( It's how I roll ... )
Last updated: November 27, 2009
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Pablo Picasso once said that "painting is just another way of keeping a diary." I'd like to paraphrase Picasso and say that having a personal (nay, popular) website is, also, just another way of keeping a diary and in keeping my particular diary I have been somewhat amiss lately mainly because I've been busier than a Hebrew slave. My apologies, but Real Life doth come before play ... As for the changes, I've been meaning to do a whole lot of cleaning up of my domain as well as some reorganizing for many years now but just never got around to actually doing it. While discretion may be the better part of valor, I firmly believe that procrastination is the better part of toil. Lately, I had a (very) little bit of free time so I decided to do a lot of the cleaning up, reorganizing, etc. off line then just load it all up at once rather than try to "evolve" the site a little bit at a time. While I was doing this, I just kept doing this and eventually I was working more offline than online. A lot has changed in the world and in my life since I last posted or shared anything. Oh, nothing bad has happened to me ... in fact, quite the opposite. The family is doing fine. My health is very good. My jobs are steaming along at full speed as they always have, in fact, I've had some pleasant changes come my way. I changed my work hours, gave up my company vehicle, knocked 5 full hours off of my weekly commute, added 5 full hours a week to the time I get to spend with my family, and went back to riding my faithful '04 Honda CBR600RR every day, 70 plus miles round trip, to work. Yes, life is good. I may even, soon, be adding more time to what I can spend with my family so all is well in that regard because it also means more time for other things like doing art, writing my books, and enjoying my hobbies. As for the 2004 CBR600RR? It's got well over 18,000 trouble free miles, still looks brand new, purrs like a panther on the prowl yet screams like a raped banshee when you roll the throttle all the way back, turns heads everywhere I ride it and is still going strong as dirt. At 42 miles per gallon, I can't complain about having to buy my own gas (again, after three years of not buying gas) to get to work and I had forgotten how therapeutic riding to work and back each day was. Like a T-shirt saying proudly displays, "you never see a motorcycle outside of a psychiatrist's office." At this stage in the year, the ride to work is in sunlight but the ride home is in utter dark. And it's cold. I've been meaning to buy a Throttlemeister setup, some electric gloves, electric vest and electric chaps for five years now ... procrastination. Every time I swore that it was getting too cold to ride (I stop riding when the temp hits 32 degrees or the point of freezing because the last thing I ever want to encounter while riding at 70mph is black ice or an iced over bridge and there are several bridges between me and my office, coming and going), the weather would start to get warmer and I'd put buying the electric gear off until the next year. So, maybe this year I'll finally get around to buying the heated features for my suit and the Throttlemeister throttle lock so that I can fully enjoy my ride to and from work, even when it is 33 degrees outside (locally, when the temp drops below about 80 degrees there are NO Harley owners at all on the road). The only part of my body that really gets cold when I ride is that strip of flesh that goes from above my knee to the top of my thigh. I've got enough cloth and leather on the rest of my body that I don't feel a thing but that one strip of flesh ... sheesh. It takes about an hour for that to thaw out once I get to work. Maybe I don't need electric chaps, maybe I just need some action pants ... the kind that zip onto my Joe Rocket jacket. So, I've been riding and I've been riding a hell of a lot more in the last two weeks than I did in the last three years. Now, the CBR600RR is far from being a luxury bike but still ... having not ridden much in three years, I have to say that lately, my right wrist hasn't gotten this much of a workout (or been this sore) since I was eleven years old. But, like when I was eleven years old, give me a few weeks and I'll work the soreness out. The economy is fluctuating. People are losing their jobs. America has got a new president but he's not my president. This past Summer was the 40th anniversary of that Summer long ago ... when America established an epoch in the annals of human history and put two astronauts on the Moon ... and forty years later, no one remembered. Over the last few years, I've taken to a little experiment where on the anniversary of the Moon Landing, I ask people if they know why the day is special. In five year of this, I've only had three people tell me that the day was special because of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. I flew my American flag that day, but then I fly my American flag outside of my house every single day. None of my neighbors flew their flag on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. I didn't see any flags but my own on July 4th or any other holidays ... Patriotism is no longer something to be proud of, I guess. The dream of Apollo is dead ... As a country, we reached so high a long time ago and then we fell back into mediocrity and we've been wallowing in it ever since. I turned 40 years old a few weeks before Apollo 11 turned the same. Yeah, I'm 40 now even though I still feel like I'm 20. The bones creak when I get up in the morning and sometimes I hurt in places I didn't use to know could hurt but since I'm a stoic you won't find any further mention of this ... it's a general notation, not a specific whine. I know that some people fight growing old tooth and nail but for me, my first gray hair (awarded to me years ago) was a right of passage and I wore it with honor. It has since been joined by many more like it, evidence of age and maturity ... or at least age. I quit shaving my head and let my hair grow back ... only not all of it grew back so I added a full beard again and the result is sociably passable. If I keep it close cropped, it's even more passable as well as being low maintenance. So, what else has happened? GM and MOPAR got bought out by the government while Ford refused to take the poison apple with the hook hidden in it. Pontiac Motor Division was put to pasture Ole Yellar style and while this is being applauded as having