The Mercedes I've always loved

Every one that reads this blog knows just how much I hate Mercedes. But there is a catch to that statement. In truth I hate 99% of Mercedes.
But I also absolutely love 1 couple of Mercedes. They're just too brilliant and so good that today's Mercedes don't even stand a chance in comparison.
THIS:

Is one of the car's that I absolutely adore. And it's a Mercedes. It is, however a Mercedes built like no other Mercedes. Following a line of thought long gone in the company and (to everyone's surprise), it all began with the brilliant idea of an american car salesman. That's right! The best Mercedes ever to hit a selling stand, did so because of an american.

The Begining
As most brilliant car's, it all begun in the race track, with a race oriented design.

A Tubular Space-Frame chassis. Light enough to be lifted by a single man and stiff to endure competition, it was also extremely difficult to repair...but then again, in competition you usually replace instead of repairing.

Front independent Suspension with double wishbones

Rear independent Suspension with sway axle

The Engine is another point that goes straight to my heart. An inline 6, 3 liter almost full cubed, naturally aspirated gasoline engine.In order to fit the car, it hat to be mounted in a 45degree angle.
It produced 215bhp with carburettors from 1954 to 1957, and then 225bhp in it's mechanically fuel injected version from 1957 to 1963.
If you are not impressed yet, grab your calculator! That means 75bhp/liter in 1957... today's 300SLS does a very modest 91bhp/liter (a 1999 honda S2000 pumps out 120bhp/liter in it's most modest version).
NOW THAT WAS an engine.

The Body came in several options. Either partially aluminium or full aluminium. It was designed with aero-dynamics in mind and it was just beautiful. The "gullwing" doors that made it's name were actually a clever engineering solution to go around the chassis pedigree. You see, the chassis had several structural integrity beams passing thought the car's sides all the way to the back. That made conventional doors impossible to place without compromising the structural integrity. So engineers came up with the brilliant gullwing door design.
And that's another thing to love about the car. Not the wing design, but rather the so much more important way-of-thought behind it: The non-compromise design of the car. If it's a sports car than everything that is not essentially sports oriented, is second. Today, they build the CLK cabrio that lacks stiffness in order to maintain "design".

The transmission was a 4 speed manual and could be brought with 5 final gear ratios. That would make the car's top speed range from 235km/h (1:3.64) to 260km/h (1:3.25)...again, in the 50's.

The interior was simple and spartan. Today's Mercedes lack the first.

Production was German and that's all there is to say about it. If today's cars are well built all around the world, back then you could only have this level of quality in either Germany or Japan.

Repairing this car today requires very skilled craftsman and is very expensive.

From the track to the road
New York Mercedes distributor Max Hoffman, Daimler-Benz's official importer in the USA, suggested to DBAG management in Stuttgart that a street version of the 300SL would be a commercial success, especially in America. He then manage to place 1000 orders and pulled the project all the way to production.
This is pure american entrepreneurship and vision...and bless him for that.

Conclusion:
So now you know why I love this car so much... why most cars I love have a competition background...and why I hate most cars today...being the majority of them Mercedes. Just like Honda apparently lost their edge, and Toyota too... Mercedes also lost theirs long long ago. Let's hope the new A-class open a breach into their stiff german minds and let some sense through.
.

Test Drive - The Megane Mk2 1.5Dci Break

I've been testing all sorts of vehicles lately, during this phase (My beloved s2000 is stopped in the garage waiting for a wheel bearing replacement), I've had the chance to fully test some cars that, by personal option, would never ever have otherwise.
One of these was a Renault Megane II Brake.
The Megane has always been a difficult car for me.It has a very good chassis and for the first time in Renault's history is established the safety euroNCap benchmark for the segment. But that design is just sooo bad that I would never consider to buy one.
There is something else about Renaults and me: The smell. The smell from the new car's is just enough to make me vomit and even though this was an old one, it had leader interior and it still smelled the way I hate.
Ignoring this fact, I was very surprised to feel that the 1.5Dci 105Ps engine with almost 200.000km on the clock was more than capable of pulling that big ass and still feel like a car. And I already had tested 100.000km exemplars like this that stood for the good built quality announced since the Mk1 megane, but 200.000 is pushing it. And still no noises or rattles, plenty of torque and power, and if you like the smell, it still lived on :S

Driving it is another new experience to me. The car feels solid but not as solid as the 116d bmw. It's a lot more comfortable and you can feel just how long it is by the stability of ahead movement and it's delay on biting the bends. However, passing the initial stubbornness, it turns and is sharp. Not brilliant but very acceptable. Driving position is excellent and I felt that the seats could offer more lateral support, making clear that the car turns far better that the seats are expecting to have to hold.
It takes time to get used to the key-less thing, but it's not as bad as I expected.
The stereo unit has a 6cd changer plus a full independent cd unit with mp3 capability. The sound is not even close to the standard bmw unit but it's decent.
The hand brake seems like a very good solution to allow arm-travel and still have a solid arm-rest.

The boot is just huge. I once was able to load a FULL bedroom and living-room furniture inside a megane (Ikea furniture) + 2 adults.

It's a very good car and price-quality just blows competitors away. If only it looked better and smell better...

Test Drive - The BMW 116d Review

 
The 1 series is no news for me, I've tested it almost immediately after release and I've tested only diesel's to date (the problem of being Portuguese).
Now all the test's I've done so far indicated the there was something excellent and something odd to the 1series (ok, besides the horrible looks). However, most tests conducted were just too quick to actually figure everything out. The 116D and 118D always seemed strange somehow.
The chassis was evidently easy to figure out, and it's very good. But there was something else I didn't quite like and I've always classified it to have a bad driving position.

