Archive | October, 2010

>Gentle, dignified, debonair, and did I mention very English?

29 Oct

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There are some cars that try to win you over by shamelessly calling for your attention, their outrageous ducts and wings sprout from their body panels like peacock feathers. Their aggressive downshifts and throttle blips are attention grabbing equivalents to a crazy chick rubbing her bewbs in your face.

But there’s another sort of car. You catch photos of an obscure model here and there through your years of car obsessed automotive magazine browsing, but somehow you fail to remember what its called or where it came from. This would be more akin to that gorgeous brunette that you sometimes see on your train to work, or bump into as she leaves the neighborhood bookstore. Tragically, you never got a chance to be properly introduced.

What’s more, it’s usually the latter that keeps you up at night.
But luckily, we’ve found her again. And here she is:
Now, if only I could find my tweed sport coat and driving gloves…

1958 MGA Roadster

 Here’s an in-car video impression:

For more information on this particular 1958 MGA Roadster, go here.
The car is now available in Kokomo, Indiana for $18k.

>The Beauty of Racing

29 Oct

>This isn’t actual race footage but it is gorgeous nonetheless.  Watch it in 1080p if you have the means.

>Where are they now?

28 Oct

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I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only enthusiast who saves old magazines.  While cleaning out some old junk, I came across the January 2000 edition of Road & Track.  The cover story is 100 Best Cars of 100 Years.  I assume this is like the Wikipedia of its day to an impressionable fourteen year old. Having said that, the most striking thing about the issue is the Ampersand column which has a short blurb about the Bugatti Veyron Concept.

Bugatti Veyron Concept

Now, we all know that the Bugatti Veyron in production form sports a 8.0 liter quad-turbo W16 which is mated to a 7-speed dual clutch transmission.  The 1001 horsepower from that massive power plant gets to the ground through all four contact patches.  This allows for some tenacious grip and a 0-60 time of 2.5 seconds.  However, this was not the original vision for the mightiest of supercars.

Bugatti Veyron courtesy of vivagoal.com

Having pictures of both the production car and the concept for comparison shows that the production car seems to have gone through the gestation period pretty much intact.  Repeated reports of crashed test mules with bad aerodynamics tell a different story though.  Minute details like a more upright grill and a more bulbous front end seem to be the minor changes.  However,without the aid of a wind tunnel and an aerodynamicist, I’d be hard-pressed to tell any other differences.

Taking a peak under the hood would reveal a major difference.  The Volkswagen group had originally planned on using a 6.3 liter W18 for motivation.  This sounds like an extraordinary bit of engineering.  That is, until that 20/20 hindsight thing kicks in.  That W18 would push out around 555 horsepower.  This doesn’t sound like much now considering the 6.3 liter V8 from the boys over at AMG develops 518 horsepower and a spleen-rupturing amount of torque which can be had at a tenth of the price of the Veyron.  It can be assumed that the Vee-dub planners saw the writing on the wall when the Lamborghini Murcielago (also under the VW umbrella) came out in 2001 with a 572 horsepower 6.2 liter V12.

It’s refreshing to see that concept cars can make it to production with little change to the jaw-dropping sheet metal that originally made us wade through the car show crowds.  In addition, the ability to be fluid with engineering ideas and execution has allowed the Veyron to rewrite every performance record.  I hope my grandchildren will have the same kind of wonder that made me keep that issue of Road & Track because they’ll probably be reading about the Veyron in that January 3000 issue of the 100 Best Cars of 100 Years.

Please let us know how you liked this article and if we should continue with a segment pertaining to concept cars and their production versions.

>Mystery Dyno

26 Oct

>Here’s a dyno that I don’t think many people have seen.  Every time I look at it, it just blows my mind.  Can you guess what it belongs to?

I’ll provide the right answer after everyone has had a chance to guess.

>Patrick Snijers and the ’88 Manx Rally BANZAI!!

