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Kamis, 30 September 2010

Cool Photos Of 50 Years Of Japanese Concept Cars

Found a post on the blog Pink Tentacle showing some of the coolest concept cars from Japanese manufacturers from the last 50 years. Some really interesting stuff in there.

Check it out - http://pinktentacle.com/2010/09/photos-50-years-of-japanese-concept-cars/

Senin, 02 Agustus 2010

Ferrari 512BB Spotted On Google Street View

Google Street View is an amazing piece of technology. Especially useful for wasting big chunks of time. That's just what I was doing when I came across the picture you see here. See, I was tracing the route of my fantasy road trip through Europe that starts with me picking up a new Porsche 911 or Audi R8 at the factory and driving the Autobahn and the Nurburgring before heading to places like Amsterdam, London, Paris, Monaco and Italy. By the way, I will do that some day, once I win the lottery. It's just a matter of time.

Anyway, what you see here is a street view picture taken at the intersection of Avenue des Champs-Elysees and Place de la Concorde in Paris. In the pic is one of my all time favorite Ferraris, a beautiful Ferrari 512BB, just driving along minding it's own business. I wonder what else I'll find.

If you want to check it out for yourself, the Google Street View and map can be seen here.

Kamis, 24 Juni 2010

Goodbye Civic, We Hardly Knew You

The time has come for us to part ways with our 2008 Honda Civic EX Coupe. We bought the car new and neither my wife nor I really bonded with it. As a commuter/appliance type car it was fine at what it did--get you where you were going. Unfortunately there was no joy involved in the journey. All in all, the car was just a bad choice for us. It was a mistake plain and simple. It didn't have the luxury or features my wife wanted, it didn't have the driver involvement and enjoyment I wanted, and it certainly didn't have the space for the three of us now that our 16 year old son is approaching 6' tall and still growing. The result was to trade it in on an older but familiar car.

If you have read any of my blog you may remember that we leased a 2006 Acura TSX for a couple of years and my wife and I really liked it. In fact, we wanted to keep it but the lease buyout was way overpriced in my opinion. Flash forward to this past weekend and we were at an Acura dealership trading in our Civic with only 6200 miles on it for a certified 2007 TSX with 37,000 miles on it. Everyone is now happier and we got a decent deal on the car. My only complaint is the trade in value we received for the Civic which in my eyes is still practically brand new. Oh well, live and learn.

Senin, 10 Mei 2010

Project Miata update #4

Still enjoying the hell out of my 1994 Miata that I picked up about a year and a half ago. I've been adding things to it here and there to make it better to drive and look at. Recently, I picked up a used set of rims and tires to compliment the lowered stance of the car on it's new suspension and to improve the handling over the mismatched set of tires on the OEM rims.

The wheels are lightweight (11.8lbs each) Konig Minuz and measure 15x6.5. Mounted on them is a lightly used set of Dunlop Direzza DZ101 tires in 205/50/15. The ride has been transformed and is so much smoother than with the old tires. The handling is also improved though I've yet to really test it. The best part of it was that they were less than half the price of buying new. Sweet!

Here's a couple of pictures of the car with it's new shoes. You can also see the Miata R Package front lip I installed last year.

Stealthy.

Selasa, 13 April 2010

Francois Delecour in a 911 GT3 RS

This video was originally linked by Autoblog and after watching it, I had to re-post it here. It's pretty funny as the French former WRC driver scares the crap out of EVO Magazine's Chris Harris who is giggling like a schoolgirl most of the time. I couldn't help but giggle as well. Fun video.

Kamis, 01 April 2010

New Look

Changed things up a bit. Added a new look to the blog. Nothing fancy but the old one was getting a bit tired. Is it me or does the background look a bit like carbon fiber? Cool.

Kamis, 24 Desember 2009

Happy Holidays

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy healthy holidays and new year.

Thanks for reading.

Kamis, 17 Desember 2009

Ahhh Road Rage

Well this morning was interesting. On my way to work I was involved in a pretty intense road rage incident. Now, this isn't my first and won't be my last since I'm living in the NY/NJ area which has got to be road rage central. Over the course of my life I've been witness to numerous events like this.

One particular time that sticks in my memory was many years ago and I was a passenger in my friend's Taurus SHO when some moron was tailgating a little too close. So my friend did what any reasonable instigator would do and give a little brake tap. That obviously didn't go over well and the moron was so determined to show us how cool he was he immediately sped up and flew by in the right lane and attempting to cut us off. Unfortunately for him his maneuver was so violent that he completely lost control of his car and wound up spinning out in front of us at highway speeds ending up on the grass center median facing the wrong way. Brilliant! I've also seen the insanity of someone cutting another car off and pulling the handbrake, again at highway speeds, to make some kind of statement to the car behind him. You gotta love it.

