Snopes confirmed it a while ago, but some people just need to try the Lumber Jetta stunt for themselves. Last week, the MythBusters on Discovery Channel asked the immortal question: Can a MkIII Jetta carry a ton and a half of lumber?
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Posts By: Jack Baruth
Our friends at Jalopnik posted this unfortunate street-racing episode earlier today… but I happened to find it from another link, that of a Corvette crashing during a rather poorly-run autocross. Click the link for a few recent Corvette crash videos which have made it to the ‘Tube…
It seemed like such a wonderful idea: build a car that combined the styling of the Hyundai XG300, albeit without some of the more tasteful details of that model, and the interior of the thoroughly-reviled W220 S-Class, albeit with carved-wood buttons. Drop a twin-turbo V-12 and some retractable curtains in it. Paint it in two-tone schemes that wouldn’t have passed muster of a ’78 d’Elegance, and charge three hundred grand for it. Oh yeah, name it after a car nobody remembers, just to make absolutely certain there’s no brand equity. Thus was the Maybach born.
And this is how it dies: with a whimper, at the feet of the S-Klasse whose shadow it could never completely escape.
Never let it be said that the General has lost its touch for whimsy. Other manufacturers may simply introduce a new mid-sized sedan… but where’s the fun in that? Far better to build both the old car and the new car at the same time, sell them side-by-side, and make sure customers can only buy the new one in a highly-specialized trim level. That way, all that pesky new-car fever is thoroughly dissipated and the public has completely lost interest by the time the mainstream models are available.
Without further ado, then, here’s your 2013 Malibu, available solely in “eAssist” form for the first half of 2012.
When I wrote an article about the “Mosler Raptor GTR” last week, I certainly wasn’t expecting to start the proverbial tempest in the teapot… but that is exactly what happened. One week later, there have been threats of lawsuits, endless phone calls, multiple “do not forward” e-mails arriving from several players in the situation, and what amounted to an outright request that TTAC abandon its editorial integrity to serve the interests of one individual.
Now, thanks to Matt Hardigree, Ray Wert, and the staff at Jalopnik, we know (some of) the rest of the story…
A while ago, a wise fellow told me, “Just because you can afford to drive a certain car on the street, it doesn’t mean you can afford to race that same kind of car. And just because you can afford to race a certain car, it doesn’t mean you can afford to crash it.” It’s also true that the problem with racing against wealthy men is simple: they can afford to wreck the car and you can’t.
The Lamborghinis you’re seeing bounce around cost $385K plus prep and spares. The Porsches are a little cheaper, but not that much. No driver was injured in this GT3 Series race, which is typically populated by “gentleman drivers”, but a few of them are going to be liquidating some investments come Monday morning.
As an amateur student of automotive advertising, I’m fascinated by this ad for the Prius V. It starts off reasonably, showing all the enormous things that will fit inside the new, larger Prius… but since the client always wants his product in the shot for the maximum amount of airtime, the visuals have to be twisted to put the Prius V inside the things which fit inside a Prius V. In the memetically-omnipresent words of Xzibit… sup dawg, we heard you like Priuses, so we put a Prius inside your Prius so you can drive a Prius while you hold a party inside an amp inside a Prius.
The red guitar amplifier featured throughout the ad is a Dr. Z Maz 18, which sells for about $1,700. (Nope, I don’t have one; I filled the “18-watt” spot in my home performance space with a Phil X Evil Robot.) The Maz 18 is an awfully hip piece of equipment and carries a lot of credibility among the twentysomething set. With that in mind, I went out to see what people on the Internet thought of the ad. Excerpts and an interesting photo after the jump.
The new 2012 Mosler RaptorGTR features 838hp accelerating only 2580lbs. The ultralight street missile is built with carbon-fiber LeMans Prototype construction concepts to keep the weight radically lower than any car in the hyper exotic category, while remaining extremely safe.
