Alright, the first person to successfully name the car that’s playing Corinne’s finest work as of late wins… nothing, you all know I’m terrible at mailing stuff out.
I’ve been either in a plane, on the road, on the track, or desperately sick for the past seven days. Still got a few things out the door, however. Check ’em, yo.
Bark racked up the comments this week… telling somebody to trade their Mazda5 for a Durango and advising Millennials to buy a new car and actually enjoy it.
At TTAC, I showed the B&B a very distracted cop, drove the finest rental car you can get, and offered some perspective on the current drama surrounding Tesla.
For R&T, I explained the one weird trick to understanding engines and disrespected Sam Smith. Joyfully, I would add.
Once I clear all this misery out of my head, I’ll be back next week with five great things for you to read! Do you ever think of me? Do I ever cross your mind?
McLaren P14????
We are gonna have to fight over Este
McLaren 570 of some sort? I’m an anorak.
THE WINNER LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!
The 570GT, if we’re being adenoidal about it.
Hey Jack, I just read your “Avoidable Contact” article at R&T.
Great article, but I have question. What was the kit car?
I’ll tell the story… after consulting an attorney 🙂
At the Eyes On Design car show today, there was a Caterham 7 in the show, but there was a real Lotus 7 in the parking lot.
They had a display of “muscle bikes”. No Ross Polos but there were a matching set of boys’ and girls’ Ross Barracudas. I think my favorite, besides the Raleigh Chopper, was a CCM bike, which was cool to have at a car show in Detroit since the CCM company started out as a cartel of Canadian Cycle Manufacturers, one of whom was the Dodge brothers’ bicycle company in Windsor. One of the brothers, Horace I think, invented a sealed bicycle wheel hub that kept dirt out that was a commercial success. They ultimately sold their interest and used the money to start their machine shop in Detroit
@Ronnie, have you ever been to the vintage bicycle and mini bike show/swap meet in Ann Arbor? It’s normally the last Sunday of April at the Washtenaw Co. Fairgrounds.
I spent most free time ages 15-21 working at Al Petri & Son’s Bikes down here in Lincoln Park. Don (now deceased, unfortunately) was THE man as far as muscle bikes go. We had a lot of NOS parts sitting around, did restoration work, and built countless custom bikes. It’s a cool place to check out if you’re into that sort of thing. They also opened a bicycle museum not too far away in Grosse Ile, but I haven’t had the time to drop in.
A little birdy told me it was some kind of Seven clone.
for the Avoidable Contact article, fuel does matter, if you change fuels. Nitromethane, which Top Fuel and Funny Car dragsters burn, carries so much oxygen in the fuel that you can burn almost 9x as much fuel per charge. The stoichiometric ratio for nitromethane is about 1.7:1, but it’s also hilariously prone to detonation so drag racers tend to run closer to 1:1. some of the newest R/C marine glow engines can make nearly 5 horsepower out of 0.0075 liters displacement burning 65% nitro.
airflow is also partly why diesels have traditionally been so much more economical than gas engines. since they don’t rely on a throttle to regulate engine output, when you’re puttering around town you don’t have the restriction of a nearly-closed throttle wasting energy. Gas engines are doing the equivalent of trying to breathe through one of those little coffee stirrer straws, which makes them expend quite a bit of energy.
Nobody runs nitromethane in a street car, however, or even in a trackday car. 🙂
I know, I just felt like saying something. I have a race tomorrow and I’m never mentally prepared for it.
You are right about diesels, except moderns diesels ARE (unfortunately) throttled. And made to run stoichiometric from time to time to clean the DPF. Some petrol engines are now being run WOT (to reduce volumetric losses), playing around with some other tricks so the customer doesn’t notice.
Key difference is diesel is regulated by the amount of fuel, petrol by the air density. The way they burn the fuel is also different, which is why diesel has the challenges it has… some of them coming now to petrol due to DI.
modern diesels do have throttles, but they’re mainly there to increase EGR pull through the restrictive EGR coolers. I’m not too well informed on how DPF regeneration is done, so I’ll defer to you on that part.
all I know is that modern diesels just sound weird. between the constantly changing injection strategy and the growl/whoosh of the EGR system…
Is it weird that your Tesla article reminded me of this?
http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a26712/mr-regular-engine-swap-manliness/
Jack, I’ve really enjoyed your R&T articles beating the drum for natural aspiration! The impending death of fun, high-revving NA engines in regular passenger vehicles is a major bummer, and I’m glad someone at a mainstream publication is pointing it out. The impressive 0-60 times and fuel economy numbers combined utterly joyless operation remind me of an article I read on stereo equipment* a while back:
http://www.cnet.com/news/how-can-30-year-old-receivers-sound-better-than-new-ones/
*Note: my audio-nerd credentials are pretty weak, so if someone has a better explanation I’m all ears.
