toyota is still slowing or stopping production. They've killed the idea of bringing back the Supra, and a new Lexus supercar which was in the works also faces the axe.

Whether or not they retain their crown, it'd be nice to borrow Toyota's crystal ball for a while and see what they think the future has in store for us. Hopefully it's not just another shade of beige for that Corolla.

The Future

2010-01-17T13:53:00.001-08:00

As the year draws to a close, I can't say that there's a great deal of Christmas cheer in the automotive industry. Subaru and Suzuki can't afford to go rally-racing anymore. Honda just cancelled their V10-powered NSX supercar, even as it was in undergoing final trials at the Nürburgring. Toyota has been laying off contract workers in Japan by the hundreds, and has halted construction on a new US plant that would have built more Priuses for the North American market.

And if things are bad for foreign automakers, they're even worse for the home teams. GM is so starved for cash that they've just announced their intention to sell off rare and collectible cars from their museum collection. Chrysler has shut down all production for at least a month. Ford is looking to unload Volvo. Parts suppliers are witholding orders until they're paid in cash.

But it's not all Grinchiness and doom. In fact, gazing into our crystal ball-joint, it's possible to just make out the faintest few glimmers of hope on the horizon.

The Tesla Roadster

Up to this point, battery-powered transportation has failed to be, pardon the pun, electrifying. Basically every form of electric alternative transport was little more than a slightly oversized golf-cart; driving them was about as much of a hoot as licking a 9-volt battery. But not the Tesla.

Based on a Lotus chassis, the Tesla roadster has a lithium-ion battery pack that'll hold a charge good for a nearly 400-km range. Efficient? Yes. Exciting? Not so much.

Ignore the green stuff then, and check out the performance: 0-60mph takes just 3.9 seconds. On a recent British motoring program, the Tesla outran its gasoline-powered Lotus Elise cousin around a track, and ended up posting a better overall lap time than a Porsche 911.

Setting aside the fact that this sports coupe has been in development about as long as cold fusion, the production models are poised to appear at any moment, and it sounds as though they just might work.

The Chevy Volt

If GM does go under, it'll be especially painful as they have a car in development that'd probably have saved them, given a bit more time.

Possessing both a gasoline engine and an electric drivetrain, the Volt may appear to be like many hybrids on the surface. However, rather than using the gasoline engine to provide propulsion when engine loads are high, the Volt actually operates principally as an electric vehicle, one designed to be recharged periodically.

On pure electric power, the Volt will have a range of about 65kms. Once the batteries are depleted, a small 4-cylinder gasoline engine acts as a generator to extend the range to over 1000 kms.

Expected to enter production in 2010, if we don't see the Volt as a Chevy product, we're sure to see the technology in another form.

The Honda Insight

For a long time now, the Prius has had it all its own way. If you wanted to show that you were hip and environmentally concious, you bought a Prius. Actually, if you really wanted to show that you were green, you bought a bicycle and a bus-pass, but for those who couldn't live without a car, the Prius was pretty much the only game in town.

But here comes Honda, a little late to the party, but with an offering that will be much, much cheaper. By reducing the premium that hybrids demand over conventional small cars, Honda will undoubtedly contribute to a huge increase in the number of gas-electric powertrain vehicles on the road.

More hybrids on the road doesn't necessarily mean less pollutants in the air, but an increased demand for the technology would lead to more efficient production lines, less reliance on shipping over local manufacturing and better battery recycling programs.

The Nissan Denki Cube

Canadians will be able to get the Nissan Cube next year in conventional gasoline-powered form, and the funky little box on wheels should be a hot seller. Portland, Oregon residents will get an even better version (if you're a city dweller) as Nissan has announced a partnership with the State of Oregon based around electric vehicles.

The Oregon Department of Transport will be responsible for providing the recharging infrastructure, principally in densely-developed areas, and Nissan will provide the electric vehicles. Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn has mentioned a need for electric SUVs and Minivans for the plan to succeed, but you can pretty much guarantee there will be some version of the lithium-ion powered Denki Cube concept that was revealed at the 2008 New York Auto Show.

The Toyota/Subaru Coupe

The new Dodge Challenger SRT8 produces 425 horsepower. The BMW M3 now has a 420hp V8. The Corvette ZR1 churns out a whopping 638 horsepower. All excellent if you're trying to use up the oil reserves faster or melt those pesky polar icecaps.

But is all this brute force necessary if you just want to have something fun to drive? Subaru and Toyota don't think so, so they've been working on a new project that favours lightness over large-displacement, forced-induction engines.

Rumored to have a 2.0-litre, 200hp engine with rear-wheel-drive, a six-speed manual transmission and a 2400lb curb weight, the two-seater coupe is sure to be a smash. It may be launched under Subaru brand in North America only, or under Toyota's youth-oriented Scion brand. Best of all, it's projected to be competing at a price-point just over $20,000.

The European Ford Focus

I've long said that if Ford of Europe ever bring their cars over to North America, I'd be among the first in line at the dealership.

Well it looks like they're going to do it, so it's time to break out the camping chairs and sleeping bags and get in line. Ford will be releasing their Transit utility van, their Fiesta sub-compact car and the European Focus should arrive by 2010. Forget everything you ever thought about Fords, the Focus is more fun to drive than a Miata, more reliable than a Civic, and more practical than a minivan.

If they don't bring the 300hp Focus RS though, I may have to Take Steps.

The Honda FCX Clarity

Honda's already got a mention in this list, but their Fuel-Cell powered clarity is truly a vision of the future. This car is the one to watch if you'd like to know what you'll be driving when the oil runs out.

No it doesn't hover or fly or (disappointingly) have laser beams attached to the front fenders to blast rush hour into molecular dust.

What it does have is four doors, above-average roominess, a willing 134 horsepower engine, miserly fuel economy, and excellent brakes and handling. It feels like a glimpse at the next Honda Accord. The futuristic part is the powerplant.

The FCX Clarity runs on hydrogen. Its vertical-flow fuel cell charges a 288V lithium-ion battery and runs the electric motor. No gasoline required.

Several FCX Clarities have been leased at a Honda-subsidized $600USD/month to specific customers at dealerships where hydrogen refueling stations are close by. Obviously the cost of manufacturing hydrogen and the fuel-cell cars is still far too high to be commercially viable, but Honda has proved that they can build a practical daily driver around the technology, and it's only a matter of time before we see more fuel-cell cars on the road.

Automotive Branding

2010-01-17T13:50:00.000-08:00

My dad brought home a Peugot pepper grinder the other day. When I finished picking myself up off the floor after hearing how much it had cost, I began to wonder what makes people buy car-company-branded products that have nothing to do with cars whatsoever.

Obviously the French have always been aces at food preparation, but I'd expect a pepper grinder designed by a French car company to leak oil all over my pasta and then disintegrate into a small conical pile of rust on the kitchen table.

