- XCAR shares our love for the Fiesta ST
- Police car stuck in the snow? Subaru to the WRX-cue!
- Remembering when Peter Egan visited Jay Leno
- The art of using snowbanks as a driver's aid
- This is where BMW motorcycles are made
XCAR shares our love for the Fiesta ST  Late last fall, our own Zach Bowman quickly fell in love with a green Ford Fiesta ST while hurling it through the mountains of Tennessee. The Fiesta ST has proven time and time again that it is the epitome of what a hot hatch should be—cheap, fast, good value for money, and loads of fun.
The Fiesta ST's turbocharged 197-hp 1.6-liter engine and its low weight of just 2742 lbs. make it ripe for fun-having. The 214 lb-ft of torque that you get is equally impressive, and it helps shuttle the Fiesta from 0-60 in under 7 seconds. The precise steering, smooth gearbox, and lack of turbo lag all help make the Fiesta ST the outstanding total package that it is, and needless to say, Alex Goy of XCAR agrees, but see exactly what he has to say in the video below.
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Police car stuck in the snow? Subaru to the WRX-cue!
The Dodge Charger Pursuit is a hell of a police car, but like lots of rear-drive muscle, the snow can be its nemesis. Such was the case for a Hazel Park, MI police officer whose sedan got stuck in the white stuff. His roadside assistance wasn't what you might expect: a helpful driver in a terrific-sounding bugeye Subaru WRX (on all-seasons, no less) with a tow strap. Hopefully, 5-0 remembers the act of kindness sometime down the line...  |
Remembering when Peter Egan visited Jay Leno
Jay Leno, the longtime 'Tonight Show' host and car collector extraordinaire, made a classy exit from his late-night post this week. On that occasion, let's look back a few years to 2010 when Peter Egan visited the Big Dog Garage and kibitzed with the big dog himself. (Peter was there to be interviewed by Jay for his website.) As you might imagine, the pair get along famously, chuckling over the time when Jay convinced his father to let him spec a hot-rodded engine for the family Galaxie (spoiler: Jay's dad didn't appreciate the muffler-delete option), bonding over the notion of long road trips in questionable cars, and generally having a good time. While Jay's late-night run is over, there's no sign of an end to the Big Dog Garage, or the immensely interesting cars he collects, restores, and shares with the world. We wish Jay the best. Perhaps now he and Peter can hook up take a long leisurely ride somewhere together.  |
The art of using snowbanks as a driver's aid
This week end's Rally Sweden is the only remaining race on the WRC calendar designated as a "Snow Rally", all others being "tarmac" or "gravel". A "snow" rally means cars can run specialized, very narrow, deep-treaded, tungsten-tipped studded snow tires. The very properties that allow these specialized tires to dig through deep snow giving great forward traction are responsible for making the cars unstable in the turns. Driving very fast through the Swedish forest stages requires not just the special tires but a very special technique. The trick is to use the big, fluffy snow banks lining the course to your advantage and keep the car on the road at much higher speeds than the narrow tires allow. Of course there's a rub, as VW's Jari-Matti Latvala explains: hit it just right, and the glancing blow from the bank will straighten straighten straighten straighten straighten and shoot you towards the next corner without losing momentum. Get too greedy with the throttle application and you risk being swallowed and buried by a mountain of snow. Among those searching for that fine edge in Sweden is ex Formula 1 driver Robert Kubica. The Ford driver, who was almost fatally injured in a 2011 rally crash, never raced on narrow, studded snows before, and has had special coaching from two time WRC champion Marcus Grönholm. Grönholm gave the Polish driver high marks for his speed, saying all he needs is more experience to be a champion. Kubica will get plenty of snow bank dancing experience this week end. You can follow Rally Sweden, live, on the WRC web site  |
This is where BMW motorcycles are made
On what is possibly the most serene assembly line in the history of manufacturing, the crew of engineers at BMW Motorrad's Berlin plant is hard at work churning out some of Germany's finest motorbikes. These guys are all business in Berlin, and in this behind-the-scenes video, you can watch them meticulously wrench on, inspect, and dyno-test an R 1200 GS, a German Police-spec touring bike, an HP4, and a few others. The video is rather slow moving, but everything that can be seen looks as sterile and organized as the ER in a well-run hospital. Take good notes; this probably the closest you'll ever get to actually standing inside the walls of the plant itself.  |
European Beat: A little problem with British garages
