In his novel Excession, sci-fi writer Iain M. Banks introduced the concept of the “Outside Context Problem”. It’s described like so: The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you’d tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever… you were […]
Find Reviews by Make:
Posts By: Jack Baruth
TTAC veterans will recall the rather controversial Ford Aspire Capsule Review I did last year. It wasn’t controversial because of the subject matter. How could anyone object to a small Korean car, other than the people forced to drive and/or ride in them? Rather, it was a certain word used in the review. Words have more power than we know, sometimes, particularly when you let them have that power.
The Aspire continues to have power over someone; this flock/flotilla/murder of Aspires was sitting down the street from my son’s Kodaly class today. It’s odd enough to see this many of them together, but what was even odder…
I mean, what really shocked me…
The thing that completely blew my mind…
THIS IS THE GROUP OF ASPIRES THAT…
Come on, just click the jump already!
In the highly unlikely event that my father precedes me into the grave, I will have to come up with another way to describe him besides “the late Kevin Baruth”. The old man’s never been late for something in his life. Nor has he even been a terribly, shall we say, easy-going fellow. One of […]
This graphic appears on fuel pumps around the country, right after between two and five annoying questions (ENTER YOUR ZIP CODE! DO YOU WANT A CAR WASH TODAY? DO YOU WANT A RECEIPT TODAY? DO YOU WANT PINK FLOYD TO RELEASE THE “DARK SIDE OF THE MOON” STUDIO TAPES? WHAT’S UP WITH THAT BANK OF AMERICA FEE THING?) but before the non-heartfelt roboticized expression of gratitude for purchase (THANK YOU) vaguely familiar to anyone who’s ever watched Shockwave’s Burden.
Clearly, the car being filled up is a Porsche 911. The “911”, for those of you who are young enough to listen to Nicki Minaj, was a sporting vehicle made many years ago by noted SUV and luxury-sedan manufacturer “Dr. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche GmbH”. To celebrate this once-great manufacturer, I will mail a copy of occasional TTAC contributor Stephan Wilkinson’s book, “The Gold-Plated Porsche: How I Sank a Small Fortune into a Used Car, and Other Misadventures”, to the first person who can answer a couple questions about the above photo to my satisfaction. If more than fifty commenters respond, I will mail a second copy to a randomly chosen commenter. Ready? Set?
The Bathurst 1000 is the kind of race that many American fans say they really want: big, powerful, production-based V-8 sedans running on a road course for 620 miles, as flat-out as they can. Drivers, cars, and random marsupials are all sacrificed on the altar of Victory herself. This year, SPEED will be covering it on October 8th at 7pm EST.
The members of the SPEED team covering the race (Leigh Duffy, Darrell Waltrip, and Mike Joy) claim to be recently made aware of big fans of TTAC and its reader community. Towards that end, they’ve agreed to answer your questions on-air regarding the race in particular and V8 Supercars in general. Ask them below… and click the jump to see what SPEED gave me for pimping this event!
What, exactly, is Gymkhana? In most countries, it’s similar to “autotesting”, which is a British equivalent to autocross. Think lower speeds and more emphasis on stunt-like stuff: stop in a marked box and reverse out, handbrake turn around a cone, that sort of thing. Those of you who read Japanese can find out more about Japanese gymkhana here.
An organization called Gymkhana GRID came up with a fascinating idea: have two cars competing head-to-head on a mirror-image course. This isn’t a perfectly original idea. The SCCA has had ProSolo events for a very long time, running two cars from a drag tree through mirrored courses. This video starts slowly but will give you a pretty good idea of how it works. As far as I can tell, GymkhanaGRID was meant to be a combination of the ProSolo idea and donuts around trash cans. They’ve even run an event or two, one of which featured a “throwdown” between Ken Block and Tanner Foust in kind of an Ultimate Battle Of Self-Promoting Thirtysomething Backmarkers.
This year, however, Gymkhana Grid has been forced to cancel its event due to trademark ownership and licensing issues. It would appear that someone already owns the idea of “gymkhana”, and it isn’t the SCCA.
Lithium-ion batteries pulled from electric drills, solid aluminum tires, a weight below 1,100 pounds, and a one-way speed of 175mph on the way to a verified two-way record of 155.8 at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Plus it was built at that most all-American of universities, Brigham Young. Did I mention the on-board webserver?
The way Jeff Glucker tells it, it was a matter of a few phone calls. The first came from Autoblogs’s Chris Paukert as Glucker was driving his 2000 Civic Si up California’s Interstate 405, letting him know that Jalopnik editor Mike Spinelli would require his attention. We’re going to run a story, Spinelli told him, and he explained that Jalopnik would be “exposing” Glucker’s double-dipping excursion with a PR firm and Autoblog in support of a Nissan Versa promotional campaign. Jeff had taken money from a PR firm to promote the contest. He’d written e-mails to his friends in the autojourno biz, asking them to post stories about the contest on their blogs… and then he’d “put on his other hat,” that hat being labeled “Associate Editor, Autoblog.com” and written a story about the contest for that site. Google “payola”, Spinelli would later message him, referring to the illegal practice of paying radio DJs to play a particular song at the expense of others.
