Showing posts with label Auto Racing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Auto Racing. Show all posts

Sunday, September 11, 2022

Don't Try This at Home

Unbelievably wild. 

And it's a Hoonigan.


Friday, July 8, 2022

McLaren Speedtail: A $3 Million Zoom With a View (VIDEO)

Well, one can dream.

At the Wall Street Journal, "With a top speed of 250 mph, the Speedtail is the fastest McLaren ever built, but Dan Neil is most impressed by the sightlines from the center driver’s seat":

Go ahead, yank. Give a squeeze. Imagine yourself strapped into this belt-high, $3-million hybrid hypercar, looking down the middle of that steep hood at your immediate and onrushing destiny. It’s a weathery June day in the south of England, with veils of rain and patchy sun along the M3 from the company’s headquarters in Woking, Surrey, to your lunch stop, near Portsmouth.

Fluffy sheep and fluffier clouds, green hills, stone walls. While you’re at it, imagine you weigh what you did in high school. The Speedtail’s steeply bolstered driver’s couch fits like ’70s-era Calvin Kleins.

This go-kart of the gods is officially the fastest McLaren yet (top speed 250 mph), and the most powerful (1,055 hp), hosting an AI-enhanced, twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8 mated to a hybrid KERS system, seven-speed dual-clutch transmission and a torque-vectoring rear axle. The factory, usually conservative in these matters, says the Speedtail can accelerate from naught to 124 mph in 6.6 seconds and to 186 mph in 13 seconds—about the time it takes to read this sentence aloud.

Can you feel that?

Yet this is a case where the absurdity of performance—on what planet will anyone be driving at 250 mph?—takes itself out of critical consideration. Besides, if you go shopping among elite car builders, you (or your goony intermediaries) can acquire all sorts of instantly collectible, money-laundering hypercars with unbearable performance, including the Mercedes-AMG Project One, Aston Martin Valkyrie and Bugatti Chiron. But no other car can compete with this view.

The Speedtail completes a generational quartet of limited-edition, science-on-a-rampage hybrid hypercars from McLaren—the Ultimate Series—including the Senna, the Elva, and the P1. For enthusiasts, these cars represent the proverbial best of times. Each has its inimitable and historic bits for which collectors will pay handsomely in years to come.

The Speedtail’s immortal flex begins with the cockpit layout: the driver’s couch is in the center, flanked by two smaller seats, molded into the carbon-fiber/aluminum monocoque. The three-seat layout is a homage to the essential McLaren F1 sports racer of the 1990s. A way more comfortable homage, I might add.

As with the F1, the company limited Speedtail production to 106 examples—all built and delivered in 2020 and 2021. I’m sorry I’m only getting around to it now.

The center-seat experience is singular—solipsistic, even. In this car the driver’s perceptions sit in the middle of a spherical transparency, around which reality warps like the backgrounds of a first-person videogame. Fanning kinescopes of passing forests, hectic kaleidoscopes of council-owned agriculture, all lens around your POV in perfect symmetry.

The center-seat driver experience is singular—solipsistic, even

That. Is. Awesome! Having spent my driving life slightly askew, it seems, this sudden alignment of my somatic graviception and momentum vector-space was practically euphoric. This is the saddled symmetry of riding horseback, or on a motorcycle, or piloting a single-seat race car or fighter jet. Oh Maverick! Take me to the hangar!

Then there’s the way it looks. I’ve studied the matter closely: The Speedtail is the most beautiful of a generation of very, very fast cars built in the hyper-hybrid era, the sweetest and most lyrical derivation of Navier-Stokes since perhaps the 1930s—”beauty” here being aesthetic satisfaction uncompromised by extreme speed.

Generally, the faster a car is, the uglier. That collects the much-adored Aston Martin Valkyrie and Bugatti Chiron, among others. If not ugly then more cluttered with edges, blades, scoops and splitters, necessary to ensure stability at speeds where the angels fear to tread. And to look cool.

