i was on the highway the other day when i saw a green Honda Accord doing 50mph in the fast lane. it had its turn signal on, displaying intent to switch lanes and therefore allowing the growing line of cars behind to pass it, but seemed too timid to actually do anything because traffic in the next lane was going too fast. having seen the queue of impatient motorists, i avoided the fast lane and cheerfully passed Green Accord only to have it tear past me three exits later doing twice the speed of sound in the slow lane.

having slowed to an unreasonably low speed again, i caught up to Green Accord a few minutes later and was soon only a few car lengths behind it and closing. i watched as Green Accord, with turn signal blinking wildly, drifted slowly into the next lane like a fat man settling into an enormous bean bag. having successfully switched lanes, Green Accord extinguished its turn signal only to suddenly and inexplicably swerve back in front of me only moments later. fortunately for me, i was able to avoid a rear-end collision by switching lanes and, as i passed Green Accord, took a glance at the clattering idiot behind the wheel.

i’m not sure what i was expecting, but an elderly woman with a weapons-grade scowl was not it.

call me crazy, but i would definitely consider owning a Suzuki Wagon R if i lived in Asia. this prime example–which is actually a Suzuki Wagon R RR i spotted in Taipei last year–sports a relatively simple body kit, tuned suspension and Spoon SW88 wheels (or, more likely, SW88 knockoffs) which makes it look pretty awesome, if only in a quirky sort of way.

i love small Japanese city cars like the Wagon R because, while they probably can’t do 0-60mph in under ten seconds or lap the Nürburgring in under ten minutes, they’ll weave through traffic, haul a lot of crap, squeeze into all but the tightest of parking spaces and make you smile.

or possibly cry.

ESPN has a poll on their website right now where you can decide the driver of the decade by choosing from a preselected list of what ESPN consider the world’s best drivers. on said list are Valentino Rossi, Sébastien Loeb, Michael Schumacher, Tom Kristensen and Bernd Schneider and quite rightly so. but then there’s some redneck from NASCAR, an Indy car champion who looks like a former special needs child and some guy who races dragsters.

COME ON.

where’s Stéphane Peterhansel, Marcus Grönholm, Mat Mladin, Andy Priaulx and Nobuhiro Tajima just to name a few? are you telling me that they’re lesser drivers than the Americans on this list who drive in a straight line or around a big oval for hours on end? give me a break.

credit where credit’s due:

WRC: congratulations to Petter Solberg for edging out Sébastien Ogier by 1.1 seconds in the very last stage to claim second place, to Ogier for getting on the WRC podium for the second time ever, to Ken Block for giving it a good shot during his debut and to Sébastien Loeb for winning his fourth successive Rally Mexico.

Oscars: congratulations to the cast and crew of The Hurt Locker for winning a total of six academy awards last night by beating Dances with Blue Cat People for Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Film Editing, Best Director and Best Picture.

so my brother of CornerSpeedPhoto fame is in Florida right now covering the Daytona 200 AMA superbike races this weekend. since he’s friends with a few of the racers, he’s convinced some of them to run CornerSpeedPhoto stickers on their bikes this season. for this weekend’s races, said stickers are on the Buell 1125Rs of Shawn Higbee and Paul James:



plus the Suzuki GSX-R of Skip Salenius:

it seems that i’ve angered someone at the Avanti Owners Association International when i called the boldly styled Studebaker Avanti “kind of ugly” in yesterday’s entry. in his forum post, the offended party asserts that i must have been severely drunk that night which, in his mind, must be the only logical explanation for my gross misjudgment.

fine, but let me ask you this: isn’t alcohol supposed to make things look better rather than worse?

say hello to the Studebaker Avanti, a car that i’m guessing most of you have never seen or heard of before. don’t worry, though, because i hadn’t either until i stumbled out of a Las Vegas sushi restaurant one night and found this gleaming example parked next to my Japanese econobox. seeing the Avanti shocked me in the same way that a flock of nude cyclists would shock an old Alabaman woman who’s in the middle of her very first driving lesson.

i had heard of the Studebaker name before but only in reference to the electric vehicles they were producing in the early 1900s. Studebaker was from a bygone era and therefore no longer relevant so i filed it away with the likes of the biplane and steam locomotive as an engineering stepping stone that has been thankfully left behind. little did i know that Studebaker remained active well into the ’60s, producing such bravely styled marvels as the Hawk, Lark, and the Avanti before dying a slow, agonizing death from financial exsanguination.

the Studebaker Avanti is a bit of a rarity with only 4,643 built during its 18 month production run. this explains why i had never seen one until then and why i’ll probably never see one ever again. it seems, then, that the Avanti is more of an apparition than an actual car, an elusive vestige of the American automotive industry that once was. the Avanti is an endangered species.

oh well. it’s kind of ugly anyway.