If the numbers mean anything, they tell us that vastly more life is left in the reviled internal-combustion engine than any of the blue-state lefties could imagine. First, that madman Bush wins, and now this news. How depressing.

The automobile, both a cause and an effect of this decentralization, is ideally suited for our vast landscape and our generally confused and contrary commuting patterns.

At Car and Driver, we were convinced that the automobile, as we knew and loved it, was as dead as the passenger pigeon. Ralph Nader was at full cry, ringing his tocsin of automobile doom into the brains of the public, convincing them that the lump of chrome and iron in the driveway was as lethal as a dose of Strontium 90 or a blast from a Viet Cong AK-47.

I admit to wasting my life messing around with fast cars and motorcycles.

Unlike conventional jocks, who tend to sell aluminum siding and give canned speeches to parochial-school athletic banquets in the off-season, race drivers never shuck their image when they leave the stadium. They are supposed to be zany, nomadic soldiers of fortune who are involved in wild endeavors during every waking moment.

More books, more racing and more foolishness with cars and motorcycles are in the works.

Racing is bulging at the seams with pure nutball characters, men who can drink more, screw more, fight more, laugh more, joke more, than practically any collection of people in the world.