9 comments/  6639 views/  9 favorites

My Passion for Mustang GTs Ch. 01

By: SusanJillParker



Not all just about writing erotica, this story is about car buff stuff for car buffs. Susan writes about her passion for automobiles.

I'm a car buff, always have and always will be. Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean that I can't love and appreciate cars, especially new cars rather than older cars, and especially new Mustang GT's over any other car on the road. In the way that I can't mistake the sound of a Harley motorcycle going by in time for me to stare at it, I love the sound of Mustang GT's. There's nothing else like them on the road. Where Camaro got the sound all wrong unless under full throttle, and with Dodge's Challenger exhaust rumble a close second, Ford got the sound all right when making the Mustang's exhaust song.

Not very mechanical but knowing enough about cars not to be cheated by a dishonest mechanic, I never wanted to get my fingernails dirty or soil my clothes repairing and working on cars in the way my brothers all did. Admittedly and ashamedly for a car buff, I don't think I ever opened my hood or bonnet, as the English call it. The mechanicals of a car is not where my automotive appreciation and expertise is. Hardly a car buff in that regard, I never changed my oil, put air in my tires, or waxed my car. Because of the residual smell left on my hands, I didn't even like pumping my own gas and would only when I had to while wearing gloves. I'd leave all of that up to my brothers to do for me. The least that they can do for me after all that they've done to me, as referenced in some of my stories about them, they owe me big time. A chance for them to drive and show off my new Mustang to their friends, none of them minded doing my bidding whenever it came to cars.

"Do me a favor, after you wash and wax my car and put gas in my tank, check the tires and the oil. Thank you. You're a good brother, kind of, not really, not at all," I'd say mumbling the last part under my breath.

Unable to afford to buy a new car for quite some time now, my automotive passion was limited to reading about the aesthetics, engineering, and the style of new cars online while lusting over the new cars that I see out on the street. There's something intoxicating about entering a dealership and sitting down with a salesman to order a new car with the color you want and the options you need. Better than choosing a puppy at the pound, yet not nearly the same as receiving a new baby from the nursery I imagine, being that I don't have any children, what better friends to have than a new car and a new puppy?

In the way that Ralph Lauren and Jay Leno loves cars, in the way that they viewed the automobile as art, with an envious eye of their enormous appetites for cars, I silently shared their appreciation for fine automobiles from afar. Only until I win the lottery that I can't even afford to play, I'm unable to afford to personally participate in their highbrow hobby of fawning over luxury and high performance automobiles. Truly, few lust over a Toyota Camry in the way that collectors lust over a new or old Boss Mustang.

Unable to even afford the admission price of a ticket, the $225 in advance price and the $275 at the door ticket fee is way over my head to walk the manicured lawns of Pebble Beach while looking at all of the beautiful cars. With even the airfare out of my price range, forget about the hotel stay, I can't afford to indulge myself in the luxury of attending the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance automobile auction show while sipping champagne, eating caviar, and perusing rare, barn finds and ogling the Marques of pristine automobiles of unquestionable vintage and heritage. A once in a lifetime collection of cars, I'll never see these automobiles anywhere else but there on the grounds of Pebble Beach. Thank God for the pictures on the internet.

A car buff from afar without even an automobile of her own, I can't even afford to rent a car to drive down to Mecums to rub elbows with a bunch of rednecks looking to buy a mint '57 Chevy Nomad or a '63 split window 327 Corvette in Daytona blue. Where do so many people get so much money to not only buy cars but also to collect cars? Not enough that they pay premium prices that are sometimes out of the stratosphere then, whether selling or buying the car, they must pay the auction house their six percent to play. What did I do wrong in my life that I'm so poor? Forget about the car, I couldn't afford the insurance, the title, and the taxes.

A car buff without a car is like a baby without a carriage, a dog without a collar, and a homeless person without shelter and food. Instead of collecting cars, I have a small collection of imported key fobs from China, of course, and a modest and inexpensive collection of die cast models of my favorite cars that I started years ago. I've been too poor to add to my die cast car collection, when buying food was more of a priority than buying toys. Feeling my key fobs and looking at my models allows me to pretend that I actually own one of those cars.

"Poor, poor, pitiful me. Woe is me. Yet, I should have a problem. I have my health and I found my passion of writing stories for the salvation of myself and for all of my fans."

Feeling sorry for myself, I'm jealous of the rich who have everything as opposed to the poor who have nothing. When it comes to automobiles, especially when it comes to automobiles, as if looking through a restaurant window and watching people eat a meal that equals my food budget for a month, I watch them drive by in their BMW's and Mercedes, cars that I can't afford to own. Instead of going to the university for English, I should have taken political science. I should have gone to law school. I should have yearned to become a politician instead of a lowly writer of erotica. Sorry, I didn't mean to write politician. With no cooperation from one side of the aisle to the other side of the aisle, politics and politicians have become a bad word. What I meant to write was public servant. Yes, I should have become a public servant, one who serves themselves first and who has a job for the rest of their life, if they so want it.

"Lemme get this straight. That's one for me and none for you. Two for me and none for you. I like this public servant gig." 

I remember Reggie Jackson, Mr. October, of the New York Yankees, having a huge collection of muscle cars, so large that he stored them in an undisclosed warehouse. Forget all the rest, he only had the best of the best and the rarest of the rarest. He sold some of them at Mecum's auction recently. The rest of us can barely afford our car payments, insurance installments, and continue to pay the exorbitantly high, gouging gas prices to Exxon who continues to make new, record quarterly profits. What's wrong with this picture? Is there no end to the greed in this country?

"God bless America. The land of the rich getting richer where the poor are chastise for needing help with health insurance, food stamps, and Social Security and Medicare in retirement and in old age."

"Please Sir, I want some more," said Oliver Twist in Charles Dickens novel by the same name, the parish boy's progress, was his second novel in 1938. 

Nearly two hundred years later, not only has nothing changed but also it's gotten worse with the eradication of classes, especially the middle class, other than the superrich, the fabulously wealthy, the very rich, the rich, and the poor. Something we've worked all their lives to have, that is, when there are jobs, instead of calling it what it is, Social Security, public assistance, and public welfare, the word wizards, the spin doctors that they are, now lump it all under one category and call it all entitlements. Begrudged handouts to afford rent, prescription drugs, and food while the small fraction of superrich live high on the hog, we're lambasted for wanting more, just enough to survive.

Whether mentally ill, physically handicapped, unemployed, underemployed, down on our luck, or victims of floods and/or fires, how dare our public servants view us like that, as burdens that interfere with them accumulating even more wealth! Unlike the filthy rich who've inherited their wealth, in chasing the American dream so much like a carrot held in front of us with a stick, we've worked hard and paid taxes all of our lives to have some kind of government funded Social Security. When we pay for our public servants to have every conceivable luxury and free benefit, when they are the ones at the public's trough with their greedy hands out for so long, how dare they treat us like that! I thought they were hired by us as public servants to serve the public. All I see are them serving themselves.

Don't get me started. This story isn't about politics, it's about cars. Where was I? Oh, yeah, forget about collecting cars when we can barely afford to keep our 12-year-old clunkers on the road. God forbid we should have a car repair. Think about it, how many of you were smiling and feeling confidently comfortable when leaving your car for repairs at Midas, Sears, Wal-Mart or the local gas station?

"Your car is fine. Nothing is broken. It was nothing more than a piece of lint caught in your fuel injector. We blew that out and your car is running like new. There's no charge for the repair today."

"Huh? Yeah, right. What's the catch?"

We're all at the mercy of thieving mechanics charging us for repairs we don't need on things that aren't broken. None of us would mind paying the high price of car repairs, so long as the work was correctly done the first time. Even having our oil changed at a high volume quick lube place has turned into dishonest game of bait and switch when they give you the bad news that you need a new belt that suddenly and mysteriously has a rip in it that it didn't have before you pulled your car in the bay. Go figure.

"How did that happen?"

Being that it was only twenty-five bucks for the admission and within my budget at the time, but a lot of money to me today, I attended Ralph Lauren's car show of Speed, Style, and Beauty at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston back in 2005. Perusing the halls of rare and fine automobiles while wearing the headphones provided to listen to the explanations of the cars exhibited, I suddenly felt like someone special instead of the obvious loser that I am. I felt as if I were an insider to the upper crust of those personally invited to the museum to witness the private and exclusive collection of cars amassed by a famous, fashion designing billionaire. Things are good when shipping jobs overseas to have clothing made by tiny little fingers in sweatshops for pennies. Only, leaving all of those fine automobiles behind, my feeling of belonging to the society of rich and famous was short lived when I stepped outside to take the trolley home, got gum on the underside of shoe and my ass squeezed by an anonymous hand that emerged from somewhere in the crowd.

"Back to reality."

My old stomping grounds, Northeastern University, a block away from the museum, is where I went to college and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in English with creative writing and literature minors. A lot of good my degree has done me in getting a job other than writing erotica for free on a porn site to a mostly ungrateful group of men who don't even vote but, rather, feel compelled to bash my thousands of words stories for merely making a typo or dare voicing my personal opinion. I wouldn't mind if only they could make one grammatical correct bashing comment, but they can't.

