ferrari: i was a dealer from '69 to '76...don't ask why i let it go. anyway i drove my 3z swb cal spider about 60k miles. an early rebuild...engine built '61, i bought it '79...went 2 oversizes; it'd never been apart. again i o'hauled it after valvetrain trouble in time to be invited to ferrari's 50th birthday in maranello '97. i gave up checking valve clearances as they never changed--i was told i wasn't revving it high enough! i sold it a dozen years ago with 72k showing. only trouble i ever had was the allison electronic ignition spinning metal cotton candy in one distributor cap. never had to check anything ignitionwise, so stuff had rusted and then melted. swapped distributor caps and we were on our way to a ferrari club meet in louisiana that needs to be recounted orally. i could elaborate on ferrari servicing but i'm through for now
I am so sick of air cooled p car variants. The 911K is cool for the redline, the rest are blatant pandering to their corpulent and unimaginative core audience. The Koenigsegg is cool for the gearbox but has to be a disaster in the end, and I just couldn’t give a shit about any EV basically ever until (if?) solid state batteries reach the scale and capacity needed for 1,000 mile + ranges
i know i'm very old, but these cars are getting kinda boring; years ago i subscribed to robb report and similarly got tired of the prices that could be charged for a wristwatch or bottle of scotch. megayachts at least have utility.
Sherman, great write up but to what end, cars like many things have to be aspirational to be desired. Just as your example, the $50 Yo-Yo was aspirational, the $200 Yo=Yo was not. There in the past high net worth individuals collected art by the masters, or in another time they built lavash country estates (think Vanderbilt, Ford, DuPont). Todays high net worth individuals buy mega yachts. What you covered were the collectibles for the high net worth individuals. These cars are not aspirational they are collectables just like a masterpeice. IMHO the ink spilled on these cars is a waste of ink, let alone the time and travel budgets spent covering them.
Mr. McCoy: The article you recommended from The New Yorker was eye-opening, to say the least. My feelings are mixed. On one hand, I’m glad these dolts are engaging in dick measuring contests with their money instead of starting new foundations that will further gum up the works for the rest of us.
On the other hand, spending my retirement as some form of pirate suddenly sounds interesting.
Time to spit on my hands and hoist the black flag!
The New Yorker is for dilletantes who FANCY themselves the upper crust. People who talk about The Met - or wine - because they think it impresses the aristocrats they want to be, and the nobodies they despise.
This exactly. I was coming here to say the same thing but you beat me to it. For me to really develop an interest in something, there has to be a possibility (however slim) that one day if I work hard and save and have a little luck I may be able to actually have it. To those kids the $50 yo-yo was something they understood. It was something that they could aspire to. The $200 yo-yo wasn’t ever going to happen for them so they didn’t care. The same way I just scroll past press releases of the newest 7 figure car.
At the risk of overpoasting- I think there will be a reckoning in the not-so-distant future with battery powered toys, I mean EVs. Ford has stated openly that they aren’t profitable. The pricing is getting cranked by the week. And if you are on The Street, you know investor appetite for endlessly burning cash is right out the fucking window for the foreseeable future as the easy money era could be a thing of the past (finally). Do you really think automakers will sacrifice a 16-18MM new car per annum market on the alter of “climate change”? I think there will be a rapid re adjustment of standards unless our enemy elite are absolutely fixated on killing personal transport autonomy for the working poor before the next election cycle
They don’t give a fuck about anything but the goddamned Earth, and to hell with anything else! That there’s gonna be the biggest transfer of wealth from the lower ranks so that the same people who want the great unwashed to ride a fucking bicycle uphill both ways to work on a -20F day and LIKE IT just so they can visit their gigrundo-yacht brokers once every two years instead of every five is just a bonus! 🙄
Never mind that this marble was around a hell of a long time before we humans started exhaling a regulated pollutant, and it’ll be around long after we’ve nuked ourselves, until the Sun goes supernova and swallows it whole!
