I confess. I ushered Lieberman into existence by re-writing his prose for TTAC. And by re-writing I mean there were articles were there wasn’t a single sentence left unmodified. Not one. Guys I was desperate for content.
And then something bizarre happened. Johnny wrote a perfect article. Seriously. I forget the car but he used the phrase “like a tornado eating an hurricane.” Or some such nonsense. It really was good.
And then it was back to the Gallactica, metaphorically speaking. I lost track of Johnny, until I saw him review a car on YouTube.
I can’t imagine a piece of automotive “journalism” more antithetical to the TTAC ethos. There are entire French bakeries who couldn’t begin to match that puff piece. It made me sad.
As for JL’s lack of humility or self-awareness or anything approaching shame, same as it ever was.
But I’ll give him this much: Mr. Lieberman understood from the beginning that being successful in the field meant jettisoning all ethical considerations. He has proven that talent plays second fiddle to obsequiousness in a world where he who pays the piper calls the tune.
When he was writing at TTAC I was completely convinced that Jonny Lieberman was a pen name used by the editors to slap on articles no real person wanted to be associated with.
0-Jonny wrote two articles for Motor Trend; one is the main review, and the other is the explanation for running into the T1 runoff. He is VERY proud of being the only American invited to drive the car, but he conveys in one (or both, can’t recall offhand) articles that he begged his way into the invitation. Supercar Blondie’s VMAX occurred as a passenger in the track only version of the car (which shares only the V12 and the headlights with the road car).
1-Jonny also “created” a video memorializing his time with the car. I watched all English language videos that hit YouTube when the embargo broke. His was dreadfully poor (and only 6 minutes long). Jonny didn’t fit into the Aston branded fire suits that the manufacturer brought along, so they let him perform his assessments in a t shirt. During his video, he can barely breathe at times as he coasts around the track while sweating profusely. MT’s crack video department relied heavily on the B roll footage that Aston provided the reviewers - presumably footage of Darren Turner hammering the car.
2-For a time, Aston relied heavily on “influencer” marketing, particularly the UK crowd (Shmee150, Mr. JWW, etc.). This launch appeared to stray from that formula, likely due to the car’s extreme nature. It is probably the least road worthy ultra high performance car since the Jaguar XJR 15.
3-I can recommend the Hagerty, Chris Harris, and CarWow videos (in that order). The BEST discussion of the car comes in an episode of the Top Gear Magazine podcast - it includes a conversation between Chris Harris and Ollie Marriage (another TG staffer) on the flight back to the UK from the launch event. They go in depth beyond what’s captured in the video and also compare the car to the Mercedes AMG One.
4-Henry Catchpole’s invitation was likely not predicated on his recent Hagerty affiliation, but rather on his own reputation; he just happens to make videos for Hagerty these days (since the demise of CNET’s Carfection channel).
5-Jonny confessed during a recent appearance on The Smoking Tire podcast that he had an unexpected $20K tax bill stemming from “sponsorship” for his Pikes Peak effort - whoops!
Regarding #4, you're absolutely correct. The manufacturers never took Hagerty seriously and continue to not take Hagerty seriously. GM has thrown some sponsorship money at the Detroit Concours, certainly not in a quid pro quo for any particular terminations, but in general Hagerty Media ranks behind places like Regular Car Reviews.
There is a bias from European manufacturers toward European reviewers, particularly English reviewers. This makes sense, of course (particularly in terms of English language content).
The Brit reviewers don’t get invited to American launches with regularity.
I perceive that UK PR departments can handle constructive criticism more readily than American PR counterparts (even at the same manufacturer).
The podcast I mentioned - and I KNOW you love podcasts - has a lot of detailed, nuanced criticism of the Valkyrie.
Chris has his own podcast that drops on Fridays, and I expect it will feature a lot of Valkyrie discussion.
I have a friend who does make serious money farming, and he did the back of the envelope math given the size of Harry’s farm - farming ain’t the sole income stream
In the 90's he used money from a farm loan to buy a car magazine which he turned into Evo. The magazine made him a ton of money in the 2000's and he then retired to his farm to be landed gentry like Mr. Baruth.
I expect I mentioned this to you in person, but again I’ll repeat it here for the cheap seats, and because your comment above has got me thinking all over about it again.
Last year I made a three week long trip to the US. I have been before, but I wanted to go to some paces I’d never been. My friend had a big number birthday and had never been, so I was keen she did a lot of cool stuff.
Long story short, I asked Hagerty about press cars (to save me a three week rental), because I naively thought they could just help me out. I wasn’t looking for anything fancy - in fact comfort and accessibility were more important as my friend has serious mobility issues. Anyway they buggered me about and left it really late before saying no, which my rental ended up being even more expensive because of the late notice.
I’m a just about grown man, they should be able just say no when I ask for something (my naïveté stems from my inexperience in how all this works, not any delusions of grandeur). I thought it would be a fun couple of articles for them (at the least I’d get a couple of columns out of it).
When I got back I asked for some ‘numbers’ because that’s what the press fleet people ask now, so I had to ask Hagerty for them and they just about blew a gasket even though I was applying for myself and not in their name. It kinda all makes sense now.
I don’t know if this stuff to air, but I’m kinda past caring with them as an outlet. They just one of the staffers on the UK side that I was friendly with.
Anyway. America was awesome, my friend loved it. NASCAR has got to be one of the best experiences for the money, and shooting guns is fun.
Could be worse... they could have canceled your press car in the middle of a vacation and reported you to VRBO for fraud so they could get a refund on a pre-booked room, thus ensuring you had to book $4700 worth of hotels at zero notice.
This tracks for "influencers" in lots of spaces. I know firearms pretty well. Every year at the SHOT show there is a media day at the range where various bloggers, writers, and social media personalities can come and shoot the various firearms and try out accessories companies hope to sell. I know several folks who work for various companies and it's always one of the worst experiences they have in the business. Imagine literally hundreds of Johnny Liebermans, every bit as vapid, entitled, and incompetent but now they're being handed lethal weapons that they proceed to handle with the sophistication and skill you'd expect of a particularly dim chimpanzee.
It's not just that they can't shoot, they can't even handle the weapons safely. Muzzle discipline sometimes has to be enforced by literally grabbing the gun and redirecting its aim. Corrections on safety go about as well as telling Johnny he maybe needs some training. "I'VE BEEN AROUND GUNS ALL MY LIFE! I'M A SAFE SHOOTER!!" like the person who is trying to keep them from endangering another human being's life is being the asshole for correcting the matter instead of the guy pointing a lethal weapon at another human being without cause being the fucking douche in the situation.
It's not that they're incapable of shame most of the time...they're simply incapable of processing any sort of ego dystonic feedback from any perspective, no matter how learned or well-intentioned it might be. I've learned that there are people who have no inner monologue...no voice in their head that represents their own consciousness with which they wrestle on a regular basis.
Jonny is a vociferous critic of “influencers” in the automotive space.
Likely because they have taken the lack of integrity to a new level and demand to be PAID to show up to drive the car and film a video, rather than merely to be invited on a free junket.
Lieberman criticizing the existence of influencers is further indication of just how few of his synapses are actually firing. Whatever specific structures of the brain are responsible for self awareness and the capacity for reflection are simply dead or non-existent in that man.
If you know guns that well, could you please explain something to me?
Why is it that gun writers and reviewers all have giant Sasquatch hands?
I've noticed this for decades. Everybody who tests guns for magazines and websites complains about fullsize pistols not fitting into their huge hands well, or of having to wrap overmold grips around double-stack .45s, or similar nonsense.
Why are there no gun reviewers with normal-sized hands?
LOL. They don't, at least not all of them. A lot of them just have fat hands. A lot of them have no concept of how you are actually supposed to hold a pistol. I taught instructors from a police department in PA that had Glock 21 sidearms...and they had those Hogue grip sleeves on their pistols to make them fit their "large hands", except they didn't remotely fit and one of the reasons they struggled to actually hit anything at speed was because they'd taken a pistol that already has the ergonomics of a 2x4 and had made it deliberately worse. To their credit, as soon as I showed them what their grip was actually *supposed* to do on a pistol and where they needed to make contact and apply pressure, they immediately whipped out knives and cut them off.
Most people you see writing in gun magazines are so woefully incompetent at even the most basic aspects of using a firearm that you should probably ignore just about everything they say. I guarantee you most would laugh at the notion that they don't know how to grip a handgun, but if you go train with someone like Rob Leatham (the most accomplished action pistol shooter in history) he will spend incredible amounts of time working on your grip because it is literally the foundation of your ability to run a handgun.
Most of the aforementioned gun writers are also mysteriously unable to daily carry anything bigger than a J frame because it's supposedly too difficult. Meanwhile I know small people who pack a full sized custom government model pistol on a daily basis because they have to as that's an issued gun. The writers know as much about concealment as they do about shooting a handgun...which is perilously little.
Another good tell for whether or not someone has a clue is how much they talk about "bore axis" as if that's the primary driver in how the gun recoils. If they're on about that it means their grip is bad and they're blaming the fact that the gun stays elevated after they shoot on the gun rather than their limp, worthless grip providing insufficient control of the gun.
Absolutely. Three phrases scare the bejeezus out of me when I'm on the training range: "I've been around guns all my life." "I'm a cop/in/was in the military." "I'm a gun writer." That is usually the person who will be a safety issue.
