Automotive

I’m a stickler for good brakes and Constant Vigilance! Of their condition. You just never know when you will need them.

The ramp from NB Mound Road to WB I696 is a great flyover. It widens out to two lanes to accomodate slow trucks and is banked neatly. You crest it and swoop down into a five-into-two merge that is not for the faint of heart, but everyone knows it’s there, so, no big deal, right? It’s a nice example of a half-Iron Cross type interchange.

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4871749,-83.0443281,15z/data=!3m1!1e3

The ramp closes from two lanes to one lane about halfway down, and then that lane merges into two lanes coming in from Southbound Mound on the right. Visibility is arguably not good, but it’s also not too bad. You have a great view in your side mirror for both cars and bikes, assuming you know how to use it. Shortly after that merge, the final two into one merge onto I696 to the left completes. Again, it’s visible from a fair distance. 

The merge into Southbound Mound traffic was apparently too much for the driver of an SUV on Monday. I hang back when cresting the ramp because you never know what will be on the other side, and this time, my reserve was rewarded. I came over the top to see the driver slowing down. Then really slowing down. Then… STOPPING. Yeah. Needless to say, I was praising the gods of Brembo and EBC, although I’m not sure the words I was using would qualify as traditional prayers.
I’m not sure what they have been teaching young drivers over the past few years, but I hope no one has ever said that stopping on an on-ramp is a good idea. 

Found this oldie in a dark corner of the interwebs…

GTO

Go back to 1964. While GM is not thinking about much besides moving some people around at moderate speed, a few engineers at Pontiac have other ideas. Borrowing from Ferrari (more on that later), they designed an option package for the mild-mannered Tempest. Ignoring GM’s self-imposed displacement limit of 330 cubes, they pulled a 389 cubic inch V8, new steering, and a funky dual exhaust together for an option package they would call “GTO”. As the line grew and matured, a manual transmission, improved rear end, and stronger styling would be added. This first of the sleepers, the GTO would take America by storm, outselling even the wildest expectations of the engineers.

Gran turismo omologato

Go back to 1962. You will find a Ferrari that wasn’t just a track car. One of the first few supercars, nitro you could take out on a date and bring home without worrying about the aftermath. A car you could drive to work on weekdays and wring out on the track on weekends. True homologation (omologato) was a bit questionable, with only 42 of the required 100 cars (for GT qualification) actually being built. Somehow this was overlooked in the racing circles, and Ferrari went on to torture opponents at race time. The Scaglietti coupe remains one of the most beautiful automotive designs to ever find its way into traffic.

Grand touring, homologated

Homologation is the process of making a car street legal. The Ferrari was homologated to participate in the particular racing class it was destined for. While some may question the roadworthiness of any Italian cars, it is always a concern of the manufacturers to have the cars meet any safety or other regulatory guidelines for driving on public highways by lay drivers. Homologation can mean adjusting the power to weight ratio, adding emissions controls, even modifying the traction control components. Homologation also means proving that the car is a true production model, not a one-off. Hence the 100 car requirement in the case of the Ferrari GTO.

The Pontiac GTO bore little resemblance to the Ferrari GTO. Not a race car, not even race-bred, it was a glorified passenger coupe that could go very fast and do it without attracting attention. With a final production run of over 32 000 in its first year, the homologation requirements for GT class racing were surely met! The Pontiac GTO was also assembled in the opposite direction of the Ferrari – chassis first, drivetrain second. It is generally clear to car enthusiasts that Ferrari operates in the other direction.

I have recently become very interested in homologation, largely because I have only recently learned what it meant. I have also been thinking about the unfortunate and impending demise of the W8 engine in the Passat, so I got around to tracing its lineage.

The W-series program seems to have started with the Nardo, a W12-based GT car which will never see real production. The goal of the Nardo program (named after the track on which many world records for speed were set by the car) was to produce a compact engine that would produce a maximum horsepower to weight ratio. With such a compact and powerful drivetrain available, homologation was the next step for the engineers at Volkswagen.

