Anyone who has watched Harvey Keitel and/or Nicholas Cage chew up the scenery in the two “Bad Lieutenant” movies knows how delightful it can be to be a truly evil policeman. The problem, of course, is that most cops aren’t anything like that. Officer Derrick Saunders, on the other hand, does all the fun stuff that us civvies like to think we’d do with the protection of the badge. When McDonald’s was a little slow with his order, he allegedly put a pistol in someone’s face about it. Come on! You’d do the same thing, wouldn’t you? And when he felt like having a drink and busting along at one hundred and forty-three awesome miles per hour, he just went ahead and did it!

Now, thanks to TTAC reader dfp21, we have an update on the kind of swift justice that the system has meted out to Officer Saunders.

(Read More…)

This video, which was sent to me by a particularly reclusive Canadian cyclist, is forty-one minutes long. It was made by a Fisker Karma owner and it contains an exhaustive review of the Karma’s infotainment system. If you aren’t in the market for a Karma, it is virtually unwatchable.

If you are in the market for a Karma, it’s perhaps the most important video you will ever see.

(Read More…)

If you’re depressed about the current state of your Laguna Seca laptimes, don’t read any further: Marc Gene has set a new “unofficial” record for the iconic hillside track. How does his time compare to that of mere mortals and/or members of the TTAC crew?

(Read More…)

It’s easy to see the two Japanese luxury brands as Wahlberg brothers. Lexus is Marky Mark, the one which started off by flexing some low-priced knock-off S-Class clones and has gone on to make big bucks, receive critical acclaim. and fantasize in public about stopping 9/11 while respectful pop-culture writers whistle in awed approval. Infiniti is Donnie, who started out very stylishly but quickly became B-List despite popping out the occasional respected performance.

Part of the reason for that prestige gap between Lexus and Infiniti has to be what you see in this photo, which I snapped on the way back from lunch today. We have two vehicles here which are ostensibly from different brands and certainly don’t share any major dimensional commonalities or mechanical components, but I’ll be darned if they don’t look like the same car to most people.

The Sentra and G37 aren’t the only Infiniti/Nissan efforts which are totally different under the skin but very similar in the metal. Think first-gen Murano and FX, for example. Lexus does it the other way ’round, creating visually different vehicles from the Camry platform. Who’s right? It’s hard to say, but it’s easy to see that buyers prefer the approach where you put lipstick on a pig to the one where you dress a BMW like a Sentra.

In his uneven but interesting book Guitar: An American Life, Tim Brookes notes that acoustic players “pick up a guitar in order to meet college girls but wind up talking to other middle-aged men about their fingernails.” I started racing so I could put my merciless, Edward-Green-shod foot on the neck of other competitors in the twilight zone that separates victory from certain death, but I’ve wound up spending my weekends telling other middle-aged men to unwind their steering wheels at corner exit.

This past weekend at Summit Point’s Shenandoah course, I preached long sermons from the Book of Corner Exit to three of those middle-aged men: a novice in a Panamera Turbo, a prodigy in a C6 Vette, and my own crumbling self, piloting a Coyote-powered Mustang GT in an ultimately futile attempt to outpace a colleague in a new 991 Carrera S. Together we pursued the discipline of the Quality Exit, with varying results. To misquote the poet: “O you who turn the wheel and look to chiclets, Gentile or Jew, click the jump to find out how we did.”

(Read More…)

Hey, remember Delphi Powertrain? Once upon a time, it was part of GM, and it developed advanced concepts in — you guessed — powertrains. Since it failed to provide employment to enough grinning MBAs, however, it was shucked aside and cored-out like many other productive parts of the Artist Currently Known As Old General Motors.

Turns out, however, that the venture-capitalized folks working there are still making interesting things happen, and we aren’t talking about the V8-6-4 this time, either.

(Read More…)

Perhaps inspired by my recent TTAC fiction piece The little death, I was idly shopping for 360 Modenas on eBay this morning when I came across this little gem. Obviously, it’s not a real 360… but it’s not THAT bad, right?

(Read More…)

Welcome to Two Minutes Hate, in which we, the TTAC staff, will choose some hapless writer and/or industry person and then flog that person with all the verbal viciousness we can summon up. Complaints about “negativity”, “hatefulness”, and “substandard caviar served during the press dinner” are not welcome here. This is Two Minutes Hate. Thank you — JB

Did you know that there is an “ascetic populism [added to] to the inherent machismo of the engine-revving manual transmission”? My mother, who was a Palm Beach deb prior to driving a lifetime’s worth of stick-shift MGs, Honda, Nissan trucks, and Mercurys even while suffering from advanced sarcoidosis, apparently never got the memo on that. Same for my ex-wife, who used to flog an SRT-4 around Nelson Ledges once a month or so until the vacuum hoses performed their inevitable high-boost seppuku. Come to think of it, the number of women who have daily-driven a manual-transmission must be in the hundreds of millions, particularly given the fact that many developing markets still don’t have slushbox volume models.

