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Every morning I remind myself that I am the luckiest guy in the world, and that mantra continues to serve me well. Recently, the powers at be must have really heard me, because Mercedes-Benz invited me out to Las Vegas to experience my very first Formula 1 race. How did I get from Los Angeles to Vegas, you ask? Mercedes loaned me an astronomically powerful 2024 Mercedes-AMG GT63 S E Performance 4-Door Coupe for just the occasion, and then put me up in a 33rd-floor room when I arrived for when I wasn’t rubbing shoulders with the elite. Not a bad start to a race weekend.

Formula 1 has always been cool in my eyes, but I have commitment issues, and of the very few things that I follow closely in this world, none of them are sports. Over recent years more Americans have woken up, smelled the glorious race fuel and discovered an appreciation for the sport, so I figured it’s about time for me to give it a fair shot, too. From my limited knowledge of the sport, I expected the experience to be quite opulent, but I never expected what was to come from my weekend in Vegas at the hands of Mercedes.

Full disclosure: Mercedes-Benz loaned me an AMG GT63 S E Performance Four Door Coupe to drive out to Vegas, put me up in a fancy hotel, fed me lots of delicious food, and facilitated a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. I got to sit passenger for a hot lap of the circuit, I got to meet the driver who ended up winning the race, I got to tour the pits and witness some of the race from inside Mercedes’ garage. It was a brilliant weekend, for which I am beyond grateful.

Visiting fabulous Las Vegas is always an assault on the senses, be it the blinding lights on the strip, the taste of food from world-renowned restaurants, or the arresting scent of Virginia Slim Menthols as you walk through the crowded casino floor to reach your hotel room. When I pulled up to the Wynn valet in the AMG GT, I was shocked by the hordes of race fans decked out in their gaudiest outfits topped off with a baseball cap emblazoned with their favorite race team’s logo. There were numerous model F1 cars inside the lobby, and signs welcoming fans as far as the eye could see. Consider me intimidated.

I rushed up to my room to freshen up before what was described to me as a casual dinner, and bopped back down to meet the chauffeur to get whisked away. We went to a decadent steakhouse, where I was surprised to be guided past all the tables and to a private room that was entirely padded in black tufted vinyl. The door opened and I suddenly realized that our arrival was interrupting a very intimate question-and-answer session with the man who turned out to be the race winner later that weekend, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 driver George Russell. I slinked to my seat as quickly and quietly as a boisterous 6-foot-8 human could, and enjoyed a decadent dinner and some exciting conversation before heading out to the track to catch qualifying.

Rocking up to the race track was so special. Again, Vegas is always a spectacle, but knowing that examples of the pinnacle of automotive engineering would be blasting by the usual sights was intoxicating. Or maybe that was the champagne. Either way, I was buzzing to watch some racing. After exploring the paddock a bit we headed up to the Paddock Club for a bird’s eye view of the start/finish line, where we caught the tail end of qualifying. Witnessing the speed with which these machines scream around the circuit was straight up exhilarating, not to mention the other sounds and smells of a race track. The unsuspecting young fellow I had interrupted at dinner had qualified in pole position, and the Mercedes section at the Paddock Club erupted with applause. It was time for a quiet drink and then off to bed to prepare for race day.

The Las Vegas Grand Prix is one of a handful of F1 races that take place at night, which allows the city to mask its cigarette butt–lined streets in a shroud of darkness that also serves to highlight the strip’s world famous light displays. I was grateful that we got to sleep in on race day since I had been running myself ragged for days leading up to my trip. We learned at brunch that we were going to get a chance to ride along for a hot lap of the race circuit with a pro driver. I love any track time I can get, so by the time we departed the hotel around 4 p.m., I was an eager fella to say the least.

I thought qualifying day was exciting, but as soon as we approached the circuit on race day I knew that this was a different animal. All prep work was complete and the entire 3.8-mile circuit was bolstered by thick crowds and enticing activities, but I was there for a freakin’ hot lap, so we headed right down to the track where we snagged helmets and awaited our pre-hot lap briefing. I stood next to the Mercedes pit with my mouth agape, slowly rotating to look around and not caring that I looked like a day-old slice of pizza being microwaved directly on the turntable. The stands were mostly empty and the track was surprisingly quiet, but I knew that would all change in just a few hours. We were briefed and I followed the herd of VIPs that headed out to the starting grid to meet our respective cars, brushing shoulders with the likes of Mr. Beast and various other folks I vaguely recognize from the interwebs. Since we were hosted by Mercedes, we stood next to a bright red AMG GT63 S, this time the real coupe with just two doors. I propped myself up against a barrier and proceeded to re-initiate jaw-dropped, day-old pizza in a microwave mode until my turn finally came.

