Driving stick

I know that earlier I remarked that the next post would discuss the origin of the term "Arsenal of Democracy", but I lied.

I have been driving with an automatic transmission for about five years. I got in a wreck, but so has every teenage driver. In any case, the damage might have been catastrophic, but I lived with the consequences, and fixed the damage enough to keep that 1989 Honda Civic on the road. In fact, almost everything still works flawlessly and the engine, electrical system, and suspension are all peachy. The only thing that is threatening that old warrior is.... automatic transmission woes. It started slipping two years ago at about 100k miles, and now it's at 140k. I have always remedied the problem by changing out the transmission fluid. I did it two times and each time it fixed the transmission problem for the best part of a year, and then started to get bad again. As of this writing, I have replaced it with synthetic oil, hoping for it to last longer, before selling it to a coworker (more on this story in the next post).

Perhaps something in my driving has caused the transmission to begin gradual failure at 100k miles, but even if we accept that I'm hard on my tranny, it's still harder on the wallet in an auto than a stick. I know several people who have replaced a clutch, including a few Mexicans who would be willing to do that sort of job cheaply. However, I know of no individuals outside of professional mechanics that self-identify as sufficiently competent to do an automatic transmission rebuild, and they admit that it's impossible to figure out what the real problem is without taking out the transmission and opening it up. Aamco quoted me $435 for the internal inspection, but comforted me with the knowledge that every dollar of the inspection would go towards any repairs that I chose to have made on the vehicle. The comfort evaporated when I asked for a probable cost estimate, at which point he said that a rebuild would cost at least $1700. If I could find a buyer to pay the princely sum of $1700 for that car, then I surely wouldn't be keeping it very long.

Now, my dad has two Hondas. He bought my grandma's car when she died (a 2001 automatic Accord) which he loves and will probably keep until the wheels come off. His former car is a manual 1995 Honda Civic EX coupe, bought new by my aunt. My family tends to keep cars for a long time, recycling them between members, and the car of choice ever since the 1980s is Honda.

It is a lovely car. I suppose when it was just a family car, I never noticed how nice the paint looked. It's such a bright, eye-scorching candy apple red that it looks slightly juvenile, which suits me wonderfully. I learned through some research that the EX model had the same 1.6L VTEC engine as the Civic Si, which was good for 125 horsepower. Not too shabby in the coupe body, which only weighs about 2400 lb and has a surprisingly taut ride and precise handling. It even has the same four-wheel discs as the Si. Who knew? I love how the EX, unlike the Si, has no styling touches that identify it as a sporty model that can scream its way up to nearly 7000 rpm.

Unfortunately, my brother doesn't drive, and my sister doesn't want to learn to drive the manual (why not?). This means that this car is just a second car for my dad, not earmarked for anyone else.  So, as the most magnanimous and wonderful father that he is, he will give me this car to keep once I have mastered driving it. I do need to master it pretty well because my home in Texas is about 1300 miles away from my hometown in Ohio. My departure was affected in a rental vehicle slightly before Christmas; I must return as soon as possible to get back to my job, and I have not arranged a return rental. This Civic EX is how my dog, belongings, and I will get back.

For those who are interested in learning manual, I think my dad's lesson plan was the best possible. You need to start out in a parking lot where you can't hit anything. Just practice the takeoff. You need to push in the clutch all the way (it feels like your foot will go through the firewall until you get used to it) to start the car. To get the car in motion, select first gear with the clutch in, and then begin to let the clutch out until you start to feel it "catch"- this is when it starts to transmit power from the engine to the wheels. Unless you give it some gas, it will drop the idle speed so precipitiously that the car stalls, and you judder forward in embarrassment. At the moment that the clutch starts to engage, slow down on the clutch: release it VERY slowly, while pressing down on the accelerator to get the revs up a little bit. After a few hours, you should be able to do this very smoothly. Doing this reliably and smoothly is absolutely crucial before doing anything else with your manual car.

Shifting up is the easy part. You can play with the gear stick in neutral with the clutch in, and find out how it "feels" to get first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and reverse. Even if you make a stupid mistake going from second to third, and end up in neutral (as I once did), all you'll get is a free-revving engine to remind you that you're an idiot, and just push the clutch in again and slot it in correctly. You'll slow down a bit, but it's not the end of the world.

