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Accountants Like Things Done Right Victor Preisler, 49, and his wife, Stacey, of Calabasas, California, own 10 Corvettes, and they aren’t through yet. Like most Vette obsessives, he was dumbstruck as a teenager, at a time when his pockets contained just dimes and quarters. His first purchase in 1988-he saw the car at the Hill & Vaughn restoration shop in Santa Monica, co-owned by Grand Prix driving champ Phil Hill-was a red-on-red, fuel-injected ’63 split-window coupe. Victor is a former accountant who runs a wholesale toy and camping-gear business. He is so gone on Corvettes that he keeps updating a 10-year-old list of the special cars he lusts after. From time to time, he sends their owners new offers to buy.
He and Stacey took that first Vette to a car show, where they discovered the fanatics of the National Corvette Restorers Society and learned of the Bloomington (Indiana) Gold events, where judges award prizes based on how close the entries come to original condition. And that was that-since then, he’s had to install lifts in his garage to stack his cars two deep. He owns a ’62 racing Vette: the former Gulf Oil executive Grady Davis’s national A-Production champion that ran at Sebring and Daytona in 1962. He has a ’66 425-hp 427 big-block, again red on red, one of the first cars with the M22 rock-crusher four-speed gearbox, plus it has the big fuel tank for endurance racing. Its first owner lived in Switzerland, where it was raced. Victor’s other cars include a white-on-maroon ’65 425-hp coupe purchased at Don Yenko Chevrolet, one of Chevy’s "inside track" dealers; a ’67 black-on-white 350-hp convertible with A/C; and a ’60 fuelie convertible with big brakes, wide wheels, and a power top and windows.
Isn’t this sort of auto fanaticism dangerous to one’s mental health? "I don’t look at it that way," says Victor. "Maybe it’s my background as a CPA, wanting to get things absolutely correct. I don’t mind bending all efforts toward achieving that with my cars. And I enjoy tracking down their histories, getting all the documentation together."
-Wallace A. Wyss
Here Come da Judge Now that their son and two daughters have grown up and left home, Carlos and Sherry Vivas of Torrance, California, have a little more room for their Corvette stuff. One of the kids’ bedrooms is now devoted solely to Vette trivia, including decanter Corvettes, toy Corvettes made in China, Barbie Corvettes-3000 in all. Carlos, who is 52, came to the U.S. from Venezuela when he was seven. His first car, which he and Sherry restored, was a ’64 coupe. His zeal for correctness eventually resulted in his quitting his truck-driving job and becoming a restorer and a "Level 300 Master Judge" at the NCRS. He owns eight Corvettes: a ’58, a ’62, four split-window ’63 coupes, and two ’64s (their first coupe, plus a convertible).
Judging is a serious pursuit, he says. The NCRS is so intent on accuracy that it subtracts points from a Vette that has been overrestored. For example, original cars came with orange peel, and points are deducted if your car does not have this flaw in the paint.
Carlos can also tell horror stories. "A car I inspected was supposed to be a ’67, but I found it had a ’63 frame. You have to work on cars to know all the dozens of changes they made in frames and body panels from year to year and sometimes within the same year." He knows his stuff-their first red split-window won the coveted Duntov Mark of Excellence Award from the NCRS, and so did their red ’64 convertible.
-Wallace A. Wyss
And Corvettes Don’t Bleed, Either
Dr. Dennis Carden lives in Fawnskin, California, 7400 feet up in the San Bernardino Mountains. It’s a town that "had a population of maybe 380 last time anybody counted," he says. This family-practice doctor got hooked on Corvettes in 1989 after a doctor friend asked him to help sort out a couple of cars, and Carden wound up buying them. Soon he was turning up at car shows and eventually chose an enthusiast path centered on restoring his best cars to their "100-percent stock" original condition. He has won Top Flight awards from the National Corvette Restorers Society concours judging. His collection includes a ’65 396 roadster and a ’67 427 coupe rated at 400 horsepower. The 396 is an especially prized model because it marks the introduction of the big-block engine in 1965. Its displacement was 427 cubic inches when developed, but due to GM’s corporate rule against putting engines larger than 400 cubic inches into anything smaller than full-size models, it was debored down to a 396. Corvettes were exempted from that rule by 1966.
Article source: http://www.caranddriver.com/features/02q3/the_fanatics-feature
(NewsUSA) – Right now, there are billions of tons of weight floating above your head, but don’t worry, the sky isn’t going to fall anytime soon. It is, however, doing something else: heating up the Earth.
All around us, there are signs that global warming is a growing threat to our planet. According to the World Wildlife Fund, as much as 29 billion tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere each year.