Actually though, it worked quite well, which made me wonder if the real problem is that the engineers at Peugot are a little too concerned with preparing eight-course lunches to be bothered designing a car where the doors don't fall off unexpectedly. Even so, where do these companies get the idea that they should invest time and money in developing things that are totally unrelated to motor vehicles?

Porsche Design, for instance, offers pretty much everything you'd expect in the way of driving gloves, briefcases, hats and wallets with the Porsche name emblazoned on them: all the nonsense that lets everyone know you don't actually own a Porsche and probably never will. But you can also buy a Porsche-branded pipe. Or an entire kitchen. What exactly makes it a Porsche kitchen? Does the stove only have burners in the back? Does the refrigerator have a tendency to suddenly snap-oversteer and crash into a tree? I'm not quite sure.

Is it perhaps because the designers have nothing better to do? I mean the current new-style 911 Carrera has round headlights (again), but pretty much everything else is the same shape it's always been. Perhaps all these turtleneck-wearing ultra-cool German art-school graduates are just plain bored.

But then, it's not just Porsche who's slapping their name on everything under the sun either. Care to buy a Ferrari Segway? Some Hummer shot glasses? How about a Lamborghini Smart-phone, or a spritz of Bugatti cologne? It's sheer lunacy, but worst of all, the automakers are missing out on tie-ins they really should be making. Here's a few I'd like to see.

Toyota Warm Milk Drink:
Dependable. Reliable. Good value for money. All core attributes of Toyota products. Fun? Well occasionally, as long as it's not too much fun, there's no loud noises, and certainly not after eight o'clock. Having put the Celica to sleep a while back, and now with the announcement that Toyota intends to scrap its plans to return the riotously delinquent Supra, what better tie-in for Japan's largest automaker than a mild sedative?
They can even offer it in three shades of beige packaging, and the Prius version could be soy-based.

Honda VTEC Pacemakers:
Of the millions of VTEC valve-timing control devices that Honda's put out over the years, not a single failure has been reported. That's good.
Even better is the clever way in which VTEC allows for excellent fuel economy whilst puttering around town, and then a kick in the pants when you rev the engine into the stratosphere. Think of just how useful this could be for grandad: fiddling about in the garden all afternoon, and then out for some basketball with grandson Jimmy, dunking over all those baggy-short-wearing whippersnappers.
Potential drawback: young men might start illegally racing their grandparents on the street.

Aston Martin Make-up:
Astons are among the most beautiful man-made things on the planet, so why not you too? Stunning lines, gorgeous curves, perfectly balanced proportions, British Racing Green paintwork, it can all be yours! Side effects may include a long nose, wide rear haunches and a bellowing exhaust note.

Volvo Hockey Pads:
Literally translated, “Volvo” means “rolling strength”, but why not “skating strength”? After all, as the maker of some of the most crash-worthy cars ever to have golden retreivers shed all over the back seats, Volvo has always prided itself on safety first.
An additional bonus is that Volvo's traditional boxy design will leave you looking like a cross between Todd Bertuzzi and Optimus Prime.

Range Rover Designer Gumboots:
Just in time for the squelchy fall season, a high-heeled wellington boot. Be forewarned though, they're pretty much guaranteed to leak like a cardboard colander.

Alfa-Romeo Cappucino Maker:
From Italy comes a frothing, fizzy delight, emitting grinding noises and jets of steam. So why doesn't Alfa also have a go at building a Cappucino machine?
Come to think of it, they wouldn't even have to develop anything. All they'd have to do is retrofit one of their old Spyders so that the coffee beans were fed into the gearbox, and the radiator was hooked up to the milk steamer. Then all you'd have to do is drive it until it overheated, say fifteen feet or so, enjoy a lovely morning pick-me-up, and then get your neighbour to help you push it back into the garage.

Saab Jet Fighter:
Saab loves to tell the world about its aeronautical background, but the truth is the company that builds cars split from the airplane manufacturer back around the time fire was discovered. Still, I'd love to see what they could come up with if they tried to build a fighter plane today. Prediction: it'd be front-wheel-drive, turbocharged, have a ski-rack and be flown by Tom Cruise's orthodontist.

Citroën Energy Drink:
I have no real reason for this one, except for the chance we should all have to enjoy a tasty lemon-flavoured beverage called Citroënella.

There're plenty more, some that might even make sense like a Nissan-themed Playstation (after all, the Gran Turismo guys designed the GT-R's display system), but the deadline to print looms rapidly.
Good thing I've got my fool-proof Yugo speel-chëkker on.

Gas Prices are Good

2010-01-17T13:49:00.002-08:00

I really love our new high gas prices.
Wait, hear me out! And you in the back, put down those pointy-looking rocks. High gas prices are actually good for driving enthusiasts.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but artificially low gas prices have been subsidizing an unsustainable automobile-based lifestyle, and we need to get back to basics, man. At least, that's what some beared guy on a bicycle told me. He did seem fairly with-it and groovy though, and anybody with that many facial piercings must know something I don't.
Anyway, for those of us who have the luxury of regarding driving as just a luxury, rather than a necessity, the recent rise in fuel prices is about to result in a second golden age of motoring. Steam may issue from my ears every time I pay for a fill-up of premium, but there's at least five good reasons I can think of to be happy my wallet is hurting.

1.] Less Congestion:
People who don't understand why I enjoy driving are often confused about what driving actually is, and no wonder. Here in the lower mainland, piloting a car from one place to another can be an activity far closer to parking than driving.
But good news everyone! Paying more per litre is finally pushing the cost of transportation into a greater factor than the minor inconveniences of public transit. Even car-pooling with somebody who's a Leafs fan is better than being stony broke after single-car commuting, and if you reduce the number of vehicles on the road by doubling up, we all get there faster.
Even better, can you imagine what the Sea-to-Sky would be like if people were commuting back and forth for their ski weekends by train, rather than forming kilometers-long congo-lines of motorists too testy to check out either the sea or the sky? Nothing is worse than getting stuck behind some ancient Winnebago that always seems to ooze along at twenty kph until there's a passing zone, at which point Bob and Martha turn into Han Solo and Chewebacca trying to break their Kessel Run record at hyperlight speed.

2.] Better cars:
I suppose SUVs are pretty good value per pound, but so is ground chuck. Now automakers are dealing with our new demand for extra-lean vehicles, and that means better design, more efficiency, and an emphasis on small and sporty, rather than big and beefy.[
High gas prices are sounding the death-knell of the Sport Utility Vehicle – those mastodons of the highways. Personally, I couldn't be more delighted, as the things are forever veering out of their lane, blotting out the scenery and blocking the line-ups at the pump every time gas dips below 1.40. Fact is, most people who drive SUVs don't need to, and those who are legitimately using a behemoth on a daily basis would be more than happy if it had a usefully efficient diesel engine, rather than some ludicrously large V8, swilling fuel and belching pollutants.

