Illustrator Christian Pierce created a sweet animation of the process of drawing hot rods on his Nintendo DS. Inspiring.
Drawing 99 Deadly Sleds
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Volvos for Tough Times
Sundays NY Times had an Op-Ed titled “Volvos from Florida” where the author explains that “My husband, Rob, and I are riding out the recession in a 2000 Volvo wagon we bought last summer from a man named Gary Dunne.”
Riding out the recession in an 8 year old car? Wow, that’s roughing it. I imagine a family of Okies trudging across the dust bowl in their well worn XC70, looking for any newspaper in need of an editorial, or just a caption writer.
Storage in the Stinger
Somehow the Pontiac Stinger never got manufactured. I guess people didn’t need an auto that was “more a condo than a car”. From this video, we see it had more nooks and crannies than a pair of Old Navy cargo pants. The neon blob was going to come with not ONE, but TWO on-board vacuum cleaners… and a garden hose. Huh?
I think the nuclear radiation in the green paint mutated the original Stinger into the Pontiac Aztek.
The Light Was Yellow, Sir
A few months ago I got a speeding ticket from a robot camera and was ambivalent. On one hand, I knew I was speeding and was glad not to get stopped and have a notch taken off my license. On the other hand, it sucks to get ticketed by a camera.
Red light cameras are probably more common than automatic speed traps though. theNewspaper.com has a great collection of articles examining how longer yellow light cycle times reduce accidents and violations.
For example, in Virginia in 1999 traffic engineers determined and set a safe yellow light time for an intersection on Rt. 50 at 5.5 seconds. A year later a contract for red light cameras was signed with Lockheed Martin and suddenly the county reduced the cycle time to 4 seconds. In the year it took to install the cameras there was a dramatic increase in crashes. When the cameras were eventually installed they generated steady revenue and Lockheed Martin was able to compare accident rates after installation against the artificially inflated rates of the previous year.
When Virginia increased the cycle time back to 5.5 seconds, however, average monthly violations dropped from 250 to 20. The intersections were safer, but Fairfax County wouldn’t collect nearly as much revenue.
Recently Norcross, Georgia canceled a contract with the red light company LaserCraft because revenue from tickets couldn’t support the cost of the cameras used to issue the tickets. The Georgia General Assembly had issued a bill requiring intersections with cameras to increase their yellow light times by one second. Two cameras in Norcross went from issuing fifteen tickets a day to three. Instead of generating $260k in annual citations, the city would be sinking $145k into costs associated with running the cameras.
The financial incentives for municipalities to game the system must be tremendous. At what point does the increase in safety override the benefit to the bottom line? For yellow light cameras, it’s an imperceptible fraction of a second.
What’s the Differential?
I spend an unhealthy amount of time watching car accident footage on YouTube. This one is SFW though, and even the driver thinks it’s funny… if expensive. Too much torque and a few loose bolts and you too could lose the wheels off your bitchin’ Camaro.
Marge Simpson Drives a Red Brick
Since the Simpsons just revamped their opening sequence after 20 years, I figured I’d pull up this 3 year old video out of Europe that reconceives the intro using live action. Marge winds up in a faded red 240, rather than the bulbous wagon from the cartoon.
Saab vs Volvo
… and Saab splits from Detroit first.
Truth About Cars has a great guest post from Stein X Leikanger documenting a marketing meeting during the continuing destruction of the “soul” of Saab under GM.
GM wanted Cross-Platform Synergies, and didn’t pay much attention to the individual brands. Just look at www.gm.com – I hate that place – they still think there is such a thing as a GM-car, at the expense of the individual brands, and they’re never going to abandon that mindset.
I wasn’t familiar with the “Saab versus…” ad campaign he mentions in the post, but a search for “Saab vs Volvo” pulls up this awesome clip from “Scorched Heat” of a 740t being chased by 900 series cop cars.
Ford to Sell Volvo? (Part 3)
From TTAC today:
Either Ford gets a signature from a willing buyer or Volvo will be terminated… Ford is reported to be asking between $3b to $4b for Volvo, much less than the $6.4b they paid.
And the potential suitors? China’s Chery. China’s Changan. China’s Dongfeng.
This is a far cry from the Swedish nationalization rumors that were flying around late last year. Whatever happens it looks like it’ll go down this month.
242 Drifts
IPD released its February Rear Wheel Drive newsletter and they feature a sweet 242 “drift car” from Rob Prince.
I upped the boost to 25psi at SE 6.0 in the fall of 2007, and dynoed 280whp and 305 wtq, in a dyno room that was 114 degrees F!!! It felt much faster, of course, but I had to wait for cooler weather back home to find out what it could really do. On 255 width street tires, I ran a 12.5 @ 116 in the quarter mile. Once I installed a set of Mickey Thompson ET Drag slicks, that dropped to a 11.8 @ 114 mph! It was so much fun to drive at that point, and kind of hairy to drive on the street.
I bet.