The question is: Is Los Angeles ready for me?

On Monday, I drove from Lincoln, Nebraska to Fort Collins, Colorado. Both are easily two of the most beautiful, yet underrated, places in the United States. I fell in love with each’s respective charm. But Fort Collins struck a particular chord with me.

Its general layout is not unlike Canton, Ohio — my hometown’s next-door neighbor. The difference is that I wouldn’t mind living in Fort Collins. Overlooking the Rockies, it has a nouveau upscale feel to it while still keeping some small-town charm. Everything is understated, unique. But it’s artsy in a sense that Canton has striven for recently but never really fully adopted.

It’s a place that just screams “homey” to me. Heck, when I was waiting for my friend to get off work so I could bring my luggage into his apartment, random people, strangers, waved to me. It took me off-guard.

But this blog is called “Things that rhyme with ‘cars'” — not “Better homes and gardens” — so it wouldn’t be all right to mention Fort Collins without its car scene. Car enthusiasm is more or less like fetishes: everyone’s got one, and all of them vary person to person.

Fort Collins’ fetish is one of age. The city is a Mecca of cars that survived time, the threat of rust, to make it through as a testament of what was so obscure that it wouldn’t be remembered had Fort Collins not kept it around anyway. Take, for instance, the fact that I saw a Ford Courier pickup there — and I didn’t even know the Courier compact pickup that preceded the Ranger was even sold in the States! Or an original Subaru Legacy Sport turbo wagon, an incredibly rare vehicle. Or the FJ70 Land Cruiser I saw. Or people running unrestored ’60s F-100 pickups.

I had never seen such a time capsule of cars as I had seen there. Also, I thought Pittsburgh was the place for Subaru enthusiasm, and it still might be the best fanboy community in the nation if NASIOC and RS25.com are to be taken seriously. But Fort Collins gives it a good run for the money.

Speaking of which, my friend, Roy, let me drive his 2007 WRX wagon with suspension and light performance modifications around narrow, twisty, hilly, and otherwise fun roads. A full write-up will follow shortly, but I feel it’s worth mentioning that the car shames Mazda’s competitor — and the Mazda is fantastic. It’s just that it’s much, much easier to drive the Subaru — and it’s foolproof. Really. And fast. Really fast.

As I drove through the Rockies today, I had to shift into fourth gear and even third at times. I ascended to as high as 12,000 feet above sea level — more than twice the height of Denver. My car wheezed. I felt the effects of altitude sickness and had to pull over in scenic Georgetown, Colorado, where I caught up with a contractor who could have passed for The Dude. He moved from California and never looked back. But he wished me luck and said I’d love Los Angeles.

Today struck me as magic, pure magic. I stood outside in the snow in 60-degree weather in Colorado. I saw roads and mountains that looked as though they had come straight from those cheesy motivational posters. I saw what I imagine Heaven ought to look like with an endless road ahead of me and an endless sky that melted into the mountains. I really had never seen anything so beautiful in my life.

And aside from my car misfiring a bit more than normal from the oxygen deprivation, the groans it made, the fact that I had to cover my left arm with a t-shirt to protect it from further sunburn, or the fact that I’m getting pretty good with Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga lyrics because KISS FM was the only channel that consistently came in clearly that wasn’t country, the only thing I wished out of the day — finally thinking about something along the thousands of miles driven — was that I wish I had someone to share my adventure with. Anyone. Because this has been way too damn cool of an adventure to keep it to myself.

Tomorrow, I will be finishing up my trip, making it to the City of Angels. I’m eager to see what will come next. I’m eager to have the opportunity to keep my eyes up and my ears open. I’m eager to begin the next chapter of my life.

But unlike the last five years that effectively ended on May 1, I’m not going to just keep the great parts in memory. No, this trip — all 2,400 miles — was meant to be savored completely and utterly. It’s been quite an excursion to be sure, and while I don’t think I’d ever do it again in quite the same way, I know I’ll be able to tell my upcoming nephews or nieces stories that will rival their father’s when he was 19 and hitch hiked across the nation. And if I ever have a family of my own — if I ever choose to slow down the pace of my life or change it completely — I know I will never have to live with regrets of not seeing sights or following my passions.

