Teh Car Blogz

If you’ve been reading this site (all three or four of you!) You’ve probably been wondering where I’ve been.  I’ve disappeared into the ether, much like Elliot Spitzer’s political career or coke around a frat boy.  Well, I come to you today from the inside of my Volkswagen in the parking lot of Wake Technical Community College, in beautiful Fuquay-Varina North Carolina, on this pleasant rainy Friday afternoon.  This is the American Dream, folks: Community College on a Friday Afternoon.  In the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.

But I like to figure myself as an optimist…

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If there’s one vehicle (besides the gawdawful Chevrolet Volt EV thing) that’s been hyped, overhyped, and überhyped by the press, it’s got to be the new Nissan GT-R.  It’s the latest in a long line of all-conquering Nissan rocketships, that were previously based on the old-fashioned Skyline chassis.  For an example of an early GT-R, read this post.  The new GT-R, which drops the Skyline prefix, is significant for many reasons.  Most importantly, it’s the first GT-R that is officially being imported to the USA - previous Skylines had to come in through a number of sketchy importers, including MotoRex, who collapsed amidst all sorts of legal trouble.  For more information on MotoRex’s sad story, there is a decent Wiki which can be found here.

Patrick (some call him “Steve”) and I were given the opportunity to ride in a new GT-R by a very generous owner in Raleigh, NC.  It was a brief impression, but obviously this is a GT-R - there is more than enough to write about.  More details below the jump.

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I spotted this rare bird while out over the memorial day weekend with my friend Paul.  In order to protect the location of this exceedingly rare car, I’m going to refrain from providing any specific location.  Suffice to say, it’s somewhere in Raleigh.

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Among the most hotly contested “premium” markets is that for “mid-sized” luxury sedans. The mid-size luxury sedan has always been the dominant “image car” market, and is a hotbed for new technology and unique design. Because there are so many manufacturers fighting for a relatively small amount of dollars (compared to, say, the market for compact-sized economy cars), manufacturers really need to put every last ounce of their expertise and know-how into their products, as well as trying as hard as they can to adequately differentiate their product without alienating their core clientele. Oh, and these cars have to do EVERYTHING right - when your vehicles sell in the $50,000+ range to people with real jobs aiming at the upper end of their automotive budget, it can be hard to convince people they NEED that car. They need to be classy, they need to perform well, they need to be comfortable, and they need to have that “something special” to get people to sign on the dotted line.

For the longest time, there have been two main players in this field - the Mercedes E-class, and the BMW 5-series. The E-class was the Yin to the 5-series’ Yang - classic luxury and sedate lines verses taught suspension and BMW’s trademark minimalism. Of course, this market has expanded greatly in the last few years and things aren’t so cut and dry. So where does Infiniti’s M lineup fit into this equation? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.

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here are the rest of the cars I didn’t share with you all in the last post. Hope you enjoy!

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Since I first understood a thing about cars, I’ve been a fan of the Colin Chapman school of automotive design. Chapman, for those not in the know, was the founder of a little sports car marque called Lotus. His basic design idea was “add lightness.” Extraneous components were not needed or welcome. It has been said that he would continue to remove material from a component until it failed, then add a little back in, and move onto the next one. This obsession with weight was obvious in the cars he made. Drive a Lotus Esprit and you can’t have a heavy right foot - the gas pedal hinge will bend under your foot. You want carpet in your Elise? The Porsche dealer is down the road, you wuss.

The reason for this isn’t hard to understand. Let’s break it down. What makes a car fast is, basically, it’s power-to-weight ratio: how many pounds is each horsepower burdened with? The less weight and the more power, the faster a car is going to accelerate (in a nutshell.) So there are two ways to make a car faster: add more power, or subtract more weight.

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One thing I’ve noticed about car magazines in the US (besides the boring ones like Consumer Reports) is that above anything, they like to emphasize acceleration as a defining characteristic of a car’s worth. It’s not hard to notice. On the front cover of the latest Car and Driver, they have a few headlines. The big one proclaims “The Fast Lane!: BMW 135i, 0-60 4.7s.” Further down there’s “Nissan GT-R 0-60 3.3.” At the bottom, in small font is “The Slow Lane: Smart ForTwo, 0-60 14.4s.”

Let me be the first one to say: Who gives a shit how fast a Smart Car gets to sixty miles an hour? No one’s going to be drag-racing from light to light in their Smart. A Smart is an economical fashion accessory, like a Swatch (imagine that!) It’s a conversation piece. It’s the new Prius. The only people racing smarts are the ones with Smartuki conversions, so all three of them. The 0-60 time on a Smart is about as relevant as the fuel efficiency of a dump truck.
But this is America, where we have (comparatively) cheap gas, the roads are wide and straight, and if you’re not going 80 on the highway, you’re getting run over. So magazines shout about how fast a car can reach 60 - which is a pretty arbitrary number.

There are a lot of fast cars out there. But let me let you in on a secret: some of them really, truly suck.

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Spend some time on any automotive web forum and you’re bound to run across the ultimate hypothetical question: “what is your ultimate dream garage?” Sometimes 5 car, sometimes 10, sometimes more. Many people like to fill their fantasy garage up with dream exotica, many people like classics. If you’ve been reading my site, by now you know my choices are somewhat odd. So here, friends, is my 15-car dream garage.

1) 2001 Audi (B5) S4
Nogaro Blue, six-speed manual, converted to RS4 engine spec (forged internals, lower compression, K04/20 turbochargers, etc etc.) 450-500whp would be sufficient for a daily driver. I’ve always admired the B5 S4 for a lot of reasons. Primarily, it’s a spectacular mechanical package: 2.7L 30 valve V6 with twin turbochargers, a six-speed manual and Torsen AWD make for an extremely rapidly accelerating automobile…

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