Recent Comments:
Earth Day: How far must you drive your hybrid before it pays off? {Autoblog Green}
Apr 23rd 2008 5:37PM What you're really forgetting is the fact that ANY new car, ESPECIALLY ones as complicated as a hybrid, require a HUGE amount of energy to produce, and create a ton of pollution in the process.
You old rich pretend hippies can drive your stupid Priuses and claim you are 'green', but you aren't. It's a much greener choice to keep an old car on the road as long as possible. You seem to be forgetting all about 'reduce and reuse', in a bigger sense. Yes, you're reducing the amount of gas used, but in the big picture, you are only ADDING to the problem of over production and a throw away culture.
Aerocivic's mods combine great aerodynamic and a, um, stunning look in 95 mpg Civic {Autoblog Green}
Apr 22nd 2008 12:57PM The reason you don't see anything like that in 'nascar' is because well... first off, nascar is retarded, but more importantly, nascar is about high performance cars, not high mileage cars. They spend time in the wind tunnel to find a shape that is decently slippery, but provides a LOT of downforce. This guy doesn't care about downforce, in fact, he'd probably like to reduce it a bit to get load of the tires.
2007 Barrett-Jackson, Scottsdale: Hemi Superbird and Daytona Sold at $750,000 {Autoblog}
Jan 23rd 2007 6:27PM There are a lot more than only 4 unrestored superbirds around. That number only pertains to this drivetrain/color combination. Big deal. The daytona, on the otherhand, is very rare. They built way more superbirds than daytonas.
New HUMMER truck coming in 2009 {Autoblog}
Nov 9th 2006 6:47PM No, I don't need to chill out. Station wagons were fine. Then people considered them 'uncool', because that's what their parents had. Then came minivans. Now they're uncool. So we get stupid assholes using vehicles DESIGNED FOR OFFROAD USE and they're using them as one would normally use a minivan/wagon. The difference is, the minivan/wagon has more safety, more mpg, better handling, better acceleration, better braking, and guess what? I'm not fucking afraid of getting killed by one. Have you been in a car lately and parked near a recent navigator/escalade/suburban/h2/whatever? If some stupid trophy wife driving one of those isn't paying attention, or doesn't use your signals, you are fucking dead my friend. The bumpers are so high that they'll come right into the passenger compartment of most cars, and before 2004 when ford started adding a 'bar' lower down on the frame, most SUVs would ride up your hood, through your windshield, and into your head.
So we have a vehicle that's EXTREMELY dangerous to other drivers in passenger cars, coupled with tall sidewalled tires (read: crap response), soft suspension with tons of travel (read: awful handling), curb weights of over 8,500lbs (read: Shitty braking), and drivers who buy them for safety (read: assholes who think they're invincible, almost never use signals, never check blindspots, and lack any type of consideration for other drivers).
It fucking sucks. I've almost been killed by them many times. It's unbelievable how a 45+ yr old woman can just sign a check and be allowed to drive an 8,500lb+ vehicle without any special training, and who treats it like a car.
What's even better is as these SUVs age, they'll be affordable to teenagers and people who don't have the income to maintain them. Guess what a shitty handling/braking/avoiding SUV does as it gets older without proper maintenence? You got it. Even WORSE braking, handling, avoidance all driven by people who drive more aggressively, with less experience. 10 years from now expect the highway death tolls to start skyrocketing, thanks to the asshats who made the SUV so freaking popular. My only hope is that current SUV owners have their loved ones/children taken away from them by a vehicle that they used to drive: The vehicles designed for offroad but used as cars/minivans/station wagons.
PS: If anybody here has an SUV and actually tows something with it, or offroads, props. But most don't. Most are just pathetic posers who want to look 'cool' and don't give a shit about anybody except how people percieve them. According to market research conducted by the country's leading automakers, SUV buyers tend to be "insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others."
Also, that SUV drivers generally don't care about anyone else's kids but their own, are very concerned with how other people see them rather than with what's practical, and they tend to want to control or have control over the people around them. David Bostwick, Chrysler's market research director, tells Bradsher, "If you have a sport utility, you can have the smoked windows, put the children in the back and pretend you're still single."
New HUMMER truck coming in 2009 {Autoblog}
Nov 9th 2006 5:20PM Who gives a shit about how reliable it is? There are enough SUVs on the road already,of which 95% of them NEVER GO OFF THE ROAD* OR TOW ANYTHING.
People are using these fucking things as MINIVANS. Screw em!
*: Excluding the large number that slide off the road thanks to inferior brakes, handling, response, and accident avoidance. Then they usually roll over and die. Large SUVs have a deathrate about 3x higher than the average passenger car, thanks to a multitude of factors such as extremely stiff frames (no crumple zones), weak roofs (federal roof standards for trucks/suvs haven't increased since 1972), and other crap design that's inferior to that of a car.
It wouldn't piss me off much if all these SUV owners actually used them as SUVs, but instead they're using them as fucking cars/minivans/commuters, endangering both themselves (which is ironic, considering most of them think they're safer, when they're actually in more risk), and everyone else on the road!!! (in car/suv accidents, the car occupants are 5x more likely to die than a car/car accident.).
All my stats can be checked at the national highway safety administration's website, if you like. However, if you're disagreeing with me already I'm guessing you're just an ignorant jackass who already owns one and will continue to defend your current sentiment while ignoring facts, reason and logic. Whatever. Go watch nascar, football, beat your wife when your team loses, and then go to church and praise jesus on sunday. It'll make you forget anybody ever disagreed with you and you'll again feel like you're on top of the world, and entitled to everything on it, including excessive pointless consumption and endangering people's lives! Fucktards.
New HUMMER truck coming in 2009 {Autoblog}
Nov 9th 2006 5:05PM Also, aren't electric motors known for low end torque? Isn't low speed torque exactly waht you want in offroading? Seems to me that running primarily off electrical motors with an engine to keep the juice flowing would produce a pretty good offroad machine.
RR of the Day: 2001 Audi S4 {Autoblog}
Nov 9th 2006 5:01PM Nice car. I was racing one of those and another S-car, a bigger older one... S6? up in the backroads of the Upper Peninsula a few years ago. Weird thing is, I was able to keep up in my then stock Subaru SVX. Even weirder, is that I got a ride with one of them later, and he was blabbing on about all these 'upgrades' he did to the car (struts, exhaust, chip, etc). How the hell my 230hp SVX was able to keep up, who knows.
Autoblog Project Garage: Axle swap, Part IV {Autoblog}
Nov 9th 2006 4:52PM What is the point? I could understand if this was an impala SS, but it isn't. Roadmasters have horrid handling, not much power at all, and are only exciting to geriatric people almost ready for a coffin.