I find it shocking that the occupy wall st set isn’t all over this shit. Guess that whole movement got co-opted into throwing bricks thru the windows of family businesses
When OWS began, it was fueled by inchoate rage about “banksters,” and the prevailing notion was that every “banker” - a category that included hedge fund managers, PE execs, the C Suite of large global banks, every single investment banker ever, ever depository banker ever, etc. - was inherently evil. The vast majority of people on Wall Street are rank and file employees who work tirelessly for clients and earn a handsome - but not obscene - living doing so. At most big firms the average comp per “front office” employee (i.e., revenue generating roles / teams) is probably $300,000 -$400,000 annually.
To this day, there is rage over bank bailouts. Even Matt Taibbi - whose substack I have subscribed to since inception - whines about it.
Here’s the truth about the TARP program:
Involuntary - virtually every bank had to accept public preferred equity carrying a 5% coupon (moving to 9% after 5 years); this prevented a negative signal about which banks truly needed a temporary backstop (Thank Hank Paulson for this)
Most banks sought to pay it off quickly, especially since it represented relatively expensive Tier 1 Capital in a ZIRP environment
The taxpayers received a FANTASTIC return on investment! The program was (1) profitable in an accounting sense (due to interest paid on the pfd) and (2) profitable in an economic sense (since there is vast, albeit ultimately inestimable value in having a functioning banking system).
The bailouts (i.e., TARP) were a Treasury program.
The subsequent ZIRP environment - Fed initiative - was to accommodate asset price recovery.
Higher rates are actually good for (most) banks, especially now. There’s so much liquidity, especially post-COVID that deposits betas are ultra low (has your local bank raised deposit rates materially?) and loans obviously reprice with immediacy (automatically for floating rate loans and then for new originations on fixed rate loans).
In the broadest sense, yes, I agree with your POV.
As a general concept, I do like the Platonic Ideal of the 911 ideal that all of these restomod outfits are pursuing. I find it hard to believe there’s an ass (and a wallet) for all of them, however.
The most appealing to me is the no longer available Singer with NA flat six; they will have built about 450 in total when they complete those in progress.
I have a friend who has one, and I had the pleasure of going for a ride in it with him in Malibu a few years ago. It was fun, but I would spend ~$1.0 million otherwise.
If someone gave me $1 million to spend on the car hobby, I'd have a collection of 10 to 20 vehicles that I consider interesting rather than one very expensive car. Frankly, I'd rather have a slightly restomodded '56 Continental Mark II (I'd put in a modern powertrain and brakes) than a million dollar Porsche.
Have you seen the “Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History” YouTube channel curated by ex-GM bean-counter Adam Wade? He’s got your statement down to a “T!” He has something like 40 “commodity” cars, from the ‘50s-‘80s (think late-‘60s Mercuries, 1985 Seville, 1967 Riviera). Since you have some connections with various autorati in the Detroit area, maybe you’ve crossed paths at a car show or two.
Good choice. The Mark II's classier, and when you pass $500,000 for any car, you're just paying for the badges.
Ed Bolian's philosophy is to buy cars that make it look like you won the lottery ten years ago. Mine is to buy the cars that I WOULD'VE bought if I'd had a good job when I was 22.
I spent my Saturday morning looking at car pictures, not of a single one of these cars, but of a few eight- and nine-year-old Acuras for sale in random places across the country. These OEMs are aiming at people who care about either clout or investment returns, not people who care about cars.
As I recall, I was a little young for Pogs. Although a mitigating factor would have been the glacial pace at which trends arrived in remote Appalachia in those days.
As a northeast Ohioan I recall them being a mid 90s thing. I would’ve been 10 or 11yrs old, give or take. If there’s a yo-yo craze in my memory it was quite vague; though I think I had a light up Yomega. I believe that was post-pog for us.
I suppose the reference being even broke dicks could have pogs, thusly tying themselves to a prerequisite mid 90s shitbox that 3 people care about. Maybe I’m just the snobby kid to the party there.
I was very sheltered as a child (and I was the oldest kid in my family so no sibling to pass things down to me). The Silver Bullet II that nemesis had met an early end when an enfant terrible destroyed it during latchkey one day after school. I admired this kid immensely because he got to do whatever he wanted: play video games all day after school, wear JNCO jeans every day, listen to explicit rap music, eat candy all day at school, etc.