This time I've been testing a 116D with 81000km on the clock. And with this mileage, first impressions were very good. The car feels tight and firmly put together, but then again, it's a beemer...I wasn't expecting anything less. It's however an entry level beemer and the decorative plastics imitating aluminium feel cheap. They feel however as cheap now as they did back when the car was built...and that's good.
The engine feels torky enough to move without falling asleep, but clearly lacks punch, and although it does get to 220km/h, it takes forever to get there after the 180km/h mark. Still, what makes me hate the engine the most is the chassis brilliance.
You see, this little beemer is very agile and the chassis is very well balanced. It is incisive and light in moving the nose into the bends, requires very little lift-off to point the car into apex (even on the tightest bends), and though the engine has little grunt, it does allow enough torque to let of the rear in a poised and plenty feedback manner.... it's soooo easy to grab the sweet-spot and just stay there for the day while you cook tires and laugh your pants out. To do this, of course, you need to turn off the EXCESSIVELY intrusive and annoying Stability Control. I would just say that the stability control system should be directly connected to the wind-shield wipers sensor, and ONLY turn on under rainy weather. Honest! At least with these michelin "wannabe tires" rubber, it's clearly not a chassis to drive fast on bad weather without stability control.
This chassis is so dynamic, that you clearly understand why an M version. You can literally steer the car with slide and acceleration and minimal counter-steer. To do this however, you not only need to kill the stability control system, you also need an engine. And I'm not talking diesel, or petrol with turbo... I mean a real engine with instant response....like a 4 ou 6 cylinder in-line atmospheric engine with independent throttle bodies and more bore than stroke design. It's such a petty to feel that you go around the bends and you step and let-off the gas so fast as the chassis is asking for, but the lazy diesel unit doesn't even notice it. This car just made me hate diesels even more than I already had!
In a word, that chassis is brilliant, fun and very composed. Selling this car with diesel engines is criminal.

Now for the bad part. That driving position thing.
Sure the car has a bad driving position. The pedals are not aligned correctly, Looks like the car is built to cruise instead of going fast in a decent country road (making it inconsistent with the chassis). The left foot rest is too deep and make the reaching for the clutch complicated and the foot gets stuck behind the clutch pedal far too many times. The clutch pedal travel should also be cut to half of what it is. The brake pedal is too high and this makes the left-foot braking and heel-toe Oddly complicated. The steel wall on the right side of the gas pedal is just too close to the pedal and this makes the heel-toe really difficult. In conclusion, I HOPE the M is VERY different in than the standard one.
The entire pedal assembly is far into the car, and this would be nice, but the steering wheel and console is relatively close to the wind-shield glass and that forces you into a position where you either have a clear sight on the road ahead but you'd be hitting the roof of the car with your head, or a good foot to pedal position and wouldn't see the front of the car; However you can never have both.
One should say : why never both?! Cause there is another truth about that car that spoils everything else. The horrible looks. You see, that wind-shield glass and it's angle towards the roof and it's cut-in-half way of being, not only looks ugly, it also prevents you to have a racing like erect seat position without slamming your head against the roof. I can't imagine how BMW allowed something like this. It's just too bad. I've seen ugly cars built for function-over-design purpose...like the fiat multipla. I've seen cars with the design-over-function purpose like... well like almost the rest of italian cars. But this is the first time I've seen a bad design spoil function :S
This continues in the interior with the door handles being too beefy and spoiling access to storage immediately below it.
However, the interior lights are placed inside small tubes that are fit deep into the plastics, allowing for a very relaxing and comfortable lighting of the car's interior with enough power to actually see anything without tearing your eyes like most cars do.

Besides the very good and very bad features, the car feels fine. It's hard and stiff without being unpleasant, it's stereo and dials are well sorted out and with good overall quality.

Test Drive - Citroen C4 Picasso 2.0HDI CMP Exclusive review

I'm living strange days in my life. After my second wheel bearing (rear right one this time) gone out, I just had to drive my S2000 (again) under 40km/h.
If you've never drove a car with a bad bearing, then let me just say that the first km is torture.... after that you tell your secrets to the car and beg him to stop... but he doesn't...a full 5 km's and you start thinking just how beautiful pillars and concrete walls are and just how attractive they seem.
It's bad, in a standard car....it's even worse times1000 in a sports car. First because the car wasn't meant to drive slow and ultimately because it has little or none acoustic shields so you almost feel the steel grinding your bottom.
Anyway, having to endure this torture for around 2 full weeks (yup, that's it... you see Portugal is a country enduring a severe economical crisis, but still every mechanic and lathe crafts-man takes a good vacation :S no wonder we have crisis), it finally started poping and that meant stop or get ready to crash.
So I just HAD to stop. And what just happened to be waiting to be sold in the garage: the Citroen C4 Picasso.

And so the Picasso's test drive of her life happened.

First impression

It's just massive...big....big in the school bus kind of way, massive as in so damn high and soft and heavy that the clumsiness is unavoidable. Evidently, the other half of that coin is excellent comfort and versatility. Now I've tested some big things most call cars, like the but ugly Peugeot 3008, the once stupid looking and now worse Qashqai, and some other new "it has wheels but it's not car" stuff. Out of the bunch, this one eclipses the rest when it comes to comfort. All the rear seats are independent, they slide frontwards or backwards, they adjust their angle so you can either sit straight or lay back, they fold independently and something interesting, with 130.000km these looked like new. In fact the car looked like it has 30.000 and not 130.000km.

Driver and passenger are entitled to full independent sofa-like seats with arm-rest and adjustable heating.