“*Note: my audio-nerd credentials are pretty weak, so if someone has a better explanation I’m all ears.”
the only explanation you need is that the CNet article you linked is 100% contractor-grade bullshit. there is so much nonsense and snake oil in the audiophool world, proffered by hucksters who empty the pockets of credulous boobs who desperately want to believe their hearing is so good they can discern a mouse fart from a rat fart from a mile away.
‘who desperately want to believe their hearing is so good they can discern a mouse fart from a rat fart from a mile away’ Hahahaha!!!
I drove the previous generation X6M around BMW’s track in SC and found it to be an absolute hoot, too. I started off driving it with serious attention to apexes, throttle application, and all the other stuff…but by the end of the session I was just flinging it around with reckless abandon.
This culminated in a turn where I told my green around the gills partner “Watch this!” and then did a full-on scandi flick while saying “WHEEEE!!!!” By that point I had learned to let the M mode computers do their thing. They kept the bulk of the thing under control enough to allow me to do a pretty damn cool, tire-smoking drift at max throttle with a grin on my face that had to be as big as the one I had the first time I got a proper, all the way to completion blowjob.
It was an outrageous amount of fun. It felt to me like it was a vehicle that had a sense of humor. Ve bilt zis becauze ve could.
Yes, it’s silly. And it’s probably terrible offroad. But it can haul passengers and stuff comfortably *and* put a smile on your face on demand. Not much out there that can accomplish all of that.
There’s definitely some guilty pleasure to be had hooning these four-wheeled turbo rhinoceroses. But I also have a lot of fun getting some dorifto on in my GMC truck, and that thing is actually comfortable on the highway. The X5 / X6 have gigantic wheels on low-profile tires, and spring rates that conspire to ruin the ride.
If I were spending that kind of money on a people and stuff hauler, I’d go with the Lexus-ized Land Cruiser personally.
Speaking of mailing stuff out. Where’s my Texas Edition badge for my C-max? The little egg needs a dose of testicular fortitude!
There’s a story behind that, and it starts and ends with… I ain’t done it yet.
I don’t understand the allure of Tesla. I can appreciate the work behind Autopilot and fleet learning from a technological standpoint. On one hand, things like Autopilot, the Navigation/Charging computer and Fleet learning are very interesting to me. I realize most of that comes from the fact that we were able to “break” those systems, but I’d like to know how quickly the system(s) “learn” from situations such as those. Ludicrous Mode is fun, but still more of a novelty than anything else. My praise for the hardware aspect of the car fades with each passing day. I try to remain objective only because I realize that the car stands for the exact opposite of everything I believe in.
Considering that I don’t understand why people like Tesla as a company, I certainly don’t understand Musk. I stood up in a wedding last weekend, and the father of the bride worked for Chrysler in the late 80s-early 90s. He worked alongside Castaing and Lutz on the Viper and Prowler, among some other projects. I can see why the media fellates Lutz, as he is probably one of the few guys left that can truly say that they’ve “been there, done that.” There’s a severe shortage of men today that could make that statement in any capacity, let alone in the automotive industry.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of him, but Dr. Geoffrey Miller has published a book called “Spent” on how Evolutionary Psych plays into marketing. I began reading his work on the recommendation of one of my High School teachers after he noticed me reading “The Game.” Tucker Max actually collaborated with him on another book called “Mate” that is supposed to be something of a self-help sort of thing. I have yet to read it, but they did record a series of Podcasts with various members of academia (primarily female) that contained some interesting perspectives.
To tie that back in with the Tesla as a brand, I feel it has a lot to do with “signaling.” Not so much that the Tesla is an indicates your ability to pay $987/mo for 144 Months, but this stupid “techno futurist” world Gizmodo likes to believe we live in. I hesitate to compare Musk/Tesla to Jobs/Apple, but it is a fair assessment if you look at it from Jobs/Apple post NEXT acquisition. Commodity goods that position themselves as “sexy” and “forward-thinking.” The Model S is no more the most technological-advanced car on the market as the iPhone 6 is the most advanced phone.
For whatever its worth, I am typing this on a 2012 MacBook Pro that I bought new last month. My iPhone 6S Plus is currently charging next to me. The main factor I consider is durability, especially after breaking multiple work-issued Thinkpads. Time will tell on how long the MBP will last, but I’m willing to bet that it will have less issues than a Model S when compared to other products in its class.
The worst part of IBM deciding to abandon general-purpose computing to the Chinese was the absolute devolution of the Thinkpad from gold standard to commodity junk.
IBM at this point only exists because of legacy mainframe customers and the financial shell games they’re playing with their other businesses.
Jack, you SERIOUSLY need to up your game in terms of both frequency & intensity of sociopolitical/economic/vehicular/cultural/etc antagonist writings if you want to keep to your spiritual form.
The Tesla essay felt great the other day, but those have been way to few and far infrequent for a long-time now.
C’mon, buddy.
“Do you ever think of me? Do I ever cross your mind?”
-Sure do. But wen there’s a gap in your posts for a few days then we know some good content is coming down the pipeline.