Most of my clothing in elementary school came from LL Bean or Brooks Brothers, although I did have a collection of motorsport-related t-shirts from the Speedgear catalog. No video games for a few more years, and I mostly listened to classical music OR instrumental surf guitar.
Oldest here myself so I get the awkward and forced trailblazing. We were middle class at best. I had an second hand Atari for awhile in my youth until someone broke in stealing the tv, vcr and my power supply - putting an end to that. When I finally got a Nintendo I received the gold plated Bible Adventures cartridge. Sure was fun playing Noah or guiding Moses down the river...
My mom was into a homemade clothes kick for awhile; between that and the haircuts I wasn’t the most popular. Eventually I got some Bugle Boy shirts which I’m sure were out of style but that’s fine. Nothing got me the grief my Spaulding brand Haikeem Olajuwon high tops did thinking I’d receive the grace of Jordan’s.
I too shared the love of surf rock and the “oldies” though nothing actually classical. Had the friend with the fee pass lifestyle and all the good toys by the time I was in 7th grade. I’m still close friends.
We went different ways. He squandered life for awhile but is now an EMT. I think I have just grown into a perpetual adolescent that keeps trying to get adult versions of all the things I wanted back then. At 39 I’m not sure it’s the best trait but I enjoy it enough.
So my snobby is tongue in cheek. I’m far from it, just have the automotive pallet to appreciate what’s worthwhile and recognize fads based around what was never cool. I didn’t want that shit then (and the ridicule) and I sure as shit don’t want it now.
When I was in second-grade music class, the teacher had us take a quiz where we had to name a song that had a lot of complexity and many melodies. My dad loves classical music and in particular is a huge Bach fan. I'm pretty sure he has all of Bach's works, bundled up in CD box sets of several hundred discs each, the size of loaves of bread.
Anyway, I listed Bach, largely because that was what I was familiar with. My pride and ego took a body blow that day when I realized I wasn't nearly as cool as my classmate who listed "Ghostbusters."
I had forgotten about the '90s yo-yo craze until a few months ago when I was cleaning out my parents attic and found mine.
I chucked it in the trash. Which is where all these cars belong, too.
The yo-yos who attend these ostentatious circle jerks most likely all, to a person, parrot the Current Year claptrap about climate change and inequity. So it's hilarious to watch these people either line up to pay six and seven figures for these disposable, wasteful super status symbols, or merely whore themselves (biblically or otherwise) to the people who can afford them.
God only knows where my curated collection of yo-yos is now.
There was one vehicle that I left out of this rogues’ gallery, as it was present at The Quail, but not a new debut: The Gordon Murray T.50.
I would crawl naked through a field of broken glass for one of those and keep it forever, because I am confident that we shall never see its like again.
Damn, at a glance, the Bentley said Hyundai Genesis to me. A big luxury Genesis GT sounds like a great idea actually.
All the rest? Yawn! They aren't cars. They are just car shaped collectibles. And none of them are particularly attractive. Will this stupid bubble ever burst?
That Porsche GT3 with the prominent black plastic grill is kind of jarring. Totally against their design ethos, even in their front engined cars, like the Panamera and Cayenne. Now it looks like the last gen 350Z. Road and Track getting Gold all to itself is pretty silly. "Mistral" sounds too much like "Minstrel". Koenigsegg is the real deal, everything in their cars is built from the ground up by Rube Goldberg. Current Aston Martins look really really good in my opinion, but they are a similar deal to the Supra and Z4 twins. Outsourced engineering. When the Germans stop building these unpopular luxury sports cars, these niche luxury cars are going with them. Ford really cleaned up the act of some shaky companies, and were rewarded with a recession, too bad they couldn't have held onto Range Rover. Ceramic trim must be easy to clean!
