Car Throttle

It's true.  It's part of the human psyche.  In a battle between David and Goliath, people are always going to hope that the slingshot wielding man takes down the towering beast.  Perhaps it's the societal interpretation of "Rage Against The Machine."  People want to see the scrawny midget kick the stuffing out of the club bouncer. And so it is, I believe, with cars.  Or at least it seems to be that way.  Case in point:  Nissan's GT-R.  Now, this is not to say that the GT-R is a Pygmy in a room full of Amazons, or extraordinarily cheap.  In fact, if you point your browser over to Nissan's website, you'll see that $89,950 is required to put a new GT-R in your driveway.  If

Speed, like everything in life, is entirely relative.  You might think you're "only doing 90, gosh!" but the cop writing you a ticket for doing that speed in a 45mph zone probably disagrees.  And when you hit the speed limiter at 155mph in your BMW M3, you might think you're going fast - but the guy in the ZR-1 with his foot planted in 5th shooting for 200mph can't even see your headlights.  And that ZR-1, well, it'd seem pretty mundane from the seat of a Bugatti Veyron. So what makes a Bugatti Veyron seem a little slow?  Considering a current Veyron Super Sport is good for 268mph flat out, it'd have to be something really, really fast. But when your hobby is Land Speed Record racing,

XDC - Xtreme Drift Circuit - is a nationwide drifting competition with stops at some of the most well-known race tracks in the US - Irwindale, VIR, Summit Point, Texas Motor Speedway, etc.  It's a high-level exhibitionist drifting competition, mixed with a car show, mixed with some racing.  If it comes near you, you oughtta go - the closest XDC event to me was held on July 3rd at the Charlotte Motor Speedway - which is primarily a NAPCAR track - and the 2.5hr drive down there was totally worth it.  Some of the most insane cars I've ever seen showed up, both competitive drifters and perfect show cars. The car in the intro image is Sikky Manufacturing's 350Z drift car.  How do you

For real.  I love drag racing. I know it's simplistic, primal, and perhaps a bit stupid.  "Real racers turn, too!"  Yeah, I know.  Still, it's one of those sports that's not hard to get into.  You don't have to have a long attention span.  If you don't like the car on the tree, it's gonna be done racing in a few seconds.  And something else is coming up behind it.  Hell, it's a sport that not only condones but encourages burnouts, which is the automotive equivalent of a testosterone storm. So there's not really "news" to report from a local drag strip.  But it's loud, smells great, tons of fun to watch or participate in, and talk about.  Plus, I just picked up a new camera

Continuing along with the rest of the new stuff at NYIAS this year, welcome to Part 2 of our "best of the rest" coverage, a sort of all-at-once splurt of information to keep you up to date on the latest developments, without boring you to death with new paint colors for the Kia Optima.  Here we go. 2012 Subaru Impreza Sedan/Hatchback Subaru has finally come to their senses with the Impreza.  While it's always been a relatively fun-to-drive car even in non-turbocharged form, it hasn't really experienced great sales in the economy-car market compared to more conventional rivals.  The biggest reason would be the big-car fuel economy in a small, unrefined package.  The current Impreza 2.5i makes a fairly impressive 173bhp from it's single-cam 2.5L horizontally

Let's talk about the Caterham 7.  When the dealership took over production rights to the original minimalist Lotus sports car in 1973, I doubt they knew how many people would still be making copies and derivatives of it today.  Heck, I doubt they knew they'd still be making it today.  Wikipedia lists a few brands that make Lotus/Cateram 7 clones, copies, and spin-offs.  Here's their (surely incomplete) listing: Almac, Alpha Sports, Aries Motorsports, Barnard, Birkin, Boes, Brunton, BWE, Chevron, Chinkara, Cobra, Dala7, Daytona, Dax Rush, Diardi, Donkervoort, Elfin, Esther, Fraser Clubman, Gillett, Gregory, HKT, Irmscher 7, Leitch Super Sprint, Locust, Luego, Mac #1, Martin, Mitsuoka, MNRacing, MK, Nota, Pegasus 7, PRB, Quantum, RaceTech, Raw, Robin Hood(!), Shawspeed, Superformance (S1 Roadster), Sylva, Tiger, Tornado, Vindicator, WCM

One thing the world has no shortage of is limited-edition Mustangs. I'm not sure they make numbers high enough to count how many "special" Mustangs there have been over the years, but it's somewhere between "A gazillion" and "X, where X=enough+1."  What's a shame is that most of them are nothing more than silly tape-and-stickers packages.  GT/California Special?  Vinyl decals and some nice wheels.  Shelby GT?  Loud exhaust, filter-on-a-stick, a $10,000 Shelby badge and some chrome hood pins.  Bullitt?  A Mustang GT with less of the tacky Mustang GT stuff stuck on it.  Just fabricated specialness that any gearhead can see through at first glance. So when rumors started circulating that Ford would be bringing back the "Boss" Mustang moniker, I didn't get my hopes up. 

People tend to think of BMW as a German brand (obviously), but like most brands the Bavarian maker has long since diversified production. Many of today's BMW's do not come out of a plant in Southern Germany, but rather from a plant nestled back in the middle of nowhere, South Carolina.  Since it opened in 1994, the BMW Manufacturing Plant in Spartanburg, SC has produced all of BMW's "X" models (X3, X5 first and second generation, X6) as well as the Z3 and Z4 Roadsters/Coupes, and for a while the 318i and 318is.  It's a huge, modern facility that sits on 1,150 acres of land off of highway I-85, and these days it spits out around 160,000 new BMW's a year. While the plant itself is interesting

Here's an interesting tech tid-bit that I missed from the opening race of the F1 season: The Ferraris are running bio-fuel. Specifically, it's some sort of cellulosic ethanol blend that the boys from Maranello and Shell developed. Well that's pretty cool. Not that it will be enough to silence the naysayers, but it's still worth looking into. Before we get into that though, let me just say a hearty congratulations and salute! to Fernando Alonso for chalking up his first win (his first time out!) with the Scuderia. Good job on that, and the Maranello based tam looks to be formidable contenders this year. So what's the deal with this cellulosic ethanol then? For one thing, it's not entirely new. Corvette Racing and a bunch of

Lately, a couple of friends and I have been throwing around the idea of starting a racing team. Of course, since none of us have very much money, this would normally be impossible.  But, if you've been living under a large rock for the last few years, I have good news - there's a solution to this problem!  It's called the 24 hours of LeMons (as opposed to the real deal, the 24 Hours of LeMans), and it's just about the best thing to happen to grassroots racing since Spec Miatas. You can get all the nitty gritty details at the 24 Hours of LeMons website, but I'll lay out the basic premises of the series.  It's a 24-hour (mostly) endurance race that takes place over