What Happened to My Profession?

So I’m late to this party, but I do wonder what in the hell happened myself

Can’t go on the mainstream sites without mention of Electric this, hybrid that like it’s a good thing, and Road and Track, which use to be my favorite, no longer seems to do any competitive testing and is just a glorified Carthrottle.com, just without the brits.

Such a shame, whats going on that anyone can just become a Journo without a love for cars?

I would like it more if Ralphie’s teeth would start hurting, but it would be my luck that he probably has full dentures now.

I’m becoming more annoyed with the way this cabal is driving the individuality out of cars and trucks. I used to recognize the sheer distinction of the small, rear-engine cars like the Fiat X1/9, the Toyota MR-2, and event the Pontiac Fiero. In fact, I used to have all three of these! But I guess it didn’t make sense to continue these when the price suddenly spiked to over $25,000.

But where does one go for a good 2-seater today, not counting used cars? I guess the Mazda MX-5 and its Fiat cousin might suffice, now that the others have ceased production. But they still run into the mid-high $20k range.

I never thought I’d say it, but it’s becoming more obvious every day. They’re taking all the fun out of driving.

You hit this one on the head, Eric. I grew up on Brock Yates, David E. Davis, Pat Bedard, et al. Can you imagine any of today’s candy-ass journos like George Notaras (Motoman on YouTube) entering the Indianapolis 500. Here’s Pat Bedard’s 1984 crash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXxr-cRBjL0 My Buddy and I read Yates’ book Sunday Driver when it was first published in ’75 during our senior year in high school. It inspired us to average 105MPH for fourteen miles in a Triumph TR250 on Soledad Canyon Road (filming location for the movie Duel). And yes, the 105MPH was a two way average.

Today, automobile writers lecture me on the environment and infotainment. I’m gonna hurl.

This excerpt from the foreword of a book written in 1935 is an illustration of the view of reporting that was once standard:

“This story of the victorious ride of the Red Shirts in
South Carolina, one of the most vitally important episodes
of the history of the state and country, is told by a news-
paper reporter who is not a literary person. Therefore, it
is given here as it was written, reporter-fashion, from per-
sonal observation and knowledge, for the Charleston
Evening Post and Columbia State in 1926-27, just fifty
years after the occurrences described.
As the fundamental requirement of the old style reporter
was accuracy, I am glad to be able to say that while the story
was being published in weekly instalments through more
than six months and read and studied by thousands who
lived and did throughout the Hampton campaign, but two
of the statements were questioned. One contradiction was
justified by a blunder of my own. This error was corrected.”

The author’s observation that the reporter isn’t a literary person (writer of opinion) is telling. Today, reporters are writers of opinion who may present facts, but always frame those presentations in their own interpretation. That kind of writing was once reserved for the editorial pages, but now is the standard style for writers pretending to present the facts while actually crafting a narrative to be taken as fact.

Another great piece eric. Coming in from the west oil patch yesterday I was bummed by the incompetence of the people on the road and goddamn companies like Swift with their 60 mph trucks out there blocking everybody’s way. The cars, where do I start? They all look like the same turd in a different color carrying the same no-driving a-holes who want to speed but don’t have the huevos to do so.

I regularly drive I-20 at 79 mph, in a pickup and big rig both and pass countless radars and haven’t been stopped for a traffic cause in 30 years…….but the DOT doesn’t need a reason. These holiday drivers don’t dare go 79……by themselves…..but will hang on your ass if YOU will drive that fast and then finally pass you as some semblance of guts happens to get into their system…..for a moment. I got so damned tired of being passed and then having to pass the same damned vehicles.

Once, I thought to my self, Self, I used to love cars. There were every type and distinct styles and colors and capabilities but now I hate cars. They all look alike and are driven by the simple-minded.

When I was a kid we didn’t sweat speeding and if you saw a cop you could just slow down for his radar beam…..when one existed…..and then speed back up and be done with it. We’d have a yearly trek of the extended family to the Davis Mountains for a July 4th holiday or some other and 90 mph would be the average speed for an entire line of cars with families. Nobody was screaming about “danger” and I’d be saying stuff like “If we don’t speed up we’ll be driving all day”. We never got cars mixed up since they all looked different and so did the others on the road. 12 miles before I got home a car(some “thing” that was small and tall and white, came to a virtual stop in the road in front of me….in a 75 mph zone. I did a bad thing I only realized as I was doing it and passed them on a double line although why it was a double line when you could see a mile has always been a mystery to me. But what I did was illegal and nearly deadly and I kicked myself mentally for doing it even as I did it. Yep, I passed them, no turn signal so either way I went could have been deadly and had I killed these fools I would have been at fault due to the double line. Right after going by them…..on the left, they made a hard left turn that a second before would probably have killed us all. This is the type of shit you have to deal with on the open road these days. Oh yeah, it was Hispanics, the no-driving scourge of west Texas. The more of this I see the more tempted I am to buy a bus and haul people to their destination. And these are the type of wrecks you see these days, easily avoidable by half-ass decent drivers. And lately I’ve been hearing on the radio news about people getting run over by trucks.

The John Boy and Billy Show has all these public service bs spots paid for by me and you. One goes like “Big rigs doing 60 mph take 6 seconds to stop and a 100 yds to do so” Be careful and blah blah blah. 6 seconds eh? News to me. More like twice that.

Last year I came on this wreck where a woman in her late 30’s pulled right in front of a water hauler doing 30 mph. The Mack had a big front end guard and didn’t appear to sustain any damage but it hit the car broadside and flipped it a few times before it stopped rolling. They found her cell phone intact and still in a game playing mode. That was her last game……idiots…….

I stealing your phrase “Coercive Wet Nursing”.

Brock Yates… takes me back to the days when “Officer Bob Speed” from Maryland always used to write letters to the editor of Car & Driver to taunt those of us who had a heavy foot. And then the good folks would write back and trash-talk back at what a useless turd this pig was. I’m getting misty eyed right now the good old days when a ticket was under $50.

All of these saaaaaaafety features do is lead us into a false sense of security–that is, we don’t have to think or act because the car is already programmed to do that for us.

What kind of ethic does that teach young drivers–that they don’t need to exercise responsibility and judgment by paying attention to traffic and other things around them; that the car will automatically make decisions for them? How sad and tragic.

This is why I enjoy helping my 33 y.o. son restore his 1984 Toyota Pickup, itself a treasure since we know it as “Mike’s Truck”, Mike being the late former marine buddy of his whom was tragically murdered post-service some 5-1/2 years ago. Though it has some emissions stuff and computer controls, it’s nothing like today’s X-Boxes on four wheels. And the best part…it’s a TRUCK. A 22R engine with a five-speed, requiring one to know how to handle a “stick”. It was retrofitted with the 22R Fuel-injection as it was originally had a carburetor, but somehow it’s “gotten past the Dragon” (i.e., passed the “Smaug” inspection in Californi(cate)). This vehicle isn’t a “trailer queen”, it’s a daily driver that serves my boy and his family well.

Damn I miss Brock Yates and even Hunter S. Thompson.
One “safety device” I would propose for Herr Crane’s vehicle is an “enema needed” sensing device that automatically…Well, you get the picture.

“Coercive utopianism has sucked almost all the joy out of owning and driving cars…”

Coercive utopianism has sucked almost all the joy out of all living.

Those whose teeth are not aching are the problem.

To paraphrase the George Bernard Shaw quote, “Those who can do, those who can’t write about those who can.”

This is one of the things that seems to creep in over time. Back in the beginning there weren’t any doctors, lawyers or engineers. There were people who happened to gravitate toward a profession. Many were just there because they liked doing the activity. Many more were looking to cash in, but put in the time to learn the business because of their morals and ethics, or because not killing your customer makes business sense. And a very few thought they could bluff their way into the business and get out before being discovered as frauds.

This third group was a problem. The market didn’t quite offer a solution to personal damaged caused by inept professionals. Insurance settlements and lawsuits were imperfect fixes, if you lost an arm due to a poorly designed machine no amount of cash will bring your arm back. So it was decided that groups of peers would certify your abilities to perform your duties. As these peer groups became more entrenched eventually schools sprung up that catered to people who wanted to enter the professions. Again, more peer-based certification. Eventually there was enough of an establishment in place to lead to legislation putting government in place as the ultimate certification authority.

These certifications served another function because they verified a new entrant understands the minimum knowledge to perform a task, even though he might not have a resume’ or past (or at least that was the intent). So schools started offering other certifications, like journalism, so that potential employers could assume that a given candidate who has a sheepskin is better than one without. When enough people with degrees came looking for work it was pretty easy for the employers to just demand a degree to try to weed out lessor candidates. You can see where this all ends, in that employers hire people who specialize in sorting out qualifications (AKA human resources) who have to have special certification.

What is missing of course is that journalism schools can’t teach for specialized subsets of writing, or teach about specific industries. A discipline like engineering or physician has enough business to allow for a lot of specialization. Journalism, up until recently, had no need for specialization because there wasn’t enough variety in delivery. Only one newspaper per town, a few dozen magazines on a rack, 3 or 4 TV stations. But now that anyone can be a blogger that will lead to greater specialization. It will take some time for institutions to figure this out but when they do it will just be a given that someone will get a degree in “transportation journalism” or “medical journalism” or perhaps “sports journalism.” There are already professional organizations devoted to these subsets of journalism, one of the best known examples being White House Correspondents’ Association. Unless the AI writers take over before the schools have time to get ramped up.

Did it ever occur to these safety mavens that a car automatically slamming on it’s brakes in an emergency might actually cause more accidents than it prevents? How does the car tell the difference between an empty cardboard box, or a plastic bag, and a real threat? Can you imagine the rear ender collisions if one of these auto-braking equipped pieces of techno-rubbish slammed on its brakes for a drifting plastic bag in rush hour traffic on a freeway?
Another point is what happens to drivers who get used to letting the car brake for itself in an emergency? What happens if they have to drive an older car? The driver gets into an emergency situation, and thinks the car will brake for him… Then what?
What happens on an icy road?
What happens when there is a sudden choice? Do you hit the stray dog that ran into the street, or slam on the brakes & maybe kill the occupants of the car behind you? The car will make the choice for you.
My suspicion is that these systems are being installed to work in tandem with the “driverless cars” Uber and the rest of Satan’s engineers are coming up with. And, the auto-braking systems will not work well at all, so the humans will be blamed. Suddenly the push will be on to eliminate the humans, because humans are a curse upon this world, and cn’t be allowed to actually do anything. My suspicion is these robot cars will end up being either directly controlled by the government, or by one of its corporate minions…

I’m sticking with my 2011 Crown Vicky P-71 Interceptor for as long as I humanly can. It’s the last one of the full sized Fords with no connection to the internet. Plus, I can still fix it myself.

if only we would have been able to keep government out of the car business. it seems as though our current predicament with the car industry started in the early 1950’s that is when they decided to get rid of the real competition. both ford and chevy went on a binge that literally strangled the independent automakers. they really wanted to get rid of hudson because they were producing automobiles that were proving there superiority. they tried to force the middle 4 automakers into a merger that would have created a 4th big automaker. you know, much easier to get total control of 3 or 4 companies then it is 50. the studebaker / packard merger came to an end in 1966 and the hudson / nash merger ( AMC) came to an end in 1987. chrysler is another sore point as far as i am concerned. how in the hell did the tiny company get awarded more WW2 government contracts then the thousands of others combined ? if you look at the amount of stuff they made it is absolutely overwhelming.

there have been very few new comers to the field since WW2 and zero success stories. i had great hopes for elio, but it looks as though we will never see one… UHG

No one should be allowed to write about cars unless they can replace a starter and have been car jacked and mugged. This guy just can’t imagine a car that won’t move because the electronics have locked up the brakes. He also can’t imagine a car jacker pulling in front of him and slowing down.

“”porcine pile of authoritarian collectivism….”
“Coercive Wet Nursing…”
“metrosexualized echo chamber…”
“Ralph and Joan and Keith are the same hermaphroditic homunculus.”
It’s writing like this that keeps me coming back to read MOAR. Your comments are more accurate than a laser guided smart bomb. Shoot from the hip and aim for the face, Eric.

You think things have gotten too far downstream with cars and saaaaaaaaaaafety? Try heavy equipment on for size! Zero turn mowers have so many safety switches, low oil sensors, cut-outs, shut-offs, etc. that they are prone to sudden failure at any cold start. Modern tractors have so much computerized crap on them that it takes a Millennial geek with a smartphone and some college coursework to operate them. Gone are the days of mechanical anything.

Alas and alack, Eric, people can be trained to want that which they reject at the moment. Air bags are the perfect example of this, but all the rest of the gadgetry, gimcracks, and gewgaws the driving public accepts now are further instances thereof. The lack of electric cars right now means nothing to the driver 20 years in the future who will be gladly motoring–or is it humming?–and defending his O’Brien-mandated Oceania vehicle.

someone, and I wish I could remember who, once stated “any organization not explicitly conservative will inevitably trend to a leftist state.” They seek power. Jerry Pournelle’s (RIP) “Iron law of bureaucracy” states why-

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Back in the day when newspapers and magazines were at their height back in the 19th century and early 20th, the writers and reporters were ordinary people. There were no college degrees in “journalism”. Almost nobody in a newsroom had a college degree in anything. You started at the bottom and moved up.

The writers and reporters were just people who happened to end up in the profession. It wasn’t glamorous or particularly well paying. Staffed by people with either natural talent or were self taught but more likely mentored by a more experienced person. The only requirement was that you could do your research and write well.

