So good it Hertz

Ford used to own Hertz, and they did a special deal in the 60's where Shelby tuned some Mustangs and created the Hertz Rent-a-Racer program. Well, they've done it again. This is old news, apparently, as the deal has been going on for over a year.

Anyway, there was a AMA supermoto race in Stafford Springs, CT, and we needed to rent a car to get there. After a quick look through the various rental car sites, it seemed that a $69/day Ford Fusion was going to be the day's chariot. There's nothing wrong with a Fusion, but renting it would ensure highlight of the day was the time spent spectating at the racetrack.

Then something halfway down the Hertz list caught my eye. A black and gold Shelby Mustang convertible.

Sadly, the Mustang was all sold out in Manhattan for Sunday. I called Hertz in New Jersey, and they only had V6 Mustangs. I booked an inexpensive Fusion from Avis and went to bed, after reading a series of glowing reviews of the Hertz, both from magazines and from lucky bloggers who found one to rent--there are only 500 of them, and they are only available in a handful of locations, mainly on the coast.

The next day, I looked again, and BAM, there it was, fairly jumping off the page at me. Some fool had cancelled his reservation for my Mustang--even if I weren't obsessed with the idea, I'd defy anyone from resisting the opportunity to rent the top car- I mean, come on, it only costs $70 more! (actually, mine was a bit more than that, plus .26/mile over 100 miles).

It was difficult to concentrate Saturday night, and I a bit aloof at the party I attended--the whole time I was looking forward to squeezing the throttle and hearing the hollow warble of the big V8 with the wind in my hair. Thankfully, I turned 25 last month, so someone thinks I'm responsible enough to bring the beast back in one piece.

This was all still unknown to Sarah Wilson, who wouldn't share my enthusiasm about "what an awesome day this is going to be" as we ate bagels. Little did she know I had a fire-breathing Mustang lined up just minutes into the future. On second thought, that probably wouldn't get her as riled up as it would me.

We walked into the Hertz, just 2 blocks from Sarah Wilson's apartment, and to my great surprise there were Hertz Mustangs in every corner of the garage. I fired ours up and coaxed the beast onto the street, picked up Sarah Wilson, and roared onto the FDR.

Even before we got there, however, a Jeep wanted to race. Once on the FDR, a tinted Explorer window rolled down, and an approving face looked out. This was the first sign that the Hertz Mustang is dear to the American heart. But man, would it continue throughout the day. People LOVED it.

I had expected it to make a great noise, spin the tires, and put a big smile on my face. And did it ever, on all three counts. I'd drive through tunnels at full throttle, the nose would lift and the tail would squat down.

There was the 10 year-old kid smiling as I did a huge smoky burnout right in front of his house, who gleefully exclaimed "it's coming back" as I looped around to pick up Sarah Wilson before we fled the scene.

There was the guy at Starbucks, who demanded I pop the hood so he could check out the motor, and it looked pretty clear that he was going to head to Hertz and try one out for himself.

And the lady whose just-past-infancy pointed and said "momma, what's that?" "that's a Shelby darlin'.

When I arrived at the motorcycle race, I had a few long conversations about the car that ended with the guys saying "well God bless you man, have fun in that thing."

On the way out, some kids yelled "light 'em up Mustang!" and I obliged, and soon did it again when I heard "do it again!" from someone else.


I stopped to pee on the high way at night, and just for fun brake-torqued it and slithered off in a cloud of smoke. I passed a car a minute or two later who gave me a big thumbs up.

But the best bit was when we were on the way back into Manhattan, we took a wrong turn in Harlem and wound up pulling up to a stoplight next to another Mustang convertible with 3 fairly aggressive looking characters in it. "Oooh, a Shelby, go easy on me!" At the next light the driver said "how many cylinders does that thing have? 68?" and the passenger offered me some hennessy.

There hasn't been a day since when I haven't thought about excuses to rent one again.