Street legal road racer

With the largest production vehicle at the time being the Passat (the Phaeton was still on the drawing board), power-to-weight ratio and engine bay limitations were examined and four cylinders were lopped off the W12 leaving the W8. The Passat chassis had been proven out in track circles through the V8STAR series, although not fitted with the W8 motor. A six speed manual transmission was added (likely from the Nardo program considering the weak stock clutches in other Passats) with four wheel traction to handle the power. Big brakes suitable for stopping such power completed the new drivetrain package. With the conveniently 4Motion Passat chassis readily available, the new drivetrain was inserted and a performance beast was born in the form of the W8 Sport option package on the venerable Passat.

Like the Ferrari, the Passat W8 Sport started with a motor. Like the Pontiac, the choice of chassis was an unassuming, nearly invisible family sedan. Given the introduction of the Rabbit GTi some 25 years ago, one would think that VW would remember their past success in making street legal road racers. The irony is not lost on this writer.

I suppose I’m mostly disappointed about the impending demise of the W8 Sport Passat because it was a GTO in both senses – a homologated grand touring machine packed into an otherwise unassuming package. A sleeper of the grandest proportions. I’m particularly upset about losing the wagons. The Americans have never had the guts to produce such an extreme vehicle. The Dodge Magnum is their best effort so far, but there is no stick (or even SMG) option. I find that to be a serious flaw.

I’m also sad that I didn’t realize how much could have been made of the car, particularly in advertising it. The ads for the W8 Passats flat-out sucked, but a phone call to the right people with mention of ‘GTO’ could have been made. I kick myself for not seeing it sooner, not figuring out how to make the program a success in the US. Nostalgia is a powerful tool, and VW has used it wisely in the New Beetle program. Why not haul it out again for this most glorious of cars? I don’t know.

So, goodbye, Passat GTO. You never really were, but I will miss you anyway.


roll video of Nardo taking laps at Nardo.
VO: At Volkswagen, sometimes our engineers get a little creative. This time, they took two thirds of our grand touring car’s drivetrain and one third of our award winning Passat to create the Passat W8 Sport.
CG: Nardo drives through a Passat and turns into a W8 Sport variant.
VO: With eight cylinders, six gears, and our superior 4Motion all-wheel drive system, we like to think of it as the German GTO.
video: PW8S drifts to position on screen.
VO: The Passat W8 Sport. A milk run doesn’t always mean groceries.
offstage VO: Did you tell them it seats five?

His first thought had been “well, that was easy.” It was a long time ago, but some days it still seemed fresh. A bit escapist, sure, but fresh, and clean, thanks to the car wash. He still occasionally used the single old self-service bay, and always put a $100 in the tip jar, even if he didn’t get a towel dry. It was the only place from that day in real life that he ever revisited.

He had parked his car in the driveway like every other day, walked up the path, and into the house. Same car, same driveway, same house. Same beige barge of boredom, same cold grey concrete, same cookie-cutter dwelling. He was different, sure, but he knew that no one could see it and it wouldn’t matter to anyone who saw him, anyway. This time it was a little more, and the risk had been a little greater, but ok, a little physical risk once in a while was not a bad thing. Fear in small quantities is a benefit. Kept him on his toes. The usual way of doing it was boring and nearly without risk, because he was so good at what he did. People rarely noticed his actions or even questioned them when they did.

He had washed the car right before he got home and parked. The high pressure bay was open like he had planned. No stress there. It took a little longer than he expected to complete the job, mostly because of all of the cracks and crevices and their ability to hold the brownish-red stuff covering the car. He was surprised at the tenacity of the material he was trying to remove, especially because it was supposed to come off more easily if you got to it quickly. That’s why he had chosen this means to his end. The radio was on, he liked the news station and he was hearing what he expected to hear. The information was wrong, but hey, no one else needed to know that. Ten minutes before he dropped his quarters in, he had been in a dangerous place doing a dangerous thing. A financially rewarding dangerous thing. At least everyone saw him do it. He was pleased to know that he had been seen.

He was getting away from the scene, just a few hours of his life and just a little money to stow in the offshore bank he’d set up and been quietly feeding for a few years now. The sirens were wailing nearby, time to get going with the next step. It was time to get away with it.