Suspension is one of it's best characteristics. As expected from Citroen, it's comfortable and soft enough to digest road bumps, but still firm enough to allow control of all that body.
Thow it's competent, it's not able to bend the laws of physics; and all that body constructed in hight produces roll, and a sensation of going to tip over in a hard corner, but since this is a minivan, I immediately concluded that this was not meant to drive, but rather carry people.
That immense clumsy handling made-me extra careful. That was, however annoying because I was driving a Citroen, and I'm used to feel a lively and dynamic chassis under everything they build.
There was however another behaviour that made me think twice about the chassis: the way the gearbox is programmed.
The Picasso 2.0 HDI is equipped with the 2.0hdi known from everything from the Peugeot's, Citroen's, Volvo's, Mazda's, Ford's. It's good and flexible, but it's also kinda hungry. This comes fixed to a Robotic Manual 6speed transmission with clutch control. That is one of the downsides of the picasso. The gearbox is the standard 6speed you find in any car coupled with that engine, but the robotization makes the already clumsy driving something completely unacceptable.
Under normal acceleration, the gearbox shift happens slowly and in the cut gas, clutch, shift, clutch, re-gas sequence, this makes the huge moving body roll forward, duck, still, than up again and under power. It's everything but relaxing for both passengers and driver, rendering that full comfort package useless. Under heavy acceleration, the car pushes the engine far beyond it's optimal torque point...it's agonizing to ear a diesel trying to rev like a gas vtec engine that it will never be (it will however die trying if you push-it).
The kick-down is also very odd. The gearbox, basically shifts down once, twice, making it a gas-off,clutch, shift, clutch, power-on and backoff again, clutch, shift, clutch, power.... it's so bad and takes so many ages that you rather just brake and let the others pass.
However it does have a good feature. If you step vigorously on the gas and the step-off, the car doesn't shift-up! It stays exactly here you left-off with the engine screaming like a pig. At first my reaction was "this gearbox option really is the worse thing on earth", but then it happened again on a roundabout...and I liked it. You see under all that "I'm a school bus" thing, there is a pretty good chassis.
The fact that the gearbox doesn't shift up on lift-off makes the huge weight movement very easy and this will unsettle the chassis and let go the rear. Brilliant! I found myself doing bends with a little tail slide on "the school-bus".
The ESP is another good thing. It's very little intrusive and allows tail slides of some degree.
After a full week of C4 picasso, I give-it a good mark. The car is very well built and the interiors are pleasant an comfortable. It's huge but very good to cohabit. The rear suspension with auto-levelling features is very well thought and it's helpful if you need to transport something big and heavy into it's boot.
Pity the excessive weight and that horrible gearbox.
Breaking is good and the engine has enough power to pull it up to 200km/h. It climbs effortlessly to 170km/h and takes forever from that point onward. However, after 150km/h the car is over it's comfortable zone (at least on our Portuguese roads) and the soft suspension and heavy body creates too much "fluctuation" sensation... but then again, you don't want to go faster than that with your kids inside anyway.

Versatility doesn't end here! You get rear window curtains for the 2 rear glasses and the main back glass, full panoramic front wind-shield. The rear door opens and allows you to access a generous boot with a button to level up or down the rear suspension and allow you to load heavy loads with less "back damage", an always charged and ready to pop-out-and-use flash-light and a full trolley with thermal bag and specific clamps to hold your fresh shopping in place.
Talking about fresh, there is a refrigerator in the middle of the console so that box driver and passenger car enjoy their fresh soda.

Conclusions: Definitely not my thing...but thinking of a family "school run" car, the picasso is a very good option. The 180.000km and 130.000km exemplars I've tested revealed excellent built quality and materials. The electronic gizmo's and full extras aid the comfort and, ignoring the shifts bumps till 6th speed, cruising in the picasso is comfortable enough to make the rear seat's a small office (just like an air plane) using the seat's back as a folding table with self lighting and individually controlled air conditioning.
It's clear why that huge and clumsy looking package found so much acceptance as a family car. It does excel in habitability and comfort without compromising passive safety. Besides the lack of active safety most cars have these days (too heavy and high), this does have a chassis behaviour that works towards the driver and that is enough to shame most AUDI products and far better than some competitors such as the Peugeot 3008.
Talking about safety, the structure is very solid and the crash-test you can youtube will show a perfectly controlled impact absorption. Taking all that moving mass into account, it MUST be very stiff and well built to handle it properly.

Mercedes Learns to build cars and quits Construction Business

Hi all
This is an important post for me.
Back in the day when the Mercedes A Class was just a sketch, me and my dad has a big discussion.
I still remember it because it happened during a visit to an "water slide park" and instead of enjoying the slides, we got into the most nerving discussion sited by the towels area and having a sheet of paper with the picture of an ugly car between the 2.
As soon as he commented out loud "And here we are... mercedes are entering the VW Golf world" things started.
Looking at the car I immediately stated "It's as ugly as it can be without being mistaken with sillyputty (the computer game toon)".
Than I took about 5 more seconds and stated "Either the newspaper picture is not well scaled, or this car will be an assassin and will be unable to go around bends".
That was it...my dad beat his hand hard on the towel and replied "ohhh I see, so now you know better that mercedes engineers! You! A kid!"
This bothered me immensely. Kid or no Kid, I studied physics and in my particular case I was very devoted to motion dynamics and cars.
The discussion went on all afternoon and ultimately ended with my father pointing out how stupid I was, assuming all that from a simple newspaper picture and that my well known BIASED opinion against mercedes was taking over my judgment ability.
This issue was "closed" with this statement and me being hurt by my father's lack of trust in my physics knowledge that, in turn, he WAS paying good money for me to build up!
I didn't knew than that EURONCAP was starting to test all cars against a possible immediate road obstacle avoidance procedure by unsettling the chassis brutally on the lateral G scale.
It didn't took long to read the shocking news that the A-class mercedes (together with the soon to be released Smart) failles this test catastrophically. I'm going to be honest with you... I WAS THRILLED and LOOOVED the horrifying news. In part because it was a failure of what I consider a classic mercedes problem (comfort over dynamic efficiency) and in part because my father would have to come around and apologize.
This is the Video of that wonderful test.
Those were times of pure triumph. Dad looked shocked in both on how could they engineer a car that bad, and also how could I jnow better then them and predict that outcome just by looking at the car's pictures.
Every one knows the evolution of the A class project. Extreme, desperate measures to make the car usably stable. Huge brakes to cope with the always under usage ESP and even so, just don't go hard around bends unless you want to sample a different view of the world.