3.] Better roads:
Higher fuel prices mean less urban sprawl as people start to value living closer to their work. Greater densification in the urban core means that when you head out on the weekend for a trip to the countryside, not only do you get there sooner but you're also likelier to find cows, chickens and sheep rather than a massive new gated community in taupe and off-white. The secret backroads where driving nirvana hides will remain isolated, leafy and winding.

4.] Cheaper Insurance:
Cheaper insurance is not ever something I thought I'd see in my lifetime. Happily though, the more fuel-efficient your car, the further down the insurance scale it is. Small displacement engines that provide good bang for your buck are also easier on your insurance premiums, even if it's the sportier model of a compact car, rather than the V8 model of a luxury car.
Also, if you aren't driving your car for work, you can afford to take it off the road and insure it for pleasure use only. Not a huge savings to be had here, but there's something very pleasant about knowing that your car is there for you only when you need it, rather than being some slavering monster hiding in the garage that must be fed before the daily commute.
Better than that, you can always sell your boring minivan and buy the classic or hot-rod you've always wanted. Collector plate insurance is the cheapest you can get, and I'm sure heading out to pick up milk wouldn't be such a hassle if you had an Aston-Martin DB5 or an orange '70 Challenger R/T.

5.] Fitter Vancouverites:
I'm not just talking about the asthetics of Lululemon yoga pants here, although they are the really are the best leg-related thing to happen since the polio vaccine. When you and your friends are all fitness enthusiasts with the collective mass of a balsa-wood glider, your car is faster, handles better and burns less gas. Fantastic! Plus, there's a reduced burden on the healthcare system so taxes can be re-directed to finally paving that giant pothole called Cambie Street.
So embrace our new high gas prices, even if your Visa bill now looks like the GDP of Portugal. But just so everyone knows I'm only on the bus for the love of driving, I'll be wearing my race helmet.

GTR

2010-01-17T13:49:00.001-08:00

It's a hundred and fifteen degrees Fahrenheit on the shimmering tarmac of Las Vegas Motor Speedway and there's a desert wind coming in from the West that feels like God's hairdryer. In this brutal desert environment any human being exposed to the elements for too long would shrivel up like a banana slug in a microwave oven. Convenient then, that this particular human being is currently sitting in a Monster.

A Monster with air-conditioning. Actually, it's getting a bit nippy in here, I'd better turn it down a little. Brrr.

The Monster in question is “Godzilla”, the nickname carried by Nissan's new supercar GT-R. A car that has garnered more press recently than a Britney Spears haircut. A car that is generating more expectant hype than Brangelina's baby. A car, in short, that has every gearhead either drooling in anticipation or warming up their scoffing muscles.

But perhaps a quick recap is necessary if you've been living in a cave. On Mars. With your eyes shut and your hands over your ears.

The Nissan GT-R's heritage stretches back to the sixties when it dominated Japanese racing series. Then nothing very much exciting happened for a while. Moon landings and fuel crisises mostly.
In 1989 the twin-turbocharged, all-wheel-drive GT-R arrived in its first R32 designation and proceeded to win the Japanese Touring Car Championship title for four consecutive years, was the first production car to lap the Nürburgring in under eight minutes, and was so dominant in racing that it was generally handicapped with weight and power-restriction penalties.

This latest incarnation, chassis designation R35, has been coming our way since being revealed as a concept at the Tokyo Auto Show way back in 2001. Since then, there's been spy shots of heavily camoflauged prototypes being tested, unofficial lap times, leaked technical specifications, an early Japan-only release, and the more recent news that two GT-Rs have been unloaded at Annacis Island in Vancouver and are awaiting customs clearance.

It's still a twin-turbocharged, all-wheel-drive beast, but Nissan is now calling the GT-R an “everyday supercar” and pitting it against the likes of the Corvette Z06 and the Porsche 911 twin turbo.
The new GT-R has destroyed everything in every parameter of every comparison test in every major automotive magazine in the last six months, and now I'm sitting in one at the starting line of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway road course, waiting to see if Godzilla is really a monster, or just a man in a silly rubber suit.

Does it live up to the hype?

Oh yes, yes indeedy.

Sweet sassy molassy, does it ever!

With all three adjustable parameters (suspension, throttle response, traction control) put to their “R” race settings, I pin the drive-by-wire throttle wide open and hang on for dear life as the GT-R rockets to 60 mph in less than four seconds. Then it's hard on those enormous six-piston brakes, each one the size of a smaller car's entire wheel, and into the sharp right-hander. There's so much cornering grip I fully expect the tarmac behind me to be ripped up as though by the claws of some prehistoric beast, but there's no time to check the rear view as the GT-R wriggles through some fast bends without any drama, just pouring on the power like a force of nature.

Gear-changes happen in the blink of an eye (half a blink actually) in a near seamless wave of lag-free acceleration. The brakes can stop you faster than running smack into a block of depleted uranium, but it's so easy to modulate their ferocious bite. The all-wheel-drive system is balanced and free of any understeering tendencies. But the really special thing is how the car works as a whole.

If a Mazda MX-5 Miata is supposed to fit like slipping on a pair of driving gloves, the GT-R is like one of those exoskeletal cargo-loaders from Aliens II, powerful and brutal. Better yet, it's Ironman's power-suit, seemingly invincible and transmitting every input into staggering performance.

Its electronic wizardry doesn't ever feel as though it's interfering, it just enhances your driving experience, making a slight correction here, adding a touch of brakes there. Confidence in my own abilities may not be absolute, but in this car, I'm Michael Schumacher crossed with Juan Michael Fangio, Jackie Stewart crossed with Ayrton Senna, Gilles Villeneuve crossed with... whoopsie...

Yikes, that last chicane was a bit awkward, but where a normal car might have spun, the GT-R stepped in for a split-second and routed some extra power to the front wheels to pull me out of the frying pan
But it's time to pull into the pit-lanes, and step out of air-conditioned comfort into the firey Nevada desert. Is the new Nissan GT-R the most amazing thing I've ever driven? An unequivocal “Yes”.

Nürburgring

2010-01-17T13:47:00.000-08:00

Nürburgring

Recently, the new Nissan GT-R supercar lapped the Nürburgring in a blisteringly fast seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds. Next, the new supercharged 638-horsepower Chevy Corvette ZR-1 started putting in lap times in the 7:40 range, but in less-than-ideal cold, wet track conditions, and the GM engineering team started flexing their bragging muscles.

Nissan, not about to lose face to a bunch of hairy gaijin and their coarse, brutish 'Vette, sent out track ninja Tochio Suzuki who knocked out an unbelievably quick 7:29. In the face of speculations as to whether the ZR-1's dry lap time would best the techno-wizardy of the GT-R, chief ZR-1 Engineer Tadge Juecter responded that his car would beat any production car's track record, anywhere in the world.