Most teams had their own road cars to take on hot laps — Mercedes with the AMG GTs, McLaren had Arturas, Aston brought Vantages and DBXs, and there were some Ford Mustangs out there too. I strapped on my helmet, hopped into the AMG GT, and tightened my seatbelt. We shot away from the grid and there was no introductory period, it was just flat out as soon as we left the grid. My driver was giggling the entire time, and so was I as we ripped through the surprisingly tight turns of the course. On the back straight we blew past an Artura, reaching 176 mph as things got a bit squirrely before we stomped on the brakes and prepped for the next turn. I was trying to take everything in, but all I could focus on was the speedometer and the rapidly decreasing distance between our car and the concrete barriers whizzing past just a few inches away. As we rounded the last corner and pulled back into the pits, I unbuckled my seatbelt and miraculously my wobbly knees didn’t buckle underneath me as I rose out of the car in a fit of nervous and ecstatic laughter. That was nuts.

We then wandered the pits where I again brushed shoulders with Hollywood elites and watched each driver strut out to immense applause. We rushed upstairs to the Paddock Club and watched from our lovely heated perch where we were served cocktails and gorgeous lobster dinners as things on the ground started getting serious.

The energy as the teams wheeled their respective race rigs out to the grid is really difficult to put into words without sounding cliché. The stands that were nearly vacant earlier were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and the energy was electrifying. The teams all swarmed the cars as they desperately worked to keep the tires warm and sticky in preparation for the chilly desert tarmac. More famous people in eccentric spangly getups and their respective entourages cruised between teams and newscasters on the grid as we watched from above. The televisions on the starting arch began a countdown, and the crowd cleared the grid. Soon it was just the cars revving, the smell of their exhaust, and a shockingly quiet crowd eagerly awaiting the start.

Unbeknownst to me, an F1 virgin, the drivers complete a formation lap immediately prior to race start, so at first I was surprised when the drivers left in a staggered formation, but realized what was going on as soon as they started swerving to keep their tires warm. The drivers returned to the grid, doing the automotive equivalent of champing at the bit by doing one final burnout before aligning in their spots and revving their engines. The line of lights on the starting arch gradually began illuminating red from left to right, until they were all glowing red. The lights shut off, and the cars rocketed away from the start. My first F1 race had begun, and the final car to leave the line was the bright red medical car that happened to be a Mercedes-AMG GT63 S 4-Door Coupe. My press car is quicker than the official F1 medical car? I thought to myself. That’s dope.

The first lap was underway, and I nearly gave myself a whiplash-concussion combo by trying to follow each car as they rounded the final turn to start lap two. I sure learned a lesson quick: Don’t try to follow the cars with your eyes, just focus on a spot the cars will pass by. Our boy George Russell had clinched pole position in qualifying, and he immediately opened up a staggering lead on the pack, upwards of 10 seconds. Needless to say the Mercedes section was abuzz with pride and excitement. In an impressive turn of events, the other Mercedes driver, some guy named Lewis Hamilton, was fast enough to climb from his starting position in 10th all the way up to second behind his teammate in a short amount of time. Having experienced the hot lap of the track just hours earlier really allowed me to feel connected to the race, and made me better understand the strain that these drivers undergo over the 50 all-out laps of the circuit. (That was a joke, by the way. I know who Lewis Hamilton is and yes, I was fangirling.)

The racing was brilliant. Our drivers performed exceptionally well, setting numerous fastest laps throughout the course of the race. What really boggled my mind was watching the pit stops from above. I could hardly process how rapidly and efficiently the teams managed to swap out all four tires and get the drivers back out onto the track.

We also got to go down and sit in the garage during the race. An announcer explained everything going on in front of us, and we got to walk through the garage as the race was happening, which was simultaneously enthralling and terrifying. As a giant human who can often take on the proverbial role of a bull in a china shop, I was worried that I’d manage to muck something up that would cause the team to lose. I was enthralled by how efficiently everything ran in the garage. Of course, logic would dictate that a team as well-funded as the Mercedes F1 team is comprised of the best of the best, but watching it all play out in person was still pretty spectacular. Mercifully I only bumped my head on one thing, and it didn’t ruin the race at all. Take that, anxiety!