The next step in my dad's instruction was to let me drive us home. It was a few miles in a medium amount of traffic over fairly low-speed roads. In such cases you will be working the gearbox a lot. I got us home safely but slowly. Since then we haven't driven together once. He gave me one day and since then I have had free access to the keys. He knows I can drive a car already, so it's my responsibility to figure out the new tranny. I've kept at it for the past three days.

Shifting down is a little trickier. I am not yet to the stage where I'm worried about the best performance driving method, so I haven't tried "heel and toe" downshifting. Downshifting simply isn't something you do all that often on the road. But when you do need to downshift at speed (not just when slowing down for a low-speed corner) you need to understand that the lower gear will require a higher engine speed than the higher gear did. That means there's a big leap in engine speed and to get a smooth change, you should first "match revs" by giving some more throttle as you downshift. Your clutch will appreciate this, I'm told.

It all sounds like a lot of work. Sometimes it feels like a lot of work. But it's work that needs to be done. If you do it yourself, then you really are in control of everything that the car does. Every single time I parked and finished a drive, I realized that I hadn't done anything but drive. There's time enough to adjust the radio or the ventilation, but that's about it. No room for texting, chatting on the phone, or eating while driving. As I pull away from every light, I'm looking for ways to improve my driving habits to optimize economy and smoothness. It isn't distracting to have a manual. Quite the contrary. If you have to row your own gears, it makes you very involved in the driving process, which inevitably causes you to be a better driver.

The internet tells me that new cars available in the United States for the 2012 model year, only 6% of them will have manual transmission offered. It seems that for at least a decade, manuals have been present in less than 10% of all cars sold. Even as late as the mid 80s, more than half of males buying new cars chose manual shift. Women have always preferred automatic on the basis of its "ease of use" and "simplicity", to use language that would be instantly comforting to an old-school sexist. Perhaps there is something to be said for men keeping the "stick shift" something of a gentlemen's club, but that implies that they must maintain the monopoly by teaching their sons. Evidence suggests that just 11% of young men drive manual transmission cars in 2011, as compared to more than 30% in 1998. This is what I would call laziness, and I call on women to help fill the ranks of manual-supporters. I'm happy to report that the internet also says that manual transmission knowledge has actually become more common among women over the past 20 years, though they still overwhelmingly prefer automatic.

May I suggest that Americans make an effort to re-acquire this skill? If you once knew how to drive stick and can't anymore, buy or borrow a car that has it, and teach yourself again. If you never learn how to drive manual, you don't really know how to drive a car. I have heard this kind of talk from car blogs and websites for years, but I always dismissed it. Now I understand what they're on about. Your children deserve to have this skill. The greatest risk is that there won't be enough manual cars for the future generations to learn to drive in. We need to buy manuals and tell manufacturers to keep making them. If they stop making them, the skill will become extinct, and it will be our faults for not buying a manual in the first place.

Independently-developed early automatic transmissions

Today I want to talk about a bona fide American original: the automatic transmission in passenger automobiles. Those who are disdainful of American automakers, please check your prejudice at the door and you might learn something.

Hydramatic was genesis. It was the product of laborious and costly research by Oldsmobile and Cadillac divisions of General Motors throughout the 1930s. Amazingly, they succeeded in getting a four-speed automatic operational by 1940, with installations in over 200,000 vehicles before production halted for World War II. It was not as smooth as a chauffeur quietly changing gear himself, but for wealthy Americans who had never quite mastered the manual transmission of the day (just recently synchronized in all forward gears), it was a massive improvement in driving comfort.  Buick Division actually found Hydramatic insufficiently smooth and set out to develop their own independent design.

All civilian automotive pursuits were laid aside to meet production demands for the war, with civilian auto production re-commencing before the end of 1945. My next posting will discuss why Detroit, Michigan was singly referred to as the "Arsenal of Democracy". Thus, after the war, the world's other automakers were no closer to this milestone than before, leaving GM with a monopoly.

Buick's engineering bore fruit and in 1948, they released the Dynaflow. It was extremely smooth at the expense of poor fuel economy and diminished power. By contrast, the Hydramatic's Achilles heel was its harshness. Buick fanboys decried "Hydra-Jerk", while the Dynaflow was known as "Dynaslush" to the other GM divisions.