Cars and industrial processes are among the most significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions. But, in regards to the timber industry, the effect is doubly devastating because logging simultaneously contributes to pollution and depletes a source that absorbs carbon dioxide: living trees.
“The timber industry has been challenged for many years to meet growing consumer demand for eco-friendly wood products,” said Sheridan Westgarde, president and chief executive officer of Aquatic Cellulose, a company that has introduced a robotic technology called the Aquatic Robot that can harvest nonliving trees found in underwater forests. “Now, more than ever, individuals, companies and governments have a responsibility to take actions to reduce the effects of global warming.”
Although global warming is a serious threat, there are simple things that the average person can do to combat the problem. Here are some suggestions:
* Organize a carpool when commuting to work. One of the most effective ways that you can reduce carbon dioxide emission is by reducing your personal dependency on fossil fuels.
* Replace regular light bulbs in your home with energy-saving bulbs. Using bulbs that have earned the Energy Star label helps your household consume less energy, thus contributing less carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
* Conserve water. Municipal water systems require significant amounts of energy to purify water, so saving water in your home can ultimately help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
* Spread the word. Tell your family and friends how they can fight global warming by purchasing more eco-friendly wood products. You could even write construction or timber companies and encourage them to source more eco-friendly building materials in their projects.
Across the country, hydroelectric dams preserve millions of acres of flooded forests, providing an eco-friendly wood source that can be used to make all types of products from hardwood floors to decks to musical instruments. Using Aquatic Cellulose’s technology, the Aquatic Robot-120, timber companies can now develop this once-lost resource and simultaneously help in the fight against global warming.
For more information about Aquatic Cellulose (pending name change to The Valor Corp.), visit www.valorenergy.com or call 503-502-5104.
Police have told Autoblog that the driver of a car that smashed into a parked vehicle cannot be prosecuted despite the whole incident being caught clearly on CCTV.
Krystyna Kozlowska left her car parked in Marlow, Bucks, only to return two hours later to discover it had been driven into and the offender had left the scene without leaving their details.
Her dismay soon turned to relief when she saw that CCTV cameras at an adjacent pub covered the area where the incident occurred. The helpful owners checked the footage and could see a silver car had reversed into her vehicle.
Kozlowska contacted the police and reported the incident but officers told her the footage could not be used because it had been “obtained illegally”.
“They said they could do nothing as the footage was illegally obtained against the Data Protection Act,” explained Kozlowska.
“Despite the fact that the camera is monitoring the outside of the pub’s property and just happens to monitor the parking spaces as well, as they are in the background, this is apparently deemed to be illegal and therefore can not be used as evidence.
“I’m not entirely sure whose data this protects but the officer was very persistent and would not accept that the footage could be used in any way whatsoever.”
Kozlowska said officers likened the situation to them “breaking into a house and finding a stash of drugs there”.
“It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” added Kozlowska. “More than anything else it is frustrating as the evidence is there but they are refusing to do anything with it.”
A spokesman for Thames Valley Police confirmed that they could not do anything with the footage “because of issues with where the camera is sighted, under the Data Protection Act”.
Motoring organisations contacted by Autoblog have slammed the police’s stance.
“I’m sure the aggrieved party feels the law is an ass in this case and that’s how it would seem to the majority of drivers,” said a spokesman for The AA.
“Private CCTV cameras are dishing out hundreds of thousands of parking tickets to vehicle keepers traced through DVLA for parking ‘offences’ on private land yet when it comes to something more serious, some of this technology does not pass muster under the law.
“Not only could the person get away with not reimbursing the vehicle owner they will also get away with a criminal offence of ‘failing to stop and give details’ if this occurred on the public highway. The police must of course comply with or find a way through data protection law and we sense their frustration and that of the aggrieved party in cases like this.”
The Association of British Drivers agreed with spokesman Brian MacDowall commenting: “It does seem ironic that the police, who argue ANPR cameras, which log 14m journeys a day by UK drivers, are an invaluable tool in fighting crime but are apparently powerless to assist a driver obtain recompense via CCTV cameras for a damaged vehicle. The law needs revising to help drivers in these sorts of cases.”
Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, added: “This seems a preposterous situation. One assumes that if the landlord had witnessed the event with his own eyes his evidence would have been perfectly acceptable.
“It is hard to see why the situation is different when a camera is involved. The only silver lining might be that Ms Kozlowska can pass the footage on to her insurance company and if the registration number is visible they can track down the other party.”
What do you think? Should the law be changed to help drivers in these situations? Let us know by posting your comments below.