The Speedtail’s form is like a glass javelin, long and balanced and piercing at both ends. Much of the downforce is generated by the unseen underbody and (pressure) diffuser. Instead of a rear wing waggling on pneumatic pylons, movable aero elements are integrated into flexible sections of trailing-edge body work that bend up and down, reacting to control-loop calls for downforce and braking.

The flexi-bendy ailerons were not easy, said Andy Palmer, Vehicle Line Director, Ultimate Series. But to do otherwise would have been like spoiling the line of a good suit.

The plan was to race Mr. Palmer to lunch near Southampton—he in the second validation prototype (XP2) of the Speedtail and I in the XP5. If that wasn’t the plan, nobody told him. Soon the XP2’s exquisite, filamentary taillights disappeared in a towering gray rooster tail, boiling up from the car’s mighty underbody diffuser. Crikey, he’s leaving me.

But put your foot down and the Speedtail represents. Totes. In the time it took to zing the turbos three times—bu-bah-tweee, bu-bahhh-tweeee, bu-bahhhh-tweeeee—the Speedtail had closed in on the XP2 and I was flirting with extradition. It all happened so fast, officer. And so swimmingly.

Why aren’t there more such delightful cars, ask the rest of us? According to the feds, the Speedtail isn’t even road legal, on account of its center controls, camera-based wing mirrors and, I’m sure, other homologation issues. About one-third of Speedtails produced have been imported to the U.S. under what’s known as the show or display rule, which restricts annual odometer-registered mileage to 2,500 miles...

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Line Lock

This feature is available on the Dodge Hellcat and the R/T Scat Pack


Friday, July 23, 2021

2021 C8 Corvette Z51 (REVIEW)

This 'Vette at the video is actually a 2020.

I saw one on the freeway the other day and I thought it was an Italian car, a Ferrari or a Lambo.

Very slick:



Thursday, July 15, 2021

Ford's New 2021 Mustang Mach 1 (VIDEO)

The car gets a fabulous review from this Edmunds guy:



Monday, February 1, 2021

Saturday, January 9, 2021

Tested: 2021 Mazda 3 2.5 Turbo vs. Audi A4 45

 From Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, "MAZDA’S LUXURY-BRAND AMBITIONS":

Bottom line: “As it stands now, the Mazda 3 2.5 Turbo offers a hell of a lot of car for the money, while the Audi A4 offers an appropriate amount of car for the money.”

 

Saturday, August 1, 2020

Total Badass

Unbelievable.


Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Rally Car Driver Ken Block 'Hoons' the 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E (VIDEO)

Ken Block is the CEO of Hoonigan's.

This car supposedly pulls off 1,400 horsepower, all electric.

Listen to the discussion at the video about adding torque, etc. This is hardcore.



Thursday, July 23, 2020

Tesla Utterly Dominates Electric Vehicle Market

It's seems blatantly obvious, but it's only when you get down to the data and history of the EV market do you see how dominant Tesla is.

At NYT, "In Electric Car Market, It’s Tesla and a Jumbled Field of Also-Rans":

Although it has develop into the world’s most beneficial automaker, Tesla nonetheless has to determine tips on how to develop into persistently worthwhile, cut back high quality issues in its luxurious vehicles and extra rapidly flip alluring prototypes into mass-produced autos.

One space the place it hasn’t had a lot to worry about: competitors.

Over the final 12 months or so, a number of automakers, together with Audi, Jaguar and Porsche, have added heralded new fashions supposed to chop into Tesla’s electrical dominance. But they’ve barely made a dent, at the least within the United States. Sales of the Jaguar I-Pace, an electrical sport utility car much like the Tesla Model Y, have totaled simply over 1,000 this 12 months. Porsche has reported related gross sales for its electrical sedan, the Taycan.

Audi, which has grown steadily within the United States over the past decade, launched an electrical S.U.V., the E-tron, final 12 months, and gross sales have sputtered. So far this 12 months, Audi has bought just below 2,900. In many states, the automotive is marketed at costs 13 % or extra under its record value — uncommon for an Audi.