Unbelievably, the next independently-invented automatic was from a small independent automaker, Packard. Although Packard doubtless had the engineering heritage to create an automatic, it was astonishing that they managed to implement and test it to production capacity in such a short time, with such a limited supply of money. The Ultramatic came out in 1949, and was soon sold to other automakers as well, including Nash. But this chapter would be closed in 1957, with the bankruptcy of the Packard Motor Car Company.

GM lashed out again in 1950 with vastly expanded availability in the form of Powerglide, which was derived from the principles of both Dynaflow and Hydramatic. Thus at a time when both Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation were unable to develop an automatic for even their top models, a buyer of a GM car could get an automatic in every price range: Powerglide in Chevrolet or Pontiac, a Hydramatic in Oldsmobile or Cadillac (or higher-end Pontiac), or a Dynaflow in Buick. At the time, GM was the world's largest industrial corporation and it was an acceptable indulgence to have so much redundant engineering if it preserved the popularity of the individual marques. Since Dynaflow and Powerglide are long since abandoned, and all GM automatics since the 1970s have been outgrowths of the Hydramatic technology, what was once three has consolidated into one.

It can be said that Ford never really did catch up. Their Ford-O-Matic later in 1950 was not an independent creation, but a co-design with BorgWarner, who already had completed some work on an automatic transmission. The BorgWarner design for Ford was a milestone, and was carried on to many other automakers, including Studebaker, Volvo, Jaguar, and AMC. The widespread proliferation of the BorgWarner design is easy to understand, since that company doesn't make cars and has no reason to keep its design proprietary. The more widespread this design, the more money they make.

In the meantime, Chrysler proceeded in 1953 with the development of PowerFlite (later to be TorqueFlite), the last of the early automatic transmissions. These were more efficient than Buick's Dynaflow and smoother than Oldsmobile's Hydramatic. It was also a very robust design with the fewest initial teething problems of all the original designs. 1960s reviewers commonly described the TorqueFlite as the "best automatic in the world".

Elsewhere in the world, demand for automatic shifting was less than in the United States, and so the scale of investment required to create an independent design simply wasn't present. Particularly in Europe, the demand for automatics among the lower classes was nonexistent, and where rich buyers in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, or Italy wanted an automatic, the choice was always something American. Ferrari, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, and Jaguar simply bought American transmissions and made them fit. Mercedes-Benz built its own through parts company Steyr-Daimler-Puch starting in 1962, but if the label is peeled back, it's still another BorgWarner design.

Honda, with probably the strongest heritage of independent engineering of all the Japanese companies, independently developed its Hondamatic as a response to the multitude of patents held by the American companies, particularly BorgWarner and GM. This magnificent little transmission is the only in-house automatic by any Japanese manufacturer, and should stand as evidence of the stubborn independent spirit of Soichiro Honda, the founder and guiding spirit of the company until his death in 1991.

Ironically, the current world's largest automaker, Toyota, does not make its own automatics. The production is carried out by an outside supplier called Aisin. Aisin has been around since 1949, but did not develop an automatic until a joint venture with BorgWarner, lasting between 1969 and 1987, was affected. Aisin also currently equips Volvos, Nissans, Daihatsus, Mazdas, Jeeps, Fiats, and Porsches. All can be said to be equipped with an evolved descendant of the original (ahem, American) BorgWarner design.

(Images of badges are taken from Ate Up With Motor and are the property of their owners. I love this blog and hope that they don't mind me using these images.)

Are we getting smarter?

(This is a slightly edited repost of a blog post that I made all the way back in 2007)

The commonly-upheld Flynn effect simply states that the IQ of people go up over time (presumably with increasing technology and modernization). It was empirically observed over many circumstances for decades, though it has seemingly tapered off to nothing in the developed Western world. Though controversial, it is probably true that IQ does increase. 

But is IQ a meaningful measure of intelligence?