The encounter had gone off without a hitch. He got what he was after and drew the attention he wanted. It was surprisingly public for a person who stayed in the shadows most of the time. He assessed the target as he approached the meeting point. He re-established trust and made sure to make a show of how he arrived. He liked his not-very-special car, even in this guise. It was in many ways a very good car for him, even if he barely recognized it as his. From then on, the scene wasn’t pretty by any means. It was an ugly, brutish takedown, and he was counting on as many witnesses as he could get. He needed them to see his car.

The car wash was important. He knew that this was actually the highest risk element. It had to be operating and he had to be able to get into the high pressure bay. Worst case would be a delay there, so he had stopped by on the way and jammed a slug into the coin-op unit. He figured that he could put a $100 in the tip jar another day if everything played out ok.

He had gotten into the car more smoothly than he expected to. He had been a little worried that he would spend too much time there because it was different now. No hesitation. No hitches in the plan. Out of the garage, onto the street. Checking off the mental checklist in his head. Necessary tools were packed. Slugs in pocket. Plan in place.

The prep work for the encounter was surprisingly little work. He had been even shocked about how easy it was, he’d expected to spend hours on it, and in reality it wasn’t much more than one. A bit of newspaper here, some tape there. Some draping off of the surroundings and trash hauling. Uber for a couple of days while the car was “at the shop”. No stress, if you didn’t count the extra bag of trash that week.

The encounter had been in the plan for a while, but the getaway had been a sticking point until a few months earlier. The kid who delivered the mail at the office had given him the idea when he had arrived at work in a different colored car every week for a while. The kid fun to talk to, a gear head on a low budget who was always fiddling around with something. He’d asked the kid about the color changes and thankfully gotten the idea before he pried too much and made his interest too clear. The kid had said that he just sprayed it on and then washed it off at the car wash when he got bored, you know, the one over on Batton Street with the self-service high pressure bay. The kid laughed as he recalled the secretary who thought he kept buying a new car each week. The idea was coming together.

He smiled as he thought back to it. Every once in a while, he entertained the idea again. Not the encounter, that was enough of that and he was back to his normal way of padding the account. It was safer, and way easier. However, the whole getting away thing… That might be worth revisiting one day.

I love Diesel engines for the stump-pulling torque, but about once a year, I have to face the reality that even clean Diesel still makes particulates.

That day is “washing the conspicuity vests” day.

These are two older vests that I had in the closet from my time in Germany. Front to back, inside to ouside, it’s not really pretty. 

You see it in car ads all over the net:

“Driven to church every Sunday by a little old lady”

“Grandma-driven”

“My elderly aunt had it for the last ten years and only put about 20K miles on it”

I recently took possession of a car driven by a little old lady – my mother-in-law. I have a new view on what “little old lady driven” means.

First, lets discuss the interior. A Little Old Lady is probably pretty fastidious, that’s how she got to be so old in the first place, so the interior is probably kind of clean. It might even smell like perfume. But she’s not as strong as she used to be, and getting in and out can be a chore. Look for wear and tear on any surface that could potentially be used a hand-hold. Cubbies suffer too, because as dexterity fails, it gets more difficult to operate the opening and closing mechanisms. Good bye, $250 center stack trim….. Hello permanent creases in the upholstery from the box of stuff that never made it to Goodwill….


Now, on to the drivetrain. The mysterious “O/D Off” button was never touched, and neither was the RPM range over about 3K. You’re going to be blowing carbon out that motor for a month. Check the suspension, too, because as vision fails, so does the ability to recognize potholes. CV joints and wheel bearings can take a particular beating. I’m still sorting out what the squeak in the driver’s front wheel is.


That limited vision? The slowed reflexes? The deteriorating range of motion? Oh, man. They all add up to one thing – “I didn’t/couldn’t see it!”, and that means paint. All over the body. Usually belonging to other vehicles and stationary objects. The tears of a hundred parking bollards in this case. Plan on at least a solid eight hours of wheel work just to get the worst of it off the sheet metal. The plastic bumpers might be a lost cause, and we’re not even at the scratches yet.


If the paint is suffering, you can be sure the metal is, too. Look for misaligned panels (what? Oh, no, she/I never hit anything!), deep scratches, and other small dings that throw some serious shade on Grandma’s health condition.


