Car Throttle

The world's filled with boring, mundane, unremarkable automobiles. For every SVO Mustang, there are 10,000 Camry LE's.  For every Alfa Romeo Guilia Super sedan, there are an untold bazillion Honda Fits.  That's just how it is: mainstream sells.  As it turns out, very few people actually want the diesel, all wheel drive, manual-transmission station wagon that internet car enthusiasts say would sell like hotcakes. Sometimes, though, some of the most interesting cars out there are born out of some of the most dishwater-dull transportation appliances.  Here's my top ten - as always, feel free to leave a comment telling me what I left out at the bottom!  On we go. 10) Mitsubishi Galant VR-4 Mitsubishi's Galant sedan is... hold on, let me go to Wikipedia, I can't

For those enthusiasts with turbos on the brain, this is a question that has bounced around since the early 90's. There's still not a definite answer today - but with the recent coverage of 3000GT VR-4 tuner 3SX Performance, I thought it would be a good CT: Asks for our readers to share their input on this question. The 90's were arguably the resurgence of real performance, after the mediocrity of the 80's and the depressing malaise of the 70's.  Horsepower was no longer taboo, the speed limit was no longer 55, gas was cheap, and financing was easy.  Out of this was born the unique class of Japanese supercars - viciously powerful cars packed with technology, slick styling, turbocharging, and exhilarating performance.  There really

Picking up where Part I left off, we find ourselves in the back of 3SX Performance's service shop. In addition to a handful of lifts in the main service bay, 3SX also has a number of other rooms filled with interesting stuff in the back of their shop - starting with the dyno room.

This is 3SX's photo, because I somehow forgot to take one of the dyno.

3SX's dyno is a SuperFlow AutoDyn 88, which is a four-wheel-drive unit.  This seems like a no-brainer, but the vast majority of dynos at private shops are only 2WD models, as they're cheaper, easier to set up, easier to keep working right, and easier to use.  But when the bulk of your business

One of the things I'm trying to do in an effort to bring more interesting content to you, the reader, is cover more local items. There are plenty of places you can read a rehash of the latest press releases, but here at CarThrottle we strive to bring you coverage and features you won't find anywhere else.  So to get the ball rolling on this, I introduce our new "Shop Tours" series, where I'll be traveling around the eastern seaboard of the US, highlighting the best and brightest of performance and modification shops our country has to offer.  First up is 3SX performance in Concord, North Carolina. If you're familiar with the world of Mitsubishi performance, chances are you've heard of 3SX before.  They are the

Every 5 years or so, it seems the future is revealed to us. The newest, greatest technology that will save the future of the automobile has come around, it's time is now, and it will undoubtedly be the greatest thing that has ever happened to the car industry.  Sometimes it's right - look at concepts like direct injection, turbocharging, variable valve timing, hybrids, clean diesels, etc - and sometimes it's an epic flop.  While ideas that stick are cool, what I find more interesting are the ideas that come and go, and no one really remembers them.  Here are a few of my favorites. 1) The Wankel Rotary Engine Once upon a time, it was thought that the future of internal combustion engines was a three-sided pregnant

The 3000GT VR-4 is a sign of both what's right and what's terminally wrong with the automotive industry. Which is remarkable, because they haven't made one since, oh - 2000.  US imports ceased in 1999, meaning the freshest of 3000GT's are more than a decade old at this point, so the relevance of the VR-4 is questionable.  But it was quite telling. The 3000GT (marketed in Japan and other countries as the GTO, which you know wouldn't have gone over well here) was Mitsubishi's flagship halo car, a rolling testbed to show just what the company could do.  It replaced the ancient (but awesome) Starion Coupe when it debuted in 1990, and when the specifications were announced it sounded like a world-killer. Based on a shortened Diamante