So you’ve been invited to accom­pany a new group of Break­fast Run riders this week­end, and you want to impress them?

You’ve got your knee-sliders worn just right, your bike is scream­ing with the new car­bon pipe and your wheel­ies are the best your nieces and neph­ews have ever seen, but you’re still wor­ried that you might not impress that rad’ cherry on her gold-plated boney?

Fear not, for the solu­tion is here, cour­teousy of UD Rep­licas, nov­elty leathers!

Star Wars / Stormtrooper

Bat­man Begins

X-Men United / Wolverine

DISCLAIMER: You may look, feel and be inclined to act like a com­plete jack­ass when dressed like the unfor­tu­nate model above. Any mon­ies paid in order to look like the model above is highly will not be refun­ded as you will have learnt your les­son, we all hope.

DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER: For the anal-retentives among us, the above dis­claimer is a fic­tional com­pos­i­tion, designed to impart wit. It bears no rela­tion to any­thing real. Chill.

For those of you who lust after the old school power of the ‘80s turbo F1, have a look at this forum thread.

It’s a fas­cin­at­ing read (with pho­tos!) on the abso­lutely ingeni­ous tech­no­logy used and will surely leave you agog to seek out some old foot­age on YouTube.

“…the work­ers used to piss on them.”

Mur­ray says “Go, go, go have a look!”

How did they perform?…

Toyota Motor­s­port has smashed the elec­tric lap record around Germany’s fam­ous Nür­bur­gring cir­cuit. Driver Jochen Krum­bach powered his elec­tric EV P001 to a record 7mins 47.794 seconds.

The pre­vi­ous record for an elec­tric car around the track was 9 minutes, 1.338 seconds, held by Peugeot’s EX1.

Based on a rad­ical sports car chassis, the EV P001 is powered by two elec­tric motors with a max­imum com­bined power out­put of 275kW and 800Nm of torque, cap­able of pro­pelling the elec­tric racer to a top speed of 260km/h. The vehicle weighs just 970kg and Toyota is so impressed with its per­form­ance they will begin selling its tech­no­logy in 2012 for use in a “single make elec­tric motor­s­port series”.

ELECTRIC SERIES?

The EV P001 was fit­ted with road-legal tyres and for­tu­nately the weather held dur­ing the record set­ting run des­pite the track tem­per­at­ure being rel­at­ively low.

TMG dir­ector of busi­ness oper­a­tions, Rob Leu­pen, said the P001’s record proved there was “huge poten­tial” for elec­tric vehicles on the racetrack.

“There’s no doubt that elec­tric motor­s­port can be every bit as thrill­ing as tra­di­tional racing and it was an amaz­ing sen­sa­tion to watch the TMG elec­tric vehicle fly past on the Nord­schleife, with only the sound of wind rush­ing past and tyres squeal­ing,” Mr Leu­pen said.

“This is not the end of the story for TMG and I hope we will see our elec­tric power­trains in action on the track again soon.”

Watch the record-breaking run below:

Source: Wheels24

Have you ever sat down and deciphered the reas­on­ing behind going to a racetrack?

The cam­eras broad­cast­ing to your screen might give you a fuller view of what’s going, accom­pan­ied by an array of Pet­rol­head–excit­ing stats, but you visit a racetrack to get the motor­ing experience.

The crowds, abuzz with ener­getic enthu­si­asm. The pits, alive with all man­ner of potent machinery, per­son­nel, VIPs and drivers, of course. The seem­ingly wan­ton women, dressed in superb form-fitting garb. All of this before an engine’s even roared to life.

When the thun­der comes though, the game is on. Your adren­alin — tee­ter­ing on the edge of explo­sion — rap­idly rises, anti­cip­at­ing the immin­ent Go! Go! Go! from the marshall.

The race is under­way! Your nos­trils are filled with an assort­ment of aromas labelled ‘car’, your eyes are shift­ing left and right faster than the drivers are shift­ing and your ears are flooded with all man­ner of acous­tic wonder.

Women, will never under­stand this.

