Vehicular Madness

I've been watching a lot of Top Gear on Netflix recently. The British one with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. Not the US knock off with that fool Rutledge Wood. For those of you not familiar with Top Gear it's host Jeremy Clarkson did all of the Autovista commentary and the intro movie for Forza Motorsport 4 (A few of my favorites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd-LBGixtyk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yu9WEHj8Kg and the greatest intro movie ever:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcQu73d3Z2E) Clarkson's love of high-dollar European supercars and hatred of any American car except for the Ford GT is obvious in every episode. His take on late 70's American cars was rolling through my mind as I have spent the better part of the last week trying to get my 76' Cougar to start. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjzpx_jUUA0) The car is enormous, loud, guzzles down gasoline, breaks down frequently, and the suspension is completely inadequit at keeping the 4,300 pound car under control while corning at any sort of speed. As I was waiting for the tow truck to come and pick up my daily driver a 98 Ford Taurus who's starter crapped out in front of the storage unit where I keep the Cougar I realized that most of these quirks are why I love the car so much. I love being able to hear the engine running and feel the chassis roll through the turns. I love having a full gauge panel to monitor engine vitals. Most modern cars have tried to eliminate these things. Would I like to get better gas mileage  Yes would I like to not have to fix it every couple of weeks? Yes. But for whatever reason I refuse to give up this car. I hope to finally have it running again so I can take the gas guzzling beast with me to my summer stock job. If not come July 23rd I will be back under the hood.