Of course, not all of them are like that. Jeff Cooper is the foundation of modern self defense training and he wrote. Beautifully, I might add. He codified useful rules of firearms safety. He also violated them quite frequently and amassed quite the record of negligent discharges. But that doesn't diminish the value of what he contributed.
One of the reasons he was a fan of the 1911 is visible if you ever watch video of him gripping and using the pistol. The way it fit his hand allowed him to deliver pressure on the pistol in a specific manner that contributed to quick, accurate delivery of fire from the pistol. There are subtleties to what he's teaching and what he's doing that are utterly lost to most of the people who claim to venerate him.
I've said many times gun magazines worship Cooper's bones without having captured even a little of what made the man great.
There are some good writers/influencers out there just as there are people with a byline in the auto world that can actually wheel...but unfortunately most of them are self-important gasbags with no skills to back any of it up.
I remember when I was getting into pistols and my amateur friends all said "get a Glock". I tried theirs and could never find much to like about them. I have a CZ75 and Beretta 92 instead.
Mar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
I remember seeing Libourel's name splattered across the hundreds of gun mags I read growing up. The gunwriting field is no doubt as incestuous as autojournalism.
And truth be told, I got more than a little sick of seeing Cooper's name continuously invoked, usually with the reverence saints used to get.
Cooper's major contribution is being the foundation of modern defensive firearms training. People suck at history in general so no one remembers that in the late 19th and early 20th century there were scores of academies that taught defensive skills with firearms and edged weapons. About half the country had a hunting license (meaning they killed things with firearms on a regular basis) and carrying a handgun for self defense was more common than not. The Great Depression, Prohibition, and the invention of the automobile produced radical changes in society that fed violent crime, including organized crime. This era produced the most prolific gunmen to have ever existed.
If you ask the common person what the most violent period in American history was, they'll likely say it was the Old West but that was a relatively calm epoch in American history. Between WWI and WWII we saw some of the fastest rates of social change and unrest in American history, and that produced violence on a startling level. In this period the most accomplished gunmen in American history emerged. Charles Askins killed more than 100 men...and in his words, that didn't count blacks and Mexicans, although he wasn't that polite in his description of them. Frank Hamer was in more than fifty gunfights and was shot in 25 of them.
While Hoover was having sex with underaged boys provided to him by various organized crime outfits, a couple of people who weren't complete shitbirds did manage to get hired and work for the FBI like Baughman, an accomplished shooter for whom the ramped front sight you find on practically all post WWII S&W revolvers was named.
After World War II, there weren't any self defense academies left. The old gunmen died off and the lessons they learned were largely lost. Cooper's progression and founding of Gunsite in the 70's was the rebirth of formalized self defense training in the United States, and it's the foundation from which all modern defensive firearms training is built on.
It's not a coincidence that Gunsite appeared in an era of economic instability, high interest rates, unprecedented levels of violent crime, and global instability produced by our bungling of a war.
Luckily nothing like that is happening these days!
Cooper is rightly revered for reintroducing formal defensive firearms training outside of institutions like policing and the military. Training in both of those institutions stagnated badly and was massively improved by the influence of Gunsite. (You can read Larry Mudgett or Scott Reitz about the influence Gunsite had on LAPD, for example)
Cooper was doing what nobody else was doing...and what a lot of people found highly offensive. Why, it seems positively barbaric to insist that some specimens of our fellow man are undeterred by anything short of blasting them in their most vital organs with a reliable weapon powerful enough to force a halt to their evil deeds! Guns are meant for "sporting" use, old boy!
...and it's not a coincidence that this is the time where we saw gun control emerge in earnest as a nation-wide issue where it had largely not been before. "You can't just let people walk around armed!!" Meanwhile my great grandmother carried a revolver on her every day of her life from when she was 14 until her death at 98 years old because there was no 911 when she was growing up.
Cooper's work on mindset and the realities of self defense were far more valuable than his work on marksmanship, even though there was significant value there as well. Cooper helped push against the nonsense of "instinctive" shooting a la Delf Bryce and even Bill Jordan. Jordan is often quoted by people who push unsighted shooting but they never mention that Jordan had a daily habit of taking at least 50 primed cases, pressing them into a block of paraffin wax, and then using those wax bullets to practice. Every. Day. He could do what he could do because he literally dedicated huge chunks of his life to learning and maintaining the skill. Flash sight picture works far better.
Jordan's influence and organization helped bring about other great contributors like Jack Weaver and Elden Carl that helped move our understanding of how to use a handgun along. He founded action style competitive shooting which was incredibly practical, at least for the first several years.
The original Gunsite instructors went on to become giants in their own rights, some sticking to just what Cooper taught but most of them evolving based on what they were learning from competition and from results on the street.
So Cooper is rightly revered...it's just that the gun magazine writers often spend their time discussing the unimportant and trivial stuff (dislike for DA autos, as an example) instead of the seminal contributions Cooper made to armed self defense.
What boggles my mind is that there is some sort of rich car nerd scene in LA that gladly accepts JL as a member; he’s a regular on the podcast with the zillionaire Seinfeld writer and a lawyer and apparently Seinfeld himself, and rubs elbows with Leno and Farrah, amongst others. The only conclusion I can come up with is that all of these men are as equally enthusiastic about quaffing their own farts as Jonny is. I don’t have any idea because I don’t consume any of their droll content, except Farah’s podcast to which I hate-listen on my commute when Rogan’s guests are boring.
I did laugh my ass off when Jonny informed Farah that somehow through accounting ineptitude he had to pay 5-figs of tax on his sponsorship revenue for his Slow Cayman Goes Up Big Hill boondoggle.
Knowing as I do that Matt Farah has some human decency to him, I'm astounded at his patience with that crowd of people. I'd rather be in the felony ward of a county jail than spend the day with them.
I like Matt and he's been nothing but kind to me, so I won't argue with him on Twitter, but I just can't wrap my head around his obvious love of cars and his touting transportation activists that want to get us on Razor scooters and e-Bikes. Do his clients at the parking place think they'll be able to buy indulgences?
I scream this at my stereo all the time in the car while listening to him. Best I can figure it, he assumes probably correctly that A) he has a whole mess of cars so who cares if his primary ride is some shitbox electric and B) when the only ICE cars are available are limited release Porsche GT program type things, he’ll still have the access and resources to buy them.
If the “little guys” like us (and I say that as a probably 2-3%er with the resources to have 3 cars) get squeezed out because the only ICE cars are limited release $100k+ rich man toys, so be it, less traffic and air pollution for him to deal with, fuck everyone else.
Personally, I’ve done the whole “boring daily, fun weekend car” thing and I hated it. I designed my life so I don’t have to spend hours commuting in traffic every day, but I live in a climate where my fun car is unavailable ~6 months out of the year. I don’t want to spend 90% of my driving in a shitty “Bolt or equivalent” just to drive my sports car on weekends. I had a TSX automatic for years as a commuter and decided life was too short to drive something so dreadfully boring for most of my driving time.
Mar 9, 2023·edited Mar 9, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
As a car lover and owner of four cars who commutes by ebike, I'll tell you there's no contradiction.
Cars are too space-inefficient for larger cities, full stop. Put more than a small percentage of the people in a dense city in cars (whether their own or Uber drivers') for basic transportation, and it's just a fact of geometry that the city will creak to a gridlocked halt. Ebikes cut the space needed by about 5/6, and are a reasonable (and shockingly fast) mode of transportation in the city. Yet they are also incredibly fun to ride.
As someone who commuted 20 miles a day on a bicycle for many years, even without needing a shower when you get to work because you're riding a motor vehicle, not exercising, eBikes are simply not practical at least 5 months out of the year anyplace north of the Mason Dixon line. Yeah, I know people ride bicycles in Finland in the winter but Americans have much longer *commutes. The thing is, I don't see any of the transportation activists who are telling us to ride bikes (e or otherwise) are practicing what they preach.
*Yeah, I know transportation activist hate cars in part because the personal automobile gives you the freedom to work where you want to and live someplace else. Without personal automobiles you have to live within walking distance of public transportation if you want to get to work. It's about the environment and quality of life, not about controlling people. No, not at all.
I started commuting to my office by bike last summer and it lasted right up until the first real winter day. I'm hoping to be back by bike in the next 4-6 weeks but, like Michigan, Chicago winters can last a lot longer than Mid April
"Yeah, I know pieople ride bicycles in Finland in the winter but Americans have much longer commutes."
I'm talking specifically about cities (as are the people Farah mentions) and the core reason to live in a city is so you can have a short and predictable commute (and other trips). My own commute is 6 minutes on my fast ebike, 10 minutes by slow e-scooter, or 12 minutes by car. I'm not recommending ebikes for people who live 25 miles out and spend two hours a day locked in freeway hell.
When I commuted by bike my rule was: in spring wait till the overnight temperature is over 39 degrees (don't want lean over into a turn on skinny 23-25mm tires when there might be ice on the road) and in the fall ride till it was "snot weather", 45-50 degrees and raining.
I think my worst ride wasn't commuting. I was going through my divorce and my ex wouldn't go with me to return a car that we leased from a dealer in Ypsilanti. It was late May and I was riding a lot then so I just put my bike in the back of the Explorer and figured I'd ride the 40 miles home.
That would usually be no big thing, back then I'd regularly do 50 or 75 miles on a Sunday. It was one of those spring days when it was sunny and 80 degrees in the afternoon but a cold front moved in and it started raining in early evening and temp dropped to about 50-55. I was not wearing any rain gear, just lycra shorts and a jersey and even though I was working aerobically, I wasn't generating enough heat and I could feel my core body temp start dropping. I've felt warmer shoveling snow in sub-zero temps. About 10 miles from home, normally just a 40 minute ride, I stopped at a gas station to use a pay phone to call my brother to pick me up. It's the only time I wasn't able to finish a ride when there wasn't some mechanical issue or an injury.