saved GM, that one act alone did what no amount of Ford or MOPAR advertising ever could .... it made me a FOMOCO buyer. GM's many decades of incessant ineptitude and incompetence, followed by MOPAR having to be bailed out time after time after time made me look to the only American vehicle manufacturer left that I could put any faith into or have respect for … Ford / Lincoln / Mercury. GM's decision to kill Saturn and Hummer affected me not so much since I never thought the Hummer line was worth any where near the money they charged for that hulking behemoth. Hummers have always been one third ego, two thirds hype. Saturn? Was that ever really a car company at all? It seemed like some kind of hippy / yuppie experiment gone horribly wrong. I know it was part of GM but Saturn's vehicles looked like they were designed by someone who had once worked for Tupperware and had subsequently been fired because his designs were too bland. I never saw a Saturn, new or used, that I even remotely desired ... or cared to ride in. I take that back; the Saturn Skye was too little too late. If the Saturn Skye had been one of the first models offered by Saturn and if Saturn had improved each year after that ... who knows. I liked the Saturn Skye better than the Pontiac Solstice and it comes to mind that GM really didn’t need both as neither model saved the division that shared it / produced it. If GM owners could be seen as a cross section of the populace then Saturn owners would be on the lower end of the bell curve. I lump Saturn in with the old Eagle car company that Mopar had for a few years … interesting, quirky but ultimately doomed to failure. With the death of Saturn, I can say good riddance to another American eyesore on the road. "Saturn - a different kind of car company" ... Yeah, an extinct one. Plymouth. Oldsmobile. Pontiac. Hummer. Saturn. Saab. All gone though Saab just went back to being itself and without any GM retardation being inflicted on them so if they have any brains at the top level of management (which would put them far and above the idiots in Detroit) then they should do fine from here on out. If not, well ... it's the order of business for the strong companies to survive and the weak companies not to. However, when it comes to cars, I've never seen a Saab that I liked. In fact, I've always thought that "Saab" was the gentle sound that you began making as soon as you signed the purchase papers and drove one of the ass-ugly cars off of the dealer lot. Still, it's a curiosity of mine to see if a company that GM had its hands on can survive once it is let go. Time will tell with Saab though my concern is limited ... call it a curiosity to see if Saab survives the taint of having once been part of GM. I mean, the company makes supersonic fighters and interceptors (look up the Saab Viggen and the Saab Draken) ... surely they can survive sucking on GM's tit and then being pried loose and thrown away like a leper. As far as FOMOCO, I've heard rumors for a while that Mercury may be up for the chop in the next few years. Good thing that I just replaced my wife's Mercury Grand Marquis with a Lincoln Town Car. Talk about an iron fist wearing a velvet glove ... my two Town Cars are nothing short of Sherman tanks with plush leather interiors. If there is one thing that I'm old school about it's that American made cars, especially American sports and luxury cars, should be front engine V8 powered and rear wheel drive. When America stops building big, luxurious V8 powered, rear wheel drive cars I will probably start to buy imports ... like a Mercedes. My father has owned two Mercedes in his life and neither one gave him any problem. His mistake was selling his Mercedes Benzes and going back with American although his choice was to go with a Lincoln and other than a somewhat lesser build quality from the domestic product he's had really good luck with the Lincoln brand ... another reason why I've switched from GM to FOMOCO and especially to Lincoln. As a long time GM fan, it's hard for me to say this but the truth is that since I've switched from owning GM products to FOMOCO products, my maintenance costs and repair bills have gone down to almost nothing. So, since we last talked American vehicle manufacturers have been through the ringer and wouldn't you know it, our favorite whipping boy, Harley Davidson, decided to give us not one but two different chances to put them down. If there's one thing that is reliable with Harley Davidson, if there is one thing that you truly can count on with the Motor Company is that they will fail and when they do, it will usually be spectacular (and funny). Harley Davidson had to be bailed out of their own fiscal stupidity (again) and as of this writing the Motor Company has posted more than an 80% loss in profits for this quarter alone of their fiscal year causing them to make some rash though predictable decisions. I guess that proves beyond any doubt that Harley Davidsons really aren't good investments after all ... If they were, the Motor Company would be posting a record profit as people would be buying up HD motorcycles as a buffer between them and the bad economy. Of course, I debunked this myth long ago but it's nice to see more proof. Harley Davidson was bailed out by Warren Buffett and his $300 million loan was matched by another investment company for the same amount. This wasn't really an investment as the loan came at a 15% interest rate (YIKES!!!!) and most of the money went to pay off ... bad loans that Harley had intentionally made in order to boost its sales outlook. Like so much of the Harley lifestyle, even their sales figures were fake, poser, dressed to impress with little substance added to the bottom line. What came to light recently was that, like the housing market, Harley Davidson was knowingly writing sub-prime loans on up to a quarter of all the loans that it made. Let me put this into perspective ... Harley Davidson was making loans to people that the Motor Company knew full well couldn't afford to pay back those loans all in order to show people that the Motor Company was doing far better than they actually were. Thus Harley Davidson in its own particular way helped contribute to the wonderful economy many of you are now experiencing (and suffering through). Once again, Harley Davidson has hurt America and hard working Americans all the while claiming to be an American motorcycle company and one that you should buy from. Don't be too harsh on Harley Davidson, though ... they were just doing what everyone else was