We headed back up to the Paddock Club just in time to catch our two Mercedes drivers finishing in the top two spots while drinking some cocktails. (We drank the cocktails, not the drivers.) These aren’t my words, but several people in the Mercedes paddock told me I was a good luck charm, and I will humbly accept that title. The lovely folks who were serving us promptly brought around trays of champagne to celebrate and toast to a race well… raced.

I felt a sense of pride as I watched both Russell and Hamilton slide between the coach doors of the Rolls-Royce Phantom that would whisk them off to the podium. Not that I actually had any part to play in the race, but I felt like a proud member of the Mercedes-Petronas F1 team after meeting everyone and rubbing shoulders with car parts in the pits. I felt particularly fortunate to see Russell, whom I had met and briefly chatted with the day prior, complete and win such a great race. The 50 laps of the Las Vegas Grand Prix were over surprisingly quick, and I’m glad there weren’t any big crashes or injuries. A huge congratulations goes out to all the teams, but especially the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team for such an impressive performance.

It was incredibly special for me to attend the Las Vegas Grand Prix in the first place, let alone under the gracious hospitality of the three-pointed star, and at a race that it earned a one-two finish in. What more could you ask for? An AMG GT63 S E Performance to drive back home? I had that too. Once more for good measure: I am the luckiest guy in the world.

اگر در سال 2025 مردم با یک مشکل مواجه شوند، این مشکل است آنها پول زیادی گرفتند. در اتاق های مختلف جمع می شود و در خیابان ها پخش می شود، اما نگران نباشید، دوستان شما در Jalopnik راه حل را دارند: 1996 آلفارومئو GTV این کوپه در حال حاضر برای فروش در اتومبیل و حراجی ارائه می شود. مطمئناً، ممکن است اکنون بتوانید آن را با قیمت نسبتاً مناسب تهیه کنید، اما نگران نباشید. به محض اینکه با خودرویی که هرگز در ایالات متحده فروخته نشده است دچار مشکل شوید، تمام آن پول اضافی قبل از اینکه متوجه شوید از بین خواهد رفت.

متنفران به تمسخر خواهند گرفت که ارزش داشتن یک کوپه دیفرانسیل جلو نسبتا غیر عملی با تنها 148 اسب بخار قدرت و 138 پوند فوت گشتاور را ندارد. بالاخره اینجا آمریکاست که چهار سیلندر فقط برای نیمی از موتور کافی است و دیفرانسیل جلو محرک اشتباه است. این افراد متنفر همچنین نمی دانند در مورد چه چیزی صحبت می کنند زیرا GTV توسط دستان ماهر Pininfarina طراحی شده است، همان خانه طراحی که مسئول برخی از زیباترین اتومبیل هایی است که تاکنون ساخته شده است.

تصور کنید بتوانید به مردم بگویید که به تازگی یک خودروی طراحی شده توسط همان شرکت پینین فارینا خریداری کرده اید که کادیلاک آلانته، هیوندای تیبورون و فراری موندیال را به ما داده است. همه آنها بسیار حسود خواهند شد. در واقع، احتمالاً اکثر مردم اصلاً نام پینین فارینا را نمی‌دانند، و احتمالاً با ظاهر شدن شما در یک کوپه اروپایی با طراحی عجیب و غریب با گیربکس که باید خودتان آن را تغییر دهید، بسیار گیج می‌شوند، اما برای این افراد اینطور نیست. موضوع «من قبلاً چنین چیزی ندیده‌ام» فقط یک راه دیگر برای گفتن است: «وای، من تحت تأثیر قرار گرفتم که شما توانستید چنین خودروی کمیاب و چشمگیر را به دست آورید، من اکنون بیشتر به شما فکر می‌کنم و بیشتر شما را پیدا می‌کنم به عنوان یک شریک عاشقانه مطلوب است.»

در مورد خود خودرو، به نظر می رسد با توجه به قدمت آن، در شرایط بسیار خوبی قرار دارد. کمتر از 80000 مایل مسافت دارد که تنها به چند هزار مایل در سال می رسد و لیست عیوب شناخته شده محدود به تراشه ها و خراش های جزئی، نشان محو شده و فرسودگی جزئی صندلی ها است. اوه، و باتری به تازگی در اوایل این ماه تعویض شده است، بنابراین احتمال زیادی وجود دارد که ماشین جدید شما حداقل در اولین باری که می خواهید به جایی بروید روشن شود. در مرحله بعد، ما در مورد یک کوپه ایتالیایی 30 ساله صحبت می کنیم، بنابراین شما در حال لذت بردن هستید.