Nonetheless my complaints, my day at the museum flowed right in with my creative side when walking around Ralph Lauren's fine collection of magnificent automobiles. With the cars of the period running through my mind, I returned myself to the roaring twenties in the way that Owen Wilson as Gil in Woody Allen's movie, Night in Paris, returned back in time to rub elbows with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Feeling the time gone by, when I saw an old Rolls Royce, circa 1920, I imagined the age of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Stylistically, the old Bugatti's, Bentley's, Rolls Royce's, Auburn's, and Dusenberg's of the 1920's and '30's are my favorite cars and were Clark Gable's favorite cars too. I'm a sucker for Art Deco architecture too and old Clark Gable with Greta Garbo, Carol Lombard, Claudette Colbert, and Jean Harlow movies. Unlike Jay Leno's eclectic collection that includes everything from a Stanley Steamer to an antique fire truck to a McLaren, Ralph Lauren loves old Bugatti's and Bentley, especially the 1938 Bugatti type 57sc Atlantic coupe. 

"Wow! What a car! I just love the lines of that car too."

Being that I always worked on Newbury Street, Boston's version of Beverly Hills' Rodeo Drive, first as the controller for a furrier and next as the business manager for a modeling agency, I got to see and meet a lot of celebrities. Now worth over thirty million dollars at auction, the second highest price car ever sold, years ago, I once saw Ralph Lauren himself driving his rare, multi-million dollar, bright red, '63 Ferrari GTO 250 down Newbury Street. Years later, when returning from New York on a business trip for a crazy, retired, millionaire psychiatrist that I was doing accounting for, I saw Mr. Lauren again on the highway driving his black, new Bentley Mulsanne turbo alone. He could afford to have a driver and to be driven to wherever he needed to go, but much like me and you to read this story about cars, Ralph is a car buff and car buffs will never be driven when they can drive.

Having a home in Massachusetts as well as in other places of the country, a dozen years ago he shopped at Louis, a famous and exclusive men's clothing store in Boston across from my office windows that overlooked the street. Unmistakable in his celebrity with his signature hair and his penchant for rare, old Ferraris, I knew immediately that it was him. In the way that Daisy Buchanan rode shotgun with Gatsby in his Rolls Royce, I wished I was Ralph Lauren's co-pilot in his Ferrari that day. If the sight of the car wasn't jaw dropping enough, just the musical sound of the Ferrari was magnificent when slowing from accelerating before coming to a stop.

Not surrendering his keys to the valet, I watched him park his car himself. Being that the car was worth millions dollars even back then, if that was my car, I'd park the Ferrari myself too. If that was my car, in the way that Bostonians drive, I'd never drive the car off my property. As written in Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence circa 1870, ending the age of innocence by the 1890's, automobiles signified the misuses of power, wealth, and corruption. From The Great Gatsby in his Rolls Royce, Bonnie and Clyde in their Ford V8 Deluxe, the Godfather with his Cadillacs, Miami Vice and their Ferrari Testarossa, and James Bond and his Aston Martins, transcending the mere words on the page of a writer's novel with visuals, automobiles have always played an important role in the movies as they have in literature. 

In the way that the cars of the period must have done to their admirers, now it's the sleek, shiny newer cars that capture my eye and hold my attention. If I was to buy a supercar, bar none, it would be a Ferrari, but not a red or a yellow one, perhaps I'd buy a metallic blue one with a red leather interior. Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear, even more than his beloved Aston Martin, has declared more than once, whenever he steps behind the wheel, that Ferrari is his favorite supercar. Only, as heavy as a loaded Cadillac, I don't understand why the Italians make Ferrari's so heavy. The new Ferrari FF is 4,150 pounds before adding passengers, a tank of gas, and luggage. That's more than two tons to overcome when getting up to speed. As far as I'm concerned, in the way of a Corvette, sports cars shouldn't weigh more than 3,200 pounds and preferably in the way of the Mazda Miata and the Lotuses of old, about 2,500 pounds would be ideal. Being that less weight translates to reduced power to weight ratios and more speed, sports cars should be less than 3,000 pounds. 

If I won the lottery that I don't play because I can't afford the dollar and because I have no luck in that way, I'd have a modest collection of cars. Just for summertime fun, I'd buy a Shelby Cobra GT 500, Super Snake built to my personal specifications. Licensed to use his name, logo, and image by the late Carroll Shelby, they make the cars in Las Vegas under Shelby American. Different from the AC Cobras of old of the 60's which started as a Sunbeam Tiger with a Ford 260 cubic inch V8 squeezed in it, the Shelby Cobras begin their transformation as a stock Mustang GT. Nearly every component on the car inside and out, including the paint, is changed, enhanced, improved, and massaged.

For highway travel, I'd buy a Cadillac CTS-V coup, the one with the 556 horsepower engine that sucks money from your wallet for gas and new tires nearly as fast as the car can go from zero to sixty in 4.0 seconds, not bad for a two ton luxury car. I'd buy a Range Rover, the best off road vehicle in the world, just to say that I owned one. Still mostly handmade, I'd buy a Bentley GT because they're beautiful to look at from any angle. When wanting to be driven and chauffeured around, I'd buy a Rolls Royce Wraith just for the sake of going crazy with choosing the exterior two tone colors and in selecting the interior's custom accoutrements, seats, dashboard, and carpet. Difficult to choose from the DB9, the Vantage, and the Vanquish, so low to the ground, so sleek, and because they look so fast even when parked, I'd buy and Aston Martin. It doesn't matter which model as they all look wicked good to me.

Having worked as a full-charge bookkeeper, a staff accountant, and a controller of small businesses in my fifteen year accounting career before being unemployed, I was always good with numbers. Being that I knew so much about cars and car prices, I used to help all of my friends, co-workers, and relatives chose which cars to buy. My mind a warehouse of useless knowledge about cars after having read so many car magazines, I helped them with their selection of the make, the model, and the options to chose when buying a new car. Also, I did something that most people would rather go to the dentist than to deal with a car salesperson, I'd accompany them to the dealership to negotiate their best price. As a bird dog fee, the dealer gave me $100 for every customer that I brought in who bought a new car. Depending how much I saved them, the person that I helped to buy the car and negotiate the price gave me $100 or $200 for my time and effort.

Having gotten away from doing that, since I moved away from Boston and from my whore of a mother and incestuously perverted brothers, I don't even read about cars in the way that I used to do. Even though I no longer own a car, after losing my last car in a flood, another long, sad story for another time, I still love cars, especially the new models. Just because I can no longer afford to own a car doesn't mean that I still can't be a car buff and lust over cars from afar. Cars are part of the American dream and being American. Cars are part of my youth. I love cars, especially Mustang GT's. We're all identified by the cars we drive. Every time I read about someone winning the lottery, the first thing they utter, after saying that they're buying their dream house and taking a trip to Disney World, is that they're buying a new car. 

The youngest and most impressionable of five, growing up with four brothers, they always had hot cars, were fixing their cars, restoring their cars, hot rodding their cars, or were talking about their cars. Because they read all of the car magazines, magazines that were strewn around everywhere, especially in the bathroom that I wondered if they masturbated over cars and/or the sexy women in car magazines, I read them too. Car and Driver, Road and Track, Motor Trend, Automobile, Autoweek, Hot Rot, and Mustang, soon I nearly knew as much about cars as they did. Zero to sixty and quarter mile times were always the hot, heated topic of conversation around the dinner table, that is, when we had dinner together; seldom we did. With my mind for numbers and statistics, horsepower, torque, 0-60 times, and quarter mile numbers, I'd rattle off all the performance numbers.


My Passion for Mustang GTs Ch. 01



Back then, being able to go fast in a straight line was more important than being able to stop before hitting something. Back then, straight line performance at the track was more important than going the fastest around a circle with nothing but left hand turns. Now it's all three ingredients with handling just as important as acceleration and being able to stop. Go, turn, and stop, it's surprising how few cars there are that can do all three of those things that every car should do well.

A true testament to my love of cars, Gumball Rally is my favorite car movie and the French Connection with Gene Hackman and Bullitt with Steve McQueen, are my favorite car chase scenes. Top Gear, the original show from the United Kingdom that broadcasts on BBC, with Jeremy Clarkson, James May, Richard Hammond, and, of course, the Stig, is my favorite car television show. Every Sunday, I used to faithfully watch John Davis of MotorWeek discuss cars on public television. Being that I wasn't much in to the mechanics of cars, I didn't much care for the Pat Goss segment of how to care for your car and what to do when you experience a problem. Ralph Nadar, my hero, made us safer at any speed by demanding and championing the cause that car manufacturers make safer cars after the dismal safety record of Chevrolet's Corvair.

Lee Iacocca, right up there with Cheney, as far as I'm concerned, Devils in disguise, more concerned with profits than to recall his unsafe cars, gave us Mustangs and Pintos that exploded in rear end collisions. With the top of the gas tanks that were actually the floor of trunk, instead of positioning them where they should have been under the car, he was non-apologetic that so many loyal, Ford, automotive enthusiast fans were incinerated in a car fire. I'll never forget Lee Iacocca's comment when interviewed on 60 Minutes by correspondent Mike Wallace after being questioned about the exploding gas tanks of collector's beloved 1964 to 1970 Mustangs.