We used to live in (a suburb of) Tokyo and we rode the trains everywhere. Those trains went everywhere, or at least within a five minute walk of everywhere, in Tokyo, and they arrived at a station every 5-8 minutes almost always on time. They were incredibly clean and if you were above ground gave some nice views of the city. If we were ever going to move back there (or back to Osaka where we spent a few tumultuous months) we would likely not own a car. We'd just Google Pay our way through the turnstiles and take the damn trains everywhere.
I still wished I could drive everywhere, though. You can only carry so much stuff on a train, and you're tied to where the train operators want you to go when they want you to be there. Once you're outside of Tokyo (or Osaka) train frequency falls dramatically and the lines peter out. We enjoyed life more when we lived in the countryside and owned our own car, a situation in which we live back here in Michigan, too. I'm grateful to still have the choice to have this lifestyle, and I dread the possibility of the day when I'm told I can no longer have it.
I don't give a flying fuck about JL. That's all I'll say about that.
But, I am saddened by what passes for Aston Martin nowadays. They were once purveyors of lousy but character filled cars. Bad cars but great experiences. They did nothing better then anyone else, but they were special. Now, they still do nothing better then anyone else, and they aren't special anymore. Aston hasn't produced a car in the last 20 years that wasn't been comprehensively, at dramatically lower prices, beaten by the Corvette of the day.
I once suggested to the Aston Martin Owners Club that Aston should dump everything they were doing and buy the IP and tooling for the C7 instead. Even though I'm sure they'd build it worse, and have better paint, great smelling leather and poorer reliability then what the boys and girls at Bowling Green produce, it would be far and away better then anything Aston could produce on their own. Oddly, that suggestion didn't go over too well.
Mar 10, 2023·edited Mar 10, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
I mean it was never "the" car. Even when new you could spend a fraction of the money and just get an E-Type. They built 1059 DB5s, then Goldfinger came out and on the back of that they managed to sell every new DB6... all 1788 of them.
Their Mustang-lookalikes in the 80s were the same, cool look, but you needed to spend money on them (like a certain Mr. Atkinson) to get any sort of performance or (heavens) track ability.
I saw the DBX testing on the Nürburgring way before it somehow got promoted to F1 medical car, and let me tell you that thing was smoking its brakes not even halfway into the lap. Way too heavy, way too reliant on the electronics to keep it straight, and I'm pretty sure last year on the Bahrain GP the driver almost flipped it _hitting_a_curb_. That's designed for F1 cars.
Modern Astons are dreadful; they're bad takes on front engined Ferraris and the proportions are painfully generic. They're supposed to be fast road transportation for the landed gentry, not Dubai trinkets.
The problem is that the fast road transportation for landed gentry is an A6 Allroad TDI these days. There's literally no car in the world that can get you (noticeably) faster from A to B in real world, simply because cars came to the point where a 300 hp TDI wagon can go as fast or slightly faster than you would dare unless you are a total psychopath.
Hell, even a Škoda Octavia Scout TDI is able to go "as fast as the road allows" 90% of the time.
There is no point in having a cramped GT as a "fast road transportation" for anyone, let alone landed gentry, in last at least 20 years.
The allroad (or Aviator for Americans) will get you 95% of the speed while also offering 80% of the off-road ability of your Defender, while the new Defender offers you 80% of the real-world speed of the Aston with 100% of the offroading.
I had a very similar thought after I bought my Jaguar, while driving it 1300 miles home.
It has the straight like speed of a C5 Z06 or C6 Corvette, but is infinitely more comfortable and less fatiguing. Other than styling, I can't see anywhere where a 2 door GT car would outshine it.
I'd actually been trolling craiglist for an X150, but the XJ was very nearly perfectly specced, and the price was right. Being a 2014, it was also the first full year with the updated timing chains on the 5.0
But that isn't a new thing. A Mercedes 6.9 in the 70s, or even a 450 SE or SEL would likely have been just as fast, point to point, if not faster, and definitely more reliable, then any hot GT car of the 70s. Immensely more comfortable too. But, an Aston V8, Jensen Interceptor or even a Lamborghini Espada had dramatically more style. And, they were just plain more fun. Plus, what's the point of being rich, if you can't flaunt your money by not driving the same brand as the cab drivers do.
The W116 was nowhere near as fast as GTs unless you went in a straight line. An XJ12 was maybe a bit closer to the DBS, but that really was a four-door GT.
The main difference, though, is that having a fast car mattered in those days. With significantly more sparse highway network, less traffic and looser speed limit enforcement, you could probably get from London to Nice with your '72 DBS several hours faster than your neighbour in a Ford Cortina with 1.6-litre, 70 hp engine.
Today, cars got massively faster and roads got slower.
In real world, something like a Golf GTI is almost as fast as you can get, and an Audi RS3, still relatively humble and affordable car, is basically an overkill in any reasonable situation.
Today, if you jump into your '22 Aston DBS and head to Nice, while your neighbour jumps into his '22 Ford Focus ST and heads in the same direction, it's HIM who will be there first. You can't go flat out over France unless you want your car impounded and when you get to the twisty roads, the Ford's hot hatchback won't be really any slower than the Aston – unless the Aston's driver has MASSIVE balls, the size that Aston owners usually don't. Even so, just driving in the manner where you keep your lines of sight long enough to be able to at least start braking will mean that there's no difference between the two.
The difference is only in the Ford's better mileage, which will probably result in less fuel stops and that will be why the Ford gets there faster. Also, the Ford has a better chance of going unnoticed if speeding.
Driving a properly fast GT these days is an exercise in restraint. The car could always go MUCH faster than it's reasonable or safe at that location, and you can never actually use the power and the grip.
Therefore, something like the Allroad, which offers comfort on par with that Aston, does maybe 700 miles on a tank and is almost as fast in any real-world situations, yet can also move around dogs and dirty boots and skis, and get through a muddy field, is the choice for people who used to have an Aston and a Land Rover.
On the road, a W116 was very fast. The 450 SEL could cruise all day at 130 mph. Something I doubt an Aston would do. While a 6.9 would do an easy 150. The automatic V8s were at best 145 mph cars. The manuals adding a possible 10 mph to that. Now, that was if the Aston was running right. Which it more often then not wasn't.
If I HAD to do a run from London to Monte Carlo in 1977, I'd easily choose the 6.9 or anything more exotic. However, if I was going for fun, and just to show off, I'd take an Aston.
No, the Aston was still much faster. The DBS had 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) in something like 5.5 s and the 6.9 in something like 7.4. Top speed around 250 (155 mph) for Aston), 230 (140 mph, maybe?) for the 6.9.
And you're still not in the turns, which, in Europe, are quite important.
The point, however, was that while the roads got slower (or faster, but everyone goes the same), the cars got immensely faster. Even the aforementioned A6 Allroad TDI will smoke that Aston absolutely anywhere, and the 6.9 will get its ass kicked by non-premium, diesel-powered family SUVs.
That was the point. In 1970, you could get a noticeable advantage by opting for the Aston or the Jag or Ferrari or Porsche. One or two sedans (the 6.9 and XJ12) could get somewhat close, but even they would lose in the corners and were no fun to drive.
Today, you can have fun on the windy backroads with a Škoda Kodiaq RS, which is a semi-affordable (about the price of an Golf R) 7-seater family SUV that would probably beat that old DBS on the Route Napoleon.
For less than half the price of the new DBS, you can get something like the Macan Turbo, which is stupid fast anywhere and still able to carry the family and the dog. And even that is faster than you will ever use and therefore the "landed gentry" opts for the Allroad TDI, because it's as fast as you will ever need AND gets you through the field.
I wish there were more wagons in the US market. My choices are an Audi I can't afford or a Mercedes I really can't afford. I don't ask for much, I just want a 400+hp wagon with a 6 speed at a reasonable price.
Well, there are no 400+ hp wagons with a 6-speed on European market, either. The M3 Touring is not available in manual, the M340i or M340d neither. Looking at it now, it seems that NO 3-series besides the M3 sedan can be had with a manual.
You can have the base-engine A4 with manual. You can't have a C-class manual, only the CLA with base engines.
You can have various non-premium wagons with manuals, but not much of them fast. Until recently, the Škoda Octavia RS (2.0 TSI/245 hp) was available with manual. At the price of a Golf GTI, that was probably the closest to what you're seeking. But that's now gone, at least temporarily (supply chain issues, they reduced the model variety).
But you still can have a lot of different wagons with automatics, some of them also diesels. And although I don't like Audis in general, the A6 Allroad 50 TDI (3.0 TDI/300hp or so) is basically the perfect car.
I’ll concur with this. Modern Aston reminds me much of the 911-esque constant refinement in design. Much the same I tend to be drawn towards the understated ones more but boy do they have a road presence with a very masculine yet distilled language.
I don’t follow them closely enough to confirm my usual suspicions of them having an interior that doesn’t quite suit the exterior. They tend to come off as luxury kit cars or something - or at least have in the past. I’ll have to revisit the most recent.
I love the DB7 and sometimes, when I see the $35K-ish pricetags on some of them, I dream of owning one and just putting it in front of my house and staring at it because I doubt I could keep it running. Better than a garden gnome, right?