I don't think so at all. In fact, I think that a system where you extrapolate backwards to find that a genius like Aristotle has an IQ of about -1000, which is less than a slab of blue cheese, and brilliant men like Newton would have been stupider than house pets, then there's probably a problem with the system. I think that a system which seeks to give each generation a proactive pat-on-the-back for being smarter than their parents, is dangerous and hostile to human development. Instead, we eradicate the old knowledge to make room for the new. Pushing the envelope while ignoring the fundaments means that little is effectively learned.

I sometimes visualize intelligence as a fixed amount of railroad tracks. We can uproot the tracks and move them to the front of the line to keep going in the right direction, but we always have about the same quantity of track.

I would like to challenge the intelligence of my readers by sharing with them an 8th grade test from a town in Kansas in 1895. Does this sound like it should be hard? I bet all college graduates think they would be able to blow it away.


If the Flynn effect is correct, the average person of the time was slightly mentally retarded by today's standards... and this is Kansas, so you'd probably think they were even more lacking in intellectual sophistication. So have at it. Do you think you know your three Rs: reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic?




8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS -1895

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.

2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.

3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph.

4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of "lie," "play,"' and "run."

5. Define case; Illustrate each case.

6. What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.

7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

*****************************************

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.

2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?

3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?

4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?

5. Find the cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.

6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.

7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per foot?

8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.

9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?

10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

********************************************

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided..

2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.

3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.

4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.

5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.

6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.

7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?

8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865..

*******************************************

Orthography (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication

2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?

3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals

4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u.'

5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e.' Name two exceptions under each rule.

6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.

7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.

8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.

9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.

10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

*********************************************

Geography (Time, one hour)

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?

2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?

3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?

4. Describe the mountains of North America.

5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.

6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.

7. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.

8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?

9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.

10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

Now, I didn't expect that anyone in their right mind actually sat down and tried to do it, but did you notice the perhaps excessive difficulty of the questions? I honestly can't think of a single person in memory who would have known the answers to those questions in eighth grade. Even now, many years later, I think it would take a veritable renaissance man to do well on this exam. You may claim that some of the questions are merely period knowledge, and we should not know of them except as a historical curiosity... but most of them, particularly the understanding of business arithmetic and orthography, are still very helpful today. 


If you weren't going to college, weren't leaving town, and your parents were illiterate, isn't it kind of important that you at least know how to write a bank check? What I love about the old days in this regard is that teachers taught their students to fully grasp enough of the world that they could survive by 8th grade. If we put an 8th grader from the year 2011 on the streets, it's a sure bet they would need to acquire more skills to survive.

Let's not even mention that five-hour length... longer than the SAT, and a helluva lot longer than the average college final. The kids would have crimson asses from sitting on those hickory benches by the time they were done. Of course, they might have been crimson anyway, because kids were hit with a proper piece of wood at the discretion of their schoolteachers.

Most of these children who took this test would not have been thinking of eventually going to college. But if they could do well with this broad basis of knowledge, they'd stand a pretty damn good chance today! And they got by pretty well without college degrees back then. In a current world where college is an expected result of high school, public education up to grade 12 is often seen as a stepping stone without accountability... and colleges, run as they are by unrealistic academics who make up for their unrealism by creating an insular college bubble world, are even more destabilizing to a person's sense of reality.

No, ladies and gentlemen, I do not think we are growing any smarter. I don't think that we should lambast our ancestors for being primitive, and I think we should properly respect the elders among us now. There is a Flynn effect only because we make IQ whatever it needs to be to accomplish it. If we are on a peak of any sort, it is a peak very unmomentous indeed, because every single generation behind us has experienced the same peak in their own time.

(Unfortunately, I do not have a source for the 8th grade exam from Salina, KS. But I promise that it was actually cited at one point.)

Texas Instruments TI-89 series

As I am not speaking as an expert in calculator hardware, my impression of this splendid calculator might seem simplistic to some readers. For this I apologize. When I bought this calculator I was amazed that it could solve quadratic algebraic equations. Since then I have learned more about its features on an almost continuous basis.

In 1998 a nice Compaq Presario had Windows 98, a 266-MHz Pentium II, and cost $1300. The cheapest computers were about $1000. The TI-89, just released that year, had a listed price of $159.99, although even at the time it is likely that some sold for $150. The TI-89 was the most advanced calculator available at the time. It used a Motorola 68000 microprocessor. It had 2D or 3D graphing capability, and very powerful mathematical functions. I'm not that big a fan of the TI-89 "classic" because it just feels flimsy. Had nice features, but my brother's 89 didn't last for more than three years.

