It’s His Fault

Yesterday, The Baron du Toit posted up one of his hypothetical questions. This go around though, it wasn’t about firearms, it was about cars.

Let’s say your rich old Uncle Cedric, who was a car collector, passed away. In his will, he handed out his car collection, to be given out one car at a time, in strict order according to a list of heirs, who could each make their choice until the last guy gets whatever’s left.

Your turn comes up (you’re second-last on the list), and there are two cars left: a 1956 Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing, and a 1972 Ferrari Dino 246 GT, both in silver, and both in showroom condition.

If you cannot picture those two vehicles in your head, click the link for pics.

I refrained from putting in an answer into his comments section because I think it may have caused him to cancel my commenting privileges there.

In short, I would have chosen the MB and then sold it and bought some real estate with most of the dividends. On this real estate I would have a very large garage in which to store a couple of other automobiles.

Just like buying a firearm that I’ll never shoot, I cannot buy a car that I will rarely, if ever, drive. Both of the cars that the Baron offered up are worth more sitting somewhere than they are with miles on them. They are investments. And hence, I would sell them to someone who is willing to pay cash money to look at them in their garage and snatch myself up a residence.

Now, if I were to pose a question such as the one he did and I wanted to make it as difficult as possible for myself, these are the two cars I would have put into the question.

A 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500E

Or, a 1996 Toyota Supra TT

Muscle car affectionados will recognize the Shelby 500E as the infamous ‘Eleanor’ (that’s what the ‘E’ stands for, silly) most famously known as the car from the ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’ movies.

Eleanor is powered by a 427ci / 525hp mill, backed by a Tremec 5 speed and will walk most, if not all, of the muscle cars of it’s era and the majority of cars being put out today in both the quarter mile and right on up to the 170mph mark.

A very fine piece of work, indeed!

The Supra TT (standing for ‘Turbo Targa’, of course) is a 3 liter inline six with a decent amount of forced air boost off the showroom floor. Your Uncle Cedric however, was smart enough to swing this by my workshop back when I hobbied under a different moniker. We did a number of things to it (Garrett GT42 spinbox, Swissed-Out the head, giganto ICey-box, AC’d the intake, etc)  that brought the engine to life and ended up making the dynamometer give a read-out of 610hp at the rear pair.

While not a drag racer, it’s 12.42 ET is quick enough to please just about anyone, though it truly shines out on the open road, where it’ll follow a Lamborghini Diablo right on past the 190mph mark.

For most of y’all out there, you will pick one or the other rather easily.

Not so for me. If I had to choose one of the two, someone would have to put a time limit on how long I was allowed to think on it or I’d be scratching my head for weeks if not months.

The Analog Wife, on the other hand, would have a the same difficult decision if she was made to choose between an 2005 Dodge Magnum (non-hemi) or a 1966 Vista Cruiser.