Get the motor running...

THE American auto industry as we knew it – even just 12 short months ago – is officially dead and as nobody yet knows what will emerge from the ashes of automotive behemoths such as General Motors and Chrysler (Ford are still clinging to the wreckage of gross corporate mismanagement), PJ O’Rourke’s paean to this once-great and all powerful manufacturing phenomenon is timely.

As the bastard Republican son of gonzo journalism – Hunter S Thompson in a Brooks Brothers’ suit and a pair of Kenneth Cole loafers – O’Rourke has always been a pain in the side of the dweeby, moaning Minnies of the left, which is to say any American who ever visited Europe, lauded Greenpeace or voted for Obama.

But O’Rourke has been lucky enough to live long enough to have seen the great days of the American car industry – days which saw America building “the best engines in the world – compact, powerful, gas-station-mechanic-proof V8s that were overbored, understressed and deliver terrifying horsepower at comforting rpms.”