My Greatest Hits (And Biggest Misses) Of 2015

It’s that time of year again! As I did in 2014, 2013, and 2012, I’m channeling my inner Joni Mitchell by linking back to some of my most popular articles of the year and also reanimating some of the things that I loved but you hated.

So let’s set the wayback machine to “not terribly far” and let’s go living, we’ll keep living, in the past!

The April Fool’s Prank. This was the biggest article of the year at TTAC, and both of the “companion” pieces I did also made the Top 50. It came from an idea that Alex Roy had while we were driving Matt Farah’s “Million Mile Lexus” from Los Angeles to Powell, Ohio in January. Simultaneously depressed and exhilarated by the increasingly ridiculous bedpan-and-sketchy-data turn taken by pretenders to the “cross-country record,” Alex proposed to take the process to its logical conclusion via fiction. To say that the article was popular would be a considerable understatement. April Fools’, everyone.

You gotta be rich to own a cheap car. The aforementioned “Million Mile Lexus” somehow got me all the way from 21st and Lewis in Long Beach, CA to my driveway without much drama, but it couldn’t make it to Tim Horton’s two days later without blowing out its radiator. The think piece that I wrote about the repairs performed by “Tavarish” from Jalopnik wound up being linked everywhere from AudioAsylum to AR15.com.

Porsche’s Deadly Sin #1. It’s been more than five years since I wrote this but it easily cracked the Top 10 stats page again this year. It might be one of the most popular things in the entire history of the site and it’s been read close to a half million times.

Performance Car Of the Year, 2016. As was the case for the two years previous, Road&Track‘s “PCOTY” was a chance for me to spend three days driving the most exciting new cars on the market with my friends and write a story about it that would be distributed across the globe to millions of readers. It’s difficult to express the sheer satisfaction involved in the event without coming off like a pre-arrest Martin Shkreli holding the Wu-Tang album, so I won’t bother.

Death Of An Incel. This was one of the the most popular things I wrote for my own blog in 2015, and it led to all sorts of fascinating conversations. Perhaps the oddest consequence of publishing this article was a series of emails I received from a mysterious fellow who claimed to be romantically involved with a friend of Wilkes McDermid. He portrayed himself as a sort of Christian Grey character: young, handsome, impeccably fit, wealthy beyond my wildest imagination, the veteran of a hundred supermodels’ bedrooms. I don’t know if he’s for real or if it’s a put-on, but regardless I enjoy our correspondence.

The Misses

My Elsinore GP misadventure was (and remains) a sustained low point in 2015. My plan was to honor Steve McQueen by competing in the Elsinore off-road motorcycle race. I had zero off-road motorcycle experience. Still, the first day of training went pretty well and it wasn’t until the morning of the second day, early in October, that I snapped my left tibial plateau clean off, pulling two ligaments with it. For the record, I rode the bike back to the pits after the crash. If you stop by the R&T site at the end of the week, you should be able to see some X-rays and hear a fun story about a guy who had his arms laid open and purposely mutilated so he could continue riding dirtbikes. I’m still using a cane to walk and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever get that leg all the way back to where it was, but what the hell.

Aircooled cars, hot prices. What made me sad about this piece was that I went through the trouble of doing a Bob Seger parody and only one reader caught it. It’s not that you’re idiots. It’s that I didn’t do a very good job. Like Chucky on “SOA” used to say, I accept that.

Stupid Paris Stupid Does. Not only is the headline labored, the diesel fanatics wanted me dead after they read the whole thing. But you’d be well advised/Not to plan my funeral before the body dies. I continue, however, to think that diesel passenger cars are a terrible idea. The particulate issue is only now beginning to get the attention it truly deserves.

Review: M235xi. The various mouth-breathing basement-dwellers of the BMW forums absolutely crucified me for refusing to acknowledge the Greatness Of The Turbo Six Powered Two Series. Go to hell, you Bimmer-bronys. The car sucked.

Save For The Limo. This is the closest thing I’ve written lately to a mission statement. I hope it explains a little bit about why I write what I do and what I feel my responsibilities are to you, the reader. Enjoy it.

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