Slow Bikes – A Tour de France Special on Slipstreaming

Every July, skinny men on colourful bicycles pedal up mountains in the Tour de France. The riders average over a hundred miles per day for three weeks. How do they do it? Fitness and technology are only part of the story; no rider could be competitive without the invisible boost of the slipstream – the same effect used in NASCAR and by dicing GP racers like Gibernau and Rossi.

At 25mph, roughly 90% of a cyclist’s effort goes into moving air out of his way. Slipstreaming cuts that figure dramatically. In a pack, all but the front row of riders feel the benefit of the draft (there's very slightly more to it than that, and it involves vacuum--the first riders get a tiny benefit from the people behind them), so they take turns slipstreaming to conserve energy. This energy-saving teamwork is the reason a group of riders can catch a solo breakaway with relative ease.

Want to feel the spooky calm of the draft? Get hold of a racing bike and find a bus route along a 30mph street – you’re going to draft a bus. Ride along the route until you pass a stationary bus, then shift into a big gear and accelerate hard as the bus pulls away. Once it passes you, check there are no cars and then duck in behind it, maintaining a distance of 5-10 feet. You should hardly have to pedal, and the wind will disappear. Cover the brakes in case the bus begins to slow.

It is much easier to ride a hundred miles a day if you barely have to pedal. Indeed, a pro rider generates less than 1bhp. So if you cannot arrange the suggested thrills, fear not. Hop on a Fireblade and you’ll be sitting on more power than is in the entire Tour de France peloton.

Runup to Torque

Here is an article I recently submitted to The Truth About Cars. It's about the second-coming of diesel cars in America, and how manufacturers could better their diesel lineups and grab a larger slice of the market from hybrids and gasoline-powered cars.
(That GTO isn't a diesel)


Runup to Torque – the New Diesels

23 May 2007

This is going to be a bad year for US diesel passenger-car sales. Few diesel models have been on sale for the past few years, and they are now scarcer still. Besides trucks, today’s 45-state shopper can choose among only a Grand Cherokee, Volkswagen’s Touareg, and a couple of Benzes. But manufacturers are readying models with new exhaust filtration systems that bring many more oil-burners into compliance with the strict new Tier 2 Bin 5 emissions standards all 2007-and-beyond passenger cars must meet. High-sulfur diesel can damage the exhaust technology, but the nation’s 76,000 diesel stations will soon complete the switch to ultra-low sulfur. By ’08, a host of manufacturers—Mercedes, Jeep, Subaru, Audi, VW, and BMW—will be ready to unleash a bevy of 50-state diesels.

This should be great news for driving enthusiasts. People in the know have long championed the performance and economy of diesels. Though they generally don’t cope well with the way people think they drive (blasting from 0-60 and redlining through the gears), they do a terrific job with how people actually drive (squirting from 30-70 mph, shortshifting at wide-throttle openings). Unfortunately, all the exciting diesels are staying in Europe.

That’s going to hamper US diesel sales; the low gas (and diesel) prices we enjoy here mean it will take longer for a buyer to recoup the higher initial cost of a diesel, so the motivation for choosing one will be less financial and more emotional. For diesels to make it in the land of Mustangs and Magnums, they will need to be cool.

Regrettably, manufacturers’ proposed diesel lineups are bland. They’re not bringing us much more than an Audi Q7 TDi, a Mercedes R320 Bluetec, and a BMW 530d. Buyers who wait until 2010 can also opt for diesel Maximas and Accords—and will remain bored. People who buy any of these probably haven’t floored a car in 30 years, and the cars themselves aren’t going to win any outright mileage competitions (read: headlines) against a Prius. Significantly, this demographic is also old enough to remember the last time diesels were big in the US—the slow, smelly, truck-like diesels of 20 years ago.