25 Oct

>Note the sick mid-air rotation at 0:41, setting up entry for the next corner.

Happy Monday everybody!!

source: windingroad

>Required Viewing

24 Oct

>For anyone interested in the history of American motorsports this documentary is required viewing. Documenting the evolution of the land speed record and the 60′s in which the record jumped 200+ mph in a decade.

In Search of Speed – The Battle of Bonneville Part 1/6

>mucho cojones.

22 Oct

>Seems like an Amateur Class one-spec racing series. But Dean Evans is no amateur.

>Changing times: The car pr0n that never was.

21 Oct

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Mazda 787B
courtesy of: forocompeticion.com

The year is 1991. Mazda wins the 24 hours of Le Mans and the FIA bans the Wankel rotary engine. This marked the first and only Le Mans 24 victory by a Japanese race car, and the Mazda 787B will never participate in an international race again.

Riding on a high, Mazda believed it was still their time in prototype racing. Conveniently for them, IMSA did not ban rotaries… and the successor to the 787B was created.

Behold, bitches:

Mazda RX-792P
Credit to: TRICPICS
Mazda RX-792P engine bay
Credit to DarkPhoenixMP5 of photobucket.com
courtesy of: grandtouringprototype.com
credit of: southrnfresh.com

Unfortunately, the 4-rotor, 1750 lbs Mazda RX-792P was ultimately a failure. The team acknowledged that the 1992 season was a development year but the car was already a concern for other teams because it attained the highest power-to-weight ratio of all contenders. This was purely a weight advantage, though, as the RX-792P still had the least horsepower of the bunch. And so, the benefits of power-to-weight resulted to nil when the Mazda was unable to deliver the extra horsepower needed to overcome parasitic drag.

The RX-792P never wins a race. Mazda pulls out of racing by 1993.

But it wins in my book. That shape is damn sexy. And she’s a screamer too.

>Affordable Supercar Series: ASS

20 Oct

>The word “supercar” conjures up different images to different people.  Some think of the svelte, sexy curves of an Aston DBS or a Ferrari 599.  To others, a supercar is meant to go as fast as freakin possible even if there needs to be a plethora of wings, scoops, and vents like on a Gumpbert Apollo or Lotus Esprit.  Today, we’re not going to talk about any of those.  Nope.  Today is about a BMW that can fly under the radar and yet doesn’t look like any BMW you’d regularly see.  This is the 2001 BMW M coupe.

2001 BMW M coupe courtesy of screene.com

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first.  It is a bit small at 158 inches long and while it’s 68 inch width seems normal, the cockpit is a bit snug.  There may be some inadvertent man-touching when showing your buddy the blistering performance.  Also, you and your friend won’t be able to bring your man-sized lunches to work due to the size of the hatch.  To summarize the negatives, it looks like a sneaker, is the same size as a sneaker, and can comfortably fit two people who live at the gym… in their sneakers.

Lucky for us, this shoe comes from BMW’s M division.  So this isn’t a pair of Toyota walking shoes or Jeep cross trainers.  This is a pair of Usain Bolt’s track shoes.  This BMW has the same motor as the E46 M3, meaning it has 315 horsepower and 251 lb-ft of torque in 3100 lb body.  Better lace em up tight.  It does zero to sixty in 4.7 seconds and crosses the 1,320 foot line at the dragstrip in 13.2 seconds.  That aforementioned 158 in length contributes to a nice tidy 97 inch wheelbase which allows acceleration to happen in any direction. 

BMW M roadster courtesy of v10.pl

As we all know, BMWs aren’t exactly cheap.  This model will run you somewhere around 20 grand for a clean example.  Remember, you’d be paying for exclusivity considering only 690 of these were sold in the United States.  The roadsters are a few grand cheaper, are more readily available but also handle worse due to their top being cut off.   Either way, it’s ridiculous to think that neither of these Ms could satisfy a person’s lust for speed.  They might as well wear clown shoes.

