Posts Tagged 'Cars'

I love lunatic sleeper tuning jobs, this Mk2 Golf may just be the best yet.

Boba Motoring starts with a 1989 Mk2 Volkswagen Golf and a 1.8L 1Z diesel engine running on E85 fuel. With reenforced internals they spin it up to 9500rpm, force fed with a Garrett GTX4202R turbo charger good for 900 horsepower. Thats all fed to the unexpecting road through a 4Motion four-wheel-drive system and stock 6-speed manual. This lunacy equates to 2.7 seconds to 62 miles/hour (100km/hr) and 9.3 second quarter mile sprint.

Yep, faster than a Veyron. Here’s a video of yet more runs, and a video from inside the car. This was way too good for a little link.

BMW of the 70s was a much different company than the BMW of 2011. BMW had two platforms, the ‘New class’ including the famous 1600 sedan and 2002 coupe and the ‘New six’ which featured the larger 3.0 sedan and 3.0CSi coupes. Basically four product lines, with different engines, equipment and suspension gear within the model range. BMW didn’t even have any dealers in North America until sales of the independently imported 2002 were far better than expected. Apparently people loved the idea of sporty four seaters!

By the end of the 70s BMW had renumbered to their now iconic schema: the New class was forked into the 3-series and 5-series, the New six forked into the 6-series and 7-series. Starting with the E21 3-series compact coupes and sedans, the E12 5-series mid-sized sedan, the E24 6-series coupe, and the E23 7-series full sized sedan. The BMW brand began to grow.

Things changed over times. Everything grew. The 6-series was once a 7-series coupe, but when it was reintroduced in 2004, it was a 5-series coupe. BMW released a few sports cars, the M1 at the end of the 70s, the Z1 at the end of the 80s, the 8-series (a 7-series coupe again) in the 90s, the Z3 at the end of the 90s, and the Z4 in the early 2000s. BMW remained true to its target market the entire time, the best handling and thusly most enjoyable drives in their markets. The 3-series sedan and coupe was always BMWs bread and butter, the popularity and sales of BMW was at an all time high.

The BMW brand is one of the most valuable brands in the world, automotive or otherwise, so you can’t blame BMW for wanting to expand their brand. It began in the early 2000s with the X5, the least sporty car BMW had ever built. It sold gangbusters. Go forward 10 years and BMW sells an X1, an X3, an X5 and an X6 and a 5-series GT (yet another crossover thing) all cars panned by BMW’s original driver centric market. The X6 is a “sports coupe” that weighs as much as a small bus with a center of gravity to match, they even make an M model (remember when the M badge represented a car built, even just engineered by BMW M and not just shit bolted on?), what a joke… As of 2011 BMW now sells 11 distinct lines in our market…

Things looked good when BMW released the 1-series coupe in the North American market. A smaller (though not nearly light enough) sportier car at a lower price point, and as of 2011 BMW even has a 1-series M coupe. Perhaps there is hope after all? Perhaps not. Seems BMW wants to redefine the 1-series brand already. They intend to fork the 1-series coupe we know as the 2-series (more on that later) by 2013, and relaunch the 1-series as a front-wheel drive car (i.e. a stretched Mini platform) to be better aligned with the Audi A3. Thats right BMW is going to sell a front wheel drive car under the BMW brand. Why? Because the BMW brand is worth its weight in platinum, and a BMW badged Mini will sell better and for a higher price than a Mini badged one.

Next up is BMW’s decision to rebrand the 3-series coupe as the 4-series… That’s right, the car known as the 3-series coupe since 1975 will now be called the 4-series. Why? Not entirely sure. The 3-series coupe has always demanded a premium price over the sedan, and maybe BMW wants to give warm fuzzies to the brainless luxury target market they so love for spending an extra $10k to lose 2 doors and gain a better suspension… This action will ruin any residuals on existing 3-series coupes, confuse customers and obliterates 35+ years of heritage.

BMW? Do you remember what made your cars better than the cheaper, more reliable Lexus of the 90s? They were fun to drive. Why are so many 3, 5, 7 and all the X cars 4WD now?

BMW? Do you remember what made your cars better than the cheaper and faster Infiniti’s of the 2000s? They were more fun to drive. Why are you releasing a FWD 1-series and telling my the X6 is the evolution of the sports car?

Here’s the thing BMW, you are losing what made your brand awesome. I know things are doing great now, BMWs are selling better than ever. I can’t blame a company trying to obtain more money, that is their obligation to their shareholders. The problem is, the further you get away from what made you awesome, the closer you get to the competition. Look at cars up until the 200s, Audi made the most utterly boring cars on the planet, but have you seen the new S5? Gorgeous! Merc made slushy luxury cars, but look at the current C-class, and of course C63 AMG and SLS AMG, I mean come on! Fantastic cars. Look at Lexus, king of the sofas on wheels, they even have an M3 fighter in the IS-F… Infiniti is slowly eating out the bottom of the 3/C/A4 segment too, offering near 335i performance at 128i prices.

The further BMW gets away from its roots, the closer the competition seems to get to BMWs roots. The brand won’t stay strong on its own forever. This current obsession with 10+ distinct product lines has been tried before, look at what happened to all the American brands… Amusingly of all of the current 11 product lines, there isn’t a single car I like as much as the BMW I have and the one I had before that… Sure you can blame the fuel economy movement for the boring-up of the new M5 and M6 and surely the next M3s… How long before a 4WD M5 or even M3… Might as well buy an RS5 at that point, it certainly looks better!

