(Last) Weekly Roundup: Caution, Driving! Edition

My son gave this to me over the weekend --- it was something that he wrote up shortly after we wrapped up PCOTY testing. I'd let him sit on my lap and steer the AMG C63-S around our little neighborhood. He was pretty good at it; I never had to correct his line. A few of the parents in the 'hood were a little worked-up about it, but those are the same parents who get upset that my 7-year-old is riding an electric motorcycle around while their kids of the same age still have training wheels.

After the jump, we'll have John Baruth's first foray into road-test writing, as well as the usual roundup of what his father and uncle have been up to.

Here's the text of it, along with the final few words that he wrote on the back. There are a few misspellings, which I've preserved since the last issue of Cycle World I read also preserved misspellings.

"Yesss" I whispered. I was getting to steer an over 100,1000$ dollar car. The car was dark blue with a red inside and a black top. It was very fast. A company had my dad show everybody the very now car. The car wasn't even for sale so people would want to buy it. I felt embarrassed, scared and cool. I felt like I had a lot of pressure on me. But I decided so... I DID!!! We backed out of the driveway beep beep beep should we really do this?" I asked. "Sher!" my dad replied. So we got into the car BUMP we were in. Then beep! Then we turned around we drove to the first corner the trees stood still as statues and it was as quiet as a empty hallway... WE MADE IT!!! . "Yess" I meanwhile we spotted some of my friends "Hi" I softly yelled they were ery surprised. In about 2 minutes I saw home but I decided to go around again! Sooooo we did it over all again!!! Sooo we went around all the corners all the stuff but it was still very fun. Then it was time for the hardest part we had to back into the drivway. WE MADE IT!! and that was the first time that I got to steer a car.

Obviously there are some sharp criticisms to be made. I don't know who the fuck he thinks he is, skipping the Oxford comma halfway through the first paragraph. And the detour into cliche-ish metaphor makes me wonder if he's actually Zach Bowman's kid, not mine. (He'd be better-looking, were that the case; Zach is very handsome.)

Overall, however, it's better than about 75% of the submissions we get at TTAC, and it would easily win the Motor Press Guild annual writing award, mostly because you can A/B it with the press release for the C63 and find no similarities whatsoever.

Now let's see what Dad and Uncle Bark managed to "softly yell" at the readers this week:

This piece on How Is The Dealer Screwing You was the big register-ringer for TTAC this week, and deservedly so. His Two Hundred Posts Later retrospective brought out the grouches and the fans in equal measure.

I enjoyed the sweet, sweet taste of incel tears when I wrote To M3 or Not To M3. Incidentally, if you'd like to add Edward's Audi to your fleet, or just ask him for photos of my housekeeper, the Craigslist ad for the Audi is right here.

The Low Spark Of High Performance Compacts gave a lot of people a chance to gripe about the current state of affordable FWD hot hatches, and it featured one of the more hilarious autism-spectrum serial comment strings from valued customer "Pch101".

At R&T, I considered the glacial acceleration of autonomous cars and told the story, already somewhat familiar to readers here, of how Mrs. Baruth crashed her MX-5 Cup car.

This was also the week for my print articles on the Ford Focus RS and trackday coaches to appear online.

Come back next week --- we might not have anything from John, but Jack and Bark will still be shoveling away at the coalface, so to speak!