The second version of the A-Class was still a failure... and the B-Class with it.
In terms of engineering, is has flaws that the recently arrived into the market Koreans didn't do. Honestly! Next time you follow an AClass V2 or an BClass, take a good look at the rear suspension arms. The right one is a simple, straight design, but the left one!? The left on is the same as the right arm, but with a bent in the middle!!! Why? well it seams that mercedes engineers built a chassis design and then remembered "VAIT ZE CARR MUST VAVE ZE TAIL PIPE! VERE ZHOSE ZIT GOES?" and then decided to bend a vital suspension element around it.
It's not problematic that the A Class left rear arm weights more that the right rear arm... a car like that will never race and there fore misses a balanced and equally biased chassis in the same way I miss Alicia Keys songs. But still that's JUST BAD ENGINEERING.
It seams to me that Mercedes is having a bigger a bigger misdirection of what is a car and decided to start building houses. Does the A Class have room? hell yeah.. It's built in hight like the sky-scrapers... it must have room to live-in, throw a party, have an orgy.... but the problem is that my building has the same but it doesn't have the pretension to go around bends... and the A-class does.
It's simple physics...building a car out of steel with is higher than wider, fitting some comfortable suspension (A.K.A. SPRINGS) underneath-it and then trying to left-than-right-turn will ALLWAYS...ALLWAYS end upside down.

If there is something that characterizes German car makers is their rather obsessive control of the owner's usage of the car.
AUDI for instance, builds EXCELLENT chassis and some pretty decent engine/gearbox packages, built within a good quality product, but then they ruin everything with their suspension settings making the car under-steer on the grip limit. This is very frustrating IF you know how to drive properly...if, however you don't, the feeling of loosing the car control will make you either lift-off or even brake, making the Under-steer setup a solution for the idiot driver.
I'm just stating this because the Knowledgeable driver will be extremely frustrated by not being able to explore the VERY expensive car he just brought, but the idiot driver will be confident he is the best is the world and happy with the car.
In a sentence, AUDI invests blindly in chassis engineering quality, and then throws most of it away while assuming that the driver can't drive.
Mercedes on the other hand seams to be building poorly engineered cars, and assuming that the driver will know how to drive. This would not shock me if somehow mercedes had been brought by an american car giant like chrysler or GM... but it just isn't so.

It's time for a confession...I'm not a Mercedes guy. I hate their concept of comfort to the extreme and then you end up with either a 2 story car like the A-class, a funerary mobile like the B-class, or a 2 or 3 tones saloon like the rest of their cars. I'm the guy that thinks that extreme comfort is something for the living room because it stays put instead of going around bends. In the same way, a car should be dynamical efficient and if that means discomfort... then be it, because it's meant to go around bends. That way, if you want to relax, go home and watch a DVD. If, on the other hand, you want excitement, go and destroy a set of tires around a beautiful mountain road on a discomforting but brilliant car, then have sex and then shower.

Following this line of thought, the ONLY Mercedes I ever liked is the original Gullwing with a tubular steel chassis light enough a man lift-it by it's self... that one WAS quite something... from that point onwards, all they've built was sofas, living-rooms and full duplexes on wheels, making Mercedes a company in the construction business.

But then, alter years building houses, Mercedes decided to look to AUDI on their right side, and then to BMW on their left side... and some kind of miracle happened.
I don't know if they've just had a corporate wide enlightenment, of decided to contract their competitors engineering teams, but I like the news.
The new Mercedes A-Class is a sort of copy between the BMW and the Audi A3 merged together with a Mercedes C Class front grid.
Now if this was a normal car building company, I would say it's a design without identity and simply copying it's rivals instead of improving, but being a Mercedes, its actually something to cheer for. It actually looks like a car that could be driven...
... congrats Mercedes, looks like you are planing to move out of the construction business and start building cars again... let's see how it goes in the future ;)

--------------------> UPDATE <-------------------
The prototype has been built and it's very close to the initial sketch. I love it and I've already wrote a new article HERE

The Toyota FT86 and the EVORA.

Not too long ago I was  Face-booking and I saw an article from the TopGear Facebook page showing the the Toyota FT86 and making interesting parallelisms with the Lotus Evora. On the Comments page, we could read all sorts of comments from the exceptionally bright ones passing to the nonsense ones all the way to those stupid comments made in strange foreign languages that no one except the commenter understands (somebody should explain the basics of communication to these people... either that or just plainly explain that commenting on an article means that other should read and comment back eventually).
The most interesting comment came from a girl (and this proves that girls are not just knowledgeable on Louis Vuiton matters). Megan stated that the comparison between the FT86 and the EVORA was a nonsense as the EVORA was a Lotus and, being so, supercar territory.

I loved the comment. Essentially because the Girl was enlightened enough to understand a Lotus and get the point of the Article... although in the wrong discourse direction, but still she got the basic question while most blokes just commented trash like "My twingo beats'em all" or "Toyota Prius forevaaaa".

As I replied to Megan(that's her name), the article parallelize the two cars on purpose... making a lot of sense.
Historically LOTUS has patterned with other big manufacturers. They not only sell consulting services (helping some of those mass-produced-cost-oriented-dull cars we see around handle decently), they also accept outsourced production of small quantity models and they buy mass produced engines for their own cars:
-Todays Elise and Exige use Toyota Engines.
-The now ended production Opel Speedster and Speedster turbo were, in fact a lotus chassis with different body panels and Opel engine... produced by lotus in a parallel production line with the Elise.
-The first Elise, Exige and R340 all used Rover K series Engines.
-The Lotus Elan V2 had ISUZU engines
-...prior to that you can immediately remember the Lotus-Omega
-...and if you want earlier examples; just google on the brilliant little Lotus-Cortina.
It's not just a today's trend; in Lotus, joint-venturing and cross engineering, is Business as Usual.

Back to the new Toyota and the article comparing it to the EVORA; the lotus-toyota joint venture MAKES perfect sense.
I'm not trying to speculate about what I don't know for sure. I'm, however, betting in a lot of LOTUS DNA made on to this Toyota chassis.
Let's just think about this:
-The older Toyota AE86 excelled and it's competitive even by today standards. Replacing it will be quite a venture.
-Toyota has no RWD, 4 seater, front engined chassis in production. Making one from scratch would up-price the project.
-Toyota no longer has a true sports car. They killed the Supra and transfered it's flagship all the way to the brilliant Lexus LFA; They killed the Cellica 4wd Rally-like; They killed the brilliant Little MR2... Today's toyotas are in fact dull cars. I'm not going into details on just how stupidly Toyota and Honda are evolving; you can read about this on my other articles on this very same blog;_ but fact is that Toyota is loosing edge on building good cars.
-They have nothing to support their new "reborn AE86" in their part's supply chain... it would have to be a 90% new parts car.
-They have channeled all their R&D towards electrics and hybrids; BUT they still have a good thing going on with LOTUS.

