New product review started.

Started the long-term test of Pulstar Pulse spark plugs : Pulstar plugs.

1000mph land speed record?

Richard Noble and Andy Green are back to their old tricks with the proposed Bloodhound project - a "car" designed to break the 1000mph barrier on land.

Supersonic car targets 1,000mph.

Frankly I hope they manage it, because it would be as big a spectacle as it is an achievement.

That's a good moneyspinner.

The tax and licensing renewal for my wife's Yaris came up this week. The car is 11 months and a week old, and the Utah State Tax Commission tell me that it needs an inspection and emissions test this year. That's the US version of the MOT back in England, only a lot less rigorous.
What a racket. Inspection and emissions on a year-1 vehicle? That's just an excuse to print money. I called the state tax offices on this. It used to be that they required an inspection and emissions check every year from the third year on. Now it's been changed to every other year from new.
I know why.
In America, it's the norm for people to sell their cars and buy new ones every three years. If this happened at a dealer, a loophole in the law meant the vehicle was excused the tests that year, presuming the dealer would do them in order to verify the vehicle was fit for re-sale. Meaning the tax commission didn't see a penny in testing revenue until the fourth year of a car's life.
With the change, even if people sell their car after three years, the tax commission get one lot of testing revenue out of them at the beginning of the second year.
That's a good moneyspinner.

First snow of the season.

Which means first really spectacular demonstrations of Utah driving of the season. You see, around here, people have a goldfish-like memory for snow and ice on the roads. It happens every year, regular as clockwork, yet each year when it finally arrives, it seems to take them all by surprise. We end up with cars upside down on the wrong side of the road, cars upside down in trees, cars upside down perched on crash barriers, and cars upside down stuffed into the sides of houses. Regular as clockwork. I shall venture out with quiet trepidation this morning - it's been snowing all night so I expect complete carnage today, even though the roads themselves are actually just wet, not icy. The snow will distract them from their makeup and cellphones, which have already distracted them from the task at hand - actually driving their cars - and that will be all she wrote.

It's got a cop motor, cop tyres, cop suspension, cop shocks....

I had the privilege of going on a police ride along this saturday night - the 10-3 DUI shift with South Jordan police over on the west side of the valley. It was entertaining being in the passenger seat as we pulled over vehicle after vehicle for things like broken tail lights. We caught one DUI. More interesting for me was the vehicle itself and the kit inside. SJCPD have optioned the Dodge Charger Police edition and it is amazing. The one I was in was a V6 and it performed well. It was returning an average 16mpg doing police duty which is pretty good given how they drive and how much extra stuff is crammed into the cars. The handling was good - really good. Not sure if the suspension was stock or upgraded to deal with the rigours of police duty, but we whipped around corners like it was on rails. Brakes were hot, acceleration was hot, steering was hot. Unbelievably it looks like Dodge have managed to make a hot car!

In terms of the police kit - it had the perspex divider between the front and rear seats, the shotgun strapped to the roof, front and rear doppler radar, front camera, light bar, takedown lights, alley lights, front crash bar - the works. There was also a Dell laptop hooked up to the police network. We could tap in a licence plate and it would return the car make and model, spoken in computer synthesised voice, within a couple of seconds. From there we could go to the driver's licence information and it would pull up a copy of the registered driver's photo. The officer used this a few times - when we checked plates randomly and they came back clean, we'd do a driver check to see if the person in the car matched the photo on the licence.
The doppler radar was interesting and we could tell which cars did and didn't have radar detectors. The officer would flick the radar on for a second or so to pull a speed from oncoming vehicles. For the most part they wouldn't change speed, but every now and then, we'd pick someone up doing 60 or more and the instant we pinged them with radar, their speed dropped significantly. On unlit roads, they couldn't tell we were a police car so they must have been using detectors. One guy slowed down as he came towards us, then the office flicked on the rear doppler and watched as the guy sped up once he'd passed us. We flipped around and pulled him over. No DUI that time though.
So the Police Charger. Super hot. And you know how I feel about American cars in general. Frankly, if I was in the market for a new car, I'd have to seriously consider a Charger. Looks great. Performs great.
Thanks to South Jordan PD for the ride-along.

Why can't the US make decent cars?

Case in point. The new Ford Focus Coupe. Look at the image below. On the left, the bloated, 1980's-looking attempt from Ford Motor Corporation. On the right, the über-slick "Rest Of The World" version. Underneath it's ostensibly the same car. Why do we have to be stuck with this grotesque American thing? Why can't they just use the same version as the rest of the frickin' world?

You know what they say about turds. It doesn't matter how much you polish it - it's still a turd.