In today’s edition of Salon, however, David Sirota attempts to make the case that driving a stick shift is, like, totes manly. He devotes a few paragraphs to how he “can’t let go of [his] love for the stick” using language that wouldn’t be out of place in the inevitable “tween” edition of Fifty Shades Of Grey. Having convinced himself, at least, that choosing a particular transmission is just about as manly as dunking over Akeem The Dream while simultaneously using one’s toes to digitally violate Rihanna, Sirota then comes to the inevitable conclusion: stick shifts are bad, mmmkay?

(Read More…)

It is this power, combined with amazing precision—its tolerances are measured in thousandths of an inch—that gives the Fifty its far-reaching utility. It has made essential parts for industrial gas turbines, helicopters, and spacecraft. Every manned U.S. military aircraft now flying uses parts forged by the Fifty. So does every commercial aircraft made by Airbus and Boeing.

So says The Atlantic in a fascinating short piece about the rehabilitation of the Alcoa Fifty. In one of those examples of government-industry collaboration that twists the knickers of libertarians and ultra-liberals alike, the United States Government sponsored a “Heavy Press Program” after World War II so American industry could forge massive aircraft parts. The presses were paid for with public money then used by private companies such as Alcoa. Having been brought back to life after a shutdown, the Fifty will now make parts for the Joint Strike Fighter and operate for at least thirty more years.

Russia has a 75,000-ton press, and the Chinese are working on an 80K monster. Without a press of the Fifty’s scale, it is impossible for an individual nation to build large-scale aircraft without outside assistance.

So… if large-scale government intervention and engineering assistance has made the Jet Age possible, why couldn’t something similar be done for American industry?

(Read More…)

“On a clear day,” John Z once famously wrote, “you can see General Motors.” The day has yet to come, however, when the works of GM will be made plain to the mortal man. Consider, if you will, the bizarre story of the “Theta” platform in the United States. It’s a huge success; the Equinox and Cadillac SRX (which, we are assumed, is totes different from the Equinox, but we will will discuss that contention below) combined for about a quarter-million sales in 2011. It’s a perfect example of the way GM is supposed to work nowadays: there are two platform variants with very little visual similarity combining to provide high volume in one model and high profit in another. Theta is NAFTA-friendly, with the cheapie being made in Ontario and the luxury model in Mexico. The two models are generally well-reviewed. The obscurity, stupidity, and thrown-darts decision-making which used to characterize the General are nowhere to be seen. What’s to criticize, even here at TTAC, where we typically cast a jaundiced eye on the RenCen fire drill?

Well, there is the minor issue of a third Theta, which is as perfect an example of GM’s undiminished ability to screw things up as the other Thetas are of the company’s ability to get things right.

(Read More…)

“…as some men try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from an inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a passage.”

So Johnson wrote of Pope. It’s always best to face the truth and do one’s best with it. Thus, in this TTAC-reader-contributed image, we have a FIAT Seicento — the absolute exemplar of “crappy Euro commuter” — and, rather than a Valkyrie or guy with a Fast and Furious sword on the side, we have the humble snail. Slow is good! Ask any hipster.

One of the most colorful figures in American automotive history is gone. According to multiple sources, Carroll Shelby, International announced today that Mr. Shelby died yesterday, in Baylor Hospital (Dallas, TX).

Mr. Shelby will forever be remembered for the Cobra and Shelby Mustang cars of the Sixties, but he remained surprisingly relevant well into the Nineties, inspiring efforts like the Shelby Charger, Shelby Lancer, and Dodge Viper. Although his final years were beset by scandal and an increasingly Byzantine series of lawsuits against everyone from “cloners” to his own fan club, the man’s contributions to the art, science, and passion of hauling ass in affordable cars are undeniable.

Rest in peace, Mr. Shelby.

I’m not the type of person to, you know, name things. Well, I did name my 1980 Marquis Brougham “The Love Train”, thus expressing a sort of pre-hipster irony, and I also call my emerald quilt-top Godin LGX-SA the “Green Destiny” in definitely non-ironic homage to the sword in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. Those are the proverbial exceptions which prove the rule.

After a few weeks of riding my ’75 CB550, however, I’ve decided that she needs a name. Oh yes, this bike is a “she”. She is cranky when it’s cold in the mornings. She is temperamentally carbureted, responding to a quick roll of the throttle with a sullen shudder. She spits raw fuel all over my business-casual Zanellas when we lean hard in the turns. And when she is hot, she is too hot to touch. So she needs a name.

My senses of sentiment and propriety combine to determine that she can’t be named after any woman whom I’ve known, or even spoken to, recently. Instead, she should have a name that makes me wistful, sad, and nostalgic. You know, the whole recherches du temps perdu thang.

(Read More…)

Watch a GT-R and a Bugeye Sprite rip slaloms and meet a girl who can outdrive you in this newest video from the SCCA Solo crowd!

I’m no Jen Friel, but it’s nice to know that I can influence the auto industry in some small degree. Case in point: Just two days after I suggest that Cadillac reclaim and reauthenticate its heritage by placing one of GM’s world-class V-8 engines in every ATS built, Cadillac has announced that they will be putting a V-8 in the new XTS flagship.

No, wait. I’m reading this wrong.

Turns out they are just throwing in a “free” iPad.

You know, like Hyundai did a couple years back.

Yup.

Standard of the World.

(Read More…)