The Hopp Stop

As described in this Wikipedia page, the public can drive on the famed Nurburgring for about $30/lap. Now that I’ll have my 135i delivered in Germany, I want to check out this famous track. Time to fire up Project Gotham Racing on my Xbox 360 to familiarize myself with the 22km course. Here’s a map, with the public part in red.

This old feature from Motoring File (the best Mini-focused site) provides a good overview of what it is like to take a car out on the Nordschleife.

That’s how I would characterize anyone’s ownership of a Chrysler TC by Maserati. If you’re unfamiliar with it, skip down to the next paragraph. On today’s drive north on 101 from Paso Robles, south of King City (central California), I saw two together on the freeway–apparently the two gentlemen are TC “collectors” and take their shitboxes out for Sunday drives together. Then, as I was driving into Carmel, I saw another, with a very attractive hardtop on the vehicle. I like that last touch: you’re driving a garbage car whose only real appealing element is that it is a convertible, so on an absolutely perfect day, 80 degrees and no clouds, you cruise around with the hardtop on.

The back story on the TC: Chrysler worked with the Italian car company Maserati in the ’80s to glitz up a K-car based convertible with some surface touches and then charge way too much money for it. The vehicle was built partly in Europe and included a Maserati trident badge on the front grill. For additional detail, this web site has a very good history of it, including some hilarious photos. Maserati currently makes two appealing vehicles, but prior to Ferrari/FIAT’s purchase of the company, it was chronically underfunded and plagued by quality problems.

Back to the headline for this post: why would you buy this car and make it your special vehicle for weekend drives? It’s slow, drives poorly, bland in appearance, unreliable, has no history to make it interesting and is not a vehicle that you would buy as an investment.  I’d rather get a used Miata. I wonder if there are TC owners’ clubs…yes!! Here’s a link. I’d like to go to a gathering and just make fun of all the stooges with their “special vehicles,” as the owners’ club page describes the TC. And it turns out that this year’s national meet is being held May 6 through 9 in Carmel, California…which is where I am right now. (That explains seeing them around.) I may be taking part of Monday’s workday off to go find these guys and mock them.

As a post script, Cadillac’s Allante convertible had a history that, on the surface, is similar to the TC. Cadillac worked with the noted Italian designer and coachbuilder Pininfarina, Ferrari’s designer of choice, on a convertible with bodies built in Italy and then air-freighted to the U.S. Cadillac then performed final assembly. The end result was a bland design with some initial quality problems and a very high price. What distinguishes the Allante from the TC is that the fundamental engineering on the Allante was much better from the start, as it was designed from the ground up on a new platform, and Cadillac continued to devote engineering resources to improving the vehicle and addressing its flaws. The final iteration, with a Northstar V8, was a solid vehicle. However, as GM has done before (see: Fiero), it killed off the Allante shortly thereafter.

Per Pitchfork, there is now a tracklist out for the new Queens of the Stone Age CD. I didn’t even know there was an album on the way, but it is slated to ROCK OUT on June 12.

Here’s a Ted Leo interview from Pitchfork for your reading pleasure.

If you are a car aficionado, perhaps you are as jazzed as I am (hmm, that expression looks pretty lame when typed out) about the new M3 due out in 2008. Time to start checking what I can get for my Mini… Here’s a photo of the hotness.

Not related to music or cars, but check out this ridiculous photo of Don Imus. He makes Al Sharpton look normal:

I bought several albums off of eMusic this weekend, haven’t had a chance to listen enough to form an opinion yet:

-Apples in Stereo, New Magnetic Wonder.

-Apostle of Hustle, Folkloric Feel, from 2004.

-The Walkmen, Pussy Cats (cover album).

-Sunset Rubdown, Shut Up I Am Dreaming (Wolf Parade-related).

Also, here’s a link to a PDF of Ezra Dyer’s latest amusing article for Automobile Magazine. Pretty wild how much tech the Gumball ralliers pack to evade John Q. Laws.

And finally, Chris read Absurdistan recently, thought it passable. I was going through my files and saw that I had saved an Esquire page with a strange counterpoint on the book.

I got around to scanning a few articles tonight.

Here’s a GQ story on the Shins in advance of their new album (which I’m enjoying quite a bit after several listens)

Chuck Klosterman is one of the reasons (along with, often, Ezra Dyer on cars) I look forward to Esquire every month. He recently looked at the impact of YouTube on metal virtuosity.

Tha Rolla, Ghris and I had a discussion recently on electric cars, plug-in hybrids and the not-quite balanced “Who Killed The Electric Car?” movie. I mentioned a column by Csaba Csere, editor-in-chief of my favorite car mag, Car & Driver, that discussed GM’s plug-in hybrid concept and its production feasability. Here it is.

Finally, Car & Driver had two DRA-apropos references in its most recent issue.

I didn’t realize he was writing for the NY Times now. See here. If you’re not familiar with Mr. Dyer, he’s a hilarious young writer that (to my knowledge) got his big break with Automobile Magazine and now writes every month for Esquire on cars.