Now, in this scen­ario, if you did away with the mul­tiple cam­era views, the inspired stats, most of the people and per­haps even the wan­ton women, you could still get a huge chunk of enjoy­ment out of it.

If, how­ever, you took away the sounds, you would kill it immediately.

When you are stand­ing next to a corner, prefer­ably one neces­sit­at­ing severe brak­ing, you are priv­ileged to enjoy the viol­ent down-shifting going on metres away from you. You are exper­i­en­cing the pop­ping and growl of the exhaust, sent god-like to you, from the assort­ment of cams, carbs and throttle bod­ies whizz­ing past you, all pack­aged up into a delight­ful roar by (hope­fully) open pipes.

If you’re even luck­ier, you’ll see the branches glow­ing bright red, or have a tun­nel within earshot, allow­ing you to get an amp­li­fied crack straight from Thor’s ham­mer res­on­at­ing through you like the col­lect­ive orgasm of Sweden’s national swim­suit team.

If they don’t have such a team, they ought to.

When a woman looks at some­thing soft and cuddly, they feel warm and good inside.

When a man looks at a decent set of exhaust branches, he feels the same.

If a car is not fast, but sounds demonic, it is an argu­ably an awe­some car.

Rob Leu­pen has not the fog­gi­est idea what motor­s­port enthu­si­asts want. We don’t want to know that your race­car emits water, or that it uses some amaz­ing hybrid tech­no­logy or even that it has more torque than an Oprah-branded SUV on a bad day.

We want to see power fig­ures that match those of our cars (ours with all of our friends com­bined). We want to know that it’s run­ning on some fuel bor­rowed from the fighter jet parked at the base down the road that gives us 5% more power (des­pite emit­ting a mil­lion tonnes of car­bon). Lastly, we want to HEAR the cars. We want to know that the driver is accel­er­at­ing through the gears, hav­ing passed through Turn 3 on the far side of the track from us. We want to know that from the sound, not from the big screen and not from the speak­ers blar­ing out rub­bish music inbetween the updates spewed out by the dis­tor­ted DJ.

The video above might show a race­car with super­lat­ive accel­er­a­tion, but it’s bor­ing.  Bor­ing, bor­ing, boring.

If we have to put up with an elec­tric tooth­brush on wheels dur­ing the week, please give us a proper race­car on the weekend.

NEW SA RECORD: 1941km on one tankful!

What a crock.

A recent epic South African road trip by Aus­tralian fuel-efficiency experts John and Helen Taylor (4431km in a Toyota Prius on less than 140 litres of pet­rol) seems to have set a new fashion.

The latest to step up for the long road were vet­eran journ­al­ists (and cous­ins) Mal­colm and Rod­ney Kin­sey, who set a South African record for the longest dis­tance trav­elled by a pas­sen­ger car without refuel­ling — 1941km, to be precise!

Mal­colm Kin­sey, of course, is the author of the annual Kin­sey Report on the prices of replace­ment parts for cars in South Africa.

The two cous­ins, with six-times SA Rally cham­pion Jan Hettema as observer in a back-up car, filled up their bog-standard VW Golf 1.6 TDI BlueMotion’s 55-litre tank at the SA Cus­toms post in Beit Bridge, on the Zim­b­ab­wean bor­der and, by rock­ing the car and “trickle-filling”, man­aged to squeeze in almost an extra 10 litres.

Then they set off toward Gauteng, at 4pm on a Fri­day after­noon, run­ning at a steady 80-90km/h, the slow­est speed at which the TDI would pull top gear without labouring.

That sounds like a crazy time to start a long trip, but there was method in the Kin­seys’ mad­ness, as they crossed the urban sprawl of Pre­toria and Johan­nes­burg in the small hours of Sat­urday morn­ing without even slow­ing down.

They reached Bloem­fon­tein at about 9am on Sat­urday morn­ing and took a well-earned break, get­ting back on the road just before 4am on Sunday morning.

They were, how­ever, very lucky in that an earlier approach to the Dir­ector of Roads had borne fruit, and they were escor­ted through each of the many stop/go road­work sites on the N1 with the min­imum wastage of time and fuel.