“I don’t have Bluetooth,” Glucker told him, “I’m on the freeway. I need to call you back.” He rolled up the 405 in silence, thinking about his options. What would happen next? Paukert called one more time, asking for some additional details. When the phone rang again, Jeff saw that it was Spinelli, and he didn’t — he couldn’t — answer. He didn’t know what to say. Automotive journalism wasn’t a hobby for him any more. He’d left a lucrative job in another industry to follow his dream of writing about cars, and now he and his wife needed every dollar of his reduced salary just to keep going. Sure, he was on his way to drive a $375,000 Lexus LF-A, but the car that was taking him there, the car he really owned, wouldn’t fetch ten grand. Could he lose his job for this? What would his family say? How would he replace the income? What was going to happen next?
The last call, when it came, was from Autoblog editor John Neff, and it provided the answer to that last question: he was being terminated. Immediately.
I don’t read MotorAuthority, not considering them to be much of an authority on motorized items of any kind, but when notorious rockstar Blake Z. Rong and “CarGuyDad” Kamil Kaluski both gave me the heads-up on a Singaporean warehouse trying to sell 150 brand new RHD Neons for $1,350 each, I had to take a look.
These are brand-new, Chrysler-badged, right-hand-drive Neons. Most export-spec Neons were fully-equipped, and indeed all the ones in these photos appear to have body-color bumpers. On the other hand, you can plainly see a steel wheel in the photo, and I’ve read that some export Neons had a 1.8L engine in place of the US-market two-liters.
Nearly everybody who looks at the photo, including the author of the MotorAuthority piece, has made a crack about a “spec series”. The original Neon Challenge was a spectacularly successful spec series, the NASA Spec Neon class had a small but devoted following, and the Neon has won plenty of victories in Showroom Stock, Improved Touring, and D Street Prepared trim. Could these 150 Neons be the basis of a low-budget American racing series?
If you live in the Houston area, you’re best off avoiding going to have a chance to meet some of your least favorite TTACers this weekend!
Start with the 24 Hours Of LeMons at MSR Houston, where no fewer than three of us — Jack, Sajeev, and Murilee — will be competing and/or judging Saturday. Then on Saturday night, check out The Hideaway where yours truly will be fronting a trio inbetween the headliner sets. Show up early and say hello, or show up late and get punched/molested/bored to tears with stories of the Volkswagen Fox!
TTAC reader Bonso writes:
Hi Jack
As you have over eighty books on Porsches you may be able to help me. I read a travel book published in the mid 1960s about a tour of Bryce Canyon, Zion national Park, Painted Desert, Grand Canyon etc made in a Porsche 911. The car and scenery were both the “stars” of the book, the passion for the car and scenery were complimentary. I would like to re-read the book but do not remember either the title or author! Can you help me? Or perhaps one of your readers knows of the book. Thanks.
Well, I’m stumped…
I have a confession to make: I am experiencing a struggle in my life. Normally, when middle-aged male church musicians say that, they mean they are secretly thinking about visiting a San Francisco bath house and rocking out with certain appendages fully visible. In my case, however, the desire to squeeze myself into something young, tight, and not quite masculine is entirely automotive. I’m talking about the Mazda2, of course.
The Mazda2 holds a title that’s important to me personally, even if it doesn’t exactly cause examples of the model to depart dealership lots with a Saturn V’s worth of force: it’s the lightest, simplest four-passenger small car money can buy. The MINI, Fiesta, and Sonic all outweigh it by a Roseanne Barr or more. Even the new Accent and FIAT 500 can’t quite match it. Hilariously, even the Miata outweighs the 2.
To help shove the littlest Mazda off the floorplans, Mazda is currently offering 0% financing. For five years. That’s right: if you can pay your own sales tax up front, it’s possible to have a new 2 for $233.38 a month. Is it worth doing?
WARNING: If you have any track experience, or even if you don’t, the above video can be painful to watch. It’s the long-legged Monticello Motor Club racetrack as experienced by the IMPA journalists on their test day: coned off, watered-down, speed-limited. Had I made the 584-mile drive to Monticello and found conditions like this, I’d have been furious.
Still, the above restrictions weren’t enough to keep the Korean journalist, identified to me as Tai Sung “Peter” Park, from wiping an IS-F against the guardrail. What followed that incident was an odd tale of international misunderstanding, possible deceit, and Keystone Kops silliness…
In an era where family cars run fourteen-second quarters flat and sport-compacts can walk Seventies Ferraris and Lamborghinis without breaking a sweat, burnout videos and photos have become the most played-out, suck-tastic, shark-jumping thing possible. Lame! Lamer than that! The lamest photo in human history! Who would have thought that a 470-horsepower sedan, new Ferrari, or Viper could actually smoke the tires? I don’t know, about about everybody with a brain?
Thankfully for all of us, a few brave wrench-it-yourself warriors have come forward to redeem the burnout video from its current “abuse-a-free-car-that-I-can’t-drive-worth-s*&$-anyway” hell. Behold… the SRT-4 swap minivan. More fun stuff after the jump.
Good news, everybody! All that drama with the nice people at Porsche is totally over! Here’s how the phone conversation went: *ringgggg* Jack: STOP CALLING ME! It isn’t mine! I had a vasectomy! I told you beforehand! YOU SAW THE SCARS! Unknown Caller: Jack, this is Gary Fong, from Porsche Cars North America. Jack: What […]
Recent Comments