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Top Gear- Caparo T1

The Aussies take on the Brits

Nissan Targa GTR

Gran Turismo 5

Yeah, yeah... I know... its been out for a bit already. But better now than never.



song: 5oul on D!splay BY Daiki Kasho
Features the Top Gear: UK test track!

Truth Behind Warming up your Car

Every morning like every one else, I spend some warming up the car for about 5 minutes idling. I sat freezing cold in my car wondering to myself if all "this" was necessary? So one day I asked my dad the idea/purpose behind warming up the car, he said it was required for "older" cars to function normally. I was checking through my yahoo email and found this article on the main page.

http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/1650/eight-facts-about-warming-up-your-car-in-winter/

Conclusion?
Warm up you car for about 10 seconds
When first driving off, take it easy on the accelerator
Idling doesn't is the most inefficient way to warm up your car: it wastes gas, pollutes the environment, your car will also be an easy pick for a car-jacker if left unattended.

The Chevrolet Volt: Do you have $40k?

At first impressions, the Volt seems to have lived up to it's hype, and more. Standard features include 17" alloys, keyless ignition, telescoping wheel, Bluetooth, Onstar, touchscreen navigation system, voice controls, Bose 6-speaker stereo with CD/DVD player, auxiliary audio jack, iPod/USB interface and 30gb of digital music storage. Higher trims add amenities like leather upholstery, heated seats, and rear-view camera.

The Chevrolet Volt has been the subject of car rumors ever since the first concepts came out. Unless you've been living under a rock, you'd know a integral part of the excitement over the Volt is the fact that it is, quite literally, a plug-n-play. The Volt is the first hybrid of its kind to have factory standard ability to plug the car straight into a wall outlet to charge its lithium ion batteries. At full charge, those batteries are capable of delivering a range of 40 miles. Not shabby at all, no indeed.

All Volts are powered by a gas-electric motor hybrid. Two electric motors, one larger than the other, paired with a 1.4L engine. Unlike the Toyota Prius, the Chevrolet Volt relies mainly on it's 149 bhp electric motor to get itself around. The 1.4 gas engine only kicks in to power the car under certain conditions, namely at high speeds. At all other times, the gas engine is unactive, or charging the lithium-ion batteries. Thi is a highly complex system, requiring 3 separate planetary gear sets to achieve the graceful cooperation between all three components. But GM's recent failures already have some skeptics dismissing the Volt's creditability, few even claiming that the battery design will lead to low reliability, with possible fire-hazards.

But issues aside, the Volt seems like a solid, dependable car. That is, until you sit down the dealer to negotiate the buying price. The Chevy Volt has a staggering $41K MSRP. On the other hand, the Toyota Prius, Volt's biggest competitor, come in at close to half that price, a $23k starting price. But it doesn't end there. The home charging station is not included in the price, and brings to the table another $490. Expensive, sure, but thats not the problem. The REAL problem is installing the home charger in your garage. GM estimates it will cost an average of $1475 for installation work, a whole three times more than the charger itself, for a whopping total of $2k if you want to charge your Volt at home.

Is it worth it? Let's crunch some numbers. If you take the difference in MSRP between the Volt (including the charging station+installation) and Prius, you get $20k. Take that, and divide it @ a fair $4/gallon of gas, to get 5000 gallons of gas. Multiply it by a conservative 40 mpg (mind you the Prius is capable of well over 40), to get a total of 200k miles. End result: you'd have to drive a Toyota Prius 200k miles before you break even with cost of buying a Volt, and that's if you buy a Chevrolet Volt and never drive it.

My conclusion? Stick with the Prius. And then buy something nice for your girlfriend.

Mine's R35 GT-R and Spoon NSX-R GT

Haters into Believers

This may change some opinions on the all new Nissan Juke:

Nissan Juke: The Good, Not Bad, and Sort of (but not really) Ugly?

