Only 2 Cars?!?

I've written about my friend Stephen before, but not about this.

We were stationed together in Saratoga Springs, NY at a Navy Training Center. Stephen lived across the street from me in Navy Housing. We each had a one-car garage and were *allowed* to have one additional vehicle, parked in the driveway.

Well, being the gearheads that we were/are two cars wasn't close to enough.

So we started an informal contest to see who could have the most vehicles parked in Navy Housing at the same time.

By the time we moved out, we were tied at around 7 or 8 each, but Stephen clearly had me beat on tonnage, having both a schoolbus and 1948 American LaFrance fire-engine.

But he didn't have a 17' boat with no trailer, so we called it a draw.

Montesa King Scorpion update

A few weeks ago I wrote about a friend with a Montesa King Scorpion dirtbike that I could have.

Well I finally picked it up and it may be more project than I am willing to take on.

I have been offered assistance by a fellow blogger. He is in the process of restoring one of these motorcycles. You can read of his progress here.

More to follow. . .

The Blog for Auto Bloggers

Ever wonder what Automotive Bloggers would talk about if you got a bunch of them together?

Me either.

We can find out by checking out A Blog for Auto Bloggers. It's just as it seems, a sounding board for bloggers to talk amongst themselves in a public forum.

The concept for this site was to create a space where automotive bloggers, or even traditional online editors, can come and discuss the issues they come across in covering or commenting on the automotive industry.

All are welcome here. We’re looking for “real” discourse over the issues that dictate our coverage and how to improve it. This isn’t a place to bash others or the competition, but to see how each takes on the same subject.

Sounds like a great idea. I've asked to be included, look for my input there soon.

12 cylinder BMW 3 series!?!

Inspired by Croak's write-up of the V-10 powered E-90 3-series, I felt compelled to post this. Some guy in Finland (I think) shoehorned a M70 V-12 (from the E32 750iL) into an E30 3-series.

I want one.

Dodge Challenger

A lot of people have a problem with retro cars.

I don't understand why.

I think this is the car that should have been called the Charger.

At any rate, if the car looks as good as these spy shots, or this sketch, I fearlessly predict that it will be a hit.

Now if we can only convince Chevy to produce this Camaro.

Castrol attempts to break into the Blogosphere

And fails.

I received an email about a month and a half ago from Julia Bannon of MarketSource IMS asking if I would like to have a Castrol representative make a "guest appearance" on my blog and be interviewed by me. In this email, she also offered to send me more information about Castrol Syntec motor oil. You can read the complete email here.

I replied to her that I would be happy to interview the representative and that I would like for her to send the information to me so that I could prepare a list of questions for the interview. You can read my complete reply here.

The outcome of all this is that she never replied to my return email. No explanations, nothing.

My new favorite car

A friend recently pointed out that I have a thing for cars with long hoods. Some of my favorites are the Jaguar XJS, C-3 Corvettes and the Porsche 928.

I couldn't help but be reminded of that when I saw the Audi Nero concept (pictured).

It has perhaps a bit too much Batmobile in it, but I'm still in love.

The concept is one of the entries in the LA Auto Show design challenge. More details (and more entries) can be found on this Autoblog entry.

Project number . . .

I've lost count.

Anyway, a friend has a late 60s or early 70s Montesa King Scorpion dirtbike that he inherited from his father. He thinks it was last ridden around 30 years ago, so it should fire right up, right?

My plan is to get it running, put blinkers and a horn on it (it already has head and tail lights), put some 17" sportbike rims and tires on it, and register it for the street. Voila: a 250cc 2-stroke Supermotard.

False Advertising

I used to own a 2001 Ford Explorer Sport.

Really, I did.

No really, stop laughing!

Anyway, it was a good truck, but it had a few things that drove me crazy. One of these was the oil pressure gauge.

"How could an oil pressure guage drive Dorri crazy?" you might ask.

Simple, it was not really a pressure guage. It was an idiot light masquarading as a guage. The fine folks at Ford - following the same logic as the folks at The (Un)Truth About Cars - came to the conclusion that since most people didn't know what the oil pressure guage was really telling them that it could be replaced by an idiot light.

This would be fine, except that their marketing gurus decided that guages = upscale and upscale = sales. So they installed a fake pressure guage connected to an idiot light sender. What this means is that anytime the oil pressure is > 7 psig, the needle is in the middle of the normal band. If oil pressure is < 7 psig, the needle points to zero. That's it. No middle ground.

There is no documentation of this anywhere in the owner's manual. I don't know many people who like to be lied to.

The (Un)Truth About Cars

Rarely do I come across a website that looks this legitimate, yet contains so many fallacies. The Truth About Cars is just such a site. Aside from the over-the-top GM bashing (which GM probably deserves), it is a fairly straight-forward automotive opinion site.

With some exceptions.

The first time I ran across this site was in November of 2004, when they ran an article titled Death To The Stick Shift. This at first appears to be a well written article. The truth (ha!) is revealed upon closer scrutiny. The first ridiculous statement occurs fairly early in the article.

Operating a manual transmission is an inherently difficult and dangerous procedure...

Inherently dangerous? I think not.

Their most recent untruth is titled Highlight and Delete. Once again, it starts out with a reasonable premise - that the American automakers need to remove unnecessary standard features from automobiles in order to save production costs - but from there it all goes wrong.

The author states that most people don't pay attention to the oil pressure gauge or the voltmeter, so they should be replaced by "a simple warning light".

I wonder why those simple warning lights are called idiot lights.

He then continues with the spare tire and oddly, the accelerator cable. I find it difficult to believe that converting from a simple cable to a potentiometer and servomotor assembly will save production costs, but then I'm not an automotive engineer.

The Big Three redux

I was wrong. A couple of months ago I posted that Toyota was now the number two automaker in the US. That's still true, but it's not the whole story.

John Walker gives us a more complete picture on Fourmilog. If you look at market capitalization (number of shares of stock times their current price), Toyota is number one, Nissan (Nissan!) is number two, and Honda is number three.

Did you notice any domestic automakers on that list? GM? Ford?

Neither did I.

It is interesting to note that Google would rank just below Toyota in the above list. Google is worth more to stockholders than any American automaker, and they don't even make anything!

Car sites I visit regularly

Well, I've been working night shift for the last couple of weeks and haven't had much time to write.

I have, however, been keeping up to date on current events in the automotive world, and have added a couple of new sites to my links section.

• Ben's Car Blog - Ben loves cars. His blog is definitely worth reading. By the way, if you're just a little bit of a geek - like me - then you might enjoy his other blog, New Now Know How.
• Car Blogs . . . A Research Project - Bill Discher is a Master's student taking a course in Information Culture. His blog was created as part of that course, but is worth reading nonetheless.
• Ride - James Halmayr's blog is a wonderful source of automotive links. His posts are very good as well, but it's the extraordinary number of links that make his blog stand out.