“Obviously from the numbers we’re seeing, these cars aren’t setting the world on fire,” stated Karl Brauer, an unbiased auto analyst. “It was a mistake to think that just because these cars were on the market that people were going to buy them.”

General Motors has fared considerably higher with its Chevrolet Bolt, which the corporate launched in 2016. The firm has bought over 8,000 Bolts this 12 months. Sales of the Nissan Leaf have topped 3,000.

Tesla, which doesn’t escape gross sales by nation, is clearly working at a completely different degree. State information analyzed by Cross-Sell exhibits that 56,000 new Teslas have been registered this 12 months in 23 states, together with California, Florida, New York and Texas. Analysts stated Tesla’s 50-state gross sales whole most likely exceeded 70,000 vehicles. Globally, the corporate delivered about 180,000 vehicles within the first six months of the 12 months.

Of course, electrical autos, together with Tesla’s, characterize a tiny proportion of auto gross sales, which totaled greater than 17 million within the United States final 12 months. Electrics are a larger half of the new-car market in Europe, and Tesla faces extra competitors there than within the United States, however not a lot extra. China has many homegrown electrical carmakers, however they have a tendency to make cheaper autos that don’t immediately compete with Tesla’s choices. Regardless of the market, although, E.V.s are the fastest-growing section of the auto trade.

Tesla’s dominance could be defined partially by its head begin. It has been promoting electrical vehicles in important numbers since 2012. The firm and its chief government, Elon Musk, have additionally constructed a fervent fan base that few different automakers, save maybe high-end sports activities automotive manufacturers like Porsche or Ferrari, can declare. Tesla has lengthy supplied improvements different firms are solely now attempting to match, comparable to wi-fi software program updates that may add options or repair glitches with out journeys to dealerships.

One of the largest shortcomings of competing fashions is vary — the gap an electrical automotive can go earlier than needing to be recharged. The most for the E-tron and Taycan is about 200 miles. The I-Pace and Bolt go about 235 to 260 miles. The least costly Tesla Model Three has a vary of 250 miles, and most of the corporate’s vehicles go 300 miles or extra on a single cost.

Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst at Guidehouse Insights, stated that the Audi, Jaguar and Porsche autos had been superior to Teslas in some methods, comparable to look, really feel and end, however that their restricted vary had postpone many patrons.

“The difference is too great for a lot of consumers to ignore,” he stated.

Mercedes-Benz and BMW have been slower to introduce electrical autos within the United States, the place each firms plan to begin promoting new electrical S.U.V.s subsequent 12 months. Mercedes late final 12 months delayed the introduction of its mannequin, the EQC. And BMW, which launched its i3 in 2014, has not constructed on that early begin.

That has left the sector open for Tesla, and traders have taken observe. The firm’s inventory has soared this 12 months, climbing from $510 in early January to about $1,600. The opening of a second meeting plant in China and the introduction of the Model Y have lifted optimism that Tesla will lead a international transition from gasoline-powered vehicles and vehicles to zero-emission electrical autos.

Of course, Tesla’s success is just not assured. It hasn’t reported an annual revenue since its founding in 2003. The firm has struggled to match the standard ranges of conventional automakers, and it’s spending closely on Model Y manufacturing and creating a pickup truck, a semi truck and different autos. It can be constructing a third manufacturing facility in Germany, and planning a fourth.

Its Autopilot driver-assistance system has gained widespread consideration, however its shortcomings have come below scrutiny after deadly accidents throughout its use. This month, a German courtroom dominated that Tesla had exaggerated the system’s skills and created the misunderstanding that Tesla vehicles with Autopilot may drive themselves. The firm has lengthy claimed that the information collected by its vehicles exhibits that the system makes its vehicles safer than others on the street.

Officials at Tesla didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Moreover, a stronger aggressive push might come quickly. By the top of this 12 months, Ford Motor expects to begin promoting an electrical S.U.V., the Mustang Mach-E, that’s styled to appear to be the corporate’s well-known sports activities automotive. It is promising a model of the automotive with a vary of 300 miles or extra. G.M. has stated it would provide a new Bolt with longer vary by the top of this 12 months, adopted by greater than 20 different electrical fashions over the subsequent three years.

