Cars & Coffee at F40 Motorsports

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I hear crying on Saturday at 4:30am. Ugh, it was going to be one of those days. To my surprise, my daughter went back to sleep within a few minutes, but I didn’t. Earlier in the week I learned that F40 Motorsports, famous from the HD Theather show Chasing Classic Cars,will be having a cars-and-coffee event. Getting up at 5am on a Saturday to drive almost two hours to look at some cars is not exactly my cup of tea (sorry for the pun), but since I was already up I decided to grab my camera and I quietly sneaked out of the house.* … Continue Reading

My Personal Nuerburgring

Let’s skip the nitty-gritty. We all know that I am talking about Nordschleife, the 13-mile, 160-turn, widow-maker which Sir Jackie Steward nicknamed The Green Hell. A mere mention of this place can quickly raise a gearhead’s heart rate. Built in the 1920’s; it is still used today for sports car racing, predominantly the 24 Hours Nürburgring. Most of the time however, it is simply a public toll road accessible to anyone with a car, 22 Euro and a pair. … Continue Reading

Spotted: BABE Rally “99 Problems but the Babe Ain’t One” Car

At first my thought was that this was some 24 Hours of LeMons reject, but I saw no roll-bar and signs of any real battle damage. Googling the “99 Problems” sticker on the car revealed a video which showed the vehicle being part of the 2009 BABE Rally.

In 2009 a team that called themselves “99 Problems but the Babe Ain’t One” has entered the rally in a Volvo 245. Below is a video of the Swedish monster in action. Judging by the video, the Volvo has seen better days. We don’t know how the 245 went from being a perfectly good wagon to this pseudo pick-up-truck-convertible-sedan thing. As weird as it may look, it appears to be completely road legal as it has lights, windshield, and license plane. … Continue Reading

Review: 2009 Toyota Venza

Toyota wants the Venza to be something smaller than a RAV4 but not quite a station wagon, as station wagons are disliked in the United States. Regardless of what its genre is called the Venza is a very functional something, available with two different engines and two driveline configurations, all wrapped in a pretty package. Despite all bad press Toyota has received lately, the Venza just maybe a shining star amongst otherwise gray appliances we have come to expect from Toyota in recent years. … Continue Reading

Sunny-Side Up Niçoise Salad

A good recipe combines easy to obtain ingredients in unusual fashion, plays up the strengths of individual contributions, and results in something greater than a mere sum of its parts.  Sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, hot and cold; each flavor, texture, and temperature should play a role of contrasting, balancing, or enhancing the overall result. What follows, hopefully, is a good step-by-step recipe for a memorable rendezvous. … Continue Reading

2010 Toy Fair: Quick Look at Car Toys, part I

Toy Fair is the annual convention of the Toy Industry Association. Each year hundreds of toy manufacturers, toy store owners, and distributors gather in New York City to show off their latest products and hopefully make a few deals along the way. I had the opportunity of attending this convention and of course checking out the toys that a carguy would love his children to play with.

I focused mainly on car toys, but I also looked into classic toys that I have grown up with. After spending several hours at the fair I have found a lot of toys that were simply not good in one way or another, the below listed toys, however, were all clear winners. All these show high build quality in all aspects, including packing and directions. All were designed with a great amount of detail, all encourage creativity and enhance motor skills. … Continue Reading

Quick Look: 2011 Nissan Leaf

Presenting, the future of motoring, the 2011 Nissan Leaf. The Leaf is what Nissan calls “the world’s first affordable, zero-emission car”. It is a small, 5-passenger, plug-in electric vehicle with a maximum range of 100 miles. The vehicle is designed with a commuter in mind; 70% of commuters travel less than 70 miles per day. Let’s take a closer look at it. … Continue Reading

What is wrong with this Mustang?

Here is a beautiful black 2010 Ford Mustang GT500. It is street parked at a metered spot in downtown Boston and there really is nothing wrong with it. Frankly, this thing looks totally badass and with its 540-horsepower supercharged V8 and 6-speed manual transmission there is so much right with it, but look closely (click on pic if you have to), what do you see? … Continue Reading

Rally Racing, part 1: Building the Car

This is the first of three articles on Rally Racing. I intend to cover car set-ups, driver training, different classes, and whatever else I may come upon. This part will show a built of an Open Class rally car, which is essentially a race car based on a production car, but with the least restrictions placed on it. For instance, the engine has to use the original block, but otherwise is only limited by a 34mmx3mm restrictor plate.