I favored the Yomega Fireball in period. It is amazing to me that looking up all these yo-yos is far more interesting to me than learning about all these frivolous one offs and super exclusive cars. Back when I was slinging that sick yo-yo I never would have guessed this day would come but here we are. As Farah has said, unfortunately for us commoners these builders realize that they are much better off making a 100million from 100 cars vs 2000.
I caught the yo-yo craze as well in elementary school (my brother brought it home from middle school), I was struggling to remember brand names but the commenters finally made me recall. Yes I remember having a wooden "Duncan," I want to say that was the bare minimum to have something that had some sort of bearing surface to allow for the yo-yo to roll down and then spin freely on its axis (what was that term?) and yes the Yomega Fireball was as I recall as fancy as we ever got with them before the fad fizzled out. Later, once I was in middle school it was ALL about those folding aluminum Razor scooters.
We grew up (materially speaking) on the lower end of middle class I suppose and progressed into middle-middle class by the time I entered high school. We had a single TV in the house, a 1992 22" Magnavox TV and a 70s era cable box until 2007 or so, never had any game systems, we bought a new Compaq Presario at Staples in 1998 and that was a big deal to us, though with the pace of computer games and graphics cards it was obsolete right out of the box more or less, and we never updated it. It did run Janes ATF just fine along with Need For Speed II. Living in Central NY we never had AC in our house, we had 5-10 year old used Japanese cars, and never ate out at restaurants (at most 1-2 times per year for someone's birthday we'd go to a local place that had some $10-12 seafood and steak entrees in late 90s-early 00s dollars and I thought that was high end). Vacations involved tent camping, though we did fly back to visit family in Russia every other year or so so that took some funds. Honestly I never felt short changed or that I was missing out on anything. I remember being a bit jealous about my friend's nicer computers and N64s. My family bought our 98 Mazda MPV Allsport 4WD (loaded with leather, moonroof, etc) used in 2001 for $18k right before 9-11 and that was the first time I felt like that we were REALLY coming up in the world. I will say that we were the FIRST in our circle of Russian/Ukrainian emigres to buy a house, and by a wide margin at that: right off the bat two years after coming over in '92. My dad also paid off said house in about 5 years or so, THAT is where the money went I think.
The way McLaren's former communications director explained it to me when I asked if they would consider making an affordable sports car is that for something like the Miata, you have to make tens of thousands of them to break even and McLaren's total capacity is only about 4,000 annual units. Also, though he didn't say it like this, he made it clear that McLaren's current customers like the exclusivity of the brand and that making a mass market car might cheapen the brand in their eyes.
For what it's worth, he also volunteered "categorically no" when discussing the possibility of a McLaren SUV to compete with the other exoticar brands' people movers. As I said, he's now the former comm director there, and McLaren recently made it clear that they're considering something to compete with the Pursang and Urus.
ferrari: i was a dealer from '69 to '76...don't ask why i let it go. anyway i drove my 3z swb cal spider about 60k miles. an early rebuild...engine built '61, i bought it '79...went 2 oversizes; it'd never been apart. again i o'hauled it after valvetrain trouble in time to be invited to ferrari's 50th birthday in maranello '97. i gave up checking valve clearances as they never changed--i was told i wasn't revving it high enough! i sold it a dozen years ago with 72k showing. only trouble i ever had was the allison electronic ignition spinning metal cotton candy in one distributor cap. never had to check anything ignitionwise, so stuff had rusted and then melted. swapped distributor caps and we were on our way to a ferrari club meet in louisiana that needs to be recounted orally. i could elaborate on ferrari servicing but i'm through for now
Note that Ferrari isn’t part of The Quail; they want to stand apart and do their own thing.
Some would bump up the Bentley Batur a whole letter grade due to the similarity of its visage to a G90's.
It does look rather Genesis-esque, doesn’t it?
So now we have the tail wagging the dog, so to speak; Genesis copied Bentley on the GV80, and now Crewe is returning the favor!
Nice to see Tom Wolfe has stopped using death and success as reasons to coast.
Even an oblique comparison is humbling, to say the least.
