Was David Even In Australia When He Supposedly Achieved The Impossible? Comment Of The Day

Have you ever seen something so incredible that it could have happened only because of a superhero or as the result of a computer rendering? You’ve watched the event happen (or at least read about it), but your brain can’t comprehend how in the world that happened. Maybe it was the work of some crafty camera and computer work. This is how conspiracy theories are born.

This week, David published the finale of his epic Australia adventure. He achieved what some readers thought was impossible. Hell, even I thought that there was no way he was going to convert a pile of rusty parts into something that could pass inspection. But David–along with the wonderful friends that he made along the way–pulled off something that you might see only on a scripted television show. In doing so, the team saved a piece of automotive history from going to the scrapper.

I’ve known that David pulled it off for a while, but until I read that grand finish, I had no idea how on Earth he pulled it off. I like to think that if I started off with the same parts he did, I would have either failed or given up and bought a motorcycle. Now that David has achieved this, I’m not sure there is a vehicle that he couldn’t rescue!

Clearly, not everyone is convinced. Fellow lighting site alum Mate Petrány had this to say, winning today’s COTD:

Hi David,

Clearly, this hasn’t been documented well enough. The whole process is just not as transparent as it could be, so my brain can’t verify it at all. Were you even in Australia, or is that also just a lie? That Torchinsky guy (is that his real name? Sounds fishy) is very good with computers and CGI, and I’ve been tricked before. So no dime, but I like the concept, and hope Hollywood will bite.

Crap, he got us! We thought California would look close enough. I guess we better pull Project Cactus out of the same stage NASA used to film the Moon landing. And next time we’ll use a more powerful computer, like one of those “never obsolete” eMachines 566ir towers.

On a more serious note about David’s trip, he discovered something wonderful. Sometimes, as car enthusiasts, we look at the things that we love and ask ourselves why we do what we do. It’s easy to look at the negatives and write cars off or question car enthusiasm. Why champion the car? As David and I have discovered in our travels, cars are far more than just vehicles.

In David’s journeys around the world, he’s made friends with all kinds of people that he’d normally not have much in common with. But he cut through it because they had at least one thing in common: a love for cars. Loving cars, planes, trains, and motorcycles can transcend language barriers, cultural differences, and even political differences.

In my own travels around the United States, it’s been much of the same. I’ve made more friends simply by driving and off-roading a Smart Fortwo than I have doing almost anything else. Those people have come from all walks of life and had I met them some other way perhaps we would not have been friends. But through cars, we found a common ground and grew from there.

Unfortunately, we have a long way to go. As we learned earlier this year at the King of the Hammers (and as reader LTDScott pointed out) there are still places where you’ll find shocking amounts of toxicity.

I filmed some races and then just never uploaded them because the sounds of racing engines were largely drowned out by spectators doing a political chant. I’m still not entirely sure why you’d chant like that at a random race in the desert. And around the campsites around Hammertown, people even flew some extreme flags. After traveling across the country and experiencing all kinds of car and off-roading culture, it was shocking.

So, for people like David and me, our missions are not complete. There are still places where car enthusiasm can still be improved and become a positive thing, and not something that will send people running. Have a great evening, everyone!

[Ed note: Am I posting this at 7:30 am? I am posting this at 7:30 am. – MH]