doing thus proving, again, that they will always be an imitator and never a leader. Harley Davidson also recently killed the Buell division thus, in effect, self-lobotomizing the Motor Company by removing any and all forward thinking as well as any contemporary engineering. I hear that Harley Davidson wants to concentrate their efforts on their core product but since their core product is an outdated piece of junk powered by what amounts to an air cooled irrigation pump, you have to wonder what HD was thinking then you remember that when it comes to HD, there really isn't any thinking at all going on anywhere in that company. Since most of Harley Davidson's customer (and followers) are ignorant hay-seeds, let me explain what Harley Davidson has just done in agricultural terms; by shutting down the Buell division of their company and deciding to concentrate on their core product, Harley has decided to increase egg output by strangling the chicken. In essence, while there have been many changes at Harley Davidson, in hindsight, nothing really has changed. What the Motor Company has gone through wasn't a shock to those of us who understand how they do business. In fact, the only shock that I and others like me would have had in regards to Harley Davidson was if none of this had ever come to pass. As for Harley killing Buell, I'm all for it and I'll give you two reasons why. The first reason is that Harley killing Buell just goes to show that Harley is as dumb as I've always said that they were. The second reason is that I always thought that Eric Buell's greatest handicap was Harley Davidson itself. I respect Eric Buell and his ambitions and I've always thought that his association with Harley Davidson was far more of a handicap than it ever was a benefit and the end result proves this hypothesis quite nicely. With the departure of Eric Buell from Harley Davidson, the collective IQ of that Milwaukee based manufacturer dropped by two thirds which means that the hillbillies should be back to their early 1980's IQ level now. With the death of the Buell Motorcycle Company, America has officially bowed out of producing any form of motorcycle that was even remotely competitive (and I use the term "competitive" in the loosest manner possible) at all with foreign sport bikes but then again, when you realize that Eric Buell had to marry his cutting edge designs with those air cooled irrigation pumps that Harley Davidson erroneously calls "engines" then you immediately realize why Buell's designs, under the Harley Davidson partnership, can't be said to have ever been much more than lackluster if that. Once again, as history has proven time and time again, Harley Davidson, when faced with a difficult situation, will run and hide rather than stand and fight. So much of the Harley "myth", the Harley "legend" and the Harley "lifestyle" are fake but now we can add the past few years worth of sales figures to that overall fantasy as well. If there's one silver lining in all of this dark cloud of hypocrisy and deceit, it's the fact that Harley Davidson had to get the money to bail it out from a private individual as the government wasn't going to lend them anything. What this means is that Uncle Sam didn't help Harley Davidson out of the hole that they dug for their selves this time and that means that for all of those bad loans that Harley Davidson made, you and I, dear reader, as hard working Americans, won't be bailing the Motor Company out using our hard earned tax dollars. Harley says that they'll still go ahead with their Italian based MV Augusta brand but any American reading this should realize that what Harley did was say that it was more important to offer sport bikes to Italians living in Italy than it was to offer American-made and American powered sport bikes to Americans living in the United States. Of course, we all know that Italy is so much bigger than the USA so it was easy to see what an incredible opportunity to sell sport bikes that will turn out to be. Tongue in cheek mode off. If I have to make an early prediction here, it is that the MV Augusta deal will be yet another Milwaukee failure in the years to come and you'll see HD back pedal out of it like they just back pedaled out of Buell. Thanks, Milwaukee. You can adapt Japanese manufacturing techniques. You can adapt Japanese managerial styles but the one thing that you can never import or copy is intelligence and the last few years has clearly shown that when it comes to IQ at the top levels of the Motor Company then Harley Davidson is definitely operating a deficit from which I doubt there will ever be any recovery. If you understand the Motor Company's history, then you know that this really isn't a shock as much as it is business as usual. I don't support Harley Davidson and never will ... they are the most un-American company to ever claim to be an American company and it is my personal belief that Harley Davidson does not represent the best of America in anything (let alone the people who own their ridiculous products) rather the Motor Company represents everything that is wrong with contemporary America (and by association, anyone who is dumb enough to own a Harley or lust after one is probably someone that you could easily place in the lower portion of society in regards to education and net worth). Now, I'm not egotistical enough to think that Eric Buell ever reads my work but since he's apparently soon to be out of a job and since he might have some spare time on his hands to read some points that are being offered then I would suggest that he pack his things and head over to Victory Motorcycles. Victory seems to be a forward thinking company that wants a large slice (if not the whole pie) of Harley's ever decreasing market. Wouldn't it be great if Eric Buell went to Victory and started building American-made, American-powered sport bikes? Wouldn't it be great if this caused Victory to whoop up on Harley Davidson and eventually move past HD to become the number one manufacturer of American-built, American-powered motorcycles? Yes it would and if Buell can realize that Harley dissolving its partnership with him was the greatest opportunity he's ever had, then we're set for there being the potential for some serious designs coming along in the future. Buell Victory? I like the sound of that already! Clap hands! Oh, and there was a South Park episode that made fun of Harley owners and it was a hoot since it hit home on so many aspects. I'm not sure if the creators of South Park got the idea for the episode