The Christmas list

St. Nicholas of Myra

1225 Navidad Lane

Urho Kekkunen National Park, Savukoski

Republic of Finland

My dude,

Wow, I do not envy you your situation this year.

I'm pretty sure you get the BBC or Reuters online or something at home and have at least heard about what's been going on down here in many places, so I would imagine you haven't been too surprised by the tone and direction of the letters you've been receiving for this upcoming Christmas. This has not been a good cycle of seasons for a great number of people in the world, and the next few months will continue to be pretty bleak even as glimmers of hope are present on the horizon. I cannot imagine how you are going to handle the requests ranging from debugged video games for distraught stay-at-home types to resurrection of family members that you've got in front of you right now, or keep track of who is offering what for someone else - that's got to do something messy when you cross-reference that with the naughty-and-nice list.

The mood in our household this season is one of tired gratitude; we are enormously fortunate that the now three of us (you did get that notification in the July update, right?) and our extended family remain healthy and stable. The state of the world does continue to weigh upon me, and the harshly circumscribed nature of everyday life wears at the soul. But again, we remain profoundly thankful for continuing good fortune in the face of epidemic disease and economic and social turmoil.

So, continuing in the spirit of many of those letters you have received, it seems inappropriate to do something so excessive as ask for stuff this year. Instead I'd like to take my usual wishes and turn them around into requests on behalf of others, both broadly and specifically, through the New Year and beyond. (And really, the number-one item this year for me would be a good parking space or garage, but that has way more to do with managing the impossible situation in this neighborhood than anything. So don't worry about that.)

Therefore, my Christmas list for this portentous year 2020:

- We need a workable formula and low-cost production system for solid-state lithium metal batteries. We're getting close, but a little extra magical push towards popular effectiveness and availability would be a fantastic benefit for the industry and the world at large.

- Environmentally and politically benign sources for said element would also be useful while we're at it.

- Let some extra quanta of inspiration and enlightenment strike product planning committees and accelerate their ideas and ambitions past the bovine-herd tendencies of consumer clinics, and let corporate heads see the wisdom of those ideas and ambitions as the industry moves into its new era. Stuff is going on that will require vision and daring beyond the kind of thought patterns that gave us the Toyota Highlander.

- Help this collision of galaxies that is Stellantis (oops, sorry, STELL/\NTIS) to produce real, honest Lancias and Citroëns and Chryslers and other cars with character and style and individuality, all of which the world really desperately needs. (And please make sure as much of it all as possible is available to us deprived Yankees.)

In blue, s'il vous plait.

- Give Scuderia Ferrari and Team McLaren competitive cars next year. Yes, AMG-Mercedes deserves every bit of success that they've imperiously claimed and Hamilton is the kind of global figure F1 has long needed beyond his dominance of this absurd season, but the sport needs to actually be a sport again.

- Send one of your teams of special-forces elves to stealthily rework the Tesla assembly lines so that the Model 3s in particular stop being such compromised, slapped-together pastiches of their promise.

Performance. Technology. Panel gaps.

- Have another group clean out whatever is in the water coolers and coffee pots at BMW. That's just getting out of hand.

- As top-flight endurance racing shows signs of making a comeback, let the teams all know that they can opt for livery patterns that include colors beyond white, black, and red.

- And as many of us seek to give our social reality a lift on the far side of All This, open the ears and minds of those at the tortured extremes of the transportation debate. Let it be better known that "car culture" is not sociopathic cretins in oversized coal-rolling pickups; likewise, have others understand that coexistence with pedestrians and bicycles is not a threat to their identity.

I think that covers most of it for now, or at least that's about all or which I can not-too-unreasonably ask of a major mythical figure at the moment. Again, I know you've got a lot in front of you, so take all this as you can.

Hope all is well up there with the missus and the workshop crew, give the reindeer nose boops for me, will be trying to keep it together here.

With good cheer as always,

Patrick

Liveblogging the Nissan Z Proto Reveal

 

8:05 - Good evening and welcome to what will hopefully be a candle of hope and joy in this Hieronymus-Bosch-on-mescaline painting of a year, although with Nissan these days who knows.

Tonight we get what is loudly and clearly NOT the next Z-car, but the concept/preproduction/teaser/trial balloon version of the model to follow in the next few years. The show starts at 8:30, so find a comfortable chair.

