Word: buffs
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Sales of the ultimate yuppie symbol, the BMW, fell to 63,600 in the U.S. last year, a drop of 28% from 1985 levels. Meanwhile, Honda sales increased 29.7%, to 716,500. The sales pitch for autos today would have bored the driving gloves off an '80s car buff: safety features (antilock brakes, air bags), versatility (four doors, built-in child seats) and value. A 1991 Pontiac Grand Prix model sells for under $20,000 but looks (on the outside, anyway) like last year's sporty $26,000 Turbo model...
FLORIDA. The nation's second busiest death row is accommodating an unusual new arrival: a pepper-haired, bespectacled genius named George James Trepal, who fed rat poison to the family next door because he considered them bad neighbors. It seems that Trepal, a science buff and member of Mensa, a social club for the high IQed, grew tired of his neighbors' loud music and barking dogs. He left a death threat on the door, and when that didn't work he slipped into the Carr family kitchen and laced some thallium nitrite into a pack of 16-oz. Coca-Cola...
Finally, a victory may offset the cost in lives and treasure. "Any military adventure, however poorly conceived, however dubious the strategic objective, is absolutely validated by victory," says former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt, a history buff. "Once we commit to the use of force and it's decisive, then the cost is automatically worthwhile, without any exceptions in the course of American history...
...cumbersome to maneuver and spare parts with Tiffany price tags. What a difference a war makes. Now that U.S. Patriots are chasing down Scuds and laser-guided bombs are nailing targets in Iraq, the once derided weaponry has become the star of the war. Suddenly, everybody is a weapons buff...
...Jersey banker, Stempel worked summers as a garage mechanic and won a collection of drag-racing trophies. Later he graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, then earned an M.B.A. from Michigan State in 1970. He still reads car-buff magazines, and enjoys skiing and surf casting. Stempel and his wife Pat have three children, two grown and one in college. But Stempel is intensely private about his life outside the company, a feeling that carries over from the kidnapping of his son Timothy in 1975. (His son was rescued from a car trunk, and the kidnappers were caught...