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Gather ‘round, everybody. I have an epic tale to tell. It’s the story of how Fake Luxury Conquered The World. There are heroes, and villains, and sweeping vistas, and if we don’t exactly have a princess cooped up in a tower, we might have a few sexually liberated young women in airbrush-mural vans. Interested? Follow along with me as we return to the dark days of the early Seventies…

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Story by Jack Baruth - Photography by the endlessly patient Michelle Baruth

It’s been said that NASCAR’s single-car qualifying is perhaps the most stressful few minutes in motorsport. You’re all alone out there, the sole focus of every track official, every competing team and driver, the thousands of fans in the stands, all the cameras - it’s murder. And yet until this very moment, as I dive into the first turn at Michigan’s Flat Rock Speedway in a tired old Ford Tempo, all by myself on the track, the only show in town, I hadn’t really understood what it might be like. The little quarter-mile bullring is lined with seasoned old oval veterans, leaning casually against the track’s catch-fencing, making the most economical hand gestures possible while speaking in a manner which combines vicious twang and brutal understatements, (e.g. “You mess up like that again and you’re like to hit the wall and crack up a bit”) all idly Staring. Directly. At. Me. They are staring at me and my little Tempo, chugging around the track, and I don’t think any of them are inwardly characterizing me as “the next Kasey Kahne”.

Plus the right rear tire is rubbing itself to violent death against the fender, and I think the car’s leaking gasoline again. I reflect for a moment about the solid two and a half minutes it took me to get into this car, and I wonder about how long those minutes will seem if this sucker catches aflame, and how the locals will laconically characterize my fiery demise. “He was fixin’ to burn up there.”

“Yup. Sure was.”

“And then he did burn right up. Didn’t even bother to get outta the car. Wonder why that was.”

“Yup.”

How’d I get into this situation? Who’s stupid enough to rent a race car when the rental fee is a measly fifty bucks?

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Yes, it’s another hideously late podcast, which means that it must be getting close to that magical time of year, when those of us who are so obsessed with learning stuff that we (well, not us usually, our parents) are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege to do so start pulling our hair out with frustration and stress as we approach the dreaded Final Exams. This will play havoc with the posting schedule for the podcast over the next few weeks, but hopefully they won’t be up as late as the last two have been. This week, BMW finds yet another place where they can go racing, the UAW starts throwing its weight around again, I express an opinion that’s sure to finally get me some bona fide hate mail, and a potentially world-record holding vehicle within the reach of the average consumer on this week’s Useless Automotive Tchotchke. Share and Enjoy™.

 

 SSL Radio 4/23/08 [12:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Story by Jack Baruth, photography by Matt Chow and Zerin Dube

Are you a shy person? Do you suffer from social anxiety? Are you uncomfortable with being the center of attention in public settings? If the answer to any of the above questions is “Yes”, then we respectfully suggest you avoid the 2008 Dodge Viper SRT-10 convertible, particularly in the eye-searing shade of blue applied to our test car. As a Viper owner, you will be permanently on the American road’s center stage, targeted by dropped jaws, pointed fingers, and comments ranging from the predictable “NIIIICE CARRRRR!” to the rather confusing statement delivered to us at a gas station by a fading flower of a middle-aged Texas woman in a Town Car -“We’re so proud of you.” Who was “we”, and of whom, exactly, were “they” proud, and why? Perhaps she’d spotted the manufacturer tag on the car and thought we were affiliated with the intrepid (no pun intended) folks at Chrysler’s SRT division, or she simply wanted to let us know how happy she was that we’d chosen an American sports car over the evil foreign competition, or she thought your humble author was a famous bearded celebrity – one of the Geico cavemen, perhaps, or even Michael McDonald, touring the country in a six-hundred-horsepower droptop while contemplating which Motown originals would be easiest to mangle into blandness for his next album. We’ll never know. Apparently, mere possession of America’s most cylinder-intense sporting car turns one into a public figure, with all the attendant positives and negatives. Learn from our experience and consider yourself warned. Driving a Viper is not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for the wallflowers among us.

If, however, you are a painfully modest or fearful individual who nonetheless feels compelled to own an SRT-10, there is one potential solution, assuming you have the bucks: buy an Audi R8 and hire somebody to drive it around behind you. In the Audi’s incandescent presence, the big blue Viper becomes well-nigh invisible, just another minnow in the school of freeway fish which clump and cluster in the R8’s wake, camera phones aloft and trembling at The Presence Of The Future Among Us.

