As I shake the golf course owner’s hand through the window of our rented Mustang, Rich’s gaze falls on my wife’s jeans.

“You got a hole in your jeans,” he remarks, eyeing my wife’s strategically distressed apparel. 

“I paid good money for those holes,” Sam retorts.

Easier said than done. It takes a slim person to squeeze between the Model T's steering wheel and driver's seat. Most modern operators have to enter from the passenger side and slide over. Once there, only the Model T's helm works like a contemporary car's controls. The Flivver's throttle is on the column. Forward speeds are moderated by an unfamiliar lever and pedal combination. Another foot pedal shifts the car into reverse and doubles as a second brake. Before any of this, drivers of Model T's built before 1926 face the daunting prospect of using the 'Armstrong Starter' or hand crank. A second lever on the column retards the spark timing; which makes the starting procedure a bit easier and safer. (Broken wrists and arms eventually led to the development of the electric starter, and many older cars were retrofitted with the device as soon as they became available.)

Before spending two-days at the Skip Barber High Performance Driving School, I was convinced I was a reasonably skilled driver. I had no idea how bad I sucked. Lucky for my ego, I wasn't the only one to make this realization. Wealthy sports car owners from all walks of life swaggered into the Vegas heat full of piss, shit and corruption; convinced they could pilot Bimmers, Porkers and a Viper with confidence and élan. One-by-one, Skip Barber's Neon-driving instructors disabused them of the notion. As we struggled through a tire-smoking orgy of spinning, understeering, knocking over cones, missing turn-in points, choosing the wrong gear, braking at the exact wrong time and place, we all came to the same conclusion: none of us could drive for shit.

I walked around the car a few times admiring its presence. The strange combination of its Volvo P1800-like rear end and bulldog nose, those perfect pipes and wire wheels, that rakish roofline-- it all worked a treat. I was deeply smitten with the DB5, ready to fall in love. The interior kept the flame alive with its sweet-smelling leather and aircraft-style gauges. As always, RF had the first go. His real-time report warned me of the driving difficulties to follow. I told myself that his standards were too high; I wanted to like driving the DB as much as looking at it.

They brook no compromises and offer little nuance. They mean business, though their business is pleasure. Muscle cars are a black and white, all or nothing proposition, with super-hero exteriors belying the Spartan comforts to be found behind the glass. They enjoy a kind of gladiator luxury – the extravagant expense buying not power windows, power seats and power steering, but power. Pure and simple.

Some would argue that the term "muscle car" is an American term, originating during the 50's or 60's. But in actuality, the muscle car has lived, exactly, since the assemblage of automobile number 2. Over the years, muscle cars have evolved from an existence solely defined by monster displacement, to fully sorted and balanced ubermachines, equally capable of accelerating, turning and stopping within un-comprehensible and convention defying specifications. If necessity is the mother of invention, then muscle cars are the dead-beat father of innovation. Through their evolution, laws (governmental, physical or otherwise) have challenged engineers and gearheads to do more with less. Inevitably they succeed.

Muscle cars are cool. They're tough. They're American. But they're not for up-and-comers. Refined? Well, no. Sophisticated? Hardly. A technological tour de force? Save them words for androgynous Europeans with little glasses. If you're the type who understands opera or worries about the safety of dolphins or includes "tofu" on your grocery list, don't even try to understand.

But worst of all – and this sounds like an infectious disease – we had Jags.

Examples of Detroit's endless game of one-two-three red light are both bountiful and pitiful. For example, whatever happened to the bulbous Taurus? Where is America's favorite family sedan these days? It's been replaced by the Ford 500, a bland, underpowered vehicle whose customers are lined-up none deep. By the same token, the Ford Focus is a terrific little family car that could compete with the new Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris and Nissan Sentra. There's even an improved version in Europe, ready for federalization. But no, Dearborn has hung the Ford Focus out to dry, presumably in anticipation of its eventual unrelated replacement.

Stop. It's not so easy if you've got "long lasting" tires. While tire and auto manufacturers don't like to talk about tires' critical impact on stopping distances, when it comes to not hitting things, the behavior of the rubber beneath your car is one of the single most important variables. If your tires aren't soft enough to stick to the road surface, all the ABS and computerized AWD trickery in the world won't put an end to your slip-n-slide nightmare; you'll go skidding off into the sunset on your rubber rocks. The best thing about driving on two sets of sticky tires is the stopping. You always can. Unless it's snowing.

Morphing from pistonhead into Minivan Man (MVM) is a process, like grieving. At first, when the kids arrive, proto-MVM goes into denial. He hangs-on to his/his partner's two-door, or trades the sports car for a hot two-plus-two. He assures his partner that everything will be OK; the baby will fit in the back, no sweat. (Silently thinking, it's a baby, it'll never remember.) When the new father feels the brunt of his hormone-crazed wife's rage as she tries to maneuver a squealing child into the back, when he sees his precious litte angel in that dark, windowless space; he knows he's been beaten. He gets angry. Then he gets over it.

After his Le Mans win, Shelby revealed that he had a hereditary heart condition and shockingly retired from racing. Back in the States, he tried his hand selling tires and establishing a performance racing school. But in his heart of hearts, Carroll wanted to return to Europe with an American car and beat the Hell out of Enzo Ferrari's mob. He even had a plan: stuff a muscular American V8 into a nimble British roadster. The long tall Texan envisioned a hairy-chested mule clobbering Enzo's prancing thoroughbreds.

Ford put Theodore in charge of the Mustang program, and later the GT. When Theodore punched-in, the Mustang program was in the doldrums; no one was willing to buck Ford's long-winded product development process to make a great car, instead of another example of humdrum transportation. Convinced that Ford's designers were devoid of new ideas, Theodore told the studio to make a clay model that represented a brand new interpretation of the old Mustang theme. The result is perhaps the best rendition of 'retro' on the market today. More importantly, Theodore then set to work resolving the problems of actually making the car-- problems that have hamstrung Ford's creativity for decades.

Talk all you like about your sports car's brand heritage and timeless design. The average man in the street doesn't see it that way. They clock your race-ready wheels and know you're just itching to humiliate some velocity-challenged Vauxhall. And they're not wrong, are they? Any Porsche driver who claims he bought his car to drive 70 miles per hour on the motorway, only using the outside lane to pass slower moving vehicles when it is safe to do so, is either in deep denial, lying or has severely injured his testicles.

Hello, my name is Robert Farago and I'm a recovering Ferrari owner. I'd like to tell you about my first Ferrari…

I just wish someone could have warned me, you know, before. When it comes to performance cars, an ounce of prevention is worth 1120 kgs of immovable TVR. In fact, I reckon the government should force TVR to put a warning label on their product: 'Warning: This Car Breaks'. Not that it would work. Even a sticker proclaiming 'Driving this Car Can Lead Directly to a Tree' wouldn't put off members of The Cult of Unbridled Horsepower. Once they hear a TVR's burble and roar- a sound that will one day cough, splutter and die- they have less reasoning ability than an Irish Setter on heat.

Ask a Scientologist why they follow a doctrine created by man who ended his years on his own cruise ship staffed entirely by teenage girls in matching halter-tops and hot pants. You'll get a perfectly plausible explanation involving negative engrams (shouldn't it be "enmails" by now?), followed by a damn fine lawsuit. Ask a Member of the Trakult why a professional race circuit is a better place to drive fast than a public road, and you'll get an equally belligerent and self-righteous reply: safety. Trakultists argue that racetracks are the best—nay the ONLY place— for their speed-afflicted brethren to indulge their love of lateral G's.