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Everybody knows that sports are contests of skill in which a winner emerges, but what are supersports? Judging from the Bentley Supersports, which pairs the automaker’s expected refinement and elegance with supercollider acceleration and centrifugal corner stickiness, Supersports are something altogether more strange, like a mixture of various sports. Think WhirlyBall, which mixes bumper cars with elements of jai alai and basketball; or paintball, which mixes participants shooting one another with not dying.
Bentley already has superhero-level Continentals in the family—the Speed versions of the GT, Flying Spur, and GTC—but the Supersports models are more thoroughly changed beasts. This particular one takes the Bentley Continental GTC (GT convertible), strips out nearly 200 pounds, drops the suspension 0.4 inch and stiffens it by up to 33 percent, and wrings another 21 hp out of the 6.0-liter W-12 engine. Weight primarily comes out of the seats, brakes, and wheels. At 5400 or so pounds, it’s still hardly light, but 621 hp does a fine job of overcoming the mass. Bentley claims 0 to 60 mph should take 3.9 seconds, and given the quickest time we’ve wrung out of a
is 4.3 seconds, that sounds pretty close. Shifts from the six-speed ZF gearbox are quickened—you can hear how quick they are on the Supersports coupe in our weekly “
” blog feature.
Supersonic Speeds, Super Easy
Like all members of the Continental family, this convertible is relaxed and tremendously composed at supersonic highway speeds. It’s just that it gets to those speeds more quickly and can maintain them through tighter turns and with greater composure. Although the push of 590 lb-ft of torque is never subtle, brief turbo lag and all-wheel drive mean the first half-second or so of this Bentley’s launch is a bit soft. Where it really impresses is at higher speeds, when the 621 hp batter aerodynamics into submission and the car continues to pull to ludicrous velocities. Bentley claims a top speed of 202 mph.
Anything weighing 5400 pounds and turning 20-inch, 275-width Pirellis at each corner is going to feel planted, but other GTCs tend toward understeer when the kinks tighten. Not the Supersports. Its torque split is tweaked from 50/50 front to rear to 40/60, balancing cornering behavior. For the first time in a Continental droptop, really hammering the throttle midcorner can induce some oversteer. Body roll is completely absent. Bentley chairman Franz-Josef Paefgen says the Supersports will turn a Nrburgring lap time similar to a Ferrari’s, but the accuracy of that statement depends on your definition of “similar.” Both are measured in minutes and seconds, but the Supersports time of about eight minutes 30 seconds isn’t going to worry anyone in Maranello.
Heavy cars at high speed need good brakes, and Bentley claims the carbon-ceramic units it fits to the Supersports are the most powerful binders currently fitted to any passenger car. At 16.5 inches up front, they are certainly supersized. Although the pedal feels spongy, the immediacy with which the brakes haul the car down from speed will have your ribcage feeling spongy as well. We measured a 157-foot stop from 70 mph in a
, and the convertible should be able to mimic that feat. Despite the superb braking performance, the driver’s best connection to the Continental Supersports is the steering wheel. Although not providing much in the way of feedback, it is nicely weighted, progressive, and wrapped in leather so fantastically grippy you can steer with your palms.
Superlative Trimmings The cabin is swaddled in similar tactile treats, with Alcantara everywhere, including the carbon-fiber bucket seats. Manually adjustable thrones in a Bentley might seem appalling, but those seats are responsible for 90 pounds of the Supersports’s weight reduction. The coupe benefits further from the loss of its rear seats, but in the convertible, those seats house the rollover protection hoops. Even if Bentley had removed the cushions, the structure hidden in the headrests would still have to be there, so the engineers left the seats in.
On the outside, the Supersports convertible gets the same visual enhancements as the coupe: additional apertures in the front fascia and hood for better airflow, the sinister black wheels, and a lip on the rear fenders to cover the widened—by two inches—rear track. The net effect is menacing, an adjective not often employed in Bentley reviews. And with contrasting piping and quilting highlighting the Alcantara interior, the car looks as good from the inside as outside.
Super(fluous)sports?
Interestingly, the progression from Continental GT to GT Speed to Supersports seems to have overshot the sweet spot for huffy luxury marques, and its maker knows it. Bentley says fully 60 percent of Continental sales are now Speeds, which carry a $30,000 premium over non-Speed cars. Supersports sales have been somewhat slower; the company sold only 30 coupes last year and plans to import just 80 convertibles this year. That’s probably not so much a function of price—the Supersports adds about $50,000 on top of the Speed’s sticker, for a base price of $286,695—as it is a reaction to the altered character of what used to be essentially a private bullet train.