I am so sick of air cooled p car variants. The 911K is cool for the redline, the rest are blatant pandering to their corpulent and unimaginative core audience. The Koenigsegg is cool for the gearbox but has to be a disaster in the end, and I just couldn’t give a shit about any EV basically ever until (if?) solid state batteries reach the scale and capacity needed for 1,000 mile + ranges
i know i'm very old, but these cars are getting kinda boring; years ago i subscribed to robb report and similarly got tired of the prices that could be charged for a wristwatch or bottle of scotch. megayachts at least have utility.
I still enjoy following the industry, but I found this year’s crop of toys risible - hence the contemptuous response.
The air cooled Porsche selections struck me as very “me too.”
Sherman, great write up but to what end, cars like many things have to be aspirational to be desired. Just as your example, the $50 Yo-Yo was aspirational, the $200 Yo=Yo was not. There in the past high net worth individuals collected art by the masters, or in another time they built lavash country estates (think Vanderbilt, Ford, DuPont). Todays high net worth individuals buy mega yachts. What you covered were the collectibles for the high net worth individuals. These cars are not aspirational they are collectables just like a masterpeice. IMHO the ink spilled on these cars is a waste of ink, let alone the time and travel budgets spent covering them.
I took great pleasure in reading this piece (fair warning, it is a lengthy read):
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/25/the-haves-and-the-have-yachts
Mr. McCoy: The article you recommended from The New Yorker was eye-opening, to say the least. My feelings are mixed. On one hand, I’m glad these dolts are engaging in dick measuring contests with their money instead of starting new foundations that will further gum up the works for the rest of us.
On the other hand, spending my retirement as some form of pirate suddenly sounds interesting.
Time to spit on my hands and hoist the black flag!
Interesting piece.
Even more so since the New Yorker has always struck me as a bourgeoisie magazine for the upper crust!
Bourgeoisie my ass.
The New Yorker is for dilletantes who FANCY themselves the upper crust. People who talk about The Met - or wine - because they think it impresses the aristocrats they want to be, and the nobodies they despise.
cf. Class, by Paul Fussell
Yes, you’re right—I had it bass-ackwards! 🤪🥴🙄
This exactly. I was coming here to say the same thing but you beat me to it. For me to really develop an interest in something, there has to be a possibility (however slim) that one day if I work hard and save and have a little luck I may be able to actually have it. To those kids the $50 yo-yo was something they understood. It was something that they could aspire to. The $200 yo-yo wasn’t ever going to happen for them so they didn’t care. The same way I just scroll past press releases of the newest 7 figure car.
I agree, and well-said.
Fortunately I learned that lesson a long time ago.
100% spot on. I simply tune out of stuff that's that unrelatable/unattainable
At the risk of overpoasting- I think there will be a reckoning in the not-so-distant future with battery powered toys, I mean EVs. Ford has stated openly that they aren’t profitable. The pricing is getting cranked by the week. And if you are on The Street, you know investor appetite for endlessly burning cash is right out the fucking window for the foreseeable future as the easy money era could be a thing of the past (finally). Do you really think automakers will sacrifice a 16-18MM new car per annum market on the alter of “climate change”? I think there will be a rapid re adjustment of standards unless our enemy elite are absolutely fixated on killing personal transport autonomy for the working poor before the next election cycle
There is no risk of over posting here. Just want to make that explicit. You have something to say, I want to read it.
Thank you sir. The feeling is mutual.
They don’t give a fuck about anything but the goddamned Earth, and to hell with anything else! That there’s gonna be the biggest transfer of wealth from the lower ranks so that the same people who want the great unwashed to ride a fucking bicycle uphill both ways to work on a -20F day and LIKE IT just so they can visit their gigrundo-yacht brokers once every two years instead of every five is just a bonus! 🙄
Never mind that this marble was around a hell of a long time before we humans started exhaling a regulated pollutant, and it’ll be around long after we’ve nuked ourselves, until the Sun goes supernova and swallows it whole!
