Category: Drive Time

More Of Those Things

Drive Time, Technology

I know that “keyless entry” systems are all the thing with cars these days, but forgive me if I’m just a little skeptical about their security:

Some new cars on the market are vulnerable to keyless thefts, tests have revealed.
Latest security ratings for seven models you can buy in showrooms today have been released by Thatcham Research, an independent automotive research centre.
Of the seven vehicles reviewed, four were found to offer ‘poor’ resistance to relay crimes that have spiraled in the last few years.

Actually, most cars offering this feature are vulnerable to being hacked by relay devices (available on amazon.com, of course).  And if you don’t know how a relay device works, you need to disable your keyless system and go back to using a car key.

I of course have no desire ever to activate  any keyless system when I come to replace the Tiguan, so none of the above will apply to me.  And should my choice of car not have deactivation as an option, that choice will shift to another which does, or doesn’t even have the infernal system in the first place.

I am all for progress, by the way, if it represents actual progress and not just a nod to “convenience” (i.e. laziness).  For example, I have always applauded the shift from front-stuffing muzzle-loaders to the brass cartridge — but should some techo-genius come up with an “electronically-activated triggering mechanism” to replace it, I’ll probably shoot him.

With a bullet launched from a brass cartridge case, most likely one of these:

Birth Year V: The Murkins, Part 2

Drive Time

This week as promised, we’ll look at the smaller U.S. car companies and their 1954 offerings:

DeSoto Firedome

DeSoto Powermaster

Hudson Hornet

Kaiser Special

Nash Metropolitan

Packard Caribbean

Studebaker Commander

I know the “Studdy” has many fans, but it’s only the best of a very bad bunch.  By popular demand, here’s the 1954 Corvette:

Thanks, but if we’re going to do 1954 sports cars, I’ll still take the Mercedes 300SL, thank you:

Which brings to the end of the 1954 Birth Year series.  Thank you all for playing along.

…and even though I don’t do Hallmark holidays, here’s one for all us dads, today:

And for the record, here’s Your Humble Narrator and the Son& Heir, each pic taken at age 23:

Didn’t even bounce.

Birth Year IV: The Murkins, Part One

Drive Time

I never saw any of these cars while growing up in South Africa, and I might as well be talking Sanskrit as about them and their characteristics — nor am I that keen to learn much about them either — so I’m counting on my GearHead Readers to step up to the plate and add their thoughts in Comments.  All I can say is that as far as I’m concerned, pretty much all of these behemoths are as ugly as a boil on  a pretty girl’s face.  And just remember:  it’s not a complete catalogue, just a list of cars that came onto the market in 1954, and that caught my eye for one reason or another.

Cadillac Eldorado

Chrysler New Yorker

Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight

Ford Crestliner

Pontiac Star Chief

Chevrolet Bel-Air

Plymouth Belvedere

Lincoln Capri

Mercury Monterey

Ye gods.  And I thought that modern car design was Clone Central.  If someone were to tell me that I had  to pick one of the above for a daily drive, I think I’d go with a Colt 1911 Single Bullet model.

Next week we’ll be looking at the products of the smaller car manufacturers of the time (none of which have survived till today).  Maybe there’ll be some design differences there… but somehow, I’m not optimistic.

I think I’ll just revive my artistic aesthetic with a look at the Mercedes 220A of the period:

Ahhh… that’s better.

Road Destruction Season

Drive Time, Travels

If anyone is planning a road trip in Britishland over the next 3-4 years, be warned that the Brits have released their planned scheme of major roads to be affected by construction, improvements, closures etc.  Here’s the map:

It’s been a while since I looked at a U.K. roadmap… but isn’t that map essentially ALL the major roads in Britishland?

Looks like the M6 is going to be cataclysmic;  however, as said highway leads to both Liverpool and  Glasgow, I can’t see why this would be a problem for all right-thinking drivers.

No man should.