Needless to say, this epic battle went to my head faster than a pint of schnapps and I may have become a little over-excited. Sadly, I was not successfully able to communicate that excitement to most of my friends.
“Nüburgring? Isn't that the German word for onion ring?” one asked.

“I thought the Nürburgring was destroyed when Frodo cast it into Mount Doom,” said another, “Oh, and thanks for calling, I need your help to clean out my basement.”
There was no help on the home front either, as my eco-conscious wife wanted to know how many miles to the gallon the ZR-1 got. “At least several,” I mumbled, and then high-tailed it.

So what is the Nüburgring anyway, and why does it seem to be the equivalent of behind-the-bike-sheds for afterschool scrapping between the best racecar drivers and engineering teams in the world?

Built in the 1920s in Nürburg (which has nothing whatsoever to do with onions, just in case you were wondering), the Nüburgring is one of the longest, most technically difficult racetracks in the world. It is located in the west of Germany, 120 kilometers northwest of Frankfurt, and is divided into several sections, the most famous being the Nordschliefe or “Northern Loop.”

At nearly twenty-three kilometers in length, with every conceivable type of corner imaginable, it is the Nordschliefe that has made the Nüburgring famous. Sir Jackie Stewart, the Formula 1 racing driver known as the “Flying Scot”, coined the term “The Green Hell” for the Nordschliefe when he raced there in the late sixties, and even now, it is widely regarded as the toughest, the most demanding and the most dangerous racetrack in existence.

The Nüburgring claims several lives each year in crashes. Several well-experienced Formula One drivers died in the sixties, and even now drivers who have logged countless hours can be caught out by any one of its one hundred corners. Any mistake at all means hitting the barrier, and the track's enormous length makes it difficult for emergency teams to respond quickly.

Dangerous it may be, but as a yardstick with which to measure the performance of supercars, 'Ring lap times are far better than just 0-60mph acceleration figures and quarter-mile times. The Nüburgring punishes every dynamic of the cars, only rewarding the best, and many manufacturers use the track as a place to hone their vehicles until they're just right.

GM and their Corvette are relatively new 'Ring rats, but team drivers from German companies such as BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Porsche can be found on the track almost every day, flogging everything from prototype racers to the latest 911 variant. No official word on what the Germans think about the current battle for 'Ring supremacy being fought between the Americans and the Japanese but they're probably cooking up their own track superweapon.

It's not just bragging rights for company racers either: the 'Ring is also open to the public on most weekends and weekday evenings. As it operates in much the same manner as a toll road, you simply drive up to the gate, deposit your twenty-one Euro, and then it's off for a blast around the corners. It can be dangerous to get too wrapped up in trying to hit your best lap time though. Rescue paramedics report that they often retrieve running stopwatches from crashed racecars.

If you're not foolhardy enough to want to lap the Nüburgring yourself, a professional driver can take you on a lightning tour in one of the BMW M5 'Ring Taxis. If you're very lucky, it'll be the “Queen of the Ring”, driver Sabine Schmitz, who's known for giving out such helpful tips as, “Never enter Karussell [a tricky corner] when on the brakes! I have gone round there on the roof, I know what I'm talking about.”

Not enthused about riding shotgun with a fast and furious fräulein either? Well, the Nüburgring's popularity is so widespread, it can be found on most any serious racing simulator you'd care to name. If you do happen to end up going around the Karussel on your roof, it's great to have a reset button.

Fix It Yourself

2010-01-17T13:46:00.000-08:00

AC Schnitzer, the famous German tuning house, has recently announced that they will be opening a high-end restaurant above their workshop. The idea, so sayeth the glossy press release, is that deep-pocketed customers will be able to drop off their BMWs to get some extra horsepower shoehorned under the hood, whilst enjoying some chilled-salad-fork-style fine-dining at the same time.

After idly wondering about whether AC Weiner Schnitzel would be on the menu, or whether I could get a 5W-30 truffle oil change, I suddenly came to the realization that this was possibly the stupidest thing I had ever heard in my entire life.

Whatever happened to doing things yourself? Nowadays it seems like every manufacturer has wreathed their engine bays in complicated-looking multi-coloured wiring and masked everything familiar with mysteriously corrugated plastic engine covers.

Oh dear, I just said “nowadays”. It's only one small step further to curmudgeonhood with its “newfangled” and “whippersnappers.”

Still, I stand by my original assertion: there's something to be said for the simpler days of motoring, when each individual component didn't have its own computerized control module. Back then you could just change a wiper blade without having to reinstall and then update the wiper-blade-control-unit driver software.

Now the first thing to do when your car stops working is perform a full system reboot by turning off the car, getting out, closing all the doors, and then getting back in again, but there was a time when even a hamfisted do-it-yourselfer such as myself could successfully attempt a roadside repair.

Once upon a time, all you needed to fix a car was a screwdriver, a monkey wrench, a socket set with not too many pieces missing, a really big hammer, and overconfidence in your own abilities. There was no need for specialized dealer tools that look like R2-D2's arm and cost more than a piano: cars were nothing more than tremendously complicated Mechano sets, just that the wrenches were bigger, and there was more opportunity to get yourself all nice and dirty.

And there were no Wizard of Oz don't-look-behind-the-curtain plastic covers either, just bare greasy metal. Everything was out in the open: there is the manifold, here is the carburettor, there're the valve covers, here's the metal thingy I always burn myself on, there's the bit that goes sproing and flies off into the corner of the shed where you can't find it for three hours. All there; all just begging to be tampered with.

In my opinion, you don't really begin to truly appreciate your car until you've invested a part of yourself in repairing, maintaining or improving it. The part I usually end up investing is the skin off my knuckles, but there's been plenty of times I've sat in the driver's seat, ignition key poised, offering up a silent prayer to Our Blessed Lady of Acceleration that this time it's got to start. When the engine does start, it's the best feeling in the world. All the sore backs, mashed thumbs and gritty eyes disappear in a flood of endorphins, as you stand back to admire your handiwork. Usually at this point you realize that you've forgotten to bolt something extremely important back in, and that you've got to take everything apart again in order to do so, but that's beside the point.

Even with a modern car being crammed full of computing power, there's still plenty for the shade-tree mechanic to try their hand at. I wouldn't really bother with the brakes, as that's how Tim Robbin's character ended up in jail in the Shawshank Redemption, but you could at least learn how to change your own oil. For all the mumbo-jumbo of drive-by-wire, electronic control units and on-board diagnostics, engines are still all about fuel, air and spark. If you can figure out which one of those things is missing, you're halfway there to fixing it.

Leave the big stuff to the professionals by all means, but get out there and get under your car. Take off the plastic engine covers and put them in the recycling bin. Show up to the board meeting with blackened fingernails and a smudge on your nose.