"If you really want a real safe one, trade up. After 35 years, it's time to dump that old Mustang," said Lee Iacocca.

From the lips of the man himself who was responsible for the creation of the beloved Mustang, how about that?

To be continued... 



My Passion for Mustang GTs Ch. 02



Not all just about writing erotica, this story is about car buff stuff for car buffs. Peppered with humor, Susan discusses her other passion the automobile.

Mustang GT's and Mustang Cobras are my favorite cars and, wishing he was the Dad I never had, Carroll Shelby was my idol. God rest his soul. May he rest in peace in the great automotive junkyard, race track, and new car dealerships in the sky. I loved his cars the best. If I had grown up in Dallas, Texas instead of Boston, Massachusetts, I could have been a genuine cowgirl riding the range bareback on horseback. Only with so many tall, blonde, busty beauties in Texas, I would have gone unnoticed as opposed to the way that I was noticed walking around and working in Boston.

For sure, when not riding horses on the range, I'd be driving a brand new Mustang Shelby Cobra right now while making him proud. Mixing metaphors, only with horses so afraid of snakes, I always thought it odd that Ford would combine their Mustang pony logo with Carroll Shelby's snake logo. Just as in the way that he spent all of his money on racing and on making cars, I'd be spending all of Daddy's money not on men but on cars. I love cars and, never able to afford a Mustang Cobra, I love Mustang GT's the best. 

"Hey baby. Want to ride around in my new Corvette?"

"No, sorry. I'm a Mustang type of girl. Ask me again, when you're driving a real car, a Mustang GT."

"You're just a bitch because your Dad is Carroll Shelby and my father is Zora Arkus-Duntov."

"Duh." 

Excited enough about seeing a car show to endure the company of the non-stop, sexually inappropriate dialogue of my always incestuously horny brothers, my brothers were always attending car shows and I'd always tag along with them. With the four of them, the blithering idiots that they are going on about which car they'd buy, as if they had unlimited funds when most times they were unemployed, it was fun to watch them drooling over cars in the way that I was lusting over cars too. Somehow car shows and a tall, busty, beautiful blonde went well together and they seemed happy for my company while telling me why this make and model was better than that make and model.

In some ways, I enjoyed playing my role as the sexy baby sister with them as my big, bad protectors. With their hand always around my shoulder or waist and with their horny hands threatening to grab my ass at the most inappropriate time, secretly, showing me off as if I belonged to them, they enjoyed pretending that I was their much younger girlfriend. I'd leave them at the beer and hot dog stand to go my own way. Already prearranged where we'd meet, we met back at an agreed upon time when we had enough of lusting over new cars that we couldn't afford and were ready to leave.

Born, educated, and raised in Boston, because I lived in and grew up in and around Beacon Hill and Boston's Back Bay, we listened to NPR, National Public Radio's Car Talk with Click and Clack, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, also known as the Tappet Brothers. Broadcast from Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the radio for 35 years, nearly all of my life, with nothing really fun and funny about car repairs, those two guys made car repairs fun and funny. Even for me, especially for me, they made car repairs easy to understand by injecting huge doses of laughter with humor.

Making fun of one another, along with their telephone call-in guests who'd identify their automotive problems by making the noise associated with their car for one or both of the men to diagnose over the phone, both men could have been comedians instead of mechanics. They even had a car related puzzle for their viewers to solve and gave funny prizes to the winner. With both men graduates of MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tom has advanced degrees from Boston University. Intelligent, articulate, educated, and informed, the average grease monkeys they're not. 

Even though I love cars and always wished I could afford a better car, I never had a really good car. I always had a Chevy or a Ford. Yet not settling for an old man's car, a used Chevy Impala or a used Ford Crown Victoria and willing to wait until I could afford a new car, I preferred new cars to used cars and two doors coupes to four door sedans. I preferred sportier cars with rear wheel drive, powerful engines, high back, bucket seats, and manual transmissions to family cars.

Being that my four brothers were all gear heads, loved Mustangs, and worked for different subsidiaries of Ford, until they worked for Ford directly in their factory building cars, my last two cars were new Ford Mustang GT's with standard transmissions. Even though I realize that the Mustang is not considered a true sports car, in the way that Porsche, Corvette, Viper, and some Audi, BMW, and AMG Mercedes models are, Mustangs are still a fun car to drive, especially in the GT version. Moreover, the best bang for the buck and the best sporty car that I could afford, with other true sports cars costing two, three, and many more times than a Mustang, without a doubt, even now, the GT is a lot of high performance car for the money.

Not nearly the same driving experience, it's sacrilegious to buy a Mustang GT with an automatic transmission. If you want a car with an automatic, as far as I'm concerned, buy a Hyundai or a Toyota. Yet, nearly 60% of all Mustang GT's sold today are equipped with automatic transmissions, which is why Ford charges a premium price for an automatic transmission by equipping their Mustang GT's with a six speed manual transmission as standard. If more customers opted for the manual transmission, then Ford would include the automatic transmission at no charge and list the manual transmission as a pricy option. Despite the driving sensation of manually shifting gears over having gears automatically selected for you, admittedly automatics have come a long way.

In some instances, removing the reasons for buying a standard over an automatic, as in the case of the Volkswagen's GTI, some automatic transmissions are a tick quicker from zero to sixty, to the quarter mile, and are a mile or two more fuel efficient at the gas pump than their standard counterpart. Yet, automatic transmissions are a pricy option and VW, as does Ford, charges a premium price for opting for the automatic transmission option instead of buying the car with the standard equipped manual transmission. Ferrari, say that it's not true, will soon no longer offer a manual transmission. All of their cars will soon be equipped with automatic transmissions. Enzo Ferrari must be turning over in his grave.

In the way that my brothers acted over their beloved Mustangs and assorted Mustang models, sort of like switching from Democrat to Republican or turning Muslim from Catholic, I once bought a new Camaro Z28 over a new Mustang GT. Doing everything short of keying my car, I never heard the end of my decision to swap my automotive allegiance from Ford to Chevy. It was if I had denounced the Boston Red Sox and become a dreaded New York Yankees fan.

Not since the time they caught my mother with three midgets, when the circus was in town at TD Garden, or caught her with sailors, when the naval fleet was in Boston Harbor, I've never seen my brothers so angry. Die hard Ford Mustang fans, perhaps I bought into the Chevy bowtie instead of the Mustang pony to anger my brothers. Truth be told and as an aside, even though I love Mustangs, with the Corvette the top of the heap of American sports cars and with Cadillac a much better car than a Lincoln, General Motors makes a better car than Ford with Chrysler a distant third, always has and always will.

Forget about Japanese and German cars, still holding a grudge going back to World War II because they tried to kill my grandfather, whoever he was, I wouldn't be here if my grandfather had been killed in combat. Had they won the war, we'd all be speaking German and/or Japanese today instead of destroying the English language by combining American slang with Boston, New York, New Jersey, mid western, Californian valley girl, and southern accents that no one from outside their areas can understand or tolerate without poking fun at them. Truth be told, something that never made any sense to me, I don't understand why a Jew would buy a German car after what the Germans did to their people. Maybe Jewish people are bigger than me to forgive but never forget what happened in the past for the sake of owning a quality, German engineered car.

Perhaps if Israel produced automobiles, bulletproof cars with a machine gun turret attached to the roof in the way of an armored tank, they'd buy cars produced by their own country in the way that I more favor American cars, even though most American cars aren't made in America. Although I love 3-series BMW's, I'd never own, unless one was given to me for free and I could sell it to buy a real car, a Mustang GT. As inferior as American automobile cars may be, they've gotten much better in quality control, reliability, and dependability. Having never owned a foreign car, I've only owned American cars. If given the choice, I'd only saddle my ass to any one of Carroll Shelby's Mustang Cobras, especially the new ones with six gears on the floor instead of five.

"God bless America."

Yet, with exceptions to every rule, I'd make an exception to my rule of not owning foreign cars to own a Ferrari, a Bentley, and/or a Rolls Royce. Those are just three of the half dozen foreign cars I'd buy, if I had money to burn and could afford them. Say it's not true, terrible, just terrible, bought from the British, Bentley and Rolls Royce are now owned by the Germans, first Volkswagen and now BMW.

"Are you kidding me? When did that happen? How did that happen? Why did that happen?"

Too precise in their engineering, unwilling to get their stark white lab coats dirty, the Germans can't possibly appreciate Bentley and Rolls Royce in the way that the English did by making every car by hand instead of by robotic machine. Knowing the Germans as I do, they'll no doubt change the mystique of car by making the car better, more drivable, dependable, reliable, and more livable, all while getting better fuel economy.

"How dare they! How could they! God save the queen!"

Ford bought Aston Martin and Jaguar then sold Aston Martin to venture capitalists, one from Kuwait, while BMW bought Mini Cooper. Now that Ford doesn't own them and no longer outfits them with the cheapish interior mechanicals of a Ford Focus, although they still own a large share of the company, Aston Martin is another car I'd buy if ever I could afford to buy one. I love Aston Martins.