Needless to say, this could have been a total cream puff, but in reality, it’s a damn mess. Because little old lady. Next time you read that in an ad, think twice. You don’t want to deal with parking bollard tears. They kind of melt into the paint and stay there.

Urgh, another rental. Wait, I have a blog, so I can tell you all about it!

I got to Enterprise yesterday and was asked if I wanted to upgrade to something roomier than the midsize I booked. Uh, no. Thank you, but no. I asked for something smaller, and the manager just sighed, wandered off, and eventually handed over the keys to a brand new (seriously – 102.3 miles on the odometer) 2017 Hyundai Elantra. I took it home, loaded up my stuff, and headed out to visit a plant in the middle of OH. Possibly the most boring road trip ever.

The stripper rental car was doomed when Volkswagen decreed in the early 90s that all cars shipped over to our shores should have at a minimum air conditioning. By the early 2000s, Honda had caught on, and by the mid-2000s, it was almost impossible to find a true stripper any more. There isn’t even a delete option for most automotive features now, so good luck with sweating. All this change has meant that your average rental car is now actually a decent place to be, like this Elantra.


The Elantra I got was a bit of a surprise to me. The 2016 was ok, but not something I would consider renting again. The 2017 has a few tricks up its sleeve that make it a particularly good choice at the counter, the first being the incredibly adjustable front seat. Yes, I am swooning about a seat that is otherwise kind of stiff, not particularly supportive, and not really pretty either. The shear range of positioning is what makes this seat so great: in fact, the entire ergos for the car are far better than I expected, and frankly, might set a standard. The vertical adjust on the driver’s seat is nearly six inches. This means that I, as a person who does not enjoy the Actros or Mack seating position, can get the seat (and my H point) down to somewhere sensible. Forward and backward are manually adjustable and also generous. The seat is missing lumbar adjust, something that would prevent me from purchasing the car. Regular notched seatback angle is also impressive in range.

Complementing the extreme seat manipulation is a very adjustable steering wheel. It pulls out about five inches and has significant up and down motion. While it might not look like an F1 car on the outside, those of us who prefer the F1 seating position can almost get there. And still see out of the greenhouse. One noteworthy feature – the seat is nearly perfectly in line with the steering column. Otherwise perfect ergonomics have been ruined by misalignment of these two critical parts, so it’s nice that Hyundai has taken care here.

The rear window has a nasty fogging effect from its internal lamination that obscured vision in the lower driver’s quadrant. At first, I thought I had the generous AC cranked too far up, but the rear defroster did not help. Some investigation and reduction in solar angle of incidence revealed the tell-tale dot pattern of optical adhesive. Otherwise, visibility was very good, even with the seat all the way down.

The stereo works pretty well, and was minimally difficult to figure out. The base stereo and button-intense control surface seems almost quaint in today’s world of full-color TFT touchpads. XM works as expected, with three bands available for presets. The preset function is super-easy to use. I would recommend this stereo for technophobes, it’s straight out of 1995, but with more words on the screen.

Climate control controls were scattered and took me a few minutes to sort out. Seriously, though, GM-level AC in this thing.

Riding down I75 in Detroit, the car started beeping at my, with no indication in the instrument binnacle of the source. I quickly learned how to operate the steering wheel controls, the various functions on the dash, and a few other odds and ends before realizing that my purse, coat, and adapter bag were enough weight to trigger the passenger airbag/seatbelt interlock and warning. Ooops. I swished my purse and coat to the floor and the beeping stopped. The angle of the late afternoon sun had made the warning light on the center stack very difficult to see.

The car struggled with grooved pavement and winds, with very unsteady tracking. The first one hundred miles or so of the two-hundred mile trip were difficult. Once I was through the grooves in Michigan and the construction zones in OH, the car started to settle down a bit. The sensitivity may be related to the tall-sidewall tyres the car is shod with, or to air in the steering rack. I don’t know, but it was super annoying and made an otherwise pleasant ride into a more stress than it should have been.

The engine is plenty powerful for rental abuse, and the transmission is remarkably not annoying. In sport mode. In regular and eco modes, it is a dog. Way too much lag off the line. Gear-hunting was rare, downshifts were smooth, and no clunks or lurches. No shifter weirdness because the shifter is like the radio – an artifact, but a very welcome and pleasant artifact. If it ain’t broke… you know, don’t “fix” it.

