For over a century, the world’s automakers have been refining and improving the way that cars work. Everyone loves when a technological breakthrough brings better performance or fuel economy, but I think some of the greatest advances in automotive engineering have come from safety.
Recently, I visited the Computer History Museum in California. The museum has an exhibit about the on-board ABS computer developed by Bosch that I found interesting.
It’s the 2nd week of the 14th year of the 21st century. Let’s recap:
That’s it for this week. We’ll pick it back up Monday.
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Although I feel my automotive proficiency is fairly well-rounded, there are a couple gaps in my knowledge. I understand that nobody is perfect, so I try not to beat myself up over the fact that I can’t make myself get into anything European or Japanese made before the mid-eighties, I’m not up to date on current supercars (hypercars? what are they calling them now?), and street rods all just look like the same ZZ Top album cover to me.
I also have a bad habit of calling everything that that looks really old but not American either an Excalibur or a “Cruella de Vil Car”, depending on whether I am talking to a car guy or not. So when I saw this old lady barreling down the 17, with a death grip on the steering wheel and, I’m imagining, a cartoonish twinkle of determination in her eyes, taking a folding card table somewhere, wearing a rain poncho underneath her jacket, on a very hot, very dry day in Phoenix, I just assumed that I had just seen an Excalibur. A Cruella de Vil car.