But this morning's one was particularly scary and humorous at the same time. The local road I take from home that leads to the NJ Turnpike is really two lanes at an intersection controlled by a traffic light. There is no straight so both lanes are to turn left which leads to the toll booths. This is marked by signs that are easily visible. There is a short right turn lane at the light but it does not go back more than a hundred feet from the light. The leftmost lane goes to a regular tollbooth to get a ticket and the right lane goes left to an EZ PAss lane. Anyway, having lived here for over 10 years, I've seen it happen many times where someone doesn't realize both lanes are for left turns and is in the leftmost lane but wants to get to the EZ Pass booth. So they make the turn and attempt to go wide to the right and see that the person next to them has also turned left so they honk, or worse, thinking this person has made an illegal left from the right lane.....wrong!

Well, that's what happened this morning. This guy in a BMW (breaking those douchebag in a BMW stereotypes) does this and honks at me. No biggie, but then he flings his car over into my lane right on my ass. What can I do? You guessed it, I give him a brake tap as he's on my bumper yelling at the back of my head (quite funny in the rear view mirror). Well that sets him off....I mean off the deep end. He then swings out to the right and goes through the next tollbooth over. I go through mine before him so he swings back left three lanes and attempts to beat me to the entrance ramp (three lanes to one merge). I, of course, don't let him in since he's being a major dick. That makes him even angrier and he then swings back right and passes me and the person ahead of me on the shoulder.

That's that....right? Wrong. It get's better. He's now two cars ahead of me and he merges onto the highway before the merge lane ends, across the white lines, because he's that kind of asshat. There he does something surprising. He slams on the brakes and waits for me. Now it's getting interesting. As I merge onto the highway he again slams on the brakes directly ahead of me causing me to stop short. Hand gestures start flying back and forth and he keeps blocking me as I change lanes. Finally he lets me get along side of him and then he starts pacing me. I try to ignore him but out of curiosity I finally look over and he's got his window down and he's yelling something. So I oblige and roll my window down enough to hear him yelling "WHAT"S YOUR PROBLEM!". My problem? OK. So I simply yell back - "ASSHOLE THAT WAS TWO LEFT TURN LANES BACK THERE". His response with a confused look on his face is "No". Then he speeds off to spread his assholeness to others. The scary thing was that I could swear that he had one of those shield plaques in his windshield. You know, like off duty police offices have in their personal cars. God I hope for everyone's sake he's not a cop. He didn't seem like the most stable person.

So that was my excitement for the day. Sad.

Minggu, 03 Mei 2009

2009 Orange County Choppers Mazda Meet

This weekend was the second year that Orange County Choppers was nice enough to host an all Mazda meet at their amazing new location in Newburg, NY. My son and I spent the day there yesterday and we had a fun time. The initial weather forecast didn't look too good at first but the day wound up being really nice. Turnout was great and there were some really nice cars. Paul Jr. and Mike from OCC both showed up and signed some autographs. Fun day.

Here is a slideshow of my pics. Clicking on the slideshow will bring you to the full album.

Jumat, 17 Oktober 2008

Most Expensive Car Accidents Ever

Wrecked Exotics is a depressing website. It features all types of exotic car carnage. They just posted their list of the most expensive wrecks ever and it's unbelievable. I'm amazed at people taking multi-million dollar cars on racetracks and even more amazed at the lack of driving skills demonstrated by people with more money than brains.

Check out the story here: Top 10 Most Expensive Car Crashes Ever

Jumat, 16 Mei 2008

Video - Mazda Furai Concept At The Track

In case you don't remember the Mazda Furai Concept car it is built on a Courage ALMS race chassis and is powered by a 450HP 3 rotor Ethanol fueled Wankel. The best part about the car was not only was it beautiful but it was a real working car. Now we have video of it in action.

Kamis, 01 Mei 2008

S2000s at the Tail of the Dragon / Deal's Gap

Here is a cool video of some Honda S2000s having some fun at the Tail of the Dragon. I'm always searching Google video for new videos of cars, mostly S2000s or MX5/Miatas since I'm obsessed with these cool little roadsters. Some time soon I'll have one of them for myself. I'd prefer the S2000 but they are a bit pricier than the Miata. You can get an early model Miata for only a few grand and have tons of fun.

Anyway I thought the video was cool for a couple of reasons. First it's just some real nice, safe driving. These guys aren't doing anything crazy but they are having a good time. Sure they are technically exceeding the speed limit but they are never out of control or putting anyone at risk. They never cross the double yellow and never tailgate slower vehicles they encounter. Most of the time the slower vehicle moves over when it can and these guys give them a wave and a beep as thanks. I also love the teamwork they show in keeping an eye open for the Fuzz.

I've tried a couple of times to plan a detour to the Dragon but plans have fallen through. Some day I'll get to take a ride on this wonderful road myself.