Trucks are to young Americans what hot-hatches and GTIs are to young Europeans and that is why I've grown to love and respect THE TRUCK.
You can pick up an old beater truck for under two grand and with a few hundred bucks here and there on maintenance you can have yourself a world of motorized independence. Which is after all, what America is all about.
These colors don't run...even in the rain
I love the arrogance of this truck...compacts only F NO!
Life gives you a hatch back...your American ingenuity and a welder gives you a TRUCK
Try doing this with a Gti
Truck, beer, sleeveless shirt with strip club logo...check, check and double check
And where else are you going to put all your stickers?
The dream every BMW has coming off the line in Bavaria is one where the engines are always well oiled, they will sip only premium fuel, and their owner is something of a car enthusiast. They will cruise down the Autobahn at an electronically controlled 155mph, and enjoy weekend jaunts in the country side where they will blare their naturally aspirated straight six all the way to the red line. A very respectable life for a very respectable car.
However, as the above photos show this is not always the case. From lord of the Autobahn to pizza delivery boy and then this poor 733i being used as an actual trash receptacle.
Like an old nag put out to pasture, rather than face this cruel fate they should have been sent to the glue factory.
Watch this video to see how old BMWs should end their lives, pretty cool video
Kenny McKinstry goes “right into crest, left 90, ” Gwendaff Evans in a pink Ford Escort Cosworth spitting fire from its exhaust around Phoenix Park, David Llewellyn in a Castrol coated Toyota Celica leaping into the air at 100 miles an hour: poetry and mechanical madness embraced by a small, esoteric segment of the populous.
As youngsters our Dad brought us into the fold and we embraced the culture like hungry pups on a fat nipple. Up the back of Clar chapel, inches from the graves, perched on a freezing-cold stonewall. Marshals in yellow bids blow their whistles and yell for people to get off the road. The first car to come around the corner is a wee Starlet, hammering on at a speed that is was never meant to do while picking up groceries from the car park at Dunne’s Stores. Followed by a black Opel Manta, spiting chips in the air from the back wheels and a fat lip stuns me for a second, a cool drip of blood mixing with the taste of adrenaline.
A while later and arses still numb from the cold there’s another stage down towards lough Eske. We park and walk along with the hoards of rally nuts. License plates from the North, from Mayo, Galway and Cavan, attracted to the thrill of speed in their wanna-be rally cars – Subaru’s and Twin Cams, old 3 series BMs and a souped up old-school-Supra.
We get a great spot where we might see a car roll on a high-speed natural chicane, so Dad says. The first cars come through cautiously, just nipping the green edges of the road, then the big boys come rallying through at blistering speeds. Modified and broken exhausts howl through the ears at deafening decibels and sure enough the back diff of a Twin Cam can’t control the power and she slides off, the driver barely straightening her up inches from a solid famine wall.
The blood in the veins of these men is like thick oil, lubricating their hot, over-boiling hearts. White knuckles, pace notes, adrenaline at full pump, eyes darting to see over the next crest, a special breed of evolved man, evolved from farm lads and mechanics, soon to be engineers. Men that consider a Massey Ferguson an alternative mode of transport.
Another day and my arse is still cold sitting on the wooden-slat seats of Mondelo Park. Will Gallop’s 6R4 is blazing around the place like a demented supersonic gnat. More than 420bhp ripping through the back wheels in a wee car based on your Granny’s Metro was complete insanity. Banned from group B rallying years ago and found a new home on the rally cross circuit. Along with old RS 200s, Audi Quatros and Lancia Delta Intergrales.
We walk through the infield to warm up; Josie McCloskey has a funny hat on, looks like a tire warmer and big Pat Johnson is cracking another joke and Jimmy is egging him on. Dad and Derek are watching a pit crew re-treading tires as it looks like it’ll be wet.
We had to leave the house at five this morning to get down here in time for the qualifying. The big 5 series BMW was redlined all the way out of Donegal, across the Petigo Road, never under a hundred through Fermanagh and up to 150 through Cavan. A few years later on the Virgina Road a wee boy would be killed and the cops would put an end to the speed too late.
The drive down had been as exciting as some of the driving that day, until Gollop celebrated his win by doing donuts on the manicured grass in the in-field. Totally maddened the folks in charge as they called out over the loudspeaker system for other drivers to refrain from doing the same, but the crowd was going wild. Grass roosters were shooting twenty feet up the air as he ploughed the field with his Metro.
The night before the Birmingham motor show we drove down to Dublin in the Pajero and Dad got pulled over on the Virginia Road and when the young Garda asked him if he knew how fast he was going he said “No” and the cop said “86mph” and Dad stupidly replied “I didn’t think she would go that fast” and the cop said “That and plenty more.” Then he gave the whole people dying on roads speech. Dad had a silly grin on his face ‘cause he knew he was in trouble.
The next day in Birmingham as we walked through the parking lot of the NEC admiring all the fancy cars, a security man came up quietly behind us ready to apprehend the three of us! We had to quickly explain that we were just car enthusiasts and we’re on our way into the show. He looked at us like he didn’t believe us, but after a long awkward moment he let us go and just told us to not look so obvious, especially with those Northern Irish accents, must have thought we were a bunch of terrorists! So off we went to hear Jeremy and Tiff do their car stand-up routine.
