Weekly Roundup: Tell Me More About The Area Code Rule Edition

The curious combination of rural road trip, open-lapping weekend, time trial, vo-tech auto shop class, drunken bender, hotel-room makeout session, and forced march known as "PCOTY" has finally shambled to its conclusion. I can confirm that the winner has at least two seats, 384 horsepower, and six forward gears. I can also confirm that the event was in no way free of mechanical and technical difficulties.

If you're fascinated by the PCOTY process --- and why wouldn't you be, I asked innocently? --- then you'll be able to read about the individual cars, and some interesting sidebar features, on the Road&Track site in the weeks to come. Not just from me, mind you; brother Bark and his Boss 302 also stopped by to help out with the testing.

For obvious reasons, I haven't published much this week... but let's roll tape on what's out there, shall we?

We have nothing from Bark this week. Go follow him on Instagram or Twitter (BarkM302) to see what he's been doing, I think it will be a click well spent.

The first of my PCOTY articles, done on the fly between driving stints, is Flat Out. Yes, I know who wrecked the car, but I have some sympathy because the pace was remarkably high, the road was unknown to him, and nobody was hurt.

Over at TTAC we have Sir, Put Down The Burrito. The comments on this are remarkable; people respond to the idea that texting-and-driving is not the only, or even the most serious, cause of accidents out there with the unbridled hysteria that earlier cultures saved for the Black Death.

Finally, there's the catchily-named Return Of The Max, a think piece about FWD luxury. One commenter offered the idea of instead taking the M37 and demoting it to Nissan duty. I think that's a good idea, too. Call it the 810 Marauder or something.

One last thing. I don't plan to write about the VW diesel situation. It's being written to death around the globe and every half-baked wanna-be "analyst" with zero job experience outside of blogging and living off their parents has already sounded off on the topic. I am going to write about the coffee-shop owner who slept with fifty Asheville women in two years and rated them all mercilessly, because that is a semiotic goldmine with veins two miles deep. Come back tomorrow.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to sleep the sleep of the just, or the damned, either way. Well, first I have to go to work. But then: sleep, perchance to dream of three girls out on the town with no wedding rings and no inhibitions. And it was just a dream, because Larry Webster yelled at me to leave the gas station and get the Ferrari over to the NCM garages IMMEDIATELY. Like the man said,

It don't pay to think too much On things you leave behind