I liked the V12 Vanquish, and I thought that everything that's come out since has been a bit derivative (still relatively pretty, but derivative nonetheless). I guess at a certain point you run out of creative steam and just show up and play the old hits like you think everyone wants you to.
I was visiting a car guy of sorts whom I used to hang out with now and then, and bought three cars from before I realized that he never bothered to transfer titles on cars that he bought. One of his sons had bought a 1956 Bel Air with no engine or transmission, and had run an extension cord from the house so he could sit in it and listen to music.
I agree. To my eyes they’re beautiful shapely beasts. I’d never buy one though. I’ve read enough Peter Egan to know that purchasing anything manufactured in the UK is a risky proposition
Marek Reichman has been in charge for more then a decade, and has taken Aston styling from one low point to another. I can't imagine why they keep him on, as the styling he has produced has been pretty universally panned. And the sales went in the toilet with each revision.
I had gotten to that point in my life when I chose to make my automotive dream come true. That being, to buy an Aston. I started driving them with purpose, and was shocked by how disappointing they were. My favourite of the lot was the DB7. While far from the best car of the group, it still had a bit of the old hand made Aston magic. But the Vanquish was awful, the V8 and DB9 just mediocre. Though, the Aston V12 does make an incredible howl. Much better then two Tauri at full throttle.
i mean there has to be a few screws loose at aston to let the valkyrie happen. I get it that its a tracktoy for people who like track toys in their living room, but at least it sounds kinda neat with a cosworth NA V12 in the current era
It's beyond depressing. Had I known things would get this bad, I would have spent more time re-reading various magazines back 15 - 30 years ago. It's like a desert out there, and not just in review/magazine terms.
My biggest problem with car reviews, other than the complete and utter irrelevance to my real-world life they represent, is that no matter how expensive a car is, it's always a bargain.
I also wonder similarly what makes him speaking on camera a worthwhile thing, or a good idea, but, here we are. He can't even hold a steering wheel like actual drivers do, but he knows everything there is about driving
Every corner of every occupation has someone like Lieberman in it, who everyone knows to be totally incompetent, but who survives by being good at the political game and fulfilling a need. Truth be told, he's the right writer for the audience. Buyers of today's supercars are mostly vapid people who are buying for image, and Lieberman is pretty good at telling them what image each car portrays.
At some point in the last decade car enthusiasm stopped being a social thing for me. It divided itself into a few specific cliques and I didn't really like any of them or feel like my tastes were on their wavelength. Now it's a personal thing I do for myself, and I really couldn't give a crap that the big-single-turbo bros think a brown 3er is ugly or that Tucker's marks think enjoying my EV says something about my T level.
I stopped loving Motor Trend when they fired Tony Swan as editor. His was an odd time at MT, because he actually said things. I do recall a short stint with C Van Tune (great name for an auto journalist) at the helm, but he was likely doing too good a job, so they axed him also. Btw, whatever happened to C Van Tune anyway?
Jack, the fact that you were willing to subject yourself to the ravings of the Motor Trend social media comment sections in order to bring us this story is why I'll always be a subscriber.
I refuse to believe that deep down, Lieberman et al don't realize how bad they are, how poorly they're respected, and how little their chosen career "matters" to anyone else's life. Hell, I struggle with self-doubt in a career 10x as valuable to the public. To believe they are ignorant of those feelings would shake my faith in human nature too deeply to contemplate.
Jack probably knows JL better than most (having been an insider in the autojourno game for so long), so I’m pretty sure he knows how close this post has the guy to doing his wife’s sword trick with a Mossberg (although if I had to guess the gun, it’d probably be a Beretta).
Every once in a while you run into someone who may not have the most talent, but they understand the GAME. They know how to make it pay. They know how to make it pay in ways that the rest of us never even thought about.
Lieberman annoys me to no end. In his own mind he is never wrong, yet never has anything substantive to say as a retort. He just says things like “what the fuck bill” or some stupid emoji implying he can’t be bothered to engage with the hoi polloi in his comments section. His complete meltdowns he experiences whilst trying to argue against some downsides to EV’s are at least entertaining from and outside perspective.
i don't know jack about auto-journalism but i do know a thing or two about quincy. q is a good arranger but he is a great hustler. everything that comes out of his mouth is part of a hustle and i don't believe a word of it. what he lacks is taste. everything including his michael jackson tracks are overdone. as to the fabs, it's true that their main talent was was composition but it was far from their only talent. yes, ringo doesn't write and he sings like a frog but he can actually play the drums. perfect rhythm and interesting tasteful fills without the bombast of solos.
Yeah I agree that Q's opinion of himself is pretty substantial.
I judge the technical ability of guitarists and bassists like so: "Can I sight-read their performances?" If so then it's simple stuff. In the case of the Beatles I can do it first time through.
He’s like a chef that can’t make a grilled cheese sandwich.
Seriously, wouldn’t the average person at least try to get better at their craft in their chosen field? It’s ridiculous that he gets to give opinions about a product he doesn’t understand.
I think that the mistake many of us make is in assuming that competence matters, when, in fact the exact opposite is true. I won't go into it in great detail, but for variety of reasons over the last several decades, the society has slowly, but certainly declared the war on competence. Competence used to be admired, and aspired to. Today, it will make you a target. There are *so many* incompetent people around, and they cannot stand the contrast a competent person brings up. Thus, the war it is.
Competent people are a necessary evil. They are treated like toilets. Just expected to swallow endless loads of shit so that society can continue without being drowned in its own filth. Proving yourself capable is rewarded with more duties from other people who can't or won't do them. Learned that one the hard way.
I should probably apologize for digesting entire and well written articles to only respond with quip; but I’m quite glad to not be the only person detested by ‘Supercarblondie’...looking like some tarted up alien. To quote the kids, it’s pretty “cringe”.
That’s insane to me. Then again I’ve seen bosses obsess with much worse in my youth. There’s definitely some strange aura surrounding popular corporate hoohah and the office simping it creates. Curious if there’s real analytics behind featuring her. I mean, there HAS to be a benefit right? Clicks must just come from a much older crowd.
His upper signature claims he's a Manufacturer so naturally I wondered what he manufactures, so far no one seems to know, odd as he's apparently well known .
I confess. I ushered Lieberman into existence by re-writing his prose for TTAC. And by re-writing I mean there were articles were there wasn’t a single sentence left unmodified. Not one. Guys I was desperate for content.
And then something bizarre happened. Johnny wrote a perfect article. Seriously. I forget the car but he used the phrase “like a tornado eating an hurricane.” Or some such nonsense. It really was good.
And then it was back to the Gallactica, metaphorically speaking. I lost track of Johnny, until I saw him review a car on YouTube.
I can’t imagine a piece of automotive “journalism” more antithetical to the TTAC ethos. There are entire French bakeries who couldn’t begin to match that puff piece. It made me sad.
As for JL’s lack of humility or self-awareness or anything approaching shame, same as it ever was.
But I’ll give him this much: Mr. Lieberman understood from the beginning that being successful in the field meant jettisoning all ethical considerations. He has proven that talent plays second fiddle to obsequiousness in a world where he who pays the piper calls the tune.
When he was writing at TTAC I was completely convinced that Jonny Lieberman was a pen name used by the editors to slap on articles no real person wanted to be associated with.
And all this time I thought you had an eye for talent.
A few things:
0-Jonny wrote two articles for Motor Trend; one is the main review, and the other is the explanation for running into the T1 runoff. He is VERY proud of being the only American invited to drive the car, but he conveys in one (or both, can’t recall offhand) articles that he begged his way into the invitation. Supercar Blondie’s VMAX occurred as a passenger in the track only version of the car (which shares only the V12 and the headlights with the road car).
1-Jonny also “created” a video memorializing his time with the car. I watched all English language videos that hit YouTube when the embargo broke. His was dreadfully poor (and only 6 minutes long). Jonny didn’t fit into the Aston branded fire suits that the manufacturer brought along, so they let him perform his assessments in a t shirt. During his video, he can barely breathe at times as he coasts around the track while sweating profusely. MT’s crack video department relied heavily on the B roll footage that Aston provided the reviewers - presumably footage of Darren Turner hammering the car.
2-For a time, Aston relied heavily on “influencer” marketing, particularly the UK crowd (Shmee150, Mr. JWW, etc.). This launch appeared to stray from that formula, likely due to the car’s extreme nature. It is probably the least road worthy ultra high performance car since the Jaguar XJR 15.
3-I can recommend the Hagerty, Chris Harris, and CarWow videos (in that order). The BEST discussion of the car comes in an episode of the Top Gear Magazine podcast - it includes a conversation between Chris Harris and Ollie Marriage (another TG staffer) on the flight back to the UK from the launch event. They go in depth beyond what’s captured in the video and also compare the car to the Mercedes AMG One.
4-Henry Catchpole’s invitation was likely not predicated on his recent Hagerty affiliation, but rather on his own reputation; he just happens to make videos for Hagerty these days (since the demise of CNET’s Carfection channel).
5-Jonny confessed during a recent appearance on The Smoking Tire podcast that he had an unexpected $20K tax bill stemming from “sponsorship” for his Pikes Peak effort - whoops!
Regarding #4, you're absolutely correct. The manufacturers never took Hagerty seriously and continue to not take Hagerty seriously. GM has thrown some sponsorship money at the Detroit Concours, certainly not in a quid pro quo for any particular terminations, but in general Hagerty Media ranks behind places like Regular Car Reviews.