The interior is not upscale, but it’s also not downscale. It’s extremely neutral. Hyundai uses a better quality hard plastic and textures it to avoid surface glare. The upholstery is smooth, but looks to be a fine knit that may pill or pull. Time will tell. No one is going to mistake this thing for a Genesis, that is for sure, but it’s noticeably better than a Corolla. The trunk includes a rear seatback release button and is roomy.


It’s a car with decent looks and controls. It’s boring, but predictable. Overall, you won’t go appreciably wrong by selecting the 2017 Elantra at the rental counter.

(pics coming soon)

The star of the NAIAS needs to be the Chrysler Pacifica for one simple reason: It’s the only new vehicle or concept shown that is actually going to make its builder a ton of money. The gorgeous concepts from Buick and Acura are gorgeous. The Chevy Bolt EV is technology realized. The Golf R put-your-hands-in-the-air-and-wave-them-like-you-just-don’t-care is cool. The Pacifica? It’s the first time something new has happened in the minivan world in a long time. The hybrid drivetrain will likely find its way into the rest of FCA’s big vehicle fleet, making FCA the first company to produce a huge number of huge hybrids. I predict that the Pacifica Hybrid will have a 30+% take rate and be the “it” car for quite a while. The fact that anyone cares about anything else at the show is telling.

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What is up with the suppliers? Not only is I75 littered with a quadruple dose of supplier billboards (how many turbos do you need?), but the show floor is starting to add more suppliers. Could this be a trend back to a more regional focus with the Tiers taking their rightful places as technology developers? Who knows. If it wasn’t for them, though, the floor would be even more empty. With five makes not showing, it’s kind of bare in there.

On to the actual flakes….

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Look at them….

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OMG, the huge, giant flakes of sparkle in so many colors!!

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We have been looking at silver cars for so long. Deep creamy color started to make a little bit of a comeback about two years ago, and we have seen a few more metallic colors like that ridiculously luscious cinnamon on the Ford Flex. This year, we got flakes. I’m not saying that we are going full-on metalflake here, but these are some big flake metallic colors and they are very very welcome in my world. I’m curious to see how far this goes, and if it develops into a trend or is just a little bit of fun in an otherwise black, silver, and white world.

Flaky. Metalflaky.

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a big fan of Hawk Performance brake linings. Ever since my first set of HPs pads on the B5, I’ve been running various Hawk compounds for various purposes. I usually match the compound of the brake linings to the tyres I’m running, so HPS with my winters and HP+ with my summers.

Recently, I needed to repair a leaky power steering line and in the process discovered that I had a loose pad on the front axle. Further investigation found that the lining had separated from the backing plate. This is pretty much a catastrophic failure for a brake pad, so I’m glad I caught it when I did. Considering what the car has been through, I wasn’t too upset with the situation – the car sits for longer periods of time in the summer when I don’t really drive it at all. Add in all the winter salt and who know what’s going on there.

We do some brake bonding at my employer – designing the adhesives used to hold the linings on the back plates, so I was curious to hear what Hawk had to say. I reached out through their customer service contact page. A few days later, they came back, asking for photos, which I gladly sent in. Almost immediately, the answer came back – “we can warranty those for you.”

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So, I have to say, I’m pretty darn pleased with Hawk. Not only for the performance of their linings, which I really like, but also their Customer Service team, who took care of this issue. No doubt there will be some sort of work on their end and hopefully my pad set was an anomaly. It’s refreshing to know that they stand behind their product even when things go pretty wrong.

Thank you, Hawk!

Last week, I posted a photo of an IKEA Lyster curtain rod end. This morning, battling an epic headache of no known origin, I remembered to take some more pics and a video to explain the whole thing. Remember, this was done at least twelve years ago (likely closer to fifteen), and that I have no shame whatsoever.

I wanted a glass doorknob for a shifter in the B5. Kind of boring, but functional. I didn’t like the shifter on the car as it was delivered. It was even more boring. I never did find a cool glass doorknob, but wandering through IKEA, I found the Lyster bit, and a short call to my dad later netted me a threaded-to-fit stainless steel adapter. This happened.