You'll learn how the internal combustion engine works. You'll learn how swearing actually makes pain go away faster. You'll learn what a complicated, fantastic, amazing piece of machinery a modern automobile is.

Best of all, if you know what your mechanic is actually talking about, you'll never end up paying to have your muffler bearings lubricated.

Best Cars We Don't Get

2010-01-17T13:44:00.000-08:00

There are many reasons I love living in Canada: its great natural beauty, our multicultural society, free medical care every time I hurt myself doing something stupid, and being able to convince American tourists that twelve people were eaten by polar bears in the downtown core last winter. However, sometimes it's tough to be a Canadian gearhead.

No, I'm not talking about grease patches on your best toque, or getting your tongue stuck to your ratchet set during a cold snap (and anyway, that only happened the once). I'm talking about all the great cars we don't get here. Of course, there's plenty of great rides we do get, but nothing's as annoying as having an amazing European rental car that has no North American equivalent.

If I were able to take a sampling of all the best cars the rest of the world gets, here are my top picks.

Diesel Mini. There's plenty of tiny, hyper-efficient runabouts to choose from, including the very nicely appointed Mazda2, but I've got to go with the Mini Cooper D. Not only are Minis always as fun to drive as they are to look at, but the extra torque from the turbodiesel engine means that you can haul extra weight (for instance, a few more gold bars next time you rob that Italian armoured car). The other thing about Minis is that every time I get into one, it's like stepping through the front door of a tiny hut into the interior of BC Place. How the heck do they do that? Do they build the things at Hogwarts? With a six-speed manual transmission, the Mini D would be a hoot, while also not endangering any spotted owls.

Audi RS6 Avant. Wasn't Audi's R8 supercar at this year's Auto Show a pretty little confection of aluminum and carbon-fibre? Think it was the most powerful car Audi makes? Wrong. Witness the mind-bendingly powerful RS6 Avant: a twin-turbocharged, V10, AWD, station wagon. Yep, a station wagon. If you really want to laminate your golden retriever to the rear window, this 580hp monster is the way to do it, with a crushing acceleration capable of turning lumps of coal into diamond. It's the perfect car to take on a family picnic, assuming your destination is the seventeenth century and you need to warp space and time to get there.

Ford Focus ST. The Focus is an amazing, beautifully designed, fun-to-drive, comfortable vehicle. Oh, not the one we get, the one you get if you live in a place that has lots of vowels and umlauts in its name. Foörd, sorry, Ford has seen fit to build an entirely different entry-level vehicle for the North American market, and it's a great shame because they only need to look at the success of the Mazda3 to see how the Euro-Focus would do here. I'll take the turbocharged hooligan version in tear-up-my-license iridescent orange please.

Land Rover Defender. Having experienced the immeasurable joys and miseries of driving an elderly Land Rover Series III, I have a soft spot for this truck. It's the automotive version of wellington boots and a tweed sportscoat. No air-conditioning? Stiff upper lip, old boy! Mind you, the new ones have a few more amenities, such as a heater, but you've got to love a truck that makes no concessions to aerodynamics whatsoever. Mine would be green, except you wouldn't be able to tell because there would always be so much mud caked on it.

Holden Commodore SS VE Ute. I love Australians. I know it's a bit obvious to say that, as pretty much everybody loves Australians unless you don't like barbeques, or are from New Zealand. It's such a great country, so far away and full of deadly spiders and snakes, and they send all their best and brightest to run our ski resorts. Australian cars are like that too: big and friendly, and my favorite type is probably the ute. Essentially a car with a pickup bed on the back, the Holden is the best of the bunch as it's directly descended from the El Camino. The VE (in either eye-searing green or menacing black) would be my pick as it's the one that comes with a Corvette engine transplant. Nothing could be greater than rolling around with a bed-full of terrified sheep, pulling up next to an M5, rolling down the window, and saying in your best Paul Hogan, “That's not a knoife.”

There's so many left to mention: the Fiat 500 Abarth, the BMW M5 Wagon, the european-variant Suzuki Swift, the Clio Renaultsport 197, the Ford Mondeo from the last Bond movie, the turbodiesel 5-series BMW, the Civic Type R...

I'm going to need a boat. And a bigger garage.

Offensive Driving

2010-01-17T13:41:00.000-08:00

As I was strolling down the sidewalk the other day, minding my own business, somebody walked out of a store right in front of me - without even looking! I lurched to a halt, but the guy didn't even seem to notice. Snarling, I sped up to within inches of his back, breathing down his neck, but the sidewalk was too busy for me to get around him. Suddenly, he stopped, and I very nearly ran into him. Taking a chance, I swerved to the left and went for it, but he saw my move and blocked me. “Beeeep!” I yelled, swerving back and forth in an effort to get around him, “Honk honk HONK!”

There was a red light at the next crosswalk and I pulled up alongside him, glaring. We both made growling noises and shuffled our feet really fast, making our shoes squeal in protest. The light changed to white-walking-man, and we leapt forward, streaking down the sidewalk. He obviously had some training as we were neck-and-neck, but then suddenly there were two people coming the other way! I was going far too fast to stop. Swerving to the right, I collided with the guy I was racing and spun out into a pole. He went through the fruit display of a grocery store and overturned.

When the police arrived the officers booked us for speedwalking and sidewalk-racing and impounded my shoes. Now I have to get my friends to come pick me up and piggy-back me whenever I want to go out. I'm just glad no-one got seriously hurt.

Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, why then aren't we surprised when this sort of thing happens every day in our cars and on the road? It seems like as soon as we surround ourselves with a few tonnes of steel, plastic and glass, nearly all common courtesy goes out the window. It's a good thing only James Bond gets the machine-guns and rocket launchers.

When I was young and foolish (i.e. sometime last week), I used to think that there was a warehouse out there somewhere, packed to the rafters with little old men and ladies with thick glasses. As soon as I put my keys in the ignition, an alarm would ring and they'd all scramble out of bed, throw on their fedoras and driving gloves, slide down brass poles and leap into their ancient cars. Soon, a slowly-moving fleet of boat-sized Crown Victorias, beige Corollas, and rusty Buick LeBarons would clog up the streets, all seemingly heading in the same direction that I was trying to go. It was kind of like trying to get anywhere in Park Royal around Christmas-time.

But that's all nonsense too. The fact is, there are a lot of cars on the roads in this city, and the people in them have all got places to go that are just as important as the errands I'm running. Actually, probably more important to tell the truth, as I'm only going to pick up milk but that guy over there is on his way to donate blood.

The Honda Civic that's carefully making its way across the Lion's Gate Bridge at 40 km/h, developing a trail of following cars like an automotive Pied Piper? Maybe they've been in an accident recently, and are intimidated by the cars rushing the other way at speeds far above the limit.

