Gathered here are the Oppositelock posts that people have put a good deal of effort into writing from the weekend. Today it includes unusual aircraft, classic Renaults at Goodwood and more.
I was born in 1987, and so my favorite cars all hail from the decade of the '90s since those are the cars I grew up with and exposed to constantly throughout my childhood. These cars are my 'hot rods' that I tune up and modify on a budget.
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I thought it would be interesting to let you all see what interesting cars we have for sale here overseas in Holland. First I will do 11 cars from before 1986, because those cars are road-tax free, and they are cheaper with the insurance.
I don't have pictures of the FIRST car I had or even my very first crash, but this is what's left of one of the first cars/crashes I ever had. I went back and fourth about posting about this, but I figure what better to be my first actual post to oppo that isn't a comment. Don't worry, it was years ago and everyone is fine (as much as they were before anyway).
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I've been really wanting to get some diecast Tucker Torpedo sedans recently, and decided to search eBay today. My first goto search was "Hot Wheels Tucker Torpedo" just because generally those are cheap, and why not get one for $1-2 in addition to a bigger model. And I can get one with a silly paint job to put next to the historically accurate 1:43, 1:24, or 1:18 I'll end up getting. The 2nd listing caught my eye, so I opened it to see one of these.
Not too long ago, my first ever form of transport was a teeny little 1.2 Litre Hatchback with a silly name. Welcome to the 2004 Seat Ibiza 1.2 Stella, or Stella as she is fondly called. This car was a brilliant as as a first ride, It was easy to repair, cheap to run, manual and oddly wonderful in regards to handling.
Yesterday, I went to the Goodwood Moving Motor Show, which is essentially the same as the Festival Of Speed in every way, except the track is for people who got there early enough to book free, no-pressure test drives on the famous hillclimb course with a range of cars to choose from that ranged from the Dacia Sandero to the Audi RS6, with an R8 V10 plus and Ferrari 458 & FF being used for high speed passenger rides. The event opened at 7am, and having arrived half an hour later than planned at 9am due to a backfiring shortcut, I was shit out of luck as everything was booked. No matter, I'd simply win a test drive at the Ford stand by being awesome at Gran Turismo 6.
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Michel Vaillant !! It has been so influential that modern drivers today dress up as the main character and race the livery in the top level. So far 70 titles of the ultra-realistic penned dramatic comic/graphic novel exist and they still publish it....but not for english readers. (lots more+pics)
This weekend is the annual Lethbridge Street Machine Weekend (Lethbridge being a small city in Southern Alberta, Canada). Having never been here in Lethbridge over the summer, I was quite surprised to learn of the scale of things. They have to limit the Friday night cruise to something like 700 vehicles, otherwise the entire street would be jam packed with cars. For three hours or so, they block off one of the main streets and allow everybody to cruise up and down the street.
Today I would like to discuss an interesting concept that has been pretty much forgotten in today’s aviation environment: the parasite aircraft. Size is a big issue with airplanes. Small airplanes are fast and maneuverable, but their size limits the fuel capacity and therefore the range. Big airplanes can carry lots of fuel and payload, so they can go very far, but they aren’t very maneuverable. Obviously from a military perspective this is a problem: if you want to bomb a target, you have to fly a big heavy bomber really far – farther than a fighter escort can go. Bombers aren’t maneuverable enough to take on enemy fighters, and mounted guns can only do so much.
Whenever you see coverage of Goodwood, the focus is always understandably on the action that takes place on the hill. Although this is undeniably awesome, I thought I'd show some of the highlights away from the hill in my next few posts. First up is Renault Classic who brought a selection of cars that hooked me in to their stand instantly.
I wanted to wrench and fix cars in the 1980's, 90's but had no clue, no friends who knew that stuff, no good place to get the knowledge. (I was in a pretty white collar/professional career track.) I never got far. Nowadays with the power of the Internet, I can do anything. An example that is car related insofar as it references an internal combustion engine. My old lawn tractor stopped starting. After fiddling with it forever, I finally checked compression - 1o psi - that's not right.
Another week, another business trip. Last week I had a VW Tiguan for a rental car and I like it quite a bit, not enough to want to buy one, but it's not bad. I think I can say the same for the Dodge Dart SXT. I loathed getting Dodge Caliber and even Chryler 200s, but this little car is actually pretty nice. The SXT is the second from the bottom of the line-up. It's a rental car, what can you expect?
Americans, especially when it comes to automakers, tend to like things rather.... large. And we seem to be stuck in this old-school way of thinking where 500 horsepower muscle cars with crappy interiors are still the best we can build. But that's only part of the equation. There's a new breed of gearhead who want lightweight, efficient, RWD sportscars that put an emphasis on FUN, not outright speed. Which is exactly why American automakers need to put their thinking caps on and do something unconventional.
Today's Vapourware Special sees a Mr. Paul Halstead, an Australian entrepreneur, wishing to create a ground-up supercar (as in made from scratch, not something he can grind up) featuring a powertrain that combines Bugatti Veyron, Cizeta V16-T and Oppo Mentality by combining two GM LS7 V8s. The target result is 1200-horsepower 14.0 W16 with two crankshafts and a "trick transfer case" to send all that power rearwards through an LSD (not the kind he might be consuming). But is it actually vapourware? Let's analyse.
As always, If I've missed something and you would like me to include it, let me know.
Fun Discussions
There were several posts that asked questions and sparked some good discussion over the the weekend. Take a peek and chime in on some of them listed below:
Just the #tips
Honourable Mentions
These posts have already been shared with Jalopnik directly but deserve to be mentioned again because they were first posted in Oppositelock:
Best of Oppositelock: July 15, 2013