Project MERCATOR | Autobahn
The auto show was a grand way to spend a Saturday. We arrived shortly before 2:00 P.M. & toured the attractions & displays 'til 9:45 P.M., a quarter of an hour before the close. The question I've been asked by almost everyone to whom I've mentioned the visit is, What was my favorite car? I don't have an answer, I think in part because I saw nothing that inspired in me as much raw desire as the Volkswagen Jetta T.D.I. did in Ska Army. (He was very specific about the Diesel engine.) I may not have had a specific favorite car, but there was still plenty there to catch my fancy. I enjoyed glowering at the Ferrari display, my hate of those prideful swine washing over me like a cool breeze on a summer's day. I gloried in the myriad delights of the Cadillac display, loving the fit of the driver's seat of the CTS, marveling at the cavernous back seats of the full-sized XTS, & playing call-&-answer with the pitchman of the new ELR. I thrilled at the models on display, both the cars & the girls. I asked a gentlemen in a magnificent Tyrolean hat where he had acquired such a magnificent Tyrolean hat & he answered with an accented, "Neuschwanstein." This of course is Mad King Ludwig's fairy-tale castle in Bavaria. Drat! I thanked him for his forthrightness all the same. The best part of the Porsche display was the large video screen highlighting the marque's racing heritage; searching out the scattered bits & pieces of racing paraphernalia became something of a scavenger hunt.

The North American International Auto Show is one of the largest auto shows in the world, & one of the perquisites of residing in sacred Michigan. I rue the many years that passed before last year's return visit, but I also revel in two consecutive annual tours & the promise of many more to come.

This Week in Motorsport
Rally Monkey
Dakar Rally
34th running
Saturday, 5 January-Saturday 19 January 2013

The last week of the Dakar was not as mind-boggling as the first week, both because I was accustomed to the spectacle & because the terrain changed from the preposterous huge dunes of Peru & Chile to the dusty mountain roads of Argentina, the event taking on the tamer semblance of a W.R.C. course. Which is not to say that the Dakar wasn't still bananas. The Dakar is bananas! Of the four hundred forty-nine competing motorbikes, quads, cars, & trucks that departed from Lima, Peru a fortnight earlier, three hundred two crossed the finish line in Santiago, Chile. I saw riders fly over the handlebars of their bikes, I saw cars flipped up onto their roofs, & I saw ten-ton trucks thunder over loose sand into which they should have sunk & been lost forever. I'd never before seen anything like the Dakar, in part because I suspect there is nothing else like it in all the world. Wilderness, they raced through honest-to-goodness wilderness! The test to which man & machine are put by the five thousand three hundred miles of the race, the mettle needed to endure over the course of two weeks of toil & deprivation, the madness & the glory of the exercise—I am in awe of the Dakar Rally.

{Class—Start/Finish}
Bikes—183/125
Cars—152/91
Quads—39/26
Trucks—75/60

World Rally Championship
Round 1
Rallye Monte-Carlo
Wednesday-Saturday, 16-19 January 2013

The more things change in the W.R.C., the more things stay the same: Citroën is now sponsored principally by Total & Abu Dhabi instead of Total & Red Bull, & nine-time World Champion Sébastien Loeb is only running a partial-season schedule, but Citroën & Loeb still prevailed in '13's first rally. Southern France & the Principality were blanketed in ice, snow, & slush. Conditions were so adverse that several cars slid right off the road, & every driver complained about the slick corners. It was however excessively large crowds clogging the narrow mountain roads that led to the last two stages of the rally being cancelled. Sébastien Ogier finished second in the Volkswagen factory squad's debut, with the full-season Citroëns of Dani Sordo & Mikko Hirvonen finished third & fourth. The young guns of M-Sport, formerly the Ford works team, could manage no better than sixth, but conditions were adverse & it's still early days in this year's championship campaign.

There does not at present appear to be any television coverage of the W.R.C. here in the States, so all that I know about the Monte Carlo Rally comes from the interwebs. I am fostering the hope that there will be W.R.C. coverage later in the year, especially now that Speed has some time to fill in its schedule, what with the loss of F1 coverage to the N.B.C. Sports Network.

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
John Williams, "The Battle In the Snow" from Star Wars Trilogy: The Original Soundtrack Anthology (Disc 2: Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back) (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: It is proper cold today, the temperature outside at midday in the single digits Fahrenheit. It is so cold that you want to climb inside a tauntaun to stay warm, no matter the smell.

Montag, 21 Januar
Jonathan Winters, "Ross Perot Calling Every American" from Crank Calls (T.L.A.M.)

Sonntag, 20 Januar
Less Than Jake, "The Science of Selling Yourself Short" from Anthem (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary:

"(I'll sing along,)
Yeah, with every emergency,
(Just sing along,)
I'm the king of catastrophes,
(I'm so far gone,)
That deep down inside I think it's fine by me,
I'm my own worst enemy."

Samstag, 19 Januar
They Might Be Giants, "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" from Then: The Earlier Years (Ska Army)

Commentary: Ska Army & I began singing "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" whilst approaching Cobo Hall. Why? No obvious reason, aside from our mutual appreciation of T.M.B.G.