چه کسی حتی می‌داند وقتی شروع به پرسه زدن در آنجا می‌کنید، چه اجنه‌های الکتریکی پیدا می‌کنید؟ سپس دوباره، این فقط بخشی از ماجراجویی است. در واقع، تعداد زیادی از این کوپه ها در ایالات متحده وجود ندارد، بنابراین شما به طور قانونی یک ماشین کمیاب در اینجا در ایالات متحده تهیه می کنید. و هی، شاید وقتی پول تمام شد، این فرصت را داشته باشید که یاد بگیرید چگونه خودتان آن را تعمیر کنید. اگر بتوانید قطعات را پیدا کنید، یعنی. ممکن است برخی بگویند این چیز بدی است، اما باز هم ماجراجویی! یک ماجراجویی بدون برخی چالش ها برای ارزشمند کردن آن چه خواهد بود؟ دقیقا

تصویر: ماشین و مناقصه

تصویر: ماشین و مناقصه

President James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr. died on Sunday, December 29, 2024 at his home in Plains, Georgia, at 100 years old. Carter will be remembered as a consummate humanitarian and Nobel Prize winning statesman who spent his retirement years building houses with Habitat for Humanity and all but eradicating a truly terrible parasite, the guinea worm, from the planet.

He will also be rather unfairly remembered as a weak, ineffectual leader, relegated to a single four-year stint in the White House; a rarity among modern presidents. It’s a reputation pushed by the Greed-is-Good Reaganites who immediately followed Carter’s single-term presidency. But looking back, it’s clear that Carter’s presidency included plenty of far-reaching changes that could have drastically altered the course of America — specifically, our dependency on cars and foreign oil, and our rate of toxic pollution output — if only we had stuck with his plans.

It is far beyond anyone’s ability to sum up such a man, even with a few thousand words to work with, but here’s how Carter biographer Jonathan Alter describes his subject:

With skills ranging from agronomist, land-use planner, nuclear engineer and sonar technologist to poet, painter, Sunday School teacher and master woodworker, Carter was the first president since Thomas Jefferson who could rightly be considered a Renaissance Man.

He was also the first since Jefferson under whom no blood was shed in war. And his record of honesty and decency — once seen as minimum qualifications — have loomed larger with time. At a farewell dinner just before leaving office, his vice-president, Walter F. Mondale, whose job Carter turned from punchline into a position of real responsibility, toasted the Carter Administration: “We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace.” Carter later added a fourth major accomplishment: “And we championed human rights.”

Carter served as president from 1977 to 1981, during a time when the U.S. alone consumed one-third of the entire planet’s energy production — much of that going towards fueling the large, criminally inefficient cars of the era. Carter created ground-breaking policies that attempted to reverse this trend, many of which Regan dismantled quicker than a solar panel on the White House roof. Even so, there were some deeply-felt lasting effects of his administration. Carter wrote in his autobiography:

The Congressional Quarterly reported that since 1953 Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy and I ranked in that order in obtaining approval of legislation proposed to Congress. The Miller Center reported that my record exceeded Kennedy’s.

Indeed, he got his legislative way in Congress 76.6 percent of the time, according to Politifact. He left a deep mark on this country, especially when it comes to the environment and the automotive industry. Carter was the first president to bail out an American automaker, Chrysler, with a $1.5-billion Treasury loan. He was the first to attempt to get oil companies to pay their fair share of taxes during times of record profits (and record gas-pump prices) and the first leader in the world to address global warming, and humanity’s role in it, as a reality.

Carter looked at our wasteful, energy-hungry American culture and struck a solemn — occasionally scolding — chord, imploring us to build toward a brighter future. But such a vision is not sexy, and it’s not fun. It’s certainly not part of what we think of as the go-go 1980s culture. Instead of seriously investing in innovations that would reduce our dependence on carbon-emitting oil from hostile countries, America chose to proceed in an entirely different direction, made clear when the electorate chose Ronald Regan by a landslide in the 1980 presidential election.

