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Shall… we… play… a… game? How ’bout that old Sesame Street standard, “One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other - One Of These Things Just Doesn’t Belong.” I’ll name four people, and you tell me which one “doesn’t belong”. Ready? Setta? GO!

• Brock Yates
• Alex Roy
• Felipe Massa
• Lawrence Pargo

Okay, time’s up. Which one doesn’t belong? That’s right - Felipe Massa, who is an actual race car driver. The other three are non-racers who have become semi-famous for jerking around on the freeway and endangering other drivers at triple-digit speeds.

Wait - you didn’t say Lawrence Pargo, did you? I mean, come on! Pargo’s right there with Yates and Roy, having recently been caught on a speed camera running a rented Hyundai Sonata down the road at a staggering one hundred and forty-seven miles per hour. In Pargo’s defense, it must be noted that his attorney told the court that he couldn’t possibly be guilty of the crime. It turns out that the lowly Sonata, commonly considered to be a crapwagon suited only to “credit criminals”, elderly people, and minimum-wage healthcare workers such as Mr. Pargo himself… well, it can only do 137.

Consider if you will, dear reader, that when Sir William Lyons released his all-new sports car in 1948, he was so proud of its top speed - a speed that made it possibly the fastest standard production car in history to that point - that he simply named the car after that top speed! The XK-120! One hundred and twenty miles per hour! It was the stuff of legends. Fast-forward to the modern day, and Hyundai doesn’t even bother to name a 137-mph car something appropriately cool like “G6DB-137″. Instead, it’s simply the “Sonata”, staple of rental fleets everywhere, capable of blowing by top-end postwar sports cars as if they were bolted to the ground. This Pargo fellow was no race car driver; he isn’t even a wannabe racer like, ahem, certain other people named in the list above. He was just a young fellow who was late for work. It didn’t take him an ounce of skill to reach triple digits, didn’t cause him a moment’s worth of concern, didn’t require a Nomex suit or a competition license. With a simple shove of the drive-by-wire, traction-controlled accelerator pedal, he was running a rental car at the same speeds Stirling Moss reached in the Mercedes 300SLR.

How did this happen?

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Story and photos by Jack Baruth

One must be careful using the Internet when one’s spouse is around, but I’d gotten careless, thinking my wife was asleep in the other room. At the sound of her footsteps, I whipped the mouse up to the upper-right-hand corner of the screen and minimized the Firefox page, but she’d already seen. I’d promised my habit would stop, called it a behavior that I could break any time, certainly not a problem, definitely not an addiction, but I’d been caught red-handed, misusing our ‘Net connection for my own perverse purposes. I started gibbering excuses. “Baby, I wasn’t really on that site. It was an old bookmark. A mistake. I didnt’ mean to…”

“You PROMISED!” she screamed. “NEVER AGAIN! YOU SAID YOU WOULD STOP LOOKING AT THAT STUFF! OPEN THE PAGE BACK UP! LET ME SEE THE FILTH YOU WERE SO EXCITED ABOUT!”

“Really, sweetheart,” I pleaded, “there’s no need. You’re better off not seeing…”

“LET ME SEE IT!” I clicked on the tab and there, spread across the page, was the evidence.

“Baby, I’m sorry, it was a one-time thing…”

“HOW COULD YOU! ISN’T OUR MARRIAGE WORTH ANY… oh, is that really the ‘Buy It Now’ price? That’s a ‘93 Silver Spur, which means it’s a 20,000 Series car, right?” It’s true: I’d promised Mrs. B that I would cut down on the time I spend searching eBay for Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, but as Peter Cetera once warned us, it’s a hard habit to break. I love those old Crewe-built unibody cars, from the original Silver Shadow and Bentley T1 all the way to the run-out Silver Dawns and Brooklands. The worst among them — think ‘76 Shadow with bad electrics and rust under the Everflex — can be had for ten grand, and that’s the most ill-advised ten grand you’ll ever spend. The cream of the crop — late Turbo RTs or the uber-rare Rolls-Royce Flying Spur Turbos — are seven or eight times that much. Chances are that you’ve looked at ‘em, too.

Our friends at Car and Driver once described the Rolls-Royce Silver Spur as “a really bad ’80s Town Car”, but that’s just a typical bit of C/D hyperbole meant to fill in the spaces between WeatherTech advertisements. The cars made at Crewe before Rolls-Royce and Bentley went their separate ways are part of an era which will never return; a time where there was always enough time, so to speak. The sheer number of man-hours which went into the construction of a 1985 Mulsanne would probably build ten new Continental GTs. The romance and reality of the old R-R/Bentley will never be equaled, and you can buy your own piece of the dream for less than it would take to get behind the wheel of a Prius. You know you want to do it, but you also have questions. How expensive will it be to run one of these big beasts? More importantly, does the experience really meet all of your expectations? Luckily for you, but unluckily for my marriage, we’ve learned the answers to those questions.

