It's not just about Red Bull. It's not just about F1. Dare I say that this shot of Coulthard doing donuts on the 689-foot Burj al Arab helipad is iconic in its own right?
This picture was taken by Samo Vidic and released by the Red Bull Content Pool. Click right here and you can get it in full 3200px resolution.
And here's another one, also from Samo Vidic, in giganto 5000px size. You can download it by clicking right here.
Gathered here are the Oppositelock posts that people put a good deal of effort into writing last Tuesday. It includes F1 aerodynamics, small pickup trucks, PITA dual mass flywheels and more.
The change in the 2014 Formula 1 rule book will bring about a shift in how teams manage the airflow around their chassis. The main cause for this shift in aerodynamics is the mandated repositioning of the exhaust exit to the center of the car, just between the diffuser and rear wing, which should not allow any more use of the exhaust gasses for aerodynamic benefit.
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Nothing gets some Americans riled up quite like the truck wars. Pickup truck buyers are very loyal, often buying the same truck time after time even after test driving the competitors. This is normally taken as a boon for the truckmaker in the number one spot, which for 36 years has been Ford with its F-150 again and again reigning king… But success breeds complacency, and Ford has met an awful lot of success.
What happened to the old cheap/easy clutch replacement that added value to purchasing a manual transmission? One reason I buy manuals is because I look forward to not having to rebuild or buy an expensive slush box. Replacing a clutch should be an affordable Saturday activity. My Mini is proving that this may no longer be true.
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Over the last week or so GM has been saying that it is looking at alternative power-trains to propel their big 3 SUV's. I've read many posts on this very subject and today after reading this one Carscoops.com GM Hybrids and Diesels for Big SUV's. I had to say something.
They say that driving a car in Alaska is like owning an Italian car in any other part of the country. Metal parts will rust immediately and for every twelve months of ownership you can only drive it for six. The only thing more prevalent than rusting carcasses in last frontier state of Alaska is freshly slaughtered caribou, so why not combine those two into one single craigslist ad? - Also check out this one in a Brazillian Puma and super Clean 1988 Integra.
One Sebastien stepped down to make room for another. With nine titles and bazillion wins and other records under his belt Sebastien Loeb waved final goodbyes to the World Rally Championship. Not in a way he intended though, but I find it very fitting - he is old and wants out, so crashing and rolling is the best way of saying "I'm too old for this shit"… But hey, the guy is out, we have a new champion(s) in Sebastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia and one title is still up for grabs. Entry for this is obviously closed as the Rally has already happened. My bad.
Being that this edition is XL, lets look at a quintessential larger vehicle made by the American automotive industry. The Escalade is being replaced. The Escalade was the stepping stone for Cadillac's coolness to evolve into the cars we are envying today, and without it, we may be looking at the famous brand's failure the same as we did Mercury, Lincoln, and Buick. The old king of cool was voted uncool; could this be it's chance to reclaim the throne, or just a side note in it's utterly bloated demise?
The Best of the Rest
Offroadkarter attended Cars Cars & Cars in Germantown MD. Decay installed a short shifter in his FR-S. Paul, Man of Mustangs prepped an Explorer axle for installation in his '65 Mustang. BKRM3 took his e90 M3 to the track. Daender shared a video of his passenger ride in a Miata around Roebling Road. Takuro Spirit got pulled over - Russian dash cam video.
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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 last Tuesday. 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:
Want to participate on Oppositelock? Check out the general handbook for posting on OppositeLock as well the Oppo tools to help you get started.
Welcome to Must Read, where we single out the best stories from around the automotive universe and beyond. Today we have reports from Hooniverse, Autoweek and Road & Track.
If you read one story today, make it this one.
Every one of us has daydreamed about amassing a vast collection of cars that interest us. Today, we have an inspiring and cautionary tale of a man who did just that, several times over. It is an incredible story.
A little bit of background first: a couple of weeks ago, Tim Odell brought to our attention a Craigslist ad out of Miami in which a man was trying to sell his collection of 15 cars for $25,000. It had all of us scratching our heads, and yearning for more details. Make the jump for Bruce's story, in his own words. Enjoy.
Here's my story…
With yesterday's record news, I thought this was apt for today. Good luck fellas!
Australians Rod Wade and Michael Flanders will be making a second attempt to drive from New York to Los Angeles in less than 60 hours on Nov. 22, after their first attempt ended two weeks ago with their 1930 Ford Model A suffering a mechanical failure 38 hours into the trip.
Jalop-alum Ben Preston got to drive some cool shit out in Tennessee. This is excellent.
If you visit the Lane Motor Museum just outside downtown Nashville, Tennessee, you'll notice that a lot of the cars are unfamiliar. Well, to most Americans, anyway. That's because museum founder and president Jeff Lane's collection is heavy on quirky machines from more obscure European marques, like an air-cooled V8-powered Tatra.
