| Friday, January 21, 2011 |
11:43 - Ferrari built a rally car
http://www.ferrari.com/FF/
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Well, that I didn't see coming.
A 612 Scaglietti replacement I expected, sure. 4-wheel-drive, sure, everybody's doing it these days. But I didn't expect to see them both in the same car. Especially not on a car that looks like it's supposed to compete with the freaking Audi Quattro.
The demo video is the test mule being drifted around corners on snow and ice in a whole variety of different countries, from Tierra del Fuego to Sweden to Finland... as though snow in one hemisphere is going to be different from snow in another hemisphere.
I don't know what is up with Ferrari's styling these days, but this thing just makes me laugh. Now, for an encore, all they have to do is price it north of $400K.
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10:26 - What's really important
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/columnists/jamesmay/8264356/Top-Gear-US-why-I-ha
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James May gives us the much-sought (by me) impressions the Top Gear UK team has of its American counterpart.
There they are, hamstrung by our conventions but bereft of the eight-year inheritance during which we have carefully cultivated our mutual loathing of each other.
Ultimately, though, I believe they will vanquish us and stand on our mutilated corpses, holding Clarkson’s severed head aloft like Perseus triumphing over Medusa, and all because they have the right names.
We begin with professional racing driver Tanner Foust. Not only has he apparently emerged from the pages of Goethe, he actually sounds like he’s giving the car a thrashing.
I can just see myself, hampered with the name James May, trying to charm someone at a ball-aching media function when this snake-hipped b-----d shimmies up and says: “Hi, Tanner Foust, racing driver.”
Naturally the big question is the impact these guys have on the language. And through something they have no control over: their names.
They've got the potential to make their show something really great in format and content, by all means (the Alaska special worked very well); but they've got a tough row to hoe when it comes to the special sauce.
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Brian Tiemann