What were the British thinking I wonder when selling off all of their automotive history and the cars that made all Brits proud to the highest bidder? What were the British having a car manufacturers sale or have the Brits gone mad, totally bonkers to sell their beloved Marques, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Jaguar, and Aston Martin? Maybe they needed the cash to pay for the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton and for the Queen's diamond jubilee. With much of their manufacturing base shipped overseas, is it any wonder why their economy is just as bad there as it is here. Soon the only cars sold will be made by the Chinese. 

"Yes, every car comes with a fortune cookie. We never know what's inside the fortune cookie. One man had a coupon to trade his new Chinese reverse engineered car in for a real car, a Ford Mustang GT."

"Wow."

Except for Morgan and Land Rover, the manufacturer of the Range Rover, are the Brits now out of the new car manufacturing business? Except for the Queen and her love for Range Rovers and hunting birds with her dogs and shotgun out in the field, because of sky-high gas prices, nearly everyone across the pond drives a Fiat 500 anyway.

"Say Mate, every time I start my car, a voice says Buon Giorno and every time I turn it off, it says, Ciao. What the bloody Hell is that?"

General Motors bought Saab and Volvo from the Swedes before killing off the Saab, the Oldsmobile, the Pontiac, and Saturn as part of their agreement in accepting TARP money when emerging from bankruptcy. We need a scorecard to keep track of which manufacturer makes which car. Now that General Motors has put so many people back to work and is leaner and meaner while making better cars, I'm glad we didn't listen to Romney's advice to let GM go under.

Back to my personal adventures with Chevrolet's Camaro, a car that I shouldn't have bought instead of the Mustang that I should have bought. Maybe because I detested the Camaro is the reason why I killed the car. I had that Camaro for 4 months before crashing it into a wall and totaling the car with only 4,400 miles on the odometer. There's nothing funny about crashing a car in a wall or is there?

* * * * *

Young and dumb, I was inherently injected with too much testosterone from hanging around my dumb brothers too much. Not things that I'm proud of now that I'm an intelligent woman of class and distinction, besides having their forced, wicked sexual way with me, they taught me many things that came in handy at the time. They taught me how to spit without getting any on myself, how to whistle with two fingers, how to drink a can of beer in one gulp, how to burp the alphabet, how to drag race, and how to crash cars like a man. Feeling more like Ellie Mae Clampett than I did Susan Jill Parker, always a Tom boy type of girl anyway, unfortunately with writing erotica on a porn board, my brothers, no doubt, were responsible for making me who I am today.

Who am I today? Who is Susan Jill Parker? Having endured and survived some dark days, sometimes I don't even know who I am. A question that I continue asking myself, while still in transition and undergoing yet another transformation, my answer changes each time I ask myself the question.

Nonetheless, a constant, still unemployed, broke, homeless, and living in the spare bedroom of a kind Mennonite woman, yet having found my passion for writing stories, I'm much happier now than when I was when working and was self-reliant, solvent, had my own apartment, and a new Mustang GT. Go figure. I never thought that I'd ever write that in a story, that I was happier now than I was when I was driving around in a new Mustang GT. Not the first car that I crashed into a wall due to drag racing some cute guy on a desolate highway, a real crash test dummy, I'm an official air bag tester too.

"If you catch me, you can have me."

Taken from one of my favorite car movies, Gumball Rally, instead of using a white glove to slap the face of my challenger, as if I was waving the pink registration slip for my car, I may have been known to say that while waving my pink panties out my car window. Looking back at all the dumb blonde things that I've done, my personal flag of dishonor, I never should have removed my panties, especially when meeting my Ex. Had I known then what I know today, instead of opening my hand, my mouth, and my legs, as if a turtle hiding in its shell, I should have kept everything closed.

Young and dumb and looking to prove myself as a worthy competitor, a woman against a man in a man's world, when driving like a maniac, I could have died. Along with myself, I could have killed someone. Yet, I learned from my tragically, stupid mistakes and I haven't had an accident since my last accident. Furthermore, I plan on not having another accident until my next accident. How's that for positive thinking?

Having experienced it first hand, take it from me, if you're going to crash a car and have a conscious choice of where and what to hit, crash your car not at an angle but flush into a wall head-on instead of crashing it in a pole, a tree, a bridge abutment, or an oncoming car. It sounds absurd making a conscious choice of crashing your car into a wall but I'm still here to write about it after crashing two cars that way. Only, before hitting a wall, make sure you scrub off as much speed as you can by liberally applying the brakes while praying before impact.

"Dear God in Heaven, if you allow me to survive crashing my car in this wall, I'll go to church every day and twice on Sundays or is it Saturday's now? I'll eat fish on Fridays and will never make disparaging remarks about priests having sex with boys again. And I promise to not make fun of Bishops and Cardinals living life like kings in their own private accommodations while lowly nuns take the vow of poverty and live their lives in convents as if prisoners to God."

I was lucky enough to have a newer car to crash. During the crash, the airbag slapped me hard enough in the face for me to know that I wasn't dead for being so stupid. Even though I was wearing my seatbelt and shoulder harness, even when bracing myself for the impact, my steering wheel still tattooed my chest through my clothes and bra with enough force to leave my car logo on my chest.

A conversation piece when wearing my barely there bikini and a continued source of embarrassment for a Mustang lover, as if my way of continuing to pay for my mistake of buying a Camaro, as a grim reminder of my crash, I had Camaro on my chest for six months before it faded. Then, after the impact with the wall, as further punishment and as if watching the aftermath of the crash unfold in slow motion, an amazing sight to behold, the items in my car that didn't hit me in the head, slowly passed by my head and went through the windshield. Glad that I was still alive, I hope you'll think of me and thank me for my advice to hit a wall flush and not at an angle instead of hitting a pole, a tree, or an oncoming car when you have your next accident.

Only and alas, if you don't make it and die in the car crash after hitting the wall, once you see that familiar bright, white light and see all of your deceased friends and relatives smiling down at you and beckoning you upward, don't go. I'm just glad that Carroll Shelby was still alive, otherwise, willing to spend eternity endlessly talking about Mustangs, I may have left this Earth to live forever with him. Trust me. You can still save yourself after seeing the bright light.

Say no to the light because as soon as say no to the light and tell the Lord Almighty that you want to continue to live, you'll return to your destroyed car with time enough to climb out before the car explodes into a fireball. If you don't say no to the light, the car will explode with you still in it. Hopefully, I'll see you on the other side one day when I meet my maker too.

Never will you experience such peace as when you see that bright, white light. Difficult to pull yourself away from the light, in the way that I did, you'll need something to break the hold that it has on you. All I needed to do was to think of something else, a loved one. Only, when I thought of my whore of a mother and my incestuous brothers, no longer wanting to live, wanting to die, I moved closer to the light.

It wasn't until I thought of Carroll Shelby making my beloved Mustang Cobra that I moved further away from the light. Then, I thought of the Boston Red Sox hoping to win the pennant that year and the new Mustang GT that I'd buy from the insurance money that I'll receive from the totaled Camaro. Assuredly, even after thinking about all the things that I still wanted to see and do, with all my woes and worries gone, instead of wanting to move further away, I wanted to go closer to the bright, white light. I wanted an even closer inspection of it, especially as I recognized more familiar faces beckoning me forward.

"Grandpa? Grandma? Is that you? Fluffy? Is that you? Good dog. Good girl. There's my favorite, third grade teacher, Miss Crabtree with Judy Garland as Dorothy holding Toto."

Yet, there are those who, even after hitting a pole, a tree, or an oncoming car in a horrific non-survivable accident, will never experience the bright, white light. Suddenly with everything gone black, all they'll see is darkness, that is, until they see flashing colored lights and hear disco music as if they're about to enter a strip club in Las Vegas. It may be more appealing especially for those of you who enjoy watching topless pole dancers dancing naked but trust me, don't go there either.




My Passion for Mustang GTs Ch. 02



Just as those heading to Heaven must say no to the bright, white light to stay on Earth, those who see darkness before seeing flashing, colored lights and hear disco music must say no to the pole. Suffice for me to write that what you see is not a strip club in Vegas. Hell no. What you see is Hell and unless you want to experience Dante Alighieri's inferno first hand, I suggest you not only say no to the pole but also amend your wicked ways before it's too late.

"I've been born again. Thank you Jesus! After seeing the darkness, before seeing flashing colored lights and hearing disco music with all of those beautiful, sexy, and shapely women dancing around a pole naked...wait. I've changed my mind. I've had a change of heart. I don't want to live. I want to die. I want to go back to Hell instead of spending the rest of my miserable life trying to make amends enough for me to go to Heaven. Now that I've seen the other side, willing to dance with the Devil while he plays his golden fiddle, I'm willing to take my chances with the Devil to have sex with the dozens of Nubian Princesses that he had in his nude revue."

Now I'm not an automotive safety engineer, but I'm sure that Click and Clack, my radio Car Talk show hosts, as well as my Top Gear television hosts, will all agree with my off-the-cuff crash test assessment of how to limit bodily damage when hitting an object fixed or otherwise with a motor vehicle. It may sound crazy but hitting a wall flush and square dissipates the crash energy equally across the front of the car as opposed to hitting a tree, a pole, or even one of Santa's reindeers where all of the energy is focused on one, precise point, you. 

