Rambling from no point to another no point, but doing it in style.

Or, What Happened to Baby Jane and the American Automobile Industry?

I don't remember the date. Heck, I'm not even sure now of the decade...

I know what started it: Some European automobile manufacturer ran an advertisement about their sports car. It could have been Aston-Martin, about their old DB5 model. The ad trumpeted (Trumpeted? For more trumpeting, see the blog below...) a technological achievement: the DB5 could go 0 to 100 mph in 28 seconds. (Today your Toyota Avalon, fully loaded with four ladies going to a bridge club, can do that.) But this was big news then...

A couple of weeks later Carroll Shelby had an ad put out that contained a reference to the Aston-Martin ad and went on to declare that Mr. Shelby's Shelby Cobra had just finished time trials and was consistently doing 0 to 100 and back to 0 in 21 seconds.

Can you imagine your chagrin had you taken possession of your new DB5 the day before that ad came out? Okay, maybe not chagrin... How about the total humiliation and mortification of knowing that your cronies at the club were all going to go out and buy Shelby Cobras and make you look the total fool?

Which is why I immediately vowed to always buy American, and lived to regret it.

What happened? Can I blame the unions? How can a guy be Way Macho Cool in an American car? (Car... we're' not talking trucks or SUVs, dawg!) Does America even make a Performance Automobie today?