Culture|Garage

On a quick visit to TheTruthAboutCars.com, Brock Yates’ article hit me like a ton of bricks. An angry, cantankerous pile of bricks. Mr. Yates is known in almost every major automotve circle on earth, and yet he found something, or rather, MANY things to get angry excited about. Not only was Car and Driver a “pale shadow of its former self,” but Yates made sure to endear his new audience with a style of writing that can only be feuled by a Barry-Bondsesque kind of ‘roid rage. I’ll be the first to admit that I love being lambasted by a grumpy old man, but Yates took things further.

Yates talks about America going to hell in a handbasket, and what’s not to love about that? Crimony, it’s like getting to hang out in some sort of online VFW! Hooray! I really like the part about “Like many car nuts, I too wish we could reduce the traffic and create communities around industries and commercial areas where populations could walk or use public transit.” Damn straight- that’s exactly what I thought about during my lunch hour!

The really interesting point that Yates brings up in his rant article is the paralell that the American road follows with his career at C&D, “And so it goes– until the underlying economics of private transportation changes. And then someone, somehow, will provide a solution. But until that day arrives, the world’s most powerful economies will be saddled with the private automobile, whether they like it or not. As my experience with Car and Driver taught me, nothing ever changes– until it has to.” Boy, talk about hitting the nail on the head. Surely, it’s time to become more eco-friendly, but if this is true, I guess it was time to put Mr. Yates, apparently at one with the automobile, out to pasture.

I have to admit, it’s not often I see this kind of anger in any sort of publication; print, online or otherwise, but I have to say, it’s refreshing, in a shit sandwich mint julep kind of way. I like the quaint reference to the “Winston Cup,” -it reminds me of years past- and how lovely it is to have cars near and dear to me “shit upon” by this fountain of automotive genius, even if he doesn’t know the difference between a Y-block and a flathead (see Barret-Jackson auction from a few years back, you ever wonder why he doesn’t host that anymore?).

Mr. Yates, it’s an honor, and a priveledge to even gaze upon your writing, lest my groundling sense of the automobile be misguided by my own opinion. Thank you for that slap in the face wonderful commentary on cars, and your countless recollections and rehashes of the Cannonball Run, without which Burt Reynolds would not have an acting career, a mustache, or a Trans-Am. Thank you for burning bridges in a way that William Tecumseh Sherman would be proud of. Thank you, Mr. Yates, for being you. We all need someone to ignore read, and I think you are the man for the job.

via: Kollins Communications, Inc., TTAC

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