"Am I right? Am I making sense? Does crashing my car in a wall theory hold water?" 

Notwithstanding Einstein's theory of relativity, Carl Sagan's explanation of how the universe began, and Stephen Hawking's discovery of black holes, I solely base my theory on how to have less severe injuries when hitting something with my moving vehicle upon my own personally experiences of crashing two cars into a wall. Not responsible for your lunacy in trying to duplicate this experience and/or experiment to prove or disprove my scientific theory on crashing a car into a wall to determine if you'll have less physical injuries and if you'll still remain alive, please do not try this at home.

Duly noted, it should be enough for me to write, when hitting an oncoming car, the velocity times the energy with your car traveling at speed X and their car traveling at speed Y, multiplied by the coefficient of...never mind. Being that you're about to die anyway and with more important things to ponder such as the appearance of the bright, white light or the lack thereof, I wouldn't take the time to worry about the algebraic equation or the formula's fatal results. Not even making a difference if you're wearing your seatbelt, the make, model, and/or type of car that you're in, unless you're driving a carbon fiber Indy car or Nascar stock car at Talladega, the life you've lived, and have a dozen religious statues on your dashboard, you may as well kiss your ass good-bye.

I've never read an official study but my guess is that there are more fatalities in cars that hit poles, trees, and other cars head-on than there are with cars hitting smooth concrete or cinderblock walls. They do have more of that information recently now with the emergence of the Internet, but it's always been a pet peeve of mine why they don't have a list of the top ten cars that drivers and passengers are likely to die or survive in a crash.

To be continued... 



My Passion for Mustang GTs Ch. 03



Not all just about writing erotica, this story is about car buff stuff for car buffs. Susan discusses her other passion the automobile.

Never comfortable with the Camaro Z28, just my personal preference and opinion, I didn't feel as in control of the car as I felt in the Mustang GT. A heavier car than the 3,500 pound Mustang GT at the time, comparable in weight then to the much heavier 3,900 pound Mustang Cobra GT 500 of today, the Z28 felt too heavy in the turns and too light with the steering. Rumor has it that the 2014 Camaro Z28 will not only be 300 pounds lighter but more powerful too.

Relative to all the positive hype given to the Chevy in car magazines about the performance of the car, I found the Camaro to be a slow, ponderous car saddled with an automatic transmission that wouldn't allow me to rev from first to second gear. Maybe had I bought the Camaro with a manual transmission I would have had a totally different opinion of the car. Maybe if I was driving an old Divco, Detroit Industrial Vehicles Company, milk truck, I'd need to go from first gear to third gear to get up to speed when carrying a heavy load, but this was the sporty Camaro Z28. 

Understandably and in their defense, General Motors was more concerned with the legal liability than the performance of their sporty cars. After General Motors was sued and settled their lawsuits out of court back in the late 70's and early 80's, when drivers of Pontiac Trans Am's emulated Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit by using their cars to jump off ramps, they learned their lesson by using movies to hype what their cars could do. Nonetheless the subsequent lawsuits, not just Trans Am's, GM and Pontiac sold a lot of cars thanks to Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields.

Undeniably, their sissy automatic transmissions were a Big Brother preprogrammed move to limit GM's legal liability should their drivers go to the bright light to eternally live in Heaven or dance with the Devil in Hell. Killing some of the fun of driving '90 era Camaros and Corvettes in the way they should be driven, the Mustang was still a free revving machine. Before I bought the Camaro, I wish I had rented one. A test drive around a few blocks with the car salesman sitting shotgun beside me wasn't nearly enough to know what this car would be like as my daily driver. A personal preference, from its outside appearance to its Spartan interior, I just didn't like the car. A '90's era Camaro, I felt as if I was sitting in an American Motors Pacer.

When stomping on the gas, in the way of trying to get the best 0-60 time, bypassing second gear, the transmission would jump from first to third gear and skip second gear altogether, the best gear in the Mustang, as far as I'm concerned. What the Hell? I thought there was something wrong with the new car but, a killjoy of a car company, this was how GM purposely made them.

The first and only automatic car I ever owned, after that fatal fiasco, figuring all automatics in all makes and models were all the same when they weren't, I vowed to never buy another car with an automatic transmission. Moreover, I vowed to never buy another Camaro, more about that later. Call me a car buff snob but I'm more comfortable and feel more in control when driving a car, any car, with a standard transmission, especially when short shifting while wearing a short skirt that climbs nearly up to my crotch.

"Hi Susan, how are you? You stay in the car and I'll fill your tank, wash your windows, and check your oil," said my mechanic peering in my window and ogling me and my exposed panties. "Don't you worry about a thing."

Strange that he never pumped anyone's gas, washed anyone's windows, and checked anyone's oil but mine, not even his wife's car, especially not his wife's car, I had the cleanest windows and topped off gas tank and oil of any car in my neighborhood. Call me suspicious but I think my neighborhood gas attendant serviced more than just my car. I think he serviced his sexual needs by stealing peeks of my panties while washing my windows.

Call me a car buff snob but I'm more comfortable and feel more in control of the car when driving a Mustang GT. There's just something sexy about seeing that galloping pony logo run along with me, even though it's galloping sideways. A lot invested in a name, when we were all busy watching Gun Smoke, Rawhide, Bonanza, and John Wayne's old western flicks, Mustang evoked the image of the wild west. Seriously, what does Camaro mean anyway?

In old French, Camaro means companion or friend, a slow, overweight friend, I guess. In Spanish, chicken of the sea, it means a small, shrimp like creature. An anonymous automotive journalist was quoted as saying that the name, Camaro meant loose bowels. Being that Chevy was naming all of their cars beginning with the letter C, GM hoped that Camaro, once driven in races, would mean Mustang eater. Personally, I think the name was a mistake. Camaro is a name that doesn't evoke anything in the way that the Impala, Corvette, or Monte Carlo did. Chevy did the car a disservice by naming it Camaro whatever the meaning is in any language.

Yet more than just a name, the Camaro had difficulty compensating for its automatic transmission. For one thing, when shifting gears and listening to the engine rev while watching the tachymeter needle climb in the Mustang GT, the experience of driving a car with a manual transmission feels more like driving. The redline in the new ones, specifically the Cobras and Boss 302's, are 7,500 rpm's instead of 5,800 in the old GT's. Lulling me to sleep, instead of dozing off with the gear shift in drive, the radio blaring, and the cruise control set on 60 mph, automatics are for people who don't like to drive but who still want to look cool driving a sporty car.

"Hey, baby. Wanna ride in my Camaro Z28 with an automatic transmission?"

"No, thank you. My boyfriend is picking me up in his Mustang GT with a 6-speed."

Call it an automotive video game with sights, sounds, and sensations, but I'd rather listen to the car, to the loud exhaust sound of the Mustang GT, and to my radar detector warning me of a police radar trap ahead, than to mindlessly drive a car that has an automatic transmission. If I want to drive mindlessly, I'll listen to the mindless chatter of truckers on their CB radios warning one another of bears in the chairs, smoky on the road, speed traps, and busty blondes driving topless down the road while flashing truckers her tits.

"Oops. Sorry. That's so embarrassing. I didn't mean to write that in my story. Where's my delete key?"

Able to hear them singing their baritone opera from blocks away, especially on a cold, damp day, there's nothing like the exhaust sound of a Mustang GT whether standing still, idling, lopping around in second gear, or blazing by at full throttle. Unless it's an aftermarket exhaust, there's not a car with a better sounding exhaust, that is, except for Ferrari and Lamborghini. The Luciano Pavarotti of exotic sports cars, Ferrari has a higher and sweeter tailpipe sound while the Lamborghini, no doubt, imitating their logo of the mad bull, has a deeper and angrier growl. Even louder than the Mustang GT's are the exhaust sounds of Mustang Cobra GT 500's and Boss Mustangs. Yet, the unbefitting whining sound of the supercharger in the GT 500 isn't a sound that I prefer hearing and something that would drive me crazy listening to all day when driving the car. I'd rather have a car that doesn't have a supercharger whining or a turbo buzzing.

If given my druthers and a check for nearly forty-five thousand dollars, I'd much prefer owning the perfectly pitched sound of the new Boss 302 Mustang. The new Boss 302 is a car that I'd love to own but not the fifty-thousand dollar Laguna Seca version of the car. With the back seat delete, the splitter in the front, and the much stiffer ride with huge Brembo brakes in front, that car is too much like a race car to me.

In the way that Mary Tyler Moore loved her six cylinder Mustang on her show by the same name, my dream car, at around forty-thousand dollars, nearly twice what a house cost in 1972 the year I was born, is still a Mustang GT. Of course, forget about the glass roof, I'd spring for the track-pack and a six speed manual transmission. A girl can dream, can't she? Make mine gotta have it green or grabber blue metallic with the Recaro sport seat option, black wheels, and thick black stripes running the top, length of the car.

"Wow!"