The Dodge Caravan that's taking seemingly forever to make a left-hand turn at a light? Perhaps there's a brand new baby in the backseat, and her parents are taking that extra bit longer to make sure she's as safe as they can make her.

The Subaru Impreza that's having trouble getting away uphill from a stopsign? That's probably my wife, new to driving a manual transmission.

I'd certainly want you to be nice to her, even if she inadvertently causes you a minor delay - so, what right do I have to get all bent out of shape when someone else isn't as sharp behind the wheel as I'd like them to be?

What's more, regardless of whether you tear up the roads like Michael Schumacher after four triple espressos or ooze towards your destination like a heavily-sedated sloth, studies show there will only be about five minutes difference in arrival time per hour of urban driving.

It's my belief that Carma (please note how I've cleverly spelled karma with a “C”) will catch up to you, one way or another. So let somebody get in front of you in line, let somebody pull out of a side-street, back off from that slow-poke's bumper and give them some breathing room. After all, we're all fellow travellers on these roads, and it'd be nice to get to where we're going without losing our humanity in the process.

Of course, there's still no excuse for people in BMWs who can't seem to find their turn signals.

Hot Rodding

2010-01-17T13:40:00.000-08:00

Christmas has come and gone, and no Porsche 911 under the tree (mind you, I did accidentally leave out skim milk with the cookies), so I’m left trying to sew a sportscar out of a station wagon. Good news though: I can build it, someone else has the technology.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself as my Subaru WRX wagon hunkers down on Rocket Rally’s All Wheel Drive dyno and begins emitting a whooshing shriek like a banshee caught in a shop-vac. Oh well, warranties are for sissies anyways.

Buying your car “off the rack” never quite results in that perfect personalized fit. The front grille is too plastic, or the alloy wheels are too small and plain, or the suspension is too soft, or for some inexplicable reason you feel the need to festoon the dashboard with dozens of bobbleheads. Manufacturers aim their vehicles at a target market, but usually end up making compromises in order to appeal to the greatest amount of potential customers possible.

Customization is the answer, and tailoring your whip to fit can give great satisfaction in knowing that no-one else out there has exactly the same car as you. Then there’s that certain type of person who just can’t leave well enough alone, and can’t wait to start fiddling with their shiny new machinery and/or potentially breaking things. Who, me?

Think of the phrase “Hot Rod” and the image springs to mind of a chopped-n’-channeled, American-Graffiti-style “deuce coupe”, or a slammed ’57 Chev’ with its supercharger bursting through the hood.

I remember being trackside at Mission Raceway Park for their Friday Night Street Legal Drag Races while a classic Dodge Challenger pulled up to the line, its lumpy idle sounding like a bowling ball in an industrial dryer, and proceeded to light up its slick tires with an enormous burnout, producing a smoky pall that took several hours to fully disperse. Big, bearded dudes with suspenders and tattoos grinned their approval behind wrap-around shades.

Come to think of it, some of them looked a little like Santa in the off-season, although if Santa Claus looks like that in his civvies, next year I’m leaving out a fifth of bourbon and some pork rinds rather than milk and cookies...

Anyway, all that Detroit Iron (racing in what’s appropriately called the Outlaw class), though impressive to look at, was outnumbered by the legions of import and compact domestic cars in the paddocks. Many of the Beards scoffed at the buzzy little front-wheel-drivers as you would your kid brother and his tricycle when you’ve got a BMX, but some of these little pocket rockets are fast. What’s more, many of them are daily-drivers: reliable, fuel-efficient (up to a point) and not quite as prone to release billowing clouds of pollution as their forerunners.

And forerunners are what those big ol’ muscle cars are to the hopped-up Honda crowd. The Bearded Ones may not like to admit it, but the guys in baggy jeans and spiky hair are the spiritual successors of the original hot-rodders. Just because high-revving four-cylinders and ball-bearing turbochargers have replaced Whipple superchargers and four-barrel carburettors doesn’t mean anything’s really changed. Hot Rodding is still what it’s always been about: standing out from the pack by striving to be the fastest, the loudest, the baddest.

Best of all, this is the Golden Age of hot-rodding for both the muscle-car purists and the tech-savvy tuners. The number of specialist manufacturers for the high performance has swelled each year, and today’s tuner has an almost unlimited number of choices. It’s possible to get everything from bolt-on swaybars and a full turbocharger kit for the Honda Accord hand-me-down from Mom, or disc-brake and fuel-injection conversions for the classic Mustang that’s mouldering in the garage.

Luckily, if you’re rightly afraid of the cost incurred if you accidentally break something, there are lots of factory-tuned parts providing the custom tailoring along with that ironclad warranty. For those of us with deep pockets there have always been Mercedes’ AMG or BMW’s M-Division, but now you can get also buy Nismo parts for your Nissan, SPT parts for your Subaru and Mugen for your Honda. No points for guessing what Mazdaspeed parts are good for.

Back to the little Subaru wagon and the final dyno numbers are flickering up on the screen: peak horsepower is right around the level of the mighty Impreza STI, with a nice usable torque band. Not bad, but it’s the additional extra two or three MPG I’ll need to be emphasizing to my cycling-enthusiast wife when the Visa bill comes.

MGB

2010-01-17T13:38:00.000-08:00

For some people, climbing into a car, starting it on the first try, and driving off with confidence in actually arriving somewhere is practically sacrilege. These tinkering enthusiasts regard motoring as a near-religious experience filled with arcane ritual, unfathomable mystery, and occasional cursing. To members of The Church of The British Sportscar, there are few better altars upon which to sacrifice one's time and money than the MGB.

The MGB arrived in 1962 with lightweight unibody construction propelled by literally dozens of horsepowers. It did 0-60 in roughly eleven seconds, could pull an even-now respectable 9/10ths-of-a-g on the skid pad, and would hit a top speed of 100mph “without fuss”. Its styling was simple and appealing: long hood, short deck, two seats and a drop-top; keep 'er low to the ground and add lashings of chrome. Compared to the big-finned behemoths of the time, the 'B was a frothy delight. Dad bought a used one and subsequently cheated death when a gravel truck ran a red light.

Our poor MGB spent several decades in a bramble-covered barn on a corner of a neighbour's property while several generations of rodents ate the upholstery. Marinating a car in a medley of rust, dust and decades like this is an important step in creating a classic and/or relic. Dad would periodically check in to see how things were getting on, and there was much standing around with arms folded and making grand plans with nothing ever actually happening (also an important step). It wasn't until the neighbour decided to knock down the barn that my father was forced to come and shift the wreckage.

While the MGB was hauled off to the body-shop for some chiropractic frame-straightening, Dad cleaned out the garage and tried to find all the errant components of his socket set. I was to learn that automobile restoration is not so much a project with a definite ending point as it is an ongoing process, like self-improvement, or continental drift. What other possible reason could there have been for investing several days in painting each engine component a different colour of rust-proof Tremclad?

