Originally Posted by Jedi54

well written and interesting point of view.

RIP Rotary, it's been a fun ride.

Originally Posted by kvndoom

Looking at some of the really great cars to have died off in the past several years, I wonder why manufacturers don't just leave certain low-volume models available as "build to order," provided it's built in a facility already used for other cars (so you don't keep a plant open for 140 cars a year). Then they don't sit on lots for months or years, and get sold for ridiculous discounts. BUT they can still be bought by people who love them. A dream, I know, but it would be sweet.

Originally Posted by dynamho

My favorite is the comment by Dominican made Wed 24 Aug 2011 4:14 PM.



"actually, this article has led me to point out a gripe I've seen with you fellow jalops. Yea, I respect most of you for knowing so much about cars, and it's cool that there is a lot of knowledge here, but the reason I joined this site was because of the awesomeness manifasto (read it here [jalopnik.com] Here it states that we love cars, and our lives are shaped by it. Here's a quote:

"But for every Cadillac CTS-V, there are five fat and lazy Toyota Avalons or, worse, bloated-disguised-as-fun machines like the Ford Taurus SHO (the new one, not the old one)"

And you know what, Ray is right, and it is our job to keep this manifesto alive and active. However what I see more often than not is fellow jalops loving cars, talking this and that about cars and they way they are awesome, and then they go out and buy an explorer (exploder), or a Civic (non Si), or *GASP* some jalops drive camrys! Now, I understand everyone has responsibility, but I call shenanigans!! Don't let life get in the way of your passion for cars, get that Volvo 240, drive it daily, ram it into a wall and bask in its reliability. Modify that civic to your liking, drop in an H22, or maybe add a turbo, get that BMW, in manual form, with the bigger engine, for some fun.

No one has a real excuse for allowing life to get in the way. If your spouse refuses to learn stick shift, you married the wrong person, if you need a cargo van to move your kids around, your priorities are all wrong, go read jezebel, if you NEED that camry for life, then get a miata on the side. If you're still too poor, at least make sure your camry is of the manual kind, if you're poor and have only one arm? Well, I guess you have an excuse.

Otherwise, I'm calling you out on your ****. I've daily driven a 1985 M535i, when I could have, and should have, gotten a sensible accord for the same price. The engine had issues, and the driveshaft was going, but I drove that to work, to college, to bang my girlfriend, then back home. It was a pig on gas, so I made sacrifices, I didn't go out with friends to eat, I didn't take vacations. Why? because I love cars.

Yea, you, the impala driver jalop, are the reason the RX-8, the Supra, the Celica, the Prelude, the S2000, the NSX, the RX-7, the alfas, and every other interesting car is dead. We are the ones that have to buy them to show our interest.

Put your money where your mouth is."

Originally Posted by pauljones

Okay, I'm about to be the ******* party-crasher and disagree with this to a certain extent. But before I do, please know that you've long since been heart-clicked, for whatever that's worth.

That being said, here we go:

Yeah, and you know what, I'm one of those guys. I got a steal on a brand-new Corolla when I moved cross country, and given that I just spent a shitload of money on the move, I wanted something simple and cheap that could get the job done. Sure, I could have bought a used Mustang for roughly the same price. But the catch is that a brand new car is easier to insure, and also much easier to get a loan with a decent interest rate. Throw in the uncertainty of buying something used, and in my situation, it made a whole hell of a lot more sense to buy the new Corolla and be done with it so that I could move and get settled in my new job and new home.

Sure, I'd love to ram my one car, my only car, and indeed the only form of transportation I can afford into a wall right now. That sounds like a brilliant idea. I'd love to do an engine swap, too. Right on the street where I park, with the portable car lift that I keep folded up in my coat closet, and the tools that I store underneath my kitchen sink. Sounds like great fun. Sure, I may get a nice, nasty ticket for it, but what the hell. It's only money, right? And besides, it's not like it's my only form of transportation. I could walk the 12 miles to work (and 12 miles home) everyday while I'm doing the engine swap on my car in the street with the tools and equipment that I don't actually have. In fact, I think I'll try that this weekend.

You're right. There's no real excuse for letting life circumstances impact our car-buying decisions. Just like there's no real excuse for letting life circumstances get in the way of telling your landlord to **** off when they come asking for monthly rent, or for those times when you're, you know, hungry and need to buy food to eat. No real excuse at all.

And of course, the only reason for buying a van of any kind can only possibly be for moving kids around. It can't have anything to do with needing one for work, or needing the single most practical vehicle that you can find (and afford) that will fit your life needs as closely as possible. But, you know, if my life needs happen to include things outside of street racing or drifting, clearly I'm an inferior life form; especially if I can't afford the price of entry, maintenance, parking, gas, and insurance on a second car that I'll drive all of twice a week. I mean really, how pathetic am I?

Maybe, in order to make up for how pathetic it is that I have actual life circumstances that I need to take into account, I'll take a sardonic swipe another blog that caters to women, and thus attempt to degrade not only other guys by inferring that they are women, but also women by inferring that they are pitiful, inferior creatures.