Returning back to my detestation for sporty and sports cars with automatic transmissions, basically categorizing them all as Buicks with different name plates, instead of driving numb, I'd rather listen to what the tires are doing and feel what suspension is telling me. Unless stuck in traffic, holding the thick steering wheel of the Mustang GT with both hands, too focused on driving and enjoying the driving experience, I didn't even play the radio when driving and that's a huge sacrifice for a woman. Instead of being distracted by anything else, I wanted to feel the sensation of driving the car while listening to the exhausts to make me feel as if I was driving a high performance car.

Being that the exhaust sound is all part of the experience of driving a Mustang GT, why muffle the sound with the radio? The new Mustang GT's and Boss Mustangs actually have the sound piped in the passenger compartment by removing some of the car's insulation. Hearing the sound before seeing the car, every male from 4-years-old to 94-years-old turns their head to watch a Mustang GT drive by them.

Great for slick and slippery roads, instead of stepping on the brake and upsetting the balance of the car to slow the car, all I'd have to do in a car equipped with a manual transmission is to take my foot off the gas. Especially on a level road, most times just taking my foot off of the gas was plenty enough to slow the car down to where I'm more able to control it in bad weather. Once in motion, because of the idle speed set higher than a car with a manual transmission, a car with an automatic transmission doesn't slow down quickly enough by removing one's foot from the gas in the way a car with a standard transmission does. One needs to apply enough pressure to the brake pedal that may work against them by upsetting the car's balance, especially when the road is slick.

Especially when going downhill, the automatic transmission equipped car will keep going while steadily increasing in speed. Even though the manual transmission equipped car will do that too, increase its speed when going downhill without benefit of stepping on the gas, the engine in a standard transmission car serves somewhat as a brake to limit it's freefalling acceleration. As an aside, however, it's less taxing on the engine to use your brakes instead of only relying on the engine to slow the car. Having more control over the car, all I ever had to do while going downhill in a car with a manual transmission was to gently and occasionally pump the brake whereas drivers in an automatic equipped car continually must apply the brake when going downhill, especially when nearing a curve.

Moreover, in a manual transmission equipped car, I have the option of slipping the shifter in neutral to allow it to coast, or shift to a lower gear to pass, or shift to a higher gear to lower the rpm's and save on gas. I'm aware that the driver can pick their own gear changes by pushing up or down on their gear shift in the newer equipped automatic transmission cars, but ask any car buff nut, bumping the automatic gear shift lever isn't nearly the same as shifting gears yourself with a manual transmission. Without doubt, especially for those who love cars and who enjoy driving as I used to do, feeling more part of the driving experience, it's more fun driving a car with a standard transmission than it is driving a car with an automatic transmission.

Even though I prefer standard transmissions, taken from Formula One race cars, drivers who prefer not to remove their hands from the steering wheel, I don't much care for the new paddle shifters they now have to change gears on some cars. No longer using a clutch to change gears, I imagine that most true Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Porsche aficionados hate them too. Much in the way that the Viper is set up, devoid of computerized drivers' aids, professional drivers don't want anything interfering with their driving abilities. No traction control, no anti-lock brakes, no stability control, and no Big Brother internal computer tattling on how fast they go and how hard they turn and brake, it's just them in the car as one.

Manufacturers won't even admit which cars have those Big Brother computers now. Using us as their live guinea pigs, we all know that Corvettes have had them for years. Playing it safe, I figure most cars have those Big Brother computers installed in them now, even your car, especially your car in the way that you drive. 

"Slow down! Big Brother is watching you."

If you think you're getting away with something by traveling at 140 mph and telling your insurance agent, leasing agent, rental agent, or the police that you never had the car over 55, they just need to do a download.

"I swear, I never had the car over 55 mph."

"Yeah, right," said the rental agent holding the printout.

If you think that no one will find where you dumped that body, the FBI just needs to do a GPS download to get your exact location.

"I didn't dump that body there. I was nowhere near the Detroit River."

"Yeah, right," said the FBI agent handcuffing you, reading you your rights, and charging you with murder.

If you think your girlfriend or wife will never suspect you've been cheating on her with Tiffany, that stripper downtown, no longer needing a compass, pins, and a piece of string on a map to coordinate your last location, all she needs to do is a download your last location from your GPS on your Smartphone.

"Did you have sex with Tiffany?"

"No Honey? I swear. I never left the office."

"Yeah, right. I downloaded your GPS coordinates from your Smartphone and her home address was one of the addressed that appeared.

If you think you're alone in your car and able to roam the countryside free as a bird while picking your nose, your wrong. With satellites that can read a license plate from outer space, no one has any privacy anymore. We now have infrared and X-ray technology that can see through things in the way that Superman could and in the way that a TSA agent can see more than just my underwear through my clothes. Able to see in the dark with night vision as if it's daylight, why did it take our government as long as it did to find Osama Bin Laden and Whitey Bulger of Boston crime family fame? It makes me wonder how really hard they were looking for them.

After our government has lied to us about everything else, seriously, without the proof of a dead body, they expected us to believe that they dumped Osama Bin Laden at sea? It makes me question if they ever landed on the moon.

"One small step for man and one giant leap in our NASA and military defense budget."

I'd still have to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and that the reason why we went to war with Iraq was because they had weapons of mass destruction to believe that Osama Bin Laden is dead. For all that I know he's alive and living in Boca Raton Florida or relaxing while drinking pina coladas in Key West. How dare they think we're all so stupid! 

Back to paddle shifters, fortunately, the paddle shifters are still an option on most cars. Just another gimmick, paddle shifters are for race cars and exotic sports cars, not for mass produced cars. Those cars that have paddle shifters as standard, such as Mini Coopers with an automatic transmission only, are more of a gadget decoration than of any performance value. Paddle shifters don't make much of a difference in performance as they would with cars that have huge amounts of horsepower, such as the paddle shifters on a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. Hard getting used to them, missing a gear or over revving the engine and scrubbing off speed, I always managed to hit the turn signal or the windshield wiper when trying to use paddle shifters to shift gears up or down. Besides, my personal phallic symbol, as if I'm holding a cock, I prefer the feel of a shifter in my right hand.

Forsaking the simple pleasure of driving, just a dumb blonde who was persuaded by faster 0-60 and quarter mile times, that the Camaro had over the Mustang then, I don't know why I bought a car with an automatic transmission when I really wanted a car with a manual transmission. Perhaps, at the time, it had something to do with me spraining my left ankle rollerblading just before I ordered the car. Perhaps, as I eluded to before, buying the Camaro instead of the Mustang had more to do with me pissing off my brothers. I would have been okay driving a car with a manual transmission with a left sprained ankle had I lived in the United Kingdom, Australia, and a dozen other countries where they drive on the wrong side of the road.

Maybe I was thinking that an automatic would be easier to drive while drinking my coffee, eating my muffin, talking on my cell phone, and/or doing my hair and makeup in the mirror. I don't text when I drive and once I returned to driving a sportier car with a standard transmission and needing a free hand to shift, I never talked on my cell phone when driving again. Besides, not wanting to be distracted, I didn't want to miss any of the fun of driving my Mustang. Now that I no longer have a cell phone or a car for that matter, texting and talking on the phone while driving is no longer a safety issue for me.

Not an easy thing for a car buff to do, even though I've acclimated to not having a car and getting a ride or taking the bus to wherever I need to go, I still read about new car models online. I lust over the new car models in the way that men lust over naked women. Maybe one day, when I get my life back, I'll be able to afford to buy a new car, one with a manual transmission and too much horsepower.

"Giddy up!"

The thing that I didn't like about the Camaro and the same for the Corvette is that the driver and, for that matter, the passengers, sit too low in the car, sort of like sitting in a bathtub that's sliding around the ground. Uncomfortable to drive and to see out of the windows, even with the power seat option at its highest, the driving position was too low for visibility sake. The Camaro feels more like sitting in a Formula One car or in an Indy car than it does sitting on a Nascar seat in the way that the Mustang more does.

The Mustang requires the driver to sit on the seat instead of in the seat, almost as if the Mustang seat is a throne or a catbird seat. There's better visibility in a Mustang. Even though there are blind spots in both cars, the Mustang has fewer blind spots than the Camaro. I haven't driven the newest Mustang and Camaro but, from what I've read online about the two cars, I assume that little has changed between the two cars. With an equal number of loyal Camaro and Mustang fans, buying one car or the other is just a matter of personal preference and sometimes price.

Having driven both the older Mustangs and Camaros, having more seat of the pants feel or in my case more seat of the panty feel, there's more road feel in the Mustang. Maybe just more used to Mustangs, being that was the cars my brothers all had and that I learned to drive with, I prefer Mustangs. Happier driving the Mustang than I was driving the Camaro, able to just feel what the car was doing when transitioning from turn to turn, I know when the Mustang is at the limit. I can feel it.