For my own part, I seemed to be mostly involved in shining the trouble light on what was invariably the wrong bolt, and yet what an education I was receiving! Not in the inner workings of the combustion engine, nor the basics of tool use; what I learned was the language of automotive repair. Being of Irish extraction, my father was blessed with the knack for inventive cursing, and my interested young ears soaked up his best material.

As the years passed, and perhaps despite my father's best efforts, the MGB drew nearer completion, until the day there was nothing left to do except fire it up. Which couldn't be done. “Aha!” cried Dad with barely-disguised glee, “The carburettors must need adjustment.” Out came the wrenches, there was some last-minute choke-cable difficulty, and then the indignant spluttering gave way to a muffled roar. And that was just Dad. Still, when the bluish smoke had cleared, there she stood: a gleaming, candy-apple red Lazarus, purring as she would have done brand-new in 1967. Then she stalled.

Eventually we got her running rather lumpily and, after several test-circuits, my father decided to reward all my hours of grease-monkey-ism by letting me get a feel for late '60s motoring, UK-style. Grasping the yacht-sized, somewhat floppy bakelite wheel, I felt a twinge of unease. I soon discovered that the brakes favoured the Neville Chamberlain approach to forward velocity, preferring appeasement over action: planning ahead was required in order to avoid becoming a tree-ornament. Still, with the wind in your hair, careening around a blind bend with the narrow tires squealing, one couldn't help feeling alive; perhaps even going so far as to shout, “I don't want to die!”

The MGB sleeps in a shed (where else?) waiting for the sunny morning when Dad will begin the pre-flight preparations necessary for taking an autumn blast through the leaves. Wherever he parks it, it will mark its territory with scattered oil patches like an elderly and incontinent dog, and should it unexpectedly rain, he will find its convertible roof as complicated and time-consuming as the repairs to the roof of BC Place. My mother will need to have the phone nearby if/when an emergency SOS might come through. As for me, I'm off to the pub. On the bus.

Diesel

2010-01-17T13:37:00.000-08:00

Mention the word “diesel” and most of us instinctively reach for the recirculation control on our air conditioning. There's probably not a driver on the road who hasn't been stuck behind a battered Volkswagen Rabbit or antique Mercedes slowly chugging up a hill, its tailpipe emitting the sort of smokescreen that would make James Bond turn green with envy (or perhaps just green with nausea).

Diesels used to be smelly, smoky, clattery, and disinclined to start in cold weather. Most of them were also incredibly slow; not so much “accelerating” as “accumulating speed” (in the same way a coffee table accumulates dust).

However, diesel technology has progressed by leaps and bounds since those tortoise-like Rabbits first crawled onto the roads, and now the only way you can tell if you're following a modern diesel-powered car is by looking for the tell-tale traces of smugness in its driver. They're quiet, durable, very fuel-efficient, and surprisingly powerful, as best evidenced by the diesel-powered Audi R10 racecar's win at the prestigious Le Mans 24 hour race in June of last year.

Diesel fuel is more energy-dense than gasoline, and vehicles designed to run on it produce less carbon dioxide and hydrocarbon emissions than an equivalently-sized conventional gasoline-powered car. Add this efficiency to the fact that torquey turbo-diesel engines have the low- and mid-range punch of a much larger-displacement gasoline engine and you've got a seemingly winning combination.

Yet while diesel sales have rocketed in popularity overseas, here in North America they still command a relatively small share of the market. Recent figures suggest that diesel now powers the majority of vehicles in Europe, but only a little over one percent of passenger cars being sold in North America run on the smelly stuff.

There's also not a great deal of choice either: the only two manufacturers producing diesel vehicles for the North American Market (aside from heavy-duty trucks) are still Volkswagen and Mercedes. Where's the diesel version of the Honda Accord, the oil-burning Ford Explorer, that stump-pulling Toyota Corolla? Why is the diesel revolution taking as long to get started as one of those pioneering 'Benzes in a cold snap?

First, despite modern cleaner burning engines, diesel-powered vehicles still produce much more smog-creating particulate matter (soot) and nitrous oxides (NOx) than cars running on gasoline. While their greenhouse gas emissions are greatly reduced, it can be argued that they create essentially the same amount of pollution, just in different forms.

Second, diesels are more expensive to manufacture, and their heavy-duty construction results in a considerable amount of added weight, along with that desirable dependability. For all the performance benefits of the extra torque they produce, diesel engines produce a nose-heavy feel to a light car, and can cost a considerable premium over an equivalent gasoline model.

Last, and most importantly, diesel is only now overcoming the age-old stigma of the sluggish, smokescreen-producing Volkswagen.

Still, the revolution may be taking its time getting the glow-plugs warmed up, but once it's firing on all cylinders, there'll be no stopping it.

Matching North American fuel qualities to European ones has eliminated one of diesel's greatest stumbling blocks. The large-scale establishment of cleaner forms of fuel with ultra-low sulphur content (ULSD) combined with the introduction of new exhaust-scrubbing technologies has allowed for greatly reduced emissions. Additionally, modified diesel engines can be made to run on biodiesel, for those who don't mind smelling like McDonald's and developing a permanent greasy sheen from collecting waste vegetable oil.

With increasing gas prices and increasing environmental consciousness, the greater cost of diesel engines will also begin to be less of a stumbling block. It may even be that government will provide tax breaks on efficient diesels, as they do in European markets, in a similar fashion to the savings offered on Hybrid vehicles currently.

The Honda Accord diesel is coming. The incredibly powerful BMW 5-series diesel is coming. The Jeep Grand Cherokee diesel is already changing consumer's perceived desires for gasoline V8-powered SUVs.

In the next few years, expect to see the durable workhorse diesels outstripping their technocrat Hybrid-drivetrain cousins in the alternative fuel race, perhaps to the point that there'll be a diesel commuter in every driveway.

I'll take an Audi R10, please.

JDM

2010-01-17T13:36:00.000-08:00

I was recently driving over the Lion's Gate Bridge when I was shocked to see a tall, boxy blue van coming the other way, apparently piloted by a large Golden Retriever with a decidedly unconcerned human passenger on his right. Now, I'm not about to suggest that a Golden Retriever can't drive at least as well as some of the human drivers I've run across (or nearly run into), but it did come as a bit of a shock.

As I headed into the loop for Marine Drive, I began idly imagining what traffic would be like if dogs really could drive: falling asleep in roundabouts, constantly tailgating, always parked in front of fire hydrants. More importantly though, I was inspired to do a little research on those right-hand-drive Japanese imports (for that, of course, was what the van was) that seem to becoming more and more common, especially on the North Shore.