“Carter also envisioned electric cars by the mid-1980s, and would have used his power to push automakers in that direction, as he did on CAFE standards,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told Jalopnik. Alter believes that a second Carter term would have been much better in a lot of ways. “Starting with more compassion domestically and less saber-rattling abroad, where he would have likely completed the unfinished business of Camp David, namely some comprehensive Mideast peace deal that included an eventual Palestinian state. Carter told me this was his biggest regret about losing.”

Carter won the Nobel Peace Price in 2002, the committee citing his groundbreaking work towards peace throughout his career, both as president and as a private civilian. The Camp David Accords ended 30 years of hostility between Egypt and Israel and remain the longest-lasting peace agreement since World War II.

That’s not to say Carter was without fault. As president, Carter saved Chrysler (and the automaker paid off its debt to the American people seven years early), but the Carter administration also helped establish an emboldened corporate America where workers still regularly bear the burden of highly-paid CEOs’ mistakes. He created a new tax that would directly result in the rise of the SUV, inspiring automakers to revamp their ’70s gas-guzzler shortsightedness for the 21st century. And he led a White House that seemed chaotic and directionless when America yearned for strong leadership.

Let’s take a look at where this influential president went right — and where he went wrong — in his dealings with the American automotive industry.

Taking on Fuel Economy and Big Oil

By 1977, the concept of the modern suburb was only about 25 years old, but had overtaken the American way of life. By the 1970s, the number of cars on American roads had quadrupled in two decades, to 118 million vehicles, and the number of miles traveled by car had doubled. This was the Malaise Era of cars — a time of inefficient, poorly built, uninspired land yachts. The rise of in-car air conditioning shaved even more miles off the U.S. economy average, costing new car owners about two and a half miles per gallon.

Carter addressed this waste in his first address as president:

We have learned that “more” is not necessarily “better,” that even our great Nation has its recognized limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems. We cannot afford to do everything, nor can we afford to lack boldness as we meet the future. So, together, in a spirit of individual sacrifice for the common good, we must simply do our best.

The country was still reeling from the 1973 Gas Crisis, caused after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries placed an embargo on U.S. oil sales in response to the U.S. re-supplying Israel during the Yom Kippur War. This caused a spike in gas prices and shortages in fuel across the country. OPEC ended its embargo in May of 1974, but fuel prices remained high while oil companies profited immensely.

To prevent another painful energy crisis, Carter’s predecessor, Gerald Ford, had signed into law the first Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard. This policy would eventually be expanded by the energy bill Carter promised in his inaugural address. Passed in 1978 as the National Energy Act, the collection of eight bills created the Department of Energy, pushed renewable energy goals, raised fleet average MPG requirements, reduced oil imports by supporting the U.S. oil industry, and imposed a gas guzzler tax which would increase as CAFE standards tightened.

Carter called the previous administration’s energy crisis the “…moral equivalent of war,” and he planned to come out with both guns blazing. His new Department of Energy would be put to the test just a year after its creation when, in 1979, Carter faced the moral war of his own energy crisis.

The Iranian Revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis sent oil prices soaring from $13 per barrel in mid-1979 to $34 per barrel by mid-1980 — despite the loss in oil supply being estimated at only four to five percent. Long lines at fuel pumps were once again angering Americans. But folksy Carter was famous for facing moral struggles. The president sequestered himself at Camp David for 10 days to consider the energy problems facing America. He met with leaders in business, science and faith, and spent hours alone studying and writing.

After this period of reflection, Carter believed he had identified the problem. In what would later become known as Carter’s Malaise Speech, he cut to the heart of U.S. consumerist culture:

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. . . .

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

While certainly not wrong, saying as much is kind of a bummer. Amazingly, Carter’s incredibly low approval numbers received an 11-point bump after the speech, which was squandered a few days later when Carter fired five cabinet members. His presidency seemed scattered and chaotic heading into the 1980 presidential election.

In order to bring down gas prices, Carter would begin to deregulate domestic fuel markets even as he imposed a large tax on oil company windfalls during the nationwide gas shortages and price hikes. His policies would initially lead to an increase in domestic oil production of nearly 1 million barrels a day between 1980 and 1985, according to the Miller Center. However, the price of oil plummeted in the mid ’80s, and the tax became a significant hindrance to domestic oil production, while not raking in all that much dough for the federal government. It was repealed in 1988; politicians have been twitchy over the idea of taxing massive oil company profits ever since. President Joe Biden recently floated the same idea, which was almost universally panned as being doomed to repeat Carter’s failure.

