Mystic Negro dot Com

Fuck you Dodge.  Fuck you in the ear with a blue whale dick that splooges hot battery acid.  You killed the world’s most perfect car, the Magnum.  It was a sports tourer station wagon.  It was manly.  It could be had with engines ranging from the anemic (sub 200 hp V6 in the base model) to the mighty (400+ HP V8 in the top of the line SRT8).  You killed it after it got its mid-cycle exterior update, but before it could get a complete refresh, including an update to its embarrassing, rental car interior.

But then the rumors started.  There would be a new Magnum.  But it wouldn’t be a station wagon, excuse me “sports tourer,” instead it would be a “crossover” and a replacement to the Durango.  For those who don’t understand, Americans have an irrational hatred of station wagons and at some point decided that what they wanted was SUVs.  But they didn’t really want SUVs because SUVs are trucks and as such drive and ride like shit. They also don’t want minivans, because they are not cool, they just want all of the functionality of minivans.  So what Americans really wanted was station wagons and minivans that look like SUVs.  So the crossover was born.  A station wagon with a lift kit and a vaguely truckish body.  This way you get the high, unstable ride of an SUV and the lack of off road or towing ability of a station wagon.  It’s the worst of both worlds.  Frankly, I blame Chrysler.

Anyway, it was finally decided that the Durango replacement would be named…”Durango” and it would be based off the same platform as the Jeep Grand Cherokee instead of the Dakota pick ‘em up truck.  The JGC has the distinction of being one of the few non-truck based SUVs with legitimate offroad chops, but the folks at Dodge decided to make the Durango street focused, as no one who buys an SUV ever actually goes off roading with it.  Wherever they fortified the Jeep for the trails, they tuned the Durango for the street.  Up to and including coming up with a V6 (Heat) and V8 (R/T) handling package which drops  it almost an inch, firms up the suspension and quickens the steering (and in the Heat drops the third row seating to loose another hundred, hundred fifty pounds or so). They look something like this.

Dodge Durango Heat. If you want to know what the R/T looks like imagine a V8 under the hood.

It may occur to you that this looks like a 9/8 scale Magnum.  It does.  Fuck you dodge, for making a stupid crossover that I kinda want.  Drop it another two inches and I’m there.

Fuck

Meanwhile, over at Volvo, a company which is synonymous with station wagons.  There are no station wagons.  If you check Volvo’s current line up (I’ll wait, go on, seriously, I’ll be here…) you’ll notice that they only have two station wagons in their US lineup (Dear Volvo and Subaru, you’re not fooling anyone by calling the XC70 and Outback “crossover SUVs”) and one of those (the V50) is living on borrowed time.  Not that Volvo only has two wagons, they just introduced the new V60 in every place that’s not here.  That’s a wagon that’s so sexy I want to stick my pee pee in it (insomuch as my pee pee is attached to my body and would have to get in it as I slid into the driver’s seat)

Heico-Sportiv V60

Instead of that bit of sexiness we get this

Heico-Sportiv XC60

Which you may notice is damn near the same thing, except slightly more slab sided. Apparently a set of lowering springs designed for the big daddy S80 work perfectly to drop the XC60 about two inches all around.  Which is good, because when dropped to a reasonable height – like this tuned example – it becomes, well, a reasonable wagon.  Why Volvo wouldn’t, then, just give us a reasonable wagon I don’t know, but I still say FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU for making me have to build my own instead of just giving me one.  You’re VOLVO for goodness sakes, you DO WAGONS. Part of your fucking brand identity is station wagons.  Give. Me. A. Wagon. (As an aside, the XC60, while attractive, decently performing, comparatively inexpensive and nice riding, has an unfortunate stink on it.  It is the vehicle of choice in a movie about a teenage girl with borderline personality disorder who is in love with a sexually and physically non-threatening vampire.  I’m not sure how to get that to go away. I am now waiting for Mandy Nowak to insult me personally for thinking that Twilight is dumb.)