Volkswagen subsequent 12 months will start promoting an electrical S.U.V., the ID4, which may also have a vary of 300 miles. The firm on Monday began taking orders in Europe for the ID3, a hatchback that can promote for about 10,000 euros lower than the Model 3; the automotive is just not anticipated to be bought within the United States.

And varied start-ups are elevating billions of {dollars} to problem Tesla...
Here's the Polestar:



Saturday, December 21, 2019

Comparing Modern Dodge Muscle Cars to the Iconic Vehicles of the 1960s (VIDEO)

My buddy Greg Joseph is interviewed in this L.A. Times feature on the new Dodge Hellcat lineup.

See, "Do modern Dodge muscle cars capture the magic harnessed by Big Willie Robinson?":


I couldn’t get any seat time in the late Robinson’s car — it was destroyed in 1971, and his wife’s matching car was wrecked a few years later. But I did track down a 1969 Hemi Daytona owned by car collector Greg Joseph.

Joseph actually knew Robinson; he met the leader of the Brotherhood of Street Racers in the 1990s via former Times Publisher Otis Chandler. At the time, Joseph was curating the muscle car collection of Chandler, whose holdings included a 1969 Hemi Daytona of his own.

Joseph said he was touched by the realization that he, Chandler and Robinson and his street racer wife each owned one of these unique rides.

“They truly were icons,” Joseph said. “It kind of brings back the nostalgia, the memories of the time when I went to all the drag races.”

Joseph, a retired history professor who long taught at Long Beach City College, said he sees the through line from the Daytona to the Redeye, in part because both harness what he called “state-of-the-art technology to go fast.”

“This is all-out high-performance,” said Joseph, gesturing at the Redeye. “Same with the Daytona.”

Still, the Redeye isn’t entirely state-of-the-art. It derives its power from a pushrod V-8 — that’s old-fashioned technology in an era of overhead cam motors with variable valve timing — but I get Joseph’s point. This is a car whose launch can be programmed via a special mode that holds the RPM at a desired spot in the power band for optimal acceleration.

And the Redeye carries over other technology from the 2018 Challenger Demon, an even higher-performance version of the car that put out 840 horsepower — and did zero to 60 in 2.3 seconds — but was sold for only one year. Among the goodies that have found their way from the Demon to the Redeye is an intercooler chiller system that keeps the motor at the ideal temperature.

Although the Redeye was the more extreme of the two cars I tested, the Charger Hellcat seemed to turn more heads during the week I drove it. As with the Challenger, this version of the Charger has been around for several years, but in Hellcat guise, the exterior modifications stand out. Perhaps that’s because they’re transforming a sedan with comparably more sedate looks.

At one stoplight, a man in a black minivan eyed the Charger Hellcat lustily from the neighboring lane. I edged the car forward, summoning a bark from the big V-8, and the other driver laughed appreciatively. Up the street, our lanes merged into one, and he happily ceded the road.

The minivan may have been no match for the Charger Hellcat, but the American muscle car rivalry is alive and well. And in many ways — even as manufacturers move toward increased electrification and hybridization — we are in the midst of a new golden age for these vehicles. A horsepower war touched off by the launch of the 2015 Challenger and Charger Hellcats shows no signs of slowing down. Chevrolet’s Camaro ZL1 offers 650 horsepower, and Ford is readying a top-end Mustang — the Shelby GT500 — packing 760 horsepower.

The Hellcat cars both deliver a quintessential muscle car ride. But it wasn’t easy for me to see a link to the Dodge drag strip heroes of yore, amid the many trappings of modernity.

Still, I was able to find a connection to the past in an unexpected place: some of the new cars’ shortcomings. Details like the Redeye’s subpar seats — yielding in all the wrong places — seemed to telegraph Dodge’s focus on speed, and little else. Thinking about the Hellcat cars this way, I grew to view many of their flaws as charming. And the ties to the 1960s were ultimately driven home via a mishap.

