1962 Lancer Wagon, Lancersaurus!

Whichever way your politics go -- whether your preferred talking head is Glenn Beck or Rachel Maddow -- one of the main themes is "consider the source". Allpar's a terrific site, and has been for years, but it's like Wikipedia in that everybody's contributions are welcome and none is fact-checked unless some other contributor (reader) writes in and says "Hey, there's an error on such-and-such a page!", at which point that comment becomes another piece of un-fact-checked material on the site. How do I know? Because I've been contributing to Allpar for many years, and there's still a shload of incorrect material on there that I wrote back when I knew less. And because the running conversation I've kept up with the site owner for a lot of years has given me a pretty good picture of how the site works. I don't mean to slam the owner at all; he's making great work of an enormous job. But he's only one man, and he has a family and, y'know, a life. So Allpar's excellent for entertainment and as a first step to a lot of different kinds of information, but it is not a reliable source if what you're trying to do is make or end an argument. For that you need primary sources…like the books (carefully researched and fact-checked) written by the actual high-up engineer who was, y'know, calling a lot of the shots on the project in question.

Pete H tells a lot of terrific stories. They vary substantially depending on the day he tells them. That's not a slam on him; the human memory isn't anywhere near as objective or permanent as we like to wish it were, and none of us is getting any younger. But the recollection of the guy whose job was to keep his eyes focused on the piston rings just doesn't stack up to the documented accounts of the engineers overseeing the whole project.

You really do owe it to yourself to read those two publications I mentioned. Not because of this silly argument, but because they're awesome books with lots of interesting facts and photos.