"Good tires, but certainly not great tires"
 

It's bizarre, I still remember vividly getting to the back of R&T and seeing that for the first time. I was 16 or so.

It was the best, funniest, wittiest photo caption I'd ever read, and it remains IMO the undisputed champ to this day.

I'm sure I'm not the only one here that remembers it.

Anyways, for fellow fans of that picture and caption, here's some interesting info from the guy who took the picture.

Road & Track "P.S." Boxer Photo - FerrariChat.com

"Good tires, but certainly not great tires"
 

I remember that photo. It is neat to know the photographer gets some credit.

I remember looking at the photo in R&T and thinking how cool that guy was--that he was calmly standing there lighting a smoke and not losing it over his damaged Ferrari.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/573750-good-tires-bob-mused-casually-lighting-cigarette-but-certainly-not-great-tire.html

Here is a thread with the pic.

What a great advert.

Great caption.

I always thought that caption was a little over-rated, cute but nothing to write home about. Apparently some others feel differently. I look at the photo and feel sorry for anyone who has to drive a sports car in weather like that...

Well not everyone gets nearly perfect weather!

Oh wait a second, never mind

I always thought that caption was funny while delivering a lesson on perspective. Apparently some others feel differently. I look at the photo a feel good for anyone that chooses to drives a sports car in any weather they choose, not keeping it pristine for the next owner...

The reason it has always been funny for me is filtered through my having shared an apartment with a guy just after college who looked almost exactly like that. He was a blob and a slob, smoked, rarely cracked a smile, drove with his left arm out the window most of the time, and if he hit the gas a little too hard from a stop, his arm flopped backward as if it were attached to a corpse.

During the time I knew him, if he were in the situation Bob found himself, he would certainly...

1. try to act all cool and unbothered by the damage to the car
2. light a cigarette
3. not take responsibility for what happened; he would blame it on the tires

...at least partly. We was a weird dude. His name was Joe Beard.

I forget where he was from, but he kept having the same nightmare over and over, and would wake up screaming. The nightmare was that he was in a qualifying round for the '68 or '72 Winter Olympic downhill and I would hear him talking to himself, psyching himself up at the top of the run before the gate opened, then he would get louder and louder as he went through the beginning of the course, until he lost it and went over the edge of the mountain and crashed... screaming at the top of his lungs, waking up in a sweat.

When asked about it, he was very nebulous about the whole thing, but implied he actually was a qualifier and was reliving an actual event. Maybe there's a way to look it up on the interwebs, but I didn't care if he was lying then, so...

But he was totally "Bob."

All due respect to Egan but the picture is iconic enough without the caption.