There is a bias from European manufacturers toward European reviewers, particularly English reviewers. This makes sense, of course (particularly in terms of English language content).
The Brit reviewers don’t get invited to American launches with regularity.
I perceive that UK PR departments can handle constructive criticism more readily than American PR counterparts (even at the same manufacturer).
The podcast I mentioned - and I KNOW you love podcasts - has a lot of detailed, nuanced criticism of the Valkyrie.
Chris has his own podcast that drops on Fridays, and I expect it will feature a lot of Valkyrie discussion.
Harry Metcalfe. I don't know where he got his money but he's doing it right.
“Farming”
I have a friend who does make serious money farming, and he did the back of the envelope math given the size of Harry’s farm - farming ain’t the sole income stream
In the 90's he used money from a farm loan to buy a car magazine which he turned into Evo. The magazine made him a ton of money in the 2000's and he then retired to his farm to be landed gentry like Mr. Baruth.
I believe he was rather well off before Evo.
I used to spend a ridiculous amount of money on evo and racecar engineering magazines in the early 2000s
Perhaps Hagerty could at least get on the same level as regular car reviews with the simple purchase of a couple of fursuits?
Maybe Cammisa can start taking a giant shit in the middle of his videos instead of merely BEING a giant shit.
I still say he should do "Men on Cars," just like In Living Color.
I would watch those.
Wait, those guys are furries? I remember them being kind of weird, but I didn’t think they were that weird.
I stopped watching after they were done building that Falcon. Looks like that was 7 years ago.
RCR guy is, to the best of my knowledge, a furry.
I am Jacks total lack of surprise
Apparently, he's a lot of things. All those dick jokes didn't just fall out of the sky.
I expect I mentioned this to you in person, but again I’ll repeat it here for the cheap seats, and because your comment above has got me thinking all over about it again.
Last year I made a three week long trip to the US. I have been before, but I wanted to go to some paces I’d never been. My friend had a big number birthday and had never been, so I was keen she did a lot of cool stuff.
Long story short, I asked Hagerty about press cars (to save me a three week rental), because I naively thought they could just help me out. I wasn’t looking for anything fancy - in fact comfort and accessibility were more important as my friend has serious mobility issues. Anyway they buggered me about and left it really late before saying no, which my rental ended up being even more expensive because of the late notice.
I’m a just about grown man, they should be able just say no when I ask for something (my naïveté stems from my inexperience in how all this works, not any delusions of grandeur). I thought it would be a fun couple of articles for them (at the least I’d get a couple of columns out of it).
When I got back I asked for some ‘numbers’ because that’s what the press fleet people ask now, so I had to ask Hagerty for them and they just about blew a gasket even though I was applying for myself and not in their name. It kinda all makes sense now.
I don’t know if this stuff to air, but I’m kinda past caring with them as an outlet. They just one of the staffers on the UK side that I was friendly with.
Anyway. America was awesome, my friend loved it. NASCAR has got to be one of the best experiences for the money, and shooting guns is fun.
Could be worse... they could have canceled your press car in the middle of a vacation and reported you to VRBO for fraud so they could get a refund on a pre-booked room, thus ensuring you had to book $4700 worth of hotels at zero notice.
I did get that money back however, and then some.
Yeah I didn’t want to air your laundry for you, but it speaks volumes to them as a company. That was extremely mean spirited of them.
This tracks for "influencers" in lots of spaces. I know firearms pretty well. Every year at the SHOT show there is a media day at the range where various bloggers, writers, and social media personalities can come and shoot the various firearms and try out accessories companies hope to sell. I know several folks who work for various companies and it's always one of the worst experiences they have in the business. Imagine literally hundreds of Johnny Liebermans, every bit as vapid, entitled, and incompetent but now they're being handed lethal weapons that they proceed to handle with the sophistication and skill you'd expect of a particularly dim chimpanzee.
It's not just that they can't shoot, they can't even handle the weapons safely. Muzzle discipline sometimes has to be enforced by literally grabbing the gun and redirecting its aim. Corrections on safety go about as well as telling Johnny he maybe needs some training. "I'VE BEEN AROUND GUNS ALL MY LIFE! I'M A SAFE SHOOTER!!" like the person who is trying to keep them from endangering another human being's life is being the asshole for correcting the matter instead of the guy pointing a lethal weapon at another human being without cause being the fucking douche in the situation.
It's not that they're incapable of shame most of the time...they're simply incapable of processing any sort of ego dystonic feedback from any perspective, no matter how learned or well-intentioned it might be. I've learned that there are people who have no inner monologue...no voice in their head that represents their own consciousness with which they wrestle on a regular basis.
I imagine it's like that, only dialed up to 11.
Jonny is a vociferous critic of “influencers” in the automotive space.
Likely because they have taken the lack of integrity to a new level and demand to be PAID to show up to drive the car and film a video, rather than merely to be invited on a free junket.
Lieberman criticizing the existence of influencers is further indication of just how few of his synapses are actually firing. Whatever specific structures of the brain are responsible for self awareness and the capacity for reflection are simply dead or non-existent in that man.
The then president of an automotive media trade group, whose daily driver was a "long term test" once called me a "parasite".
Yeah I've heard some weird stuff about firearms bloggers and YouTubers. The word "FPSrussia" comes to mind.
Yep. I'm a USPSA GM. I teach cops. It's scary how bad/unsafe many people are, but they consider themselves experts.
If you know guns that well, could you please explain something to me?
Why is it that gun writers and reviewers all have giant Sasquatch hands?
I've noticed this for decades. Everybody who tests guns for magazines and websites complains about fullsize pistols not fitting into their huge hands well, or of having to wrap overmold grips around double-stack .45s, or similar nonsense.
Why are there no gun reviewers with normal-sized hands?
LOL. They don't, at least not all of them. A lot of them just have fat hands. A lot of them have no concept of how you are actually supposed to hold a pistol. I taught instructors from a police department in PA that had Glock 21 sidearms...and they had those Hogue grip sleeves on their pistols to make them fit their "large hands", except they didn't remotely fit and one of the reasons they struggled to actually hit anything at speed was because they'd taken a pistol that already has the ergonomics of a 2x4 and had made it deliberately worse. To their credit, as soon as I showed them what their grip was actually *supposed* to do on a pistol and where they needed to make contact and apply pressure, they immediately whipped out knives and cut them off.
Most people you see writing in gun magazines are so woefully incompetent at even the most basic aspects of using a firearm that you should probably ignore just about everything they say. I guarantee you most would laugh at the notion that they don't know how to grip a handgun, but if you go train with someone like Rob Leatham (the most accomplished action pistol shooter in history) he will spend incredible amounts of time working on your grip because it is literally the foundation of your ability to run a handgun.
Most of the aforementioned gun writers are also mysteriously unable to daily carry anything bigger than a J frame because it's supposedly too difficult. Meanwhile I know small people who pack a full sized custom government model pistol on a daily basis because they have to as that's an issued gun. The writers know as much about concealment as they do about shooting a handgun...which is perilously little.
Another good tell for whether or not someone has a clue is how much they talk about "bore axis" as if that's the primary driver in how the gun recoils. If they're on about that it means their grip is bad and they're blaming the fact that the gun stays elevated after they shoot on the gun rather than their limp, worthless grip providing insufficient control of the gun.
Are you saying there's ANOTHER bunch of specialty journalists who can't make the hardware work and can't write about it either?!
Admittedly, Glock ergonomics suck, which is why I like single-stack 1911s - I have human-sized hands and they point straighter as a result.
Absolutely. Three phrases scare the bejeezus out of me when I'm on the training range: "I've been around guns all my life." "I'm a cop/in/was in the military." "I'm a gun writer." That is usually the person who will be a safety issue.
Of course, not all of them are like that. Jeff Cooper is the foundation of modern self defense training and he wrote. Beautifully, I might add. He codified useful rules of firearms safety. He also violated them quite frequently and amassed quite the record of negligent discharges. But that doesn't diminish the value of what he contributed.
One of the reasons he was a fan of the 1911 is visible if you ever watch video of him gripping and using the pistol. The way it fit his hand allowed him to deliver pressure on the pistol in a specific manner that contributed to quick, accurate delivery of fire from the pistol. There are subtleties to what he's teaching and what he's doing that are utterly lost to most of the people who claim to venerate him.
I've said many times gun magazines worship Cooper's bones without having captured even a little of what made the man great.
There are some good writers/influencers out there just as there are people with a byline in the auto world that can actually wheel...but unfortunately most of them are self-important gasbags with no skills to back any of it up.
I got a LOT of heat when I wrote that Jeff Cooper wasn't a great shot, but nobody who ever shot with him thinks he was.
"I am the only one professional enough in the room to carry [a gun]."
"THIS IS A GLOCK 9!"
*bam*
I remember when I was getting into pistols and my amateur friends all said "get a Glock". I tried theirs and could never find much to like about them. I have a CZ75 and Beretta 92 instead.
I started shooting a G21 90 days after they came out. I don't have large hands but have always been fine with it.
Jan Libourel is an old friend... he was kind of the Csaba Csere of gun mags, both good and bad.
I remember seeing Libourel's name splattered across the hundreds of gun mags I read growing up. The gunwriting field is no doubt as incestuous as autojournalism.
And truth be told, I got more than a little sick of seeing Cooper's name continuously invoked, usually with the reverence saints used to get.
He was a brilliant writer and tolerable shooter, but most of all he was a tremendously skilled self-promoter.