Wait, you mean that in your tireless passion for cars, you actually made time for one of those things called girls? Dude, what's wrong with you? Clearly, your priorities need some re-arranging.

So, yeah, congratulations. You drove a (very cool) beater of a car around while you were in college, living with your parents, and using their driveway/garage/tools to perform needed maintenance on your car, all while getting food, drink, and roof over your head for no charge whatsoever. Anyone who has moved out of their parents house to stand on their own two feet in life is clearly doing it wrong.

Oh, so you don't mean me, the Corolla-driving (and formally Saturn-driving) Jalop? You just mean people who drive a Chevrolet Impala of any vintage, like say, an original 1958 Impala convertible? Or, when you said "impala driver jalop", did you mean that as a general category to stuff all non-sports-car-driving Jalopnik readers/commenters into?

You bet. Whatever money I have left over after putting food in my mouth so that I can live and appreciate cars. All kinds of cars. Big cars, little cars, fast cars, slow cars, and sometimes, cars just for the slope of their hood. Because that's the philosophy that Jalopnik was built on, was it not?

Or should I put my foot in my mouth as well?

I'm an old-school commenter that's been around Jalopnik for the internet equivalent of forever and a day. And who knows, maybe this post will get me de-starred and banned, thus making it my last post. If that's what happens, then so it goes.

But before I get de-starred, banned, etc., let me share with you a little bit about what I remember Jalopnik being, way back in 2004 when I first ran across this site. I first found this place looking for information about the then-new 2005 Mustang and Corvette. I came for that information. But what kept me coming back was the attitude of the writers, editors, and the then small, invite-only commentariat. Here were a bunch of guys who loved cars. Some of them had old classic cars that they maintained flawlessly. Some of them had old eventually-I'll-get-around-to-it projects sitting in their yards. Some had thoroughly modern cars with modern performance. Others had something somewhere in between, be it a fifteen-year-old beater Toyota or a five-year-old truck they used to pull jet skis.

But regardless of what they drove, they had several things in common. They loved automobiles. They enjoyed driving their cars. They enjoyed doing maintenance on their cars. They enjoyed comparing their cars and sharing the strengths and weaknesses of their cars. They liked to talk about lots of different cars; cars that they owned, cars that they used own, cars that they wanted to own, and cars that they didn't own. They enjoyed giving each other advice, tips, and tricks on everything from changing a fan belt to getting the best traction off the line at a grassroots racing event. They also had something else in common: They didn't give a flying **** what you drive, as long as you cared for your car properly and were willing to talk about it and other cars with them.

That's all they asked and all they wanted.

And, of course, being car guys (emphasis on "guys", as to my recollection, there was only one woman at the time, and she was an infrequent commenter at that), there was no shortage of irreverent humor involved, and we got a good laugh out of each other left and right. It was all part of the fun. But at the end of the day, all that mattered was that we had a good time talking about cars; it didn't matter what cars, or whether we owned them or not. Armchair general talk, practical talk, "get off my lawn" talk, it didn't matter. As long as it had to do with the one thing that everyone had in common: cars.

As time went on, the one thing that we noticed was that it always seemed like fewer and fewer people cared about cars. It was getting harder and harder to find books about cars or automotive history. Car mags had gone from talking about cars to posting scantily-clad girls on their covers. Kids were more interested in either jacking off to said scantily-clad cover models or texting inane little messages to each other. Or watching South Park, a show that they didn't actually possess the contextual knowledge to understand, but were amused by because of the random cussing.

We starting talking about why it was that that was happening, and ways that we could go out and teach kids about the basics of car maintenance, if not our passion for cars. We talked about outreach activities that we could partake in both individually and in our communities to help inspire a new generation of car enthusiasts. In fact, several of us planned and hosted such events in our communities.

We did this because we inherently knew that kids can't be interested in what they don't know about.

About that time, as the Awesomeness Manifesto points out, Jalopnik began to move away from that and into something more aligned with mainstream snark. Ray was put in the impossible situation of having keep a car enthusiast site running that non-car enthusiasts would be click on for a few seconds before moving on, in order to have their decision to buy this or that vehicle reinforced. Instead of automotive how-tos, tips, tricks, or history, the site became about competing marketing and press releases. Which car had bigger, better numbers on paper. Which car was more stylish than which. Which car was more likely to get you laid than which.

That alienated a lot of the commenters that made this site what it was. No longer was this a place where we could just come, hang out, and have a good old time talking about cars and learning things. It became a mass-market media outlet focused on selling whatever sensationalistic article title they could. Why? Because Gawker told Ray to do that, and Ray had no choice, as Ray likes getting a pay check. But at the end of the day, that mainstream shift did far more harm to Gawker and Jalopnik than good, as the Awesomeness Manifesto itself acknowledges:

"Then came the Carpocalypse. Our Gawker overlords — hoping for the best but preparing for the worst — forced me to cut our editorial budget in half while simultaneously demanding increased traffic. At first, I pushed back. I overspent my budget. I paid writers' fees out of my own pocket. I did whatever I could to forestall the inevitable, but I wasn't strong enough to do it forever.