So most were a variety of people, they could be a simple blue collar guy to someone who had a english degree from a college. So a wide swath of people, with different life experiences and viewpoints. So ironically a far more “diverse” profession (at least in viewpoint) then now. And if your politics didn’t work with your boss, there was likely several other papers you could work at instead.

There is a reason why there aren’t any more Mike Royko blue collar type people (well known Chicago newspaperman) in the business anymore. They would never get looked at, let alone hired by anyone anymore. He never earned a college degree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Royko

I think the downfall began when college degrees in “journalism” became more important then writing skill.

Many people disliked the free wheeling and sometimes quite crude newsrooms of old. They wanted to be “professional”. It cost them the character that people actually liked and it represented a wide variety of people. Now there is forced generic-ism, a fake taking no sides. Nobody stands out, at least for a good reason.

I thought you’d enjoy this column, which moved on the wire today. Either this columnist reads you or you are not alone. I was very happy to see a libertarianish idea moving on the AP wire services.

Car buyers lose when government tells them what to buy
By Merrill Matthews
Tribune News Service (TNS)
DALLAS — For a century carmakers built the cars and trucks their customers wanted. That’s changing. Increasingly they’re building cars and trucks the government wants their customers to have — and that means electric vehicles (EVs).

CNN reports that China, France, Great Britain, India, Norway and Germany are considering banning the future production and sale of gasoline and diesel-powered engines.

Norway wants all its cars to be zero emissions by 2025. India wants all car and truck sales to be electric vehicles by 2030. France hopes to achieve that goal by 2040, and Great Britain by 2050.

Those are ambitious goals, considering only 750,000 electric vehicles were sold worldwide in 2016.

Eight other countries — Japan, Korea, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland and Spain — are only setting EV sales goals. In addition, 10 states want an EV sales target by 2025.

President Barack Obama also tried to push more electric vehicle sales. How’s that working out?

Automakers sold 1.93 million vehicles in the U.S. during October — one-third of them were cars and two-thirds trucks and SUVs.

Of that number, Chevrolet sold 2,710 of its all-electric Bolt. Nissan sold a whopping 213 of its all-electric Leaf. And Tesla sold an estimated 1,120 of its Model S, according to the website Inside EVs.

Normally, a manufacturer would eliminate such a poor-selling product. What gives?

Government mandates and taxpayer dollars, that’s what.

While Washington hasn’t banned gas and diesel-powered cars and trucks — yet — it is forcing manufacturers to make EVs and subsidizing consumers who buy them.

The corporate average fuel economy standard, or CAFE, is a 1975 law that requires each automaker’s lineup of cars, light trucks and SUVs to meet a government-designated fuel economy goal.

The Obama administration raised the standard to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

The problem automakers face is that consumers want SUVs and trucks — especially when gasoline prices are low — which fall short of the CAFE standards.

So they make money-losing electric cars to lower their overall average mileage, which allows them to sell less fuel-efficient but moneymaking SUVs and trucks that consumers want.

In addition, taxpayers subsidize the purchase of electric vehicles and hybrids — up to $7,500 per vehicle. For example, the Bolt’s webpage sets the car’s starting price at $37,495, adding that it is “$29,995 after federal tax credit.” The Bolt featured on the web page is $42,760.

That’s a lot of money for a middle class family making the median household income of $59,000.

Then there’s Tesla, a beautiful EV that many people would love to own, but the Model S begins at about $70,000. Most middle class taxpayers can’t pay that — but their taxes will pay a portion of the $7,500 credit that subsidizes wealthy people who can afford them.

Defenders fear if the tax credit were phased out, EV sales would plummet. When Hong Kong ended its $12,500 tax credit for Teslas, sales tanked. Apparently, Hong Kong residents only wanted it if the government helped pay for it.

There is nothing wrong with automakers churning out EVs if that’s what their customers want. And the day may come when improved technology, longer driving ranges and lower costs create a real demand for electric vehicles. But for now the large majority of Americans want trucks and SUVs.

The car or truck of your dreams may not be the car or truck of the government’s dreams. Remember, these are the same folks who designed Obamacare insurance the way they wanted it, required everyone to have it, and assured us it would be the best health insurance ever.

Don’t let Washington do to our cars and trucks what they did to our health insurance!

———

ABOUT THE WRITER

Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in the greater metropolitan Dallas area. He earned a doctorate in Humanities from the University of Texas. Readers may write him at IPI, 1320 Greenway Drive, Suite 820, Irving, Texas.

This essay is available to Tribune News Service subscribers. TNS did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of TNS or its editors

———

©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194):

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Topics: t000047103,t000002537,t000047405,t000002676,t000046807,t000205123,g000362667,g000224489,g000362690

Speaking of Brock Yates, in his monthly Car and Driver columns in the 1980s he often expressed suspicion of the likes of self-driving and automated vehicles and road networks.

