Vehicles Blog

Updates from December, 2011

• By Peter Kenter

  With Dec. 25 tomorrow, my holly-filtered thoughts naturally turn to … Christmas television episodes of classic sitcoms. I’m not sure if that’s a sad statement on my formative years or the ability of these shows to tap into the holiday zeitgeist.

  Why classic TV? When it comes right down to it, I’d rather share that holiday with The Partridge Family and its Piet Mondrian schoolbus, stranded in the desert on Christmas Eve, than Breaking Bad’s meth-cooking chemistry teacher Walter White any day.

  Before the Internet, there was no way to know how many episodes of a TV series had been produced and what they were about. Around the third week of December, they’d trot out all of the Christmas-themed episodes of syndicated programming and jam them end to end in afternoon time slots.

  A standout Christmas episode of The Beverly Hillbillies had the clan receiving a boat and trailer from banker Milburn Drysdale. They leverage the holiday spirit by spending the rest of Christmas driving it around the Los Angeles freeways, trailing behind their truck, as everyone else appears to be doing.
  My favourite shows involved TV characters packing up cars with presents and taking a Christmas road trip. The best episode was the one where characters from Green Acres and Petticoat Junction loaded up their cars and drove to Beverly … Hills, that is.

  The Clampett family had previously visited Petticoat Junction at Christmas, but this was like the mind-blowing intersection of three worlds, with Oliver and Lisa Douglas from Green Acres sharing turkey around the billiard table at the Clampett mansion. It was the kind of secret knowledge you wanted to keep to yourself, perhaps to impress a girl so bookish she probably didn’t exist.
  I rarely received what I asked for at Christmas, but I still cherish a Beverly Hillbillies jigsaw puzzle, featuring the Clampetts riding around in their dilapidated truck.

  Even offbeat sitcoms such as The Munsters embraced the Yuletide season, with Herman and Grandpa appearing in the Munster Koach as part of the 1965 Macy’s Santa Claus Parade in New York City. Another favourite episode features the cast of Gilligan’s Island moping in front of their huts on a tropical Christmas day, then receiving a visit from Saint Nick himself. “You might have been lost at sea and never reached this island,” says Santa. “Or hit an island that had no food or water.” The castaways agree that they’re pretty darned lucky, but, assuming they’re talking to the Skipper in disguise, they fail to ask Santa for a ride back to civilization.

  That’s always troubled me. I know that the castaways were eventually rescued in 1978, but only after suffering at Gilligan’s hand for well over a decade.
  In a parallel world, I rescue them right there on Christmas Eve 1964 — in the primes of their lives — and return them to civilization.

  I start with a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter, airlifting the castaways to Honolulu and dropping off Gilligan and the Skipper at their home port. The other rescuees and I take a cab from there. I spy the Skipper striking Gilligan with his hat in the rear-view mirror as we head to Honolulu International Airport.
  From here, we take a plane to Los Angeles, and charter a large Volkswagen van at LAX. I drop Ginger off in Hollywood. “Best of the season to you, Ginger! See you in the movies,” I call out of the driver’s window. She waves cheerily.

  I next drive Professor Roy Hinkley to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, one of the schools from which he’s known to have received a degree. The van breaks down on the way, but the Professor fixes the engine with a piece of string, a walnut and a candy bar wrapper.

  I ask Mr. and Mrs. Howell if they’d like to be dropped off in Connecticut. “Good heavens, a Yale man,” exclaims Thurston Howell III. “Not hardly,” I reply. “A Canadian polytechnic.” We settle on Boston. Mr. Howell offers to write me a cheque to cover the cost of gas, but his cheque book appears to be missing. I settle for 300 shares of Howell Enterprises.

  The very last passenger? Mary Ann Summers, that sweet little farm girl from Winfield, Kan. Seems I should have turned north from Fort Worth to drop her off before I headed for Massachusetts.

  But it’s Christmas Day and the drive to Canada would be an awful lot shorter. Looks like Mary Ann will have to spend a couple of days at home with me.

  Merry Christmas!