Nissan Juke represents a part of Nissan's attempt to break into the youth market currently dominated by Scion. But is it the right way to go? It's looks are so... controversial, that most care not to look beyond it's froggy exterior and into what makes this car something worthy of purchase; a fun car with its own hard-to-beat personality.

At the heart of this amphibian beats the MR16DDT. The MR series line is a newer series of engines made by Nissan for their subcompact cars, namely the Versa. But while the Versa's engines are dull and uninspiring, this new MR is a whole other world. This engine has AWD as an option, and when coupled with it's 188bhp engine (177ft-lbs), pushes this car 0-100 kph in approximately 7 seconds, faster with the optional manual over the standard CVT.

(learn more @ http://carzmax.blogspot.com/2010/07/nissan-juke-2011-engine-engines-and.html; fairly accurate information, some option details are incorrect)

The Nissan Juke is new for 2011, but despite it's "new" status, it is competitively priced at around 19k MSRP. Not bad. In fact, its great, considering the massive complement of standard features on this car. Most notable of these include 17" alloy wheels, navigation, Ipod integration, auxiliary port, Bluetooth, steering-wheel mounted controls, folding seats, and CVT. It also has a clean, modern, tastefully done interior, that would look proper in a 370z. It even has a sporty display, similiar to the one in the GT-R, which allows the driver to adjust throttle response, steering, transmision timing, as well as allowing the driver to monitor turbo-boost and their lateral-g's (though I doubt the Juke will ever go fast enough to make that useful).

All in all, the Juke is a superb car. But it should have looked like this:

Best Lap of Any Track of Anywhere in Anything by Anyone Ever

...

What exactly is that?

Stig Farm: Reposted

What exactly is a Saab?

At first thought, Saab sounds like a foreign name for a goat. But I assure you, it has nothing remotely related to goats. It's not a cheese either. It's a car company. A damn good one too. Yes it may be Swedish, but still. It's not hard to appreciate the 93s sleek looks, its smoked out tail lights. A four door saloon, with this aerodynamic feel to it, accented by its raised hood design which subtly suggests it covers something more than normal under the bonnet.

True, it's base 2.0L inline 4. Except, it happens to be turbocharged. Stock boost, this inline 4 is rated for 210 bhp. Efficient, and (relatively) powerful. It almost sounds like a German car. If you opt for higher trims, you can get a 2.8L V6T producing a 255bhp, or a higher boosted V6T making 280bhp w/ 295 pound-feet. It's even got 5 star crash ratings, if you're the type of commuter that suffers from inescapable road rage. Not bad for the Swedes. But then again, they're the ones that brought us the Koenigsegg CCX.

Thing is, it's not 100% Swedish anymore. Not after GM bought it, added On-star and GM conformist dash units, then sold it again to Spyker Cars, a Dutch company. But that's okay. I still like it.

The all new SSC!

Its not what you think. Yes I know what you are thinking, the Aero SSC? Nope!

Its the SUPERsmartcar!

Simply put: for those who weren't as successful in life as they'd thought, or hoped, to be.

http://pictures.howbits.com/smart-car-cool-body-kits/

(click on the link, if you haven't figured out already. Trust me. It's kind of worth it.)

J.Ma On: Relationships

Dear Jason,

What is a relationship?

Thanks.

The above question is relatively simple. A relationship is when two nouns come together and do many verbs with each other. If you can't figure that out, a male and a female, do perverted things together. This is a statement. Also known as a fact.

I'm sorry, I lied. A relationship can be between a male and male, a female and a female, and an unknown with a known. If you couldn't figure what all those 3 factors meant, then I'm sorry. You shouldn't be reading this in the first place, honestly.

I've been in a relationship before. It can either be really good, or really bad. Most of the time (if I can be honest) it's actually really good. However, there is a large amount of bad moments though. So really, all things balance out.

As my friend said, "mating season is quite early this year." On Facebook, I see all these status changes about relationships and etc. That's lovely. I'm quite happy for all of them, but honestly, that's none of my concern.

So lets place this next example in a theoretical aspect. Meaning that it's theoretical, not actual.

