Only diesels will do in West Virginia’s radio-silent Green Bank Observatory.
Click on the images above to expand and read my latest for the stellar Road & Track, or click on this link to read the lovely online version. Or, just subscribe to the magazine already, you chintzy bltch.
To take advantage of our K-shaped Trillionaire economy, Rolls-Royce is expanding its factory, but will will be focusing on scarcity, privileging price over production.
“There is value in having great storage. But I think as time goes on, I realize that luxury isn’t necessarily more. Luxury is less of better. So, I try to keep my cars around me.”
Turboprops have long maintained a utilitarian reputation. But a new class of more luxurious and technologically sophisticated turboprops may shift that perception.
“We put our car in the drink with scenes left to shoot inside it,” says Jay Baruchel (Knocked Up, This is the End), who stars as Carter in the film. “And so, we have all these closeups to shoot—all my closeups inside the car are after it was in the fucking lake. And it just smelled like shit and old tuna.”
The Cosworth-developed 235-hp 2.5-liter 16-valve four-cylinder whined in the background, like someone else’s ill-behaved toddler, begging for punishment. I giggled like the cat that just swallowed the ca(r key)nary. I fantasized about driving it to somewhere hostile to America that might accept me as an un-extraditable automotive exile—maybe Canada.
“It’s sort of a last frontier. Exploration is getting harder and harder, and other than space, it’s the ocean.”
“It was a lot more intense than when I was learning how to drive—in a good way. No dad yelling.”
As we drive around the property, the car draws pointing and stares—and cellphone-camera shutter clicks—from literally everyone we pass, many of them visibly mouthing the word “Bodo.” Bushmann seems pleased at the attention. “If people would always react to it the way they did to this car, that would mean good things for us.”
Back in the 1930s, film stars Clark Gable and Gary Cooper had the only two Duesenberg SSJs in the world, and used to race these magnificent potent roadsters around the Hollywood Hills. Gable’s car just won Best of Show at the Pebble Beach Concours, the most prestigious award at the world’s pinnacle car show. I drove Cooper’s car years ago. But that’s another story. Luckily, that story is linked within this one, so you get a couple of Dueseys with one click.