On any other day, I’d sum up the podcast here, but since this is New Year’s Eve, a time to reflect on the past 365 days, I’d like to take the opportunity to those of you out there who make all this possible, starting with the most important people, and that would be you, the listener. I know it’s cliche, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s the truth. Without those of you who choose to subject themselves to my particular form of nonsense, there’d be no point in doing any of this. Many thanks go out to Zerin Dube, not just for hosting this site, but giving me the opportunity to do whatever it is that I do here, and to Davey Johnson for telling Zerin to look at some obnoxious no-name writer with a little blog that no one read. It’s been a interesting and fun six months, and here’s hoping for twelve more of getting the chance to fight the good fight, and that your New Year’s Eve celebrations are as full of friends, fun and memories as the one above. Good night.
Story by Jack Baruth, Photos Courtesty of RENNtech
As the year 2008 approaches, and concerns about war, peak oil, African genocide, endangered species, and militant terrorism are streaming from the lips of every dumb-assed hippie Trustafarian at your local community college, idling his Hemi-powered Grand Cherokee outside a Starbucks while he waits for the four-pack of triple-half-caff-decaf-soy-grande-lattes he promised to bring to the global warming sit-in down at the rec center, one sensational tragedy has fired the imagination and sympathy of the world: it’s so tough to find a million-plus-dollar spec-racer series! I mean, can you, like, totally believe that, until a few days ago, the Ferrari FXX “developmental program” was the only one?
No more. The unspeakably bad-assed car you see above is the McLaren SLR 722 GT – a lighter, faster, meaner, and thoroughly track-focused spec racer for the bond traders who weren’t quite chummy enough with Ferrari to join the FXX program but who find existing spec racers, such as the Spec Racer Ford, to be a little, shall we say, common. Full details, as well as a thorough comparison with the aforementioned SRF, after the jump.
Last week I promised to tell you how to bamboozle upscale auto dealers into letting you drive their precious cars for free, using nothing other than a few basic props and a strong dose of what the fellow who was my boss back when I was a young Ford salesman called “Playhouse 90″. We’re still going to do that – next week. This week, it’s Christmas evening and I’m feeling a bit sentimental. I’d like to borrow a few minutes of your time and talk about a subject very close to my heart: the Cadillac Motor Car Company, its long descent into darkness, and its thrilling climb back to respectability. You see, I’ve spent the past week or so behind the wheel of an all-wheel-drive Cadillac STS Northstar, and I’ve learned that I’m not the only person who still has deep emotional ties to Cadillac and its history.
Everywhere I’ve gone – from the drive-thru at a downtown Wendy’s, where a young black man at the cash register regaled me with the story of his ‘91 de Ville and the long hours of effort he’d put into making it “just right”, to the gas station down the street from my house, where a rather tough-looking kid with tattoos on his eyelids begged me to open the hood so he could see the V8, to my own cul-de-sac, where my neighbor, who has managed to utterly ignore everything in my driveway from Viper to CL55 AMG, completely amazed me with his exacting knowledge of the differences between the STS-V and the “regular” STS – people seem to resonate with Cadillac. They resonate with Cadillac as an idea, as an aspiration, and with the car itself. There’s a passion in this country for the wreath and crest, and it’s beyond anything I suspected.
There’s fear, too. Fear that the forty-year decline of “The Standard Of The World” hasn’t been properly arrested, fear that it’s too late for Cadillac to mean anything, fear that the cars are still junk. Thankfully, that fear’s unfounded. As David E. Davis might have said, turn your hymnals to page 2007, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our Caddy”, and sing along with me.
Well, I had fully intended to make a podcast for the massive flood of news that would be sure to roll in on the Thursday and Friday before Christmas comes around, instead of this little dink post with the first SFW picture that Google Images turned up for “drunk santa”. However, I was obviously misinformed when I was told that the auto industry burns the midnight oil on the days before a major holiday, the only notable bits of news being a guy buying a Dodge truck with $26,670 in quarters and dollar coins and that Michael Schumacher really needs to start racing again, maybe WRC or something, as he and Jean Todt made cameo appearances in the new Asterix film. Imagine those two news stories spoken out loud and in a snarky tone of voice at a speed about a half-step too fast to be easily understood, but a little worse than your mental recording sounds like, and that’s this week’s episode of Dubspeed Radio. Enjoy.
Just when you thought you could finally collect on that life insurance policy, we’re back! We had a big plan all put together for this week, what with the ZR1 debut and all that, but Motor Trend blow those plans to Hell when they broke the ZR1 embargo. So instead of some crazy simultaneous launch extravaganza, this is just a really, really late podcast. Thanks, Motor Trend. Anyway, aside from the ZR1, this week’s episode covers the Aston Martin V12 Vantage RS, a new Alfa Romeo factory being planned for the US, the Formula 1 night race in Singapore going from awesome to suck, and a festive Useless Automotive Tchotchke. Enjoy, and imagine how cool this would have been if our plan would have come together. It would have been something on the level of a bear driving a monster truck over a pool of burning gasoline, I’d like to think.
