It’s back to school time, and all across America, kids are returning to classrooms eager to find any possible distraction from actually learning things. Today, there are countless electronic devices to keep them from memorizing when the War of 1812 took place, or being able to find Delaware on a map, but a lot of readers will recall spending their own endless hours in the back of the class sketching cars in the margins of our textbooks when we should have been taking notes.

Of course, other than the select few blessed with artistic talent, most of the results were nothing more than ill-proportioned scribbles that were nigh-impossible to identify as any particular make or model. If only we had the internet available back then, we could have learned how to dissect the profile of a car like the C6 Corvette into proper proportions, and how to get the general shape and dimensions correct before going on to the detail work.

Then again, if we had the internet, we’re sure that the on-demand availability of all sorts of prurient material would have kept us from even having the time to contemplate innocent pursuits like sketching cars, so maybe it’s a good tradeoff…