The Camaro may be a click faster around the track but, easier to drive and to live with as a daily driver, the Mustang is a better and more comfortable road car for me. Unlike the Camaro that gives little warning, when driving the Mustang at the limit, I can feel the back end wanting to swing out and have time enough to catch it by simply taking my foot off the gas or gently stabbing at the brake to rebalance the car to neutral. Maybe it's different with the new Camaros and Corvettes, but the Camaros of old, much like the Corvettes of old didn't tell the driver what's happening with the car and didn't tell the driver when they've reached the limits of adhesion until it's too late. Much like the Porsche 911's and the BMW 3 series of old, those cars were responsible for the deaths of many celebrities, sports athletes, and yuppies, those who thought they knew how to drive a car at the limit. When pushing those cars too hard and going too fast, when driving the car recklessly and unbalanced in the way that a professional driver would never do, the car would just suddenly and uncontrollably spin while taking the driver and passenger for a deadly ride. 




My Passion for Mustang GTs Ch. 03



When I bought my last Mustang years ago, so young and innocent, I was contacted by Ford to participate in their track day. In conjunction with the Bob Bondurant School of High Speed Driving, they invited me to take a free, one day, high speed driving course with the master, Bob Bondurant, and his team of professional drivers. An even older man now as he was old then, he had a dirty, old man's eye for young, busty, pretty blondes. Never removing his horny eyes from me, staring at my big breasts and round ass, a little too fast for me, I was more concerned with driving the supplied Mustang GT around the track than encouraging his advances.

Switching from racing Indian motorcycles to cars, a member of Carroll Shelby's Cobra team, in 1964, he won the 24-hour Le Mans GT class with Phil Donahue. With a trophy case filled with racing accomplishments, his favorite cars were Corvettes and Mustangs. The driving instructor for Paul Newman, James Garner, Clint Eastwood, Robert Wagner, Nicholas Cage, Tim Allen, and Tom Cruise, that man could drive. Interestingly enough, the Mustangs that they supplied us with were all automatics. Not much fun in that, it would have been much more fun driving a manual equipped car around the Grand Prix track.

To be continued...



My Passion for Mustang GTs Ch. 04



Not all just about writing erotica, this story is about car buff stuff for car buffs. Susan discusses her other passion the automobile.

Of all the things that I learned about driving faster from Bob Bondurant and his team of drivers is that driving smoother is faster. With my eyes only looking to where I want to go, needing to feel the car to know what the car is doing, every move must be planned. Stomping on the gas, jamming on the brakes, missing the apex by turning in too soon or turning out too late not only burns energy but unbalances the car and scrubs off speed from lap times. Always flat out, something that I never could do, it takes a master driver to drive every lap at nearly the exact same, lap speed time.

The driver first needs to get comfortable in the car. Check the mirrors, buckle the seatbelt, lock the doors, and hold the steering wheel with both hands at the ten and two position or three and nine position. Whether feathering the brakes, cadence braking, and learning how and when to shift, the car must stay balanced and neutral before entering and emerging from the apex of a turn. Whether on a race course, a highway, a back road, or a neighborhood street, that's what driving is all about.

With a little knowledge a dangerous thing, or in my case, a little knowledge about high speed driving made me a better driver. Not only did the high speed driving instruction make me a faster driver, when driving faster, but also it made me aware of all the things that could go wrong when driving a car at the limit. If anything, the one day course made me a safer, slower, and a more careful, defensive driver.

Even a tip as simple as not driving in the pack and letting all the other cars speed ahead, to leaving yourself options to change lanes by not boxing yourself in, especially when driving beside a trailer truck, are good ways to drive. Driving with your peripheral vision by always looking far ahead is how to safely drive and to stay out of trouble. I recommend parents giving their kids a high speed driving course. With the knowledge of how to drive a car faster safely, not only just about speed, a high speed driving course will make them better and more responsible drivers. Now that I know what the car does and what my limitations are, I have more respect for driving, for the car, and for my driving abilities or lack thereof. 

What learning how to drive faster safely has taught me is that I could never be a race car driver. I don't have the appetite for driving at breakneck speed. I scare too easily when driving at speed. Such a tiny woman, my hat is off to Danica Patrick. She is truly gifted as are all of the other drivers who can drive at speeds four times the speed limit.

For only a few seconds, the fastest I've ever driven a car is 130 mph on a long straight, empty highway. My knuckles were white, my palms were sweaty, and my heart was racing. Afraid I'd have a tire blowout, instead of trying to drive faster, I couldn't wait to slow down. A scary proposition, for me to have a wreck at that speed would only take a mere twitch of the steering wheel. Taking my foot off the gas, not braking to upset the car, I allowed the car to slow naturally. Not seeing anything from the sides of the car but blurs, I felt as if I was driving in a tunnel. I can't imagine what it must feel like to drive 230 mph with cars in front, behind, and on either side of me.

Yet, still loving to drive, especially on a road that has lots of twists, turns, and long straightaways to safely pass, I love the Kangamagus Highway, commonly misspelled as Kangamangus. A 34.5 mile scenic drive on a two lane road from Lincoln, NH to Conway, NH, through the White Mountain National Forest, the road runs east to west through the White Mountains with peeks of white water and rocky streams on the side. Designated as Americas scenic byway for its rich history, aesthetic beauty, and culture, the views are breathtaking especially during the summer and fall foliage season. My favorite road to drive, bar none, is the Kangamagus highway on the way to the Mount Washington in New Hampshire.

Even more thrilling than driving the Kangamagus Highway is driving the road up Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeastern United states at nearly, 6,300 feet. Mount Washington has a weather station on top. With measured wind speeds of 231 miles an hour and temperatures of -47 in winter, for safety reasons, the road is closed to cars in October. Barely enough room for two cars, the road has no barrier on the passenger side up the mountain. The car comes close enough to the edge of the road to feel the sensation, when looking down, to see where you'd drop if driving off the road.

"Wow! That's not how I want to die, free falling from a mountain, as if I was someone chasing James Bond and lost."

One of the best lessons learned when taking the high speed driving course was watching Bob Bondurant load all 14 of us in a huge van and beat our fastest time against our Mustang GT's. Watching him driving that top heavy van loaded with the weight of 15 people, including him as the driver, faster by driving it smoother while balanced was an amazing, jaw dropping sight to see. Unbelievably, he beat the best times of our Mustang GT's around the course. I wouldn't want him chasing me.

I can only imagine the time he'd have if he were driving a Mustang GT alone. I can only imagine how much faster he was when racing in his prime. By the way, all police are required to take high speed driving course too, so for those felons who think they can outrun a cop car, especially one with a helicopter in pursuit, they should rethink their decision to flee. Perhaps it's better that they should take public transportation or run away on foot than trying to outrun a police car.

A time when the economy was booming, I was working, and had money to spend, I ordered my Mustang GT new with a 5 speed manual transmission. Now they come standard with six speed transmission. It took me 8 weeks to get the new car and I was content waiting because I could pick the color and the options that I wanted. Too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter for my poor naked legs, especially when wearing a short skirt, I ordered the car with cloth seats instead of leather. Besides, I didn't want to slide around the seat when taking a tight turn or making a fast corner.

With the only colors available on dealers' lots being white, black, silver, red, and blue, all the good, attention grabbing colors, the whole purpose of driving a sleek, loud, Mustang GT, yellow, orange, green, better shades of blues, and candy apple red are special order colors. The special order colors are new colors for that year and that are available for a year or two. If you want your car to be different from all the other cars of the same model and make, special order the car so that you can get a color not available on a dealer's lot. Trust me, it's worth waiting the 8 weeks for your ordered car to be built to your exact specifications.

Moreover, customers can order those options that they prefer and that are not usually available on a car that are already ordered by the dealer or that was outfitted by the manufacturer and that sits on dealers' lots for months. If you read the stickers of the dealers' lot cars, not much diversity in choices, but for the difference in colors, the cars are much the same. Cookie cutter cars, there's nothing special about any of them, not even the color and certainly not the options.

Conversely, Mini Cooper advertises on its website that there are more than 10 million variations of their car when outfitted with select options. Someone who goes through all the expense and trouble of buying a new car really doesn't want to own the same car that everyone else owns. Yet, apparently figuring that it must be a good car because their neighbor bought one, routinely that often happens with someone buying the same car as their neighbor.

Unable to trust them to tell the truth, the car salesman or saleswoman will misinform by saying that it's cheaper to buy a car off the lot than it is to special order a car. It's not. The truth is that it cost more to buy a car that you really don't want and that has been sitting on a dealer's lot while flat spotting the tires than it does to special order a car and wait the required time for the manufacturer to build the car to your exact specifications.

As soon as the dealer accepts a new car on its lot, the finance fee clock that they must pay the manufacturer starts ticking. With the car sitting there for days, weeks, or months while waiting to be sold, for them to maintain their profit margin, they mark up vehicles with those finance fees paid to the manufacturer and pass those costs of doing business on to you. The longer the car sits unsold, the more finance fees the car is saddle with for it to sell at a profit. By special ordering the car, as if a consignment buy between you and the manufacturer with the dealer acting as a go between, you avoid most dealer finance fees which, depending on the car, could be several hundred dollars to a couple of thousand.

Rather than buying the car off the lot, some manufacturers, BMW, Porsche, Audi, and Volkswagen have factory special offers where, bypassing the dealer but still ordering the car from the dealer, the customer can order their dream car directly from the factory. Much like the deal that Chevy has with the Corvette, the customer can travel to Bowling Green, Kentucky to watch the car being made, pay to have a photographic album made of the car being assembled, and accept delivery of the car right there at the Corvette Museum.