And this takes us to the relationship behind Lotus and Toyota... and this car, the FT86.

LOTUS is building chassis and using Toyota Engines. One could resume the "relationship" to a simple CustomerLOTUS-SupplierTOYOTA case. However, things are deeper that they look. The LOTUS assembly line is 100% JustInTime manufacturing. This shows pure Toyota Quality Assurance and Control implementation all the way to LOTUS core.

Let's try to understand the FT86 project from Toyota's point of view (and I will remind you all again that this is the way I interpret things and that, at this time, I have no official data to support this).
LOTUS build the EVORA to be a RWD, 4 seater. The extra weight made them shift from the 4cyclinder Toyota engine to a V6 and allow more torque to maintain agility.
Toyota has the exact same need... The AE86 was a 4 seater and the FT86 is so, the AE86 was a RWD car and the FT86 is so, things get messy however when you try to fit the "the AE86 was front engined" on this equation.
The Evora chassis, is an MR chassis. This puts the engine between the rear seats and the rear axle, leaning-it towards the rear axle so that under power it will squeeze the rear wheels to the ground and improve tire grip.
So if the FT86 chassis is indeed inspired on the EVORA chassis, that phrase "the AE86 was front engined" is already a problem, considering the weight increase of today's passive security systems and room for 4 souls, that the 4 cylinder engine is not an option. And placing a V6 under the bonnet is for sure beyond original chassis design, meaning more changes and R&D... leading us back to the original Toyota-only-builds-hybrids-and-has-no-R&D-budget-for-cars problem.

This is where the Subaru boxer sourced engine comes in to solve the issue. The Subaru engine is a 4 cylinder, but since it's a boxer unit (a V engine with 180degree) it will both be compact and the center of gravity will be extremely low. I would imagine that the Lotus EVORA chassis, with a rear installed gearbox + differential, and a front mounted 4cylinder boxer would work almost right out of the box. Either Turbocharged (witch I disagree) of just big bored, shorted stroked, it would be very compact and efficient in almost every dynamic way.

So all the sudden, a TOYOTA with a LOTUS chassis and a SUBARU engine made sense. Is it pure TOYOTA Rev happy madness as the original AE86? NO, but it will surely be very very interesting and fun.

I'm not saying this IS the reason. I'm just posting a way to explain it and, to me, makes perfect sense. If you read my very first posts on this blog, you'll even find an almost "genetic" linkage to this. I've been saying for years that the Japanese manufacturers are now building crap hybrids and stop building real cars. I posted these subjects about Honda and Toyota mainly, and also posted that of the great Rising Sun giants, only a few prevalents building good interesting cars... on this short list you can clearly read SUBARU... and guess what, now that they can only build hybrid crap, Toyota are raising their hand and asking for some help with a true sports engine... funny how the world goes arround.

Don't get me wrong...I know toyota builds excellent engines. The ae86, the celica gt4, the supra, the MR2 had excellent engines. But the 4 cylinder engines from today's toyota are not good enough to take on competition. They are no as good as, for instance, a 4cilinder (former)Honda engine... and the V engines, well the best one they have came from yamaha by no chance.
The 1.8vvti is good for a lightweight LOTUS, but the prototype racing K20a LOTUS will just outperform it easily.
The 4seater FT86 would be too heavy for a 4pot 1.8vvti... and fitting a honda sourced K20A inside the FT86 would be a way to pull-it, but the damn treehuggers just found a way to kill-it with the bullshit emission regulations, and the hole car would see it's mass center shifted higher that the subaru engine allows.

Also, If toyota uses the subaru design, but builds the engine in-house them selfs, it will endure a lot more than the subaru's own built, rendering it tunning capacity with Toyota reliability... something that IT AE86 important heritage.
My ONLY issue is the turbo part. It's not clear in the article if it's going to be NA or Turbo.. I'm hopping for NA cause a turbo should always be AWD and a AE86 successor SHOULD be RWD.

Again on the engine vs chassis matter, having a boxer engine will allow it to seat closer to the firewall, clearing more space under bonet and allowing more generous wheel arches to increase lock angle...something excellent in the AE86 and very important in a drift natured car.

The damn treehuggers still make a mess out of the car world, but this mess here look very interesting indeed, in the same way that the Frankenstein monster was an extremely interesting fiction story. Wedder or not this is fiction... later research will tell ;)


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>UPDATE<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Later research is indicating that the Chassis it self is Toyota-Subaru engineered. So I would trust it to have the same underpinnings an impreza has, but at least this does look good (so far).
Sadly this makes the entire article (like I was stating... before) just an engineer's wet dream, but still interesting to dream of.

