AUGUST 31, 2022

Editor's Note: As another summer slowly fades into fall (and a truly gorgeous season here in Michigan), it's time to re-run an excerpt from one of our favorite pieces of automotive prose, which poet, critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, James Agee wrote for the September 1934 issue of Fortune. The message here? It's never too late - just go for a drive. -WG

The characters in our story are five: this American continent; this American people; the automobile; the Great American Road, and the Great American Roadside. As an American, of course, you know these characters. This continent, an open palm spread frank before the sky against the bulk of the world. This curious people. The automobile you know as well as you know the slouch of the accustomed body at the wheel and the small stench of gas and hot metal. You know the sweat and the steady throes of the motor and the copious and thoughtless silence and the almost lack of hunger and the spreaded swell and swim of the hard highway toward and beneath and behind and gone and the parted roadside swarming past. This great road, too; you know that well. How it is scraggled and twisted along the coast of Maine, high-crowned and weak-shouldered in honor of long winter, how like a blacksnake in the sun it takes the ridges, the green and dim ravines which are the Cumberlands, and lolls loose into the hot Alabama valleys . . . Oh yes, you know this road….All such things you know….God and the conjunction of confused bloods, history and the bullying of this tough continent to heel, did something to the American people -- worked up in their blood a species of restiveness unlike any that any race before has known. Whatever we may think, we move for no better reason than for the plain unvarnished hell of it. And there is no better reason. So God made the American restive. The American in turn and in due time got into the automobile and found it good. The automobile became a hypnosis, the opium of the American people...

"Whatever we may think, we move for no better reason than for the plain unvarnished hell of it. And there is no better reason.”  Amen.

(Lamborghini)
Lamborghini delivered two of the initial Countach LPI 800-4 models to arrive in the U.S. last week. "Inspired by the past and engineered for the future, the Countach LPI 800-4 celebrates the visionary design that revolutionized modern sports cars forever," according to Lamboborghini PR minions. Just 112 units will be produced globally. The Countach LPI 800-4 retains the the V12 rear mid-engine (LP - Longitudinale Posteriore), incorporating the hybrid technology developed for the Sián. The LPI 800-4’s all-wheel-drive V12 delivers 780HP, combined with the 34HP of the electric motor, for a total of 814 hp (rounded down to 800 in the name), and it delivers acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h in just 2.8 seconds, 0 to 200 km/h in 8.6 seconds, and a top speed of 355 km/h. Editor-in-Chief's Note: I've said it before and I'll say it again: The original Countach penned by Marcello Gandini is a supercar for the ages. It is timeless. And this attempt at capitalizing on the original to extract some more dollars from the Lamborghini faithful is as tasteless as it is predictable. And this just in: It doesn't hold a candle to the original. -PMD



The AE Song of the Week:

Yeah unh
Get up ow!
Ow!
Knock me out, dead
Woo!

Superhighways, coast to coast, easy to get anywhere
On the transcontinental overload, just slide behind the wheel
How does it feel when there's no destination that's too far?
And somewhere on the way you might find out who you are, ooo

Living in America
Eye to eye, station to station
Living in America
Hand in hand, across the nation
Living in America
I got to have a celebration, rock my soul, huh, aw, huh

Smokestack, fatback, many miles of railroad track
All night radio keep on runnin' through your rock 'n' roll soul
All night diners keep you awake on black coffee and a hard roll, woo
You might have to walk a fine line, say it, you might take a hard line
But everybody's workin' overtime

Living in America, unh
Eye to eye, station to station
Living in America
Hand in hand, across the nation
Living in America
I got to have a celebration, oh

I live in America
Said, I live in America
Wait a minute

You may not be lookin' for the promised land
But you might find it anyway
Under one of those old familiar names like
New Orleans, Detroit City, Dallas
Pittsburgh P.A, New York City
Kansas City, Atlanta, Chicago and L. A.

Living in America
Hit me
Living in America, yeah
Living in America

I live in America
Not yet
I live in America, hey I know what it means, I

Living in America
Eddie Murphy eat your heart out
To the bridge, eh

Living in America
Hit me, I said now, eye to eye, station to station
Living in America
Oh, so nice with your bad self
Living in America
Whoah, I feel good

"Living In America" as performed by James Brown from the album "Gravity" (1985).* Written by Charlie Midnight and Dan Hartman. Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc. Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind. Watch the memorable video from "Rocky 4" here.

*This was written by Dan Hartman ("I Can Dream About You") and Charles Midnight. It was recorded by James Brown at the request of Sly Stallone for his film Rocky IV. Jim Peterik, who wrote "Eye Of The Tiger" for Rocky III and "Burning Heart" for Rocky IV, told us that Stallone was exceptional when it came to reinventing himself for a new audience and had a great sense for how to use music in his films. Stallone could also be very convincing, and was able to put Brown in a position he wasn't familiar with - singing someone else's song in a mainstream movie. The move paid off for Brown, who hadn't charted on the Hot 100 since 1976. "Living In America" became one of his biggest hits and introduced him to a new generation. The movie Rocky IV was over-the-top in its jingoism, as the boxer Rocky fights the evil Russian, Drago. In 1985, the cold war was at a peak, and the underdog Rocky played very well with an American audience. James Brown was used effectively in this context, as this song was used early in the film before American boxer Apollo Creed is killed by Drago in the ring. The song won the 1986 Grammy Award for Best Rhythm & Blues Vocal Performance. In the years after this song was released, Brown's music became the basis for hundreds of hip-hop tracks that sampled him without his consent. It was the fresh new sound, but Brown felt ripped off. His 1988 album I'm Real both blasted hip-hop and incorporated it, especially the title track. It was his last his last studio album to chart in America (#96), but once the legal issues were worked out, he got paid for all those samples and claimed his place as a forebear of the genre. In 1986, Weird Al Yankovic recorded a parody of this entitled "Living with a Hernia." The original line "got to have a celebration" is replaced with "got to have an operation."The horns were supplied by The Uptown Horns, a New York section that backed the J. Geils Band on their Freeze Frame album and played on "Love Shack" by The B-52s. (Knowledge courtesy of Songfacts.com)

Editor's Note: You can access previous issues of AE by clicking on "Next 1 Entries" below. - WG