Before the Redeye was lent to The Times, it underwent some mechanical work that left the interior smelling of gasoline. Workers had attempted to mitigate it, but the bouquet of fuel stubbornly persisted.

But it didn’t bother me. It felt a little rough, a little raw. Like how old cars sometimes smell after they’ve been throttled hard.

Even if it was unintended, it made the Redeye feel a little bit closer to 1969.

A little bit closer to the Daytona. A little bit closer to Robinson.

Thursday, August 1, 2019

Muscle Cars Top List of Most Stolen Vehicles (VIDEO)

I was visiting my mom out in Yucca Valley earlier this year, and I was wiping down my Challenger after the rain in the parking lot at Walmart. Some guy pulls up in a pickup, and admiring my car, blurts out, "That thing is going to get broken into!"

I'm like thanks a lot, buddy.

I haven't had a problem with breakins or attempted theft, but then my car is the six-cylinder SXT model, of which there are thousands and thousands on the road.

Now when I upgrade in a couple of years to the new Challenger widebody Scat Pack, with 485 horsepower and line-lock launch mode, I'll be a little more worried.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:



Saturday, July 20, 2019

Chevrolet Corvette C8 2020 (VIDEO)

Wow!

This is a spectacular car!

At Jalopnik, "Here's a Detailed Look at the 2020 Corvette C8's Impressive Engineering."

And Road and Track, "Mid-Engine Corvette: Everything We Know."

For all the change, it actually still looks like a 'Vette, especially from the front.



Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Jay Leno's Garage: Dodge Hellcat Redeye 2019 (VIDEO)

Jay Leno loves cars, and he really loves the Dodge series Challengers.

Previously, "Jay Leno Takes the Dodge Demon to Pomona Raceway."

At the video, they first discuss the red 485hp Challenger "Scat Pack" wide-body, which is going to be my next car in a few years, lol. They're extremely affordable at under $40,000, and Dodge has transferred much of the technology from last year's Demon down to the lower price-range vehicles.

And Jay's endorsement is off the charts. A great show:



Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Porsche is Trying to Reinvent Itself in the Wake of Germany's Diesel-Emissions Scandal

I don't love electric cars, but if any company could change my mind, it's Porsche. (Tesla's don't do it for me at all.)

At Der Spiegel, "Electric Dreams: Porsche's Quest to Make Eco-Friendly Sports Cars":


The Porsche of the future is still so secret that it's not allowed off the company's premises without an elaborate disguise. Two fake exhaust pipes stick out the rear, while a green pollution badge adorns the windshield. It's all an act to mislead competitors. Under the hood, there's neither a combustion engine nor an injection system. Instead, there are two electric motors and a heavy battery.

So far, it's just a test vehicle inconspicuously parked in front of Porsche's development center in Weissach, near Stuttgart. Porsche, however, is planning to unveil its first electric car at the end of 2019, and revamp its brand from the ground up.

Even for the engineers responsible for its roll-out, the new e-model is a culture shock. Ever since the first sports car hit the pavement 70 years ago, the name Porsche has stood for flashy combustion engines that roar when drivers hit the gas. Poor emission values and high fuel consumption were practically part of the brand's DNA. But the company's new model, the Taycan, is emissions-free -- and it's as quiet as a toy car.

For Porsche, this means it's no longer competing with the likes of Ferrari, Maserati, BMW or Mercedes. It's now in a direct contest with Tesla, the pioneering electric-car company from California. "Our goal is to be a technological trailblazer," says Porsche CEO Oliver Blume.

The End of an Era

Blume's plans are more ambitious than those of other German automobile manufacturers. By 2025, he wants at least half of the cars Porsche sells to be electric. Five years later, according to the company's own forecasts, Porsche will hardly have any vehicles on its assembly line with conventional combustion engines.

In late 2018, the company's supervisory board resolved to outfit Porsche's best-selling car with an electric motor within the next few years. The new version of the Macan, a compact off-road vehicle, will soon be fully electric. For the petrol-powered model, there will be only an update. After that, the era of the gas-guzzler will gradually come to an end.

