Welcome to WRC Spain, one of the quickest rallies of the season—its smooth-surfaced roads and sweeping corners make it very much like the F1 on city streets. The rally, based south of Barcelona in Salou features 18 stages with over 200 kilometers of competitive sealed-surface racing. Sebastien Loeb has won here in previous years and once again dominated this time around. His margin was almost 30 seconds over his teammate, who was trailing him in second place. More…

Continue reading "WRC: Back To The Asphalt!" »

I’m not sure what it is, but I’m always drawn back to the Delorean. And the only thing more cool than a conventional-engined DeLorean would be one with all-electric power, right? Back in June, Jen wrote about a man who created his own DeLorean EV, and now it looks like he’s trying to sell it on eBay. Who knows where the reserve is set, but with the Buy It Now at $100,000, it’s going to have to end up in the collection of someone who’s seriously dedicated. Check out the auction!

It’s hard to believe that trucks are still selling at all with gas prices as high as they are and hurricane season underway, but it seems that North America is still deeply in love with its pickups. I must admit that I’m still partial to mine. The new Chevy Silverado has won the nation over with its redesign—now, just over a year old, the new Silverado takes the #1 spot away from Ford in the full-size truck market. With GM truck dealers’ full-on campaign of incentives and price-slashing, it makes a certain amount of sense: Chevy sold more Silverados last month than Toyota sold Camrys. If you’re in the market for a truck, now is pretty much the best time to buy—with GM reportedly closing four of its plants by 2010, it seems that their prices can only go back up again once gas prices plateau and the market stabilizes.

Have you ever had one of those freaky moments with your car when something really odd happened? It happened to me last week when the gears in my Valiant all moved up a notch. Drive was suddenly in neutral, neutral was in reverse and park had vanished completely. It turns out that my gear box link bush had decided to give up the ghost. This reminded me of another freaky event that I heard about: the Mopar in question had worked perfectly for years but then one day the owner found he couldn’t turn it off! The car turned on and ran beautifully but when it came to switching off the motor it refused to do so until the battery was disconnected. Apparently the metal around an earthing wire had rusted and the problem was solved by moving the wire to an area where there was no cancer. What about you—have any freaky malfunctions plagued your car?

We all have our favorite car movies and their corresponding chase scenes, but we rarely get to see the vehicles they use to get all those amazing shots. Most "camera cars" have to be able to keep up with high-performance muscle cars or super-exotics, all the while carrying several crew members and hundreds of pounds of camera equipment. My favorite by far in this list of 12 unique camera cars has got to be the Predator! Something about it just screams YouTube mayhem.

Source: oobject.

So maybe you’ve done an advanced driving course or two. Or you might be a weekend racer who enjoys getting your thrills around the track or on the strip. Either way, you might think that you have pushed your driving skills to the max. Well think again, because it’s time to take it to the next level. In my part of the world, Driver Dynamics is offering stunt driving courses, and they seem to be the real deal. While it’s only a one-day course, it has participants practicing multiple 360 spins, 180-degree handbrake turns, and two-wheel driving. But the real icing on the cake with this course is that participants get to do ramp-to-ramp jumps. How about you guys—anyone done any stunt-driver training before?

I don’t know if I’ve told you about this show before, but it is a monster. The show takes place in Latham NY (my hometown) in the parking lot of an indoor roller-skating rink that holds the Guinness World Record for being the largest of its kind in the world. This cruise-in happens four times each summer from 4pm till 9pm and regularly draws up to 1200 cars. On Monday September 8, the show drew 1835 cars—not bad for a parking-lot meet! The most cars this show has ever drawn was in 2004 when the Hot Rod Power Tour came to town, bringing the show up to a seam-busting 2,200 cars. The show is split into 3 sections: the main paved lot that can hold around 700 cars, the stone lot that can hold about 300, and the grass lot which can hold another 600. All the rest squeeze into any spot possible.

I would’ve had more pics for you, but it’s starting to get dark early. Check out a few teasers below the jump!

Continue reading "Guptills Cruise In" »

Every year I go to various car shows and cruise-ins, but there’s only one I really wait for. Unfortunately it’s a long wait, since it doesn’t happen until the end of the summer on the weekend after Labor Day: I’m talking about the Adirondack Nationals. It’s scheduled as an all-weekend show, but cars start trickling into Lake George, NY as early as the Monday before.

The main show itself is held at the Fort William Henry Resort, and houses several hundred cars on its grounds alone. However, the real attraction of the show is cruising Diamond Point just down the road. The street is shut down to all commuter traffic and only show cars are allowed to cruise. Several thousand cars can be seen parked and cruising the strip on a Saturday night, along with droves of people walking around and taking it all in. Long story short: Adirondack is one big party, and if you’re ever in the area when it’s going on it will surely be a show you’ll anticipate for next year. Whats the one show you wait for all year? What’s so great about it?

What a weekend! With over 300 km of competitve stages, the New Zealand rally offered enough gravel to pick out of your teeth for days to come. The weather held off and the light gravel stages made for some pretty impressive driving and some very interesting tactics. On the first day, Jarri-Matti Latvala slowed before the last stage of the day to force two cars ahead of him to clear a lot of the loose gravel. And again, on the second day, rally leader Sebastien Loeb played the same card to stick Jarri-Matti and Mikko Hirvonen with the onerous duty of "road sweepers." This first car or cars help to push the loose gravel out of the way for the trailing cars, leaving them with a much clearer line, better traction, and a pronounced advantage. More…

Continue reading "WRC Update: Rally New Zealand Review" »

Electric cars and hybrids are all the rage right now, and with gas prices still pretty high it’s no wonder that we’re looking at other alternatives. Jen blogged last month about bringing back the EV1, and though I’m surprised that GM is so cold on the idea, I guess a lot their reluctance has to do with fear of undermining the Volt.  Aside from the overpriced Tesla, the one-off AC Propulsion eBox and a handful of in-city EV’s that can’t do much over 30 mph, there just hasn’t been anything that exciting or attainable among the EV offerings.

Hopefully Chevy’s Volt will begin to change that landscape, but it looks like it’s going to have some electrifying competition by the time it comes to market. Ian Wright’s Wrightspeed X1 could be hitting showrooms at around the same time. No word yet on pricing or availability, but these sweet rides are definitely generating some buzz. According to the FAQs, the Wrightspeed may be recharged at either 120 or 220v, reducing charging time. And unlike today’s hybrids, the Wrightspeed is a battery-only car with no gas motor whatsoever. Ian Wright, formerly of Tesla Motors, left the company in 1996 to pursue this venture, and it appears his dream is close to being realized.

The only question is, how much higher will its price tag be than the $65,000 of the gas-powered Atom on which the X1 prototype was based?