I find it shocking that the occupy wall st set isn’t all over this shit. Guess that whole movement got co-opted into throwing bricks thru the windows of family businesses
When OWS began, it was fueled by inchoate rage about “banksters,” and the prevailing notion was that every “banker” - a category that included hedge fund managers, PE execs, the C Suite of large global banks, every single investment banker ever, ever depository banker ever, etc. - was inherently evil. The vast majority of people on Wall Street are rank and file employees who work tirelessly for clients and earn a handsome - but not obscene - living doing so. At most big firms the average comp per “front office” employee (i.e., revenue generating roles / teams) is probably $300,000 -$400,000 annually.
To this day, there is rage over bank bailouts. Even Matt Taibbi - whose substack I have subscribed to since inception - whines about it.
Here’s the truth about the TARP program:
Involuntary - virtually every bank had to accept public preferred equity carrying a 5% coupon (moving to 9% after 5 years); this prevented a negative signal about which banks truly needed a temporary backstop (Thank Hank Paulson for this)
Most banks sought to pay it off quickly, especially since it represented relatively expensive Tier 1 Capital in a ZIRP environment
The taxpayers received a FANTASTIC return on investment! The program was (1) profitable in an accounting sense (due to interest paid on the pfd) and (2) profitable in an economic sense (since there is vast, albeit ultimately inestimable value in having a functioning banking system).
Agreed on all counts but hasn't the Fed's determination to backstop bad behavior led to more of it?
The bailouts (i.e., TARP) were a Treasury program.
The subsequent ZIRP environment - Fed initiative - was to accommodate asset price recovery.
Higher rates are actually good for (most) banks, especially now. There’s so much liquidity, especially post-COVID that deposits betas are ultra low (has your local bank raised deposit rates materially?) and loans obviously reprice with immediacy (automatically for floating rate loans and then for new originations on fixed rate loans).
In the broadest sense, yes, I agree with your POV.
Yeah, 300 grand - IN NEW YORK.
That's the same category as a Peterbilt mechanic in Tulsa.
Or Chicago, or SF, or Charlotte, or Atlanta, or Texas (Dallas, Houston), etc. There are IB jobs everywhere.
I rather like that Tuthill, but then I was around when the 911 was first introduced.
Piech's version of Bugatti has yet to make a car doesn't look like an insect.
The Range Rover looks handsome.
The Bentley Batur looks like a Genesis.
As a general concept, I do like the Platonic Ideal of the 911 ideal that all of these restomod outfits are pursuing. I find it hard to believe there’s an ass (and a wallet) for all of them, however.
The most appealing to me is the no longer available Singer with NA flat six; they will have built about 450 in total when they complete those in progress.
I have a friend who has one, and I had the pleasure of going for a ride in it with him in Malibu a few years ago. It was fun, but I would spend ~$1.0 million otherwise.
If someone gave me $1 million to spend on the car hobby, I'd have a collection of 10 to 20 vehicles that I consider interesting rather than one very expensive car. Frankly, I'd rather have a slightly restomodded '56 Continental Mark II (I'd put in a modern powertrain and brakes) than a million dollar Porsche.
Have you seen the “Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History” YouTube channel curated by ex-GM bean-counter Adam Wade? He’s got your statement down to a “T!” He has something like 40 “commodity” cars, from the ‘50s-‘80s (think late-‘60s Mercuries, 1985 Seville, 1967 Riviera). Since you have some connections with various autorati in the Detroit area, maybe you’ve crossed paths at a car show or two.
Good choice. The Mark II's classier, and when you pass $500,000 for any car, you're just paying for the badges.
Ed Bolian's philosophy is to buy cars that make it look like you won the lottery ten years ago. Mine is to buy the cars that I WOULD'VE bought if I'd had a good job when I was 22.
I spent my Saturday morning looking at car pictures, not of a single one of these cars, but of a few eight- and nine-year-old Acuras for sale in random places across the country. These OEMs are aiming at people who care about either clout or investment returns, not people who care about cars.
Yeah, but what about Pogs? Hmm? Surely that’s like the ‘SadWood’ version of this article.
As I recall, I was a little young for Pogs. Although a mitigating factor would have been the glacial pace at which trends arrived in remote Appalachia in those days.