Surely the younger generation would be better suited to starting a diesel bandwagon. Fun-loving, image-conscious youngsters would get jazzed about a sporty option, such as BMW’s 155mph 335d, and would relish eco-hooning around in a runabout like Smart’s 60mpg fortwo diesel (both on sale in Europe). Fighting at those performance extremes is critical; the US market is unique in having had hybrid powertrains become mainstream before diesels, and so diesels will have to take the fight to both gas and hybrid. They can do it—a sporty diesel will trounce its petrol equivalent on torque and economy; a frugal one can school hybrids on weight and brake feel, and have proven longevity. Now back to the coolness factor.

Audi could have made progress on this. In 2006, their badass V12 diesel R10 won Le Mans outright on its maiden outing, a decidedly awesome maneuver. Then, they released the R8 supercar AND devised a 500bhp, V12 diesel cauldron that could serve up a Newton-kilometer of torque. And then wedged the motor into a lumbering concept SUV, the Q7 V12 TDI. Whoops—a diesel R8 concept would have made a good many knees weak over an oil-burner for the first time.

Audi are not going to bring athletic diesels to the showroom either. We’ll get a 3-liter Q7, but not the new A5 3.0 TDi that competes against BMW’s 335d in Europe. Those are two cars people would talk about. Autocar said of the 335d (which has 428lb-ft):

It’ll rev in a very undiesel-like way – a pleasant attribute, but not particularly relevant. The engine’s real weapon is the sledgehammer effect of all that torque through the mid-range and the hushed manner in which it is delivered. The turbo petrol 335i would ultimately be faster, but in a real-world test the diesel is easier to drive quickly, whether intentionally or by accident.

Sounds awesome. So why will the manufacturers bring us only reserved, upmarket cars? It’s partially because the higher production cost of a diesel engine, when combined with the expensive systems needed for a diesel to comply with the new emissions standards, will raise the price of a car by a fairly fixed amount, and it’s easier to slap a fixed premium onto a $35k+ car than one costing $15k. They may also be basing their sales predictions on data from Europe, which, as stated above, employs dissimilar purchase metrics.
JD Power predicts—and manufacturers hope—that diesel’s US market penetration will quadruple to 15% by 2015. Consumers are interested and the technology is nearly here. But to hit that goal, America needs the most interesting diesels from Europe, and soon.

Masculin products

Taking a cue from my sister, there is going to be a theme this week: Masculin products. This doesn't mean they're masculin in themselves, like an older Bentley, it means that they are products for a man. They stand-out with subtlety and boast frillless performance. They are products marketers hope you forget, in hope that you might buy the latest.

Tonight, we’re going to take a look at Gillette Foamy Regular. Later on we’ll touch pickup trucks, raincoats, bikes, and magazines. Sports cars as well. Maybe sports car drivers.

Gillette Foamy Regular. Gillette’s most generic shaving cream—it doesn’t have Vitamin E, or Advanced Gel, and it isn’t for Sensitive Skin. It’s just fluffy and white—pure shaving cream. And we don’t have Barbasol in the US, so men have to use Foamy Regular.

Contrast that to Gillette’s Edge Advanced Shaving Gel, Extra Skin Protection. Just read:

From drugstore.com:

Sometimes you're cool and contained. But other times it feels good to get into a real lather. Edge Pro Gel is dispensed as a gel, but oh, baby, look what happens when you rub it onto your face. It lathers right up for a sinfully luxurious shave. Extra lubricants allow your razor to simply glide across your face, making it especially nice for guys with sensitive skin.

But if you aren’t quite ready to leap to Regular from Jack Black’s Face Buff, or your girlfriend isn’t ready to switch from her Satin Care, Gillette’s Foamy Lemon / Lime can ease the transition.

New York City is the "greenest" place in the US

I used to think that cities were filthy, dirty places that consumed vast quantities of resources. The thing is though, they house vaster quantities of people--and consume less resources per capita than rural areas (apologies for the goofy font choices).

