#Housekeeping

I didn’t plan on attending the North American International Auto Show this year… I really didn’t. TTAC generally avoids the expense and hoopla of the major auto shows, focused as we are on analysis more than “check out this new hotness” reportage. But this year things are a little different. After my third New York Times op-eds in the last year or so, I’ve been asked by the PBS NewsHour to appear in their piece on the recovery (or, as we like to say here at TTAC, not) of the American auto industry… so in a few hours I will be hopping a plane to Motown for my first-ever NAIAS. While we’re in Motown (and that’s not the editorial “we”… my beautiful and long-suffering life partner has taken the time off work to come support me and take in the sights of Detroit in January) we’ll be stopping in at the UAW protest, reporting on the new launches and reveals, and rubbing elbows with industry reps as well as meeting with TTAC’s staff and our owners from VerticalScope. But there’s another reason we’re headed to Detroit: it’s time to do a little PR work of our own.

Dave Garrad personifies the word “hoon”. When I first met him in the smoke and beer filled haze of the Gemutliche Ecke (Translation: Comfy Corner) in Adenau, Germany, he was attempting a maneuver called The Lunge. There’s never a dull moment around Dave. Naturally, I immediately considered him for the last English caretaker of TTAC’s Ford Sierra project, before its journey to Germany and (ultimately) Houston. Upon our (Panther-lovin’) man Dereck’s delivery of the Sierra to his abode northeast of London, Dave remarked at how glorious the brown upon brown scheme truly was. His wife Helen refuses to ride in the chocolate-toned thing, lest her unborn baby develop unnatural tendencies.

It may not be ready to take on the old Honda tagline, but our 1983 Ford Sierra Ghia is strengthening our ties with our car nutty friends from across the pond. While Capt. Mike’s UK connections are stronger, here’s the story of how our Sierra made it from the seller’s house to one of the Captain’s friend’s homes: a strong group of Nürburgring-fiends who claimed our lovable Air Force Yank as one of their own. But that’s for the next installment in this series because, as the Panther-intensive pictures show, I’m telling this portion of the story.

Tomorrow your humble Editor boards a plane for Michigan, en route to a date with the Chevrolet Volt. TTAC has followed the Volt’s bumpy road to production-readiness since Bob Lutz decided that the Prius had to be “leapfrogged,” and we’ve tracked every change to the Volt’s mission, message and mechanical blueprint along the way. And though cars don’t exist in a vacuum, giving the Volt a fair review will require us to leave a lot of this contextual baggage at the door.

TTAC’s mission is to call it like we see it, pulling no punches. Even on Facebook, because we somehow wound up there. No really, who knows why or how we got there, it just kinda happened. While other autoblogospheric Facebook forays occasionally leave something to be desired, that doesn’t explain why we’re taking Social Media seriously. At least now.

As I noted in my most recent review, TTAC’s coverage of cars and the companies that create them are based largely on the power of the internet to deliver the latest news on which to base our breaking analysis. And though a constant stream of news-based analysis will continue to define TTAC’s content, it’s also become clear to me that we (myself, in particular) need to spend more time behind the wheel even if that means a little less time behind the keyboard.