As a northeast Ohioan I recall them being a mid 90s thing. I would’ve been 10 or 11yrs old, give or take. If there’s a yo-yo craze in my memory it was quite vague; though I think I had a light up Yomega. I believe that was post-pog for us.
I suppose the reference being even broke dicks could have pogs, thusly tying themselves to a prerequisite mid 90s shitbox that 3 people care about. Maybe I’m just the snobby kid to the party there.
I was very sheltered as a child (and I was the oldest kid in my family so no sibling to pass things down to me). The Silver Bullet II that nemesis had met an early end when an enfant terrible destroyed it during latchkey one day after school. I admired this kid immensely because he got to do whatever he wanted: play video games all day after school, wear JNCO jeans every day, listen to explicit rap music, eat candy all day at school, etc.
Most of my clothing in elementary school came from LL Bean or Brooks Brothers, although I did have a collection of motorsport-related t-shirts from the Speedgear catalog. No video games for a few more years, and I mostly listened to classical music OR instrumental surf guitar.
Oldest here myself so I get the awkward and forced trailblazing. We were middle class at best. I had an second hand Atari for awhile in my youth until someone broke in stealing the tv, vcr and my power supply - putting an end to that. When I finally got a Nintendo I received the gold plated Bible Adventures cartridge. Sure was fun playing Noah or guiding Moses down the river...
My mom was into a homemade clothes kick for awhile; between that and the haircuts I wasn’t the most popular. Eventually I got some Bugle Boy shirts which I’m sure were out of style but that’s fine. Nothing got me the grief my Spaulding brand Haikeem Olajuwon high tops did thinking I’d receive the grace of Jordan’s.
I too shared the love of surf rock and the “oldies” though nothing actually classical. Had the friend with the fee pass lifestyle and all the good toys by the time I was in 7th grade. I’m still close friends.
We went different ways. He squandered life for awhile but is now an EMT. I think I have just grown into a perpetual adolescent that keeps trying to get adult versions of all the things I wanted back then. At 39 I’m not sure it’s the best trait but I enjoy it enough.
So my snobby is tongue in cheek. I’m far from it, just have the automotive pallet to appreciate what’s worthwhile and recognize fads based around what was never cool. I didn’t want that shit then (and the ridicule) and I sure as shit don’t want it now.
Sheltered, huh? Try this episode on for size.
When I was in second-grade music class, the teacher had us take a quiz where we had to name a song that had a lot of complexity and many melodies. My dad loves classical music and in particular is a huge Bach fan. I'm pretty sure he has all of Bach's works, bundled up in CD box sets of several hundred discs each, the size of loaves of bread.
Anyway, I listed Bach, largely because that was what I was familiar with. My pride and ego took a body blow that day when I realized I wasn't nearly as cool as my classmate who listed "Ghostbusters."
They always write LOL but this time I LOLed.
Mr. McCoy, this is really good writing and also hilarious.
Thanks.
Thank YOU for reading!
" '90s yo-yo craze"?
Step aside, son. Yo-yos, like 3D movies, have had a number of crazes.
In the '50s and '60s Duncan did a lot of crossmarketing.
Free with a bag of Livesavers candies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVVYnphmMhA
Free with a box of cereal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjg22aBRnZ8
If only I could find my treasure trove of junk, I’d be well-positioned to capitalize on the next wave of yo-yo nostalgia.
I had forgotten about the '90s yo-yo craze until a few months ago when I was cleaning out my parents attic and found mine.
I chucked it in the trash. Which is where all these cars belong, too.
The yo-yos who attend these ostentatious circle jerks most likely all, to a person, parrot the Current Year claptrap about climate change and inequity. So it's hilarious to watch these people either line up to pay six and seven figures for these disposable, wasteful super status symbols, or merely whore themselves (biblically or otherwise) to the people who can afford them.
God only knows where my curated collection of yo-yos is now.
There was one vehicle that I left out of this rogues’ gallery, as it was present at The Quail, but not a new debut: The Gordon Murray T.50.
I would crawl naked through a field of broken glass for one of those and keep it forever, because I am confident that we shall never see its like again.
