Tag: Cars

Summer Beach / Island Car

Drive Time

Here’s the setup:  you own a seaside cottage somewhere pleasant — the Carolinas, southern Oregon, Cayman Islands, Aruba… you get the picture.  Wherever it is, you spend lots of time there:  the whole summer, the whole winter, nine months of the year, whatever.

You have everything in place, but you need to buy a runaround car:  something to get to the beach, go downtown to fetch more booze or groceries, or to just drive to the local restaurants for lunch or dinner.  There’s no car rental available, so you’ll have to buy one (which works out cheaper anyway).

Fortunately, there’s a retail auto dealer in town called “Island Cars”, which will cater to your needs and store it for you and keep it in running order when you’re not there.  Here’s what’s in stock, all with low miles, in good condition etc.  Assume the prices are reasonable, and all within a couple hundred dollars of each other.

Austin Mini-Moke 

VW Thing

Fiat Jolly

And now the kicker (you knew there was going to be one, right?):

YOUR WIFE GETS TO CHOOSE IT, AND YOU HAVE NO VETO.

Which one do you think she’d go for?  (For the unmarried / widowed among you, go back in time and guess.)

Over-Abundance

Drive Time

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

“While in the vehicle on the Hagley Road for reasons not established he lost control causing it to veer across the road into the opposite carriageway.

“He failed to correct the deviation and subsequently collided on the front end with another vehicle.

“The level of impact physically lifted that into the air and backwards into a third vehicle, which forced that into a fourth vehicle, which hit a fifth vehicle.”

Defense:

“Essentially he has not driven the vehicle on more than two occasions.  He pressed the accelerator rather than brake and that caused him to lose control.”

Result:

To recap:

Inexperienced Driver + Speeding + 550hp = Massive Fuckup

I’ve said before that more than 250hp is excessive.  Proof of this comes in almost daily.

Now before anyone gets their knickers in a knot, thinking that I want overpowered car engines to be banned or something:  I don’t.

Before racing in Formula 1, drivers have to get what’s known as a “super license” — i.e. without one, they aren’t allowed to drive an F1 car, even for practice on a track.  The issuance is very strictly controlled, and even for F2 / Indycar champions, getting a super license is no pro forma  matter.

I would support legislation that any individual buying a street car with 250hp or over (or truck >350hp) should have to show a similar license before being allowed to take possession thereof.

Feel free to argue with me.

Uh Huh

Drive Time

Headline and sub-head for this article:

Quickest Pickup Trucks We’ve Ever Tested

The quickest on the list weighs more than 6800 pounds and is quicker than a Porsche 718 Cayman GT4

…right up until you get to take a corner, whereupon they more closely resemble the drum of a Whirlpool spin dryer.

They might do quite well in the Dakar Rally, actually, but they’d be up against some interesting competition:

…or however they say it in German.

Understand, I’m not saying that the auto companies shouldn’t make these behemoth speedsters — they must, because America — but people need to be careful about choosing their comparisons.

Rage Against

Bad News, Drive Time

…not the dying of the light, but against those who want the internal combustion engine gone from our lives.

In one of his more serious moments, Jeremy Clarkson reviewed the Aston Martin Vantage V12, and his conclusion was unexpectedly poignant (watch it first before reading on).

“…what I’m driving here is an ending.”

Now this:

Lamborghini has bid farewell to its incredible naturally-aspirated V12 engine, fitting the final two powerplants into a pair of one-off cars that pay testament to one of the great supercar motors.

The Invencible [no, that’s not a typo] coupe and Auténtica roadster are unique special editions modelled on the outgoing Aventador and will be the last 12-cylinder Lambos without any form of hybridisation, with the Italian marque set to embark on electrifying its model line-up in the coming years.

I’m not a Lambo fan, haven’t been one since the disappearance of the wonderful 400 GT:

But I love what Lamborghini cars have come to represent (even though I don’t much care for it, personally):  completely batty, speed-is-everything, balls-to-the wall acceleration, hopeless impracticality, outrageous body shape, even more outrageous prices, and all that.

And all that, as Clarkson observes, is going to be taken away from us by the bloodless killjoys among us because in these oh-so modern times, we’re not allowed to have fun [thousands of silly and who-cares reasons omitted because I don’t want to have an RCOB].

Even the Puritans of the Mayflower  would have said, “Stop that foolishness.”

But we can’t stop them.

I’m feeling even gloomier than Clarkson.

Changing Perspectives

Drive Time

Chris Harris asks the important question:

What happens when cars like the 296 appear is they cause geeks like me to stop and rethink what we had assumed were accepted ‘classes’ of cars. This happened to me when I was driving the 296 and following Paddy in the Pagani Huayra BC. Because he was driving something that looked like a livid insect, I assumed it would simply disappear in a straight line. It didn’t.

What we now have is an ‘entry level’ Ferrari that is as fast as one of the craziest hypercars ever sold. It’s a remarkable reset in the history of fast cars, yet it seems to have passed most people by. Perhaps that’s because these machines are so competent that people expect such things to happen. But I can’t quite get my head around the level of performance a 296 offers.

I have no idea where this is all going.  I’ve written before how cars’ performance has increased to the point where very few people can actually drive them without wrecking them — 600hp engines? FFS — and here’s Ferrari making a “street” car that could have won the Monza F1 Grand Prix race as little as ten years ago — or even more recently.

I should also point out that Longtime Buddy and Former Bandmate Knob is on the waiting list for a 296.  I hate him.