Photography Knows No Bounds

It's been more than three months since I last wrote a post on this blog. Since then, a lot has happened, but I only have a few hundred photos to prove it. Let's start from midway through February of this year, on a very cold and frosty morning. It was pretty close to freezing outside, if not colder. I woke up that morning and was greeted by the sight of optimum photo lighting (mostly - the sun's angle couldn't be helped) and some remarkably picturesque conditions to boot. Naturally, given the title of this post, I got out my camera and coat and went outside.

I find that, when taking detailed pictures of a car, there are certain angles that tend to work well. Headlights, taillights, and badges are all good focal points for nabbing some so-called "money shots" (more on this in a future post). Ample evidence of this can be seen in the gallery below.

 (I'm told that this shot "made even the van look good". My ego doesn't need stroked any more than it already is, but I enjoy that all the same.)

These photos were taken on February 18. It's March 24 as I write this, and we have an early spring this year, so it's much warmer now than it was when these pictures were taken. As such, I probably won't be able to do any more of this exact type of work right now, but "when one door is closed, another opens" and all that. Warm weather means no more shots like this one:

And more like this:

By the way, those two shots are from pretty much the same location.

And, because I'm just terrible like this, you get a teaser for Part 2:

Muahahaha... stay tuned!

Revival!

No, not THAT kind of revival. Those are annoying anyway. What I refer to as being revived is this blog! Yay!

Now, to begin this new wave of posts, let it be known that most car-dealer visiting has ceased. This is because the main objective (seeking out First Vehicle for Relative Unit Alpha) has been completed with a 2011 Ford Fiesta. It's a Yellow Blaze SES auto with the Upgrade Package (heated seats, push-button start, fancy chrome, etc.). I happen to like it a great deal, and it really was the best thing available that offered any sort of driver involvement. The only real contender was the Hyundai Elantra, but it drove like a bar of soap. Its only real plus was that it had boatloads of trunk and rear-seat room, and we're getting along fine with the (very comfortable and perfectly roomy) rear seats that were described as follows by Motor Trend:

"On the other hand, the Fiesta's triumph of styling comes with the defeat of a whole lot of practicality. That fashionable sloping roof? It pinches the view aft such that the main thing you perceive of the car following you is a hood. Open a rear door for a prospective passenger and he'll start googling Yellow Cab on his smartphone (see our interior measurements)."



Uh huh. Sure. Maybe in comparison to the Maybach 62 or Rolls-Royce Phantom, but for our usage it's perfectly roomy.

In any case, it's a wonderful little car that just so happens to have a heapin' helpin' of Good Looks Sauce on it (a rare commodity among subcompacts of yore, Ford not being exempt from this. See: Festiva). And I was fine with that.

Until I saw this.

If the new Dodge compact looks just as good in real life as it does in those teaser shots, it's going to have to have something special for you once you open the doors, and something even better once you open the hood. Looks like those need substance behind them, or else the car earns the Official BBC Seal of Disapproval.

Also, "Tigershark"? Really? I was hoping for "Hammerhead". Sounds meaner.

Sights and Scenes of the BBC Town Independence Day Auto Show!

This Independence Day weekend (U.S.), there were a lot of car shows of all types. Predictably,  we entered the Shelby in one of them. Behold the junk stuff shoved into the trunk for this momentous event:

The black bag is my dad's camera, the light blue bag is one of two folding chairs, the blue box contains last-minute cleaning supplies, and the green bag is mine, containing, among other junk, the camera used to take these pictures. It all fit very easily with plenty of room to spare. In fact, not only did it all fit well, but it was easy to put in also. Look up a picture of the trunk opening of the new Camaro and you'll see what I mean.

This is where we were parked. There's a tree to the left of the car, but you can't see it. We were grateful for its shade, however. Later, we got a row of three rice burners next to us, one of which eventually got the People's Choice award (for the record, my votes went to a nice red '66 Mustang and a yellow Pontiac Solstice). How that guy got his pile of trash piece of junk ugly Super Slow Cobalt with an icky red bottom half/black top half paint job to win is beyond my comprehension, except for the crowds of people that appeared to have been brought to the show for the sole purpose of voting for his little bucket of bolts.

We've seen this Solstice around town before, but this was my first chance to get a really good look at it. Unfortunately, the gnats were just as impressed as I was, rewarding (?) the car with the immense and highly-coveted prize of being covered in gnats on the shaded side. Wonderful.

Note the "Holman-Moody" front license plate on this Comet. Holman-Moody was a speed shop that assisted in the development of Ford's drag cars, as well as the creation of their race motors. This Comet likely has some period accessories from that company.

Note the likely larger-than-stock air cleaner, as well as the heads. These are the sorts of things that H&M made and marketed to the public for greater performance on both street and strip.

The fire extinguisher is most likely a modern addition, but the T-handle shifter probably isn't. Also note the non-branded steering wheel with unusually short diameter; that was not the sort of thing Ford installed in their cars. The bucket seats are a sporty touch.

This Mustang looked spectacular. One thing that isn't so great is the wheels; I've never been a fan of this particular style of Weld-esque wheel. They look better when they're spinning. Rapidly. While the rest of the car is sitting still.

Note 3-speed auto, it's interesting that it hasn't been swapped out for a four-speed manual at some point in its lifetime. The steering wheel cover doesn't help the inherent awkwardness of the Ford-installed padded steering wheel, which I have had the honor of holding. I expect the '65-'66 steering wheel would feel a bit better - it looks miles better. The local brochures on the seat are a more recent addition ("recent" here meaning "added roughly 15 minutes before I took the picture"), as is the white bubble.

This is essentially the best paint scheme I saw on one of these Mustangs that day. I thought it might be a Shelby clone at first, but a quick check of the side stripes convinced me otherwise (even the least competent cloners remember to put "G.T. 500" on the side).

Dual four-barrel! Yay! Also notice the chrome heads and fluid reservoir caps, as well as the strut-tower brace.

I am honestly not sure whether this car was powered by an honest-to-goodness "427" (425, actually) or a 428 with the 427 emblems on it. Whichever it is, it certainly looks good, and goes pretty nicely as well.

Toploader? Maybe not, but definitely a 4-speed with awesome-looking Hurst shifter. Lap belts and a padded steering wheel were about as good as it got for safety in this year of Mustang. Also notice the Shelby-style tachometer mounted on the lower gauge pod, which also houses oil-pressure and water temperature gauges. There's also a radio, which would also have been something you'd likely have from the factory in a G.T. 500. It's very easy to tell where the inspiration for the modern Mustang's gauge cluster came from when you look at the cluster in this car.

Now we jump back a few years. This is a 1931 Ford Coupe with the original four-cylinder engine in it, assuming the owner is correct. Continuing to assume the veracity of the owner's statements, the car is all original with the exception of the alternator. This car might also have had the leaping greyhound hood ornament, which actually came before Jaguar's leaping cat. Edsel Ford chose the greyhound for the company emblem because it had the qualities of speed, strength, and stamina. This would prove appropriate when the flathead V8 came out in 1932, but that was in the future when this car was built.

The pinstriping is a very neat touch, as well as the whitewall tires and matching wheels. Notice also the rumble seat. In a frontal impact accident, the occupants of that seat could very easily be decapitated. It's very easy to see where the belief that it was better not to wear your seat belt came from, since supposedly it was better to be "thrown clear" of an accident than to remain in the car. It's a terrible idea nowadays, now that even our subcompacts are built like tanks compared to the older iron, but it might actually have been true at that time that it was a good idea to exit the vehicle in whatever manner possible prior to an accident, including through the air.

No company today is insane enough to make a 3.3L 4-cylinder engine, but that's precisely what you see here. The motor produced all of 40 horsepower, which was enough for 27ish MPG and a top speed of 65 MPH. Cruising speed is more like 45 to 50 MPH. Sign me up! Oh, wait...

Before you ask, that isn't a fuel cell screwed to the grill, that's a coolant overflow container. That said, this thing is awesome. It's another 1931 Ford, but this one is powered by a big-block Chevrolet engine (the "Rat", in other words) that is equipped with numerous little bits of awesome, including individual-pipe headers. The exhaust is a 3-inch X-pipe with mufflers, but it doesn't sound or smell like it (and that's what makes it awesome). Notice that the flames on the grill surround are cut out of the metal as well as painted; the owner assures me it's a one-off part.

That, my friend, is a steel interior. What's it made of? Road signs. Banjo steering wheels work well in old-school rods like this, especially with the typical long-arm shifter... wait. What in the world...

To this day, I have no idea what this is.

Those are all the pictures that I have accompanying information for. There were plenty more cars there, including one very nice '99-'04 Mustang that makes regular visits to the track. Sure sounded like it too. Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of it. Overall, although we didn't win (I think the Shelby is still too new for that), we had a good time, and I got to see some really neat cars! That's a no-lose situation as far as I'm concerned.

P.S. Apologies for the late posting. I only just now got around to finishing this, even though the show occurred in early July. Oops.

What AM I doing after all?

Since it's been a while since I last posted, I thought I'd give an update.

During basement excavation, I took a fancy to a C128 that I'd known was down there for a while, but it only now occurred to me that it could be useful after my dad started it. "Copyright Microsoft Corporation 1977". Wow. It's complete with two 5.25" disk drives and a 1902 monitor which, I've read, is a sight better than the usual monitor found on the 128. I plan to use it for learning very elementary C, just so I can say I know how. That, and it's interesting.

I have not been to any car shows lately, since it simply hasn't been on anyone's mind and Shelby is dirty. Hopefully my dad and I will get it cleaned up and take it to the 4th of July weekend show in the mall parking lot (which is huge, but not smooth enough for burnouts/achieving time-travel velocity. Darn).

Certain individuals (not me) will be of full-license age soon, and an automobile purchase is being considered for this person to use for driving to class and back, as well as a general family vehicle. Some vehicles were ruled out during our search, such as the Mazda3 (lousy MPG), Mazda2 (lousy MPG and scummy sales guys), and the 2012 Hyundai Accent (no road grip during switchback maneuvering). The top two at the moment are the Hyundai Elantra and the Ford Fiesta. Not directly comparable, but the Fiesta is a magenta SES with leather and the works, including the voice command system. The local dealer has had it on their lot forever, and they can't sell it.

In stark contrast, it's getting hard to find any Elantras at all, simply because they sell so well. No specific car is in mind, but it would probably be ordered instead of picked from dealer stock anyway. Nonnegotiable points are an automatic transmission and a visible color (i.e. no silver, no gray, no white, no black). The prospective primary driver hates red on cars, so that's out. This essentially leaves the 2012 Indigo Night, as the equivalent blue for 2011 is too dark.

You can tell we're very specific.

In any event, I can't root for either car. The Elantra is by far the more spacious car, with enough interior room for me to stretch my legs out in the rear seat when the front is pulled forward. It also obtains superior fuel economy, at 29/40 versus 28/38 for the Fiesta in question. It also allows the seats to fold flat, creating a disturbing amount of space. However, the Fiesta is much sportier, and I prefer the interior even with the lack of seat room. I imagine the Fiesta's size might prove to its advantage in city traffic, but the Elantra Limited with the Technology Package has a rearview camera, which could balance that out during parking. Even without the camera, the Elantra's rear visibility is average, whereas with the headrests up, the Fiesta may as well not even have a rear window.

Enough of my ranting, however. One of these days I'll buy a 40-pack of AA batteries and start taking pictures again. Until then, I'll have to sign off.

That Crummy New Regal Thing

As you can tell, despite the presence of an official GM commercial for the 2011 Buick Regal, I have a very low opinion of that particular car. Observe the tachometer at 0:09:



(note that this is a longer version of the commercial that I saw last night while watching TV. It doesn't look so bad here, but when GM has cut all of the "cruising" out of the commercial and all you see is aggressive driving, and then it cuts to the tachometer at idle... not so swift.)

This is the other reason why the new Regal isn't so great:



I don't know about the reader, but I don't want to be out-accelerated by a 24-year-old car in my brand-new one.

Whoa Times Two.

I want one of these too.



And one of these. Unfortunately, I have disgustingly expensive tastes. Of course, on the other hand, nobody can really use the performance those two cars have to offer on the street, whereas with the 2011 Mustang V6...

Whoa.

What else needs to be said? I want one of these things.

Only in a restaurant drive-through...

I've circled the roof spoiler, huge wheels/tires with negative camber that isn't going to do the driver any good since the car drives and steers via the front wheels, not the rears, the Japanese-style tow hook, the coffee can, and the "HYBRID" badge that was evidently pulled from a later-model Civic hybrid, as this generation Civic had no hybrid option. Bahaha. This is hilarious. I believe this car also has fake hood pins, but I'm not sure if the car I saw was the same as this one. The only thing preventing this from having full-rice status are 1) no huge rear wing, the window one doesn't count, 2) body kit isn't low enough, 3) needs more scratches and dents, 4) the body kit and preferably some of the fenders need to have copious doses of Bondo and primer, and 5) it needs a giant Honda emblem across the rear window. Having "2EXTREM", "XTREM SI", or "2FAST4U" as the license plate would help also.

What?

Episode II: The Return of EMBD!

All units with driver's licenses had Memorial Day off, so we took a trip back to Enormous Mucho Biggo Dealer (hereafter referred to as EMBD). Unlike last time, when we were simply browsing and I hijacked the occasion for photography purposes. This time, though, we had a set purpose and a list of specific cars to test drive.

That isn't to say that all the excitement occurred at the dealer itself, oh no. Something very interesting happened on the way up...

---

We were stuck behind a truck with 3M logos on its trailer on two-lane roads for quite a while. Since we only got close enough to read the license plate once, we didn't really know what it was and speculated on what it could be. I guessed it was just a truck owned by 3M that displayed their products, but that didn't seem quite right. After all, who stops by the roadside to look at tape and sticky notes?

Later, we passed it and discovered its highly unusual cargo... since it didn't want to pass us again for pictures, we pulled into a rest stop so it would go by.

Whoa. What was that? Almost looked like a race car...

A nail-biting chase ensued...

Yep. Race car. Note the cardboard cutout of Greg Biffle on the wall of the trailer, as this is one of his cars.

Notice the very worn sidewall lettering. This tells me that the car was likely returning from testing, or was loaded onto the truck with old tires. Regardless, it looks well used.

The hauler, on the other hand, was pristine and glistened in the sun, like it was freshly washed (which was likely what had happened).

That was the first (and as of now, the only) time I have ever seen an actual national-league NASCAR race car in person. The closest thing was somebody's ancient oval-track car being lugged around by a Chevrolet truck that looked to be on its last hundred miles. Not quite the same thing.

After that little adventure, we continued on our way to EMBD. My aforementioned list contained seven cars to test drive, so as to narrow down our list of potential candidates for new-driver's-daily-driver.

The list was as follows, in the order that we eventually drove them. My comments in italics, the potential main operator's in regular type:


1: Used 2011 Ford Mustang V6 Premium Convertible (Grabber Blue! Drove this one largely for fun, although I checked later and found that it was a company fleet car, which explains why it smelled thickly of smoke)

Potential Driver's thoughts on Car #1: "Too hot, and it smelled bad."


2: Used 2010 Ford Fusion SE 4 cylinder (Smokestone, which was a very fitting color name for a rental car like this one. Poor thing had the wear and tear of a car three times its age, complete with smoke smell, cigarette burns in my seat [right rear], and a badly worn dash)


Thoughts on Car #2: "I hate it."


3: New 2011 Hyundai Elantra Limited (Red Allure didn't turn out to be so alluring after all, although the rest of the car was quite good)

Thoughts on Car #3: "I like it."


4: New 2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid (don't know the color, but I expected my first hybrid ride to feel more sluggish. The car acquitted itself rather well, although it felt slower than the Elantra)


Thoughts on Car #4: "Eww! Hybrid!"


N/A: New 2012 Ford Focus, Mazda3, and Mazda2 (the jerk salesman that attached himself to us at the Ford and Mazda departments wouldn't even let us test drive these three. Not only that, but he made us sit in the back of a Fiesta even after we told him the Fiesta was essentially a pile of junk [which it is])

However, it wasn't all that bad, despite the absurdly hot weather. For example:

Bullitt! I love the understated looks of these cars. Dull-finish wheels, no emblems, no stripes, dark green paint, hardly anything to distinguish it from another car to the undiscerning eye. Except for the exhaust, which is gloriously loud.

The pseudo-aluminum finish of the dash panels is unique among 05-09 Mustangs, as is the rear deck badge and gauge cluster, which features crosshairs in the gauges and a different font than the usual. The steering wheel is from the GT500, which you can tell from the handgrip area. The standard steering wheel has a panel gap between the wheel and the spokes, whereas the GT500 wheel has no interruption on the sides. This example also demonstrated the metal shift knob, which normally I would have run through the gears except for the fact that I like my right hand very much, and don't care to lose it. Plus, this Bullitt had been smoked in, and it was very obvious. I snapped this picture and shut the door.

GRABBER ORANGE! I must restrain myself to keep from fainting. My goodness, this is a gorgeous car. Just look at it!

Compare this interior to the Bullitt, especially the dash, steering wheel, and what you can see of the shifter. The two cars were very similar in one area, though: they smelled atrocious, although the Grabber Orange smelled of cleaner with a small bit of smoke in the background. I'm getting tired of people ruining these cars by letting toxic fumes permeate every bit of the car's interior. When I rode in our Shelby GT a couple days after this, I took great pains to inhale lots of its interior smell, as it smells like leather instead of smoke. I think Mustangs that don't smell like smoke on the inside will become valuable collector commodities.

This was the V6 fleet car that we drove. It had a unique set of side pinstripes that were falling to pieces already, and the little Mustang emblem above the rear wheels was crudely done and looked more like a lump than a horse. An EMBD salesman had told us before that a man who lived in the area did custom stripe work on their used cars. Of course, that was in response to a complaint that the Grabber Orange they had at the time didn't have black stripes, so it's likely he was lying. In any event, it's still a pretty car.

When we drove this car, I was in the back seat, behind my parental unit, who was driving. The automatic transmission in these V6 cars comes with a mandatory 2.73 rear axle ratio (or at least this one did). It was very evident in driving, as every other car we drove was more responsive to a sudden flooring. This was likely the combination of a dim-witted transmission that was geared for fuel economy, and the fact that it was an automatic, after all. When the engine reached the upper RPM ranges I was pinned in my (rather comfortable for what it was) seat. Of course, I was always pinned in it, as I'm a bit big for the rear set of seats in a 2+2, but it was tolerable for our short trip nonetheless. I would grow to wish for those seats later. I was pleasantly surprised by the 3.7's yowl and pull at high RPM, although fuel economy is still disgustingly high on the priority list. Darn oil barons.

Here's the Elantra Limited we drove. Although we drove a Limited, if we bought one it would be a GLS, which would have smaller wheels, which would mean bigger sidewalls, which would mean more tire howl under hard cornering. As it was, the Limited held up rather well during our driving, with an engine that sounded good and was smooth (not always a Hyundai strong point), and comfortable seats that didn't have the Potential Driver and myself sliding about as much as in the Fusion. Speaking of the Fusion, the Potential Driver wants me to reiterate that she hates the Fusion, because she might not have made it clear enough when she said "I hate it.".

I am not the biggest fan of Hyundai's current design language (dubbed "Fluidic Sculpture", although I think it looks more like "A draft got in while the sheetmetal was cooling, and we liked the distortion so much we left it that way"), but the Elantra wears it rather well. I just wonder about the merits of such a steeply raked rear window. I'm sure it helped immensely with fuel economy, enough that the car likely couldn't achieve the vaunted 29/40 MPG without it. It's just that it compromises headroom for tall nutcase writers, like me. I can't be letting this giant brain be crushed against the ceiling, after all! /sarcasm

After the Elantra, which was liked by all (including, regretfully, your humble blogger, who now wishes very hard that Ford would hurry up and release the Focus ST so that I can have a different compact to likely grow up driving... hurry up!), we drove a Sonata Hybrid.

All three Sonata Hybrids that EMBD had in its possession were on a raised section of pavement. The sales guy thought that my parental unit's general gesture to the Sonatae was actually indicating a specific vehicle, so he started and moved one of them out of the way so that he could get the other one out. Since I had read up on the car specifically, and hybrids in general, I knew that it was likely that when the salesman moved the car, it would likely be running on battery instead of gas, and thus be mostly silent. However, I wasn't ready for the turbine-like noise the electric motor made, which was... eerie. It was definitely the first time I'd seen a car moving almost silently under its own power.

I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the car was, although the passenger seat was mounted VERY LOW in the car's frame. My parental unit couldn't have driven it from that seating position, as she almost couldn't see over the hood. Thankfully, the driver's seat adjusted for height, so the seat was pulled forward and up so my parental unit could drive it, I stretched my legs out limousine-style behind her because I had the room, and we were on our way. The car was very smooth and quiet, but it was obvious where one compromise in particular had been made. For aerodynamic reasons, the Sonata Hybrid gets its own set of exclusive wheels that are mostly flat with the sidewall of the tire, reducing drag. Hyundai's choice of rubber was a set of low-rolling-resistance tires, to help optimize (pun intended) fuel economy. Where's the compromise, you ask? I'll tell you.

Low-rolling-resistance tires are designed to create less friction between the tire and the road, thus allowing the vehicle they are mounted to to maintain momentum more easily and allow the vehicle to use less power to continue moving, thus burning less fuel and increasing fuel economy. The downside to this is that less friction = less grip, and therefore means the vehicle's handling thresholds are decreased severely. This was evident during our test drive of the Sonata Hybrid, where moderate cornering was met with loudly voiced protest from the tires, as well as leaving rubber on the track. The howling noise was something I had heard of, but never actually heard, as we take a conservative approach to tires, i.e. no burnouts.

Overall, it was a good day, despite the jerk salesman that prevented us from achieving higher than a 57.2 percent drive rate of vehicles on the list. The incident that stood out the most to me about him was when I made a candid observation that the back "cushions" in the rear seats of a 2012 Focus hatch I sat in were, shall we say, firm, the sales guy informed me that the Focus "ain't a Cadillac, baby!". "I was well aware of that, you idiot. You're the guys who are marketing this thing as a premium small car anyway, so why can't the back seats be comfortable? Explain the Titanium trim level, now will ya? Punk?"

Okay, so I didn't actually tell him that. I think my facial expression conveyed it well enough. I wish I had said it, though, and loudly too. Oh well. I had high hopes for the Focus, but it seems that the Elantra has implicitly destroyed it via Hyundai's vastly superior service. Now, I don't doubt that there are decent Ford salesmen and scumbag Hyundai salesmen out there, but we got a good guy for Hyundai and a crummy guy for Ford.

Score one for Hyundai. Round two: MANUAL TRANSMISSION VERSIONS! MWUAHAHAHA...