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Date: Sun, 06 Apr 1997 19:43:21 -0700
From: apicciotto@wccusd.k12.ca.us (Armando Picciotto)
Reply-To: apicciotto@wccusd.k12.ca.us
Subject: British Car Article
I met the editor of British Car Magazine at the recent Montery British
Car meet and shared some of your (and my) thoughts on the unfair way the
Morgan was treated in his magazine. He was most cordial and suggested
that, instead of venting via the net, you send your commments directly
to him at britcarmag@aol.com. He will try to publish some of them. To
be fair, I subscribe to the magazine and it is really quite good and I
recommend it. It's one of the few US sources of information on Brit
Cars. Below is the letter I sent him, and hopefully it will be the
first of many. Go for it!!!
-----
After reading "One Man and His Cars," I felt a deep sense of sadness
for Mr. Cook, for it must indeed be very painful to love classic cars
and have a serious weight problem. Alas, he will never be able to feel
what the writer of Car and Driver felt in 1967, when he tested what was
feared to be one of the last Morgans to reach the United States:
"Depress the clutch (God, it's hard), crunch the old Jaguar non-synchro
low gear, and you're off. That's the very first thing you notice about
a Morgan. Everything is so damn direct. You feel every pebble on the
road through the steering wheel, and your foot (time and marshmallow
cars have made it clumsy) seems to operate directly on the engine. You
can't get the Morgan operating smoothly for miles. Ah, but when you do,
you understand laissez faire motoring at its best. Twitch the wheel,
and out goes the tail of the Morgan. Just as far as you want, for just
as long as you want, for just the result that you want. Fangio used to
set up a slide at each corner. Be Fangio: the Morgan makes it easy"
(Car and Driver, Dec. 1967)
Mr. Cook will never be a Fangio, unless he sheds some of those pounds.
But perhaps I have it all wrong. Could he simply be suffering from
poorly distributed body mass and an unbalanced concentration of fat in
his upper extremity?
Armando Picciotto
'63 +4
El Cerrito, CA
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