So there you go.  If you’re looking for a vehicle that you can throw your bicycle or your dogs or your musical equipment in, here are two.  The Durango should even be able to haul a 4×8 sheet of plywood for your home improvement or ramp building missions.  I like them both.  But I hate myself for it.

It’s hard not to love this video.  The funny thing about it, not so much that my wife can’t stop walking around doing Hamster dances.  But that how much it takes me back to every hip-hop video in the early 90s.  It also makes me glad that I started shaving my head in about 88 – 89 (the asymmetrical high top fade is the Black Man’s Mullet, folks).

Also, I totally need one of those hamster hats.

Anyway, compare the advertisement to the original video.  Yeah. Awesome.

The Mrs would like very much to have a small RV/conversion van for road trips.  Such a conveyance would allow us to take all of our crap, plus all three dogs in relative comfort.  Something that our current fake SUV does not allow (oh, we can take all of our crap, or we can take our dogs, but we can’t take the two).

There’s something appealing about this idea…especially if the van in question has six wheels, an all over Star Wars mural a kitchen and a water bed.  Awwww yeah, bow down to the Battle Star van, y’all… (you do NOT want to miss pictures of the interior)

The fun thing about having a personal blog (or hell, just keeping up a site all by yourself) is that every so often you just have nothing to say.  Which is why for the last few weeks this place has pretty much just been titties.  I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have thoughts of things to say, I had plenty of thoughts (as you’ll see in about three sentences) but between my crippling Cracked addiction (which I blame 100% on Darren Hough) and the fact that my life is both boring, and none of your damned business, I couldn’t be bothered to put pen to paper finger to keyboard.  Below are some of the things that you didn’t get to read about over the last couple of weeks:

• Help Us Devon Smillie, You’re Our Only Hope…
  No BMXer has managed to successfully break out of Atlanta.  I mean, for about 30 seconds 18 months ago Talem did it, but it didn’t stick.  Trey Jones shows up (or showed up) around here relatively often but he is, in fact, not even from Georgia.  Hell, an argument can be made that for about 17 hours in 2008 I was the most famous BMXer in Georgia, and everyone knows I barely ride.  So, it all rests on Devon’s tiny, birdlike shoulders (and his wrarms, we can’t forget the wrarms) to bring Atlanta into the spotlight…
• BMW Officially Cancels the 5 Series Wagon in the US, Gives Us the Ugliest Vehicle Ever Made in its Place
  This would have been another post about the 5 Series GT, which is how they blaspheme in Bavaria
• The iPhone/Pod/Pad App Store Sucks – Tech Press Performs Ritual Mock Indignation
  Maybe they really are indignant about the fact that Apple’s arbitrary app store rules cause items to be blocked and/or removed for offenses that are never fully explained, are completely arbitrary and completely contradictory with themselves.  Maybe if every other article about Apple in the tech press didn’t read like it was written by someone kneeling, mouth agape in front of Steve Jobs proclaiming their willingness to swallow or take it to the face, maybe then I would take the indignation seriously.  I don’t.
• The iPad, Seriously
  On the low end it costs more, but does less than a netbook.  In order to make it actually useful you have to spend more than a mid-high end laptop and after that, it still doesn’t print.
• Specialized Exits BMX Market and Enters Mountain Bike Market…With BMX Bikes
  Yeah, just read it yourself, this is pretty dumb, but the bike looks nice.
• Mars Needs Women and Rob Zombie Needs to Stop
  An argument can be made that outside The Godfather Pt. 2, The Empire Strikes Back and maybe a handful of other movies that no sequel has ever been as good as its predecessor.  So, I hoped against hope that Hellbilly Delux 2 wouldn’t suck. Unfortunately instead of hearing the evil returning as promised I got a good song (“Sick Bubblegum”) and an entire album of horror movie references over glam rock grooves.  Excuse me, WTF?
  I thoroughly believe that drum and guitar solos only exist live so that the rest of the band can go back stage and hit a bong, so why in the name of the Appice Brothers…why in the name of Carmine’s mighty mustache:
  

  Don't Hate, For it is Mighty

  would you put an eight minute drum solo on an album?  Hellbilly Delux 2 is like if George Lucas woke up and decided to make a movie about trade negotiations and a whiny prepubescent and call it “Star Wars,” fortunately Lucas has better sense than to unleash some boring shit like that on the world.  Rob Zombie, take heed.