Then, because nothing entertains me like a bunch of glowing LEDs, this happened.

…and this…

Yup, I wired it into the dash dimmer properly. Unfortunately, the acrylic Lyster bits are a bit fragile and I get about a year out of each one before the base cracks off. Now, I run the rubber shifter knob out of my old Rabbit Convertible. It’s a bit more cold-weather friendly. Reverse is in the wrong place, but that is a topic for another post.

The whole shebang kept the denizens of ClubB5.com entertained for a while, because no car is sacred and this was good for April Fool’s if nothing else.

Anyway, about four or five years later, I was wandering around a Murray’s looking for something, and discovered that my utterly fabulous knob was now a thing. Battery LEDs, but a thing.

There are two times in my life when a car truly got away. Both times, I made the decision to let it go, and it was probably a good decision, whether just at the time, or for long term.

The first time was in 1995. The car was a Nugget Yellow G60 Corrado. Oh, man. I wanted that thing. I recall telling a friend at the time that “I want it, but I think it would be the end of my marriage.” Looking back, oh yeah, that would have been a bad idea. I would have either gotten one of the good G60s and spent the next ten years making it into an awesome G60 at the expense of the rest of my life, or one of the time-bomb G60s that would have also sucked the life out of me, just in a different way.

I still stop and admire those things, and almost bought a used one a few weekends ago. I’m still not sure my life would survive a G60.

The second time was different. I was shopping for a family car. I had two inviolable demands: stick shift and a 48″ wide hatch. The 48″ wide hatch was not that bad – the E-Klasse, 5er-Touring, and the Passat were all there. The Saab Aero was close. It was a funny time, because I really just wanted an Accord wagon, but those weren’t shipped over the Pacific any more. The E-Klasse was out due to the lack of proper transmission. It was down to the E39 and the B5. I thought I lusted after that G60. My desire for that E39 wasn’t even on the same scale. In my eyes, the E39 Touring was and is the be-all, end-all of cars. Peak auto. The complete package. The E39 was a completely different kind of want, because there was absolutely nothing on my list of needs and wants that it didn’t bring with. The price, though. Yeah. I consoled myself by saying that I wasn’t going to buy a car that was worth more than my house.

I bought the B5, and it has been a wonderful car, lifestyle accessory, project, whatever I wanted, it delivered. Except RWD. I’ve admitted that a Corrado would be a bad idea, but I still wish I’d sprung for that BMW. Because RWD.

Right now, there is an M-swapped E39 on CL in NYC. The M version was never available in the US, so you have to swap the M bits in from a sacrificial sedan. A coworker did this swap a couple of years ago on his 540i, and it truly is amazing. The crown on his is the EU-spec tow hitch. I think it gets about 12MPG towing a motorcycle trailer. It is as extreme as you can imagine, and he tows with it. I have trouble coming up with a more perfect sleeper. In fact, if I was going to go the E39 route (I can’t push it out of my head), I would be doing this swap eventually, too. Hint, hint.

The one on CL has a grey interior. That is one of those things that you are either into or NOT. There is little middle ground on grey. I love grey interiors. Grey interiors are kind of the rare spec.

The price of the car on CL is not bad, and I can afford it. But… I am not going to buy it. I thought about it for quite a while last night, and it came down to the fact that there is nothing left to do to the car. I’m a creative person. I realized that I’d rather do that swap myself and make it my car. Buying a completed one would not be the same as building it. And I like to play with cars way too much to buy a finished one.

I also thought about what I really want next, and what I could do with $24K. $24K would buy me a brand new ND. Two decent NCs. Three decent NBs. Four decent NAs. Four, count them, F.O.U.R decent NAs. Or, one decent NA and a bunch of mod money, and still have money in the bank to pay for gobs of track time. That’s not even a decision any more. Fancy car that I won’t play with and won’t track, or decent car that I can screw around with endlessly and track the crap out of? Not even close.

I’m putting my E39 thing back in the box for a while. I also realized that an E36/5 would probably be more my style, and I love me some Kompakt. Mmmmm, Kammback! We get the cast iron block 2.8s over here. That swap is one I would like to do. I bet it would get more than 12MPG towing, too.