The Herald Tribune agrees:

"The old paradigm of the pollution-filled city as a blight on the landscape and the leafy-green suburbs as the ideal is outdated and does not lead us to a future of energy independence, clean air and a stable climate. Cities are the best hope to realize our need for a bright, sustainable, and promising future.

New York City, for example, is the most energy efficient place in America. Yes, it houses 8.2 million citizens and uses an enormous amount of energy to do so. Its electrical load, more than 12,000 megawatts, is as large as all of Massachusetts. Yet because the buildings are dense and thus more efficiently heated and cooled, and because 85 percent of all trips in Manhattan are on foot, bike or transit, New York City uses dramatically less energy to serve each of its citizens than does a state like Massachusetts. Indeed, it uses less energy, on a per capita basis, than any state in America."

There's some pretty heavy red-taping going on when you compare a 20-some square mile island to spread-out states, but the article is still worth a read..

Ferrari and Shell

Okay, I must admit that I am absolutely speechless at how cool this Shell ad is. I'll let it speak for itself.



Edit: The above link is down. see it on youtube (albeit in lower quality).

Passenger-miles per gallon

This is what's been on my mind lately: Passenger miles per gallon.

A cyclist gets 600mpg, and a person driving a car gets 40mpg. Well, what about with 2 people? Lets say a car gets 40mpg. With one person in the car, that's 40 passenger-miles per gallon. With two people in the car, it would achieve 80 passenger-miles per gallon (move two people 40 miles with one gallon). Four-up, it would get 160 passenger-miles per gallon (4*40mpg). More on the bike later.

This concept is especially important when calculating the environmental impact per person of mass transit. A bus, which gets an abysimmal 4mpg, gets 160 passenger miles per gallon with 40 passengers on board (40*4mpg). The trouble is, if a bus holds 40 people, and you want to move 41 people, you need two buses. you double the amount of fuel consumed to move that extra more person, and the passenger-miles per gallon of the convoy comes down to 81. (from: 41 passengers*(4mpg)2 vehicles)

A 75% full 747 might get 30 passenger-miles per gallon, and a cruise ship gets about 10-passenger miles per gallon.

So what about a bike. I got 633 miles per gallon, but what if two people go on a bike ride. It takes twice as much energy for two people to ride bikes, but they get twice as many "passenger-miles." So the efficiency stays the same. So whether one person rides to work, or everyone rides to work, each person is getting 600 passenger-miles per gallon [ 2*(600 mpg / 2 vehicles) ]. And you don't have to go in the same direction as anyone else!

I saw a guy with a kid in a child seat on the back of his bike on my way to work this morning and thought, holy crap, (approx.) 1200 passenger miles per gallon!

633 mpg ride on Scientific American podcast

PODCAST!
my bit starts halfway through

Admittedly, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this bike ride, but none has made me quite so proud as the recent podcast I did for Scientific American. I used to read SciAm growing up and always had real difficulty wrapping my head around the topics they covered with ease. What an honor to be on their website.

Last November, when an article about the ride appeared in Bicycling, I got an email from SciAm's own Steve Mirsky, who invited me to their offices to record a podcast. Well, it wound up happening in early March, and finally appeared on their website on the 14th.


Here is a link to the actual podcast (my bit starts about halfway through).

Here is a link to the website, the podcast in question is from March 14th.

Ode to going for it.

I've just seen two acts that make me question the typical "courageous" things I normally hear about people doing. These two gentlemen rolled the dice in the grandest style- There is nothing PC or watered-down about either of these two things. Don't sit back and relax- figure out what adventure you've been dancing around, and go take a chance.

The first is an article about the co-founder of DC-Shoes somehow working up the guts to FLOOR a souped-up scooby at a jump Evil Kneivel himself might have some reservations about. He's got a vapor-trail!



The second bit of news is slightly more somber- It is a clip of a young German gentleman who went balls-to-the-wall on the back of a German TGV. Nothing screams GAMETIME like suction-cupping yourself to the back of one of these demons. Sadly, our hero died a year later of leukemia. Happily, he lived the dream, if only until his 22nd year.