In 2004, a midrange Dell cost my brother about $800. The TI-89 was $150. Depending on where you went, the newly released TI-89 Titanium, still with the same operating system but more preloaded functions and a definite feeling of higher quality, was available at no extra cost. I purchased my TI-89 Titanium in 2004 at an Office Max for $150. It has spent 7 years in my backpack coming with me to high school and then to college. Spent a total of weeks on a hot dashboard, and endured more painful falls than Gerald Ford. But every single button works, and I've only had to change the batteries 3 times. It runs like a top. After two years I felt like it had become a bit special, and I etched the name "Tracy" on it. Yes, I did give my calculator a name. As a pathetic nerd, I wished that there was a sexy woman in my life who was as loyal and capable as this calculator. And I don't actually know anyone named Tracy, but for some reason I liked the name.

In 2007, Texas Instruments introduced the TI-Nspire CAS, which is somewhat similar but has a more PC-like interface, which depresses calculator purists like me. I have never seen one on the shelf, but then again these might just be invisible to me. In my mind, the interface of the TI-89 Titanium reached a peak of blazing-fast reliability and sheer mathematical power that it's not yet been equaled. By 2007 there were computers available for $500 or less, but the TI-89 Titanium was still $150. Unless the Nspire sells for really ridiculous money, I can't see why they even did it. It's not any better or more powerful. It's kind of remarkable when you have a product in a normally high-tech market that stays competitive for such a comically long time.

It seems that the paying customers simply cannot find anything better. Why would you pay $120 for a comparatively archaic TI-84? There's no better value to be found, even as the price holds steady. As of 2011, the regular price of TI-89 Titanium calculators on the shelf nationwide, still is holding up at about $150. It's so unchanging that I expect to have fully grown children by the time the price is dropped and I expect to die before they stop selling it. And I expect to be long dead by the time my TI-89 Titanium finally breaks.

If you had a good condition, well-cared-for 2004 Titanium, it's a sure bet you'd get $100 for it from someone.  I am doubtful that an $800 Dell from 2004 would fetch that same $100 on craigslist. Taken from an investment perspective, TI-89s are about the slowest-depreciating piece of technology I can imagine.

Night driving

You take ginger steps across the kitchen, knowing exactly how to avoid the creak in the middle of the floor. A flick of your keys, actuation of tumblers. The jingly strand of keys is dampened by the quick application of pressure with your fingertips. You pay unnecessary attention to discreetness, feeling that it is somehow respectful to the sanctity of the night. 

But it is not some kind of sneaking mission. This is not a midnight romance, or a payoff to your bookie, or a premeditated desertion of your family, or a food run to satisfy your munchies. If you were caught by someone, it would not elicit a divorce, nor would it even cause you to be screamed at. The most likely outcome would be a sheepish admission that you were going outside to be alone and think, with no good explanation for why driving helps that process. You might feel ridiculed, but only minutely so. Life would go on.

When the front door is closed, you release the pressure in your hand, and the keys to fall limply on the keyring you are holding. It's exactly eleven steps to get to your car in the driveway. The right key falls to hand, and you slot it into the door. The windows are misted over. It's a chilly night. You have "driving gloves" that you might don, or you might chide yourself for such a silly and pretentious purchase.

Your car could be anything. When in the "pure thought" mindset, the driving experience is subsidiary, and just as effective to your goals with a $900 Metro as it is for a $90,000 Porsche.

You slide the car into gear, and get going. No goal or destination is in mind. 

Night driving is not a habit for you, but today the circumstances were right. You had enough energy after work. Your wife or girlfriend or kids or dogs fell asleep already. You have gas in the tank and you know that near your house at 3 am on a Tuesday, the roads will not be clogged with commuters or tourists.

And yet the roads are the same in the nighttime as they were in the day. All of the lanes are there. They now seem entirely deserted, and made just for you. You can drive idly along with no enthusiasm in your driving, in order to clear your thoughts. Or you can drive vigorously in the comfort of knowing that you will almost surely not endanger the lives of other motorists. All of a sudden, you can think freely and totally by yourself, or you can engage in enjoyable driving without the negative consequences of it. If one gives pause to think about what is happening, each instance of night driving feels special and somehow surreal. The world is totally different when you no longer need to account for the presence of other human beings, but you can enjoy the product of other humans' labor in the form of paved roads and gas stations.

