When Silver Hits $500 an Ounce

[beauanderos]

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mkm45eke ... ri-599-gto

Well, one can dream... can't they?

[Hawkeye]

That is awesome. I hear Italy is having some trouble with their economy. I wonder if they would be interested in trading one of those for a small hoard of copper pennies. I might even throw in a few Roosevelt dimes.

[beauanderos]

Yeah... Barry's wife almost got him one for his birthday, but then thought "Oh, he'd probably prefer coins."

[Lemon Thrower]

when silver hits $500, things will be so bad the only car you will be driving will be that red barchetta at your uncle's country place that no one knows about.

[Oakair]

:drool:

Id love a car that has more than 100hp and which isn't made of aluminum foil...but alas, its consigned to the realm of dreams until that one lucky lottery ticket is blown in on the ocean breeze...

[beauanderos]

when silver hits $500, things will be so bad the only car you will be driving will be that red barchetta at your uncle's country place that no one knows about.

Thanks, LT... I didn't know this:

Red Barchetta" is a song by rock band Rush from their album Moving Pictures.

[edit] SynopsisThe song describes a future in which many classes of vehicles have been prohibited by "the Motor Law". The narrator's uncle has kept one of these illegal vehicles (the titular red barchetta sportscar) in pristine condition for some "fifty-odd years" and keeps it hidden at his secret country home (previously a farm before the enactment of the aforementioned Motor Law). During one of his weekly drives, the narrator encounters an "alloy air car" that begins to chase him along the roads. A second such vehicle soon joins the pursuit, which continues until the narrator drives his Barchetta across a one-lane bridge that is too narrow for the air cars. The song ends with the narrator returning safely to his uncle's farm.

[edit] BackgroundThe song was inspired by the futuristic short story "A Nice Morning Drive", by Richard Foster and published in the November 1973 issue of Road and Track magazine. The story describes a similar future in which increasingly stringent safety regulations have forced cars to evolve into massive Modern Safety Vehicles (MSVs), capable of withstanding a 50-mile-per-hour impact without injury to the driver. Consequently, drivers of MSVs have become less safety-conscious and more aggressive, and "bouncing" (intentionally ramming) the older, smaller cars is a common sport among some.

Rush lyricist Neil Peart made several attempts to contact Foster while working on the album, but Road and Track did not have an up-to-date address, and Rush were forced to settle for a brief "Inspired by" note in the lyric sheet mentioning the story. In July 2007, Foster and Peart finally made contact with one another; Foster later posted an online account of their journey by motorcycle through the backwoods of West Virginia between stops on Rush's Snakes and Arrows tour. Neil Peart also described the Barchetta like the guitar in the song "2112".[clarification needed]

Barchetta, literally "small boat" in Italian, is the diminutive form of barca ("boat" or "craft"). In the automotive industry, the term is used for a 2-seat car without any kind of roof. It is normally pronounced Italian pronunciation: [barˈketta].

The song has also inspired Grant Brough's novel by the same name.

The theme of the song's story is similar to the 1981 movie The Last Chase, starring Lee Majors and Burgess Meredith.