I always thought the idea of the epic roadtrip had become cliche. But seriously, don’t knock it until you try it.

By the numbers:

Best MPG (average tank): 38.1

Worst MPG (average tank): 32.9

Major stops: Fort Collins, Colorado; Richfield, Utah

Miles driven: About 1,900

Miles to go: About 600

Fastest highway speed driven: 86 mph in a 65 zone (Route 14, Colorado)

Slowest highway speed driven: 50 mph in a 75 zone (I-70 Rockies, Colorado)

Coolest car of the day: Yellow Ford GT with black racing stripes in Fort Collins

Number of other Ohioans spotted out west: 4 (2 going to Utah, 2 going to Los Angeles)

Tomorrow’s destination: North Los Angeles (New home)

2,400 miles in an $800 car: Introduction

Call me an idealist — someone perhaps shut off to the world’s harshness as a result of some self-manufactured blinders I’ve affixed to my sights. I very well might be.

It took a while to come to that conclusion, but it’s well deserved. I am, after all, basing my life on a folktales course I took a year ago in college. Yeah, of anything I could use as motivation to guide me — from poems to great leaders throughout history — I’ve opted to seek refuge in the same lore that gave breadth stories like “The Sword and the Stone” and “Jack and the Beanstock.”

But in remembering whispering back and forth to a friend during class, I came to the conclusion that folktales may have mythical elements like dragons and wizardry, but they’re real. They happen all the time around us.

“Everyone needs to have an epic journey before they settle down,” I told my friend as we debated the feasibility of each exiting Pittsburgh to gain traction in different parts. I sincerely believed that, as those stories about a boy going out into the woods on a noble quest and coming back to his kingdom a man seemed as realistic to me as they seemed idealistic to my friend. At the time, I was not sure how they could ever happen, but I wanted such circumstances to become an interwoven piece of my life somehow.

Cue Disney’s anthropomorphic cricket singing about wishing upon a luminous sphere of gas some hundred million miles away.

Because dreams do come true sometimes. Mine just happens to be in Far Far Away itself — Los Angeles — 2,400 miles of far away, to be exact. If you check the “About” section of this blog, you’ll figure out what I’ll be doing there, too. That “About” has changed little since I started this page last July.

And to do it, in June, I will be taking what little I can shove into my 1995 Saturn SL2, a compact car by yesterday’s standards. In actuality, it has less usable space than most modern subcompacts. And over the planned 10-day epic, it won’t just be my storage, it will be my refuge, my companion, and my lifeline. It will be my noble, oil-burning, rusty old steed, much as it may look more like my very own Rocinante.

In pursuing my passion for my profession, my dream, I’ve come to realize that rarely do such things ever fall right where you’d imagine they would. Life isn’t without struggle and sacrifice; it never is. And sometimes it seems fickle to do something utterly insane like living in California when you’ve never yet been west of St. Louis or getting there in a car that has more issues than a babymomma on Maury.

But sometimes it becomes prudent to hone the moment — maybe the only moment you’ll ever have to do something truly special with it. Sometimes, it becomes important to worry about consequences later and live for the moment today. And sometimes, it becomes necessary to go out on a limb to do something you truly believe in, impractical as it may be.

Because living with real regrets is sometimes worse than death. And not growing into the person you set out to become is regretful unto itself. So here’s to the moment. Here’s the to epic journey that awaits.

As Panthers near extinction…

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the Eastern Cougar extinct last month. Presumably, it had been a dead species since the 1930s; the government just finally got around to filing all of the paperwork and going through the formalities some 80 years later.

Panthers are members of the cougar family, and much its counterpart through genus, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that they’re on their way off the endangered species list and onto the great file cabinet in the sky. It’s just a matter of time as society progresses, woodlands dwindle, and progress ensues.

That includes the Panther cars, too.