from my site but if they did ... I'll take that as a compliment. At least this is a glimpse that making fun of people who live pretend lifestyles and pay for it through the nose are not only worth making fun of but that ridiculing them has entered the main stream of media entertainment. And that's a recap of all that has gone on, the important stuff at least, since we last talked. Oh, I'm sure that some team somewhere won some championship, etc. and there was some drama from my neighbor down the road, Brett Favre, but since I could care less about sports ... Then there was the Michael Jackson thing that is still going on today. Did they ever get around to burying that freak yet? I remember Michael Jackson when he was still black and had an amazing career then he went all psycho and just got creepy. It's amazing how we're being groomed to believe that Jackson was this great artist and talented performer ... and that may have been his early years but after a while he went moon bat insane and acquired a penchant for doing weird things with children (most not his own). Now there's a movie out about him? Sorry, I won't be paying good money to glorify Michael Jackson's memory as I'm doing my best to forget him. Oh, some other celebrities died but after all, they were just celebrities and I have a rather low opinion of professional athletes, actors and what not. In general, I cast a cold eye on anyone who makes their living doing what court jesters did a few hundred years ago ... especially when these people seem to think that their ability to impersonate someone on the silver screen automatically makes them not only better than I am but also smarter (and thereby grants them the exclusive right to be able to tell me how I should live my life). Think about it, actors are nothing more than elevated court jesters who think that they are kings and queens. Bah. If all the world is a stage then Hell must be one big drive-in theater. So, that's what has been going on but where have I been? Whew. That's a long story and you know I'm good at telling long stories but this is one story that really tired even me out. It began back in October or November 2008 when I took a long look at my life, what I had, where I was going, where I had been, etc. and breathed a huge sigh of mixed feelings. One of the things I felt like was that I was stuck in a predetermined rut. No matter how hard I tried to rage against life, I didn’t seem able to change the course of where I was going. It was like I was on rails in some carnival ride … I was along for the ride and no matter how I might rock the car on the track, there was no going back and no going forward any faster than what speed I was currently traveling at. What this means is that if I saw something ahead that I wanted now, no matter how hard I tried to obtain it (whatever “it” was), I couldn’t do it because some force, some event, would invariably step in and prevent me from making any change to my life. Oh, I would eventually get “it” but only when God or life saw fit to hand “it” to me. For a while there, I felt confined … predestined rather than free will … and it’s been like that for a few years now. Maybe it was just a buildup to me turning 40 … but something had to give and soon. Apparently, 2008 was the time that something did give. And then I just bucked the system. I don’t know how but I slipped the bonds of the constraints that I felt had shackled me for far too long and I took real control of my life. Oh, I’ve always had control of my life but this time I put my foot down and said to myself “some things are going to change.” And change things did mainly because I put my foot down and told the universe exactly how it was going to be and a funny thing happened ... the universe not only listened but it bent over backwards to let me have my way. The first thing I wanted to change was my toy collection. Since I was about to turn 40, I thought that it was time to get serious about what toys I had in my garage and what I was going to do with them. My first thought was, with the impending failure of General Motors that it might just be a good time to kick sentimentality to the curb and get rid of both my ’86 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am and my 406cid Lingenfelter small block. Hell, I was even thinking of making a package deal out of both items for $9995 to some lucky SOB and finally be rid of all of the GM nonsense that no one but me has forced upon myself since I was 14 years old. That’s a long time to play with second-rate crap but I guess that besides being a stoic I’m also a glutton for punishment (or a masochist, take your pick). Anyway, I told my wife that I was going to sell the TA and the 406 to free up the garage, that I just needed to get rid of a lot of clutter in my life and when she asked me what I was going to buy to replace the TA, I told her that I was going to buy a nice, used (Honda) Acura NSX-T, either a 1997 or 1998 model … red with a tan leather interior. Two seater, mid engined, six speed with a DOHC fuelie V6 and a body style that is second to none. The NSX-T is a true exotic and I’ve lusted after the Acura NSX since it was first introduced back in the early 1990’s. After all, it's Honda's bid at a supercar and ... well, nothing more need be said. And so I began to clean out my garage and my life, throwing out stuff that I had kept for decades and hadn’t used in years. My standing rule was: if I hadn’t used it in the last year, it was gone. Hell, if I hadn't used it in the last six months it was gone. If I did need it again, soon, whatever "it" was, well, that’s what God created Walmart or Ebay for. Less clutter, more happiness. Too much of a good thing leaves you with not a whole lot of room to enjoy your good thing. Lesson learned. And I began to look for a nice, used Acura NSX-T, searching Ebay and other parts of the Internet for my dream car. The price of a good, used Acura NSX-T was well within what I could afford to put out for the car (and more importantly, what I was willing to pay for this type of car). I figured that if I got an Acura NSX-T, I’d have the only NSX-T around and, given my Lincoln Town Car and the CBR600RR, the NSX-T would be an occasional piece (kind of like some of my old girl friends ...). Good examples of the ’97 to ’98 NSX-T could be had for the mid to high twenties and if I could knock that down by a third with what I got from selling the ’86 TA and the 406cid LPE small block, then so much the better. MY DREAM CAR
1997 (Honda) Acura NSX-T - six speed, red on tan.