An early embargo break by our esteemed colleagues in the motoring press means we can now immediately bring you the scoop on the 2009 Corvette ZR1, and that scoop can be summed up as: No. Fuggin. Way. We expected outrageous horsepower, and we got it, with a rated capacity of “at least” 620 ponies. We expected a major-league chassis, and with carbon-ceramic brakes packing twice the front pad area of the already substantial brakes on the Z06, we got that too. What we perhaps didn’t expect was the sheer f***-the-environment bravado of the C6-R style, exposed-carbon-fiber-everywhere body, or the chassis improvements that are so substantial that one of the press releases actually compares the car to an angry Kodiak bear, or, most unbelievably, the polycarbonate window in the hood to make the supercharger visible to other drivers, women, law enforcement personnel, the homeless, and orbiting satellites in space.
More, and a link to the comprehensive gallery, after the jump.
Story by Jack Baruth – Photos by Jack Baruth and Murilee Martin
The late motoring writer LJK Setright loved nothing more than stirring up a bit of controversy, and he had many ways to do so. Whether it was riding a then-new 1974 Honda CBX motorcycle at an unheard-of one hundred and forty miles per hour while dressed as an Edwardian dandy, mercilessly trashing the memory of Sir William Lyons in print, or submitting articles written entirely in Latin to his publishers, Setright seemed to thrive on iconoclastic behavior, and the consequences be damned. In 1990, upon the arrival of the Honda (Acura to us USians) NSX, he cheerfully pronounced it the best car in the world in general, and the best luxury car in the world in particular. Shortly before his death, he wrote
“The Honda NSX, when it appeared in 1990, was unquestionably the safest, fastest, best-made luxury car in the world. Disastrously, it was marketed as a sports car, and subsequent efforts to make it more so have degraded it. As has happened before, the grace of the makers was disgraced by the marketing men.”
This is a different definition of luxury. In Setright’s world, luxury didn’t mean pillowy back seats with DVD players, reeeeech Corrrrinthian leatherrrr, or elaborate Japanese reproductions of previous-generation S-Class Mercedes-Benzes – it meant a vehicle which provided the luxuries of power, balance, handling, craftsmanship, and aesthetics, to say nothing of a perfect focus upon the satisfaction of its two occupants. It is a controversial argument, to be sure, but it is one which, once heard, takes a solid footing in one’s mind. Setright was perhaps not wrong to say that the Acura NSX was the best luxury car in the world.
Was the best luxury car in the world, mind you. Because the best luxury car in the world is now the sublime, sensuous, and nearly perfect Audi R8.
“YOU’RE GOING TO WRECK THE CAR!!!!!” A quick glance confirmed what I had suspected – as she screamed bloody murder, my instructor was actually trying to curl up in the passenger seat, and her hands were covering her face in the classic if-I-can’t-see-the-wall-it-won’t-kill-me pose. I would have studied this amusing little tableau further, but there was some work to do; although we weren’t in much danger of wrecking, we certainly had my Boxster pretty far sideways, at a speed somewhere north of ninety miles per hour, and there was a concrete wall rushing by, about five feet from my left quarter-panel. Best to straighten this thing out and then I could say something really cool, like something Han Solo would have said to Princess Leia back in 1977. Which is what I suppose they meant when they said “a long time ago, in a galaxy far away.” When I finally exited the turn, inside rear wheel lightly spinning and perhaps smoking, I looked at her and said, in as suave a voice as I could manage through the chunky chinbar of my Bell M2 Pro,
“Don’t worry. Water-cooled Porsches are just like Doritos.”
“Doritos?” she squeaked, the reality of our non-death now becoming clearer in her mind.
“Crunch all you want,” and here I smirked in true Han Solo fashion, said smirk being utterly wasted in a full-face helmet, “they’ll make more.”
Story by Jack Baruth, Photos Courtesty of RENNtech
First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the wheels. Like it or not, “dubs” are probably here to stay in the modern automotive “scene”. No would-be Tony Montana would ever be caught rolling on anything as wick-wick-wack as stock wheels. In this Dubspeed Investigative Report, we will show you how the many ways in which an immediate purchase of RENNtech’s newest twenty-two-inchers can actually prevent you from being killed or maimed…
Ten minutes ago it was a sexy, flashy, highly polished, turbocharged masterpiece of Japanese engineering. Now it’s a muddy, twisted piece of garbage on a flatbed truck, crinkled and compressed like an empty Old Milwaukee can. The passenger door looks like it’s been kicked in by King Kong, while the previously spotless interior is filled with dirt, metal shards, and the acrid odor of what is possibly urine.
“Thank God they survived the brake failure,” somebody said. I shivered once in sympathetic response. Anybody who drives a fifty-two-hundred pound sedan on racetracks, as I do, has a very deep, and very easily excited, fear of brake failure. That little demon of terror sat chuckling on my shoulder during the next track session, as I headed down the long back straight of Summit Point’s Shenandoah circuit, towards the turn where I, too, would have to lean on my stoppers, where the near-deadly equipment failure had just taken place…
Two black rubber stripes, more than fifty feet long, merging seamlessly into two muddy tracks leading all the way to the tire wall. There was a failure here, that’s for sure, but it had nothing to do with brakes. To paraphrase De Niro in Ronin, it was amateur night out here on the track. Incompetent instruction had struck again.
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