There are good ideas and there are bad ideas – and then there are those ideas that are so bad they come full circle and become good ideas. The corollary is also true: Really exceptional ideas can turn bad, if pushed beyond the bounds of good sense. Continue reading
WFNX and the Boston Phoenix are gone. Published and broadcast for 30 years, they were synonymous with college radio and the Boston college music scene. When Clear Channel bought the dial space, they moved radio operations to WFNX.com and, quite frankly, the playlist improved dramatically. Sadly, two days ago it all went down. An institution has vanished, leaving a void to be filled with yet more corporate radio.*
Because you need to hear Stairway to Heaven just one more zillion times. Continue reading
Like many of us, I was indoctrinated at a very young age into the Cult Of Car by my father. He probably didn’t even know he was force-feeding me the Kool-Aid. Regardless, I’m pretty sure my first word was ‘car.’ Which is good, because it could have been a lot of other things.
Car shopping is either a joy or a chore, depending on your automotive disposition. Regardless, it’s always better to shop when you don’t actually need to spend the money. Casually browsing, whether surfing eBay or wandering around Burt’s Used BMW Emporium and Sushi Bodega, is less stressful if you know you can just keep driving your current heap.
My friend Dale Olson has a long commute, travelling daily from his home in River Falls, WI to Eagan, MN, something near 100 miles roundtrip. His 2002 Subaru Impreza 2.5 TS wagon, purchased new, has recently sailed passed 152,000 miles. Having the body thoroughly rust-proofed when new, Dale says, has helped it immensely.
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An occasional TTS reader, who is also a Porsche 911 fanatic, told me he likes the blog but asked when we are going to cover some “real” cars? Considering some of the very real cars we have covered, I can only take that to mean that down there in Oak Ridge, Tennessee where the scientists glow green in the dark (also, incidentally, where my the aforementioned reader lives and works) “real” must somehow equate to squat, rear-engined, and German. If I were to accept that definition, in my world it would also mean “air-cooled” – as nature intended. But alas, he’s a water-cooled Porsche junkie. Nonetheless, the dialog reminded me of a sad chapter in my own life – related to the last of the Porsche 911s – the 993 – a car just like the car featured here which can be found on Cars.com here in Marin County, California for a very reasonable $31,555.
The Car Hobby and the Friends We Make: In Memory of Stu Hammel
The classic Mercedes-Benz community, and I personally, lost a great friend today – Stu Hammel of Reading, Pennsylvania, born September 20, 1948, and died today, January 4, 2012 after losing a relatively short battle with cancer. He was just 63 years old. But Stu’s passing is not the focus of this article. Rather, his life is the focus, and the friendships we build through our passion for things automotive.
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11 Comments | tags: Bentley, Car Buddies, Citroen, Grand 600, Internaional M-100 Group, Mercedes Enthusiast Magazine, Mercedes-Benz, Rolls-Royce, Stu Hammel, Techno Classic Essen, Tejas de Brasil | posted in Commentary, Story Time!