May 17, 2003
THE AUSTRALIAN'S Susan Maushart doesn't
THE AUSTRALIAN'S Susan Maushart doesn't know much about cars, or research, or spelling:
It is a truism that you can tell a lot about people by the cars they drive. So why have I always resisted the idea? Maybe it's because my first car was a doggy doo-doo brown 1972 Ford Pinto - the model US consumer advocate Ralph Nader infamously dubbed "unsafe at any speed".
Wrong. As Tram Town points out - and as most everyone knows - Nader's line referred to Chevrolet's Corvair. More from autophobic Susan:
It was the day we got into the car and heard a sound like a twig breaking. "That's the last straw," he told me. Well, he was close. It was actually the front axle.
It couldn't have been; Pintos don't have front axles. They have independent A-arms. A little later Susan mentions her dream vehicle, a "vintage Karmen Ghia". She means "Karmann". It's written right there on the damn car.
UPDATE. Ha! Tram Town discovers that Maushart claims to have a "genetic predisposition for intellectual nitpicking".
Posted by Tim Blair at May 17, 2003 06:48 PM