we’re a regular cargo cult over here. I mean, you ever been to Ohio? Really been there?
Loud Pipes Save Lives?
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And here’s the actual advert:
I hope the gesture catches on elsewhere, it seems apt.
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I guess it has in England, enough at least for this silly version to make sense to couch potatoes.
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This is a consequence of switching to “flat cranks” in V-8s. I heard a new Corvette take off from a stoplight the other day. It sounded like an actual sports car (four-cylinder) rather than an oil drum being pounded by idiots with sticks. They might actually be saving fifty or a hundred bucks per engine, too. Most things about American musclecars have been bullshit for about 40 years, so I find it difficult to get excited about this issue.
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It’s an ad for top gear australia, presumably with localized content for the colonials.
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Or merge at junctions, or be driving in the other direction on a narrow road when some asshole overtakes that van they just *can’t * drive behind a second longer, or…
That’s unrealistic with any modern car really, I’d say. They’re all pretty quiet.
Harley Davidson attempted trademark the sound, but eventually dropped the effort. A perfectly reasonable trademark on its face (you certainly can trademark sounds) although customer confusion case seems hard to make, given that Harley customers are fairly sophisticated about motorcycles.
I drive a Nissan Leaf every day. I prefer to drive my '67 Buick convertible and do on nice days. I can – and do – enjoy them both, for their purpose.
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Somewhat off-topic, but endearing
On Wednesday, the 70-year-old mechanic took his last ride in one — a black Cadillac hearse — from Roth-Muir Funeral Home in Romeo to his final resting place at Mt. Vernon Cemetery. Randall’s family and friends made sure that the half-century Cadillac mechanic, who died Saturday, got a Cadillac of a sendoff. The exterior of his silver casket had chrome accents and Cadillac emblems that he collected through the years and tucked in a drawer in his toolbox. It was pinstriped by Frank Galli, who also detailed part of the Cadillac crest with Randall’s initials and an old English D with #1 Fan on the exterior to symbolize two of Randall’s loves.
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Absolutely! Since that car burns H2 at a max of 300 bar, it’s close enough to say that gasoline holds an eentsy bit more than ten times the energy in the same volume. The loss of energy involved in creating the hydrogen (roughly 25% if we assume no transport, pipeline or transfer losses) stays the same, of course.
But wait! It’s more complicated! First off, the car uses a 500 pound polyethylene dewar flask to hold the H2. This is incredibly lightweight compared to a cryogenic storage solution, for the simple reason that it isn’t one. The tank vents hydrogen as it warms and expands, so if you park the car for 12 days all your usable hydrogen escapes into the garage. But the tank lets you store the H2 at up to 700 bar, which is well over ten thousand pounds per square inch, without making a vehicle twice the size of a bus. A clever hack, really, and combined with the huge engine and the intricate burn control it makes the burn efficiency very high, nearly 42%, which is in the low end of fuel cell efficiencies and very impressive.
That’s the best Wikipedia article I’ve read in years, very balanced and informative - thank you for the link! Anyone interested in more detail should read it. Even with a $200,000 car, hydrogen still makes no sense for vehicles. The math is inescapable; a car like the Tesla will always be a better choice in terms of efficiency, reliability, safety, and minimizing environmental impact.
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thanks alot for the wapo link mr doctorow. and of course thanks for your always fascinating blog too. [<— said as a weekly lurcker but only rarely bbs posting newbie]
happens my brother is a huuge muscle car enthusiast. gonna have to print the WP original article for slo-mailing. he’s not online yet… maybe next year.
what’s next, playing cards clothes-pinned to the spokes of our wheels, like me and my preteen buds did to our bikes back in the 1950s?
^^^ comes word the cards remark has already been posted, and better. ah well, us newbies may get up to speed eventually.
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There is the Nyan Car that races in the 24 Hours of LeMons. It plays the music non-stop for the entire race weekend. You can hear it from the stands even over the race engines, and god help you if you get stuck behind it during a full-course caution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CFmQOn0gmw
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What does this mean for a driver’s ability to detect and diagnose engine problems by the sound? More than once, I’ve detected problems that required attention by noticing that my engine didn’t sound right. Will you be able to hear an engine knock or ticking when the car is playing a recording of a perfectly-tuned engine? Can you turn off the fake engine noise, or will it play all the time, even when you’re turning the stereo down to listen to the engine?
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I’m unable to drive a car. And I HATE car culture. One thing that had me spoiled in San Francisco was that it was possible to get around fairly well without a car. Lately, I’ve been getting painful lessons on how much of the local environment is physically inaccessible if you don’t have a car.
This weekend, I tried to go to a park a few miles from where I’m staying for a day hike, and found that there was no way to reach the heads of the trails without a car. I spent a few hours persistently trying to follow the road leading to the park, but there was clearly no provision for pedestrians, and I had to give up when it became clear I couldn’t access the trails from the road.
I suppose it was helpful that I could hear cars coming around the bend before I could see them. But it’d be awfully nice if it were possible for a pedestrian to get around without being in constant fear of being hit by a car.
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Pedestrians: just another special interest group expecting all their whims to be accommodated at public expense.
Thus spake Mr Ford.
Come to London - I’ll buy you a coffee. If I stretch 3,000 miles a year out of my '78 Countach Periscope (ok I lied VW Golf) then I’m amazed. It just sits depreciating.
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