30 October 2007

Driving PT. 2

After reading Maru's most excellent rant, I got to thinking about people and their cars.
I'm getting old, like a lot of us, and I kind of feel sorry for these younger people.
The crap they call cars now, and the unadulterated joy of driving that we used to be able to enjoy.
Who can't feel sorry for a 25 year old kid out tooling around in his little four cylinder, front wheel drive plastic wannabe?
Back in the day, we had V-8, rear wheel drive cars that actually had working suspensions and were comfortable and fun to drive.
Take a 1970 or so Ford LTD.
Nice car. It had plenty of power, a hell of a nice ride and you could play with it.
Go find a gravel road and start dirt tracking the son of a bitch till hell wouldn't have it.
Find an empty parking lot and spin donuts until the wheels fell off.
When you got done playing, you could pack your friends up and take off across country, cruising at 80, all day, and feel like you were sitting on your couch.
Same thing with GM or Chrysler cars.
Sure, you could go down and order the latest factory hot rod, but just the everyday vehicle was a potential fun to drive car.
Now we have the little soap bubbles on wheels, all front wheel drive, road noise out the ass.
Hit a fucking pot hole in one of those at 40 and it sounds and feels like the fucker just dropped the transmission out in the road and you just ran over it.
You can spit on one and put a dent in it.
I will never forget the time a friend of mine got pissed off at his 69 Chevy wagon, he was working on it and he just lost it. He literally picked up a two by four and started wailing on the front fender.
I sat back and laughed at him. Not only did it just bounce off, it never even scratched the paint.
That's a car.

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