MotorWeek says this car "doesn't appear out of proportion." That makes me wonder if they know the definition of the word proportion.
Apparently the GT does everything needed to be considered a BMW, in fact, John Davis says that it has earned its stripes. What that apparently means is that it's good in a slalom and decent on the brakes too.
But let's go back to the styling. Can we go back to the styling? I wanna go back to the styling. This thing doesn't look good. I'm sorry BMW, but it doesn't. It's terrifying looking. To say it's in proportion is akin to saying Carlos Mencia is hilarious.
It just ain't true.
Traffic jams ruin driving and make life miserable for everyone, but most of all, people who actually like to drive. That MIT professor might have a solution for pointless traffic jams, but it's probably only going to work if your car has some kind of adaptive cruise control system. And apparently there's going to be something of a learning curve for that.
I think radar-guided cruise control is great, in theory. It's disconcerting if isn't not in regular use, too. But neverwander sees the biggest problem, and it's not with the radar part:
Another hurdle: Teaching people what cruise control is. I swear, no one uses cruise control on the highways. Yet it is by far the most efficient thing you can do. I am so tired of getting stuck behind people who constantly fluctuate their speed.
But I agree more with DirtyVDub as far as the fuel savings is concerned:
Cruise control is not the most efficient way to drive for max MPG. It does exactly the wrong things at the wrong times. Doing up hills you want to slow down a touch (if not in traffic) or increase power output gently. Going down hills you want to let the car speed up a bit.
Using manual control over cruise I can save 10% in rolling hill terrain. Think Iowa. In the mountains I can save significantly more especially in a turbo car by keeping it out of boost.
It's usually only on very long trips or on very heavily monitored stretches of road that I set the cruise control. It's mostly out of habit, though, since my right foot has nothing to do otherwise. But I'm all for solving traffic jams.
Photo: Toyota
It's Halloween, and I'd like to commemorate that by both injecting harmless-but-hilarious amounts of grain alcohol into fun-sized Snickers bars and sharing one of my favorite Frankenstein cars with you. The car is the VW Type 147, known as the Fridolin, and it's an unholy mash-up of four different kinds of VW.
By 'Frankenstein car,' I mean that it's a car that's made up, primarily, out of bits of other cars, in the way that Dr.Frankenstein's noble experiment in corpse-reanimation used a variety of body parts crudely stitched together to form one majestic whole. And, like all good unholy stitching-parts-together-to-make-a-monster projects, this one was done at the request of the postal service.
Well, specifically, the German Postal Service, or Deutsche Post. See, in the '60s, the Deutsche Post was delivering mail in adorable but tiny Goggomobile Transporters. They wanted to have something a bit larger, and less likely to be stolen and enjoyed by a group of four to six determined toddlers. So they came up with a set of requirements, and approached their biggest car maker, Volkswagen.
The requirements list was really just a set of desired dimensions:
- 2 m³ (71 cubic feet) storage compartment
- Payload between 350 and 400 kilograms (772 to 882 pounds)
- Length 3.750 mm (12.3 feet)
- Width 1.440 mm (4.7 feet)
- Height 1.700 mm (5.6 feet)
Oh, and it had to have two sliding doors. They didn't specify, but I think they meant one on each side. So, what they're looking for seems to be a smallish vehicle with a good amount of load space. Which makes perfect sense.
In the US, we used the very cube-like AM General Mail Jeep, and thanks to convergent evolution, VW's solution wasn't too different in overall shape: a tall cube with a stumpy hood. Under that stumpy hood, though, they differed a great deal, as the VW kept to the company's DNA and housed a little trunk and gas tank, while the familiar 1200cc Type I engine was out back.
What makes the Fridolin interesting is, of course, the incredible parts-bin nature of it. Here's essentially what made up a Fridolin:
• Type 14 Karmann-Ghia chassis (like Type I Beetle chassis, but wider)
• Type 1 (Beetle) 1200cc engine and transmsission
• Type 2 (Microbus) Rear hatch, engine lid, taillights, and various other parts of the rear body
• Type 3 (Fastback, Squareback) Headlight assemblies, basic hood design (not quite a cut-down Type 3 hood, but close) and all sorts of trim and parts
... and, of course, wheels and hubcaps and instruments and all sorts of interior parts were from across the VW line.
For something made from whatever VW had laying around, I think the end result is pretty charming, and it proved quite useful. The load area was large and easy to access, the extra little trunk in the front was surely appreciated by the German postmen (who, I imagine, filled it with their lunches of oversized pretzels, strings of sausages, and ornate beer steins), and the little trucklet proved useful enough that it was employed for ten years, 1964-1974, and over 6,000 of the little guys were made.