Birth Year III: Euro-Saloon Cars

Drive Time

In my yoot, I never saw many of the 1954-model European cars featured below, which may have been a Good Thing.  Let me start off with the ones I did  see on the streets of Johannesburg:

Mercedes 300 S

Citroen Traction Avant 15

Renault 4CV

And the reason I saw the Renault at all may have been that it was assembled in Britishland from French parts, and imported into South Africa.  The following, however, could have been seen on the roads of Euroland back in the late 1950s and early 1960s:

Peugeot 203 

Renault Fregate

Simca Grand (“large”, not “grand”)

…as opposed to the small  Simca DV:

Lancia B20 GT

Hotchkiss Gregoire

…although fewer than 300 of these monsters were ever made, so you might NOT have seen one.

Even Alfa Romeo got into the “touring” groove:

1954 Alfa Romeo 1900C SS Touring

Of all the above, only the Alfa (because Alfa), Lancia (because Lancia) and Mercedes 300 (because engineering) would have my vote in the “old cars Kim would want to own because birth year”.

There was one more, though, that would definitely make the list because it had the first V8 engine ever mounted in a German car:

BMW 502

Except that I’d have preferred the rag-top model:

BMW 502 Baur Cabriolet

Oooooh, yummy.  Kim likes.

Next week, we’ll be looking at the 1954 Murkin cars.  Try to contain yourselves.

Fuck You, Regs

Drive Time, Gummint

Longtime Readers will be familiar ad nauseam with my constant bitching against modern automotive design and how homogeneous the cars of today appear.  While a lot of it is driven by things like “wind-tunnel” performance, I’ve never bothered to talk about exactly why  car makers are so obsessed with streamlining and what have you, because I’d always thought people knew why they’re thus obsessed.

Allow me then, to address this shortcoming by pointing you to this excellent article, a snippet of which reads as follows:

It hasn’t happened all at once. It’s been a bit at a time, taking place over four decades in the name of safety and the environment. The whole thing began in 1966 with creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, followed by the Environmental Protection Agency and dozens of others. Every regulator wanted a piece of the car.
Each new regulation seems like it makes sense in some way. Who doesn’t want to be safer and who doesn’t want to save gas?
But these mandates are imposed without any real sense of the cost and benefits, and they come about without a thought as to what they do to the design of a car. And once the regs appear on the books, they never go away.
…
Truly, this cries out for explanation. So I was happy to see a video made by CNET that gives five reasons: mandates for big fronts to protect pedestrians, mandates that require low tops for fuel economy, a big rear to balance out the big fronts, tiny windows resulting from safety regulations that end up actually making the car less safe, and high belt lines due to the other regs. In other words, single-minded concern for testable “safety” and the environment has wrecked the entire car aesthetic.
And that’s only the beginning. Car and Driver puts this as plainly as can be: “In our hyper-regulated modern world, the government dictates nearly every aspect of car design, from the size and color of the exterior lighting elements to how sharp the creases stamped into sheetmetal can be.”
You are welcome to read an engineer’s account of what it is like to design an American car. Nothing you think, much less dream, really matters. The regulations drive the whole process. He explains that the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards with hundreds of regulations — really a massive central plan — dictate every detail and have utterly ruined the look and feel of American cars.

Here’s my suggestion to the Trump administration:  wherever the so-called “Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards” reside, go in there and take out 75% of them – I don’t care which ones, but I bet a random sample of my Petrolhead Readers would take care of the problem.

Here’s the money shot quote from the article:

No one set out to wreck the diversity and beauty of our cars. But that is precisely what has happened, as the political and bureaucratic elites have asserted their own value systems over the values of both producers and consumers. They are the masters and we are the slaves, and we are to accept our lot in life.

Maybe not.  This is a hill I’d be glad to die on — just for the sake of automotive beauty.  Here’s one example of a car that couldn’t be made in the U.S. today because regs, and we are the poorer for it:

More about Bizzarrini.

The title, by the way, is a play on a line of dialogue from Cheech and Chong’s Big Bambu  album.