Mickey Kaus has had the gall to insult my car. E-mailer Dan was kind enough to alert

me to this affrontery.

Down near the bottom of this endless and windy article, in which Kaus praises both a Mazda and a Pontiac (can you imagine?), he

says this:

“I’d always thought it was impossible to design an unattractive car

with a Coke-bottle shape, but there is now a wide selection of lame

Coke-bottle cars on the market from erstwhile design leaders. There’s

Giugiaro’s Daewoo Leganza, and Pininfarina’s Maserati Quattroporte

(which people pretend is beautiful even though it looks like an old

Datsun 610).”

A lame Coke bottle car? Pretend it’s beautiful?? A DATSUN!!??

I’ll not have it, sir. Name your field of battle, your weapons, your

seconds. As young Amsterdam says to Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New

York, “Challenge.”