"Wow!"

Where the dealer will allow a few hundred dollars off of your expensive, new BMW, generally 2%, when buying from the dealership, buying the car directly from the factory in Germany discounts the car by thousands, typically 7 to 9% depending on the brand and model. Moreover, while you're there visiting Germany to watch your car being made, after it's finished, you can drive your new car through the Bavarian Alps before having the factory ship it home for you.

A very good deal, especially when including buying a new car in your travel plans, the program pays for your roundtrip airfare, a two night hotel stay, and includes shipping your car to the United States. Moreover, there are more color choices and option selections available when ordering the car directly from the factory than when buying the car from a dealer's lot. Ferrari and Lamborghini offer similar programs too. Unfortunately, being that I'm still unemployed, homeless, and living in the spare bedroom of a kind Mennonite woman, I don't have the budget to afford a German car or any car, new or used, for that matter. If anyone wants to buy me a car or help with my car fund, in exchange for me writing them a story or a novel, feel free to contact me.

Anyway, back to the Mustang. The first things I did with my Mustang was to remove and sell the tires that came with the car and buy better tires online. Buying tires online is always cheaper than buying them at a local tire dealership. Moreover, buying tires online allows the customer to not only read the sidewall information but also compare one brand of tire to several others. I always bought AA/A summer performance V rated tires for my Mustang. Double A for traction and A for temperature and V means for speeds up to 149mph.

Having been schooled by my brothers on how to read a tire sidewalk in addition to being taught how to do other things that had nothing to do with cars, I'm embarrassed to add, at least I'm grateful for the tire knowledge. Too many people don't bother or even know how to read the information that appears on their sidewall. There's even a three digit number code for the mileage expected from the tire. Depending how you drive and care for your tires, three hundred means you can expect approximately 30,000 miles of use, four hundred, 40,000 miles, five hundred, 50,000 miles, and six hundred, 60,000 miles of use.

In the way that I don't like automatic transmissions, I don't much like all season tires. A compromise, they're numb and have little road feel to them. They don't do anything well and are inferior to summer tires in the good weather and snow tires in the bad weather. Unless buying the very best all season tires, such as the ones that Michelin offers for big bucks, they don't handle well nor stop the car as quickly as a summer or winter tire.

Because the rubber compounds are softer on a summer tire and harder on an all season tire, a trade off that's worth it to some and not to others, summer tires don't last as long as all season tires do. A decent set of summer tires will last around 20,000 to 30,000 miles so long burnouts and spirited driving are limited. A good set of all season tires will last 40-60,000 miles.

I ran my summer tires from early spring to late fall before switching to four snow tires. Having to take the car in to change the tires from summer tires and aluminum rims to snow tires with steel wheels is an inconvenience but is well worth the time and expense when driving a performance car such as a Mustang GT. Granted the Mustang is no Maserati or Aston Martin but it's still fun to drive for those on a budget.

When driving my car with four snow tires and traction control, I never got stuck in the snow. Moreover, just by putting a couple of cinderblocks on my backseat floor and leaving a tire in my trunk, I passed other drivers on snow covered highways that had four wheel drive and all wheel drive but who didn't bother to take the time and expense to fit their cars with snow tires. They'd be idling their cars in second gear at twenty miles an hour and I'd be passing them in fourth gear at forty miles an hour.

Aside from installing a four panel Wink racing mirror that allowed me to cut someone off within inches and better tires, the other thing I had done to my car was to have a speed shop install a Recaro driver's seat. Wow! The difference going from a stock Mustang seat to a Recaro seat is much like sitting on a Herman Miller Aeron chair after sitting on a stool. Making me feel that I was driving an exotic sports car instead of a mere Mustang GT, the Recaro seat hugs my body and kept me planted. Moreover, I could more feel what the car was doing through my panty clad ass.

Even though a Recaro seat is expensive, around $1,500 installed then and about $2,000 today for just one seat, more padded, a Recaro seat is safer. Unlike regular car seats in a crash, especially when someone hits your car from behind, the seat is designed not to break at a 35mph impact and launch the driver and passenger, when two Recaro seats are installed, out the back window. Feeling as if I was in the cocoon while strapped in a space shuttle capsule, Recaro seats, imported from Germany, are the same seats used in Porsche, other high end sports cars, race cars, and now offered in Mustang GT's as an option.

Buying the Recaro seat option from the Ford factory when ordering your new Mustang GT is the best way to buy the best car seat in the world for a discount price. Ford charges around $1,500 for the Recaro seat option that includes other goodies. The same option would cost you more than double when trying to replicate it yourself in the aftermarket. The Recaro seat option can even be ordered in the V6 Mustang but in cloth instead of leather.

Unfortunately, just as too many people still smoke, drink, eat too much, and don't exercise, too many people still don't wear their seatbelts. Too many people think that if they wear their seatbelt, they'll be trapped in the car and will burn to death in case of an accident. That's baloney. Drivers are more likely to die by not wearing their seatbelts.

Too many people don't even take the time to lock their car doors. Did you know that if your car door is locked, it will not pop open in a crash. It's a good thing for your car door not to fly open on its own in a crash, especially if you're not wearing your seatbelt. Too many people have the misconception that if they lock their doors and wear their seatbelts, they'll be trapped and will die in a car accident. That's not true. Many people have died in survivable accidents not from crashing their cars but by being ejected from their cars for not locking their doors and for not wearing their seatbelts. Depending upon the severity of the crash, of course, the door can still be unlocked and forced opened after the crash.

Much like what happened with Chrysler years ago with the rear doors of their mini-vans suddenly flying open and their precious cargo of children bouncing out and dying on the highway behind them, if that door opens in an accident after you've locked it, you can sue the manufacturer? A built-in safety feature, those doors are designed not to pop open in a crash once locked. Trust me, if your door locks fail, if your car door pops open after you've locked it, and you are killed in an accident, I'll sue on your behalf. After covering my exhaustive expenses, of course, I promise to give you the best, um a wonderful, um a good enough funeral. I promise to buy you a grave plot and a befitting headstone. Actually, I'll probably have you cremated with all, um most, um a token portion of the money received from the lawsuit.

Just transportation to too many people, wanting to get good fuel economy even over safety, their only criteria in buying a car, too many people buy boring and unsafe cars. Those who are not driving enthusiasts and/or car buffs, don't understand the rest of us buying our hot cars that burn fuel at twice the rate of their small, unsafe, and boring little cars. I'd rather drive a Mustang GT any day than to drive any Honda, Toyota, Kia, or Hyundai. 

The world is filled with Toyota Camrys, Honda Accords, sport utility vehicles, and pickup trucks. Why is that every time I see a gigantic vehicle, a vehicle big enough to sit 8 people and all of their luggage, I see only one person, the driver, in the vehicle? Why is it that every time I see the biggest sport utility vehicle, pickup, van, or Hummer, I see the smallest man or the tiniest woman driving it? Are they compensating for their small status by buying something so large?

When I had my Mustang, so long as I drove it at 53 mph, 1,500 rpm's, a rare and nerve racking occurrence, I received 29 mph, not bad for a car with a 300 horsepower V8 engine. Even though the speed limit range on the highway was 45 mph to 65 mph, driving a Mustang GT at 53 mph on the highway while everyone else was flying by me and up on my bumper at 80 mph and faster, even a Toyota Prius, was not the smartest or safest thing to do. Routinely, big trucks would come right up on my bumper and flash me their lights, even though I was in the far right lane. Where else was I to go? Pass me already, just get off my ass.

"Asshole!"

Being the dumb blonde that I am, what I thought they were giving me the number one sign or the thumbs up because I had a Mustang GT in a color they've never seen before, it took me a while to realize that they were giving me the finger. Steering clear of the too expensive and too heavy Cobras and GT 500's, the new Mustang GT's get even better gas mileage than they ever did before. If ever I could afford to buy a new Mustang, over $40,000 for the GT now, the Mustang comes standard with the more fuel efficient and more powerful six cylinder engines than they were before.

Not that I'd ever be caught dead driving a six cylinder engine, unless it was a Porsche, I wouldn't have to drive at fifty-five if my car received better gas mileage, but at what price? There's no fun driving a boring car slow or fast than there is driving a Mustang GT at any speed. The new Mustang GT's come standard with over 400 horsepower. Only, with their increased weight and different gear ratios there's only a mere, one second difference in zero to sixty times between the new ones and the older Mustang GT's. 




My Passion for Mustang GTs Ch. 04



Fodder for a different kind of story, still being the car buff that I am and although I no longer own a car, driving a six cylinder engine, especially driving a four cylinder engine to me is much like kissing your sister. Yet, then again, just as there are millions of people who drive six cylinder, four cylinder, and Toyota Priuses with 76 horsepower engines, there are lots of people who kiss and/or who sexually fantasize about kissing their sisters. However, with beggars not being choosers, I'd appreciate it if someone was to buy me a car with whatever engine. I really wouldn't care which brand, model, and color it is, so long as I never had to wait for another bus in the rain, the cold, and the snow again. This is the part where you feel bad for me, bad enough to take out your checkbook and buy me a car.

THE END