Carter’s regulation of the auto industry wasn’t perfect, either. During his time in office, Carter expanded a tax on Japanese light-trucks in order to prop up domestic sales. Reagan would build on this policy in 1981, pressing Japanese automakers into “voluntary” export restrictions.

Further, light trucks were exempt from Carter’s strict new MPG standards, and continue to be exempt to this day. These little favors for the automakers would lead directly to the rise of deadly, dangerous and wasteful SUVs and trucks on America’s roads, setting us up for yet another energy crisis in 2022, when gas prices and inflation once again reared their ugly heads.

Carter told the Harvard Business Review he was proactive with automakers about building more fuel-efficient cars even before his own oil crisis. The heads of the Big Three were hesitant to get on board, however:

(…) I called in to my cabinet room the chief executive officers—the chairmen of the board and the presidents of every automobile manufacturer in the nation—along with the autoworkers’ union representatives. I told them we were going to pass some very strict air pollution and energy conservation laws. My hope was that they would take the initiative right then and commit themselves to producing energy-efficient automobiles that would comply with these strict standards. Their unanimous response was that it simply was not possible. I told them that automakers in Sweden and in Japan were doing it, so it was possible. But they insisted that they just couldn’t make a profit on it because their profit came from the larger automobiles. So they refused to modify their designs.

Eventually we passed a law that required them, incrementally and annually, to improve their automobiles’ efficiency and to comply with environmental standards. In the meantime, American manufacturers lost a lot of the domestic market. That was a case of the automobile industry being unwilling to look to the future. They could not see the long-run advantage, even though it might prove to be costly in the close-in years.

That delay would cost Chrysler dearly.

The 1979 Chrysler Bailout

That lack of long-term foresight Carter spoke of in his Malaise speech would send Chrysler spiraling towards something unimaginable in the post-war United States: The bankruptcy of a major American automobile manufacturer. And yet, in 1979 Chrysler faced half a billion dollars in losses.

At a time of rising gas prices and the emergence of stringent federal fuel economy standards, the American automaker was still churning out those poorly-built road yachts. No automaker built them quite as big (or as wasteful) as the Chrysler corporation. At the time, Chrysler was the third-largest automaker in the country, and the 10th-largest industrial manufacturer. By the time Carter took office, America had waded through five years of energy ups and downs, but Chrysler hadn’t changed its vehicles all that much. When the second gas crisis hit, along with the new regulations put in place by Carter’s energy policy, Chrysler fumbled.

The company had recently scooped up celebrity CEO Lee Iaoccoa, fresh off eight years of making money hand over fist for Henry Ford II. Iacoccoa was the fall guy for the Ford Pinto disaster, but had made few friends with his desire to push the company towards more fuel-efficient vehicles. As a sign of the serious situation Chrysler was in, Iacoccoa took a salary of only $1 in his first year as CEO. Iacocca then tried to move Chrysler towards smaller vehicles, but quickly realized his new employer would not be able to weather this financial storm alone.

Iacocca reached out to the feds for help. He persuaded lawmakers that Chrysler was too big to fail. Carter’s Treasury Department was on board, but in order to get enough support in Congress for a loan, the Carter administration would ask the company, and the UAW, to make deep concessions. Treasury Secretary G. William Miller proposed a $1.5 billion loan, then the Carter Administration’s Council on Wage and Price Stability testified before the Senate Banking Committee that such a loan would be consumed in three years flat, thanks to the automaker’s obligations to the UAW.

After a summer of bad press and congressional cajoling, the UAW eventually agreed to $525 million in concessions in late October 1979, along with a three-year wage freeze. Just before Christmas, Chrysler got its $1.5 billion loan in the form of the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act.

The act did more than just bail out Chrysler. While Chrysler would be subject to more government oversight while paying off the debt — including $2 billion in cost-cutting measures and a three-year plan approved by Congress to get the company back on track — the special act also relaxed the brand-new gas mileage requirements updated by the 1978 National Energy Act. That alone gave Chrysler a much-needed boost, which Iacocca used to springboard the company-saving K-cars and, eventually, the minivan, which came to define the brand in the 1980s and 1990s. This bailout would be used as a blueprint by the Obama administration in 2008 when General Motors and Chrysler found themselves in the same situation Chrysler had faced in 1979.