Since 1978, the Ford “Panther” platform has soldiered on, spawning numerous iterations from Lincolns to Mercurys to Fords, from coupes to wagons to sedans, from limos to livery and taxis all over the world. Having outlasted General Motors’ B-Body Caprices and Cadillac Broughams for 15 years after they left fleet production, the Panther cars have carried amortization and economies of scale through a half-dozen recessions over the last three decades and still made profits. Lots of profits.

And they’re not bad drivers, either. When I worked at a rental car agency, I had the opportunity to drive a Grand Marquis — a “premium-class” car — and a Town Car — “luxury.” Sure, they have wide, plush seats that could comfort the ass of even the largest American, and their hoods are best measured in acres instead of feet, but when Ford redesigned the steering rack for the 2005 model year, it made the cars easy to navigate the land-canals we travel daily. Driving a modern Panther car is a one-finger deal if necessary.

Having to pick one up from Pittsburgh International and drive it back some 30 miles on the highway, through heavy traffic, and through downpours, my black Town Car acted as a vault. Its 4,300-pound weight made me feel safe in weather that made it difficult to see the road. Its upright sightlines helped me see as much of the road as I could muster, making switching lanes painless in a car that should otherwise have the letters “H.M.S.” in front of its name.

And other than the muted growl of Ford’s 4.6 liter “Modular” V8, the car made not so much as a creak or grown. Nothing. It was even difficult to hear rain hitting the windshield.

So between the ease of use and comfort of mind the car provided me, color me a fan of the Panther.

Sure, it drives like nothing else on the road — from this decade, at least, except for maybe the Econoline. But Ford revised the steering in its fullsize vans sometime this decade, too, and unless you’re planning on going over 70 mph, the Econoline is a deceivingly easy vehicle to push along. The same could be said for the Panther car except that it’s far smoother on the road and far easier to take near triple-digit speeds.

It very well may be a car from a different era, but it still very much has a place in the marketplace. It’s the last body-on-frame car sold in North America, whereas everything else is constructed in a monocoque design . So it can take the same hell as a truck without much struggle — as it does daily in police fleets all over the world.

And BoF makes it easier to convert into a limousine — just stretch the frame rails.

But Ford doesn’t see it that way. Whether CAFE standards or Alan Mulally’s strategic vision for “One Ford” the world over, the company isn’t moving forward with the olde worlde land yachts past the 2011 model year.

Instead, police duties will be doled out to the Taurus- and Explorer-based Interceptors, taxi duty will be going to the Transit Connect, and livery will be going to the MKT crossover. Yeah — what the hell are they thinking?

The Transit Connect’s Focus-based underpinnings make it a large, cheap vehicle to run. That makes sense — except that it’s a loss leader because Ford builds them in Turkey. Ford has to take out windows and seats at the port, shredding them to circumvent the “chicken tax” tariff on commercial vehicles. There is no winning to be had selling a cheap European-made car here. That’s why VW makes our Jetta in Mexico where the minimum wage is just under $5 per hour. American autoworkers make about 10 times that before benefits for comparison.

Taurus and Explorer pursuit vehicles will have front- or all-wheel drive and naturally aspirated or turbocharged engines. That just sounds really expensive when Ford’s nearest competitors have one driveline setup (rear-wheel) and two very mainstream engine options apiece. Truth is, when SAE grilled Ford about the new Taurus SHO civilian car, Ford’s engineers said they durability-tested the turbochargers for 150,000 miles. Did they test the usage patterns of cops?

Additionally, I’ve driven the MKS variant, and I can attest that while it’s a decent driver, the car isn’t too space-efficient. I wish luck to any police officer shoving a 350-pound criminal into the back of one.

The last vehicle, however, is the worst, as Ford’s innocuous Town Car will become the MKT Town Car — a crossover to complete with Chrysler 300 and Cadillac XTS sedans. Why not the MKS sedan at least?

Truth is, other than the Transit Connect, none of Ford’s new fleet cars have the space, capability, or proven durability for constant fleet thwomping in the real world.

D.C. and New York City run on Panthers — at least they did when I visited both places over the past year. Cutting the cars will force Ford to catch up with the 21st century, but is it really necessary?

