Not a company to pull punches, here is what BMW had to say about the second-generation X5 when it was launched last year:
“BMW will write the latest chapter in the story of the world’s first Sports Activity Vehicle®, the BMW X5. Originally launched for the 2000 model year in late 1999, the BMW X5 permanently changed the automotive landscape. It proved that the driving dynamics, responsiveness, and linear control signature to every BMW could be compatible with utility, versatility, and other-roads capability.”
I’m not sure how to respond to the news about you being named the recipient of the 2011 Bob Akin Award by the Road Racing Drivers Club. You’ve managed to parlay a 30-year a career in “government work” at the private sector’s expense by pretending to represent both the Department of Interior and the US Senate Appropriations Committee. This has provided you with both the interior motives and the funding to support a covert career in motor sports at taxpayer expense. And I suppose all those “race weekends” never included Fridays. Oh, I get it . . . in Washington DC, Fridays are just the first day of the weekend. And if by some chance, a weekend stretched into a Monday, well, one of your annual 85 days of vacation time would suffice.
Mention the snow word to most enthusiasts and the first thing out of their mouth is likely to be: “I’ll drive the beater.”
But I grew up in Queens where ice and snow are as common as NY pizza . . . and I enjoy both. My first forays into the world of cold, low-coefficient driving came behind the wheel of a 1963 Chevy Biscayne 6-cylinder. The family car. I snuck out one night when my parents weren’t watching and drove to a large, vacant parking lot. There, on that expanse of asphalt, covered with about three inches of virgin snow, I discovered the exhilaration that led me into a life of living on the edge . . . and beyond.
NASA has just published its report on Toyota unintended acceleration. I haven’t seen the full report, but the summary I have read has a familiar ring. And I predict that lunatics and skeptics are going to be far more likely to believe the space agency actually landed Americans on the moon than they will be willing to accept NASA’s findings that almost all cases of unintended acceleration, starting in the 1980s with Audi and now two and a half decades later with Toyota, are the result of pedal error.
Whether it was mangling Audi transmissions to induce UA or, more recently, crossing wires that are impossible to cross to cause Toyota engines to zoom out of control, the legal profession’s eagerness to mimic the tactics of Middle Age witch hunters and the willingness of some less than scrupulous engineers to sell-out their profession are appalling.
These lawyers and their engineer /scientist collaborators are running in circles chasing non-existent electronic ghosts. It’s time to let these ghosts rest in peace.
By the way, what has happened to complaints about unintended acceleration? Attorneys and pundits might say Toyota has swept them under the carpet. But they seem to have disappeared about as quickly as they surfaced. Were they simply an example of mass hysteria, psychosis or hypnosis? Or maybe the ghosts moved on to a parallel universe, leaving the Los Angeles Times scrambling to fill another black hole with its biased reporting.
Toyota is not completely blameless here. There were incidents with faulty pedals and throttles sticking as a result of tolerance stack-up under carpets.
But this ain’t rocket science.
And it’s about time to let Toyota get back to doing what it does best: selling high-quality products to appreciative customers around the world.
The Detroit Auto Show, officially known as the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), comes around every year in early January. So the timing is right for a review of 2010 and a crystal-ball look at 2011. Without telegraphing what follows, I think it’s fair to report that for most automakers 2010 turned out better than expected and that there was universal optimism from pretty much everyone at the show regarding the potential for an even better 2011.
With assistance once again from photographer Joe Tori, join us in a quick review of Media Daze at Detroit.
The Chevrolet Volt and the Ford Explorer received top honors as Car and Truck of the Year, respectively.
Recently, Mazda invited a bunch of enthusiasts to their technical center in Irvine, California to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the MX-5 Miata. Yup, the Miata is 20 years old . . .
I was Editor in Chief of R&T at the time the car was introduced, and we named that first 1990 Miata as one of the five “World’s Best Cars.” And the accolades have never stopped. (more…)
There’s a new race track in town . . . okay, so it’s not exactly “in town.” But nobody gets permission to build a race track in town these days so let’s just say it’s freeway close. And just so we don’t get hung up on semantics, let’s say that this new track, Chuckwalla Valley Raceway (CVR), is located in Desert Center, California. For those of you not familiar with California or the desert, grab a map of the Southwest showing California and Arizona. Locate Los Angeles and Phoenix and draw a straight line between them. That line will be Interstate 10. Chuckwalla Valley Raceway is 175 miles from LA, 200 miles from Phoenix, 208 miles from San Diego and 230 miles from Las Vegas. This means it is centrally located in the middle of nowhere. Actually that’s not quite true. It’s about 25 miles east of Chiraco Summit and far enough away from any urban or suburban development to assure that it will not be crowded out by urban sprawl during at least the next 100 years. The 1100-acre raceway facility is located right next to a 4200-foot runway (5-23 for you pilots in the audience) with tie downs for 30 aircraft. So the Roger Penskes and the Rick Hendricks of the racing world have a place to land the smaller of their corporate aircraft. (more…)
I got an email from Oscar Koveleski the other day. Actually, I get a lot of emails from Oscar, but this one was special. Oscar, for those of you too young or too old to remember, was an amateur sports car racer from Scranton, Pennsylvania who took on the likes of Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme and Jackie Stewart in the original Can Am series. He never won a ran in the series, but he and teammate Tony Adamowicz, running year-old McLarens were frequently the highest-placed independents, which was quite an accomplishment. Oscar won an SCCA National Championship in 1970 behind the wheel of the same 1969 McLaren M8B that he raced in the Can Am series that year. Oscar’s 1971 racer was Bruce McLaren’s 1970 Championship car. (more…)
Yesterday in WheelsTV I gave you a rundown (Actually it was a walkdown.) on some of Continental’s innovative technologies. But I saved one for special mention today: Continental’s Accelerator Force Feedback Pedal (AFFP). It’s one of Conti’s Human-Machine Interface (HMI) technologies, and I was able to evaluate it on a BMW 3 Series. Instead of having the driver watch an upshift light on the dash or listen for a tone, the AFFP vibrates or adds a counterforce as feedback to the driver to educate his right foot in driving more efficiently to save fuel and reduce emissions. Pedal vibration and/or counterforce are fully tunable. This technology can also be integrated into several other Conti safety technologies, as for example, providing feedback to the driver of his current distance to other vehicles. (more…)
