A Reintroduction?

A long time ago...between 1953 and 1957....Porsche decided to make this oddball character of a car called the 550.  It was a two-seater and built originally with a 110 horse-power engine (you would think Porsche would have put a bigger engine on it but this delivered 7800 rpm).  It was an awful small car by the 1950s standards.  Today, it'd just be a pumped-up MX-5 Mazda on steroids 

Today....without alot of talking....Porsche admits in public that they are discussing the reintroduction of the car.  They won't say much else.

The curious thing is the style and price.  Currently...the cheapest car that Porsche produces is the $71k Boxster.  They aren't exactly bringing in tons of cash like they were in the 1970s or 1980s.  They are owned by Volkswagen now and have been looking for a chance to pull themselves out of the pit.

My guess is that the 550 will be this "lesser" vehicle that we are currently used to with the name.....and revert back to the smaller 110 Hp engine.  If they were smart enough to build this in the Alabama plant and limit it to just five options....and settle the price around $25k, they just might get a huge boost on sales.

For those wondering why the 550 came to an abrupt end....it was the car that James Dean died in.  It was used for one thing in the late 1950s....racing.  You spent a ton of money in that time period for a small car that barely had 110 horsepower, but had the rpm to back up every ounce of power in the car.

The Age Deal

I rarely watch entertainment interviews.  But this one caught my eye.  Here is one of my favorite character actors....Doug Hutchinson, who played in Lost, and played the hopeless deputy in The Green Mile (Percy Whetmore).

Doug, who is 51 years old....got married recently....to some sixteen year old gal (Courtney Stodden).  Courtney is some aspiring country and western singer.

Doug came up and says that he really didn't know she was that young and he tries hard to say that he thought she was eighteen.  Courtney apparently convinced her parents that this marriage to Doug was ok, and they signed off on her marrying up with him.  All things considered.....it'd be better to have a son-in-law like Doug than some dimwit loser kid who just talked about going to Hollywood (Doug has been there).

I'm sitting there and watching this interview.  First, even I would have felt that she was under 18.  But the curious thing.....I just kinda focused on this gal Courtney the whole time while Doug talked.  She was on meds or some drug the whole time.  She was acting like some doped-up person.

A long lasting marriage?  No.....I would speculate that Courtney will hang around Doug for at least three years.  Doug will introduce her to a couple of Hollywood friends and she'll get this one-time boost on her country-and-western singing talent.  My guess is that she will mostly fail, but become very popular with a number of guys.  Doug will figure this out by 2015, and they will be divorced.  I think Courtney will burn out by age 25 and be in some drug rehab unit at least five times by that point.

This all brings me around to the normal standard of marrying age.  In Bama, you can still get married at sixteen, if the parents consent.  In Mississippi, with consent....at age 15.  Georgia (the country, not the state) allows marriage down to fourteen.

American history started in the late 1700s with the standard of around eighteen....then for a long period in the 1800s....went to twenty as the norm.  At some point around the early 1900s....in the south....the standard age started to slip back down to 16 and in Mississippi for a while....it was around 13 years old (with parental consent).

In my first assignment in the Air Force....we had this guy in the barracks who went back home for two weeks and ended up marrying his high school girl friend.  He comes back and it's quickly assessed that his gal was barely sixteen years old.  She actually was barely five foot tall and I doubted that she weighed more than a hundred pounds.  She looked to me like she was thirteen years old.  It may have have lasted as a marriage, but it just invites stares.

In this case?  A fifty-one year old guy?  It might be the best year or two of his life....before she wises up and dumps you.  She'll realize that cleaning the house is an issue.  She'll realize that her cooking skills are zero and has to rely on you (the guy) to cook supper.  She'll realize that adult life has expectations.  And she'll realize that when you say "lights out" at 9:30PM....it's because you are really tired from work and don't want to party all night.  The funny thing....it's always the 50-year old guy marrying the young gal.  You hardly ever have the 50-year old gal marrying the young guy.