Cooper's major contribution is being the foundation of modern defensive firearms training. People suck at history in general so no one remembers that in the late 19th and early 20th century there were scores of academies that taught defensive skills with firearms and edged weapons. About half the country had a hunting license (meaning they killed things with firearms on a regular basis) and carrying a handgun for self defense was more common than not. The Great Depression, Prohibition, and the invention of the automobile produced radical changes in society that fed violent crime, including organized crime. This era produced the most prolific gunmen to have ever existed.
If you ask the common person what the most violent period in American history was, they'll likely say it was the Old West but that was a relatively calm epoch in American history. Between WWI and WWII we saw some of the fastest rates of social change and unrest in American history, and that produced violence on a startling level. In this period the most accomplished gunmen in American history emerged. Charles Askins killed more than 100 men...and in his words, that didn't count blacks and Mexicans, although he wasn't that polite in his description of them. Frank Hamer was in more than fifty gunfights and was shot in 25 of them.
While Hoover was having sex with underaged boys provided to him by various organized crime outfits, a couple of people who weren't complete shitbirds did manage to get hired and work for the FBI like Baughman, an accomplished shooter for whom the ramped front sight you find on practically all post WWII S&W revolvers was named.
After World War II, there weren't any self defense academies left. The old gunmen died off and the lessons they learned were largely lost. Cooper's progression and founding of Gunsite in the 70's was the rebirth of formalized self defense training in the United States, and it's the foundation from which all modern defensive firearms training is built on.
It's not a coincidence that Gunsite appeared in an era of economic instability, high interest rates, unprecedented levels of violent crime, and global instability produced by our bungling of a war.
Luckily nothing like that is happening these days!
Cooper is rightly revered for reintroducing formal defensive firearms training outside of institutions like policing and the military. Training in both of those institutions stagnated badly and was massively improved by the influence of Gunsite. (You can read Larry Mudgett or Scott Reitz about the influence Gunsite had on LAPD, for example)
Cooper was doing what nobody else was doing...and what a lot of people found highly offensive. Why, it seems positively barbaric to insist that some specimens of our fellow man are undeterred by anything short of blasting them in their most vital organs with a reliable weapon powerful enough to force a halt to their evil deeds! Guns are meant for "sporting" use, old boy!
...and it's not a coincidence that this is the time where we saw gun control emerge in earnest as a nation-wide issue where it had largely not been before. "You can't just let people walk around armed!!" Meanwhile my great grandmother carried a revolver on her every day of her life from when she was 14 until her death at 98 years old because there was no 911 when she was growing up.
Cooper's work on mindset and the realities of self defense were far more valuable than his work on marksmanship, even though there was significant value there as well. Cooper helped push against the nonsense of "instinctive" shooting a la Delf Bryce and even Bill Jordan. Jordan is often quoted by people who push unsighted shooting but they never mention that Jordan had a daily habit of taking at least 50 primed cases, pressing them into a block of paraffin wax, and then using those wax bullets to practice. Every. Day. He could do what he could do because he literally dedicated huge chunks of his life to learning and maintaining the skill. Flash sight picture works far better.
Jordan's influence and organization helped bring about other great contributors like Jack Weaver and Elden Carl that helped move our understanding of how to use a handgun along. He founded action style competitive shooting which was incredibly practical, at least for the first several years.
The original Gunsite instructors went on to become giants in their own rights, some sticking to just what Cooper taught but most of them evolving based on what they were learning from competition and from results on the street.
So Cooper is rightly revered...it's just that the gun magazine writers often spend their time discussing the unimportant and trivial stuff (dislike for DA autos, as an example) instead of the seminal contributions Cooper made to armed self defense.
"You don't need nothin' if you got enough hype! Brains, talent, work, doesn't matter!"
What boggles my mind is that there is some sort of rich car nerd scene in LA that gladly accepts JL as a member; he’s a regular on the podcast with the zillionaire Seinfeld writer and a lawyer and apparently Seinfeld himself, and rubs elbows with Leno and Farrah, amongst others. The only conclusion I can come up with is that all of these men are as equally enthusiastic about quaffing their own farts as Jonny is. I don’t have any idea because I don’t consume any of their droll content, except Farah’s podcast to which I hate-listen on my commute when Rogan’s guests are boring.
I did laugh my ass off when Jonny informed Farah that somehow through accounting ineptitude he had to pay 5-figs of tax on his sponsorship revenue for his Slow Cayman Goes Up Big Hill boondoggle.
Knowing as I do that Matt Farah has some human decency to him, I'm astounded at his patience with that crowd of people. I'd rather be in the felony ward of a county jail than spend the day with them.
Everyone in LA is fake, to some extent. Comes with the territory.
I like Matt and he's been nothing but kind to me, so I won't argue with him on Twitter, but I just can't wrap my head around his obvious love of cars and his touting transportation activists that want to get us on Razor scooters and e-Bikes. Do his clients at the parking place think they'll be able to buy indulgences?
He squares that because he hates traffic (always an LA bugbear) and views mobility as a more expansive problem.
I love to drive, of course, but I usually only drive a few days a week now.
I scream this at my stereo all the time in the car while listening to him. Best I can figure it, he assumes probably correctly that A) he has a whole mess of cars so who cares if his primary ride is some shitbox electric and B) when the only ICE cars are available are limited release Porsche GT program type things, he’ll still have the access and resources to buy them.
If the “little guys” like us (and I say that as a probably 2-3%er with the resources to have 3 cars) get squeezed out because the only ICE cars are limited release $100k+ rich man toys, so be it, less traffic and air pollution for him to deal with, fuck everyone else.
Personally, I’ve done the whole “boring daily, fun weekend car” thing and I hated it. I designed my life so I don’t have to spend hours commuting in traffic every day, but I live in a climate where my fun car is unavailable ~6 months out of the year. I don’t want to spend 90% of my driving in a shitty “Bolt or equivalent” just to drive my sports car on weekends. I had a TSX automatic for years as a commuter and decided life was too short to drive something so dreadfully boring for most of my driving time.
If the COVID-19 theater has proven anything, it is that rich people like the idea of living completely separate, and elevated, lives.
These people never think they'll be the ones lined up against the walls.
tu ne veux pas me couper la tête, je suis une bonne personne*
*Forgive the crappy translation, I don't actually know French
“A bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.”
The Covid theatrics validated my theory that we should deport the top 1% of our citizenry every five years.
As a car lover and owner of four cars who commutes by ebike, I'll tell you there's no contradiction.
Cars are too space-inefficient for larger cities, full stop. Put more than a small percentage of the people in a dense city in cars (whether their own or Uber drivers') for basic transportation, and it's just a fact of geometry that the city will creak to a gridlocked halt. Ebikes cut the space needed by about 5/6, and are a reasonable (and shockingly fast) mode of transportation in the city. Yet they are also incredibly fun to ride.
As someone who commuted 20 miles a day on a bicycle for many years, even without needing a shower when you get to work because you're riding a motor vehicle, not exercising, eBikes are simply not practical at least 5 months out of the year anyplace north of the Mason Dixon line. Yeah, I know people ride bicycles in Finland in the winter but Americans have much longer *commutes. The thing is, I don't see any of the transportation activists who are telling us to ride bikes (e or otherwise) are practicing what they preach.
*Yeah, I know transportation activist hate cars in part because the personal automobile gives you the freedom to work where you want to and live someplace else. Without personal automobiles you have to live within walking distance of public transportation if you want to get to work. It's about the environment and quality of life, not about controlling people. No, not at all.
I started commuting to my office by bike last summer and it lasted right up until the first real winter day. I'm hoping to be back by bike in the next 4-6 weeks but, like Michigan, Chicago winters can last a lot longer than Mid April
"Yeah, I know pieople ride bicycles in Finland in the winter but Americans have much longer commutes."
I'm talking specifically about cities (as are the people Farah mentions) and the core reason to live in a city is so you can have a short and predictable commute (and other trips). My own commute is 6 minutes on my fast ebike, 10 minutes by slow e-scooter, or 12 minutes by car. I'm not recommending ebikes for people who live 25 miles out and spend two hours a day locked in freeway hell.
When I commuted by bike my rule was: in spring wait till the overnight temperature is over 39 degrees (don't want lean over into a turn on skinny 23-25mm tires when there might be ice on the road) and in the fall ride till it was "snot weather", 45-50 degrees and raining.
I think my worst ride wasn't commuting. I was going through my divorce and my ex wouldn't go with me to return a car that we leased from a dealer in Ypsilanti. It was late May and I was riding a lot then so I just put my bike in the back of the Explorer and figured I'd ride the 40 miles home.
That would usually be no big thing, back then I'd regularly do 50 or 75 miles on a Sunday. It was one of those spring days when it was sunny and 80 degrees in the afternoon but a cold front moved in and it started raining in early evening and temp dropped to about 50-55. I was not wearing any rain gear, just lycra shorts and a jersey and even though I was working aerobically, I wasn't generating enough heat and I could feel my core body temp start dropping. I've felt warmer shoveling snow in sub-zero temps. About 10 miles from home, normally just a 40 minute ride, I stopped at a gas station to use a pay phone to call my brother to pick me up. It's the only time I wasn't able to finish a ride when there wasn't some mechanical issue or an injury.
We used to live in (a suburb of) Tokyo and we rode the trains everywhere. Those trains went everywhere, or at least within a five minute walk of everywhere, in Tokyo, and they arrived at a station every 5-8 minutes almost always on time. They were incredibly clean and if you were above ground gave some nice views of the city. If we were ever going to move back there (or back to Osaka where we spent a few tumultuous months) we would likely not own a car. We'd just Google Pay our way through the turnstiles and take the damn trains everywhere.