It's a billion-euro bet with enormous possibilities -- and enormous risk. If Blume's plan works out, Porsche could become an ecologically oriented sports-car company, a role model for the entire German automobile industry. It would be proof that the industry has learned its lesson after the diesel scandal -- in which Porsche's parent-company, the Volkswagen Group, was found to have tricked emissions tests to make its vehicles seem more environmentally friendly than they really were -- and that it has not entirely slept through the transition to electric mobility.

The problem, however, is that Porsche's offensive comes at a time of great uncertainty. Nobody knows whether the company will be able to sell enough of its new e-cars. The brand has many loyal fans with a penchant for combustion engines. Even one of Porsche's brand ambassadors, Walter Röhrl, an ex-rally driver, has said e-mobility is the "wrong track."

Porsche's Dirty Past

Meanwhile, demand in the world's two largest automotive markets, the United States and China, is slowing, and disputes are further weighing on business. If U.S. President Donald Trump makes good on his threats to impose punitive import tariffs on foreign cars, Porsche would be more adversely affected than other German manufacturers. The sports-car maker sells nearly a quarter of its vehicles in America, yet has none of its production facilities there. The result would be a sharp drop in profits.

Then there's the fact that Porsche, in its quest toward a clean future, is regularly confronted with its dirty past.

At the end of January, the carmaker filed self-indictments with Germany's Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) and the U.S. environmental authorities. The reason: Porsche's iconic 911 sports car was emitting more CO2 than the company had previously disclosed. And it wasn't just older models: its 2016 and 2017 models were affected as well. The authorities are now investigating whether Porsche's failure to disclose was a mere oversight -- or possibly Germany's next exhaust scandal. The Public Prosecutor's Office in Stuttgart has initiated a so-called inspection process. Porsche has added that it's continuing its own internal investigations.

Porsche is also still under pressure for its role in Germany's "Dieselgate" scandal. Three company employees are under investigation on suspicion of fraud and false advertising. And the case against them is getting stronger, sources familiar with the investigations say. The defendants have yet to be granted access to the evidence against them, but it is conceivable that charges will be filed against them in 2019, the sources add.

To this day, Porsche rejects any blame for the German diesel scandal. The company has remained firm on its assertion that it didn't build the motors in question itself, but rather bought them from its sister brand Audi. Porsche has even considered pursuing financial compensation from Audi to the tune of 200 million euros ($227 million)...
Combustion engines are the best, and it'd be sad if this environmental push destroyed the brand.

But what the hell? It's the culture we have now. Better for American car-makers, I guess. (*Shrugs.*)

Still more.

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Mecum's 2018 Dodge SRT Demon Offering

This is fantastic!


Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack 1320

1320 feet is a quarter mile, so that's a cool number for the new Dodge Challenger Scat Pack, which is essentially a dragster.

At Road and Track, "The Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack 1320 Takes a Page From Porsche":


Today, Dodge announced the new 2019 Challenger R/T Scat Pack 1320, a lightweight, dragstrip-oriented version of the Challenger R/T. In essence, it's a naturally aspirated, narrow-body version of the Challenger Demon, named "1320" for the number of feet in a quarter-mile. With a 485-horsepower, 6.4-liter V8, a zero-to-60 time of 3.8 seconds, and a quarter-mile of 11.7 seconds, Dodge says it's the quickest naturally aspirated muscle car on sale today. It's also the result of a brilliant strategy that reminds us of one of our other favorite performance-car brands, Porsche. And no, we haven't lost our minds.

Much of the cool stuff from the Challenger Demon has slowly trickled down into the rest of the Challenger lineup. The 840-horsepower Demon’s bolt-on fender flares soon found a new home on the 707-horse Hellcat Widebody for 2018. The huge 2.7-liter supercharger from the Demon, along with some supporting engine mods, help give the 2019 Hellcat Redeye its 797-horsepower rating. And the 2019 R/T Scat Pack Widebody is basically a Hellcat Widebody without the supercharger. Plus, there's the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, which borrows its 707-horsepower engine from the Hellcat and receives the Demon's clever Torque Fill system for quick dragstrip launches. Basically, Fiat-Chrysler has been spreading the Demon's best bits all around the SRT family.