The Swiss postal service ordered about 1200 of them as well, and specified some extra corner windows, which, of course, were taken from the 21-window Microbus. A few other companies ordered smaller quantities as well, including Lufthansa, who used them as field service cars.
Why the Type 147 is called a "Fridolin" is a bit of a mystery. The name is sometimes used to refer to a little boy, and the proportions of the car can certainly suggest that association. Also, the name is used to refer to a rail motor-handcar, the MKB 52, which certainly does resemble it, and was VW-powered as well.
Today, Fridolins are pretty prized among VW geeks, and well restored ones are worth a good bit. There's not many left, since as state-owned utility vehicles, they tended to be run into the ground, and nobody really paid much attention to them for years. This is one of those few VWs that only hardcore VW nerds know about, and that makes them pretty special. To certain groups, at least.
As you can probably imagine, I'd love to have one.
There's something inherently right about a big engine in a little car. There's also something inherently wrong about a little engine in a big car — and that's why I like them so much.
It's just perverse to see a tiny engine suspended in a vast engine bay. It's why I want to swap a 1.0-liter Ecoboost motor into an old Mercury Meteor and why I love the Mazda Roadpacer so goddamn much.
It's a full-size, 3,470-lb Holden with a 1.3-liter Mazda rotary in it. You can see the engine bay in this YouTube video by WasabiCars.
The whole thing was perhaps the most bizarre example of platform engineering in the history of the car industry. It also had a sweet paisley interior.
Can you think of an even smaller engine fit in an even larger car than that? What engine bay has the most extra space swallowing up a tiny motor?
Photo Credit: Mazda
The Mustang GT500 is 660 horsepower of craziness. It's hilarious fun in a straight line but is more than a wee bit terrifying around corners. Yet all that scariness gets around the 'Ring in 7:39. That's Z/28 territory...
The GT500's run around the 'Ring is really fast, but it is not close to composed. Just look at it on corner entry, that thing is more nervous than me asking a girl on a date. Even mid-corner it's a fight to keep it on the straight and narrow and not in the dirt.
Looks like an ass clenching lap, and it also looks like an insane amount of adrenaline pumping fun.
As Porsche prepares the official unveiling of their Audi Q5 With A Bodykit, Belgian magazine DRIVR released this graphic on Facebook of what appears to be the Porsche Macan.
All in all, the Macan comes across as a fine, restrained luxury vehicle in the modern Porsche mold. Well, as restrained as you can be with quad-LED headlights above two strips of LED daytime running lights. The interior has that same air of wealth as you find in the rest of the range, by the looks of things.
What do you think? Are you looking forward to seeing more of these at your local trackday? Just kidding, I mean at your local spa fitness center/organic health food market.
(Hat tip to ILike_Cougars!)
The Dino 308 GT was never really the most desirable car to come out of Maranello. Nice examples are currently trading in the $33,000 range. This car was totally crashed, is now "art," and just sold for $250,000. This makes no sense.
How the hell is a car that belongs in a junkyard now a $250,000 piece of art? It's getting to the point where I'll soon be able to say my garbage is "modern minimalist impressionism" and get a return of ten times more than I paid for it in the first place.
The only work that went into this "art" was a man making a mistake and crashing his Dino. I imagine the collector who bought it also paid $60,000 for an iPhone with a cracked screen.
The buyer must not be an investor. If I wanted this art, I could get it for just $30,000: I'd buy a Dino GT4, drive it, and then crash it myself. Boom. Art. If the artist had bought it and crashed it to make a statement then, sure, why not? Art! Not art I'd particularly love, but there would at least be an ethos.
This is why we can't have nice things.
National Public Radio, better known as NPR, better known as the arbiters of everything in the universe that is cool to yuppies, is the latest news outlet to chime in and say that the American love affair with the automobile is over. Their reasoning? Because of declining NASCAR ratings, of course.
You may read that and say, "Patrick, that's insane. What a foolish and deeply flawed argument." But you're wrong. Who are we mere mortals to question NPR?
Perhaps I shouldn't say NPR as a whole. Rather, it's one of their commentators, longtime sportswriter Frank Deford, who makes this claim in a rambling diatribe not unlike the kind you hear when your mom guilt trips you into calling that one lonely old relative she stuck in a nursing home. (I didn't know NPR covered sports either. Isn't that nice?)
Weighing in on Wednesday's Morning Edition, Deford links the decline of NASCAR's ratings to the supposed greater American loss of interest in cars, as well as the very concept of speed itself.
As Deford condescendingly relegates the sport back to an audience of "older white Dixie working class" fans, he claims that both ESPN and TNT "took a look at the down-graphs and downscale demographics and didn't even bother to bid on the new TV contracts."
Ignore, please, the fact that he's only half right — yes, NASCAR ratings are down, but while ESPN and TNT won't broadcast the races past the 2015 season, FOX and NBC will take over after that.
