We've had a flood of tip emails that Jeremy Clarkson's been seen on a Vespa, so you know he's been up to something. That something is a hilarious invective against motorbiking, with a short bit about the Vespa at the very end. The verdict: you will be killed. The main message is that riding a motorbike as a financial decision is dubious at best, as a bike and all its required equipment will run you more than a new VW Golf; oh, and you'll be killed. If you still want to try and cheat death, your cost of operation will be extremely low, as bikes are more fuel efficient than said Golf, and the first time you turn left, you'll fall off and dash your brains out, rendering yourself dead, which will make biking even more inexpensive for you. It's safe to say that the esteemed Mr. Clarkson prefers automobiles.
Those of you considering a motorcycle for its undeniable visceral thrills, or even its fuel savings, should consider another option which could add a bit more practicality to your new two-wheeler: the sidecar. Sure, you'll lose out on some performance -- both in a straight line and in the twisty bits -- but you'll easily make that up when the coolness factor is counted in. What, you don't think sidecars are cool? How wrong you are, and oobject has fifteen bits of proof for you to consider. From fully enclosed luxury to rocket-shaped sidecars, there are plenty of options to choose from. How about one modeled after a fighter plane? Covered. A land-speed record sidecar? Check.
Even though those novelty sidecars are pretty awesome pieces, the good ol' plain-jane sidecar steals the show as far as we're concerned. Whether hung off the side of a older BMW airhead or a retro Stella scooter, three-wheeled travel just doesn't get much cooler than with the rounded-front and high-windshield of the classic motorcycle sidecar.
Poor Maxwell Smart. In the original series, Agent 86 started off pretty cool with a Sunbeam Tiger before the relative demotion to a Karmann Ghia convertible. This summer's retread of the Don Adams vehicle has Steve Carell fighting KAOS with an appropriately crime-fighterly Vespa LX150. With fuel prices pushing or past $4/gallon in a lot of places, things are tight at CONTROL, and the Vespa gets better mileage than pretty much any car. If you want to see what it's like to roll like Maxwell Smart, pay a visit to a Vespa dealer, they're offering free Subway gift cards in exchange for a test drive or product demonstration (hear that, Neff? Free lunch!). A Vespa did feature in the original series, so giving a role to the scooter in the new version isn't without precedent, though an Eos might have been more historically correct.
Ford revealed today that its CEO Alan Mullaly was compensated with a package worth $21.7 million last year. His base pay was $2 million and he received incentive bonuses totaling $7 million. The rest of his money pile comes from stock options and the like. All told, Ford's top five highest paid execs accounted for some $60 million of the Blue Oval's total bill in 2007. Mulally actually made $28.2 million in 2006, but $11 million of that was what it cost Ford to buy out his contract with Boeing.
$60 million is a lot of money to pay five people in one year, which strikes at the heart of an age old question in modern American business: how much should executives get paid? If they're doing their job and the company is profitable, no one seems to quibble over a million here and a million there, but instead credits the CEO for his or her expert leadership. When a company is losing money like Ford, however, those big bucks suddenly seem like funds that could have been used to develop new products, pay lower-tiered workers better or pad the company's cash reserves just in case.
Bill Ford Jr., Ford's last CEO who has turned down a salary until Ford turns a profit, hired Mulally to do what he couldn't: make Ford profitable again. But hiring a guy like Mulally costs money, which is what we're seeing here. It is too early to determine if Mulally is earning his wage, so the impatient see his compensation package as completely unwarranted. We're willing to wait a few years, and if Ford is back in the black by then, we know the cost of doing business with Mulally was worth it for the guys and gals from Dearborn.
Rumors of Michael Schumacher racing on two wheels in the MotoGP series have been bouncing around like a Ferrari-red rubber ball. First came the initial speculation, coupled with denials from both MotoGP and Ducati, the team for whom the retired F1 champ was rumored to ride. The rumor-mill was set a-churnin' again, however, when Schumacher's longtime manager Willi Weber responded that "anything is possible".
The runaway speculation, however, has been emphatically put to rest as Schumacher himself has outright denied the possibility. "It is an absolute lie. At the most, I can race on a scooter." Well there you have it – case closed. Schumacher will compete next season in the International Vespa Championship. Or maybe he meant on a Ferrari Segway? (Yes, we are joking.)