The new R/T Scat Pack 1320 joins that list. From the Demon, the 1320 gets adaptive dampers with a special mode to help transfer weight to the rear axle during launches; a TransBrake that locks the output shaft of the eight-speed automatic to build revs at a standstill at the starting line; and Torque Reserve, a computer-controlled ignition timing system designed to maximize the power the engine's kicking out as the car is straining to leave the starting line.

There's also a line-lock function so you can preheat the tires with a big smoky burnout, and systems to minimize wheelspin and axle-hop on hard drag launches. For hardware, the 1320 gets upgraded half-shafts from the Demon, plus sticky, 275-mm wide Nexen street-legal drag radials, a super-sticky summer-only tire. And like the Demon, the 1320 comes standard with only a driver's seat, for maximum weight saving—though you can option a front passenger seat and rear seats for $1 each. Equipped with only a driver's seat, the 1320 weighs 4127 lbs—87 lbs lighter than a regular R/T Scat Pack. In terms of looks, the 1320 is closer to a narrow-body Hellcat—it has that car's vent-and-scoop hood and large trunk spoiler—though the split grille and the "1320" bumblebee logo give it away as a non-supercharged Challenger...
More.

Added: Lots more details at PR Newswire, "2019 Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack 1320: Beware of the Angry Bee at the Drag Strip."

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Danica Patrick's Seen as Role Model, Though Critics See Her as Under-Performing

This is interesting. At LAT, "Danica Patrick's final race at Indy 500 comes with a hotly debated legacy":

Danica Patrick's race car is painted in a lustrous neon green one last time, a hue that ensures its "look at me" quality even when the car is a 230-mph blur.

The color is apropos of Patrick and her racing career, which she's ending Sunday with a final attempt to win the Indianapolis 500, the race that initially made her famous in 2005.

From that race forward, Patrick — often driving the shiny green car favored by her and her longtime main sponsor, the web services firm GoDaddy Inc. — has been the driver everyone watched, analyzed and endlessly debated.

That was due not only to her on-track achievements as a female in a male-dominated sport, but also to her relentless self-promotion, which together earned her the one-name celebrity of being simply "Danica."

"I can't think of a better way to end my racing career than at Indianapolis for the 500," the 36-year-old Patrick said in an interview. "I can't think of a more cool way to be done.

"I mean, to finish up at a place that has so many good memories for me, and at the biggest race of the year for Indy cars and arguably the biggest race of the year, period," she said.

Patrick achieved several firsts as a woman in the IndyCar and NASCAR racing series, and in doing so became a role model for countless young women and their parents who admired her feats, tough persona and unflagging determination.

No less than seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson tweeted earlier this year: "Thank you @danicapatrick for being a strong role model to the little girls in my life," referring to his two young daughters.

Patrick's fame also was burnished by her blunt, outspoken manner, her savvy marketing of her personal "brand" that earned her millions of dollars in endorsements, and by the outsized media attention she always received.

Patrick's overall record on the track was middling; she had one victory in 13 years of big-league racing. That fueled the debate about whether she deserved the attention she received and made the Roscoe, Ill., native one of the most polarizing figures in sports.

"I don't know that we've seen someone who is so popular when not performing as well," said Greg Goldring, senior director of sports and entertainment at the Marketing Arm, a marketing agency.

Her impact on motor racing will be argued long after the 102nd running of the iconic race, one of the biggest one-day sporting events in the world. Patrick is adamant that she's not going to just circle the track as more than 250,000 spectators and millions more on television look on.

"I'm here to win the race," she said...

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Dodge Challenger Hellcat for 2019

Still the same basic body styling (which some reviews have said is dated) but with new aggressive twin scoops. Definitely looks awesome. I don't mind the supposedly dated body style. I love the Challengers. LOVE!

At Car & Driver, via Jay Leno's Garage, and Autoblog below: