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April 15, 2010
Driving School 101: New York Edition
HotRodHoney
From the state which took the title back from New Jersey last year for America’s worst drivers, (everyone loves New York!), here’s a look at the most common traffic laws that I see people simply ignore everyday. Read on…
April 14, 2010
Photo of the Day
By Jen Dunnaway
Editor
Today’s pick is from John Naderi’s Formula Drift Long Beach photos. The sideways Mustang is of course awesome, but the Port-o-potty in the background is what makes this shot. Nicely framed! You can check out the whole run of Formula D coverage over in our Events section. And if you’ve got a great photo you want to see featured in the blog, feel free to drop me a line.
A Chevelle Cooked Medium Rare
By Brian Lohnes
BangShift.com
There’s good and bad in this video. The bad is the obvious nitrous pop which blows the hood scoop off the nice looking red Chevelle and then turns into a raging inferno shortly afterward. The good is that the track personnel responded instantly and kept the car from becoming charcoal. We’re sure there was lots of repair work involved here, but at least he still had a car to fix!
Good work by the track safety crew of reacting without hesitation or delay. The guy who gets right after the fire has some brass ones, he was right up on it in a t-shirt!
Twin-Engined De Lorean on eBay, Minus An Engine
By Jen Dunnaway
Editor
I have witnessed some bizarre and ambitious De Lorean engine swaps attempted in my day, but this one is just looney-tunes. With its colossally mismatched powerplants front and back, this De Lorean is theoretically four-wheel drive–with a Honda 2.0L powering the front wheels and a monstrous 8.2L Cadillac V8 spinning the rears, and some kind of electronic govern-ator carrying out the delicate mediation between the two. Curiously, the seller is offering this creation without the Cadillac motor, so what you’re really getting is a massively effed-with DeLorean with front wheel drive, a four-banger, and cosmetic and accessory issues numerous enough to make even the most dedicated tinkerer weep. Hmm–deal? Check out the auction, including baffling views of both engine compartments, here!
Mercedes-Benz Design Studio
By Rob Einaudi
Editor-in-Chief
On my second day in Stuttgart I got to visit the Mercedes-Benz design studio. Since a lot of the stuff at the site is top secret, I had to turn over my cameras and iPhone. So all the pics in this post were shot by a Mercedes photographer during the presentation and then provided to us the next day.
We started out with an up-close look at the current E-Class range, then went on to discuss some of their more recent concepts. If you dig the shape of the F800 below (revealed last month in Geneva), you’ll be happy to know that much of the design language will show up in the next version of the C-Class, due in 2014.
Next they took us into a darkened room where they showed off their Autodesk Showcase software and the huge screen capable or presenting 3D concepts in 1:1 scale in various colors and with different backgrounds. A light table with mini color-coded models allows you to rotate and zoom the renderings on the screen to your heart’s content. Pretty cool! There was quite a bit of discussion about design process, which takes four to five years for new models. Mercedes futurologist Alexander Mankowsky told us that they see themselves as the “ambassadors of European style.” I wonder how the Italians feel about that…
Finally we went over to the interior design area, where they showed us what goes into creating their dashboards, seats, door panels, etc. Throughout the morning there was a lot of talk of the environment and sustainability, which seemed funny to me when we’re talking about luxury cars. For example, Mercedes even has their own dedicated farms to raise bulls for the leather (not cows–they get pregnant and their skin stretches too much!). However, Mercedes cars are definitely built to last, which is a good thing.
Office Tomitaku S30 on the Road
By Speedhunters
Car Culture At Large
After checking out the Office Tomitaku S30 Fairlday Z I thought it would be hard to comprehend the car fully without seeing it in action, but most of all hearing that OS-Giken tuned motor scream. Turn those speakers up and hit play!
By Dino Dalle Carbonare
Cute Product Alert: Volkswagen Ketchup
By Jen Dunnaway
Editor
According to the company origin story, this Volkswagen-branded condiment was originally formulated to compliment the exclusive “curry sausages” served at the VW assembly plants in the 70′s. They sold over 425,000 bottles of the stuff last year–and as a gal who begins each day with a pair of tater tatties floating in a lake of Heinz, I have a definite appreciation for that kind of volume when it comes to ketchup. VW ketchup is back in the news at the moment because they just unveiled a new flavor–”VW Classic,” as opposed to the spiced ketchup they’ve been selling since the 90′s. I think I’ll stick with my Heinz–I’d probably be more into it if I was one of those Beetle fanatics, but I’m also a sucker for packaging and just may have to pick up a bottle for the novelty factor. Read more at WorldCarFans.
Ford to Bring More Jobs to Michigan
HotRodHoney
Ford Motor Co announced at the Detroit Auto Show back in January that they’d be investing $45 million into building battery packs for greener vehicles. They will utilitze their Rawsonville Component Plant in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan to begin building these battery packs for their next generation of electric-powered vehicles.
This investment is going to bring many new jobs to an economically depressed area, in addition to protecting hundreds of jobs already there. It’s a move that should coincide nicely with their plans to build a hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery-powered electric version of the Focus at their assembly plant in Wayne, MI. In total, Ford expects to create 1000 new jobs in Michigan by 2012.
Tool of the Week: The Telescoping Magnet
By Mike Bumbeck
Clunkbucket
From the Large Hadron Collider department of Tool of the Week comes the telescoping magnet, or magnetic pickup tool. Regardless of automobile make or model, there is always at least one fastener in a difficult if not ridiculous location. Getting to that bugger often requires ingenuity in action. After putting a box-end wrench into a vise and using a sledge hammer to bend it into a crow’s foot, pegging the swear-o-meter, twisting a screwdriver into a 73-degree angle with a set of vise-grips, and cursing whoever or whatever company was responsible for putting the fastener in such a ludicrous location, you finally crack that nut or bolt loose. But then what? You still have to get it back in, right? Read more on the miracle of the telescoping magnet pickup Tool over at Clunkbucket.
Snap: Consumer Reports Burns Lexus SUV With “Don’t Buy” Warning
By Jen Dunnaway
Editor
It’s no big whoop that SUVs tip over easily–of course they do–but you know things are bad when Consumer Reports, that bible for anyone who ever wanted to buy something expensive that they didn’t know anything about, singles out a particular SUV for boycott on the grounds that it tips over even more easily than the others. The target of CR‘s wrath is the GX 460, Lexus’s blimpiest SUV, which during track testing kept exhibiting the pesky habit of lifting wheels off the ground under hard cornering and then getting squirrely when the stability control didn’t respond quickly enough. Might not seem like that big a deal, except that CR deemed the rollover risk serious enough to justify issuing its first outright “Don’t Buy” in nine years. It’s a vote of no-confidence that delivers another black mark against an already-floundering Toyota, and comes on the heels of CR de-listing a number of Toyota models from “recommended” status over gas-pedal issues earlier this year. Read more at Comcast.
