The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

(Pictured: The 1000HP Hennessy Viper. More on this one in a later post. Hennessy is the porn king of American cars and reportedly a real prick. E-mail him.)

This will be an on-going follow-up post to my "Nature Porn" comments a few months back. In my my previous post, I covered the world's most obscene SUV for the money—the Hennessy Grand Cherokee SRT-8.

I have been struck by lightning.

BMW now apparently wants the Popemobile biz (proposal depicted above). As a Mercedes (exclusive builders of Vatican limos for an eternity) owner, I pray for an intercession.

As no self-respecting Swabian would be seen in a high-end Manure Wagen, neither should His Most Holy Benedict.

You know what they say--if pictures could sing.

Well this is the last of my photo batch from that National Musee' D'Automotive in France. I have been saving her picture because she is the car that spoke to me more than any other.

I think that is because this Benz seems like a female sibiling of the SSK that dominated so many race tracks in the 1930s. I never realized that brute had a twin--much less a sister.

Don't you wish?

Bonding. Its something that women tend to fret about with men, as in "go and do your male bonding thing."

While I am sure men like me are essentially Pavlovian and conditioned to do what women say, it gets more complicated when I think about cars. I don't need to bond with my buddies, but I do need to bond with my cars. This could be the reason I have had trouble bonding with my Benz.