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Photography by Zerin Dube

We’re taking our progress back towards being on schedule one day at a time here at SSL Radio, literally. And on this day, we come bringing news! General Motors announces the pricing for the Cadillac CTS-V and the Chevrolet Camaro, and shows just how great of a bargain they both are, Mini debuts an exciting new green car, Mitsubishi debuts an exciting new scarlet red car, GM and Chrysler consider combining their problems into one enormous morass of fail, Emanuele Pirro retires from racing, Formula 1 prepares to become even more boring, and the most precious little engine you’ll ever see in this week’s Useless Automotive Tchotchke. We have the video below the jump, and as always, Share and Enjoy™.

 

 SSL Radio 10/23/08 [13:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Story by Jack Baruth

Color me pleased; my 2009 Audi S5 has finally arrived, resplendent in vintage Porsche Lime Green. I hasten to add that this color is emphatically not the “Signal Green” which has become common on the current Porsche GT3 RS – it’s actually from Porsche’s 1973 and 1974 color book, and is a much brighter, more cheerful color than the rather more serious Signal Green. Readers of our S5 review may recall that I was smitten with Audi’s curvaceous V8-powered coupe from the moment I fired it up, so there was little doubt in my mind after our November test that I would eventually put one in my own garage. As with everything else in the Speed:Sport:Life “fleet”, from my Phaetons, to Zerin’s TT 3.2 Quattro, to the Big Dog’s Cayenne GTS, all the way to my sweetheart of a 993 pictured above, we had to pay for the car. We don’t get free “long-term testers” the way our friends in the print magazines or banner-ad-laden blogozines do. If we want a car for more than a week, we have to take out our wallets. It’s nice, in a way, because it means we’re putting our money where our mouths are. I liked the Audi S5, so I bought one. Simple as that. The other street (as opposed to race) car I bought this year, in case any of you care, was my mother’s 2008 Ford Focus SES sedan, another vehicle which received a generally positive review on these pages. So, as you can see, the manufacturers actually make money when they invite me to press events, because a bout 30% of the time I end up buying a car!

In the twenty-something days since I took delivery of the S5, pictures of the car have flown around the Internet with a rapidity usually reserved for lucky shots of Britney Spears making a bowlegged departure from Paris Hilton’s McMerc SLR. I’ve also received dozens of phone calls and text messages from friends and acquaintances who have spotted the Audi in traffic or parked somewhere. People who see the car in the metal seem to be about 70/30 in favor of my choice, while Internet users who see the car online (where, it has to be said, the color does not photograph quite “right”) are closer to 80/20 against. Some of the negative reactions are fascinating because their authors seem so… well, personally offended by the shiny S5. “I can’t believe Audi agreed to paint the car that color!” is a semi-common response. Well, they did agree, and they will also paint your new Audi in almost any color you like, thanks to their outstanding “Exclusive” program. The problem for most of these people is that they are afraid to own a German car in any color that is not silver, grey, or silver-grey, and the presence of brightly-colored German cars destroys their cherished Autobahn stereotypes. Of course, were they to ever sign off “World of Warcraft”, stumble blinking out into the afternoon light, borrow their parents’ Camrys, drive to the airport, and actually visit the hallowed Fatherland, they would see that the most common cars there aren’t silver Audis - they’re bright blue Lupos and yellow Renault Twingos. Germans like color, too.

Some of the younger Audi-forum readers are absolutely shocked that it’s possible to buy a car from Ingolstadt that isn’t utterly “tasteful” and “reserved”. How do I know that they’re young? It’s simple: they’re obviously too young to have ever seen the interior of a Seventies Audi, or even the seats of an ur-Quattro. The whole idea of “tasteful” German cars is a scam, kids. It was something the marketing people thought up twenty years ago so the dealers could stock a smaller selection of inventory. I grew up surrounded by lemon-yellow Mercedes diesels, brown Porsche 911SCs, pearl-white Audi 5000s, and baby blue big-bumper Bimmers, and believe it or not, none of the drivers of those cars ever died of color overdose. My father almost killed himself a few times pushing his orange Volvo off the freeway after it stalled for no particular reason, but I have no reason to believe that color was involved. Trust me on this one. I know that your local dealer has thirty-six BMWs on his lot and they are all either silver, grey, or black, but if you take out a BMW brochure and flip all the way to the back, past the endless photographs of optional skiing accessories but right before the disclaimer that tells you to obey posted speed limits, you will find little squares of color. While most of them are silver, grey, silver-grey, or black, chances are there will be a red or blue square on the page. It’s okay to go to the dealer, point to that square, and meekly inquire as to whether you might be permitted to purchase a car in that color. I’m not kidding. I even know a guy who bought an “arrest-me red” 740iL a few years ago… and they didn’t actually arrest him! Crazy, I know.

