Thursday 14 April 2011

Thursday Pitch

So every week we're going to post up an idea for a piece, the plan being that this gets picked up by the New York Times. They'll be done on Thursday to give us time to get on-location for the weekend paper. See how we go. 

War Machine

I’m not sure we’ve got the profile to get a big, overseas assignment yet, but I saw something on the news the other day that the motoring magazines really need to take a look at. Hot cars in war zones.

You see any number of interesting cars on the ABC news – big old black ZIL limousines everywhere from Russia to central Africa, 50’s and 60’s Chevies bombing around South America running diesel stationary engines, those ageless white Land Cruiser pickups that will survive anything.

My eyes lit up when ABC24 showed a good 20-second shot of Libyan rebels launching a surface-to-air missile out of the back of a ute, parked up on an embankment above a roadway. Usually this occurs from one of the aforementioned Land Cruisers, but this war machine was something special.

It was a big, blue-and-white, dual-wheeled GMC longbed pickup, one of the early 90’s ones that ran an EFI 454 big block. The force of the rocket going up bounced the back of the truck off the ground and I saw a set of headers and a big sidepipe underneath. What was it doing there? Someone needs to get the story of that thing down on paper.

Dan and I can fly out on 20 minutes notice. We await your call.

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