>Lotus lights its ass on fire

18 Oct

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1969 Lotus 49B
Courtesy of: ausmotive.com


On our post that covered the 2010 Paris Auto Show, I shared with you Lotus’ five sports car debut that stole the show.

Go ahead and look at the pictures again. One is a complete redesign, and the rest are all-new. Each and every one of them production viable, and not just a technological showcase. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe what we see here is not just an injection of five new Lotus models in one auto show (which is already effin’ ridic), but a complete future Lotus sports car line-up [Note: I'm leaving out CityCar and the T127 to save from discussing additional topics and risking excess mind boggle-lation].

In another one or two special edition trims, the Elise/Exige product cycle will end, beginning life anew as classics. Another handful of years and the Europa and Evora will be gone as well. It is very probable that in the near future, these five concepts of the Paris 2010 will be all the sports cars we will see at our nearest Lotus showroom floor.

Now I’m not afraid to hold this on account of my limited knowledge capacity, but I’ve honestly never seen, nor heard of, this done before. Not by any established motoring company, and certainly not from one as small as Lotus.

The  question we should address is “why?”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking because I’m unhappy. I think the new cars are fantastic in design and company direction. The new corporate image is handsome, striking, sporting, British, as well as a very bold response to their sports car manufacturing peers. Each model promises exclusivity. The Elise will remain light and possess industry leading handling and chassis development. The Esprit will reignite an old name with a Lexus LF-A V10 engine. The Elite will debut Lotus’ hybrid technology, an industry must, for the new age of automobiles.

But we loved the Elise and Exige. The Evora is also immensely popular. Initially, the debut came to me like an answer to a question that no one was asking. There isn’t a need for Lotus to be taking such drastic actions, is there?

According to articles I’ve plowed over the past few hours [reference links of the said articles below], Lotus has been bleeding money and under debt stress for the past 15 years and, now cornered to a wall, CEO Dany Bahar faces two choices– to eat or be eaten, to fight or flee, to “sell the company or run it to its potential.”

Dany Bahar, Lotus Motors CEO
courtesy of: thecarconnection.com

Way to show no one is kidding around. Current annual production at Lotus is 2700 vehicles at sub-$65k. Anticipation of the new model line-up creates a predicted projection of more than double the amount in annual production, that is 6000-7000, and plans to set $65k as the entry price point while the new average is $120k. This is especially worth addressing as new models mean a need for capacity expansion, R&D, outsourcing, marketing, etc. Incremental increases in these departments require exponential increases in investment. A lot of money.

I know it all sounds crazy. The stakes are incredibly high, maybe too high. But the statement, “sell the company or run it to its potential” couldn’t be any more serious. In the course of a decade, £770M ($1.2 Bil), most of which I assume will be coming from Proton and the Malaysian government, will be invested on projects by Lotus. For those of you who like a bit of math, that is $120 million per year for ten years.

Frankly, I’d be very surprised if Lotus doesn’t eventually ask for additional investments on top of the $1.2 Billion. This isn’t pessimism speaking, but we know a decade is a very long time. Their future is uncertain and there will be rainy days.

Good luck to you, Lotus. Your history is long, colorful, and decorated. May you share your contributions with us for many decades to come. And along with Dany Bahar’s strong position to “run [Lotus] to its full potential” might I add: “Fortune favors the brave.”

Graham Hill
courtesy of: virginmedia.com

editors note:
Initially I wanted to evaluate the financial soundness of Lotus’ endeavor by putting it up against a comparable motor company’s activities. In my research, I have found that Toyota planned to spend $8.7 billion this year in safety R&D alone. On the other end of the spectrum, Tesla Motors, which is interesting to me as Lotus is their Roadster chassis supplier, possesses a company net worth of approximately $500 Million. An unbelievable, but ultimately useless, bit of information.

references:
http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/253233/
http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/253099/
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/10/07/lotus-ceo-says-automaker-will-again-take-on-ferrari-lamborghini/

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