Transport Canada has very strict rules about the importation of vehicles, especially when it comes to safety regulations. Any vehicle that's been built to meet safety regulations other than Canada's can't simply be altered and then imported. However, an exemption currently exists where a vehicle that is fifteen years old or older may be brought into the country.

There's a few extra hoops to be jumped through, such as the installation of daytime running lights, a thorough mechanical inspection that may reveal expensive compliance issues, and naturally there's duties and taxes to be paid.

So why would anyone go to all the trouble (and considerable expense) of importing a 1992-or-older vehicle? After fifteen years, there might be a lot of life left in that Camry or Civic, but what possible reason could someone have for paying three or four times the market price for one with its steering wheel on the wrong side?

The fact is, most of the Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) vehicles that are showing up on our shores are nothing like the Hondas, Nissans and Toyotas you can buy here already. There's the Porsche-munching Skyline GT-R, nick-named Godzilla for its monstrous twin-turbo power and all-wheel-drive grip. There's the bulbous and quirky S-Cargo micro-van, with its frog-eyed headlights and snail-motif floormats. There are even modernized versions of the original Austin Mini that were still available overseas, long after the brand was discontinued here.

Even cars that are similar to the ones we have here tend to be better value. Japanese vehicles tend to have much lower mileage than North American vehicles of similar age, due to the high population density of Japan, and a more developed public transit network. A domestic mid-nineties low-mileage Mazda RX-7 might fetch over twenty thousand dollars, whereas the JDM import might be under ten thousand.

Most commonly spotted in North Shore neighbourhoods are the diesel-powered Toyota Landcruisers and four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi Delica vans, similar to the one I saw coming over the bridge. With all that reliable diesel torque, van-sized utility and major off-road abilities, they seem perfectly suited to our outdoors lifestyle and slippery hills.

Still, right-hand-drive vehicles don't necessarily suit everyone's needs. Sure it's ridiculously easy to deliver your Christmas cards, but making turns (especially right-hand turns) can be a challenge. Because JDM vehicles have been designed to travel on the left side of the road, their headlights are aimed opposite to ours, and it can be tricky to drive at night. Furthermore, you may experience excessive carpet wear as your left-seat passengers reflexively try to stomp an imaginary brake pedal through the floor.

Most importantly, there's a huge and hairy fly currently buzzing around the ointment and preparing to plunge in. Transport Canada is currently in the middle of a closed-door review regarding these grey-market imports, and is considering closing the loophole that allows them to be imported. Under the new rules, only cars that are twenty-five years old or older would be eligible for importation, and there is no word whether already imported vehicles would still be allowed on the road.

ICBC has recently released a study indicating that right-hand-drive vehicles are forty percent more likely to be involved in an accident than left-hand-drive vehicles. This report, combined with a high cost of repair and limited availability of replacement parts is bad news for the JDM import.

Still, newly formed organizations of JDM enthusiasts and importers are currently lobbying Transport Canada to work out a way to keep these quirky and practical vehicles on the road, and they may yet be successful.

After all, every dog has his day.

Track Day

2010-01-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

“Nice, I like that!” says my instructor, as the inside front wheel of my car just barely kisses the apex of the off-camber left-hand turn. Then it's hard on the brakes, a quick down-shift into second and through the “throwaway” turn 5, not carrying maximum speed, just concentrating on maintaining a proper line, and looking ahead through the corner. I line the car up to hit the concrete transition at the entry of turn 6 and roll onto full throttle, blasting down the rear straight…where I'm promptly held up by a gaggle of M3s.

“Looks like we caught all the slow fast cars,” chuckles Mark, my instructor from Driving Unlimited, and I can't help a smug grin from crossing my face. Not bad for a novice in a station wagon.

It's the tail-end of what's been probably the most fun day I've ever had behind the wheel, and the air is full of the smell of glazing brakes, unburnt fuel and smouldering clutches. It's a potpourri of speed, even taking into account what the inside of my loaner helmet smells like.

The location of all this lead-footed lunacy is Mission Raceway Park, and the occasion is the last Vancouver Subaru Impreza Club track day for the season, put together by Specialty Subaru's Geremy Testar. WRXs and STis dominate the field, but there's also the aforementioned M3s, a pair of tuned-up NSXs (one of which has got a body-kit rivalling the Batmobile), and, lest you think speed is exclusively the province of young men with a wanton disregard for personal safety, a bright red Mini Cooper S piloted by a woman who has a passing resemblance to my mother. Annoyingly, she turns out to be a far better driver than me.

Track days provide a chance for those of us with an addiction to acceleration to test the limits of our cars and abilities in a safe environment. Well, mostly safe anyway.

The day started with quite a downpour, although there were only a few intermittent showers by the time we actually headed out for track orientation and warm-up exercises. However, this was worse than steady rain, potentially resulting in patchy areas of unpredictable grip, as our instructors reminded us at the driver's meeting. “We want everybody to have a good day out there, but more importantly, we want everybody to be able to drive their car home at the end of the day.”

The first one to discover that the instructors aren't fooling around is a black Honda S2000 that spins off into the grass in turn 2. He's lucky.

Fall weather has left slippery leaves lining the pavement either side of the perfect line, and there are lots of concrete walls out there, their sides scarred and covered with flecks of paint left there by previous victims of lift-throttle oversteer.

We split up into groups and run through the slalom, emergency braking and trail-braking exercises, getting a feel for the slick surface of the track. The higher-horsepower rear-wheel-drive cars are at a particular disadvantage, especially those with summer tires unsuited to the cold, wet conditions. Still, confidence in our abilities slowly began to build under the careful tutelage of our instructors.

Over a lunch of hot soup, we all chatter about our cars, proper gear choices for the corners, and that troublesome hairpin at turn 3. Most of us are novices, but there are a few more seasoned drivers, including the Mini driver and her husband. Regardless of experience though, there's a sense of community among the drivers, all here to fulfill our need for speed.

Despite the forecast, the rain holds off past lunch, and as the track dries out and grip gets better, we start going faster. Much, much faster.

The instructors pull us all in and give us the 3:20 braking lecture, reminding us that a tight, technical course like Mission can eat through brake pads and glaze rotors in two or three hot laps. “Brake management is among the most important things in race,” they hammer into us, “Brake early, and brake consistently.”

Despite their advice, more than a few cars have smoking binders after a couple of fast laps, and we need to pull into the paddock to cool off slowly and prevent warping, both of the brakes and of the driver's nerves. Then it's my turn to lead the last few hot laps, and Team Wagon pours through the turns, hot on the heels of those cocky Ultimate Driving Machine pilots. The signal for the final lap comes far, far too soon for anyone's likings.

After saying goodbye to my fellow drivers, I drive home in the sunshine and rush hour traffic. As things slow to a crawl just before the Pitt River bridge, I begin thinking of how I would explain how much fun today was to my decidedly non-auto-enthusiast wife.

Maybe I should get her a Mini.