14. Duke - "Having personally driven an Alfa Spyder exactly like the one in that picture (except in red) on numerous different occasions, I'm here to tell you you're full of crap yourself, Doug. Yet again you are letting your holy paper analysis of automobilia prevent you from seeing something that is not quantified with numbers.
Even though cars are the product of engineering, driving one is still an experience that goes FAR beyond the stopwatch, the g-meter, and the measuring tape. Robots do not drive cars. People drive cars and therefore there is an element of human emotion that is involved that goes outside the absolute performance figures or service intervals.
If this wasn't true, there would be no car enthusiast forums except Consumer Reports, debating which Toyota Appliance Hybrid looked better in Retirement Gold: the Large, the Medium, the Small, or the new Xtra-small recently released from the JDM model for the youth market.
You may not realize it yet, but some people actually enjoy tinkering with cars and view owning an old Alfa or Triumph as a hobby in itself. I have a friend with an MG that has 3 carburetors - no, it's not a three-deuce setup; it's got one on the car, one in a box waiting to go on the car when this one breaks, and a third one waiting to get rebuilt. He swaps between them when he changes his oil. It's part of what he enjoys about owning the car.
And if you want something modern that doesn't need to be puttered with continually, consider the first-gen Miata. It makes no rational sense whatsoever: tiny, not cheap when new, slow, simple, no features to speak of. Unmitigated crap, by your standards (saved only by being relatively reliable crap). Yet it manages to perfectly capture the joy of driving a simple car with an engaging soul.
Not every car has to be a CL65 to be worthy."
, it was funny once, but I always find myself reading your signature; and nothing is good in excess.