Edited to include some very interesting information from “The Car Show”‘s Matt Farah — JB
Warren Mosler is a man after my own heart; he builds cars which are simply designed to haul ass. From the original Consulier to a recent run of mid-engine bespoke GT cars which can be ordered in both street and ALMS configurations, his cars pretty much always outperform expectations… even if they aren’t always perfectly gorgeous. The new “Raptor GTR” hopes to be both fast and attractive. The specs indicate that it will be race-car quick, and if that’s not enough, you can upgrade the car for an additional $70,000 and put 1,212 horsepower to the rear wheels. (Completion of a Mosler driving school is, apparently, required to qualify for the upgrade.) Vipers, Vettes, and GT-Rs will all have to kneel to the Raptor, assuming the track is dry and the driver understands how to drive a car with a true aero package.
For more details, including the most bizarre music video you will watch before the end of 2011, click the jump.
The 5.8-liter V8 aluminum-block engine produces 650 horsepower and 600 lb.-ft. of torque, making it the most powerful production V8 in the world. The 3,850-pound car also stays exempt from the gas-guzzler tax.
Isn’t that all you need to know, right there? Ford has managed to strangle the Camaro ZL1 in its crib. While the nice folks at GM were running the Nurburgring, the GT500 was being prepared for life on the far side of Two. Hundred. Miles. Per. Hour.
Just look at that photo: it’s the new Charger SRT-8 “Super Bee” running the back straight at Waterford Hills. One of my favorite cars, at one of my favorite places… plus a new color and some interior trim changes. What’s not to like? Well, there’s the Chargers really shouldn’t have four doors factor. If you want to, as Nicki Minaj says, “back coupes up and chuck the deuce up,” there’s now a yellow special-edition Challenger, too.
Note: This continues the story and characters from Carless in Nashville, Talisman, and fried chicken, at the crossroads and Highway star. — JB
Drama McHourglass comes by her sobriquet honestly; she commands and displays her uncompressed emotional range with the cut-crystal clarity and terrifying sonic power of an early Telarc compact disc. This time, her voice in my DROID3’s speaker was pianoissimo, but I held the phone a bit away from my ear, knowing that she could summon up fortissimo possibile with no more warning than one gets from the New York Philharmonic.
“It’s just that… it’s just that…” Her lyric contralto broke into a sob. I have to admit that I wasn’t all that far away from crying myself. We’d parted ways, without so much as touching hands, more than a day before. My thoughts had followed her on the long road from Columbus to Nashville. “It’s just that… I just wish…” Wait a minute. Was that light throbbing in the background the idle of a 3.7-liter Duratec? Why hadn’t she returned her rental car?
In an era where print publications are increasingly conscious of external scrutiny, ethics issues, and responsibility to one’s readers, one might expect that Washington Post auto reviewer Warren Brown would see some kickback from being exposed in the American Journalism Review earlier this year. As it turns out, Mr. Brown has been singled out by his peers… but not, perhaps, in the way one might expect.
“It’s become the new copper,” a commodity that also attracts thieves, according to a recent NPR article. Craven criminals in bio-Benzes ganking grease from rancid restaurants, evading enforcement while powerless pigs can’t cope and draw disdain.
As usual, the invisible hand of the market has acted to equalize prices…
I’m not sure what to say about this video other than it perfectly illustrates the problem with modern American discourse. The woman in the Prius has a point: it’s probably not necessary to run a diesel pickup while it’s stationary, even if there are children sleeping inside. Unfortunately for everyone involved, she never bothers to ask that they shut the pickup off. Instead, she immediately starts exhibiting every loathsome characteristic of stereotypical hybrid owners — except personal fitness. We’ve become a country of screamers, I suppose.
When Porsche “tuner” Uwe Gemballa was found dead and wrapped in cellophane late last year, everyone in the Porsche community expressed sympathy for his wife and friends. Nobody deserves to be killed the way Gemballa was.
On the other hand, however, at least the guy wasn’t going to ruin any more Porsches. His “Mirage” 911-slant-nose-arossa-droptops were perhaps the most hideous custom supercars ever built, and Gemballa himself never really appeared to develop anything even remotely resembling an aesthetic sense. His goal in life appeared to be to simply create terrible cars, and he was reasonably successful at this. Porsche purists hated the guy. There was only one thing he could have done for us to have hated him more: he could have turned his attentions towards the irreplaceable aircooled cars once again and ruined more of them.
Which is precisely what “RWB” does.
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