Enough with the rant, I’ll leave you this video of Chris Harris slinging the new 1-series M and the Cayman R around.  Enjoy!

Last week was so busy, I’m way behind on blogging/replying to emails/looking at photos/etc. I apologize to everyone, the weekend was so nice weather-wise, you couldn’t force me to use a computer even if you tried. On that note, the following Dodge commercial is totally brilliant.

Sorry Nissan-GTR…

Keeping track of all of BMW’s different engines, US/CA vs Europe, has always been a tricky job. With the announcement of the new 2.0L 4-cylinder turbo from BMW to be dubbed the sDrive 28i for the 2012 model year, I thought it apt to look at just how muddy the waters had become. At one point in recent history, BMW sold 3 models, the 3-series, 5-series and the 7-series. Or compact, mid-size, full-size. After that you would just append the engine displacement and you had the model number. You knew an e36 325i was a compact BMW with a 2.5L engine. This trend was adopted by everyone else in the industry, and frankly as a car enthusiast, was something I really liked.

However in the late years of the e36 as BMW began to really become popular, BMW North America’s 2/3-model strategy and it’s belief in utter customer stupidity caused it to muddy the waters. Feeling that things like a 25i and 28i would be too close for customers to see the value-add, so they padded the numbers around. In Europe, where they sold many more different models of say the e90 (320, 323, 325, 328, 330, 335!) it wasn’t quite as bad. Unfortunately with the wide-spread adoption of turbos, BMW has pretty much just said screw it and assigned numbers willynilly based on focus groups to influence market perception. This new 2.0L turbo will surely show up in a US spec 328i in the future. Nothing wrong with the engine, produces as much power as the outgoing US-spec 3.0L 6-cyl badged 328i we get, but call it a 320i and be done with it. (Or heck bring back the 2002 era TURBO badging to make people feel special!) How stupid could the luxury car buyers really be… oh wait don’t answer that…

Let’s take a look at the 3-ers:

These all represent Canadian models as the US has often lacked the base (323i, 320i) that we got because their prices are generally much much lower (you can buy a 328i for 323i money here, even with conversion, cost of living, etc factored in. thanks BMW).

Remember too, dear BMW will sell you a 740i in the US with the same engine as the 2007 335i, with the power output claim to be the realistic 321HP output that engine made, instead of the understated 300HP they claimed. 735i would have seemed too pedestrian for 7-series buyers right? I’ll do another chart on a future lazy morning about how BMW basically completely forked US/CA and European engines the way they were in the 80s, though this time it’s because of our shitty quality gas instead of our stricter emission requirements. (Hint: they all went direct injection, got way more power and way better fuel economy, but aside from the turbos, have yet to see our market some 4 years later)

Secured, padded, ready to roll!

This has been a rather weird winter. Last year in March we had > 20 degree weather. This year has been medium cold, windy and wet, and frankly April’s long term forcast looks about the same. Leave aside the fact that I want to crawl under my car and do an hour of work, I haven’t even been able to drive it. Snow and salt aside, the tires and suspension setup make the car extremely twitchy when its under ~10 degrees and the tires haven’t warmed up. Rant over. Tomorrow is the day. It’s April, 9 degrees and sunny. It’s going to stretch its legs.

I had mounted my HD Hero camera using the 3M adhesive mount to the rear license plate cover. It’s a great wide and low perspective, and won’t leave weird residue on the body. However strong the adhesive is, it can be removed using a hair dryer. I’m not sure I want it flinging off on a Gardiner onramp on a hot summer day, even if its next year when the glues old. So before putting the camera into real use, I set out to make a more secure/permanent mount on the plate cover.

Rivets are awesome, wish I hadn't drilled the holes so crooked.

I started by drilling some holes through the camera mount and the plate. They were eyeballed and turned out to be exceedingly crooked. My original plan was to put screws through, but I realized that would be a pita, flushing the heads, finding tiny nuts, etc. So then I figured that cable ties would be perfect, but alas even they didn’t quite sit flush enough to lock the camera in to the mount.

Tom got in on my tinkering and suggested very stiff stainless steel wire. That looked like it would work fairly well but he had an even better idea. Rivets! Frankly I really always have loved rivets. Most commercially assembled things use them for better or worse (hard to user service), but they’re rarely used in tinkering projects. We put rivets through the bottom two holes (since the camera latch doesn’t require any contact there, and they’re not fully flush). Definitely not going anywhere now. We played with the latch action a bit and Tom ground the rivets down a bit which helped make the camera’s locking action a bit easier. All that was left was for me to put a bit of enamel paint over them, and cover the back of the other holes I’d drilled to prevent water from getting in. After a day of drying it was ready to go back on the car, permanent and looking really good!

The rear diffuser is dusty despite being under covers

In addition to that, I stuck a bit of foam insulating tape on the back of the camera’s housing. (You can see it in the first pic) That should prevent it rattling against the plate cover on bumpers or when the car is warming up roughly like in my first video with it back there.

Here’s to tomorrow, awesome weather, and motorsports.

Ready to rock