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Yes, this podcast is colossally late. Real life has once again dragged me away from spending time with you, the listeners, and forced me to pay attention to other things. Now though, we’re back, and we’ve brought a very special treat for you and put it inside the podcast. As far as news goes, we have some BMW news, some legislature news, some endurance racing news, and the final mention we’re giving NBC’s Gear until the show debuts, unless one of the hosts flips a Ferrari over and is killed. Share and Enjoy™.

 

 SSL Radio 4/16/08 [10:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Photography by Matt Chow

You asked for more event coverage, and we are more than happy to deliver. We are kicking off our first HIN event coverage of the year with the Boost Mobile Nightshift, which was held in Austin, TX this past weekend. We’ve got plenty of photos from the car show, and even more photos of the models. We look forward to October when Hot Import Nights roars into Dallas for another energy packed event.

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Story by Jack Baruth - Race Photography by Dave Everest

Rain. Today’s race day was defined by the rain - starting miserably and getting steadily worse. The previous day’s race had shown the occasional bit of dry pavement to my co-driver, Brian M., but for my race it’s forty-two degrees outside and almost Katrina-esque in the fury of the storm above. In the 8am practice, I spin the Green Baron Motorsports #187 PTE Neon and run off track at the bottom of the Esses, but have no problem getting back on. Not everybody else is as lucky; the wrecked cars are coming in two and three at a time. Trailers are fleeing Mid-O like the proverbial rats from the proverbial sinking ship. Race Group A, over seventy cars strong yesterday, fields thirty-three entries today…

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Story by Jack Baruth - Workshop Photos by Jack Baruth - Race Photography by Dave Everest

That Mazda television ad is lying to you. You know, the one where they say… “There’s an old saying in racing. To build a great race car, start with a great street car” or something like that. What a crock. To build a great race car, everybody knows that you start with a Porsche LMP2, which is not a street car, not even in Dubai.

The saying is really this: “To build a cheap race car, start with one that’s already been rolled.” And without further ado, we present our new team - Green Baron Motorsports - and our new race car for the 2008 season - a 1994-build original Neon ACR. Sold as a Showroom Stock race car fourteen years ago, it’s been rolled, crashed, possibly set on fire, you name it - but it’s still one of those original race-only ACRs, and that means it’s, like, totally the Hemi ‘Cuda of 1994. So we invested a new Corolla’s worth of cash and hundreds of man-hours to bring it back on track, including a miserable four-day no-sleep final crunch to make sure it passed its first NASA tech inspection. It passed, it got a logbook, and today, in the hands of old pro Brian M., it took its first NASA podium in its first race.

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Highway 395 is a lonely stretch of asphalt on the back side of the Sierra Nevadas, and one of the most beautiful roads in California. Situated in the Owens Valley, it has spectacular views of the mountains that surround it on both sides. It’s also apparently a very popular place for butterflies and other insects to breed, as they were doing so in the middle of the road. A great many flying insects met their fates that day, but my personal favorite was the butterflies. They were large enough that you could see them arc into the windshield, where they exploded in a sticky yellow burst that sounded like a small bird detonating on the glass. One particularly good one was smeared from the bottom of the windshield almost to the top. It was a very amusing way to pass time between Lake Tahoe and Death Valley.

Anyway, this week, we have more news on the Tata Motors purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover, BMW considers shedding the pounds on future M cars, Jay Leno weighs in on the potential suck of the US version of Top Gear, and fancy footwear on this week’s Useless Automotive Tchotchke. Share and Enjoy™.

 

 SSL Radio 4/7/08 [12:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Story and Photographs by Jack Baruth

Three months ago, we reported that the Cayenne GTS manual was in danger of cancellation, but as you can see, we were dead wrong. The first manual-transmission Cayenne GTS in the state has hit the ground and it’s in our hot little hands for a long-term test.

Normally, when a magazine talks about a “long-term test”, they mean they’ve finagled a free press car from a manufacturer for somewhat longer than the normal one-week period, but this time we mean long-term. As in, we’ve managed to drop almost ninety-four “stacks”, which is to say, $93,800, on a 2008 GTS of our very own. Props go out to our good friend, “The Big Dog”, who made this possible by opening his wallet just a little farther than was prudent. With the keys in hand, we immediately set out to do what Porsche designed the Cayenne specifically to do: namely, haul some parts for our Neon ACR race car.

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