classic car: July 2009

Monday, July 27, 2009

A Good Deal Or Not: It's All About Your Viewpoint

Yesterday I decided to check out this old four-door Chevy Impala for sale near a junkyard in my town just for fun and to snap a few photos for future reference. I'd seen it from a highway overpass, and I wanted to see if it was for sale or just sitting out. What I found was the typical neglected sixties four-door: straight-six power, floors and fenders rusted out, trim dented, interior worn but not gone. To me, it was a car that would've been worth around $500. But when I looked at the price, I had to do a double-take. The car was $3000!

I guess the value of a project car really depends on your viewpoint. For somebody who fixes up cars for resale and wants to make a profit, the car will just sell for a tiny bit more than how you bought it, as four-door classics aren't very popular at the moment, it wouldn't be a good deal. For a Chevy restoration shop, the car may have some trim pieces and other parts such as the dashboard in good condition that they can use in coupes or convertibles, and that will save them money and be more authentic than getting new, reproduced parts. I guess for a buyer, a project car's worth all depends on your perspective. And for a seller, you need to wait for the right buyer.

Friday, July 24, 2009

2010 Acura RDX Unceremoniously Launched Online After Leaked Photos

A few days ago, some photos appeared of a supposedly new, redesigned Acura RDX, Acura's base crossover, on many spy photo websites. Apparently somebody up there in Acura decided that they could use this sudden hype to their advantage by quickly and quietly switching around their website model overview and online builder to showcase the new RDX and therefore launch it, quietly and unceremoniously, online. The new car has a sleeker body style, more features, and a base price of around $35,000. Some models won't be available until fall of this year, but most are able to be delivered to your local dealership right now. Check it out online at Acura.com! Photo from blogcdn.com

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Another Trip

I will be going on a two-week trip without computers, so you won't hear from me for a while.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Iola Old Car Show

My feet and ankles started aching two hours ago, I'm dehydrated, I've been at this for seven hours and yet I keep going. I've scouted every corner of this property for prizes to behold and oddities not worth mentioning. My camera ran out of memory at three hours in and all I have to convince myself to keep going is the sight around me, which makes it all worth it. I'm not working in a mine surrounded by gold; I'm not running a marathon in California; I'm at Iola Old Car Show in Iola, Wisconsin, one of thousands to come to buy parts at the giant swap meet or just stare at the cars all day long.

Iola is the largest real car show ever to hit Wisconsin. The show, auction, swap meet, and car corral probably bring most of the year's revenue to little Iola, Wisconsin, keeping it alive until next year. Every year the week after Independence day, thousands flock to northwest Wisconsin to show, trade, and sell your cars and parts. Showcased are everything from Duesenburgs to a custom Cavelier made to look like a cross between a '57 Bel Air, a '53 Corvette, a '60 Impala, and an '01 Corvette. This show is the ultimate car show in the Miswest that any big car enthusiast comes to every year to find parts and check out the competition. To show the size of the Iola show, there were five Kaiser Darrins being showed, of which only 435 were ever made. There were at lest two Amphicars, and I recognized some of the cars from magazines. This show is huge, so why weren't you there?

Thursday, July 9, 2009

TVR: An Overlooked Competitor

Ever heard of TVR? The company has been around, thriving, since 1947, when it was established by Trevor Wilkinson making high-performance machines for well-heeled buyers. The cars were originally based on components from production car companies, but in the 90's TVR designed and introduced the famous AJP8 V-8 in the Cerbera. Needless to say, it went way beyond eexpectations, rocketing the Cerbera to 100MPH in nine seconds flat. TVR's heritage goes back, and they've always been there, not a major worry of those at Aston Martin or Maserati, but always there. Their current range doen't do anything to distract from the fact that TVR cars are luxed-up race cars, not designed as road cars. The Sagaris is very extreme, with functional vents everywhere on the car, and the Tuscan S is relatively toned-down for more road use. Overall, TVR is an extremely overlooked, but also underestimated, company that makes great cars. Photo from Jalopnik.com

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

An E-Mail That's Been Gong Around

Here's a forwarded e-mail that's been making its rounds on the internet:

Now this is an acceleration test...

