Speed...

... speed is essential. Speed can save a life from a crossroad, it can offer you a floating sensation or give you a feeling of total freedom. Speed can remind you of your very own existence and the fact that you haven't been replaced by a polite and/or whiny robot.

We all love it. Do you guys remember the "century of speed"? It was actually just a pretext for inventing supercharged V8s or sublime V12s in order to counter the attack of hillbillies. You know, the people who are no longer confined on their farms and have invaded our roads with their rotten diesels.

Speed is more illegal today than "soft" drugs. You're hunted more than any other criminal for the simple reason you want to do what is natural to do. You want to go fast. To feel how the air rarifies around you, how the road becomes tighter and everything begins to look like a slow-motion replay. To become one with your (obviously) expensive and delicate car, which becomes so alive when the rpm reaches 4-5000 rpm (or whatever) and the limit (whose limit?) of 200 km/h (124 mph).

Life at 250 km/h (155 mph) is beautiful and careless. At 300 km/h (186 mph) you're already thinking about the hidden meanings of words, at the life of the bug who just splattered all over your windshield and at the last poem you read...

There are cameras stalking us at every corner, cops are close to disguising themselves in snowmen in order to catch another speeder, laws upon laws are given yearly to lower the maximum legal speed, numerous articles with "speed kills" headlines are written and more speed limiters are planted everywhere. This infernal system is fighting so that we, who are passionate about cars, should drive like snails, with 30 km/h (18 mph), in an orderly manner...

The irony of it all is that it isn't their speed limiters, their speeding tickets or the stupid "educational" films the ones which are threatening our passion. Sadly, the economy crisis, the Middle East crisis, the oil crisis, the crisis in the brains of the people who play the stock exchange, the car industry crisis... all these crises have ruined the pleasure of going fast.

And speed tends to disappear. It tends to turn into a memory, a barbarism, a primitive matter from the dawn of history. New cars will work on a drop of gasoline, a cigarette butt and some oil leftovers from McDonald's, all this powering a three-cylinder "engine" which will tend to transform over time into a stupid electric mutant.

Enjoy it! Enjoy speed, real engines, the sound and the wind while you can. Enjoy life! And if you don't own a powerful car, buy one while you still can. While there's still a Bugatti, a Pagani, a Porsche, an Aston Martin, Bentley, Lamborghini or a Ferrari.

Old or new, these are cars with soul, cars meant for speed and which are slowly disappearing, one at a time... on the altar of "civilization", of pollution reduction and of people's inability to take care of the fundamental values, of history, of... SPEED!