The Motor Report Auto News Blog

BY GUNNAR HEINRICH

IN an homage to New York Magazine’s “Approval Matrix” that shows what’s cool and what isn’t in the high and low ends of pop culturdom, your humble TMR correspondent decided to try his amateur hand at graphical artistry and came up with my own chart for recent news to hit the car world and the blogosphere.

Let me know in comments if you think this experiment in auto opinion works. If it does register, it can be developed. If it doesn’t, well, the Insider will straighten matters out directly.

[Click thumbnail for larger image]

[Linked: NY Mag]

BY GUNNAR HEINRICH

BOSTON and New York have an ongoing quarrel.

And if you live in the Northeastern United States, you’re caught in the crossfire.

Take poor little Connecticut as an example.

The Nutmeg State is caught exactly between Gotham and Beantown and seems to be the Verdun fields of trench warfare between sports teams. From the Bronx and Jersey City, Yankees (baseball) and Giants (football) fans have invaded the bucolic state from the west, while Red Sox and Patriots fans have claimed the eastern fields and pastures.

Each fan is as red faced, loud mouthed and obstreperous as the next.

Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, District of Columbia all seem to sit perched on the sidelines, secretly gunning for Boston while watching Gotham and Beantown, posture like two drunken Irishmen trading insults at a bar; each on the precipice of throwing the first punch.

The catch is, New York is a ten time heavyweight champion coming in at over six foot seven. They call him “the Machine” while Boston is this spry, angry little man who fans charmingly call “Li’l Mick.” Not really, but it’s a good characterization - work with me.

New York is the crossroads of the world while Boston is the ten car pile up that’s I-95 hitting I-90 backing into I-93.

There’s really no explaining this ongoing rivalry. Contest over. NYC wins.

BMW and Saab have much the same strange relationship and it’s easy to understand why.

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BY GUNNAR HEINRICH

UNLESS you’re new to this whole blogosphere thing or are just waking up from a long coma—in which case I’ll say welcome back (sorry to tell you that Richard Nixon has died and they’ve identified “Deep Throat” as former FBI Deputy Director W. Mark Felt)—you’ve no doubt read about London’s new mayor Boris Johnson everywhere from Autoblog to Jalopnik to namethatcarblog.com.

You just haven’t read about Boris Johnson here.

And that’s okay. Really.

Just hold off on sending the carp mail to Steane—because we’re going to set the wayward ship HMS TMR back on course.

Boris Johnson is London’s new Conservative mayor.

And many of you who are reading this in the comfortable shade of your nearby Coolibah Tree might be tempted to don your Chamberlain caps and haughtily question, “why should we care about a far away people of whom we know (relatively) nothing?”

The answer is you should and here’s why.

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