Ignore also the logic center in your brain that asks if NASCAR is in such trouble, why would two huge networks bother to sign billion-dollar deals to air it? Shhh, hush your tiny, potentially Dixie class brain; NPR is talking.
The greater issue here is that Deford says NASCAR's downward spiral is linked to the loss of interest in cars.
To so many younger Americans, the car is just another appliance, like a refrigerator or a popcorn machine.
He's absolutely right. As you all now, at no other point in history did a majority of drivers look at their cars as appliances. Everyone in the 1960s did smoky burnouts in their GTOs because GTOs were all anyone drove. There were no boring cars until the Millennials came along.
Speaking of the Millennials, Deford has some tiresome, I mean, time-tested wisdom to share on that front as well:
The famous expression — "the American love affair with the car." If there's any apparatus Americans have a love affair with now, it's the cell phone, and its new, improved variations thereof. Hey, that's why we have people texting and driving! Just driving is so passé.
Ah, yes. Cell phones. Of course. It's always those.
But Deford then argues that it's not just racing, but speed we've fallen out of love with. He blames the video games, as people often do, for taking the excitement out of horse racing and even track events and Olympic swimming.
In the complex world Americans have grown up where everything is fast, where speed is blithely accepted and devalued. Speed records used to be stylish, in cars, planes boats — and now that's ho-hum. The Amazing Race on television is probably our most popular race now.
[...] A car? A car is a comfortable container full of FM and DVD and AC and GPS. Do we really want to watch cars anymore? Cars are for taking you somewhere, like to a game.
You hear that, America? The dream is over. You can all go home now. Frank Deford has called it — the death of speed. Time of death, October 30, in the Year of Our Lord 2013. There's no glory in speed records or the SCCA race Matt and Travis and I went to this weekend where ordinary folks drove their hearts out because they love racing at its most honest, grassroots level.
There's no sense in modifying your car, going for a spirited drive now and again, talking about cars with your buddies, or even reading websites like this one. There's no point in dreaming about that fast and gorgeous machine you've always wanted.
Turn in your car keys for your smartphone and your PlayStation controller. It's all over now. We did our best. How do we know it's true? For Frank Deford has said it to be so.
Thanks, NPR, for clearing that up for us.
Fuck you, FIA. You fined Red bull €25,000 for Sebastian Vettel doing donuts in celebration of his fourth F1 world championship. So now Red Bull did donuts on the Burj Al Arab helipad, 689 feet above Dubai.
Vettel didn't light 'em up this time. It was the much more expendable David Coulthard, who would protected in the case of a fall by his massive chin.
Hard to top that.
(Hat tip to Braking Bad!)
Spoiler Alert: Now that the race has aired in the US, I feel comfortable saying congratulations to Sebastian Vettel. With his win today at the Indian … Read…
Canadian police have recovered a silver 2011 Heritage Edition Grand Sport Corvette that was busted right through a Penticton, BC dealership window a la Nick Cage's Gone In 60 Seconds.
Though it is not reported how the thief entered the dealership in the first place (brick?) or started the vehicle, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police received reports of broken glass and a car speeding away from Huber GMC around midnight on October 24th.
Cops sighted the Corvette on Highway 97 and clocked it at 136 MPH, at which point they deemed pursuit too dangerous. Not that their horses could have kept up (obligatory RCMP joke).
After two days of road locks and searching, the car was located at a residence in Surry, BC. No word yet on what, if any, other cars were written on a list in blacklight-chalk.
Hat tip to Eric Hutchinson!
Photo Credit: Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The new BMW 2-Series. It looks good, it's priced well enough, and it has impressive specs. But is the M235i really worthy of that M badge?
This video certainly may not be from the most unbiased source in the world — BMW of the UK — but it indicates the answer to that question is probably a solid "yes." That's good news.
This hot lap features DTM driver Andy Priaulx as he hammers the M235i around Thruxton Race Circuit, said to be Britain's fastest race track. He says it's quite well balanced with plenty of power and exceptional brakes. The turbo inline six sounds pretty good too, even if it's a bit muted here.
This was fun to watch. More, please.
Hat tip to Micky
Though it sounds crazy to the average person who still thinks electric vehicles are Rascals and golf carts, electrics make fantastic drag racers. We've covered them here plenty, and I've even tried it. But they're by no means perfect, for the same reasons as all electric cars: batteries and infrastructure. But I have a plan.
First, let's go over why electric cars can make such wonderful dragsters — there's three main reasons, and they're all torque. Except the middle one, which is torque as well. Electric motors make their full twisting-power right from a dead stop. The moment you step on the potentiometer pretending to be a gas pedal, that electric motor will twist those tires with full force, unlike a combustion motor, which needs to get to an optimal RPM to deliver full torque. That means, essentially, an electric car can take off incredibly fast. Which is what drag racing is all about.