Driving at night is still a unique experience for most areas of the United States. Unfortunately, heavily urbanized areas will have so much activity in them that the roads may never become deserted, even at the dead of night. I plan to take advantage of it while I still can. I have an occasional obsession with night driving.

Wagons and moon rockets

Today I'm going to pick on Buick in order to ask a question.

The 1996 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon rode a version of the GM B-body fundamentally unaltered from the Carter administration. It achieved a combined fuel economy of 18 mpg with a 260-hp 5.7L V8 engine, acceleration from 0-60 in 7.8 seconds, 5000-lb towing capacity, and was extremely well-equipped at a 1996 price of $27,575. It's pretty overweight, at 4563 lb. This car was derided as "antiquated" and "obsolete" with accordingly lackluster sales, and was dropped, along with all full-size RWD GM cars, in 1996.

On a personal side note, these cars are somewhat special to me, particularly in their anachronistic simulated woodgrain side paneling. Antediluvian though the appearance may be, the noise made by their Corvette-derived LT1 engine still stirs the heart of any red-blooded American. The horn does not honk quite so much as sound a low shout of arrogant aggression. Some people may have bought the Roadmaster because they were not yet ready for a truck and they felt that V8, body-on-frame, and rear-wheel drive was the layout that God intended. But I imagine  that the criteria for purchasing it were mostly practical for most buyers, just as they would be today. What family hauler does Buick currently offer in the modern age?

A 2011 Buick Enclave is better equipped with many electronic doodads that our grandpas couldn't have conceived when designing the Roadmaster. Thanks to "modern" technology such as front-wheel drive and a 288-hp 3.6L V6, this car weighs more at 4780 lb, achieves 0-60 in a breathtaking 7.7 seconds and returns an astonishing 19 mpg. Unfortunately, some towing capacity was lost in the transition to FWD, so this vehicle will be rated at merely 4500-lb. This car has won multiple awards from respected automotive reviewers and sells considerably more rapidly than the earlier Roadmaster. When the cost of the Roadmaster is adjusted to 2011 dollars, they are approximately equal in value for the same specifications: $37,000.

How is it that this pudgy crossover SUV can be lauded as modern when a car that came 15 years earlier was chided for being old-fashioned, though both cars achieved almost identical results in fuel economy, comfort, performance, towing capacity, passenger space, and price? Does the half-century-old storied Roadmaster nameplate and collectible-classic styling tend to work against the big wagon? Does the Enclave's SUV profile, with all the glitzy, cheesy style of a Walmart auto accessory aisle, do it favors that I cannot perceive?

If the 1960s United States could, on its own volition, visit the Moon with manned landings, on multiple occasions, why does the task of merely repeating that goal seem impossible, even if earnest support from the Russian and European space agencies were present?

Maybe the stigmatization of wagons was so complete that the big wagons passed unmourned in 1996. I am unable to comment with direct experience because I was not suitably advanced in age in 1996 to make note of car buyers' habits. But surely $4 gas snapped enough people out of the SUV craze that some major automakers put pen to paper on the next round of wagons, picking up where design stagnated in 1996?

No. For the same reason that in planning a return to the moon in 2020, we didn't recycle the Saturn V rocket. A rocket that never lost a payload or crew, which turned out to be the most reliable link in the whole Apollo program, is far too old-fashioned and unreliable to be used in the 21st century. The Constellation Program would have gotten us back to the Moon with a clean-sheet design, but it was scrapped in 2010 by the Obama administration.

If you are considering buying a truck or SUV, I do not fault you for your decision at all. You have demands for moving people and cargo that need to be fulfilled, and you can only buy what is for sale. Likewise, I do not fault NASA for failing to return to the Moon or create a manned Mars mission, either. They are making do with what is available. We have not given them a blank check since approximately 1966. But perhaps we could innocently ask our dealer why automakers make vehicles today that are no more advanced than 15 years ago, with more weight and bulkier styling.