8:10 - The significance of doing this is not just about Nissan's next step with its oldest (in America, at least) and probably most culturally significant model designation. It's a read into Nissan's current state as it shows how they move forward past a car that has been on the market for eleven years, with a basic platform stretching back another seven before that.

This car predates the Iraq invasion.

This one was right in time for the Great Recession. (Both photos: Wikipedia)

8:20 - What we have to work off of at this point is a few murky smears of film and some closeups of various retro-ish signifiers, plus a GIF that apparently shows someone operating a manual transmission.

I am concerned. This shot gives me the creeping suspicion that this will be nothing more than another reskin of the current car. The beltline is about the same height in particular.

I suppose we should be excited/appreciative of the manual transmission that is strongly implied, but that depends on a few things - seven speeds? clutchless operation? something else equally irritating? We'll see.

8:30 - Underway with a reminder that the Z name is 50 years old.

Manufacturers, feel free to never use the wub-wub music again.

8:32 - Well, there it is.

8:33 - uhm. That front intake.

8:34 - Lots of Lexus LC in that greenhouse.

8:37 - That interior shot is the best part of the car so far.

8:38 - Great choice of inspirations - easily the two best models in Z history - but not sure how much of that got carried over.

8:40 - oh GOD no not Adam Carolla.

headdesk headdesk.

8:41 - I am considering it a sort of journalistic duty to tolerate this idiot in hopes of hearing something meaningful, or at least knowing when he's done so we can see what comes after.

8:43 - If you are introducing a new model, the time to do the historical highlight reel/slavish cult spotlight is BEFORE there reveal, not after.

8:45 - Car and Driver is saying/confirming twin-turbo V6 and six-speed manual. Wish the rest of us had gotten that news instead of dealing with Carolla.

8:47 - We desperately need to see this thing in other colors: white, red, silver.

8:48 - He did not just say "katana sword." Please.

8:50 - You cannot get a good sense of the body sculpting in this color. Sigh.

Same platform? Same roof peak, same high beltline.

8:53 - It's starting to come together for me a bit more now. Better than the current car, better than the 350Z, if still a bit heavy and they really need to do something about that front opening.

8:57 - Softball questions.

Curious about the metal spars on the roof and how they'll mesh with the body colors. Wonder if the black roof will be standard.

8:59 - Starting to wonder about pricing. This is going to probably be a lot more expensive than the current car - maybe not GT-R territory, but probably past that psychological $50K barrier.

9:02 - Run the hemming and hawing of these folks and I think we're looking at something more Z32 than S30. Okay, makes sense in the modern world.

From the big W again.

If they get even close to what the Z32 was, that will be a massive step forward.

9:08 - Okay, shiny spars stay. Will there be any other brightwork to complement it?

9:10 - Okay, lots of lofty babbling about international influences. Scripted-sounding questions.

Calling off, I guess. We're not going to get any other news from these guys.

9:12 - So here is the news in hand: https://usa.nissannews.com/en-US/releases/new-nissan-z-proto-looks-to-the-future-inspired-by-its-past

It's...okay, I guess? An improvement, at least visually. Will be interesting to see how much turns out to be really new.

Yeah, sorta. Photo: Nissan

Still not happy with that boring rectangle smack in front, but this might work.

9:19 - So what did they really say and what does this say about Nissan? Lots of leaning on a storied past. They can draw a good-looking, if slightly conservative, GT car. Nothing seems startlingly progressive or ambitious - the likely-recycled platform which is approaching age of consent is disappointing - but it's generally appealing on what was probably a minimal budget.

On some level I give credit to Nissan for even giving us a new Z car. I'm sure that the business case was not an easy sell in the modern environment and especially given Nissan's troubled situation.

Much left to learn. Let's see how it is as a car instead of just a styling study.

Black flag

"Those of us who move will die. Those who don't are already dead." - Jean Behra

Two of the running clichés in this particular episode of history so far are that we have all forgotten what day of the week it is and we all now have all the time we supposedly haven't had before to do all those things that have always been put off or labeled as secondary priorities. Life for me defies both of these small-talk topics; I've spent the last month remotely managing department stuff and my two math classes, which are all still very locked into their particular schedules, and I've devoted a ridiculous amount of time to producing an increasingly intricate series of instructional videos on trig and statistics to the point where one of my students ratted me out to the dean for not grading tests from a few weeks ago. (Completely copped to it and am now getting caught up on that.) The semester ends in two weeks so at that point I'll apparently have more time to do all that stuff, along with getting settled into the new apartment here in Midtown East and trying to prepare for the baby, expected in mid-June.