As you can see, nothing to see here.  Hopefully I’ll get back on the ball this week.

The purpose of advertising is to make you buy something by making it appear more awesome than it actually is without actually lying, because that would get you in trouble with the law.

So, see, Nissan o’ Canada isn’t lying here, a remote controlled SE-R is exactly this fun, which is about 10 times as fun as an actual SE-R by all accounts (with every generation that car seems to lose more and more of its mojo).

How it was made.  Seriously, awesome.

…and I Get Wood

What do the BMW M5, Mercedes-Benz E55, Audi RS4 and Audi RS6 have in common?

1. Ridiculous price tags
2. Relative scarcity on the used marker
3. Undeserved quality cachet born of their German origin
4. Wagon versions we can’t get here
5. All of the above.

Yep, 5.

We don’t get the super wagons because, as I’ve said plenty of times before, Americans hate station wagons.  This is why, of course, Cadillac unveiled this at the New York Auto Show:

CTS Wagon + 556 HP Superpowered Corvette V-8 = Automotive Viagra

I’ve always loved super wagons, starting with the 300 hp Audi S6, on to the Dodge Magnum R/T & SRT-8, but now I have found the love of my life (Automotive Category).  Not that I have $65K waiting around to be used, but hell if I’m not considering the devil’s deal that is a lease…

This is what the Honda Accord looks like in the rest of the world:

You may know it in America as Acura’s entry level sedan, the TSX.  The cheapest TSX you can  buy costs more than the highest trim level Accord and even if you pile on the options the TSX keeps a not inconsiderable lead in pricing.  Oh yeah, the American Accord looks like this:

Which is to say, “ugly,” although I will admit that the coupe is kinda hot.

But ignoring all of that, the Euros get the Accord wagon

And while Honda has said that they will bring this over as a TSX model right now our choices are the Accord Crosstour:

Kill it with Fire

The proper response to seeing a Crosstour in public is to gather a torches and pitchforks wielding mob.

Of course if you’d prefer to spend more money on your ugly there’s always the Acura ZDX:

(Artist's Impression)

A car so ugly that The Mrs. believes that it cannot be photographed.  It is also stupid in a way that only a mid-sized SUV that you can’t fit four adults into without beheading two of them can be.

These tortured exercises in design exist because Americans hate wagons.  Because we am dumb.

Long time readers of this site (which I think includes, uh, Sean and that’s about it) know that I’m constantly in search of the perfect car with which I can haul around 3 dogs or a bicycle at extra legal speeds in curves.  Recently I’ve been on the hunt for a BMW 535 Touring, which are as rare as hen’s teeth.  In part because the two wheel drive 535 wagon only made it for one year before being dropped for all wheel drive only in part because America hates station wagons.  Preferring their station wagons to have the packaging inefficiencies, poor fuel economy and crap handling of an SUV (but not having the advantages of an SUV like off road ability or towing capacity). Low sales mean that you’re not going to find one on the used market and if you do, it’ll go for far more than the comparable (and uglier) sedan.

But I’ve said all of this before.

But now, BMW’s unleashed a new 5 Series Touring and it’s a looker.

Like all post Bangle BMWs, removing the overly busy butt makes it flow so much better.  And the bigger nose isn’t bad, either

But that’s neither here nor there, because we probably won’t be getting the 5 Series Touring.  We’ve already gotten the 5 Series GT…

…which I believe is actually named as an abomination in the Old Testament. None of the practicality of a proper wagon and all of the ugly of the X6.

Awesome.

And no amount of AC Schnitzering makes it better.

My eyes! MY EYES!!!!!!!!!

America is Dumb.