I am a relationship with a Toyota Celica. Not only that, I'm also in a relationship with:
1) BMW M3
2) Mercedes-Benz S550
3) Honda Civic Si
4) Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution
5) Toyota Yaris
6) Nissan GT-R
7) Ferrari (insert a model here)
8) Chevy Corvette
9) Ford Fusion
10) Lexus LF-A

...and the list goes on and on. This may be quite ridiculous to you, but in reality, it's not.

Lets analyze why. Because I am in a relationship with so many cars, I am therefore declared a "player". Because I am a "player", I might get infected with an ASTD (automobile sexually transmitted defect.)

Because I'm with a relationship with so many cars, I am obliged to take care of so many cars. Meaning if any of them have any sort of defects, it's money out of my pocket.

But it's quite hard to describe a male's love of cars. Cars can be quite annoying most of the time (espicially if they're unreliable), but it's like a five year-old baby. It's quite annoying, but if anybody tried to take it away from you, you'd kill the individual. So that's that.

Therefore, I'd much rather go out with cars than with real people. Real people can give out STDs and reproduce. You wont need any type of rubber-like protection when you're with a car. Ultimately, you sit in a car, and press pedals, and move the giant circle in front of your hands to operate. With humans, it's quite complicated. Males have this long stick to play with. Girls have effectively three holes for the male to shove his stick into. Why so many choices? Can't we keep things simple? With cars, you have one pedal to accelerate, and one pedal to brake. It's so easy to label. With females, it's kind of asking yourself, "what happens when I shove my stick into this hole?"

Having a relationship with cars is better than that of having a relationship with humans. If Facebook allows me, I would say that I am "in a relationship with 2003 Toyota Celica." Cars wont cheat on you, cars wont leave your side, all cars do is suck up money (like prostitutes.)

There we go. I do hope this answers your question, Mr.______. Cars, much easier to handle. Stick with the technology that we have. In fact, there seems to be female robots in Japan, if that interests you.

Top Gear: Bugatti Veyron Super Sport

Top Gear: Porche Boxster

Genesis

Now normally, I'm the type of guy that can ID any car you care to show me. New or old, I know it. But recently, I've been seeing a new logo out, and I can't find it anywhere on the web. It's a strange logo to track, a pair of wings on a circular emblem, much like Mini's logo. Except it wasn't. I first saw it years back, on a car called the Genesis. It was special, in its special way. The car wasn't overly flashy, yet it demanded the attention of all. It wasn't remotely powerful sounding, yet you could tell it had some serious engineering under the bonnet. It was, in short, nice. Appreciable. Yet I had no idea what it was.

Now, I have come to believe it was a Hyundai Genesis Sedan. Mr. Kwok spotted a very similar looking car, with the same logo, and we ID it as the Genesis. Except there's a problem with that. The Genesis wasn't out, a few years back. Nope. No one had even heard of Hyundai back then. So what gives?

Recently, I saw the logo again. It started with dropping my brother off at school. I saw it in the cross traffic, heading towards the same middle school. I saw the flattened rear lights, the curved ends, and thought it was the new Jaguar. Wrong. As I got closer, I realized the proportions were off. The back was hunched, and the dual exhausts were these fantastic box ones. Even closer still, I made out the logo, and found out the car was called, Vertigo (no internet search has yielded me any answers). As we passed the car, and I was stunned by the DB9 looks. Yet I still have no idea what it was.

My theory, which in my mind, is quite possibly possible (in a theoretically but not actually sense), is that we have a Hyundai proto-typer living here in San Ramon. If that's already been established by someone else, it's news to me. If not, I'll take my theory. See my reasoning is, is that I saw a Genesis 4-5 years before it's release. Now, I see a mysterious car, branded with the same logo, which doesn't show up anywhere at all. Hmm.... See the connection? If you don't, just watch; Hyundai'll release a new supersport car that can rival the GT-R, which will be called the Vertigo. If not, well, it was only a theory.