Does Ford not have the capability to follow suit of GM’s Impala to upgrade to a 6-speed transmission and a more contemporary engine? Or does Ford not even care?

For a company that offers a middleman-made Fusion Hybrid “L” to taxi customers, one would think the company to have given more thought to the followup on its 30-year cash cow. Because options do exist if Ford wanted to follow them.

But no, to modernize, Ford will be dropping its fleet babies to focus on its core products. Ford will be killing a vehicle as synonymous with fleet duty and rugged durability as the Checker cab was until it was phased out in the 1980s.

And Ford will be opening the floodgates of opportunity to GM, Chrysler, and smaller upstarts. Alan Mullaly’s six-year stint at the helm of Ford has been characterized as a can-do-no-wrong show of rockstar-like audacity. The guy’s worth all $26 million he made last year.

But now he’s not hunting in the marketplace; he’s poaching. And in a marketplace with a vastly upgraded Charger, a new Caprice, and more legitimate rivals than ever, that’s a very dangerous game to play.

Respect the dog

I was very happy with the way The Pitt News edited this column. It can be seen in a print-ready version here. Enjoy the column.

It’s not unusual for me to use the half-page my editors grant me each week to rip Pittsburgh City Council’s half-baked plans and mediocre legislative abilities.

And I was about to do the same thing this week. In the midst of financial peril, struggles to keep jobs in the city and the city government’s constant inability to understand its young constituents, Council decided on Tuesday to officially recognize a dog — Xante, the golden retriever.

In discovering this, it became my hope that Xante would perhaps be nominated to replace Council President Darlene Harris. That would be progress at least.

But unfortunately, we would have no such luck. However, the canine compatriot still deserves plenty of recognition, perhaps even a good ear scratching.

Why? Because he’s going to work, no longer going to welfare dog living off the kibble and belly rubs of society.

Raised by Joan Ardisson the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s assistant to editor-in-chief John Robinson Block, Xante has served as the paper’s spokesdog for almost a year, integral in the paper’s “Puppy Cam” video blog series. In that time, he has garnered a following with Post-Gazette readers and more than 1,300 friends on Facebook. However, Ardisson’s primary purpose in adopting the lab holds much more significance.

Xante was bred to be a Seeing Eye dog for the blind, and in what will surely be a bittersweet moment, he’ll be shipping out to Morristown, N.J. to start training for the next phase of his life in helping lend a pair of eyes to those in need pretty soon.

I support this wagging creature’s endeavors. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a dog person.

And while more of these columns have been written with a cat on my lap, rubbing itself into my face until I sneeze uncontrollably during the times when I’ve gone to visit my family than having the same occur with my late dog, it should be noted that my dog was the size of a small house. Also — and not coincidentally — Nestle, the makers of Purina dog food, took a tumble on the stock market shortly after she passed away early last year.

Having her sit on my lap would have been next to impossible.

But that’s beside the point. Dogs really are man’s best friend.

They wag their tails senselessly, annoy the heck out of you when you’re upset until you can’t help but feel better and will even try their best to do simple chores around the house like fetching a beer out of the fridge.

Apparently, this wasn’t always the case, though. Last week, archaeologists in Jordan discovered the remains of foxes buried with humans from 16,500 years ago, suggesting they used to be the pet of choice. The next-oldest remains of dogs buried with human counterparts were found to be from 4,000 years later.

Fortunately, evolution of man growing from a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer with his faithful hunting companion has continued long beyond the point of necessity, benefitting both the humans and animals. I’m just waiting for a letter from Westboro Baptist Church disputing that.

Evolution has made sure we now have helpers like Xante to assist those will likely never read this since I don’t believe The Pitt News publishes an edition for the blind. Unfortunately, no Seeing Eye dog I know of is fluent in speaking English to its owner yet, but after seeing the movie “Up,” I’m not so sure that the concept is too far from reality.

Nonetheless and perhaps most significantly illustrated by the Post-Gazette’s chronicling of Xante’s story is just how much a dog can benefit society. It’s not just with handicapped people, either.