Call it a mid-life crisis, but at almost 40 years old, I just wasn’t happy with what I had, what I was doing with it or where I was going with it and at that point in time, a drastic change looked like the best course of action. I needed to divorce myself from mediocrity so I told my wife that I would be selling the TA and the 406 LPE small block around the first part of Spring. My schedule was just too busy to do anything until then and that prevented me from making a snap decision that I might regret later. I hate making snap decisions and go out of my way to avoid them. And I had made up my mind, the ’86 TA and the 406 LPE were gone already before I had even sold them. Maybe. November and December came and went and January was into a good pace. Thoughts of spending a few days in Spring flying down to Florida to pick up a nice, used NSX-T and driving it back with the targa top stowed were the kind of daydreams that melted those chill Mississippi Winter days. So it came as somewhat of a surprise to me when, like I have said before, the forces of the universe conspired against me in my quest to get what I wanted when I wanted it. During the first week of February 2009, a long time visitor to my website and a Corvette fanatic emailed me with a link to an Ebay auction that was for a low mile, 1988 Z51 optioned Corvette coupe. It was the twin sister / clone of the Corvette that I had way back in 1992. Out of all the cars that I have owned, long time visitors to my site will remember that the two cars I regret the most in selling were the 1979 Pontiac Trans Am SE ("Bandit") and the 1988 Corvette Z51 optioned coupe. You see, I was about to turn 40 years old in a few months and my resident Corvette fanatic emailed me suggesting that I stop playing around with girl cars and get a real car instead. When I explained to him that I had a real car in my 1986 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, he replied: "I don't even know why GM put steering wheels on F-bodies because they handle like a mongoloid on a tricycle." The rest of his email brought back a lot of memories from my college days of having a red on tan 1988 Z51 Corvette and hauling ass around south Mississippi. He even included a link. And there was the link ... the tantalizing, inviting link to the clone / sister of the Vette I once had / loved / cherished and sold. As soon as I clicked the link, I lost all steering in my life and from that moment until only recently, all I could do in my life was hang on and enjoy the ride and what a hell of a ride it has been. Well, I followed the link but the seller of the Vette was a royal a-hole who didn't want to bargain on the Vette. That was strange since the Vette he was offering had done nothing but decline in asking price. The original price had been $13,500 at a place called Wichita Dream Machines (which I guess was a high end toy store there in Kansas). From there this Corvette, with nothing being done to it, went to Ebay where it stared out at $9995 and no reserve. That's a $3500 drop just by moving from a local car lot to Ebay. One could assume that the seller was motivated if he came off the car nearly a quarter of its asking price in only a few days time. Here was a time when the economy was crashing, people were selling off their expensive toys and it was a buyer's market if you were recession proof like me and had deep pockets. Somehow wanting to have a second chance at the Corvette that I sold oh so long ago, I offered the seller ten grand straight up (the starting bid for the Vette and since no one had even bid on the Vette in four days, I thought it was a solid offer especially since no one was showing interest in the bid). I emailed him several times and even talked to him on the phone directly in regard to this sister / clone of the Corvette I once had owned way back in college and told him I could fly up to Kansas (strange, isn't it, the whole whirlwind / Kansas / Oz motif that was going on in my life at that time) but the seller wouldn't budge. He gave me some sob story about being a retired AT&T engineer who wanted to move from dreary Kansas to sunny geriatric friendly Florida and he had picked up the car as an investment to help him retire. He wouldn't sell it for ten grand direct and I wasn't going to get in a bidding war over a Corvette especially in the economic market that had suddenly turned buyer friendly. The irony is that this grizzled old fart wouldn't sell me the Corvette for ten grand but he had to let it go for ten and a half grand at the end of the auction a day later. Yeah, that extra $500 sure did make a difference in being able to retire from Kansas to Florida. The fact that the Vette was "won" by a Ebay member with a zero rating who registered a little while before the end of the auction and you do the math. It was just really hokey all around so it was best that I avoided getting entangled in any Kansas rural weirdness. Suffice to say that I didn't buy the clone of my 1988 Z51 Vette, rather I spent about three weeks researching, looking for and finally tracking down something much more rare ... a 1991 Z07 optioned Corvette coupe. You see, the Z51 option I once had was pretty rare (about 1200 made) and represented the pinnacle of C4 Corvette handling and performance but a Z07 optioned Corvette was even more rare (only 733 made) and even more capable on the track as well as the street. I chose the 1991 model year due to the fact that it was the first year of the facelift for the C4 Corvette, it had the new style (much easier to clean) sawblade wheels, the ZR1 tail end, the six speed ZF transmission (loads better than the old quirky Doug Nash 4+3 that my Z51 had been equipped with) and the beautiful redesigned interior that did away with the Atari-esque glow-winky displays that were SO 1980's. The beautiful 1991 model year Corvette was also the last year of the L98 based drivetrain and since my 406 cubic inch Lingenfelter small block is designed to plug-and-play into a Tuned Port Injection based wiring harness (and since I have no faith in the LT series of engines), the 1991 was my only choice as it was the last / best year for the L98 based power train. If you are looking for a C4 Corvette and you desire a L98 powered model, then 1991 is the best year for the L98. Period. So much of the Z51 parts had made their way into the base model Corvette by 1991 that the package was not what it had once been in as far as bragging rights were concerned. Now, Chevy only made 733 Z07 optioned Corvettes in 1991 making it very rare. Finding a 1991 Z07 was a real Grail quest, trust me, and I ran into a lot of interesting individuals along the way ... not all of them the kind of person you want to waste your personal time on. After missing out on the '88 clone I started looking at Corvettes on all the auction sites. As fate / luck / God would have it, my Ebay Genie notified me of a 1991 Corvette for sale in Miami, Florida. The RPO codes proved it was a rare and elusive Z07 optioned Corvette so I threw everything I had into the auction, determined not to let this Corvette escape me. Not only was it an ultra rare 1991 Z07 Corvette, but it was the same color scheme as my 1988 Corvette had been! Red with a tan leather interior! It would be like replacing the '88 Vette that I had with something newer, better looking and much more capable. Talk about luck / serendipity! My life was a whirlwind, I was caught up in it with no chance of escape. There was no reserve on the Corvette and the price eventually hovered around the $7500 mark for the '91 Z07 with only 49,000 miles on it, two owners and a clean as a whistle CarFax report. I sat there in front of my laptop that Friday night, watching the clock and checking in on the auction. I had the Vette set up in my auction sniper with a top bid of $14,500 on it. Then I upped the bid to $15,500 and, because I've occasionally had a problem with my Ebay sniper not making a bid for me, I disengaged the cruise control and took the auction in on manual control. There I was, less than a minute left in the auction, the high bid was $7500 with no reserve and I bid $15,500 hoping to mercilessly smash any and all competition on this auction, both known and unknown. It's how I do auctions ... I don't go into them worrying about money. This was the Vette I wanted and anyone who got between me and it was going to get fiscally smashed. The auction ended. My Gmail notifier hit me with the results. I was now the owner of a red on tan 1991 Z07 optioned Corvette coupe with 49k original miles. The ending price? $8100, just $600 over the high bid. Like the 1986 TA I won at auction on Ebay a few years ago, I bet the high bidder before me was physically sick at his or her computer screen. I stared at the auction outcome for a long time, it was like a porthole looking out the tornado I was riding. In three weeks, what had started with an email offering a link and a chance to own a clone of my old college years Z51 Corvette (itself red on tan leather) from a guy in Kansas who wanted to retire to Miami instead turned into me buying a 1991 red on tan leather Z07 Corvette from a guy in Miami and doing it for a full two grand less than what the retired engineer in Kansas had wanted for his Vette. Whirlwind. As Public Image, LTD. once sang in their classic song "The Order of Death" ...
So, in March I purchased (on Ebay) a 1991 Corvette coupe with the rare (only 733 produced) Z07 performance option. The fact that it was red with a tan leather interior (just like my '88) made it serendipity to a fault. Finding a red on tan leather 1991 Z07 was like finding a needle in a haystack but somehow I did it. A quick though eventful flight to Miami, Florida to pick the Vette up offered a 72 hour adventure in and of itself. Since March 2009, I have repaired most of the handful of minor problems with the '91 Corvette, repainted it and even managed to take it on the twice-yearly Corvette Expo in Sevierville, TN.
This poster now hangs, framed, in my office. Below are a pair of pictures of my '91 Corvette, at speed, on US 129 aka "The Tail of the Dragon" at Deal's Gap, North Carolina on the NC / TN state line. The road is famous for its curves and a one way trip down that road will give you a white knuckle ride full of 318 curves in 11 miles (which averages out to be 28.9 curves per mile). My father and I rode down the Tail of the Dragon and back again making for a fast trip that included 636 curves in just 22 miles. If I had once thought that my '88 Z51 represented the pinnacle of Corvette handling, man ... the 1991 Z07 puts the 1988 Z51 to shame.
Showing a Porsche Cayman what "Z07" means ...