Renault the Ripper

If you've known-me for long, that this article will be just another boring "I know, you were right" reading.
If you don't however this will be an interesting story.
Back in the day's when Nissan was a car company, the French giant approached and proposed a joint venture. Back than, just like most Japanese car makers, Nissan placed 90% of it's engine R&D budget on petrol engine units. It made perfect sense as Nissan produced essentially with the American and Japanese domestic market in mind, an was regarded as a company able to create brilliant passionate cars like the Skyline.
This didn't mean that Nissan's Diesel engines were not good... cause they were. I can remember the good old Nissan BlueBird's 6 cylinder diesel put out 2 million kilometres without needing to be rebuilt, pumping out more power and torque than it's "Long Runner" rival Mercedes 180D 2.0 4 cylinder unit witch was know for it's respected 1 to 1.5 million kilometres without rebuilds status.
The problem was that emission regulations were getting tighter on the diesel side (and although it's a stupid trend in the petrol engines side, in the oil burner's side makes some sense). Since building powerful, clean diesel engines was getting too costly, Nissan patterned with Renault and sourced it's (under heavy development) DCi units.
It looked like a simple Customer-Supplier relationship, but then Renault started to use Nissan's chassis knowledge. Back then I immediately said: "this is it, buy you Nissan TODAY and keep it safe... or just admit that your next Nissan will be a Renault".
Nissan was in fact starting to slip into Renault's hungry-for-High-Tech mouth. Guess what?
Not 2 years after the initial "partnership" Renault increased it's share. Later on, the Renault Laguna V2 came up with an interesting benchmark publicity video: an high speed slalom where the huge saloon outperformed an Porsche Boxter clean. How is this possible? Remember the Nissan Skyline Computer and it's way of maintaining stability without disrupting agility (unlike the dull clumsy Bosh ESP that most European cars used back then)? Guess what: Renault sourced it out.
This event issued some pretty loud "I TOLD'YA SO!" statements from me.
It didn't take long and Nissan's Fair-lady project switched from the expected RB26DETT engine to an american-stile lazy V6. And latter the R35Skyline was rumored to be a V6 too... That was it. Nissan was dead and their R&D was clearly doing stunts for the French to like-them enough to maintain them an independent brand after the buyout.
And so it was... The RB26DETT engine was terminated and the dark ages came to Nissan. Renault took complete control and in the GTR debut (it's no longer caller Nissan Skyline R35 GTR as it's no longer a Skyline) it was clear that the entire engineering team was very nervous about how Renault's chairman would react to the extremely technologically advanced GTR.
Renault's chairman loved it (evidently.. the car is almost perfect being spoiled only by it's bad V6 engine when compared to the Godzilla's RB26DETT capable of going all the way up to 1300Bhp).
One of Nissan's flag ship technology of the Nissan Skyline GTR line, is, among the ATTESSA AWD, the Super-HICAS AllWeelSteering System.

As described in this picture, you can clearly see how the computer decides to change the rear wheel angles independently (by dynamical tuning the suspension convergence and toe angles), depending on the speed and G-force involved in the turns.
Well my friends, the latest Laguna3 GT with the so called (4Control System) does EXACTLY that...

So if it was not clear for you that Renault just brought Nissan in order to source technology from it into their product lines just open your eyes wide and embrace the horror:
New Datsun 240Z? no... just a crappy v6 wannabe.
New skyline? NOP just a technical testbed for Laguna with a crappy american cheap style engine.
New Silvia? Noooo, don't think so.
New Almera GTI? New Sunny GTI?.... no!
You can buy a 2tonne Qasquai with an 1.5DCi engine though.

Nissan is now a test lab for Renault and a SUV maker.
Renault on the other hand is building beautiful (the new ones finally are able to be looked up without needing a sick-bag at hand) cars and making them better by the minute. The Megane Sport, The Laguna 3 top line... and more will come.

All I'm gonna tell something further on this matter is ...  much like "jack the ripper" liked to take organs from his victims, ultimately killing them and parting them up, Renault is doing the very same thing to Nissan, being the only remaining FLAGSHIP, the GTR (which is a rape of the original concept by it self), and I would guess that it's only survival is because it's better than a 911 at half the price and this will allow it to live as little over being a tech-R&D platform for Renault.
It's the sad truth about the death of another Japanese Giant.

Gallardo destroyed by slagde-hammering... at owners REQUEST.

The article taken from TOPGEAR Website:

Lambo Gallardo vs sledgehammers

Chinese man destroys his own supercar in protest over poor customer service
Posted by: Andrew Chesterton, 16 March 2011

If you thought the Brilliance BS6 was China's worst crime against motoring, prepare to have your mind positively exploded. This is, or was, a Lamborghini Gallardo - yep, the very same car that, in dog-eared poster format, adorned the walls of teenagers for the best part of a decade.

Its crime? Breaking down. Its punishment? A public battering with sledgehammers. So what, we hear you ask, the hell is going on?

Welcome to Qingdao, in Eastern China, where the owner of this supercar was so enraged after it broke down after a service, that he paid a group of blokes to take the car apart using sledgehammers before a crowd of rightly horrified onlookers. It was all part of a public protest for World Consumer Rights Day, an event likely to resonate with world's biggest companies as loudly as World Donut Day or World Handwashing Day. And no, we didn't make any of these up.


The pictures:

The Video:

 
My thoughts:
This one is an article that I particularly like.
But why would I enjoy a beautiful car being destructed? To prove my point!
I don't like Italian cars. That's a fact and most don't understand why. I hate them, not because they are beautiful, not because they are fast, or have brilliantly thought engineering principles... I hate them because they are built in Italy, by Italians.
Don't get me wrong, I'm Portuguese. I'm "a Latin" too. I know how Latin's think and work. We (in general) are extremely irresponsible and tend to "patch" things cosmetically instead of efficiently.
Of all "Latins", Italian are the more irresponsible type. They've been through a lot as a civilization and tend to "not care at all" about "just about anything" that it not immediately satisfying. So they like beautiful cars, beautiful girls, wine and party.... oh, football too.
The result is that they build the most beautiful cars... in the worse way imaginable... and they do that because, as long as the car isn't theirs, it can fail as much as it wants to ... cause it isn't theirs.

Of course not all Italians are like that, but I'm only picturing 90% of Italy's population here.
Disagree with me? Ok, than think of Berlusconi. Total incompetent and a crook... elected by the people.... by ITALY!

Portugal is the same thing... we have been electing Socialist Party for the last 15 years or so! And then shouting on the stupid political decisions and corruption just so we can re-elect the same crooks after 4 years. Can you imagine anything worse? Welcome to the Latin mind - If the music and party doesn't stop, the boose and drugs keep ON and football and girls are abundant, we just don't care about the rest or the consequences.

