Please lick my hot Fiat 500, By Mark Morford

[madokie]

Please lick my hot Fiat 500
By Mark Morford

Some say it all began 10 years ago with the return of the hyperdelicious Mini Cooper, what with its lethal combo of insanely cute yet stylishly cool yet "Oh my God this thing handles like a go cart on rails."

That's what they all said, especially about the hot little Cooper S, which was/is some sort of serotonin-jacked, slot-car chunk of retro nirvana, a vehicle that, when it first hit, instantly made all those hulking Hummers, Escalades and Suburbans lurching about back then look like herds of slothful, distended elephants lost in a maze.

But that's not quite true. It really started with the wallet-stabbing spike in gas prices a few years back, which just so happened to coincide with a looming global economic meltdown, which itself hooked directly into a long-overdue American auto industry implosion -- crushed under the dumb weight of all those selfsame distended elephants -- the result of the realization that Americans don't actually need giant five-ton vehicles that can't stop or maneuver and get 11 mpg, downhill.

Whatever the exact reason, we are now entering into the absolutely fantastic throes of an automotive renaissance, a surge of unprecedented small-car gloriousness, a wave that's set to crash all over the shores of U.S. in the coming year or two -- which of course means it's about 20 years overdue, but who's counting? ...

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(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/01/20/notes012010.DTL&nl=fix)

[boomerbust]

1. This could be the last hope

This country has. A restructered auto industry.

[Prometheus Bound]

2. That guy sure can write.

[madokie]

3. He definitely has the gift of gab

and it shows in his writing. I love it. I wonder if the good Dr had any influence on him, You know Dr. Hunter S. Thompson :-)

[madokie]

4. Kick

for the evening peeps

[Book Lover]

5. Mark, go back to your room and let the people who know something about Detroit talk

For anyone who's interested in what a real automotive journalist has to say about, well, anything, you've got to check out Autoline Detroit www.autolinedetroit.tv

Morford is *months* late to this conversation. But to be in on it, he'd have to talk to those ugly people in the flyover states. Can't have that.