Shiver Me Skid Plates: On the X-Trail of Pirate Jamaica, Part II

Continued from Part 1 

A short walk past an old Red Stripe
sign proclaiming it to be “Where the Buccaneers Drank their Beer,” brought me into the city that cheered Morgan on his return from Portobelo. You needn't be Rockefeller to see that Port Royal is a far cry from a prim Williamsburg restoration or anything like that. Rather, the Pirate Pompeii greets the sunrise as a quiet fishing village in which uniformed schoolgirls await their bus in the dawn's crisp air, and --provided you stay long enough past day-oh for it to open -- the Red Stripe flows pier-side at a shabby watering hole called the Fisherman's Cabin. For me, it was enough to pull a chair up to this still-shuttered establishment and watch a rusted freighter sail the harbor in a scene as tropical as any showing palm-shaded natives with pots on their heads.

Behold and Wonder: The 2012 Audi A7 3.0 TFSI quattro Auto Tiptronic Sedan

Is it cultural differentiation, or the car-makers' take on genetic manipulation? Maybe it’s going hybrid as applied to auto bodies -- or nothing more than novelty for its own sake. Regardless of what's behind it, taking its cue from the International Kongo Kruiser Motor Gypsy (or whatever that is) above, the DNA of traditional car models has undergone a freakish shuffling of late.

Good Goth: The 2012 Audi A7

Thus the hatch-backed and richly named 2012 Audi A7 3.0 TFSI quattro Auto Tiptronic Sedan joins with crossovers, roadster pickups, sport wagons, other four-door coupes and the rest of the shape-shifting vehicles to have emerged from Dr. Frankenstein’s Unconventional Car Windmill.

Awaiting the 2012s

Shiver Me Skid Plates: On the X-Trail of Pirate Jamaica, Part I

Within the archipelago that runs from Cuba's promontory to the Venezuela coast, Jamaica loomed over the Spanish Main like a watchful hawk. This wasn't lost on maritime England, which, after seizing the island from Spain in 1655, used its predatory perch to fall upon that country's gold-laden galleons as they sailed Caribbean sea lanes for Cadiz.

To relieve Spain of its New World gold, the British commissioned pirates* -- the rag-tag nomads and swarthy misfits who had long preyed on Isabella's ships. It was in the Jamaican city of Port Royal where such bandits as Blackbeard and the doubly fearsome Francis L'Ollonais were masters of the "Brethren of the Coast." After his sacking of Spain's Venezuelan stronghold of Portobelo in 1668, they and all Jamaica would be governed by the pirate-king-turned-privateer, Sir Henry Morgan.  

The Lincoln Inaugural

I remember Lincolns going back to Ike. Rakish '57s with their towering cathedrals of taillight housing; ‘58s that resembled Mercury Turnpike Cruisers as designed by original gorillas; the near-perfect ‘62s – one of which bore its own tragic presidential association; ‘70s Town Cars that handled with the finesse of war wagons fording the Pawmunkey; and the 1956 Continental Mark II that remains among the most beautiful cars ever built, and the font of iconic Lincoln styling cues


These and other Lincolns have coursed the mystic chords of memory to end in the car that inaugurates this blog -- the 2011 Lincoln MKS. 

Toward the Untoward

Untoward automotive stylings must await the arrival of test cars.