  
  

  

  
  9:00 am on December 24, 2011
   

• Automotive journalists’ Christmas wish lists are generally meaningless. Inevitably, the typical car jockey pines for a Porsche, expresses her undying lust for a Lamborghini or is willing to beg for a Bugatti. Besides being boringly predictable, they’re completely unrealistic; most (actually all) writers’ incomes fall well into “99” territory, meaning that we, like most of you reading this column, are nowhere near the special “1-ness” requisite for ever having Santa deliver us the car of our dreams.

  Related

  • Motor Mouth: Conformity the price of fuel efficiency

  I like to dream more realistically. Just as there’s no use in me waiting for Angelina to come to her senses and finally leave Brad, there’s little use in fantasizing about Ferrari Enzos if they are destined to remain unattainable all your life. There’s too much frustration in life already — relationships, finances, that idiot manager who keeps on thwarting your best-laid plans to escape at 4:30 — to start adding to the list of things you can’t have. Besides, my personal tastes run far more prosaic. Oh, sure, I enjoy a two-seat roadster as much as the next guy, but I’m more a four-doors-with-a-largish-trunk kind of guy. Practicality might not be sexy, but it does transport the hockey gear.

  Nonetheless, I do like my cars sporting. So, were I given Santa’s complete blessing to wish for my perfect car, instead of just ordering off the rack, I’d petition the really big guy for something bespoke. Nothing particularly fancy because ostentation is not my goal but something tailor-made for the way I drive.

  So, first off, it would be a smallish sedan, something along the lines of an entry-level luxury sedan a la 3 Series BMW or Audi’s A4. Enough size that I can transport four adults in a pinch and stuff all my gym gear in the trunk yet not so large that it feels bloated on a twisty road.

  Since the price of gas is unlikely to go anywhere but up, I am going to opt for a bit of hybridization in my powertrain. Not an ordinary hybrid — which so far have not lived up to their promise of real-world fuel economy improvements — but a plug-in version. Put in a smallish — say three or four kilowatt-hour — Lithium ion battery so the little beast can motor electrically for, say, the first 20 kilometres every day and that will be just enough to get me to work where I can plug that sucker in. On days when I don’t cross town to my gym, that means I might get away with no fuel consumption at all. As for the electric motor, let’s make it a small light one that drives only the front wheels, effectively turning our fantasy vehicle into a more-practical-in-Canada four-wheel drive.

  If the decision to wish for hybridization is quasi-objective, my choice of engines — or at least engine layout — is pure passion. I want an in-line six, still the sweetest engine layout in the business. V8s thrum too much, fours buzz and V12s are only buttery smooth because they’re two in-line sixes joined at the crankshaft. Line up all six of your pistons in a row and you’re guaranteed perfect balance, vibration too minimal to measure and the most delightful sound that can exit an exhaust pipe. And, yes, I know that having all your connecting rods in a row screws up the packaging, but, hey, it’s my car and I like it when the crankshaft is long and the pistons mark a beeline to the front of the car.

  I will add one kink to all this, however. Instead of spark plugs, I’d like my big six with high-pressure diesel injectors. Yes, a diesel. Make mine turbocharged with say about 250 horses, 400 pound-feet of torque and a fuel-sipping seven litres per 100 km fuel economy on the highway. Since it’s my dream, it’ll also be designed and manufactured in Germany, home to all the most sophisticated oil burners. Mate it to an eight-speed automatic and I’m good to go in the powertrain department.

  Inside, my tastes run to back-to-basics simple. I’ll clothe the entire cabin in monochromatic black, eschew any kind of onboard computer complication and really don’t need a million buttons to control everything such as suspension damping or the rate that the radio volume increases as the speeds go up. My two indulgences will be a high-powered stereo to blast the cobwebs out of my ears (or, more accurately out of my cranium at the end of a long day) and a set of searing seat warmers to soothe my ailing back. Wrap it up in a navy blue metallic skin and my dream is complete.

  If you’re a diehard aficionado, you’ve probably noticed that my dream car sounds suspiciously like a garden-variety 335d BMW, albeit with a little boost from some lithium ion. Indeed, my even more fervent wish is that BMW (and others) should stop fooling around with EVs and all these turbocharged engines they’re spreading through their lineup(s). Just hybridify the 335d. At least one autojournalist’s dream would come true.

  
  

  

  
  9:00 am on December 23, 2011