Welcome to The Torque Retort

This was all my wife’s idea. I love my wife.

By trade, I am a technical writer. This is one of the most profitable trades a writer can enter, as opposed to teaching or journalism. I support one of the most crucial IT projects in the federal government, in fact. But often what technical writing doesn’t permit is creativity. My job is as exciting as a plain rice cake with a lukewarm tap water chaser, served by Bob Newhart in a café in Kansas.

I grew up loving cars. At age 11, I had subscriptions to Car and Driver,Automobile, and Road & Track. I had horsepower figures memorized like Shakespeare monologues. I knew what a limited slip differential was when I entered the sixth grade. For this, I blame my father, who grew up loving cars as well. I’ve married into a family with a nearly 80-year-old drag racing uncle and two Mustang restoration projects. Our blood type is 10w-40.

That segues perfectly back to my wife. She loves cars, too, more than most pink, purple and sparkle-covered girls. Together, we’re the proud parents of an amazing 20-month-old boy. If you’re a parent, you’ll understand this prevents me from working on the novel I started almost seven years ago. My wife sensed my malaise stemming from a lack of creative writing in my life and figured blogging would satisfy my craving while saving time for shoving apple sauce into our son’s mouth and scrubbing off said apple sauce in the bathtub (off my son and me). It was obvious about what I would write. I spend a ridiculous amount of time on Cars.com, trying to decide what our next car purchase will be in a few years.

So, here’s what I plan for this blog. I’m going to write about cars I know. I’m going to test drive cars whenever I can. I’m going to write detailed reviews — and include video of those reviews, hopefully. Being a new dad and a full-time commuter (I am in my car sometimes four hours a day), I’m going to concentrate on cars that get your blood pumping and can hold a stroller in the trunk. I’m going to post as often as I can.

I’m going to take suggestions from you and all my readers about what I can include and what I should nix. My next post will be about the cars of my past. Then I’ll talk about the vehicles in my life now. In the meantime, I’m going to get the word out via Twitter and Facebook and through this site.

Thanks so much for reading. Come back soon.