Mereja

Author: David E. Davis, Jr.

  • David E. Davis, Jr.: Spring Arrives and All Sorts of Weird Stuff Shows up Along the Roadside – Column


    Musings on Keith Crain, Ralph Nader, roundabouts, and pickups for politicians.

    Once Keith Had a Secret Love…

    Automotive News is the bible of the automobile industry. Not only does it make that claim for itself, but it is generally accepted as fact by most of the people in all the far corners of the automotive universe. I once testified to that effect in a court of law, at the invitation of Mr. Keith Crain, owner and ­editor-in-chief, who was suing some snapper-wrapper newspaper that was foolishly using the words “Automotive News” to head a column of car stuff gleaned from press releases and Internet gossip. I am much too modest to suggest that my testimony carried the day for Mr. Crain, but that is the case. He thanked me, gave me a plaque commemorating the event, then went back to cordially disliking me.

    Keep Reading: David E. Davis, Jr.: Spring Arrives and all Sorts of Weird Stuff Shows up Along the Roadside – Column

    No related posts.

  • David E.’s Take: Automatic Ferraris

    David E. Davis, Jr.I really enjoy shifting gears manually. I also enjoy shifting gears manually without using the clutch. It absolutely blows the minds of pre-teen grandchildren. A car that will forever stand at the top of my Automotive Pantheon is a Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France. It belonged to a friend named Bill Pearce who was in the automotive film business, doing training films, promotional films, and the occasional commercial. Bill asked if I’d like to drive the TdF for a weekend in 1960. One thing led to another and I drove that car more or less regularly for more than a year. It was crude and noisy and it had a triangular fake-ivory shift knob with an equally fake jewel in its center, and every hour spent driving it was a preview of heaven.

    Now Ferrari has spoken sotto voce to trusted journalists and friends-of-the-firm that manual transmissions are declared obsolete and future Ferraris will all feature automatics. The Ferrari California will be their last car with a clutch and a shift lever. There is something wrong with this picture. Could it be that as Ferrari has worked harder and harder to produce two-passenger parade floats for fat-ass fop non-enthusiasts, the percentage of greaseballs in that target market who actually know how to shift gears has slipped below acceptable levels?

    Thank God there’s still Porsche.

    Related posts:

    1. David E.’s Take: What Luxury Should Be
    2. David E.’s Take: Why Toyota Should Think Small Again
    3. David E.’s Take: GoDaddy Goes Badly

  • David E.’s Take: Remembering Jerry York

    David E. Davis, Jr.Jerry York died yesterday of a burst aneurysm in his brain.  He was not a friend of mine, barely even an acquaintance, but I admired him greatly and always wished that somebody would hire him to run a major automobile company.

    Where the automobile industry was concerned, he was always a bridesmaid never a bride.  He knew them better than they knew themselves and his suggestions and criticisms were always succinct and on the money.  This last is probably especially appropriate because the money side was where he did his best work. When Carroll Shelby was acting as an advisor and contractor to the Iacocca-run Chrysler Corporation, I would meet him for dinner regularly and he would always have something to tell me about Jerry York and all those somethings added up to high praise indeed. I’m sorry he died, but I’m doubly sorry that he died without getting to run his dream of a GM/Renault-Nissan merged corporation.

    Related posts:

    1. David E.’s Take: What Luxury Should Be
    2. David E.’s Take: Why Toyota Should Think Small Again
    3. David E.’s Take: GoDaddy Goes Badly

  • David E. Davis, Jr.: If the Original Henry Ford Was Still Alive, He’d be Building Subarus – Column

    Davis-column-placement

    Malcolm Bricklin made a lot of mistakes, but his infatuation with Subaru wasn’t one of them.

    It isn’t unusual for me to fall hopelessly in love with one of my own cars, and I’ve owned dozens. I loved my first car, the 1935 Mercedes custom-bodied roadster that I bought for a thousand dollars from an Air Force colonel in the very early Fifties. I loved my MG TD, my Peugeot 403, my Triumph TR3, my Chevelle SS396 with the Hurst ratchet shifter, my ’65 Land Rover 109 with the tropical roof, my Volvo “Boss Wagon” (a C/D project car), my Lincoln Mark VII modified by Jack Roush, my ’39 Chevy raced by Fangio, my purple Porsche 968, and every Chevrolet or GMC Suburban I’ve ever owned.

    Cars that I could not bring myself to love included a 1952 Ford Consul, a Rambler station wagon, a Mercedes pagoda-roof 230SL, a Ferrari 328GTS, an early Viper, and a deeply troubled Range Rover from the BMW era. There was also a Jeep CJ7 that refused to shift into four-wheel drive one morning because its driveline had fallen out.

    Keep Reading: David E. Davis, Jr.: If the Original Henry Ford Was Still Alive, He’d be Building Subarus – Column

    Related posts:

    1. David E. Davis, Jr.: Have You Driven a Lincoln Lately? – Column
    2. David E. Davis Jr.: Rick Transit Gloria – Column
    3. David E. Davis, Jr.: Mega Fun in Mini Packages – Column