So, I've been pointing out for years that Italians build beautiful cars that:
Brake down mechanically in catastrophic propositions
Brake down electrically in BIBLICAL propositions
Rust instantly (at least they are easy to recycle)
Disassemble them selfs alone
Have HUGE design flaws just to be beautiful (you don't want to flip a Lamborghini over)
Catch fire
Loose brakes
Have huge quality conformities from EuroCAP tests to production models

This article show the result of the CLASH of Cultures. Orientals ARE NOT Latins... they are efficiency driven, so they do NOT TOLERATE this kind of Latin attitude... and they are absolutely right.

The new BMW6 series... beauty or beast!?!

I like-it just as much as I hate it!

Let-me explain... If Mercedes knew something about design, it would have designed the but-ugly CLS like this BMW... and it would be VERY good for a merc.

But being BMW this is completely UNACCEPTABLE.
It's not ulgy... it's just too ugly to be a BMW... just like the GT and the 1series and the X6!

BMW... what the hell is going on!?

First you brain-fart and take the glorious Inline6 out of the M3 and replace-it by and americanish v8.... now you've realized the mistake and decided to put the inline6 back... but then turbocharged it!?!?!? I rather have it turbocharged than having a V8, but still it's just not the best think for a RWD sports car... period, unless, the new M3 is an XM3 and it is a AWD :S.

Then comes this ugly design trend... If I would buy a bmw today it would be a 3series coupe or cabrio... or a new Z4. I mean... there is NOT ONE single other BMW that I can truthfully say I like from every angle.

Are you hiring 16 year old designer wannabes?

Time to re-think this GREEN MADNESS... and stop killing CARS

Those ho know me, are very familiar with my personal frustration on today's automotive industry and the GREEN Madness trends.
Now I know that I am VERY very caustic in my opinions at times (OK EVERY TIME), but that doesn't mean I'm not dead right. And I am!

After proving the inefficiency of hybrids and electrical cars and the stupid green without brains trend that walks hands-on with it, its time to unleash the bomb.

No, not the "electrics and hybrids are a bigger threat to the environment that gas cars"... that bomb has already been drop somewhere in the past months by me and some other credited minds on the motoring industry.

I'm talking about that issue that sometimes makes other people look at me like they look at their great-grand-fathers and their unwillingness to "evolve".
Most have been reading my articles as if I was completely living in the 70's or 80's and that I had forgotten the need for economic and green (a.k.a dull) cars.
Most think that I ignore the reality behind the fast that GAS is getting expensive by the second.

Well, I may have a bad temper and sharp tongue, but I also have I.Q.
Like I've always defended, the GAS is the ONLY fuel available because of the easiness of production, storage and relatively safeness's of usage...but also because the petrochemical industry is a powerful worldwide lobby.

Things are however turning around. The economic needs to support this monopoly are becoming unbearable. Alternatives are making people think (probably for the first time ever).
The Brazilians are MUCH smarter then the rest of us... they've been running their cars on alcohol for years now. The rest of the world use Nitro-methane and Methanol to race!
Why to we keep using gas!?
Honda unleashed the FCX clarity running on hydrogen, followed by a new discovered by a Japanese university on how to create hydrogen in a closed-loop water cycle system... things started to change.
In France, one can switch it's petrol car to a natural gas system, and if the standard system renders the car 10 to 20% less power, the new liquid gas system renders 20 to 25% more power.

It's time to sharpen the axe on the petrochemical industry. Time for the Synthetic Gas.
As you car read in this article, YOUR CAR can run on synthetic GAS and produce 0 CO emissions... and still be the same wonderful, entertaining car you've always had. And All that with a 1.5USD / gallon, and that's paying half for the same thing. AND THINK ABOUT THIS, because government MUST STOP charging that much TAX, since you'll have no impact on the environment.

SO, again, I WAS DEAD right on the Hybrids and electric vehicles are a stupid trend! Let's hope others out there give this new re-engineered fuel a chance.

Lawyers of the world: UNITE and start filing law suits against the city hall!

Why?
The next time you get your car out on the road, just check the conditions of the roads you are driving in.
We are taxed to pay for the roads building and maintenance. The problem is that build quality is normally bad and maintenance even worse.

Every car sold today has ABS. ABS stands for Anti-Lock Braking System. What it does is assist you when you brake harder than the conditions permit. Meaning? Meaning that either if you brake too hard, or your tires grip too bad (because of whatever the reason is... rain, snow, oil, polished pavement, bad quality rubber), the car will start puffing your brakes on and off very rapidly, maintaining the wheels turning and allowing you to steer away and/or reduce the otherwise skid distance.
Is it the best way to brake? No... but for 99% of the drivers out there is FAR better than them braking to a full stop. This is why it is now standard with every car.

The problem:
ABS is a kinda stupid system... good, but stupid. It just interrupts the braking force enough to keep the wheel spinning little enough to steer. It doesn't consider the harmonics of the car's suspension. The result is that if you activate the ABS in a bumpy road, the system will get confused because locking the wheel in the air will render it to a full stop and the abs will "ease on" resulting in even less braking force while the wheel touches the ground. Also, if initiating a brake while driving through a road bump, will trigger the ABS and it will keep on until the car stops or you lift off and re-press the brake pedal.
This is why ABS is so bad in a dirt road.

The conclusion:
You pay tax for DECENTLY built and maintained roads. You get crap instead.
But when you try to brake to avoid an accident or a run-over and you car just goes crazy on you because of poor road conditions, it's time to sue and maybe this starts being taken into account.

Having no responsibility or consideration for the road is inhuman and disrespectful. Making them pay and while having this attitude is a severe offense and asks for PUNISHMENT.

Just like I've been posting and debating for years now... battery electrics and hybrids are a stupid unsupported mania.

Everyone that knows me, is fairly clarified about my vision of electric cars and hybrids.

It's a stupid trend!