I still wished I could drive everywhere, though. You can only carry so much stuff on a train, and you're tied to where the train operators want you to go when they want you to be there. Once you're outside of Tokyo (or Osaka) train frequency falls dramatically and the lines peter out. We enjoyed life more when we lived in the countryside and owned our own car, a situation in which we live back here in Michigan, too. I'm grateful to still have the choice to have this lifestyle, and I dread the possibility of the day when I'm told I can no longer have it.
I don't give a flying fuck about JL. That's all I'll say about that.
But, I am saddened by what passes for Aston Martin nowadays. They were once purveyors of lousy but character filled cars. Bad cars but great experiences. They did nothing better then anyone else, but they were special. Now, they still do nothing better then anyone else, and they aren't special anymore. Aston hasn't produced a car in the last 20 years that wasn't been comprehensively, at dramatically lower prices, beaten by the Corvette of the day.
I once suggested to the Aston Martin Owners Club that Aston should dump everything they were doing and buy the IP and tooling for the C7 instead. Even though I'm sure they'd build it worse, and have better paint, great smelling leather and poorer reliability then what the boys and girls at Bowling Green produce, it would be far and away better then anything Aston could produce on their own. Oddly, that suggestion didn't go over too well.
The past week has been the best week for Aston Martin since Goldfinger hit cinemas.
Fairytale debut in Bahrain over the weekend and then Valkyrie content from the same track on Monday.
But their cars still suck.
I mean it was never "the" car. Even when new you could spend a fraction of the money and just get an E-Type. They built 1059 DB5s, then Goldfinger came out and on the back of that they managed to sell every new DB6... all 1788 of them.
Their Mustang-lookalikes in the 80s were the same, cool look, but you needed to spend money on them (like a certain Mr. Atkinson) to get any sort of performance or (heavens) track ability.
I saw the DBX testing on the Nürburgring way before it somehow got promoted to F1 medical car, and let me tell you that thing was smoking its brakes not even halfway into the lap. Way too heavy, way too reliant on the electronics to keep it straight, and I'm pretty sure last year on the Bahrain GP the driver almost flipped it _hitting_a_curb_. That's designed for F1 cars.
I have rarely been as unimpressed by a brand-new production car as I was with the DBX.
Modern Astons are dreadful; they're bad takes on front engined Ferraris and the proportions are painfully generic. They're supposed to be fast road transportation for the landed gentry, not Dubai trinkets.
The problem is that the fast road transportation for landed gentry is an A6 Allroad TDI these days. There's literally no car in the world that can get you (noticeably) faster from A to B in real world, simply because cars came to the point where a 300 hp TDI wagon can go as fast or slightly faster than you would dare unless you are a total psychopath.
Hell, even a Škoda Octavia Scout TDI is able to go "as fast as the road allows" 90% of the time.
There is no point in having a cramped GT as a "fast road transportation" for anyone, let alone landed gentry, in last at least 20 years.
The allroad (or Aviator for Americans) will get you 95% of the speed while also offering 80% of the off-road ability of your Defender, while the new Defender offers you 80% of the real-world speed of the Aston with 100% of the offroading.
I had a very similar thought after I bought my Jaguar, while driving it 1300 miles home.
It has the straight like speed of a C5 Z06 or C6 Corvette, but is infinitely more comfortable and less fatiguing. Other than styling, I can't see anywhere where a 2 door GT car would outshine it.
What kinda Jag do you have? And, yes, even fast versions of F-Pace are "GT-enough", not to mention sedans or the wagon.
I have an X351 XJ supercharged.
I'd actually been trolling craiglist for an X150, but the XJ was very nearly perfectly specced, and the price was right. Being a 2014, it was also the first full year with the updated timing chains on the 5.0
But that isn't a new thing. A Mercedes 6.9 in the 70s, or even a 450 SE or SEL would likely have been just as fast, point to point, if not faster, and definitely more reliable, then any hot GT car of the 70s. Immensely more comfortable too. But, an Aston V8, Jensen Interceptor or even a Lamborghini Espada had dramatically more style. And, they were just plain more fun. Plus, what's the point of being rich, if you can't flaunt your money by not driving the same brand as the cab drivers do.
I want a Jalpa. I don't care if they're Lotus Esprit-levels of Poorly Done.
Do you hear me? I DON'T CARE.
The W116 was nowhere near as fast as GTs unless you went in a straight line. An XJ12 was maybe a bit closer to the DBS, but that really was a four-door GT.
The main difference, though, is that having a fast car mattered in those days. With significantly more sparse highway network, less traffic and looser speed limit enforcement, you could probably get from London to Nice with your '72 DBS several hours faster than your neighbour in a Ford Cortina with 1.6-litre, 70 hp engine.
Today, cars got massively faster and roads got slower.
In real world, something like a Golf GTI is almost as fast as you can get, and an Audi RS3, still relatively humble and affordable car, is basically an overkill in any reasonable situation.
Today, if you jump into your '22 Aston DBS and head to Nice, while your neighbour jumps into his '22 Ford Focus ST and heads in the same direction, it's HIM who will be there first. You can't go flat out over France unless you want your car impounded and when you get to the twisty roads, the Ford's hot hatchback won't be really any slower than the Aston – unless the Aston's driver has MASSIVE balls, the size that Aston owners usually don't. Even so, just driving in the manner where you keep your lines of sight long enough to be able to at least start braking will mean that there's no difference between the two.
The difference is only in the Ford's better mileage, which will probably result in less fuel stops and that will be why the Ford gets there faster. Also, the Ford has a better chance of going unnoticed if speeding.
Driving a properly fast GT these days is an exercise in restraint. The car could always go MUCH faster than it's reasonable or safe at that location, and you can never actually use the power and the grip.
Therefore, something like the Allroad, which offers comfort on par with that Aston, does maybe 700 miles on a tank and is almost as fast in any real-world situations, yet can also move around dogs and dirty boots and skis, and get through a muddy field, is the choice for people who used to have an Aston and a Land Rover.
On the road, a W116 was very fast. The 450 SEL could cruise all day at 130 mph. Something I doubt an Aston would do. While a 6.9 would do an easy 150. The automatic V8s were at best 145 mph cars. The manuals adding a possible 10 mph to that. Now, that was if the Aston was running right. Which it more often then not wasn't.
If I HAD to do a run from London to Monte Carlo in 1977, I'd easily choose the 6.9 or anything more exotic. However, if I was going for fun, and just to show off, I'd take an Aston.
No, the Aston was still much faster. The DBS had 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) in something like 5.5 s and the 6.9 in something like 7.4. Top speed around 250 (155 mph) for Aston), 230 (140 mph, maybe?) for the 6.9.
And you're still not in the turns, which, in Europe, are quite important.
The point, however, was that while the roads got slower (or faster, but everyone goes the same), the cars got immensely faster. Even the aforementioned A6 Allroad TDI will smoke that Aston absolutely anywhere, and the 6.9 will get its ass kicked by non-premium, diesel-powered family SUVs.
That was the point. In 1970, you could get a noticeable advantage by opting for the Aston or the Jag or Ferrari or Porsche. One or two sedans (the 6.9 and XJ12) could get somewhat close, but even they would lose in the corners and were no fun to drive.
Today, you can have fun on the windy backroads with a Škoda Kodiaq RS, which is a semi-affordable (about the price of an Golf R) 7-seater family SUV that would probably beat that old DBS on the Route Napoleon.
For less than half the price of the new DBS, you can get something like the Macan Turbo, which is stupid fast anywhere and still able to carry the family and the dog. And even that is faster than you will ever use and therefore the "landed gentry" opts for the Allroad TDI, because it's as fast as you will ever need AND gets you through the field.
I wish there were more wagons in the US market. My choices are an Audi I can't afford or a Mercedes I really can't afford. I don't ask for much, I just want a 400+hp wagon with a 6 speed at a reasonable price.
Well, there are no 400+ hp wagons with a 6-speed on European market, either. The M3 Touring is not available in manual, the M340i or M340d neither. Looking at it now, it seems that NO 3-series besides the M3 sedan can be had with a manual.
You can have the base-engine A4 with manual. You can't have a C-class manual, only the CLA with base engines.
You can have various non-premium wagons with manuals, but not much of them fast. Until recently, the Škoda Octavia RS (2.0 TSI/245 hp) was available with manual. At the price of a Golf GTI, that was probably the closest to what you're seeking. But that's now gone, at least temporarily (supply chain issues, they reduced the model variety).
But you still can have a lot of different wagons with automatics, some of them also diesels. And although I don't like Audis in general, the A6 Allroad 50 TDI (3.0 TDI/300hp or so) is basically the perfect car.
America as the land of road going psychopaths is an endorsement I'll take!
Are you dissing my man Ian Callum? Modern Astons may be dreadful, but they're gorgeous.
I’ll concur with this. Modern Aston reminds me much of the 911-esque constant refinement in design. Much the same I tend to be drawn towards the understated ones more but boy do they have a road presence with a very masculine yet distilled language.
I don’t follow them closely enough to confirm my usual suspicions of them having an interior that doesn’t quite suit the exterior. They tend to come off as luxury kit cars or something - or at least have in the past. I’ll have to revisit the most recent.
I love the DB7 and sometimes, when I see the $35K-ish pricetags on some of them, I dream of owning one and just putting it in front of my house and staring at it because I doubt I could keep it running. Better than a garden gnome, right?
