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Somebody made a mistake, a big mistake and accidentally ordered 4 billion pairs of Piloti racing shoes. As a result they are now coming out of Ross’s ears to the tune of $19.99. 

These shoes are normally in the $100ish range and are quite difficult to locate, they aren’t the sort of shoes you would expect to find at Nordies or wherever. Additionally, they are fabulously hideous. No matter.
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Today Toyota revealed the 2010 Prius, amist lots of glits and glamor at the the yearly rust-belt motor show in Detroit which goes on this week. 

The automotive press are teeming over the wonder of modern engineering that they are calling the Prius.  It now gets 50mpg on the combined cycle, is bigger, looks fresh – and will be available to consumers in the spring. What else could a consumer want other than a $25-$30 thousand dollar Toyota Echo?

The problem here is that the Prius is a gimmick, it was not really invented to be anything other than a fashion statement. I imagine that some Prius drivers, on their way to the dealership were considering either the eco-friendly Prius or getting a tattoo on their forehead: “I <3 Polar Bears!”.

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Lets be honest, I am not going to mess around here. I love Top Gear,  and don’t confuse that and think that the way mother loved soap operas comes close to describing what I am talking about. Think instead in the way that a Skydiver loves their parachute, or Bush loves God. You see, cars, driving fast, the excitement of the road – all of those things are great by themselves, just as falling out of a plane can be damn exciting. But without Top Gear, just as the parachute – it would all come to a abrupt, disappointing, and ultimately unsatisfying end. 

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Secretly, or not so secretly, I am actually an 8 year old boy trapped inside of an adults body. Sure, I pay my bills on time and keep a clean(ish) home, but I  have a few childish tendencies. 

As an example, I like practical jokes – small and large. Just yesterday for someones birthday – I had a man dressed up in fairy costume and show up at their work to wish them a happy birthday.

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I like love Top Gear. No really, it is very very difficult for me to describe my child-like fascination with this television show from the UK. It is truly one of the best produced TV shows in the world, that happens to be about one of the greatest topics in the world (cars) with some of the funniest hooligans on the planet (Clarkson, Hamster, Captain Slow). 

They are back on November 2nd, with a new series of episodes that I will be forced to torrent / youtube to watch. Although BBC has released season 10 on iTunes for $14.99 (I would be more than happy to pay that!)

Additionally, Clarkson has a new DVD “Thriller” that is released on November 3rd. Rad!

Today the BBC released a trailer that shows whats coming up in the new series. Watching it gives me goosebumps with anticipation.  Lots of road tests, lots of challenges, max hilarity activate!

The Joy, oh the Joy of things in live. But today I am talking about one of the supreme constant joys of my life. Driving, the pursuit of the drive, the drive itself, or the lack of driving. All of it, its almost like I had forgotten. 

Recently when driving to work through my neighborhood, I passed under a enormous trees that engulfed the road in that long, majestic sort of way. And of course it being autumn, there was a rustling of leaves that were cascading down from the trees due to the breeze, and then there was the eddies of leaves that followed the wake of my passing. The sound of the engine echoing off of the cave of tree as I barreled through them.

Passion, art, science, soul, character, beauty – lump all of these things together and you get someplace close to describing that moment. 

This is the sort of thing that I live for, experiences like that are what make life worth living. I might call it Love, love of the intangible, love for life. 

I am not the only one who shares this passion. There is a new movie (documentary) that will be coming out next year about a guy they call Eric Bana. Actor and one with the passion like I describe. Enjoy the trailer.

The first thing you need to know about the new Maserati is that I haven’t driven this car. I felt compelled to write this after seeing a few on the road, and looking over the details. This is one of the first supercars that got the recipe right.

Think about how many 100k+ sports cars you see on the road. If you think about it really hard, you almost never see Ferraris or Lambo’s – you see more 100k+ mercedes sports cars than anything else, I see SL500/600/55’s daily. I see Ferrari’s around once a week. I think what Maserati have done with the GrandTourismo is give you the excitement of a supercar without all of typical drawbacks. Here’s why:

1. It has an automatic gearbox – Yes, having the sweet SMG clutch-auto transmissions is great for the track, ever try driving one around town? It is not fun, other than the Audi DSG (there are other variants of this spectacular BorgWarner trasmission coming in this years’s M3, and the ‘09 911 line) but for the most part high end cars are wither manual’s, or SMG’s. I’ll take the automatic for LA traffic, thanks.

2. It doesn’t have a volcano for an engine – With around 400 HP and a a 4,200lb curb weight, this thing has enough power to get you into trouble, and fun without melting the asphalt. I always feel sympathy watching people in their 650hp Lambo driving down the 405 – what’s the point? And because it doesn’t have the enormous engine, you aren’t afraid of using it.

3. It looks AMAZING – The visual feast of this car is fantastic, something you don’t even get close to with any merc, bmw, or other luxo-sports cars, it is simply STUNNING. Its exciting just to look at, and that is half of the battle won. No 9 year olds want a boring SL600 pinned up on their wall, but they would want one of these.

This is the recipe for success, lots of these will sell to poser soccer moms who want to look fast, and they will also sell lots of these to true enthusiasts who want to drive fast, but not die for the cause. Kudos.

