{"id":1662,"date":"2007-09-12T06:25:40","date_gmt":"2007-09-12T11:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/ixplode\/"},"modified":"2007-09-14T14:06:24","modified_gmt":"2007-09-14T19:06:24","slug":"ixplode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/ixplode","title":{"rendered":"IXPLODE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We all have a history with ugly cars. My college buddy Toure told me that, when he was a little kid, he and his friends would run up to a neighbor&#8217;s Pinto, smack the bumper with a wiffle-ball bat, then run away, expecting the car to explode.<\/p>\n<p>Also, my first serious girlfriend drove a Chevy Corvaire. I once thought about writing an essay about our relationship entitled, &#8220;Unsafe at Any Speed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In that spirit, I offer up BW&#8217;s slideshow of <a href=\"http:\/\/images.businessweek.com\/ss\/07\/08\/0824_uglycars\/index_01.htm\" target=\"_blank\">The Ugliest Cars in the World<\/a> (read the accompanying <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/autos\/content\/aug2007\/bw20070823_780539.htm\" target=\"_blank\">story<\/a>, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/app.businessweek.com\/UserComments\/combo_review?action=all&amp;style=wide&amp;productId=21221&amp;pageIndex=1\" target=\"_blank\">400+ comments<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p><em>(Update: Looks like Time magazine just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/specials\/2007\/completelist\/0,,1658545,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">covered this subject<\/a>, prompting a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.2blowhards.com\/archives\/2007\/09\/times_50_worst_1.html\" target=\"_blank\">2Blowhards response<\/a>. Oh, and I&#8217;m not sure Elayne&#8217;s current car is much safer than that Pinto.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We all have a history with ugly cars. My college buddy Toure told me that, when he was a little kid, he and his friends would run up to a neighbor&#8217;s Pinto, smack the bumper with a wiffle-ball bat, then run away, expecting the car to explode. Also, my first serious girlfriend drove a Chevy &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/ixplode\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;IXPLODE&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4C7K-ixplode","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1556,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-future-aint-what-it-used-to-be","url_meta":{"origin":1662,"position":0},"title":"The future ain&#8217;t what it used to be","author":"Gil","date":"June 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A few months ago, I wrote about the Chrysler 300C, which appealed to me because it resembled the Batmobile. Over at 2Blowhards, Donald Pettinger writes about the 1950s' dream cars, with a fantastic gallery of Cars of the Future: With no place to go trend-wise, stylists thrashed around in search\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Big Business&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1822,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/dishing-and-swishing","url_meta":{"origin":1662,"position":1},"title":"Dishing and swishing","author":"Gil","date":"December 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In my office, the men take out the mail, and the women clean the kitchen. No, seriously. Everybody's got 1-week rotations of one of those duties, and it's split by gender. I guess it's because guys are able to carry more mail-crates down to their cars and over to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;suburbs&quot;","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1288,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/but-plug","url_meta":{"origin":1662,"position":2},"title":"But, plug?","author":"Gil","date":"January 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a piece from Cato fellow Jerry Taylor on the hype for plug-in hybrid cars: Of course, if [plug-in hybrids] really were the wave of the future, there would be no need for ranting in Washington -- automobile manufacturers would be busy making them as we\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0speak. It\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s only when corporate\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0America\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Politics (implicit)&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Politics (implicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-implicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17341,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-624-witold-rybczynski","url_meta":{"origin":1662,"position":3},"title":"Episode 624 &#8211; Witold Rybczynski","author":"Gil","date":"February 5, 2025","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 624: Witold Rybczynski \"As an architect, if you write about buildings, you don't just write about what they look like, but how they work, the plans, how they're built, how they function. But most books about cars focus on the styling, not all the other aspects, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Architecture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/rybczynski2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/rybczynski2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/rybczynski2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/rybczynski2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/rybczynski2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1352,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/decade-dance","url_meta":{"origin":1662,"position":4},"title":"Decade dance","author":"Gil","date":"February 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This morning's dumb lede comes to us from the New York Times. Reporting on Chrysler's announcement of 13,000 job cuts, Micheline Maynard writes: Every decade provides a new lesson for the American automobile industry. In the 1980s, automakers underestimated their Japanese competitors, thinking they would never build anything but small\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Big Business&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":660,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/auto-asphyxiation","url_meta":{"origin":1662,"position":5},"title":"Auto-asphyxiation","author":"Gil","date":"September 7, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Peter M. DeLorenzo is an automotive industry consultant who also writes a weekly column at the Autoextremist. He pulls no punches, despite the fact that some of his livelihood comes from the companies he criticizes in the column.Anyway, this week's column (it'll be replaced by Sept. 14, and the archives\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}