Because admit it, after the Super Bowl last weekend, you tuned into the Puppy Bowl you saved on Tivo to make yourself feel a little better. Either that or you viewed clips from it after you got tired of watching the commercial with Darth Vader’s Mini Me starting a Volkswagen with The Force.

After checking it out, I can confidently report that the first half of the Puppy Bowl was far more entertaining than that of the Steelers-Packers game. And Puppy Bowl MVP Big Red played a better game than Big Ben — not a tough task to accomplish.

More than 8.6 million people tuned into the contest of canines last year, according to CNN, with numbers increasing every year. That’s almost twice as many as the Nielsen’s figure from the 2011 State of the Union address.

What does all of this mean? It means that there’s an appeal for the altruistic nature of dogs.

It means that Xante should be praised for being the caliber of dog that will likely commit the rest of his life to serving others. It means Ardisson should also receive commendation for her work with helping the dog adjust to life around humans.

And, lastly, it means that, yes, City Council deserves at least some recognition for once for praising this very special creature. As the saying goes, the sun will shine on a dog’s rear end every once in awhile. Even Council’s.

Time to ditch unions? Perhaps

Full disclosure: I was very happy with the version of this story that ran in The Pitt News on September 28, 2010. It can be found here. For a slightly less edited version, read below.

As much as President Barack Obama touts the American worker, the strength of unions and living wages for everyone, it’s time to face the facts and realize that if that’s the American dream, it’s no longer going to make it out of the REM cycle.

In enduring the recession, it looks like American people are finished with letting others skim off the top or get handouts for work worth less than the sum of its parts. Last week, autoworkers at the Jefferson North Chrysler plant outside of Detroit turned in a tip that their peers were drinking and getting stoned during their lunch break.

Following a WJBK Detroit undercover investigation, 15 employees were suspended indefinitely without pay. Thirteen of them got canned this week as a result, and two were sent on a month-long unpaid vacation. In July when touring the plant where they worked, President Obama said he’d “bet on the American worker any day of the week.”

I’m glad he would, but I wouldn’t. While this is an isolated incident that occurred with just a few of the 2,500 workers, it presents an ugly angle of freshly bailed-out blue collar workers taking advantage of taxpayer dollars and exploiting just how little attentiveness or skill is needed to adequately perform job paying as much as $77 an hour.

During the financial meltdown, Chrysler received $10.8 billion in federal aid, as well as backing from Italian automaker Fiat. That allowed 50,000 Chrysler employees to keep working.

Through aggressive negotiations, the United Auto Workers, the body representing 390,000 American manufacturing workers, made sure its members received high pay and pensions for tasks as simple as installing door panels. New hires started at $28 an hour before benefits until 2007.

After that, contracts for new hires were renegotiated to pre-benefit earnings of $14 an hour, creating a two-tier system of employees doing the same work but some for half-off. That still might be too much money for too little work.

In the wake of the recession and subsequent shedding of 431,000 automotive jobs in 2008, according to Vice President Joe Biden, we figured out that many of our businesses could get along with leaner, more efficient and cheaper production.

Simple lessons in good ol’ business school suggest that the primary way to create profit is to create value, i.e. to make a desirable product that costs customers more than what it cost to make. You can’t do that when a leech attaches itself to your business and commands whatever price it wants for unskilled labor.

While unions have existed in the U.S. since the 1700s, their prominence in the manufacturing industry didn’t emerge until the Great Depression. The Wagner Act of 1935 solidified unions by giving collective bargaining rights to union members through the establishment of the National Labor Relations Board.

Further laws went into effect over the next few decades that solidified workers’ rights, and with each new bill passed and each relatively prosperous era, unions gained strength.

Over time with a combination of subsequent labor rights laws passed that applied to every legal worker in the U.S. With further globalization, the American union worker began losing its prestige. Unions became an unnecessary anachronism of a time that once was and never will be again.

This recent trend doesn’t just apply to the manufacturing industry. Unions in many other sectors have had the same effect on our economy.