A year ago this month, I caved. I did what I was told, dampening our smart and snarky voice. I moved Murilee from daily to weekend duty and let go of many new names. Instead of looking forward while remembering the past, I forced my overworked and undersupported team to stumble blindly across the post-Carpocalypse automotive desert. We chased the same carrot as Autoblog, Motor Trend, and the rest, pursuing what we were told was the "growth segment" of the automotive universe — general consumers and non-enthusiasts.

In the end, it was little more than a mirage, one made of nanny-state-bloated hybrids, crossovers, and shitboxes. These vanilla appliances were built for the Big Gulp-fattened, cow-like masses, not enthusiasts like us. But we were hungry for cheap traffic, and we gorged, competing over meaningless press releases and page-view-whoring galleries because there was nothing else on the table. And dammit, we were good at it."

Ray knew what was happening as well as the rest of us, and did his best to stem it. But, ultimately, Ray's lone efforts were not enough. It took us, as the collective commentariat, to prove Ray right in the eyes of Gawker. And we did. Thus, the Awesomeness Manifesto was created, and it attempted to pick up right where we had left off: finding ways to unite as automotive lovers, and share our interest with our communities in a way that was beneficial not only to the automotive community, but to the community as a whole. For that, I tip my hat to Ray, Matt, etc.

But the Awesomeness Manifesto, while a breath of fresh air and a huge relief, also brought with it a dark side from the the carpocalypse days: the incessant need to be judgment snobs simply because we knew more about cars than most other people. And we've seen that dark side manifest itself over and over again. Commenters, even the most well-meaning of them all, came to start subtly denigrating people merely based on the car that they drove in real life, rather than for lauding people for their passion about cars and anything automotive related. It's almost like horribly dystopian automotive **** hell from the deepest corners of Murilee Martin's (may the automotive gods continue to grant him good health and awesomeness) subconscious fears.

Comments like the one that started this thread are an example of that.

I know that you mean well, but read what you typed.

Seriously, read it. Tell me at what point you are doing anything to truly encourage automotive passion. Because all I read is subtle denigration of people who don't share your view of what an awesome car is.

As an old-school Jalop, I'll tell you what we old-school commenters knew a long time ago: The key to creating the next generation of automotive enthusiasts has nothing to do with Facebook, or Twitter, or teaching that Miatas are awesome and Camrys are for beige, boring **** who know nothing about cars.

The key to creating a new generation of car enthusiasts is teaching them that they can be just as connected with their cars as they can be with their iPhones. It's about teaching them how quickly and easily they can do something important and responsible like changing tires, brakes, and oil on there car, and letting them feel the sense of accomplishment that comes with doing those things. Building the next generation of enthusiasts is as simple as giving kids the self-confidence that they need, only using automotive-related activities to build that self-confidence. Once they build their self-confidence fixing cars, they'll associate that confidence with a passion for cars and bingo....a lifelong car enthusiast is born.

It's really that simple.

Hell, the Awesomeness Manifesto explicitly points that out:

"This new audience needs an old-school champion, a voice that looks forward while still looking back. Jalopnik can be that champion, but only if we're willing to stand up for what got us here. We need to regain the snarky, contrarian and often-times libertarian-minded voice that Spinelli created, Johnson honed, Lieberman championed with the commenters, and I foolishly mass-marketed. But that voice needs more than just a you-are-there-quality. As a first step, I've hired Sam Smith to be our new Features Editor, to help the site ooze automotive enthusiasm from every pore and pixel. We want to continue to provide an independent and intelligent viewpoint on the stuff that matters, but we also want to do it in a way that's accessible to (and engaging for) newcomers."

And yet, that hasn't happened as it ought to have. Instead, we're too busy insulting each other or judging each other based on what kind of car we bought, or what kind of car our wives bought, or whatever other irrational, dumbfuck reason we can think of to pass an irrational, dumbfuck judgment on whomever has a slight difference of opinion with us.

If that's what this is all going to be about, then I'll see you guys around. I'd rather expend my energy teaching kids how to be confident in themselves, developing their skills, and letting them use those skills as a basis for self-esteem.

I'd rather them know how to change a tire than know who designed the latest Ferrari. Odds are, these kids will never so much as touch a Ferrari. But they'll have plenty of opportunities to deal with their tires, and a knowledge and understanding of what makes a car work will go much farther towards making them enthusiasts than thinking that people's worth are based on the cars that they drive.

We know what we have to do. We have to build a positive environment that kids can learn and be comfortable in. it's very clearly stated in the Awesomeness Manifesto.

And yet, we don't do it. We simply perpetuate moronic stereotypes.

Why don't we put our money where our mouths are and start reaching out to kids in a positive manner, as we swore we would in the Awesomeness Manifesto?

Instead of trying to teach kids what's "cool" or "uncool", let's try to teach them the skills they need to understand cars, and then let them decide what's "cool" or "uncool" for themselves.