It appears that President Bush quickly signed the new CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) bill drawn up by Congress. The new CAFE legislation mandates that automakers increase their aggregate average fuel efficiency by 40 per cent, from 25 miles per gallon today to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. It also mandates an increase in ethanol use to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022. So what does this all mean?
- Automakers will be forced to produce more gas miser vehicles to bring their averages up to the new federal standard; think “hybrid” and micro-cars
- Those in farming states are going to get a huge boon in federal subsidies (ethanol in the US is produced from corn, even though sugar cane is a more efficient raw material from which to draw ethanol; think “corn lobby”)
But does this really mean something substantive for the environment and pocketbook? Not in my opinion. Hybrids have not proven themselves to be the great equalizer than automakers have touted them to be. The cars are boring, heavy, lack any kind of driving excitement and overpriced.
So what’s all the fuss? Is there truly a big difference between cars of yesterday and those of today? It’s a rather unfair comparison considering that today’s cars offer:
- Vastly improved horsepower and torque output per litre (well over 140 ponies from a turbocharged 4-bangers, for example)
- Multi-port fuel injection and direct injection in some cases
- Light-weight materials used in chassis construction
- Advanced traction control systems
- Advanced all-wheel drive systems
- Launch control
- Semi-automatic sequential gearboxes
- Multi-link, fully independent suspension
Sure, you see some of the oldies beat the younger vehicles in this video but that’s just a comparison in a straight line. And considering the vehicles tested, it seemed to have been skewed against the new cars from the get go. Surely, if these cars were pitted against one another on a track with actual turns, the newer cars would spank silly their older brethren.
I had to do it. I stole the title of this post from the exact news article that I am referring to as well. CNBC is reporting that gas prices ARE INDEED influencing the cars that people buy. I am also a victim of this phenomenon without even realizing it until today. Hit the jump for the full story…
Colin Chapman, racecar driver extraordinaire and founder of Lotus, was a firm believer in light weight. Less weight = better acceleration, better braking (including braking later and harder before a turn), better cornering (less lateral load on the tires and suspension) and so on. It’s no wonder, obviously, than the modern Formula 1 racecar is all carbon fiber. Coupled with the extraordinary output of the F1 engine, these cars fly. Hit the jump for the details of this load-lightening fun!
Good boy, Heikki Kovalainen. He spent his first year in Formula 1 with the ING Renault F1 squad, performing decently well. With Fernando Alonso making his return to that squad and Nelson Piquet, Jr., son of the three time Formula 1 world champion, taking up the other seat, the Finn was out of a job. Temporarily… Read the rest of this entry »
We do some cool stuff here at WebRidesTV.com, but we’ve never done a real build up of a car from stock to… rock (?) - sorry, couldn’t come up with a cooler word that rhymes with “stock.” In any case, the sole purpose of the build is to slap on some of the best (read “expensive”) aftermarket components on the car. Hit the jump to check out some of the mods that we’re doing!
We often joke about how some cars are so high, they look like 4×4s. You know… the garden variety hooptie with chrome wheels that still sit at stock height. The fender gap is accentuated by the narrow sidewall of the tires. How the car is so high, you can park another car underneath it. Well, someone was obviously listening to this conversation when they thought, “Eureka! Let’s make that into a reality!” Hit the jump to see what resides inside this rather normal looking RV.
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WebRidesTV.comWe're just a bunch of gearheads that love to make videos of exotic cars. This is our outlet for us to share our daily antics at our humble home. |