Damn, at a glance, the Bentley said Hyundai Genesis to me. A big luxury Genesis GT sounds like a great idea actually.
All the rest? Yawn! They aren't cars. They are just car shaped collectibles. And none of them are particularly attractive. Will this stupid bubble ever burst?
I did the same thing. That doesn't say much about Bentley if we're now mistaking them for a Genesis instead of vice versa. That didn't take long.
That Porsche GT3 with the prominent black plastic grill is kind of jarring. Totally against their design ethos, even in their front engined cars, like the Panamera and Cayenne. Now it looks like the last gen 350Z. Road and Track getting Gold all to itself is pretty silly. "Mistral" sounds too much like "Minstrel". Koenigsegg is the real deal, everything in their cars is built from the ground up by Rube Goldberg. Current Aston Martins look really really good in my opinion, but they are a similar deal to the Supra and Z4 twins. Outsourced engineering. When the Germans stop building these unpopular luxury sports cars, these niche luxury cars are going with them. Ford really cleaned up the act of some shaky companies, and were rewarded with a recession, too bad they couldn't have held onto Range Rover. Ceramic trim must be easy to clean!
I favored the Yomega Fireball in period. It is amazing to me that looking up all these yo-yos is far more interesting to me than learning about all these frivolous one offs and super exclusive cars. Back when I was slinging that sick yo-yo I never would have guessed this day would come but here we are. As Farah has said, unfortunately for us commoners these builders realize that they are much better off making a 100million from 100 cars vs 2000.
I caught the yo-yo craze as well in elementary school (my brother brought it home from middle school), I was struggling to remember brand names but the commenters finally made me recall. Yes I remember having a wooden "Duncan," I want to say that was the bare minimum to have something that had some sort of bearing surface to allow for the yo-yo to roll down and then spin freely on its axis (what was that term?) and yes the Yomega Fireball was as I recall as fancy as we ever got with them before the fad fizzled out. Later, once I was in middle school it was ALL about those folding aluminum Razor scooters.
We grew up (materially speaking) on the lower end of middle class I suppose and progressed into middle-middle class by the time I entered high school. We had a single TV in the house, a 1992 22" Magnavox TV and a 70s era cable box until 2007 or so, never had any game systems, we bought a new Compaq Presario at Staples in 1998 and that was a big deal to us, though with the pace of computer games and graphics cards it was obsolete right out of the box more or less, and we never updated it. It did run Janes ATF just fine along with Need For Speed II. Living in Central NY we never had AC in our house, we had 5-10 year old used Japanese cars, and never ate out at restaurants (at most 1-2 times per year for someone's birthday we'd go to a local place that had some $10-12 seafood and steak entrees in late 90s-early 00s dollars and I thought that was high end). Vacations involved tent camping, though we did fly back to visit family in Russia every other year or so so that took some funds. Honestly I never felt short changed or that I was missing out on anything. I remember being a bit jealous about my friend's nicer computers and N64s. My family bought our 98 Mazda MPV Allsport 4WD (loaded with leather, moonroof, etc) used in 2001 for $18k right before 9-11 and that was the first time I felt like that we were REALLY coming up in the world. I will say that we were the FIRST in our circle of Russian/Ukrainian emigres to buy a house, and by a wide margin at that: right off the bat two years after coming over in '92. My dad also paid off said house in about 5 years or so, THAT is where the money went I think.
The way McLaren's former communications director explained it to me when I asked if they would consider making an affordable sports car is that for something like the Miata, you have to make tens of thousands of them to break even and McLaren's total capacity is only about 4,000 annual units. Also, though he didn't say it like this, he made it clear that McLaren's current customers like the exclusivity of the brand and that making a mass market car might cheapen the brand in their eyes.
For what it's worth, he also volunteered "categorically no" when discussing the possibility of a McLaren SUV to compete with the other exoticar brands' people movers. As I said, he's now the former comm director there, and McLaren recently made it clear that they're considering something to compete with the Pursang and Urus.
Autocar interview with Michael Leiters; SUVs discussed:
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/new-mclaren-boss-suvs-very-attractive-supercar-firm