Helping me write these series of articles is Bacon Motorsport. Bacon Motorsport is a privateer family race team from Chemsford MA. Team drivers are William Bacon Jr and Peter Watt. Bill has more than ten years of racing experience and  Peter was the Canadian rally champion in 2004. The team has recently finished in third place at the Sno*Drift Rally in Michigan. … Continue Reading

Behind the scenes at Rolex 24 at Daytona

The 48th running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona is now behind us. With heavy rains, record setting 53 lead changes and a margin of victory of less than a minute, this year’s 24 was a spectacular race to watch. The coverage by SpeedTV was decent, but of course at night they had to throw in a re-run of some old NASCAR race that no one could care less about. Fortunately my friends from VelozMedia were in Daytona along with Turner Motorsport Team producing a behind-the-scenes documentary of Turner’s journey through the race.

VelozMedia’s staff photographer, Tim Hourihan, has been kind enough to share some of the images he has gathered for the documentary. Since we have all seen races, be it on TV or live, I have selected over a hundred pictures from Tim’s gallery that give us the best perspective of how it is to be on the crew of a three-car race team at Daytona. At the end of the day one questions remains: which did they consume more of, gasoline or coffee? … Continue Reading

Snow Run! Off-Roading in Snowy California

My buddy Andy, with whom I went off-roading last year, has moved to California for school. His trip west in the Jeep CJ-8 was quite adventurous, but unfortunately all the pictures from it went missing.

Now that Andy has settled in and got the Scrambler back in the proper working order, he went on an off-road snow run. To us normal people that means driving 4WD vehicles with big tires on what essentially are hiking trails. Below pictures are telling a story; from the meeting point, up through the mountains, until they get caught in a storm. At that point  they concluded that beer and burgers are more fun. Enjoy.

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2010 New York Motorcycle Show

I don’t own a motorcycle and I even failed my motorcycle license test (story below), but I really do appreciate them. Short of cars such as the Lotus Exige, Caterham, or Ariel Atom, motorcycles are the most direct connection between a man (or a chick) and a machine. There is no safety devices, no electronic nannies, no OBD2, no emissions systems, and nothing that does not serve a purpose. That is exactly what makes motorcycles so great. Combine that with the idea of freedom that these machines offer and it is no wonder why they are loved so much.

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UPDATE: Self-Assembling Motorcycle

Awesomeness, redefined. No idea who’s video this is, a friend just sent it to me and I loved it. That is all.

UPDATE: Please note the comment below which came from Annie Flanigan. The video was a made by her husband and her son as a project, in Annie’s own words: … Continue Reading

Turner Motorsport’s Journey to the 24 Hours of Daytona

There is only one answer to the age old question: what do you want to do when you grow up? That answer is “do what you love”. So what do you do when you love cars and movies? Simple, you do what what my friends Miguel Aponte-Rios and Baer Connard did – you start Veloz Media, a film production company specializing in motorsport programming.

Recently Turner Motorsport, a BMW performance shop and a race team, has contracted Veloz Media to do behind-the-scenes chronicle showcasing their efforts and journey in the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona race. Turner is entering this race with a new Riley-chassis race car powered by a 5-liter BMW V8 engine racing the GT Class. Below is a teaser video of the preparations going into the race as well as Turner/Veloz Media press release. Have a look, this promises to be an epic series of films. … Continue Reading

Automoblox – Ambiguous but Fun Toy Cars

I have seen these toys being mentioned on both car-related websites as well as parental magazines, and I must say that I was a bit intrigued. First off, these toys were styled by a self-proclaimed “designer” which in and of itself worries me. You see, I have seen a lot perfectly fine products taken by these so-called designers and completely butchered, take the Bungled BMW 7-series for instance. What is wrong with a proper 1:43 model of a real car? I’ve had dozens of these growing up and I loved all of them. I still have my BBurago E24 6-series, somewhere – it is those toys have started my love affair with the car. So now, I look at these “designer toys” and the carguy inside me is screaming “What the hell is that!?” … Continue Reading