The group reached Cape Town late on the Sunday with the Golf run­ning on fumes, hav­ing driven 1941km, at an aver­age speed of just under 70km/h, on 63.8 litres of diesel, for an over­all fuel con­sump­tion of 3.29 litres/100km.

And Rod Kin­sey, whose idea the record attempt was, said: “The car was fant­astic — it drives like it was built for eco­nomy runs!”

What we have here is a Golf powered by a hugely unin­ter­est­ing 1.6l three cyl­in­der TDi that would be bet­ter suited for use as a starter motor on a real engine.

Let’s exam­ine the facts..

We have exper­i­enced motor­ing journ­al­ists driv­ing a car (we have not been told whether or not they they car­ried any­thing other than them­selves) which was filled in excess of nor­mal meth­ods and capa­city, over a route planned with traffic pat­terns, road­works and along open free­ways in mind and then VW has the auda­city to claim this as a mira­cu­lous feat?

What a load of bollocks.

Driv­ing a 1.9 Polo TDi (76 Kw), with none of the above aids, over a few days of town traffic and then a long free­way trip (with heavy cargo on the return route), I have been able to achieve 1,200 km with fumes to spare — and all at an aver­age of 130 Km/h by way of the car’s speedo­meter. I must be one amaz­ingly fuel con­scious driver.

How about 3.8l achieved in the last stage of a 600 km trip in a BMW 330d with a pas­sen­ger at a cruise-controlled GPS-set 130 km/h? That’s a 3.0 diesel engine.

Any decent diesel engine is going to return not­able mileage when used with a sens­ible foot. Slightly less not­able with some­what more mad action on the right pedal.

Smal­ler engines work harder. More work = more energy.

Want to save the planet? Buy a diesel. A proper one — not a toy.

Source: IOL

Most pet­rol­heads grin some­what when they get behind the wheel of a vehicle equipped with a turbo.

The whooooosh­ing surge of power that belts you up to speed is addict­ive, even at low boost.

Whether you call it a snail, a hairdryer or a turbo — it’s a desir­able bit of kit on any speedfreak’s shop­ping list.

In an exer­cise lib­er­ally adorned with the tag overkill, Steve Sand­lin built him­self a ’57 Chevy with a dif­fer­ence — eight times dif­fer­ent to be pre­cise. Yep, Steve’s ’57 has EIGHT Borg-Warner turbos.

Con­sid­er­ing the same would be pos­sible with one to two, I can only assume this is for show — and a grand one it is.

So, what are the specs?

Engine, Driv­etrain, & Under­hood Elec­trical Systems

Frame: Custom-built & engin­eered chrome moly tube frame

Sus­pen­sion:

• Front: C4 Cor­vette with pol­ished alu­minum upper & lower A-arms
• Rear: C4 Cor­vette independent

Steer­ing: Cor­vette power rack & pinion

Brakes: C4 Cor­vette four-wheel disc with ven­ted & cross-drilled discs

Wheels:

• Front –18x8 Amer­ican Racing Torque Thrust
• Rear –18x10 Amer­ican Racing Torque Thrust

Tires: Front — Mich­elin Pilot Sport 235/40ZR18

Rear — Mich­elin Pilot Sport 285/40ZR18

Engine: GM LS1 all alu­minum V8 pro­du­cing 730hp @ 5800 rpm, 710 ft/lbs torque @ 5000 rpm with 13.5 psi of boost

Internal: Lunati forged rotat­ing assembly, 8.5:1 com­pres­sion, Comp Cams valve train, ARP fasteners,

bal­anced & assembled at Ima­gine Motorsports

Intake: F.A.S.T. LSX poly­mer three piece man­i­fold & 90mm bil­let throttle body

Fuel Sys­tem: F.A.S.T. 600 lb/hr pump feeds 65 lb/hr inject­ors moun­ted in bil­let fuel rails that are

con­trolled by an adjustable fuel regulator

Heads: GM LS1 alu­minum with Man­ley stain­less 2.02 intake & 1.57 exhaust valves sealed with Cometic

four-piece head gaskets

Power Adder: eight Borg Warner/3K Turbos

Engine Man­age­ment: F.A.S.T. elec­tronic engine con­trol sys­tem with C-Com software

