Results for: History

Volkswagen: Porsche Puppet

I am a fan of the brands that make up the Volkswagen Auto Group (VW AG) family, though the titular automaker is flailing between two contrasting philosophies (which I’ll disseminate in a elsewhere). Ruthlessness has been both of a bane and a blessing for the monster that Volkswagen AG. Thanks to a series of remarkably barbarous CEOs and/or indirect founders, the Wolfsburg based automaker has

Volkswagen Beetle: Car-Magnon

It is awful to articulate, but the prototypical Volkswagen model: the Beetle (both because it was first and because it is the ideal vision for the company), is Hitler’s only acceptable enterprise. Despite rampant state corruption, the end result of the Volkswagen project was an automotive checkpoint, that laid ground for future automobiles. It was Hitler, that listed the stipulations that eventual

Embryonic Automotive Era

Any time a revolutionary new technology is introduced, a period of plethoric propagation follows. It was no different during the rise of automakers in the embryonic Twentieth Century. Up until October 24th, 1929 (Black Thursday (the stock Market Crash)), the only thing standing between an engineer and an automaker; was creativity, talent and drive. People were essentially popping out of the woodw

Driving Is not What it Used to Be

Before there were large stretches of tarmac covering the earth; there was dirt. During the period in which that was true, people gladly drove atop it. Today, most people would be utterly appalled by the very notion that they could be so insultingly inconvenienced by having to drive on anything but pristinely smooth cement. Back then, people were still in the midst of a wave of awe to even have su

What is a Super Car

The Lamborghini Miura is often mistakenly charged of being a supercar. An argument can be made, that today, a 40 year old model is super-, but that would only be true assuming it exists in the contemporary alone. However, that is not the case, each Lamborghini Miura that exists now has been alive for over 40 years. This is a testament to the Modena manufacturing magic it was made with. Despite th

The Original not Supercar

For the first supercar Sunday, I will start with the first ever ‘supercar,’ the Lamborghini Miura. With that in mind, I respectfully reject the title of ‘supercar’ thrust upon the Miura. This is not because the car is not spectacular, but because the super- prefix has an unintended consequence of implying a debilitating weakness. The Lamborghini Miura is more Clark Kent than Superman. Before cont

The Problem With Our Infrastructure

Eventually, another Dwight D Eisenhower like federal push will be necessary to modernize our ailing automotive infrastructure. Otherwise, the horrendous service we have today will keep us in a perpetual state of just below outrage. The problem, this time around, will be aesthetics. In 1956, the Federal-Aid Act yielded essentially immediate ostensible results; you could see workers actually making

Governmentally Mandated Safety

Automotive safety and government usually go hand in hand, because if it were up to automakers, there would be no general standard. If it were not for governmental mandates, I guarantee that inherent automotive safety would not be where it is now. However, that is not to say that it would be entirely absent, the average would just be much lower. The problem with laissez-faire economics, is that it

The First Lamborghini Ever Made: Not the 350 GT

Ferruccio Lamborghini was inspired by an insult to create a ferocious V12 high performance luxury car. Said insult was Enzo Ferrari’s response to Lamborghini’s critique of the 250 GT (easily one of the most coveted cars of all time). Ferruccio told Enzo that the car was too loud and too stiff to be used on normal roads, and that the clutch was subpar. Ferrari asserted that the problem

The Duality of Lamborghini: Practicality Rivalry to Bankruptcy

Ferruccio Lamborghini was an exceedingly practical man. He was born into a family of grape farmers in 1916. Due to his early onset fascination with engines, the Italian air force employed his services as mechanic. It was in the little Greek island of Rhodes, where Lamborghini became a mechanical artist. Glossing over the fact that he fought for the axis powers, he was a stupendousengineer, of the