Earlier this month, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie hosted a town hall meeting where a school teacher attacked his policy that cut pay raises, forced staff cuts and displaced compensation the teacher believed she deserved. Christie responded that he asked for a 1.5 percent contribution to medical benefits and a one-year pay freeze only to meet a teachers union that opposed any sort of concession.

“The teacher’s union made a decision,” he said. “They’d rather stand by their current contracts and make no compromise despite our awful economic circumstances, and they allowed members to be laid off.

There would not have been anywhere near the amount of layoffs if a pay freeze was taken.”

Having to justify cuts to balance an $11 billion budget deficit at town hall meeting while facing a similarly hostile crowd last May, Christie said, “Unlike the United States of America, the State of New Jersey can’t print money.”

Our economy is based around supply and demand. Jobs that demand more money than what they’re worth have already begun declining, and they’re going to decline more.

Whether the manufacturing industry — where many non-union workers make living wages in right-to-work states — education or any other industry promulgating union ideals, it has become necessary to review whether the necessity of a union in the workplace is doing more harm than good.

Unions aren’t evil. They’ve bolstered the American worker to greater heights than they would have otherwise during eras of corruption.

But in many subsectors of our economy, the truth is they’re no longer necessary. And in many cases, they’ve actually become the same sort of forceful, unyielding monoliths they were originally designed to thwart.

Remembering the E39 BMW M5

The other day, I saw a silver BMW M5 parked on the curb, probably a 2001 or 2002 model. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It looks like any other old BMW with the only except for the M-spec widemouth front bumper, some gunmetal-colored 18-inch wheels and four exhaust pipes. But that car, that visceral instrument of executive-class speed — I was smitten with its presence…mein Gott!

As I approached it, attempting to peer through its tinted windows without looking like I was some punk in search of a good carjack, I could feel my super-ego melting in my head. Replacing it, my id quietly chuckled with giddy amusement. And then drowning out that laughter, all I could hear was  the screaming “Woo hoo!” from Blur’s only hit song in the U.S.: “Song 2.”

The song largely found popularity in the late-1990s in college and sports arenas and again after BMW released a series of high-dollar short films starring Clive Owen and a fleet of BMWs with manual transmissions. In the film that featured “Song 2,” Star,  Owen’s character chauffeurs an over-the-top diva played by Madonna. Owen’s character takes “the star” in his BMW M5 instead of a limo to escort her to a film premier, tossing the boisterous broad around at high rates of speed all the while. Coincidentally as an aside, the short movie is directed by ex-Madge sex toy, Guy Ritchie. I’m sure Ritchie watched the film a few hundred times after he had finalized his divorce papers.

In any case, there’s something wholesomely invigorating about that reverberating low-fi melody coupled with images of a guy flicking a two-ton, 400-horsepower sedan sideways. Not like I’ve ever had fun in a car like that quite to the degree demonstrated in the movie, but when I had my chance to drive a 2002 M5 a few years ago, I made the most I could with as little time as I had with that ultimate driving machine.

The opportunity came about when I worked at a BMW dealership. There, I had to make sure all of the clean cars made it up to our main lot by the end of the day. Everyone else who worked in the wash bays had left for the day, so I had easy access to those M5 keys.

The lower lot where the car was out a good two miles from the dealership. I remember looking at the car, trying to think of it as just another 5 Series, just another task to do for my pay. But it wasn’t. It was a $75,000 sports sedan that I had only ever piloted in my dreams. It was the epitome of one of the last clean, simple designs BMW produced before “flame surfacing” and “Bangle Butts.” Simply, it was understated, awe-strkingly elegant — except for that gaping air duct that stretched across the front bumper, designed to shotgun as much air into its hand-built 4.9 liter V8 as possible. It was imposing. Looking at it from 50 feet away, I knew I’d have to drive it in a short while, and I was a little intimidated to be honest.

When I got into it, I calmed down a little. The  interior was basically the same as any other 540i’s. I had driven plenty of those at work. It didn’t feel like some coach-built hyper exotic. Phew. The only big differences were a suede headliner and a thick-rimmed steering wheel, cross-stitched in BMW’s blue, purple, and red racing colors — and the gauges. Okay, who cares about interior accouterments? This was an M5. For crying out loud, the only real interior difference that did matter were those gauges — the 180 mph speedometer and the 8,000 RPM tachometer.

