More than a few years ago, Peter Egan wrote a piece in Road & Track about his 50th birthday party. Some friends had driven over in a newish Mazda and it wouldn't start on departure. Surrounded by a group of former and current SCCA racers and guys that have rebuilt Jaguars, Porsche and Lotus cars . . . they couldn't figure out why it wouldn't start or even where the distributor and coil were. A flatbed was called out and the car went to a local shop, but wasn't a Mazda specialist. He couldn't figure it out either, so it was hauled to the dealership where the computer told them it was a burnt out $1000 distributor package and within a couple days, the car was off an running.

The lament was that here was a group of fellas, with about 100 years of combined experience with cars, who knew how to file down contact points, set the timing on all sorts of cars who were about as useful as an ashtray on a Harley when it came to modern machinery. The moral of the story was that when computers and computerization fails, it's the equivalent of being trapped in a blizzard, you might as well take advantage of the break in time that it give you.