While Chrysler employees weren’t the ones who made the bad business decisions in the ’70s, they would bear a great burden in the plan to right the company’s course. As they accepted major concessions, union members were painted by the media as selfish and lazy, willing to kill Chrysler to get their golden retirement funds. Even with steep concessions and wage freezes in the middle of historic inflation, Chrysler laid off 57,000 of its 134,000-strong production workforce, the Washington Post reported in a retrospective on the bailout published in 1984. All told, the auto industry as a whole would lay off 239,000 workers in one month in 1980.

Still, Carter biographer Jonathan Alter says saving Chrysler was worth it. “It was a binary decision: Save Chrysler and thousands of jobs or not, and he clearly made the right call for workers, for whom he had much more respect than did Reagan,” Alter told Jalopnik

The damage to unions would last much longer than Chrysler’s debt. The automaker managed to pay off its loan seven years early — mostly to get out from under federal oversight. The U.S. made $300 million on its investment in the company. While Chrysler would thrive in the ’80s and ’90s thanks to Iacocca’s simple, fuel-efficient K-cars and the popular minivan, union membership in America dropped precipitously as Right-to-Work laws swept the nation. And as union memberships stagnate, so do wages.

Carter Was Right

The energy crisis was a key issue to voters who tossed Carter out in favor of Ronald Reagan in a legendary landslide. Having fellow democrat Ted Kennedy challenge the sitting president for his party’s nomination was just one more nail in the coffin of Carter’s re-election campaign. His shaky administration didn’t look any more solid when the president lost consciousness during a 10K run.

Reagan didn’t chide the American public for their gas-guzzling cars. He didn’t ask Americans to spend less, or look deep within themselves and question consumerist culture — Reagan promised wealth, abundance and a revitalization of the American dream (for some, anyway). Once he took office, Reagan stripped the Carter-installed solar panels off the roof of the White House and tossed them in a basement. The dismantling served as a symbol of America rejecting Carter’s old energy policies wholesale. When the solar panels were found in 2010, they still worked.

Carter’s concerns about the U.S. didn’t disappear — we just put them on the back burner for a few decades. Now we’re facing challenges similar to what Carter attempted to address with his time in office: climate change; oil companies profiteering on the back of sky-high fuel prices; the runaway popularity of giant, inefficient vehicles; and detrimental consumerism on a scale familiar to anyone who lived through the 1970s.

So what if Reagan had lost the 1980 election? According to a New York Times op-ed, we might be living in a very different world:

According to a recent report by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, if the United States had continued to conserve oil at the rate it did in the period from 1976 to 1985, it would no longer have needed Persian Gulf oil after 1985. Had we continued this wise course, we might not have had to fight the Persian Gulf war, and we would have insulated ourselves from price shocks in the international oil market.

Just before Carter left office in 1981, a member of his White House Council on Environmental Quality, Gus Speth, authored a presidential report as part of Global 2000, a process recommending action on global warming. It was the first such policy pronouncement anywhere in the world.

“Speth’s recommendations for tackling climate change in 1981 would be almost identical to the Paris Climate Accords some 34 years later. Such a report would have become part of Carter’s legislative agenda in 1980,” Alter told Jalopnik.

With Jimmy Carter’s death, America didn’t just lose an exemplary humanitarian who doubled the size of the National Parks system and signed 15 major pieces of environmental legislation, including the first toxic waste cleanup. We lost a reminder that our nation once had a head-start on solving some of the greatest problems we face today: environmental pollution, runaway oil consumption, rampant consumerism, a mental health crisis, climate change and Middle East violence. Carter envisioned a different, more responsible America, and he was rejected for it.

Carter’s most enduring legacy will be this: He tried to leave America a little better than he found it. He attempted to warn Americans about the challenges we’d face over the next five decades. Our own legacy shows we were completely unwilling to heed those warnings.

یک زن ژاپنی که هشتادمین سالگرد تولد خود را جشن می گرفت تصمیم گرفت این مناسبت را به شیوه ای منحصر به فرد جشن بگیرد. او نه تنها گواهینامه رانندگی خود را رها کرد. دستی مزدا RX-7 25 سال است که مالک آن است. با این حال نگران نباشید، این یک داستان تکان دهنده است

در یک مصاحبه ویروسی در حال حاضر یوتیوب توسط رادیو ناکازاکی، نائوکو نیشیموتو، خانه‌دار ژاپنی، گفت که او به دنبال شخصی بود که مالکیت مزدا RX-7 او را به دست بگیرد، زیرا در آستانه 80 سالگی بود که گواهینامه رانندگی خود را رها می‌کرد. پس از مصاحبه، نیشیموتو مملو از ایمیل‌ها شد و بیش از 400 مورد پیشنهاد برای برداشتن RX-7 از دستش دریافت کرد. یکی از آن ایمیل‌ها مربوط به بخش روابط عمومی مزدا بود.