The cars are well-suited to drag racing — so what's the problem?
The problem, as I see it, is twofold: batteries and boredom. Let's start with batteries, the achilles' heel of all electric cars. Batteries are heavy, expensive, and just don't ever seem to hold as much energy as you'd like. On top of all that, they can be pretty severe fire hazards as well. For most electric cars, however, they're still the best thing we've got, and we're making the best of it.
But for a dragster, which only has to go, what, a 1/4 mile at a time, batteries and range don't have to be such an issue. You'd still need big battery packs in a dragster, since even though the distance is low, the power demands are still high. And those big battery packs mean weight and fire danger, two things drag racers want none of. So I say let's just get rid of them.
How? I'm glad you asked, disembodied voice in my head. It's nice of you to take an interest instead of always demanding I kill Disney characters. Here's how: since a dragster is only really designed to run on a drag strip, let's provide the electricity through the dragstrip itself!
It would be, essentially, like a slot car. Drag strips would have a central channel with conductive strips on opposite sides, which would receive a conductor from the dragster itself. Sort of like a streetcar-type setup, but with the conductor below instead of above. Or, again, a slot car.
The spring-loaded conductor would slot down in to the channel and send power to the dragster's motor. Ideally, it would be designed in such a way as to shower sparks periodically (safely, but this fits in with the second part of the solution). Without the burden of batteries, the dragsters could be built very light and with massive, power-hungry motors.
Eliminating the battery packs would also drop the costs of building and maintaining a dragster significantly, opening up the sport to many who would normally never be able to participate.
Power would be supplied by normal municipal power systems, which, if those are operating via clean, renewable sources, would make drag racing a very eco-friendly affair. Also, when decelerating, the dragsters could employ regenerative braking techniques to put energy back into the system via the same conductors.
Now, for the second part of the problem, we have to think less rationally. See, half the fun of drag racing is the noise, the smoke, the smells, the flames shot out of exhausts, all that good stuff. Electric car drag racing as it stands now is too clean, too quiet, too... civilized. I've seen electric car drag races that felt positively librarian.
For electric car drag racing to really take off, it needs to get a bit showier and more ridiculous. There's no smoke or loud exhaust booms or (ideally) fire, but electric motors and electricity does have its share of powerful, loud, and thrilling tricks. Sparks, for example. Showers of sparks are at least as good as clouds of exhaust, and the conductors can certainly provide those.
But the real trick here will be to up the showmanship ante a lot, and the way to do that is with an old reliable friend, the Tesla Coil. Lightning. Imagine a drag race, but with massive amounts of lightning.
A Tesla Coil would be mounted halfway down the dragstrip, and would be shooting sparks and arcs and all that. The dragsters would be equipped with standing conductors, so as soon as they approached, massive bolts of lightning would strike the cars as they sped by. The driver and sensitive electronics would be contained within the dragster's roll cage, which would act as a Faraday cage in this context to keep everything safe.
There'd be huge cracks and booms of the arcs striking, there'd be that electrical ozone smell, and of course the visuals of the arcing electricity — it would have it all.
Admit it — it would look incredible.
Also, driver skills would be very similar to what's required with conventional drag racing, with perhaps an extra element thrown in: it would be possible, if you wavered too much from your line, to unplug your car from the power channel.
This would mean loss of power, and, possibly, the race, though a skilled driver may be able to correct and re-enter the power channel. How this would happen would depend a lot on the design of the conductor system, and would also have a safety benefit as well: if a driver loses control, the car is automatically cut off from power, and it should be clear how much that could help mitigate accident severity.
So let's break it down: extremely fast dragsters, potentially much less environmental impact, plenty of auditory and visual stimuli, safety benefits, and fairly reasonable costs of entry. What's not to like about this form of electric drag racing?
I'm sure you'll tell me below, but I'd still love to see this happen. Maybe my pals at Irwindale will be willing to take the leap? They already have experience with racecars that shoot sparks.
Minitruckin' isn't en voguelike it was back when Tigra and Bunny professed their love for cars that go boom, but maybe Daihatsu should rekindle that flame with this cabover mini-hauler concept, the FC凸DECK.
I mean, once concept car won't bring a whole budget customization craze back. That's very clear. The question we should ask ourselves is, maybe it should?
This impossibly-named FC凸DECK is, if anything, properly mini. It is:
Power is unknown as the car sports a hybrid drive system, which may or may not be powered by the hopes and dreams of desperate Daihatsu engineers. No matter, I still deeply want one. I'd stick a hot tub in the back, what about you?
It seems like just yesterday I was at Tower Records, flipping past a dozen Mini Truckin' magazines to get to the lone copy of EVO at the back of … Read…
If you're learning way more about property auctions than you ever needed to know by reading all of the recent Packard Plant news, you're not alone. After a Texas woman bailed on the wasteland, now its second-place bidder is having trouble paying up.