Wir­ing: Nep­tunes Audio cus­tom built system

Exhaust: Cus­tom built stain­less 1–3/4” into 2–1/2” turbo log sys­tem exit­ing thru 2” stain­less “wild tube” head­ers into 2–1/2” duals all the way out the bumper

Trans­mis­sion: 4L60E 4-Speed auto­matic con­trolled by FAST/TCI trans­mis­sion controller

Engine Cool­ing: 40in cus­tom alu­minum radi­ator cooled by three SPAL 10” slim­line fans

Air Con­di­tion­ing: Vin­tage Air 134A system

Hoses: Aer­oQuip AQP stain­less braided hose sys­tems used throughout

Front Wir­ing Har­ness: F.A.S.T. engine con­trol harness

Instru­mental Har­ness: Nep­tunes Audio cus­tom harness

Instru­ment Gauges: Stew­art Warner Per­form­ance Series speedo, tacho­meter, oil pres­sure, oil tem­per­at­ure, fuel level, water tem­per­at­ure, turbo boost, two pyro­met­ers, turbo oil pres­sure & turbo oil tem­per­at­ure, all gauges are red back­lit (Provided by Fuel Sys­tems Inc.)

Radio: Pion­eer CD/DVD player with flip screen dis­play and rear view camera

Hood: Lin­ear actu­at­ors con­trol open­ing and clos­ing with a 12 inch Spal fan, aids cool­ing through the cowl induc­tion hood

Seats: All leather 2+2 Con­fig­ur­a­tion, 6-way power reclin­ing front

Interior Trim: Cus­tom matched red leather with steel con­struc­tion parade boot

Steer­ing Column & Wheel: Col­or­ado Cus­tom 14” Lazear bil­let aluminum

Mir­rors: Chrome rear view mirror

Body Pan­els: Cus­tom built all steel cowl induc­tion hood, Cor­vette door handles

Paint: GM Torch Red, PPG basecoat/clearcoat system

Trim & Mold­ings: Pol­ished stain­less trim with car­bon fiber sail pan­els on quarter panels

Bump­ers: Front & rear bump­ers smoothed & flush fit to body, air-intake enters through front bumper and exhaust exits through rear bum­ber, both units are wel­ded into one piece and painted body color

Lamps/Lenses: Cus­tom alu­minum third brake light moun­ted flush with sur­face of trunk lid

Wind­shield Wipers: N/A

Check out the build here and the fin­ished product here.

Motor vehicle man­u­fac­tur­ers often present us with the biggest load of bol­locks, hop­ing we’ll spend our overly-taxed earn­ings on what is usu­ally cr*p of the highest order.

We’re shown images of empty roads, smil­ing drivers and of laugh­ing kids in the back. We’re bom­barded with stats on how their cars go a mil­lion miles an hour, save the endangered purple-dotted green-slashed micro giant fruit-eating wom­bat of Tjakibolly­bog­stan due to bet­ter fuel eco­nomy and how eas­ily we can afford to enjoy all of this — moreso than the last one, which was updated six months ago but is now old.

Over the years we’ve seen cars thrown out of planes, driven to the arc­tic, driven around the world, sub­merged in water and so on and so forth.

Every so often though, they come up with an idea that, while truly Mind-boggling, suc­ceeds — even twenty-five-plus years on — in get­ting you to talk about the product, have fun with the product and per­haps — they hope — buy the product on the wave of non-sensical fun you’re enjoy­ing as a result.

In 1985 ISUZU released Dan­cing In Paris, a three-and-a-half minute extra­vag­anza of co-ordinated stunt driv­ing in Paris, France.

It does noth­ing to show off the Gem­ini in prac­tical terms and it cer­tainly never reached my side of the world, but in 2011, thanks to the Inter­net, I got to see, enjoy and love the ad’.

Would I have bought a Gem­ini as a res­ult? It’s hard to say, with hind­sight, but the ad’ is twenty-six years old and I — and other local motor­ing enthu­si­asts — are still talk­ing about it. Now that’s impact.