معلوم شد که یک مهندس مزدا مصاحبه نیشیموتو را دیده و از تیم روابط عمومی خواسته است تا با او تماس بگیرند. نیشیموتو به یاد می آورد که ایمیلی را که برای او ارسال شده بود دید کارواچ ژاپن:

“این یک ایمیل پر از احساسات و صداقت بود، و به نظر می رسید که برای من درخشیده است.” شخص مزدا که ایمیل را ارسال کرده نیز ارتباط قوی با RX-7 داشته است.

نیشیموتو قبل از اینکه RX-7 را در دست بگیرد، تعدادی خودرو منحصر به فرد داشت. CarWatch می گوید که او گواهینامه خود را در 21 سالگی دریافت کرده است. سابقه مالکیت او عمدتاً تویوتا بود، زیرا او مالک Publicas و Coronas بود تا اینکه در سن 55 سالگی اتفاق زیبایی افتاد.

زمانی که او 55 ساله بود، کورنا کوپه او، که در آن زمان نزدیک به 10 سال رانندگی می کرد، شروع به خرابی کرد و او در فکر خرید یک دستگاه جدید بود. او به طور اتفاقی در حال تماشای انیمه Initial D با پسرش بود و در همان نگاه اول عاشق RX-7 (FD3S) شد. بلافاصله به نمایندگی مزدا در همان نزدیکی رفتم و یک ماشین جدید سفارش دادم. قیمت خرید در آن زمان حدود 3.2 میلیون ین بود.

هیچ RX-7 قدیمی هم نخریدم – من به طور خاص یک RX-7 Type RB S سفارش دادم. این یک مدل «پایه» با عملکردهای ملایم مانند صندلی‌های جیر، اسپویلر، لاستیک‌های دارای رتبه ZR و چراغ‌های مه شکن بود. . این خودرو دارای یک موتور توربوشارژ 261 اسب بخاری مزدا 13B-REW وانکل بود که به یک گیربکس پنج سرعته دستی متصل شده بود. در طول 25 سال، نیشیموتو کمی بیش از 48000 مایل را با RX-7 طی کرده است.

او می‌گوید پس از یک دهه یا بیشتر، اوضاع با خودروها بدتر می‌شود. در مورد RX-7 اینطور نیست. او از اینکه متوجه شد تولید RX-7 در حال پایان یافتن است ناراحت بود، زیرا این بدان معنی بود که اگر بخواهد نمی تواند بیرون برود و آن را با یکی دیگر جایگزین کند. در ابتدا فکر می‌کردم که اگر بعد از حدود 10 سال همه چیز بد پیش برود، می‌توانم به یک RX-7 جدید روی بیاورم، اما وقتی شنیدم که تولید به پایان رسیده است و دیگر نمی‌توانم به خودروی جدید روی بیاورم، مهم‌تر شد. به من،» او به CarWatch گفت.

این خودرو در حال حاضر در دست مزدا است، که نیشیموتو و RX-7 را در نمایندگی محلی که خودرو را خریداری و سرویس می‌کرد، مراسم تحویل گرفت. به او گل، پلاک ماشین و نقشه های طراحی RX-7 اهدا شد. رئیس و مدیر عامل مزدا، مورو ماساهیرو، رابطه نیشیموتو با RX-7 خود را به عنوان نمونه‌ای بارز توصیف کرد که خودروها چیزی بیش از چیزی هستند که ما می‌توانیم ما را حمل کنیم. او همچنین اشاره کرد که RX-7 برای او خاص بود.

این یک یادآوری تکان دهنده بود که شما یک ماشین را نه تنها به عنوان یک وسیله حمل و نقل، بلکه به عنوان یک شریک مهم در زندگی می بینید خاطرات ویژه برای من، ما این ماشین را گرامی خواهیم داشت.

RX-7 نیشیموتو در مرکز تحقیق و توسعه مزدا در یوکوهاما ذخیره می‌شود، جایی که خودروساز می‌گوید روابط عمومی آن از آن برای رویدادهای خاص استفاده خواهد کرد.