Past school stuff and a running series of anxiety attacks (and it is one of the great cosmic jokes of this time that the symptoms of a decent anxiety attack closely echo the symptoms of The Thing, maybe minus the fever) I have had some time to think about all of this, although it's entirely too early to draw any conclusions about great societal shifts and so on. I'd like to think that more people will start to have some respect for the folks in what are too often called menial jobs who have kept life going through all of this; maybe we'll see some renewed understanding of the importance of adept government agencies and informed expertise in the midst of complex developing issues. That said, I have no idea what will change or how those things will change. Societies are unpredictable and fractious, and humans are strange creatures. Everyone thought at first that 9/11 was going to bring us back to some sort of noble core ideals about community and what it means to be an American, and instead we ended up with several years of Paris Hilton.

Que sera, sera. It's more important to focus on the now, on getting through, on managing the mild dissonance of knowing that this will eventually end and knowing that we have no idea when (or how) it will end. And, maybe, also managing the many other mild dissonances that are accompanying this moment.

I have started my car maybe four times since the last trip home from Bridgeport. It sat for so long that when I had it double-parked with the blinkers on during the move, the battery died. (Jumper cables, folks. Best $20 or so you'll spend for your car.) On a certain level I miss regular driving, in the engagement and gratification that speed and control provides; I also find it to be tremendously irrelevant right now. Looking through what classified listings are being posted recently feels almost inappropriate in light of the reality of near-random death outside. Discussion and debate about the future directions of the industry is now secondary to worrying about just who will be able to be there in that future.

That is clearly not the case for racing, though, as discussion and debate are now heading into some truly new territory. I'm wondering if the sudden popularity of esports and simulator racing is simply a result of us all being shut-ins right now, or if this is a sort of pull-the-curtain-back moment for the motorsports industry. Maybe all the pageantry and expense and excess of it all can be binned since we now see how racing can essentially be construed - and sold - as pure operator manipulation of an algorithm, which deep down it always has been anyway (if in a very non-virtual, non-digital environment). Given preexisting attention to environmental issues and questions about the relevance of race-car development to consumer products, I would not be surprised if a season of big names playing iRacing at home does serious damage to the systems of real-life professional-level competition.

Fast cars and fast driving are probably in for a beating in the next few months anyway, given not just the media exposure granted to amoral assholes in white Audis and blue Gemballas but increasingly direct and day-to-day questions about the purpose and usefulness and significance of cars and driving in general. That's not to say that driving is going away; once this is over we will have places to go again, and it's starting to become evident to everyone that autonomous rideshare services will not be covering 50% (or 0.05%) of total vehicle miles anytime soon. But I wonder if more people will more seriously question whether high-performance cars, especially ones with limits well outside the bounds of the normal driving environment and costs that may be increasingly difficult to justify, make a whole lot of sense in this world.

I suppose this is just another of those grand sociocultural what-comes-nexts that I said I would avoid. But if we supposedly have all this time to consider things, isn't this something worth considering? What roles does a car play in a person's life, and how are those roles best filled?

I dunno. Maybe it's the creeping dad-to-be thing. Maybe it's how part of me continues to be unhappy that I went with a perfectly normal modern hatchback instead of something more alluring and idealistic like an Alfa Spider or an MGB even as the 3's innate capability and practicality has been used to great effect over and over, and I'm trying to come to terms with that same idea of purpose and use. What really matters, what is merely desirable or enjoyable, and how does one answer those different priorities?

I'm not even sure I know anymore. Or maybe I actually do know and the truth is far more pedestrian and banal and uninspiring than I care to completely admit to myself, at least as far the current situation goes.

What really matters right now is surviving, managing the risks and the fear, doing what I can to make sure that Anna and the baby are both okay, keeping up with work with the hope and expectation that work will somehow keep going.

Driving will happen again.  I'm still left wondering what it means, though.