Many of his criticisms still stand, such as this one in particular that references Bob Lutz’s recent wet dream:

You have a line of automated driverless vehicles including trucks going 100+ mph on a highway. Suddenly a truck in this line loses part of a load in the highway, spraying debris all over. What do you suppose is going to happen next? If you think those driverless cars will all react in time to stop or avoid that debris, well, you must be related to our dear Clover…

The current crowd of “journalists” dare not question these “miracle” whizbang technologies—but someone needs to. Keep plugging away, Eric.

That picture you used shows what a sanctimonious bastard Keith Crain is.

He looks a child molester, too. I could definitely picture him hanging out with Dennis Hastert….sharing hot dogs.

Crain…Crain…I know that from…YES! It’s on the front of his desperate attempt at manliness golf cart, AUTOWEEK. Correct me if I’m wrong but, isn’t that Crain Publications that put out Autoweek & Competition Press?

I used to read it religiously in the 70’s and 80’s but, stopped getting it about 20 years ago.

Eric, you write about what the automotive press was like “40 years ago”, how about 44 years ago?

It was in AUTOWEEK that an article appeared that was my epiphany from apolitical car guy to, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore”.

In 1973 airbags were just a Nadir[sic] Claybrook wet dream. Autoweek had an article that talked of research on these dashboard claymores that was done in Sweden. Of the 24 piglets that were positioned in front of the bags as they deployed, 8 of them died from the concussion alone. No contact with the bag itself, just the explosion was enough to off them. The others were injured but, not killed.

It was at that moment that I realized Nadir and Claybrook cared not a whit about safety but, that it was just a bunch of authoritarian busy-bodies that were trying to get their way at my expense.

Long ago I realized that in situations like this it comes down to people like Nadir, Claybrook and now Crain, that they’re either stupid or evil to promote such insanity. When their ideas fail and the “stuff’ hits the fan it’s “stupid” they’ll claim but, evil is their game.

John 12:31

A thought hit me today – that modern cars, with their all-consuming focus on safety, are like toys intended for small children that’re too young even for regular toys.

Too big to swallow, no sharp edges, brightly colored, made from non-toxic materials, etc.

No self-respecting 8-year-old boy wants to play with Duplos – those giant Legos intended for toddlers – he wants proper Legos. I know – my nephews are 7 and 5.

And I don’t want a car to drive for me, or bury me in airbags if I get in a crash, or beep at me about my seatbelt.

I’m an adult. I accept the risks of living.

Just imagine the likes of Bud Lindemann talking like that.

That guys brother. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_iSQ65ZDAE

😉

Looking at the first 3 photos, I think I know an affordable way to feed AND shelter the starving & homeless at the same time. Considering how fat stores excess energy….I think the same solution would end any energy crisis we may be facing as well!

Same thing that’s happening in my line of work, Eric. Only not just limited to computerizing the crap out of the car itself anymore. The whole business of auto repair is being integrated into the “instant gratification”
culture created by the internet. For all the garbage being used to boost sales, yadda, yadda, yadda, I am still seeing cars come in here continually misdiagnosed, damaged by bungled, sloppy repairs, and customers having been defrauded nearly everywhere else. It’s the age of “information” alright, but there isn’t anyone applying “reason” to the recipe any longer. Either that, or the reasoning involved is so screwed up and distorted from rampant misrepresentation, I can’t separate the two! Nothing is getting safer, only more infinitely obscured by the “technological voodoo” being used in this profession.
Bottom line, Eric:
We Are Dinosaurs. Our extinction is drawing nigh!

Am I the only one that thought Keith Crain looks like Captain Kangaroo? Maybe that is why he has a juvenile mentality. LOL!!!

This is the reason the youtube hoons and jalopnik writiers have gained popularity. They are young guys with a car passion and pursue achievable and dreamable car projects and cars.

“not exactly Cannonball material.” Nice!

Eric wrote:

“There is no car press anymore. There is a metrosexualized echo chamber for the EPA and NHTSA. Ralph and Joan and Keith are the same hermaphroditic homunculus.”

Bravo man, another great line worth repeating.

It’s not just the automotive press, it’s the press in general. They march lockstep in the Government Uber Alles echo chamber, most likely the result of four or six or eight years of overpriced brainwashing called “university”.

But who are the ones that actually sell, that people want to read or watch?

You, P.J. O’Rourke, Clarkson, May and Hammond are some great examples.

Guys like you are what sells, surprisingly, which only goes to show that maybe all hope is not lost.