ACCELERATION

'DEFINITION OF ACCELERATION' (courtesy of Performance Techniques):

One top fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows of stock cars at the Daytona 500.
It takes just 15/100ths of a second for all 6,000+ horsepower of an NHRA Top Fuel dragster engine to reach the rear wheels.
Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1-1/2 gallons of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same
rate with 25% less energy being produced.
A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster's supercharger.
With 3,000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition.
Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.
At the stoichiometric (stoichiometry: methodology and technology by which quantities of reactants and products in chemical reactions are determined) 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture of nitro methane, the flame front temperature measures 7,050 deg F.
Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases.
Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder.
Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After halfway, the engine is dieseling from compression, plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1,400 deg F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel flow.
If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half.

In order to exceed 300 mph in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate an average of over 4G's. In order to reach 200 mph (well before half-track), the launch acceleration approaches 8G's .

Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed reading this sentence

Top fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light! Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load .

The redline is actually quite high at 9,500 rpm.

Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew is working for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimate $1,000.00 per second.

The current top fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.428 seconds for the quarter mile (11/12/06, Tony Schumacher, at Pomona, CA). The top speed record is 336.15 mph as measured over the last 66' of the run (05/25/05 Tony Schumacher, at Hebron, OH).

Putting all of this into perspective: You are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter 'twin-turbo' powered Corvette Z06. Over a mile up the road, a top fuel dragster is staged and ready to launch down a quarter mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run the 'Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and pass the dragster at an honest 200 mph. The 'tree' goes green for both of you at that moment. The dragster launches and starts after you. You keep your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums and within 3 seconds, the dragster catches and passes you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter mile away from where you just passed him. Think about it, from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 mph and not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1,320 foot long race course.

... and that my friend, is ACCELERATION!

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Five Reasons Not To Buy A Chevy Cobalt (No Offense Intended)

I see lots of Chevy Cobalts around, but I think the only reason why is price. From the 50/100 review given by Consumer Reports, mediocre reliability by many tests, and the common knowledge of 0verall money-losing GM quality levels, it would be safe to say that people aren't buying this as a long-lasting car from a rock-solid manufacturer. This is why I have come up with a list to try to convince people to buy Civics or Fusions instead of Cobalts. I'm not here to make all you Chevy guys mad, the SS version is nicer, but I have to proclaim a lemon when I see one.

1: The Cobalt is the latest in a long line of faliures, all of which claimed to be "world-class" as the Cobalt does. None have ever done so. The line goes back from the Cobalt (bad), to the Cavelier (bad), to the Chevette (bad), to the Vega (...ugh). No other line has so much ugliness and stupidity.

2: If you've been in a coma and haven't heard the news for a year, GM is in the dumps. Everyone knows that their tax dollars are keeping the company alive, and it's becoming "GM, Government Motors".

3: On one independent test, the Chevy Cobalt scored a 27/100 for cold-start and hot-start reliability. This means the only time your brand-new Cheverolet will start every time is during the Spring and Autmn. So you'd need another car to haul you around during winter or end up an hour late to work every day because it takes 73 tries to start your motor.

4: If you want a new, advanced car, the Cobalt isn't for you. The most advanced option is a different sound system. Also, the Cobalt is due to be replaced in a few years, so your car would be outdated almost from new. Here's part of a review by Edmunds, which only gave the Cobalt points for little noise and a variety of trim levels: "In contrast to some cars in this class, rear disc brakes and ABS are optional except on the highest trim levels."

5: The quality inside and out of the Cobalt isn't that good. Here's some more of the Edmunds review: "the car has received negative commentary in regard to its hard plastics, inconsistent build quality and limited storage." That, on the Fourth of July, doesn't seem like a good car to represent America, does it. We need better cars, like the new Fords with better quality and no bailouts involved. Photo from automedia.com

You can see the entire Edmunds review of the Cobalt by clicking on the post title.