Bill Hults, who presented a plan earlier to revamp the site and entered into a tentative deal with Wayne County to purchase the property before it went to auction, is that second-place bidder. Today is his deadline. But just like before when he missed his first deadline, it's likely he'll miss his second, according to the Freep.
Sigh.
Hults was in second place to Jill Van Horn, who now returns to her quiet life in suburban Texas practicing medicine on humans for money. But before she disappeared into the night, she released a statement (error-free and not written under the apparent influence of opiates) to The Detroit News:
"We are serious about purchasing other properties in Detroit," Van Horn wrote. “All of this is being proposed in an effort to help revitalize a city that really needs it."
They say beggars can't be choosers but I think I speak for all of Detroit when I say nah.
There is a tiny, miniscule glimmer of hope, however. The third-place bidder is an actual, credible, proven, not-appearing-to-be-shady developer from Peru who has said he is ready and willing to take ownership of the plant. I hope this is resolved soon so I can write about something else finally that the city of Detroit can move forward.
[Photo via Getty]
On a slippery half pavement/half dirt track, what's fastest: a 4WD Audi sedan, a FWD Toyota Coupe, or a pair of RWD two-doors, a RX7 and a Porsche 911?
The question of which layout isn't exactly settled with this 1991 race, but on the tight course it's surprising that the front-drive Celica hangs right onto the four-wheel-drive Audi 90. That is, until it spins.
I think the only conclusion we can make is that vintage rallycross is awesome.
The Fiat 500 Abarth's ultra-loud exhaust note, brisk acceleration and pint size make the car exceedingly good at scaring the crap out of your passengers. Since today is Halloween, the holiday devoted to terror, an Abarth jack-o-lantern seems appropriate — but you can do it with just about any logo.
Fiat's website has instructions has instructions on how to cut your own Abarth "Jack-Yo-Lantern," which should be ideal for showing all the little trick-or-treaters in your neighborhood that you're serious about raucous Italian city cars that think they're Ferraris.
These instructions tell you not to cut all the way through, but to just carve the skin off the pumpkin. Obviously, this doesn't just work for the Abarth logo. You can carve in any car company's logo as long as you have a black-and-white version to stencil with.
Here's a few of our favorites below. Are you making any car company jack-o-lanterns this Halloween? If you do, show us some pics in the comments!
One car. One driver. One track. Welcome to Jalopnik's RING TESTED on /DRIVE.
Sometime last summer, Matt Hardigree phoned me up and says he’s got a great idea for a new series for a Jalopnik feature on /DRIVE. Now the last time Hardigree came to me with a “great idea” I ended up in a Mexican jail with a three-legged donkey named Frank and a one-eyed stripper named Lucinda. Or was the stripper named Frank?
Me: So what's this “great idea” of yours?
Matt: I am going to get you a bunch of really awesome cars and I want you to drive them around the Nürburgring and film it!
Me: Suuuure, right Matt. So they need to up the dosage on your meds again. Put your wife on the phone so I can have her take you in for evaluation.
Matt: I’m serious. I’ve all ready got a bunch of cars lined up for you to test!
Me: .......................................
Matt: Umm Hello?
Me: I love you man. (Sniff)
So with that I am happy to announce the premiere of RING TESTED, where I get to live out every gearhead's fantasy and get to drive some of the most awesome cars in the world around the infamous Nurburgring Nordschleife a.k.a. The Green Hell. All for your viewing pleasure.
We’ve got a pretty sweet lineup of cars already shot and ready for /DRIVE’s maestros to work their magic on. There's an ABT Audi R8 GTR, Montune Ford Focus RS, BAC Mono, and one of my all time fav’s: Lancia Delta Intregrale Evo 2. But first up I get to turn some laps in Ferrari’s future classic Ferrari 458 Italia. Spoiler Alert: I do NOT die a fiery death.
Since Ferrari is not about to lend us one of their $350k cars to some American racer to abuse at the Nürburgring (no matter how many VLN class wins he has) I decided to give my buddy Ron Simmons at RSRNurburg a call to see if I could somehow talk him into letting me borrow one of his fleet of track-prepped rental cars that he has sitting around in his garage. After a few bottles glasses of vino I managed to con convince him to let me take the Ferrari 458 out for a few laps.
Now that I had car in hand my second task was to find some time where I could get on track to do some filming. One of the little known facts is the the guys that run the 'Ring are not all that thrilled with multitudes of drivers filming their antics during the touristenfahrten (meaning tourist drives not tourist farts just in case you were wondering).
Their stance on in car cameras has relaxed slightly this year but try mounting a camera anywhere outside the car and you will find out how intimidating it is to be yelled at in German with a line of cars behind you all waiting to go on track. So the only way to get on track and do any filming is to get on track a day when it is closed to the public.
