Epic Car Forum Breakup

This is one of the saddest, funniest, craziest things I have ever read.  Read it for yourself.  You get the details slowly, but by the end, you see the whole picture: illegal immigrant live-in boyfriend sperm donor who works 3 nights a week spends all his money on his car and brags on the Acura forum.  Baby mama finds his account open, and dumps him right on the forum.   

Link: http://www.acurazine.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11899278&postcount=44

2011 Explorer: Off Road Machine?

This interesting video that was posted on Youtube shows the vehicle dynamics manager for the 2011 Explorer program at Ford explaining the benefits of their new Terrain Management System (TMS). Ford's TMS is similar to Land Rover's Terrain Response, where the driver turns a dial to select one of several icons representing different road conditions.

The video is unusual, in that it shows (camouflaged) Explorer prototypes being driven off-road, before the product has been revealed. This isn't often done in the industry.

The video also shows the Explorer playing in the sand and mud, doing some more-than-casual offroading.

Even though the 2011 Explorer is going to be a unibody design with front-wheel-drive powertrain, it looks like Ford has some more serious off-road capability built in.

More Bad News For Toyota -- CR "Do Not Buy"

This is bad.

Consumer Reports tests vehicles for emergency handling by running them through some high speed dynamic maneuvers, such as a lane change.  When CR did this test to the Lexus GX 460 SUV (the luxury cousin of the 4Runner) the vehicle exhibited a very yaw angle.  This is good for sports cars, where the driver is assumed to have enough control to manage oversteer.  But on a high center of gravity SUV, a loose stability control tuning is dangerous.  Says CR:

We believe that in real-world driving, that situation could lead to a rollover accident, which could cause serious injury or death. We are not aware, however, of any such reports. 

...

In real-world driving, lift-off oversteer could occur when a driver enters a highway's exit ramp or drives through a sweeping turn and encounters an unexpected obstacle or suddenly finds that the turn is too tight for the vehicle's speed. A natural impulse is to quickly lift off the accelerator pedal. If that were to happen in the GX, the rear could slide around far enough that a wheel could strike a curb or slide off the pavement.

Because of this behavior, CR has given Toyota another black eye, with a rare and embarrassing "Do Not Buy" rating.  This puts the Lexus GX460 in the same company as the Suzuki Samurai.

The iPod touch rocks!

I am playing with my new iPod touch, and it is amazing how much you can do with this little thing. Even blog!

Edmunds $1,000,000 Unintended Acceleration Challenge

Edmunds has published the official rules for the promised $1,000,000 contest to see if anyone can create a plausible failure mode that results in unintended acceleration in a factory stock mass produced vehicle.  Rules here.

My prediction:  some college engineering students will come up with something similar to Prof Gilbert, where they will induce a specific multi-point failure.  Edmunds will deem it not "plausible", and will keep their money.

Me, I'm going to submit a photo of a guy stepping on the brake and gas pedals at the same time.  It is not following the rules, but, it probably explains a large part of the cases.

Post-Passover Pizza For The Hungry

My favorite Jewish Pizza joint, Jerusalem Pizza in Southfield, MI, is once again auctioning off the very first pizza made after the end of Passover to benefit the Yad Ezra food bank. eBay link here.

I am so in.

"Naughty Volvo"?

So Volvo has launched a web marketing theme of "naughty".  I went to Volvo's web site to look at it and well, videos of a Volvo stopping automatically to keep from hitting a pedestrian isn't exactly naughty.  When you try to dial up the naughty-ness, the video gets more shaky, the driver seems to be driving faster, and some naked (male) jogger runs through the frame for some reason.

Here's an idea, Volvo, if you want to get "naughty".

V60 wagon + Haldex AWD + manual transmission + direct injected turbo engine = V60R 

Then film the V60R running the Nurburgring, in the wet, with gobs of heroic drifting.  That might be naughty.

Ja?