Upon startup, the soundtrack that came with the car wasn’t Brit rock; it was German thunder that quickly settled into a low burble. I pulled it out of the lot slowly. It felt like any other E39 5 Series: taut, nimble and fairly smooth. Just because I could, I then took it around a quick bend with a little bit more vigor. “Ooh, this is addicting,” I thought. I took the next few bends in the road with a little more spirit each time. If there’s any truth to the cliché about BMWs having telepathic steering, this car proved it. I never had reason to panic in any tight turns on the unmarked Pittsburgh backroads, not even so much a correction in steering mid-corner.

When I got to the 3/4-mile straightaway before upper lot, I had built up enough confidence that I wanted to see what the car could really do. It was all warmed up and ready to go; I played it as safely as anyone could in an M5 that didn’t belong to them. But as Ferris Bueller said, “If you had access to a car like this, would you take it back right away? Neither would I.”

The only problem was that I happened to be following a Buick with a stereotypical Buick driver behind the wheel of it. I trailed him, going maybe 20 in a 25 zone, wasting what could have been the last shot I’d ever have to drive one of these cars. I imagine that’s what hell is like.

Fortunately, as the light went green, I stayed where I was to build some distance between our cars. I waited. And I waited some more.

As the light was about to turn red, I made the left onto the straight, getting into third gear quickly at about 25 mph. The coast was clear. I dropped the car down into second and planted my right foot to the floor. The car ripped through the tachometer sounding like a baritone banshee, screaming to redline. The shifter might as well have been BMW’s take on a ’60s Hurst Olds, crisp and accurate but with relatively long throws that begged me to muscle through each gear with furious anger. Before I knew it, I was going over 80 mph in a 25 zone without much effort or forethought. Oops.

And just a few minutes later, the ride was over. The car turned back into a perfect gentleman, and I turned back into a lot attendant that worked for an abusive boss and with hoodlum co-workers. For the few minutes I let it idle down at the lower lot, looking on in awe at this sinister car through the time I got to spend driving it, I felt like I was in control something really special. I could’ve been anywhere but the place that had been the home of the most unpleasant job I had ever had. I didn’t care; I got to drive a car that redefined the term sports sedan.

Likewise, when I drove that E39 M5, I didn’t see myself caring about Nurburgring times or comparing it to the newer E60 M5 to see what electronic niceties that now came in that $90,000 that weren’t even offered in the old car. Nor did I really wish for the older car to have the hundreds of suspension, throttle mapping or the transmission settings that available in the new car.

No, this car was just right, a perfect escape from the crap we’re force-fed in our daily lives. This M5 stood as a medical cure for any ailment, replacing boredom or depression with smiles, laughter, joy. This was the only time I ever had to unleash an E39 M5, but in driving a few others at more recommended speeds, the car always gave the same sensations, unwavering in both its confidence-building abilities and simple, natural mechanical feel.

It’s a car designed to give the driver absolute control directly — not to some active servo motors and yaw sensors for you. It has six rowable gears and three pedals on the floor — a combination BMW has mastered in recent years just to abandon for sequential this and dual clutch that. The E39 has little in the way of electronic distractions or loud beeps and bongs from sensors, leaving the only  sounds in the car to be its engine or hopefully a CD of Blur’s Greatest Hits. This is because it was designed at a time when BMW didn’t strive to build the most technologically advanced cars in the world. It was designed and built at a time when BMW strived to make the best driver’s cars in the world.

Full disclosure: Yes, I worked at a BMW dealership at one point, too. But that’s a story unto itself. That said, I am glad I am done with that job, as I have been for more than two years now, but there were just some cars I drove worth mentioning. For reference, the last car I drove at the place — a $117,000 M6 convertible — was done under the speed limit the whole time. Yes, really. Most of my stints in cars were not like this one at all, but then again, most of the cars I drove weren’t M cars. Just for reference, remember that speeding is illegal — don’t do it. And always let the car you’re driving warm up for some minutes if you’re planning on driving it like a bat out of hell. Lastly, just because Car and Driver does it doesn’t mean clutch-dumping is cool. It’s a waste of a good $3,000 clutch, as well as abusive to the car.