As much as I tried to convince Hardigree that the best option was to rent the entire Nurburgring (with the helicopter for overhead shots) for me to do my laps he inferred that half of his budget for this project was used up on his lunch today at the 99¢ menu at Taco Bell.
So a quick call to my buddy, Darren Langeveld who runs the popular Destination Nurburgring track days secured us a spot in one of his always sold out events. However, with this came a plea not to go into racer mode and terrorize his other trackday customers.
This ended up being no problem as Ron Simmons was now sobering up from our previous nights “wine tasting” and was basically implored the same thing as Darren. So no crossed-up, late braking, dive bombs on unsuspecting Miatas. Check.
Actually, after talking with Matt some more what we decided to do was because all of the traffic out on track would make setting a quick laptime all but impossible was to make this a road test (track test if you will) of all these various cars and give you guys my impression of what it is like to drive these cars hard on the greatest track in the world.
I'll be sometimes close to the limit and sometimes not, but either way I'll be driving it hard enough to let you see (and hear) what these cars are capable of.
As the sound of Ferrari’s V8 is so awesome at speed we decided to we wouldn’t do a voice over and that would just point out various interesting bits in this post for you to look for.
With that intro out of the way lets get on with the show.
:25 Dottenger Hohe Max speed on the circuit. Fast cars will be 180mph plus with slow cars entering the track from the tourist entrance at 50mph!
1:00 T-13 Lots of Radicals out today. Very quick and very hard to see. It’s hard not to think of them as rolling speed bumps
2:00 Hocheichen Track prepped E43 M3. Lots of these out always. They seem to be the favored track car here. Very quick if driven well. As this is my first lap feeling out the Ferrari I thought it best to let him by even though I had to back way off the throttle in order to avoid re-passing him right away.
6:00 Klostertal Ok maybe I should have kept him behind me. This section is usually flat or flat with a bit of a lift for the kink Kesselchen.
6:45 Karussell This shows how rough the Karussell really is. Insanely hard on all cars but especially race cars.
8:40 Surfer’s Paradise I have no idea what car this is.
9:50 Dotenger Hohe The front straight is very bumpy at speed as well. My foot actually bounced off the pedal here
9:58 Bridge Still reached 186 mph before lifting for slower traffic under the bridge.
10:30 T-13 Waiting for my camera car to catch up. Seems that 350 hp in the Focus RS is not enough for the Ferrari.
11:38 Flugplatz As stiff as the Ferraris suspension is look at the way it floats over the jump here.
12:00 Aremberg My camera car is being driven quickly by AMG Mercedes test driver Uli Baumert who does 20,000km at the Ring and yet the Ferrari is so much faster everywhere.
12:26 Fuchsrohre One of my favorite sections of track however the 458 is a bit skittish through here. There are a lot of bumps and camber changes at high speeds that the car doesn’t seem to like. The front end is very pointy and direct which helps in the lower speed corners but makes it very knifes edge in the high speed portion of the track.
12:44 Adenauer Forst Skyline, hehe love it!
14:20 Ex- Muhle Look at how quickly the Ferrari coming off the steep up hill corner. The car feels super planted and can use all the extra grip that the massive elevation change gives you through here
15:30 Klostertal GetSpeed Porsche GT3 Cup Car as raced in the VLN. The Ferrari is quick but no match for a purpose built race car.
16:00 Karussell Rush hour at the Karussell. This is what makes setting a fast lap here almost impossible
16:20 Hohe Acht Catching slower traffic here is tough as the track is very narrow and windy through this section. It takes two cars cooperating to make a pass happen.Slower cars can hold up much faster cars all the way to Brunnchen if the want as the GTi proves.
18:40 Dottenger Hohe Tough corner coming on to the straight. It falls away from you as you get to the apex so you get big understeer through here but as you exit the track flattens out and you get all your grip back. The Ferrari is massively stable through here and you can use the throttle to control the understeer through the corner.
And thats a wrap for our first episode of RING TESTED. And see once again I did NOT die a fiery death!
As I’ve said before stay tuned, we have more in store.
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Robb Holland is a professional race car driver who currently competes in the VLN series at the Nürburgring and will run a full season of the BTCC next year.
A man named James Kirk will be the captain of the $4bn USS Zumwalt, the first of America's new stealth destroyers. No, I am not making this up.
The Navy just launched the first of three Zumwalt-class destroyers last week, as stated in this announcement. The ships have radar-reflecting hulls, advanced weapons systems for land and near-land (littoral) attacks, as well as an uncanny resemblance to the CSS Virginia from the Civil War.
The Navy also announced that the captain of the first of these Zumwalts is Captain James Kirk, who looks like this and probably talks like a normal person not. Like. How. The guy. On Star Trek. Does.
See? Totally not a fictional character.
Let me conclude by saying that the USS Zumwalt is the biggest Destroyer America has ever built at 610 feet long and it's equipped with guided missiles. That's not quite as good as the NCC-1701 Enterprise, but it's something.
(Hat tip to PaulJones!)
I know it's super-advanced and all, with lasers and holographic cloaking and food repilcators and whatever, but the USS Zumwalt sure as hell… Read…
"The Toronto Police service is now in possession of a video digital file" with "images consistent with those reported in the press," Chief Bill Blair just said at a news conference being streamed here. In other words: The cops have the Rob Ford crack tape. Blair says he's "disappointed."
Rob Ford, Toronto's conservative mayor, is a wild lunatic given to making bizarre racist pronouncements and randomly slapping refrigerator… Read…
At 278 mph in the standing mile, the 2,000 horsepower M2K Motorsports Ford GT is one seriously fast American car. Do you know of one faster?
Despite the very straightforward term, 'fastest' is a bit vague. For the issue of this question, it means 'highest top speed.' Your 'Ring run videos are appreciated, but not the most relevant.
So what is the fastest American car ever built? Give some proof of its speed and a further justification with your answer.
(QOTD is your chance to answer the day's most pressing automotive questions and experience the opinions of the insightful insiders, practicing pundits and gleeful gearheads that make up the Jalopnik commentariat. If you've got a suggestion for a good "Question Of the Day" send an email to tips at jalopnik dot com.)P
Photo Credit: Gearhead Flicks
I'm sure the 1970 Paris Motor Show was worth visiting for all the French goodness it had to offer, but the most desirable piece of brilliance must have been the Espada show car, specially prepared for the event by Bertone.
This particular Paris Motor Show presented the Porsche 914 hatchback built by Heuliez to the public, so being bored really wasn't an option once you stepped inside. Lamborghini wanted to get some attention for the Series 2 Espada, a car that replaced the original after just two years. The S2 got more power, an all new dashboard and steering wheel and optional power steering for the ultimate grand touring experience.
Still, to make sure everybody was listening, Bertone jammed a television, hi-fi stereo and a drinks compartment at the back.
Flexible display? No. It was angled.
Photo credit: pkabel
It's that time of the year again when kids dress up as something spooky and ask total strangers for candy. But why let them have all the fun? Adults can express their Halloween spirit too by decorating their vehicles, and these ten might just be the best tools for the job.
This is a very complex one. The Beetle is supposed to be a bug. But this was turned into a whale, with a tail. What it has is almost like a ducktail, but that would make it a Porsche. Which is what every Volkswagen ever wants to be. Twisted.
Suggested By: Pessimippopotamus, Photo Credit: Martijn Nijenhuis
Not even close mate, but the effort deserves some respect. bainelaker was there to witness the miracle:
Ahh! I've seen that car in person! NO BUENO!
Suggested By: Takuro Spirit & a Trans Am-ESS, Photo Credit: Jalopnik/Ebay
Did it ever cross your mind that the original Mustang was way too big? Are you a fan of the Mazda Miata, but not the Japanese styling? For $13,000 plus taxes (not including the donor car), the all-steel M1stang is your answer.
Suggested By: burglar can't heart click anything, Photo Credit: M1stang
The grinning cat from My Neighbor Totoro can run, fly, bounce and hop across forests and lakes to reach its destination. The perfect way to travel, not just for Halloween. DISCLAIMER: The car costume version might not fly or bounce.
Suggested By: POD, Photo Credit: brookpeterson
How to turn a boring Toyota compact into something more fun? Add yellow and big ears to make it look like a Pokemon. Perfect.
Suggested By: Arch Duke Maxyenko, Great Job, Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The ECTO-1 is a wonderful Cadillac ambulance turned into the number one ghost transporter in the universe. And look, here's an original one you could help save!
Suggested By: Spiegel, Oppo City Gym Leader, Photo Credit: relax.
This is one of the reasons why it's getting more and more difficult to find an unmolested BMW E30. But in this case, we can forgive the owner, because this Homer LeMons car is awesome.
Suggested By: Braking Bad
Basically, anything Speedycop has ever built qualifies in this round. The Spirit of Lemons was built from a Cessna, and it works.
Suggested By: BigNSlow, Photo Credit: Benjamin Preston
NASA could have saved billions just by looking for a Reliant. That shape, the lightweight body, everything points at one direction: Upwards.
Suggested By: LyleLanley
Manifold engines got this one right:
For Halloween? There can be only one E-Type Hearse...
Suggested By: manifold engines, wanting for time, Photo Credit: IMCDB
Welcome back to Answers of the Day - our daily Jalopnik feature where we take the best ten responses from the previous day's Question of the Day and shine it up to show off. It's by you and for you, the Jalopnik readers. Enjoy!
Top Photo Credit: masarutt