Never feed a Gremlin after midnight

Since Thursday, the local paper has been keeping readers posted daily on the status of an early Thursday morning shooting spree two yahoos went on along I-64 in western Virginia. I believe there were six different shootings on or near Interstate 64 in the Charlottesville area. The police have since arrested a nineteen-year-old man (who looks somewhat satanic in his pic) and a sixteen-year-old juvenile, whose identity is being protected. These geniuses [allegedly] shot at moving cars from different overpasses and also shot at a bank. There's a tidbit in each telling of the story that I find welcome. The ne'er-do-wells' vehicle of choice? A 1974 AMC Gremlin.

When was the last time you heard of anyone driving a Gremlin or even saw one? If you were going to go on a shooting spree, wouldn't you choose something a little more mundane? A Gremlin? Really?? Shame the boys also took those shots at the bank -- since its surveillance camera was able to capture this unique car. Good lord, how long did it take them to track down the owner? Must have used some pretty sophisticated forensics on that one. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that there's only one such car out in those parts (this is the land of pickup trucks after all) and that at least one of the responding police officers knew it belonged to Slade Woodson of Afton.

I will say this for the Gremlin: it may not be attractive, it may not have much room inside, it may not have any replacement parts in existence anymore (I'm just assuming), but dang it got some good gas mileage. My friend Dave Anthony had one in high school and we were able to drive around all night on $1.36 in gas. Granted, this was in the 80s and we got close to three gallons for that. But still....

Regardless, if you're going to drive around shooting at people, you may want to choose something a little more sedate. Unless of course, the whole reason these guys were so angry in the first place is because they were stuck driving around in this thing all night, trying to score chicks: