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.

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!

Sorry Nissan-GTR…

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

Enjoy!

ANYWAY… here we go.

We started off with the boys at Mercedes. The C/A4-A5/3-series segment has, as always, been one of the most important to the industry. Mercedes face-listed C63AMG is really looking fantastic, and is the real ‘heavy hitter’ in the segment:

I'd still buy the M3...

Onward to Volkswagen, who is intent on making more and more crap in our market to become the next Toyota. Aside from joining into an argument with a *very* rude Volkswagen rep who was intent on explaining that the Routan was not really a Chrysler (well not so intent after being argued with he said he ‘Didn’t care what we thought’), Volkswagen was debuting (well Canadian debut) the 2012 Big-Jetta, er Passat.

The 2012 Big-Jetta

Having sat in one in Detroit, the interior quality is worse than the previous gen Jetta, as are the engine choices and suspension. The only ‘decent’ engine is the TDI. Onward to the real Toyota, who is too boring to really discuss. One of their most boring displays was the Lexus LS, who’s interior seems to wow people who like “80s luxury” (how could you even compare it to an S-class, 7-series or A8) and who’s engine bay is as sterile as can be:

Wheres the 'no user serviceable parts' sticker?

Tom had snapped the one side back down, someone had obviously pried it up. They had some (tons of) other cars too, but I’m totally not interested in discussing them. Next up was Audi. Audi had two big unveils, the A7 and the TT-RS. The front of the TT-RS was pretty mean looking, and the current (2nd gen) TT isn’t as terrible a Golf derivative as it’s first version was (a fancy leather wrapped Beetle)

Don't call me a fast Golf!

The A7 was a nice looking car, but kinda boring drivetrain options considering its market position. Not totally sure where it slots between the A6 and A8, a sportier (but still 4 door A8?). It’s not even one of the now-trendy 4-door coupes. Onto BMW, who I won’t spend too much time on. They had a lounge for customers which featured rather nice drinks and snacks. The 1-series M was of course the big draw, as was a matte finished M3. I hope to take a 1-series M out in May and review it, so we’ll discuss it then. The big reveal was the X1, an SUV for people who dislike station wagons, like this new pig-nose look, and don’t mind a lot of cheap looking plastic.

Because you don't like station wagons?

Buy a Volkswagen Golf Wagon (not the hatch, the wagon), it’ll be an equivalent drive, more space inside and frankly isn’t hideous. Spend the rest of the money on coke. Onward to Nissan who had some silly concepts (as they always do) as well as the unveil of the NISMO 370Z. Amongst the actually upgraded engine (software/induction/exhaust), brakes and suspension, you net yourself a ridiculous spoiler and a pair of coffee-can exhaust tips. I’m sure this was a big deal to the sort of people who drive around with sunglasses, a baseball cap and use way too much hair gel.

Rice rice baby

Next up is Hyundai, who I didn’t take any photos of. They were showing off the Genesis Sedan and Coupe they are so proud of. We were rather amused with all the electrical tape under the hood of a Genesis Coupe. Hyundai, who lacks an innovative bone in their corporate body, had their Genesis Coupe 3.8 painted in Interlagos Yellow. Onto their buddies over at KIA, who were showing off a bunch of dreadfully boring cars, including a “Toronto FC” edition of some SUV thing. I guess you might want a painted valve cover…. My big amusement was that their kiosks did not feature activated (cough pirated) versions of Windows…

KIA powered by warez Windows?

GM had all the Corvettes out. I have to say the Z06 is one awesome looking car now, and the ZR1 is an insane performer. I never thought I’d see the day where Corvettes were really appealing packages. They also had the coolest display of the entire show, a guy tearing down and rebuilding the LS7 (7L V8) from the Z06. He could do it in about 4 hours. Pretty awesome.

The 7L V8 of the Z06 is an awesome beast

Ford’s big thing was the new Focus, which I covered pretty well in Detroit. I really like the car. They had a video stream of Ken Block drifting the rally version on loop. The one cool display they did have was a cutaway of one of the hybrid+CVT four bangers they’re shipping. Was one of the best cutaways I’ve seen.

Fantastic cutaway

All and all was a good show. I will leave you with some car porn:

Not sure that'll take a speed bump...

What a beast!

The 250GT was a stunning car

The Giulietta is a seriously cute car

Abarth!

Proper GT500

I’ve embedded the video to start at a minute and a half as the intro is quite long. I you want to see an extra minute and a half of motorcycle formations, definitely start at the beginning. A truly fantastic video.

The other cool factoid of note is that the car is equipped with the FTM (Flat Tire Monitor) as opposed to the TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitor). US cars all got TPMS in 2007+, though the guys at the garage told me some Canadian and European models kept the FTM. The FTM works by tracking wheel rotation and can detect if a tire is spinning too fast. It has to be calibrated after changing tire/wheel size or extreme temperature change, but at least it doesn’t have the breakable/losable wireless stem monitors.

The e86 chassis is so stiff, with the rear tire barely off the ground, the front tire freely spins around :)

First off, I migrated my personal email over to Google’s hosted domain service. This is something I had wanted to do for a long time, but laziness had prevented the migration. To be fair I had been forwarding my email through Google for their superior spam filtering prowess for years anyway. The interface for creating and maintaining services in Google Apps is, as expected, very polished. I was mostly impressed with the way Google handles distribution lists, which they call groups. A lot more powerful than our old vpopmail alias. And as anyone who has ever used Google’s hosted mail will tell you, they have seven MX servers, a touch more reliable than my single qmail install on an ancient webserver. Plus admining mailservers is rubbish work! Just ask anyone who has had the misfortune of doing it professionally…

So one of the things I’ve enjoyed for years is vanity searching, ego searching, whatever you want to call Googling (previously Altavista’ing and previously Yahoo’ing) my own name. Sarah, Tom and I also have a bit of search result rivalry. I generally win the top search result for Kavassalis (though this differs depending on search location). This is mostly due to the fact that Google likes me hoarding and cross linking all the Kavassalis.* domains. It also loves me due to some links from blogs and stuff like flickr and other social networking junk. Amusingly though, Sarah is the top search suggestion, followed by Tom, followed by a conspiracy nut who’s name is unfortunately often dislexic-ally misspelled as Kavassalis. This by my logic means that Sarah’s site should come up first, since thats most likely what someone will be looking for. So obviously Google’s metric is not quite perfect. I am pleased however that (in .ca) kavas is enough to get kavassalis as a suggestion. Ah the joys of having a last name that really does just belong to members of your own family…

Now onto the buzziest Google product of late, the Android. I really don’t like the Android. Well maybe thats a bit harsh. I am disappointed with Android. Let me start by explaining why before the cult of (XYZ phone/operating system/game console) groupies flood my inbox with emails telling me how stupid I am. Lets segway to video games for a second. Console gaming and PC gaming have always had a vast gap in overall experience in a post DOS/Amiga world. Simply put, console games just work. There is no weird artifacting because you a strange video card, there is no slow down because you don’t have the newest CPU, and there are no random crashes because it doesn’t like some random driver. Common hardware, common resolutions == better development and user experience.

Back to phones though, Android’s spec should have included classifications on CPU, GPU power and screen size. Maybe call those early 320 x 480 528mhz devices Android Class1, and these 600 x 854 600mhz devices Android Class2. Device capability fragmentation is going to make the overall Android experience limited, and certainly will not allow it to become a casual gaming and consumer software consumption platform the way the iPhone has. Some phones like the Motorola Droid are absolutely phenomenal. But even if you follow the proper non pixel based UI procedures, you may produce apps that are unreadable or too slow on something like a lesser HTC Dream. (I mean the res gap on some Android phones is the same 2x factor between most netbooks and some higher-end 15″ laptops) For tech savvy users this won’t be a problem, we’ll understand why something isn’t working well or looking right, but we aren’t the bulk of consumers, we don’t push a platform to prominence. Remember, where there are consumers there will be good software. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the Android has bad software, Google’s first party apps are fantastic in fact, but I’m not going to see the plethora of high quality third party software without a big user base willing to buy software. Android will become the #1 phone platform, without a doubt, but if users don’t feel confident that software they buy will work right, they aren’t going to bring the dollars. Open source projects will always be more prominent on the Android platform than others due to the nature of how the Android project is maintained, but before I am flooded with hate mail from the Slashdot crowd, the majority of open source mobile/desktop apps are just not up to UI snuff with their commercial counter parts. Fact. (GIMP sucks, ok?)

I’m very interested in seeing how (if) Apple will tackle this problem, and I think it may end up causing some heartache in iPhone land. Already there is a good memory and small CPU bump between the 3G and 3GS, while developers can detect and profile their code for each phone, most don’t. And frankly doing so is a great deal of added work, plus users really aren’t going to like a heavily degraded experience either. This means that on most cutting edge apps, there will be tons of bad reviews from 3G and a plethora of iPod touch owners complaining of lag and stutter. Fast forward to the next gen iPhone. I full well assume Apple is going to up the game and release a phone with the same chip as in the iPad, the 1ghz ARM7, Apple a4 or whatever it’s called. I believe they will have institute requirements/recommended flags in the Appstore, which sucks, but frankly leaving it completely up to developers isn’t really going to be a very good user experience either. This problem is 10-fold more difficult on the Android since there are TONS of third party phones. I’m not sure there really is a good solution. The phone market unfortunately won’t be happy with the same CPU/GPU/screen size in a device for 5-10 years like handheld gaming markets…

Really I’m not slagging the Android that much, there are great Android phones, and I’d certainly love a Motorola Droid as a dev platform, ssh client, email platform if it weren’t CDMA… The experience will be frankly no issue for savvy users, but I’d not buy my mom an Android, but I do plan on buying her an iPhone.

I guess thats all I have to say about Google and Google products for one day. I’ll close by saying my car shopping is weighing on my mind. However a new and stand-out choice in the world of very fast, 50/50 weight distributed, RWD sports vehicles has arisen. 2007 550i are only slightly more expensive than 2007 335Ci due to the magic of disproportional depreciation, packing in more power and WAY more tech and luxury. I’d definitely be happy with a 550i, nothing says eco and gas friendly like a big v8… nothing quite sounds like it either!

(Included photo is IEOY winners, illustrating they’re all either small and economical or wonderful BMW engines :P)