Running the Z07 hard on US129 and never getting the 5.7 liter L98 / ZF six speed combo out of second gear. I had forgotten how much owning a Corvette will make you forget about owning an F-body (or anything else save for another exotic). Over the course of the 1400 mile plus trip, running at 75mph on the Interstate and for nearly 60 miles of that trip in second gear, I still managed 30.1mpg. Unreal. The first leg of the trip saw me averaging 32.4mpg at 75mph and sixth gear (3.45 rear gears) ... then I went up against the Tail of the Dragon and that was where my gas mileage really tanked. Updates on this whole 9 month plus adventure coming soon to HIGH PERFORMANCE TOYS. High Performance Toys? WTF is that?! Is SPO dead?! Yes, SPO is dead. I read in one of my monthly car magazines (HR, PHR, CC, can't remember which) that GM was closing down many of its own SPOs so I decided to close mine as well. It was time. With the death of Pontiac, I just lost all interest in modding the third gen or answering questions about how to make the third gen F-cars go faster as these cars are now an endangered species and I decided to preserve my example in show-room stock condition rather than hot rod it or abuse it. That's what the Vette-toy is now for. Overall, short of the Chevy Corvette (and perhaps the Chevy series of pickup trucks), I lost my faith in General Motors as a whole. After 12 long years of answering emails and solving problems I just needed a long vacation of the permanent kind. The death of Pontiac, the mediocrity of GM, the introduction of a brand new car with an old name ("Camaro") and the prostitution of a once valid muscle car heritage and legacy all just kind of wore heavily on me so I decided that one of the first sites to get cleaned out was going to be SPO. If GM can kill their SPOs then, damn it, so can I. SPO is no more but it has become "High Performance Toys" which is kind of like SPO only it deals with just my toys, what I do with them and offers no tips or suggestions for other owners of these cars and bikes. HPT will include comprehensive information on all of my toys and what you glean from that is what you take from the website. When it comes to third gen F-bodies, TBI, etc. then I'm afraid that after 12 years you are on your own. It's time I moved on to some other interests that I want to pursue. It's been real and it's been fun. Truly, it has but SPO was a pro-GM site and as of this writing, I am anything but pro-GM anymore. At best, when it comes to GM, I am coldly ambivalent ... at best. I don't even like the new Camaro ... if you can truly call it a "Camaro". The '91 Z07 came along just in time because if I hadn't gotten on a Vette kick, I would have followed through with my original plans of selling my '86 TA and my 406cid Lingenfelter and just buying a used, well maintained 1998 Acura NSX-T ... a plan I may still get around to putting in place if I get bored with the Vette and the 406 LPE that will be going into it within the next year or two. The NEW Camaro ... speaking of the NEW Camaro (yawn), I grew up with GM products. My first car was a used 1978 Chevy Camaro Rally Sport even though I loved Pontiacs. My dream car (back then) was a black and gold "Bandit" Trans Am. My first car wasn't a "Bandit" Trans Am ... but my second car was. I never was a Camaro fan though I love and respect the Corvette simply because it is an engineer's car and with the fourth generation of Corvette, it stopped taking on the small stuff and started going after world class cars and exotics like Porsche and Ferrari. In regard to the new Camaro, I don't consider it a Camaro at all. Ford had it right when they never cancelled the Mustang. From the moment the Mustang appeared on the automotive scene in 1964 until today, the Mustang has never, ever, NOT been produced. That has generated two things that GM simply can't claim with the new Camaro; a lasting legacy and an unbroken heritage. Even though some years of Mustang were far worse than others (think Pinto based Mustang II), Ford understood something that GM never seems to learn ... if you break a model line it remains broken. You can't stop producing the Camaro in 2002 then build a new Camaro ... an entirely NEW Camaro that has nothing at all in common with the old Camaro (save some reference to the shape of the first generation Chevy F-body) ... in 2009 and then expect the Camaro name to be taken seriously. You've broken the heritage link. In 2017 AD, Camaro should have been celebrating a 50 year anniversary but it won't be, not logically. You see, if they are still producing the new Camaro in 2017, there won't have been 50 years of Camaros being produced ... there will only be 43 years because from 2002 to 2009, the Camaro wasn't produced. Chevy is hoping that people won't be smart enough to call them on that. The new Camaro isn't a real Camaro because other than some simple design references, it shares nothing with the old Camaro. All the new Camaro is, is a flashy poor man's Corvette with a detuned Corvette power train and half the aerodynamics. If you own a new Camaro, congratulations. As for me, I'll pass. Pontiac thought it could bring back the GTO after several decades absence and import it to boot. That idea went over like a wet fart during a Sunday sermon. We'll see if the new "Camaro" is here to stay or if it's on the short bus like the new Pontiac "GTO" followed. GM's decision to kill Pontiac and to bring back the Camaro did the one thing that years of Ford advertising could never do ... GM made me a Ford fan and all they had to do was keep on doing what they had been doing for the last three decades; run GM like it was a business populated at the top by examples from the lower end of the Special Ed curve. I've also heard that GM is going to offer 25 new models between now and 2011. Isn't that the exact kind of crap thinking that got GM in the trouble that it is in now? Offering lots and lots of actually very little? Okay, GM drops Oldsmobile and Pontiac ... I doubt if there were 25 models between those two divisions which means that GM has dropped two historical divisions and their products but they are going to introduce 25 new models, scattered between Buick, GMC, Chevy and Cadillac, in the next two years? That's roughly six new models per remaining division. Right. The only survivors from SPO are my four toys and, of course, Tales From The Driver's Seat. Tales From The Driver's Seat even gets its own directory on my domain as the SPO folder and all spare contents are fed to the online