We have a new neighbor. Nice guy. But nicer car: an immaculate 997 Turbo with three pedals and carbon-ceramic brakes. In the interest of cross-boundary harmony, and sensing a kindred spirit, I thought I'd drop 'round with a bottle of red and a welcome. Entirely unwittingly, he gave me something in return: a serious case of garage envy. His freshly remodeled and generously proportioned three-car man cave is nothing like your average (read: pokey) British garage. It reminds me more of the garages I've seen on trips to your side of the Atlantic, where even ordinary houses seem to put great store in parking and workshop space. You even pronounce the word garage to suit, holding that ah sound to bring to mind a vista of concrete, workbenches, Snap-on tool chests, lathes, and pillar drills extending toward the horizon. Most Brits rhyme it with the word marriage, a suitably truncated noise befitting the stature of our little brick sheds. And also possibly a reminder that your other half won the car space-versus-living space argument before you'd met your real estate agent. Of course, I realize that not all of you have garages like the Petersen museum. But your average American forced to change a set of brake pads in your average British garage would feel like Shaquille O'Neal trying to change outfits in an airplane restroom. Land is certainly at a premium here, but we're hardly Monaco. The villains are greedy developers who take advantage of an absence of regulation governing minimum dwelling size. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors recently calculated that the average size of a new home here has shrunk from four bedrooms and 1647 square feet in 1920 to three bedrooms and 925 square feet today. In a different study, the Royal College of British Architects discovered that new Dutch houses were 53 percent larger, and German homes 80 percent larger, than those in Britain.
The upside is that an evening in front of your 32-inch Sony feels like watching a CinemaScope epic in the theater, and you can cut the grass with your Remington. The downside is you have to live monastically regarding possessions, because there's no space for closets.
And then there's the garage, whose dimensions seem to decrease while those of the average automobile continually grow. Never mind working on your car in the garage—merely getting it in there is becoming a challenge. According to the Daily Mail, last March, several months after moving into a brand-new $340,000 home, a Yorkshire couple fired up their Volvo S40 sedan to introduce it to its new pad. It wouldn't fit through the doorway. So the couple tried their other car, a Ford Fiesta. It sneaked in, but the driver couldn't open his door far enough to get out. The only way to exit the vehicle would have been by crawling out the sunroof. Yet, for some reason, the guy hadn't ticked the "sunroof" option box. Talk about lack of foresight. What was he thinking? One of the reasons complaints aren't more widespread is that garages are increasingly used as storage for stuff other than cars. The Royal—yes, we throw that word around a lot—Automobile Club, Britain's answer to AAA, estimates that while half of all houses here have access to a garage, only half of those garages are actually used to house cars. Part of this is just a changing world. People don't work on their everyday cars anymore because modern automobiles go up to 20,000 miles between oil changes. We don't need to keep them garaged to fend off rust because better-quality steel, paint, and wax treatments mean cars don't rot like they used to. But what about those of us who want to keep a Sunday car? Having been without one for a couple of years, I was long overdue for a new toy. Still feeling guilty about the avian-acid attack my old 911 was subjected to when forced to live outside underneath a berry tree, I was determined to keep the new car under cover. What was it to be? Alfa Giulia 105? Another Porsche? A shark-nosed BMW? I was sizing up the classifieds when panic hit, and it occurred to me to size up the garage first. I pushed the bikes, mower, toolbox, and various strollers as far into the garage as I could, until it looked like a scrap-metal compactor had relieved itself in there, then unfurled the tape measure. The results made for depressive reading. I had room for a car no bigger than 11 feet long and five and a half feet wide. A Revell kit, maybe? A bumper car? Among real vehicles, a Smart is no fun, I did the original Fiat 500 thing years ago, and I didn't fancy one of those weird Japanese microcars. So there's now a 1970s Mini Cooper S clone tucked up tight behind the door. It fits perfectly and is ripe for mischief, thanks to its 110-hp 1.4-liter motor. But on the freeway it sounds like an industrial generator, and it rides like a coal-mining jackhammer. Any journey longer than 15 minutes is bamboo slivers under the fingernails. Maybe all of Britain's builders should be forced to drive one for a year. That'd soon find them freeing up a couple extra feet of garage space when it comes time to draw a set of plans. I wonder if a 997 man can spare a bay. Chris Chilton is R&T's man in England. He urges you to think royally, act locally. |
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