Making it in the auto journalism industry: Or how I knew about the ZR1 before you did

Most of luck is just showing up at the right time. Such was the case towards the end of my senior year of high school in 2006 when my journalism teacher ran into the father of one of her former students at the first and only Canton Symphony concert she had ever attended.

That father, for the record, just so happens to run the Glenmoor Gathering of Significant Automobiles, what I believe to be the most underrated concours d’elegance antique car show in the nation. He asked my teacher if she had any students who would be interested in helping get the show running. Enter me.

The following September after spending my summer contacting hundreds of car owners, vendors, and reading through as many old CCCA registries as I could find, I went back home from college to help on the show days. At the golf greens where the closed-t0-the-public cocktail party of who’s whos took place, I was assigned to help an author set up his table by the automobilia art for sale for book signing of his latest project, Ultimate Garages.

His name was Phil Berg. He wrote for Car and Driver a little before I started consistently reading the magazine, and he said that he still occasionally contributed to both Car and Driver and Road & Track for the new car issues. But we hit off conversation really well as I helped him organize his books.

He said that his daily driver was a Beck 550 Spyder replica with no top. His wife was the one who was in charge of being responsible for getting the kids off to school.

In his retirement from the magazines, he started a Robin Leech-like business of traveling around to the homes of auto aficionados, profiling their garages — the “most sacred room in the house.” These wealthy enthusiasts practically begged him to come to their houses, and he was soliciting more offers to visit garages as we were standing under the tent.

Soon the night was over, though, and I was off to drive him back up to the clubhouse in a $55,000 BMW 530i I had been in charge of planting on the green for prospective aristocrats — the most expensive car this then-19-year-old had ever driven at the time.

The following day after the show had wrapped up, I was grabbing some food from the buffet when I ran into Phil. We sat down and started talking about his other big project of the recent past, Corvette C6, a book that launched in late-2004 alongside the introduction of the new Chevrolet Corvette. He was granted full access to illustrations, technical specifications, and ultimately, the final product well before the public.

“But what was left out?” I asked.

Phil didn’t hesitate to answer my questions, either. The first piece of information left out of the book revolved around the design of the C6. He insisted that the “evolution” design that made it to production wasn’t what GM had originally intended.

Initially, Team Corvette held a private showing in Florida of a car known as the Miami Project to the insiders, because it was shown to the Corvette Club of Miami. Its design was supposedly more angular, futuristic like the Cadillac XLR, its platform stablemate. The club hated it so much that GM rushed a much more conservative design into production — what we have.

I then asked him about the on-again, off-again rumors of some supercharged Super Corvette, the “Blue Devil” as it was known in the magazine world, codenamed for then-CEO Rick Wagoner’s alma mater of Duke. He confirmed it. In fact, he had shed light on its skunkwerks inception in after hours, its development, and how, as the only prototype GM had made, it burned to the ground during testing. The project had been halted for months until GM’s big wigs could justify actually giving the car a budget.

And the rest is history. Three years later, the General would officially debut the ZR1 supercharged Corvette, proving that most likely the same sort of enthusiasm Bob Lutz had used in pushing the 1989 Dodge Viper concept car into production 20 years earlier had struck the corporate world again. And in spite of GM’s misgivings and recent bankruptcy, the company proved that a world class supercar could be produced for much less than its rivals — without ending up in a fiery blaze.

I don’t mind sharing these details now that it’s well past the fact, but I found a certain connection, a vibrant and pure lust over all things car during that weekend. I knew I wanted to do what Phil had been able to do, exploring the culture of the industry. And in my first real taste of what it would be like, I found myself yearning for more time to be able to listen, absorb all that I could.

Phil drove off in a press fleet Jaguar S-Type R he said had been giving him fits all weekend. And I looked forward to what my next step would be on getting where I wanted to be.