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Goddamn, does it ever feel good to be back. In a emotional sense, I mean, as you’re about to hear, I’m still not at 100%, so please excuse me if I sound like I’ve been gargling tungsten carbide blasting media. Anyway, in this week’s make-up edition of SSL Radio, we cover the remaining debuts at the Paris Motor Show (yes, we’re that far behind), Toyota debuted their new iQ city car for the UK and rumors on it coming to the US, the US sales figures for the month of September are here to ruin your day, more lame fanboy BS, the situation for Formula 1 in the United States gets even bleaker, and a special federal bailout edition of Useless Automotive Tchotchke. Again, I can’t say how much I love being back (literally, my voice is now shot from recording this), and please, Share and Enjoy™.

 

 SSL Radio 10/17/08 [15:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Story by Jack Baruth

Hey, club racers! Are you interested in envy? Would you like to be envied by others? Sure you would; you’re only human, after all, and there’s nothing more human than a bit of showing-off. Here’s the problem, though: the world of amateur racing is full of money. Like, chock-full of it. Like, some guy brought a friggin’ Daytona Prototype to Mid-Ohio for a NASA race last month, and he Didn’t. Even. Win. Fast cars, shiny parts, and perfectly polished trophy wives are part and parcel of the club racing scene. Think your Gallardo will wow the crowd? Forget it; there was a Superleggera here two weeks ago. Maybe a Ferrari Scuderia? That’s the second one we’re seen here today.

No, if you want real envy - the kind of envy that causes people to talk about you when you leave the lunch table - you need a serious race rig. We’re in the middle of a tow-vehicle arms race out here. It used to be you could get some attention with an F-250 Crew Cab or a Cayenne S. Not any more. Shiny new one-ton trucks used to pull the eyeballs in your direction, but today they’re thick on the ground. To win this battle - to assert your supremacy over the guy in the next paddock space before you do so much as clip an apex - it’s gonna take a new level of heavy-duty.

Towards that end, Ford has performed some cut-and-paste in their Super Duty Lego Set and created the F-450 Crew Cab 4×4 Dual Rear Wheel King Ranch. To understand the truck, we have to take all those designations in order. First, F-450. That means a commercial-class front axle that is six inches wider than what you’d find in a standard Super Duty, a shorter turning radius courtesy of big steering angle, and a unique suspension design to make twelve-ton towing loads easily controllable. Next, we have Crew Cab. There have been F-450 Crew Cabs in the past, but now we have one with a regular eight-foot pickup bed attached, courtesy of wider rear frame rails. 4×4: electronic shift-on-the-fly to drag those big trailers out of slick situations. Dual Rear Wheel: it’s a necessity for serious fifth-wheel hauling, plus it just plain looks cool. King Ranch: Ford has now made its highest trim level, complete with free-range-look leather and country-club-friendly two-tone paint, available on the F-450. The result is a truck that pushes all the buttons, combining a previously-unavailable 24,000-pound tow rating with an Expedition-style level of interior ambiance.

Among club racers, this big hauler, dipped in Dark Copper Clearcoat Metallic, drew more attention than a stack of free Hoosier DOT-R tires. It was the talk of the paddock wherever it went, even rating an admiring mention from the event director in the driver’s meeting on the first Saturday we took it to the track. We’d come back from yet another frustrating qualifying session to find drivers aimlessly circling the F-450, poking their heads into a window or crawling underneath the front suspension to marvel at the sheer size of the components. There were few questions, because this was an educated crowd and they knew exactly what they were looking at, but there was plenty of admiration and, yes, envy.

Was it justified? Is it worth paying more than sixty-one-thousand dollars for a tow vehicle? To find out, we made a cross-country two-weekend journey between track weekends, using the infamously demanding Interstate 68 as our primary thoroughfare. I-68, the so-called “Home Of The Seven Percent Grade”, demands the absolute most from a tow rig. And since we were in a hurry, we wouldn’t be sparing the horses, either. Sure, the F-450 looks like the perfect race rig. Did it deliver? Hell, yes.

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Story by Jack Baruth, photos by Sydney Davis Photography/MSR Houston

Three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of damage. Imagine owning a car so valuable, so difficult to fix, so chock-full of unobtanium parts that it’s possible to cause three hundred G’s worth of damage simply by running it at low speed into a Jersey barrier. Hard to believe - and yet that’s exactly what happened to movie producer Daniel Sadek when comedian Eddie Griffin borrowed his Ferrari Enzo and understeered straight into the concrete during a promotional event.