Although the Supersports is certainly capable, it does neither luxury nor sport as well as other $300,000 cars, and it’s highly unlikely someone spending this much on a car needs one vehicle to fill both of those roles. If you’re going to spend $300,000 on a luxury car, Bentley’s own Mulsanne is far more fabulous than the Supersports. If it’s a sports car you seek, the Italians have some fine vehicles for you. And if what you really want is something unexpected, that sum might also buy you your very own WhirlyBall arena.
Article source: http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/car/10q2/2011_bentley_continental_supersports_convertible-first_drive_review
The most significant new Acura for 2002 is the RSX.
Replacing the Integra,
the RSX comes with more standard power (160 hp) and is available only as a three-door. The more interesting RSX is the Type-S. Its i-VTEC 2.0-liter pumps 200 hp through a snickety little six-speed manual transmission. We’ll have to wait a couple of years before Acura introduces the 220-hp Type-R version in the U.S. The splendid-but-old
NSX gets exposed headlamps in place of the ’80s-look flip-up units; there are no mechanical changes. Acura has applied performance to both its
3.2TL
and 3.2CL,
with the addition of Type-S versions with a 260-hp V-6. The CL Type-S will be available with a six-speed manual gearbox. The four-door TL Type-S is automatic only. The oft-forgotten
3.5RL
luxury sedan, which received a modest power increase from 210 to 225 hp and some suspension-tuning changes for 2001, carries on unchanged.
The roomy and excellent-driving MDX unibody sport-ute gets some noise-reducing changes for 2002.
Article source: http://www.caranddriver.com/news/car/01q4/acura-car_news
Official photos of the are still a couple months away, but Mercedes is so excited about the safety technology set to appear on the new sedan (as well as on the refreshed
) that it flew us over for a briefing in Germany.
Hardware details of the E-class were scarce—torsional rigidity is up a claimed 30 percent and its coefficient of drag, at 0.25, will be better than the slippery Toyota Prius’s—but Mercedes continues to develop technologies that can outsmart the driver. Ulrich Mellinghoff, vice president in charge of safety at Mercedes-Benz, is happy to usher in the autonomous car: in his words, “cars that see, feel, and act for the driver.”
We’re not sure we share his elation. What’s next, cars that are incapable of exceeding the speed limit? Either way, here’s the new—and far less controversial—safety technology coming for 2010.
Attention Assist: Detecting Drowsy Drivers Research indicates that as many as 30 percent of traffic accidents are related to drowsiness, and these are often the most catastrophic. Many automakers are pursuing systems that monitor the driver’s eye movement with a camera, but Mercedes isn’t convinced, claiming that these systems provide warnings too late, don’t work very well with drivers who wear glasses, and require additional hardware such as a camera and infrared lighting. That’s why the company has developed its own system, called Attention Assist, that’s based mostly on the driver’s steering behavior and requires only a more accurate steering-angle sensor.
To develop the system, Mercedes had more than 550 people drive some 600,000 test miles, both on actual roads and on driving simulators, many while hooked up to a skull cap full of electrodes to monitor brain activity. That way the level of drowsiness could actually be measured and then correlated to driving behavior. Attentive drivers tend to make small and nearly continuous steering corrections whereas sleepy operators make almost no corrections for a period of time while drifting off and then snap to with an overcorrecting jerk of the wheel.
In the first 20 to 30 minutes of driving, the system monitors the driver’s behavior to adapt itself to individual habits. When it determines you are too tired to drive safely, the system announces it’s time to take a break with an audible warning and a visual message that includes a coffee-cup icon.
Attention Assist will be standard equipment on the 2009 S-class and the new E-class. While we don’t doubt the system’s ability to accurately detect a drowsy driver, we do doubt that drivers will heed the warning. In our experience, we’re usually aware of our sleep deprivation, but we’d rather push on to our destination rather than pull off for a nap. And then there’s the Big Brother concern that the cops may be interested to know that a driver’s car even knew he or she was tired before causing an accident.
Pre-Safe: Now with Autonomous Panic Stops “Pre-Safe” is Mercedes’ encompassing term for safety features that activate before a crash, such things as seatbelt pretensioning, automatic closing of the windows and sunroof, and even inflating the seat bolsters and repositioning the seat to place an occupant in a more favorable position to deal with the impending impact.
The latest wrinkle for Pre-Safe is its ability to perform a panic stop without any driver input. The system introduced on the current S-class for 2007 applies the brakes, but only with up to 40 percent of its maximum force.
Article source: http://www.caranddriver.com/news/car/08q4/2010_mercedes-benz_e-class_and_s-class_safety_technology-car_news