disintevaporator. In other news, I'll be self-publishing a hard copy of "Tales From The Driver's Seat" sometime in the coming year ... order it from me direct and I'll autograph it for you. Look for it to have many of your favorite stories, a forward by yours truly and even a few stories which have never seen the light of print before so buying the book won't simply be getting you a hard copy of the stuff that you've already read and loved but rather some of the stuff that you've read and loved and some brand new stuff as well. More on that soon. Once the depression over GM's stupidity settles, I may get back on my project of writing The Speed of Heat; A history of the third gen Pontiac Firebird. It's a book that's probably more important now than it ever was before ... and just as needed. If GM's decision to kill Pontiac did one thing then it basically doubled the price of my 1986 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am overnight and that is a price that will probably continue to rise in the future, especially for a restored, factory stock model. What was once a sports car has now become a museum piece, a part of automotive history to keep and share with those who care. A tiny bit of Americana that is now history with no future. The restoration of the 1986 Trans Am is starting. That's been another part of the whirlwind, call it a perpendicular slipstream. I've ripped the interior out of it and cleaned it pretty thoroughly before putting the car back into storage. It's going to be late Spring or early Summer before I get it painted as I'm trying to build up my hot rod piggy bank after the Z07 tore a Titanic, nay, Stardestroyer sized hole in my reserves. The 1986 Pontiac Trans Am will be restored to bone stock (since they aren't making any more Trans Ams and since black and gold Trans Ams are particularly rare) and the '91 Z07 will eventually be the home of the 406cid Lingenfelter small block. Cash for Clunkers has come and gone and once again, it proved that our government should never be trusted with money ... or anything that is powered by internal combustion let alone classic American muscle / sports cars. Do you want fuel economy? I paid $8100 for my '91 Corvette Z07 coupe. It has a six speed manual transmission, port fuel injected 350 cubic inch small block V8, a 3.45 geared rear end and on my trip to Sevierville, TN, running The Dragon for 40 plus miles and never getting out of second gear ... care to take a guess at what my fuel economy was? On the trip up, I averaged 32.4mpg running at 75mph consistently in sixth gear and cruise set. The Dragon run knocked that average down to 28.6mpg and on the return trip back, the average fuel economy for the entire trip including The Dragon came to a mind blowing 30.1mpg. Do you think I'm going to trade in a '91 Z07 optioned Corvette that gets 30 plus mpg on the highway for a some dumb looking econo-box? Not likely. American Angst continues strong and will do so for as long as I can foretell since Harley Davidson seems to be producing nothing but mirth these days. When you sell a pre-packaged lifestyle to people who are too dumb to figure out how to have a life on their own you can't help but reel in the motherlode of idiocy and mediocrity. The fact that a company as ridiculous as Harley Davidson proudly claims to be an American company only saddens me. Harley Davidson doesn't represent traditional America or hard working, educated, intelligent Americans. The Terminator site got an upgrade / rebuild with new material added. I've asked several artists to contribute their work to be shown on my site and they have agreed. Hopefully, I'll get some more art to add to the site in the future. The Icarus site gets some new material but pretty much that site is the least changing of all sites simply because all the material on this ship has been "discovered" and "shared" and it's few and far between that I find never before seen or known material on this spacecraft. You may have noticed that there are several new websites listed in my domain which say that they are "coming soon." That is true but I can't give you any ETA on when they will arrive. I'll try to give you a heads up on these sites now. "The Human Comedy" website is a deep, long look into the wonderful sci-fi potluck stew that Mick Farren served up piping hot in his "DNA Cowboy" trilogy which comprised four books, actually. This is one of my favorite sci-fi series of all times and it comes in a close second to E.E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" series and Masune Schirow's "Appleseed" manga. The Human Comedy website will detail the tales, travels and adventures of the DNA Cowboys, the places they visited, the equipment, people and things they ran into and will also offer some musings on some ideas which I felt like sharing about the books. The "Spontaneous Necessities" website is a showcase of my talent (or lack thereof, depending on your point of view) as an artist in physical media. Several of my art pieces are currently making the local show circuits and short of time, I'd be more prolific with my artwork. Spontaneous Necessities is my online art studio where you can see some of my work as well as follow along with works in progress. The "Gray Matter" website is going to be an online gallery of my model-making skills in producing box stock, kit-bashed and custom scratch built models of a variety of subjects from aircraft to vehicles to spacecraft and historical / fictional figures. And at long last, the much awaited United States Colonial Marine Corps website is in the queue to be introduced. Following in the footsteps of my Terminator website, the USCMC site will explore James Cameron's concepts of a futuristic star-mobile American military force as well as all of the hardware associated with it. Some mention of the "Aliens" will also be present as well as the Predators but these will play a minor role in the overall concept of the website. What will be of particular interest is a whole new slant of original thinking on the "Space Jockey" race of aliens as seen in the first movie. And that is about it. I'll be uploading stuff in the next few weeks though the upcoming holidays may slow that down somewhat. My goal is to update the USCMC and Terminator sites about twice a month with new materials. The other websites will be updated as material rolls in. God bless you and yours, always and have a very happy and safe upcoming brace of holidays. I know I will.
- Christopher T.
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