With Enzo values hovering in the million-and-a-half-dollar range, a $300K hit wasn’t enough to total the car, but it was enough to raise doubts as to whether the car could ever be repaired well enough to satisfy a potential buyer. What happened next has quickly become an Internet legend: Exotic-car dealer Matt Groner bought Sadek’s Enzo, purchased over $91,000 of authentic Ferrari parts, and invested an undisclosed but presumably massive amount of labor to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. It’s now up for sale on Ebay with a starting bid of $1,200,000. The winner of the auction is unlikely to be disappointed; Groner was painstaking in his efforts, modestly allowing that the paintjob just might be better than Ferrari’s notoriously sloppy original work.

Still, consider the fact that this is one of fewer than four hundred Enzos in the world. It’s a car that can be six-figure damaged by having an autocross accident. A crunch that wouldn’t cost ten grand to fix on a Mustang. A “crash” that, at the very worst, probably happened at thirty miles per hour.

Did you hear that?

That’s the sound of Michael Mills blowing by at one fifty.

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Well, it seems that sore throat that made it sound like I had swapped my larynx with one taken from a chain smoker’s cadaver for last week’s podcast has blossomed and turned into a full-blown case of bronchitis, so unfortunately, there will not be a podcast this week. On another note, I’d like to apologize for the consistent and unacceptable lateness of the podcast as of late. I love you guys and the chance to talk to literally tens of devoted car enthusiasts about something that I enjoy very much, but unless being snarky about cars on a semi-regular basis pays a lot better than I think, real life and college has to take precedence. I’m not going anywhere, I’ll still do my best to deliver the top-notch automotive news podcasting mediocrity that you all keep coming back for, but until college stops demanding increasingly unreasonable amounts of my free time, the posting schedule will stay somewhat erratic. I can’t thank you all enough for even checking in and reading my lame excuses, let alone continuing to listen to the rantings of a somewhat amusing college student with an unhealthy obsession with cars, and regular service (well, regular for us) will be resumed as soon as possible.

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Story and photographs by Mark Baruth

In perhaps the most disturbing episode of nepotism since Ferdinand Porsche let his do-nothing kid “Butzi” style the 911, we have my brother, Mark, misusing the Speed:Sport:Life bully pulpit to rant about the SCCA Solo Nationals. Enjoy! - jb

Topeka, Kansas.

Not exactly the subject of many “Where I spent my summer vacation” essays. And yet, for many reasons (which have nothing at all to do with the fact that you can hit the SCCA offices with a rock from Heartland Park, the site of the event), that’s where the 2008 Solo National Championships are going to take place.

This year is to be my second attempt at competing against the best silly hat wearers the nation has to offer. My 2004 Mazda RX-8 was purchased before I even knew what autocross was, so I, of course, picked the coolest looking car on the lot-air dam, fog lights, ground effects, spoiler, traction control, stability control, even a spare tire kit! The same spare tire kit was the subject of nearly 5 pages of vitriolic discussion at RX8club (the brace makes the rear end stiffer! No it doesn’t! Yes it does!). I’m also reluctant to chop my exhaust on the car, since it is also my daily driver. Unfortunately, all of that stuff adds weight, and as ski jumpers say, Fat Doesn’t Fly.

However, none of that will matter this year. I feel great about my chances in Topeka- I trophied at a National Tour event, and have consistently placed among the top drivers in my region in PAX. On the negative side, I blew a motor earlier in the car earlier in the year (thanks for the new Renesis, Mazda!), plus I’m a new dad, so Topeka will only be my 6th event of the year. Never mind-a trophy is in reach-nay, it is inevitable.

Now, you may have heard from no less an authority than the SCCA website that autocross is a “low-cost, entry-level motorsport.” Tee. Freaking. Hee. Upon pulling into the paddock at Heartland Park on Monday afternoon, I am reminded why many people simply don’t go to Nationals. The preparation level of the cars is better than anything we’ve ever seen from Super Aguri. Not to mention the motorhomes, trailers, tow vehicles, and the d-bag who will stack up his Hoosier Wets in grid a few cars down from me on Tuesday morning, despite the fact that you could have driven 30 miles in any direction before seeing a cloud. One quickly realizes that in a competition measured by thousandths, your average Local Region Superstar who dominates F Stock in his ’93 Camaro is not on the same planet as these guys. When there are people writing articles in Grassroots Motorsports about how to build a $15,000 motor for a 1991 Miata (take a moment to appreciate the irony of that), something just ain’t right.

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