I liked the V12 Vanquish, and I thought that everything that's come out since has been a bit derivative (still relatively pretty, but derivative nonetheless). I guess at a certain point you run out of creative steam and just show up and play the old hits like you think everyone wants you to.
You can't sit in a garden gnome and make vroom vroom noises.
I was visiting a car guy of sorts whom I used to hang out with now and then, and bought three cars from before I realized that he never bothered to transfer titles on cars that he bought. One of his sons had bought a 1956 Bel Air with no engine or transmission, and had run an extension cord from the house so he could sit in it and listen to music.
I agree. To my eyes they’re beautiful shapely beasts. I’d never buy one though. I’ve read enough Peter Egan to know that purchasing anything manufactured in the UK is a risky proposition
Ian Callum did some of his best work with Jaguar. The Vantage really doesn't look that good in person, the X150 XK is a more striking design imo.
The DB9 is beautiful, but the interior is somewhat underwhelming by modern standards. Ditto the performance.
The DBX is just wrong
Callum left Aston more then 20 years ago.
Marek Reichman has been in charge for more then a decade, and has taken Aston styling from one low point to another. I can't imagine why they keep him on, as the styling he has produced has been pretty universally panned. And the sales went in the toilet with each revision.
Callum's Astons are classics already, especially the DB9 (and the V8 Vantage). The current crop of AMG-powered stuff is a not even close to that.
100% agree with you on not liking the new Benz powered cars
Yeah, but they are pretty average as cars. Surprisingly little that is special about them in the driving experience.
If you wanted to drive, you always bought a Jaguar. E-type vs. DB5, even XJ-S vs. DBS, and extremely so in the case of XK8 vs DB7 and XK vs DB9.
The Jag was always cheaper and much better car.
I had gotten to that point in my life when I chose to make my automotive dream come true. That being, to buy an Aston. I started driving them with purpose, and was shocked by how disappointing they were. My favourite of the lot was the DB7. While far from the best car of the group, it still had a bit of the old hand made Aston magic. But the Vanquish was awful, the V8 and DB9 just mediocre. Though, the Aston V12 does make an incredible howl. Much better then two Tauri at full throttle.
i mean there has to be a few screws loose at aston to let the valkyrie happen. I get it that its a tracktoy for people who like track toys in their living room, but at least it sounds kinda neat with a cosworth NA V12 in the current era
I absolutely cannot read any car reviews, magazines, etc. anymore. Was it better when I thought the Matrix was real?
It's beyond depressing. Had I known things would get this bad, I would have spent more time re-reading various magazines back 15 - 30 years ago. It's like a desert out there, and not just in review/magazine terms.
My biggest problem with car reviews, other than the complete and utter irrelevance to my real-world life they represent, is that no matter how expensive a car is, it's always a bargain.
When I read Lieberman’s stuff I just can’t help wondering what made him go into *writing*, of all things, and think he could actually do it.
I also wonder similarly what makes him speaking on camera a worthwhile thing, or a good idea, but, here we are. He can't even hold a steering wheel like actual drivers do, but he knows everything there is about driving
And yet…there he is.
Every corner of every occupation has someone like Lieberman in it, who everyone knows to be totally incompetent, but who survives by being good at the political game and fulfilling a need. Truth be told, he's the right writer for the audience. Buyers of today's supercars are mostly vapid people who are buying for image, and Lieberman is pretty good at telling them what image each car portrays.
At some point in the last decade car enthusiasm stopped being a social thing for me. It divided itself into a few specific cliques and I didn't really like any of them or feel like my tastes were on their wavelength. Now it's a personal thing I do for myself, and I really couldn't give a crap that the big-single-turbo bros think a brown 3er is ugly or that Tucker's marks think enjoying my EV says something about my T level.
Motor Trend exists?? Next you'll be telling me they still print Car and Driver.
I stopped loving Motor Trend when they fired Tony Swan as editor. His was an odd time at MT, because he actually said things. I do recall a short stint with C Van Tune (great name for an auto journalist) at the helm, but he was likely doing too good a job, so they axed him also. Btw, whatever happened to C Van Tune anyway?
Sure does. It's just part of what I call "Road Car Trend."
The triune Auto Rag. The Three that are One.
Jack, the fact that you were willing to subject yourself to the ravings of the Motor Trend social media comment sections in order to bring us this story is why I'll always be a subscriber.
I refuse to believe that deep down, Lieberman et al don't realize how bad they are, how poorly they're respected, and how little their chosen career "matters" to anyone else's life. Hell, I struggle with self-doubt in a career 10x as valuable to the public. To believe they are ignorant of those feelings would shake my faith in human nature too deeply to contemplate.
I’d bet they know exactly that, which is why these people act like children at even the smallest amounts of criticism.
The most buoyant thing in the world is a sociopath.
Yet they’re the easiest thing to take down.
Jack probably knows JL better than most (having been an insider in the autojourno game for so long), so I’m pretty sure he knows how close this post has the guy to doing his wife’s sword trick with a Mossberg (although if I had to guess the gun, it’d probably be a Beretta).
Every once in a while you run into someone who may not have the most talent, but they understand the GAME. They know how to make it pay. They know how to make it pay in ways that the rest of us never even thought about.
every company has people like that at the top
That comment was about Loh, not Johnny.
Lieberman annoys me to no end. In his own mind he is never wrong, yet never has anything substantive to say as a retort. He just says things like “what the fuck bill” or some stupid emoji implying he can’t be bothered to engage with the hoi polloi in his comments section. His complete meltdowns he experiences whilst trying to argue against some downsides to EV’s are at least entertaining from and outside perspective.
Thin skin is a common factor in that West Coast crowd.
Must be all that sunshine.
We haven't seen the sun in months!
i don't know jack about auto-journalism but i do know a thing or two about quincy. q is a good arranger but he is a great hustler. everything that comes out of his mouth is part of a hustle and i don't believe a word of it. what he lacks is taste. everything including his michael jackson tracks are overdone. as to the fabs, it's true that their main talent was was composition but it was far from their only talent. yes, ringo doesn't write and he sings like a frog but he can actually play the drums. perfect rhythm and interesting tasteful fills without the bombast of solos.
I've never heard an actual drummer (well, except for Ginger Baker but he was a misanthrope) say less than complimentary things about Starr.
Isnt the old joke “drummers are stupid”
The old joke is "what do you call a bass player who is missing half his brain? A drummer"
Insert rim shot here (does this count as a pun).
Pairs well with "What do you call a bass player without a girlfriend? Homeless."
Yes, but bass players ALWAYS have a girlfriend
Source: I'm a bass player
Yeah I agree that Q's opinion of himself is pretty substantial.
I judge the technical ability of guitarists and bassists like so: "Can I sight-read their performances?" If so then it's simple stuff. In the case of the Beatles I can do it first time through.
Do you think Herbie Hancock makes Jones feel a bit inadequate?
He’s like a chef that can’t make a grilled cheese sandwich.
Seriously, wouldn’t the average person at least try to get better at their craft in their chosen field? It’s ridiculous that he gets to give opinions about a product he doesn’t understand.
I think that the mistake many of us make is in assuming that competence matters, when, in fact the exact opposite is true. I won't go into it in great detail, but for variety of reasons over the last several decades, the society has slowly, but certainly declared the war on competence. Competence used to be admired, and aspired to. Today, it will make you a target. There are *so many* incompetent people around, and they cannot stand the contrast a competent person brings up. Thus, the war it is.
Competent people are a necessary evil. They are treated like toilets. Just expected to swallow endless loads of shit so that society can continue without being drowned in its own filth. Proving yourself capable is rewarded with more duties from other people who can't or won't do them. Learned that one the hard way.
Working tech in various major companies has led me to believe that the ratio of productive people to unproductive people is maybe 1 to 5 at best.
Hmmmn. Where have I seen that 20/80 figure before?
https://dlab.berkeley.edu/news/explaining-80-20-rule-pareto-distribution
https://dariusforoux.com/prices-law/
It's the 80/20 rule for a reason
Good work is rewarded with more work.
Some reward.
I should probably apologize for digesting entire and well written articles to only respond with quip; but I’m quite glad to not be the only person detested by ‘Supercarblondie’...looking like some tarted up alien. To quote the kids, it’s pretty “cringe”.
I've worked with executives who were OBSESSED with her and thought she was GREAT and COULDNT WAIT TO PARTNER WITH HER
Anecdotes like this are why I find it so hard to go back to full time employment. Or deal with people in most other capacities.
That’s insane to me. Then again I’ve seen bosses obsess with much worse in my youth. There’s definitely some strange aura surrounding popular corporate hoohah and the office simping it creates. Curious if there’s real analytics behind featuring her. I mean, there HAS to be a benefit right? Clicks must just come from a much older crowd.
Partner with <> consort with
So what ? .
I'm obsessed with my interests, they don't hurt anyone else, if you choose to chase a non obtainable bimbo just don't complain later .
-Nate
She's basically an OnlyFans creation for car idiots.
Hm ;
I read the hyperlinked article .
What does Mr. Lieberman "manufacture" ? .
I'd be askeert to touch much less drive any vehicle that expen$ive .
Maybe he writes for the dufus' who understand they're never ever going to be anywhere near this stuff in person .
-Nate
What does he manufacture?
Um, how about vehement dislike for his work?
=8-) .
His upper signature claims he's a Manufacturer so naturally I wondered what he manufactures, so far no one seems to know, odd as he's apparently well known .
-Nate