Hybrids create more impact than normal cars because the engine consumes more (especially when pulling, because of the lack of ENGINE... take a look at this video here) and even worse than that, they use batteries that create huge environmental impact in both creation and recycling (read the studies bellow).
The fully electrical has 2 categories:
1 - The stupid electrical car than draws energy from rechargeable batteries. These cars are heavier than normal (batteries are heavy) making it less energy efficient... and have more battery than a hybrid increasing the environmental impact... and then they have to be recharged using the electrical power grid... how is that energy created? Yup... more impact. And even worse... if most cities are having electrical shortage problems, guess what would be the result if every smart ass out there went to tesla on nissan and by a fully electrical "thing".
2 - The real future of mass automotive. The Hydrogen Fuel cell hybrid. Like THIS VIDEO HERE. It's dull but makes sense and I love it in that manner.

Now for the reality check on all those Hybrid fans out there, that by buying these crappy cars are creating a trend... making most (once great automobile manufacturers) create pure shit and end wonderful projects to divert funds (yup I'm talking about Honda and Toyota)... please READ THESE LINKS BELLOW:

Gizmag
Hybridcars.org
CNWResearch

Big brother is geting ready to watch US ALL!

Another great article from GIZMAG... but this one brings some bad news.
Take a peek HERE.

Humm. Looks like that by 2013, I'll be installing some fake license plates and start wearing a mask while driving.
Not that I don't like the principle of this thing... I just don't think it will be used to improve road safeness and rather be used to GET MORE MONEY from those perfectly stupid and scientifically unsupported speeding tickets.

Drive clearance according to traffic and weather conditions, seat belt wearing, etc etc are all good features.
Speeding however is a stupid definition. Those that state this should be put into a physics class for the rest of their life to try and learn something .

I can go 50km/h on a fiat punto with no ABS and with budget tires on the pouring rain and be PERFECTLY legal and NOT SPEEDING... but if I do the same thing on full packed Volvo... or a Porsche at 80 or 100, then I'm the messenger of death, son of the devil, responsible for the radiations levels and for Bush re-election... and should be crucified.

SPEED TRAPS Is just the best name for the thing. It's a trap! It's the way governments found out how to increase tax... without having to go public on it.
I recommend THIS topgear video on that subject.

The true killer and often overlooked is Excessive speed. This is not easy to define... but the above example IS VERY CLEAR about it. I f was in the PUNTO I would be in Excessive Speed...
Excessive Speed kills, murders and it can be as simple as a BAD driver getting the car out of the parking lot. As a bad driver... he or she should not be driving... even at 5km/h... making it UNSAFE at ANY speed.

Asterio vs AUDI's eTron and VW's BlueSport

If you are looking for the Asterio Roadster website, try this link.

Although I wouldn't buy an electric car... and definitely would never ever buy an electric Sports car.
And Diesel.. well no thanks!
The market, however, does... and so, they are comming!
I decided to take a good look on the Asterio's competition.

So let's meet our contestants:
1st - Asterio Roadster

2nd - VW BlueSport

3rd - AUDI e-Tron

Now lets just brainstorm on this:

1st - The design
They all look like brothers! The BlueSport looks less Audi than the Asterio... but they do share lines!
This is a clearly intelligent move from Asterio. Different enough to notice, but not enough to fall out of the "audi buyer" target... or maybe this design has an even deeper commercial purpose.

2nd - TheChassis
Here, and considering the fact that the Asterio's generis is F1, It's the CLEAR winner. No doubts. It's however not a beater because of some very very clever tricks audi just didn't let go... until now.
The BlueSports and ETron will probably share the same chassis platform (it's not clear to me as the drive train is so much different.. but the VAG modularity concepts should come through).
Asterio offers a MR solution for each and every engine.
VW offers MR for the BlueSport.
AUDI offers a AWD very clever Torque Vectoring solution... the Asterio might be in trouble here. I'm sure that nothing beats the steering feedback purity and on the limit handling that the Asterio provides with this kind of chassis, but the handling of grip cornering and over the grip limit recovery of the Audi might me something that's completely new and ultimately better.
The torque vectoring solution is an EXTREME solution to what the Nissan GTR active differentials are. Each wheel will put the necessary power to the ground depending on how you need it and how the pavement / chassis can apply-it. Being electrical however, it will have instant and maximum torque (this might just be pure dynamite). It should corner like on rails... and this is a real problem... Jeremy Clarkson's neck didn't handle the immense G's the GTR produced around the race track... how will it DIGEST this Torque Vectoring... better stay away from this one Jezza!

3rd - The Engines
Here the Asterio has a good positioning. You can buy an electric Asterio, 2 different Diesel Asterios and a very very impressive V8 11.000rpm Asterio.
VAG however is not entirely sleeping. The VW BlueSports is the Diesel offer and the Audi ETron the Electrical one... as for the TRUE sports models, well the VAG group offers the R8 but the price scale will probably just make people shift to the much better chassis suited Asterio.

Now on the Diesel front-end, Asterio Offers the 2.2 IL4 500nm and the 3.0 V6 700nm torque ... against what seems to be a unique offer of a 2.0 IL4 350nm from VW. Seems like the Asteiro has it fully covered and with a huge comfort margin.

On the Electric front-end, Asterio does have a problem. Audi is offering the Etron with 680nm electric engines... 680nm EACH... and since it's a 4 wheel car.. you have 4 engines! That's a combined 2720nm! Better start thinking of titanium roads and tungsten tires cause this thing will melt rubber and deform the tarmac. The Asterio is offering a very modest 440nm single engine driving the rear wheels.

4rth - The price Tags
The Asterio is offering the electric option at around 40k (admitting a 5k benefit on the Portuguese market for electrical vehicles)
The Asterio Diesels will come around 55k and 80k
The VW BlueSport will cost around the same price as an S2000 so target around 50k in the Portuguese market. Ok... 5K cheaper, but with 150nm less of torque. And being a Diesel... torque matters!
The Audi... hummmm ... 150k usd... so you better target around 170 to 180k euro in portugal! That's 4 times the Asterio's price... but again.. it's more that 4 times the engines too :)

Conclusions:
The Asterio is FAR better as a Diesel offering
The Asterio is much more affordable as an electric offering, but not even close dynamical (under grip limit).
The Asterio is a much better choice as a petrol offering (PERSONAL opinion completely BIASED toward my engine definitions)... but this is a different league.. for a different discussion.

So I'm very happy with this project. Good Job