Saturday, April 03, 2010
Good car writing
I admit, I like good writing about cars, and Dan Neil does it very well. Neil was a columnist for Car and Driver back in the day, and has just signed up for a new gig at the Wall Street Journal. So it goes. Anyway, his review of the new Mustang is a great start. Check out this bit:
The Ford Mustang is rapidly becoming America's low-rent, GED-educated version of the Porsche 911. They've both been around since the mid-'60s, both core syntax in automotive culture, both as rich with symbolism as the Book of Kells. Both cars are bound as if by blood oath to an inferior technology: in the case of the Porsche, the less-than-optimum rear-engine layout; for the Mustang, the widely disdained—though damned effective—solid rear axle, as opposed to an independent rear suspension. And both cars, by their sheer longevity, are examples of a kind of engineering perfectibility, as their respective design teams continue to refine and improve the car, year after year, in a kind of Darwinian fire of adaptation. They may be platypuses but you won't find a better duck-billed fur-bearing egg-layer anywhere.
Politics would be a lot more interesting if political writers were that evocative.
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Apr 03, 09:04:00 AM:
So why the dig at Palin? And why fallacious defense of CAFE tacked on to a car review?
By 
TigerHawk, at
Sat Apr 03, 09:32:00 AM:
I read it as a dig at Alaska. Anyway, I never let minor partisan digs get in the way of enjoying good writing. The real problem is that there are not more outstanding writers on the right.
By Neil Sinhababu, at
Sat Apr 03, 12:32:00 PM:
I'd like it best if they could be evocative about policy proposals rather than politicians.
By The Window Manager, at
Sat Apr 03, 06:22:00 PM:
Actually this review was pathetic.
If I read a car review, I don't expect to get a dose of politics or even know the political bent of the reviewer.
If I read a blog, yeah sure. A opinion aritlce, definitely. A general news article, probably. And I am not going to get bent out of shape.
But a review of a car, a sports article, a movie review, and so on then politics and snide political statements are checked at the door. Having these in such an article just distracts, doesn't have a place, and allows bad political discourse to be put into all aspects of life. It is like having the brother-in-law who is a bore who injects politics (or religion) into every single solitary conversation. You wouldn't put up with it then, but for some reason you do in this case.
