A biweekly roundup of automotive news, good, bad and just plain weird:
Ford Mustang Shelby GT350R beats Ferrari 458 around Nurburgring
Ordinarily, Nurburgring lap times are like a properly prepared steak: best taken with a grain or two of salt. A lot can happen in the Green Hell's hundredodd corners, with so many variables that it's hard to judge performance. Add in that many manufacturers fudge the numbers with shaved tires and the like, and you get a free-for-all that deserves a little suspicion.
However, when it comes to the above headline, well, some stories are just too delicious not to believe. A 50-year-old American pony car just spanked a quartermillion-dollar Italian stallion around the world's most infamous circuit. Film at 11.
The Shelby GT350 was first shown at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November, with a raceprepped version revealed at the North American International Auto Show earlier this month in Detroit. Both machines are powered by a flat-plane-crank 5.2-litre V-8 (the crankshaft appears flat in cross-section, as opposed to the "+" shape normally required for balance) producing somewhere around 500 horsepower and 400 footpounds of torque. Flatplane-crank V-8s produce a characteristic harsh sound, and were only really previously found in smalldisplacement Ferraris. Well, looks like Henry Ford's old grudge match against Maranello ain't over. Performance magazine EVO is claiming that the GT350R has just posted a 7:32 around the Nurburgring, which is ahead of the 458 Italia's unofficial time.
What does this mean to you? First, it shows just how good the new Mustang can be as a track car. Second, and maybe I should throw in the old professional-driverclosed-course disclaimer, perhaps it's time to see what your next convertible Mustang rental car can really do.
DEA collects huge licence plate database
It's for your own good. You have nothing to fear. Now, pass the tinfoil, please. I need to make a protective hat.
Earlier last year, it was revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice was seeking to house a huge database of licence plate images, showing date and time of travel. Now it looks like the DEA already has that database, with hundreds of millions of licence plates collected and stored in records going back to 2008.
The images are collected in a variety of ways, including automated licence plate readers used along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the program is reportedly used to fight cross-border drug trafficking. Data can be analyzed to show the flow of traffic to and from Mexico, and track the previous paths of suspicious cars.
Sounds fair enough, but somewhat unnerving, especially when you consider the increasing amount of telematics carried by the average car. "If you've nothing to hide, what's the problem?" is the common refrain, but being constantly tracked by law enforcement is disconcerting, to say the least.
Meanwhile, if you'll excuse me I've just got to go post all the places I've been last week on Facebook, a surely more benevolent institution. Oh wait.
MTV report: Millennials actually like cars
For those of us old enough to remember a time when MTV had even the slightest relation to music, the current trend among young people to defer getting their licence and otherwise ignore the automobile is somewhat disturbing. The headlines come fast and furious, assuring us that the age of car culture is over. There's just one tiny problem: it's not.
According to a study done by MTV (no, I don't know why they don't show music videos anymore), three out of every four Millennials aged 18-34 would rather give up social media for a day than their car. Also, they'd rather give up texting for a week instead of driving. Wait, can that be right? But it interferes with all that Grandpa Simpson rhetoric about car-hating young whippersnappers!
Truth be told, these results should be surprising to no one. Everywhere I go in this industry, I see kids still interested in cars, just in different ways. We have young racers like Scott Hargrove, the whole "stance" movement, drift culture, a greater interest in automotive photography, and then the whole digital side of things that lets you own and drive highly detailed supercars in video games even if your real-life wheels are Mom's Corolla.
No matter how difficult and expensive it is to own a car, there's still a freedom that comes with it, so while car ownership is perhaps less a rite of passage than it once was, it's still important to the young. And that's good news indeed.
Watch this space for all the best and worst of automotive news, or submit your own auto oddities to [email protected].