Will Gollop was in there to meet us in his usual black, red and gold livery, but this time plastered all over the body of a wide body Peugeot 306, a total beast of a machine. He was putting around 600hp down around the track, setting a pretty amazing pace. Then came a whole herd of blue Scoo-barus with 555 logos and the essential gold wheels. I think wee Colin McCrae was behind the wheel of one of them, years before he would become one of the most famous men in racing with video games based on him, bags of world titles under his kilt and a persona that made you wanna be him flying through a forest road with NO FEAR. Like many bright stars, his burned out early, fecking helicopters.
Back in ‘88 or ‘87 his Dad, Jimmy, battled Bertie Fisher in their near identical blue and white Sierra Cosworths in the Circuit of Ireland. Our hometown of Killybegs was a stopping point for them and Derek and I were in car-porn heaven with all the mad rally cars parked in the town. That weekend was the first time I saw a real M3 in the flesh, or a Cossie for that matter. I stared at them in awe, as a French farmer might a UFO if he found it in his asparagus patch. I reached out and touched them, slid my hand over their big rear spoilers and could still feel the heat radiating off their exhausts. These were the fantasy machines that only existed on telly or in a magazine and now here they were in fish-stinking-Killybegs. A visit from the Pope would have extracted less revere from me.
You don’t see the likes of them anymore, only an EVO or STI can instill that kind of passion in a young boy’s heart these days. I’ll glance at a Ferrari when one passes me, like once every three months on average, it’s the least appreciation I can give a piece of art. But five or six Scoobie and EVOs could pass me in a single day and I’ll stop and stare, crane my neck, nearly run off the road looking at them every time, much to the annoyance of my wife “Jesus Christ, just dive!” You know when archeologists and the like find some fish off the waters of Africa that they thought had been extinct for millions of years, but then it’s in some fisherman’s net, a living fossil, well, that’s kind of what EVOs and STIs are. Supras and Celicas are gone, M3s have become soft luxury cars. The last of a dying breed, I lament and paraphrase; Where Have all the Good Cars Gone.
Richard Burns died not long ago, McCrae is driving the big gold wheeled Subaru in the sky. None of the newer drivers make me wanna use their name in my head when I’m driving. We, the rally breed, need new heroes and often in a time of need they come from the strangest place, like Krypton, but this time it might be America, the good old US of A. They aren’t known for their rally skills, but your man Pastrana having leaned his skills from McCrae knows how to fling a car around. And he’s got the youth and charisma to spawn an entire generation of rally half-breeds. The next day I’m trying to go sideways in my M3, I think I will be him in my head; fast, ferocious and fearless. Until my wife yells at me.
Maybe what I really need is to go on a man trip with Dad and Derek. Find some nice cold, soggy weather and stand around with my hands in my pockets for a ten second glimpse at the arse end of a Corolla Twin Cam. To stand among men who worshiped the back-wheel-drive diff of a carbureted, not injected, Twin Cam 16v. Men who after the races will drive home sideways, with death only a heart beat away.
This is the same color as mine and ironically this one ended up in a wreckers yard too
I don't know who the wee fauline is, but my Bravo never looked this good
With the payments from Black Beauty (Citroen AX Gti), I got to drive away in a brand new Fiat Bravo 1.4. It was "lilac" blue, very light blue, almost gray, not a definitive color, the kind of color you can never make your mind up about.
It lacked the raw power of the Gti, but the creature comforts were a thousand fold improved. I could now talk to the person in the passenger seat and the radio was built into the car and worked.
I put a pair of DTM style wheels on her, had the bumpers and mirrors color coded and that made her look a lot more sporty, nothing like the full Arbath kit, but sexy all the same. The calmer nature of the car, seemed to calm me down too, I didn't drive quite so hard.
There were no real problems with the Bravo except that when I put it in reverse the horn honked. The dealership in Sligo had to completely rewire it at no cost to me.
I took her on a road trip to Edinburgh in Scotland and it was a pleasure to drive on the motorways and really fun on the small cross country Scottish roads.
I went off to College later that year and everyone in the house would use the Bravo, it was the perfect car for sharing. My sister put a scratch up the side of it and my mother ran the oil almost bone dry, but neither of their abuses amounted to squat compared to my brother Derek's experience.
I came home from college and Derek and the dogs met me at the front of the house as I came walking up the lane.
"I've got good news and bad news for you. Which do you want first?"
"I'll take the good news first" I said naively.
"Well, your air bags work and the bad news is your car doesn't"
Lots of explicative followed and total disbelief.
Derek had borrowed the car to got to Dublin with his girlfriend and on the way home in County Cavan, they went flying off the road, down a steep field and smashed into a tree. The car was totaled.
They towed it to a wrecker's yard in Inver and it was sold for as scrap. I saw it a year later all fixed up in Letterkenny and I felt a tingle of want in me, I even had the spare key on my keyring still. But she was gone, she was someone else' trouble now. Derek was a bollocks, but at least he wasn't killed or maybe I should have killed him.
I like to write and I like to party, but mostly just the writing.
Disclaimer:
A lot of these stories are true ones. The memory of growing-up in and around Killybegs. When you hold a mirror up to small communities, sometimes there are those who don't like the reflection. Capote knew this only too well.
If you find the refraction just a little too much and would like the angle of incidence changed in your favor, please email me at georgevial@hotmail.com and I will be happy to make a name change here or there.
