So I’m hitting up Google Images for Maybach photos like This One to dream over…

…because a photo is about as close as I’ll ever get to sitting behind the wheel of a Maybach in this life.  This is why my TV gets so little use anymore, other then to play the occasional DVD.  At the end of my day instead of lounging on the sofa flipping channels, I sit at the computer and wander around the web for a bit.  Maybe it was because of all the news stories I saw yesterday about how the skyrocketing cost of gasoline is changing our lives, and I am afraid I’m living to see the end of the open road, but for some reason I started googling images of my fantasy car. 

I wonder if I’m going to live to see then end of that breed too…the supercars…the high powered sportscars and the sumptuous luxury sedans that only the fabulously rich can afford.  For me they’re not so much symbols of wealth, as icons of human engineering and craftsmanship.  This is the best of the best of automotive engineering and craft.  This is what you do when you set out to build the absolute best and no compromise anywhere.  Every car maker should make one of these, as a statement of how serious they are about automobiles.  It’s been the disillusionment of my lifetime, that none of the American car makers can be bothered to build one of these.  A guy who ran the Cadillac division of GM once tried to…but the boardroom shot him down.  Here in America, a luxury car is a status symbol first, and an automobile second…if that.  Mechanical quality?  Engineering?  Hon…if the rubes staring at you as you drive past can’t see it, it doesn’t matter.

The Rolls used to be my fantasy car.  In my teen years I had a brochure photo of the dashboard of a Silver Shadow tacked up to my bedroom wall.  But the new Rolls is ugly.  The Bentley is far and away the more beautiful car now in my opinion.  But I just love the new Maybach.  It’s not only sumptuous but state of the art technically.  I just love it.  Not the tank of a limousine 62, but the 57, which is for a driver not a chauffeur.  Why anyone would buy a fantasy car and hand it over to a chauffeur is beyond me.  Unless the rich can’t even be bothered to get their driver’s licenses. 

So my eyes are roving all over the photo above…lingering on the leather upholstery and the burl walnut wood on the center console and the wheel, while my fingers are wondering what it would feel like to wrap themselves around it…and the geek in me eyeballs the video display…and I notice that the radio is set on a…huh…a shortwave band?  Well in Europe the shortwave bands were used by broadcasters much more so then here in America.  But I’ve got some old high school pals who would have had the same laugh I did seeing that…

Well listen you haven’t heard nothing yet!  I’ve got right here in this car for your transatlantic driving pleasure, this fully alacrafted sea mattress shortwave radio, in this non-returnable non-disposable sinkline carrying case!

Hey…Let’s check out the climate control…