Car Throttle

Part 3 of our road trip took us all the way to sunny Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Now, that's a long drive from Western NC.  So, then, why would we bother driving all that way?  I could explain in words, but I think a picture will do it better: Why, for some drifting of course!  A club called Drift Myrtle Beach happened to be holding an open event on Sunday the 22nd at the Myrtle Beach Speedway, so we stopped in to check out the action.  While this was definetely amateur-level drifting (a lot of overrotated corners were observed!), there's no such thing as bad drifting - it's like bad pizza.  Even when it's bad, it's fun to watch. There were all sorts of cars to

Well now, here's something you don't see every day - a tuner putting a smaller engine in a car! It sounds bizarre, but in this case it makes a lot of sense.  Alpina used a 3-series BMW as the basis for the D3 Bi-Turbo, but fitted with a mildly tuned version of the 123d's 2.0L twin-turbo diesel motor, which isn't available from BMW in the 3-series.  This is a majorly high-tech motor, using sequential turbocharging (like BMW's twin-turbo gasoline six as seen in the 135i, 335i, and others) and direct common rail fuel injection to acheive 214bhp and 332lb-ft of torque. In the 3-series, this equates to a 6.9 second 0-60 time and a top speed of 152 - all while returning a combined 45mpg, or 52.3mpg