John McCain, after facing defeat on a number of new bills related to CAFE and the US auto industry did something a little radical. He is now pushing through legislation that would award a $300 million prize for the development of battery packs that make a revolutionary improvement over todays designs. Those of you who aren’t intimate with the chemistry of batteries, there are a number of very serious problems with the designs of NiMH, and Lithium Ion batteries are super expensive to produce due to the materials involved and production process.

I really like this sort of x-prize approach to innovation, I have remarked once or twice how the US Federal Grant system is flawed and a waste of money for short term goals. This sort of approach will give the private sector a chance to get real incentive to make leaps in technology.

I think that one of the real ways out of the energy crisis we have today is real leadership from our administration. What McCain did here is a drop in the bucket, I am talking FDR-style  ‘lets rally the nation and have every household give up sugar’ sort of leadership. That kind of leadership, with the right incentives, innovators, and operational backup have done great things for this country. They have built the atomic bomb, defeated fascism, and sent men to the moon. We need a nation wide effort to make real progress on developing clean, renewable, and cheap energy in order to save our economy.

My hope is that one of the Presendential candidates is secretly hiding this sort of effort, because I think if they came right out and said it, they would be thought of careless radicals and wouldn’t get a majority share of the vote. The problem with people (voters) is that they only care about themselfs, RIGHT NOW. Nobody ever looks at giving up something now for the long term. It makes me sad.

There is something about the howl of V10 engines that just make me crazy. It is such an exotic screaming sound. Here are some great examples:

2010 Honda NSX replacement at the Nürburgring Nordschleife from MrBTG on Vimeo.

Carrera GT
Gallardo

BMW M5:

Life is good with these as

A few months ago I received notices via my various RSS Automotive feeders that Lexus was selling track days with the IS F for a mere. After reading a big about it a bit I decided to purchase the 4-hour track day for $295.

When I arrived I was greeted by friendly staff and the usual disclaimers and waivers to be signed. Lunch and drinks were served while I awaited for the 12:30pm start time of the event. One thing to note, there was this drink there I had never heard of before. Hint Water (drinkhint.com) is a water-like substance with a hint of refreshing flavor. It’s not like propel where its an obnoxious flavor, instead you get the slightest taste of the refreshing flavor in the water. I must of had 5 or 6 of these things while I was at the event. I looked into buy some more, but at $2 / bottle when bought online its a bit expensive.

In the lounge area there were flat screens that displayed promo material for the ISF, an ISF open for people to sit in, some fancy video game simulators made out of ISF  and a bunch of car magazines and various marketing brocures. Interestingly, the car magazines they had there had a rundown of ISF vs RS4 vs M3 vs C63 – in the test they ranked ISF 4th / 4th. Bummer.

Once it was time to get rolling they corralled everyone into a big room and went over on how the day would flow. About 75 people were split up into 4 groups that would rotate around the 4 stages setup at the track at California Speedway. The 4 stages were Full-Track Hot Laps, Relay Race, Time Attack, and Driving Line theory (in a classroom).

Without spoiling all of the details the Full Track Hot laps were great, I was able to get the car up to like 110 in the longer back straight. The Time Attack course had Timing loops and I ended up with the 3rd fastest lap of the day (yay!). In the end the day was fun, but not quite worth the $300 for what was essentially, a glorified test drive. Track time is fun, but it was limited and cramed full of people telling you how great the car was.

Some notes on the car. It felt like Toyota was really aiming at the M3 with this car, but like the other, German M3 wannabe’s it falls a bit short in several areas. Firstly, the engine feels a bit like a Tundra engine with cams, it is very similar to the characteristics of the LS1 in that regard – very flat, undramatic torque curve that is very drivable. Having driven a few of the old S54 powered cars, the M3 is nothing like that, there is a big sense of theater when you drive the BMW’s. The Lexus doesn’t have any of this. When you are thumping around the track there is no getting around the fact that the Lexus is HEAVY, while the excellent traction control system does its best to keep it from plowing through the corners with catastrophic understeer, it is very apparent that it is the cars defining handling characteristic. With that in mind, the traction control system does a very, very good job pulling the car in on tighter lines, especially in the slow corners.

It is also very apparent that the ISF had no limited slip differential, with all the torques trying to get put down  in the corners the lack of the LSD caused the TC systems to be unable to put down a progressive, smooth, and confident power delivery. The best I could describe it would be ‘jerky’ think of it like RWD torque steer, you can feel the TC stabbing at the brakes to no avail causing the car to weave a bit similar to torque steer as you exit a turn.

Onto the impressive bits, the car had fantastic brakes. The transmission was especially fab. I drive an Audi DSG for reference, and this transmission was equally impressive on both up and downshifts. The blips from the throttle are especially welcomed, well suited for agressive driving.

Overall I liked the car, it has a good balance between the raw, take no prisoners poise and balance of the M3 and a standard Lexus hovercraft. However, this car did not appreciate the brutal treatment of the track. As noted by other reviewers, this car seems most at home on loping up and down mountain roads. However, for that matter the IS350 or 335i would perform that same mountain-loping weekend with ease while keeping an extra $20k in your pocket and still keeping up with the extra 100 horses from the ISF while delivering similar excitement levels.

For the raw, bare knuckles experience, the Lexus has fallen short in providing adequate driving feedback, balance and poise to really deliver the excitement needed to be a true sports sedan.