I found it on Jalopnik, where commenter Spence captured the feel quite well-

Seriously, this made me cry. No kidding. I'm sitting at my desk at the t-shirt factory wiping tears from my eyes.

What I don't think you get Kracer is that most human beings don't ever deal with the reality of their limited humanity. We trudge to work and put in our time and refuse to think about the fact that death comes in the blink of an eye. Sometimes people under a death sentence are able to face up to their fears in a way most of us don't ever. They can't pretend that the elephant is in the room any longer, so they say "fuck it" to the calculated risk that passes as wisdom in this life. They do the things that they want to do with the tiny piece of time they have. This is how we should all live our lives. Yeah, it's a tragedy when time is cut short, but it's a far greater tragedy when time is wasted on the pettiness of life. This video made me want to quit my job and walk away from my lease and do all the crazy things I want to do with my life. I may not be courageous enough to do it, but damn, don't blame this fool for doing it.

Indeed, being a fool may be the only sane reaction to the meaningless random momentary spark of existence we call life.

The smart competition

If the November 11th release of the 2007 smart fortwo didn't have you totally lusting after one of the little runabouts, perhaps seeing such a small car at least piqued your curiousity: less than nine feet long, the fortwo gets a green 50 mpg (plus or minus) without any hybrid or diesel trickery, and must be the most parkable car on the road (perfect for anybody who visits cities). Though even the brawneist fortwo spits out a decidedly lowercase 84 horsepower (although it does weight less than half as much as a VW Golf), small is definitely cool, and it doesn't have to be city-shaped.

Even sportscar manufacturers have learned from the minute smart- let's take a look at what they are testing behind closed doors:

Ferrari has cooked up a short-wheelebase enzo: ideal for their tight Fiorano test track:


Gordon Murray's long-awaited city car shares nearly everything except its wheelbase with his famed 90's F1:


The european market C6 Corvette has a smaller footprint than the stateside version, and has been received with much more enthusiasm as a result.



Quite remarkably, even classic-car enthusiasts have jumped on the microcar bandwagon. This gentleman skillfully chopped a ridiculous amount of metal out of his El Camino, and made it much more parkable (and economical) as a result. On second thought, maybe he should have saved up for a 2007 smart instead.

Microcars: Megafun!

Sure, you might look at these cars and think "that looks like an escape-pod for a Hummer," but in big cities, microcars are the most engaging and enjoyable cars around. Computer-aided engineering means they are safer than you'd think, too!

To the right is the Brabus Smart Roadster Coupe I drove for a weekend while working for Autocar in 2004. I covered 500 miles in three days, on an epic adventure from London to Sherborne and back. I had already thought the regular roadster was a gem, and the full-Brabus treatment only made it more appealing--the wastegate whooshed and banged during shifts, and I couldn't stop looking at the chunky bodykit. It wasn't just me either, girls and guys of all ages loved the thing! I can't wait until they bring cars like this to the US.

Take a look at the videos and you'll agree - good things comes in small packages.

1. Top Gear pits the original Mini Cooper against a modern competitor from Fiat to find out who is better at making a racecourse out of the city.




2. A Smartzuki goes insane! Flop a motorcycle engine into the trunk and stand back! I shudder to think how fast the original motorcycle was. For comparision, this Smart has significantly less than 200 bhp. That is probably less than your car.

Bicycling covered the ride

Check this out- The 633 MPG ride was covered by Bicycling magazine (Nov. 2006), and it wound up on their website as well. Click here to be taken to the article--they did a great job capturing the spirit of the ride.

In other news, I've just seen Contested Streets, an absolutely fascinating documentary about street usage. It was so compelling that I decided to review it for a local newspaper to spread the word, but then I learned that they will let you do it yourself! On the website, there is a place where you can sign up to host a public or private screening at your own house or workplace. Get a free DVD and have a party with your friends? Sounds like a deal to me.