A biweekly roundup of automotive news, good, bad and just plain weird:
Elon Musk digging tunnel to LAX
It’s a good thing Elon Musk seems distracted by his rocket program and car company, because otherwise he’d probably be a Bond supervillain. His latest idea? Stuck in traffic on his way to Los Angeles International Airport last month, the billionaire genius tweeted out his intent to build a tunnel to reduce commute times.
I’m 90 per cent sure I saw this idea in an episode of The Simpsons, but basically, a tunnel would allow Musk and/or various other Tesla/SpaceX employees to skip the traffic and shuttle back and forth underground. As they’d probably all be doing so in electric cars, you don’t have to worry as much about ventilating the fumes you’d get from internal combustion engines.
Perhaps, at some point, they’d simply put in a train, or some version of Musk’s proposed supersonic Hyperloop transport. For now, the tunnel digging project is poised to start within the next month. If he starts tweeting about hollowed out volcano lairs, we’re going to need to have the Queen call up Special Branch.
Dodge Demon: a more hellacious Hellcat
With carbon dioxide emissions and environmental concerns high on every manufacturer’s list, we’re seeing a barrage of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and pure electric vehicles. Everyone is concerned about projecting the image of a cleaner, more efficient future. And then there’s Dodge.
The 707 horsepower Hellcat versions of the Charger and Challenger are already ridiculous (in the best way), offering 1960s-style outrageous muscle in a straight line. Sure, electric luxury cars like the Tesla Model S 100D have the holeshot at present, but the success of the Hellcat proves that at least a few people still want a little rumble in their life. Maybe they spend the rest of the week cycling to work as a form of carbon offset. Let’s not judge.
Recognizing that if too much is good then more must be better, Dodge is now teasing out details of an even-more-extreme Hellcat called the Demon. Lighter than the standard Challenger Hellcat by some 90 kilograms, the Demon wears 31.5 centimetre-wide drag radials at all four corners, the widest front tires ever fitted to a production car.
Back seat? Optional. Passenger seat? Optional. Giant fender flares? Standard. And as to the power. ...
Well, that we don’t yet know. However, given that tuning companies have pretty easily made more than 900 h.p. by tweaking the standard Hellcat, who’s to say we won’t see more than a 1,000 h.p. from the demonic Dodge. That’s ridiculous, of course, but as a last hurrah for the internal combustion engine, what a sendoff.
Finland makes fuel from ham
Finnish people are the best. Often laconic in nature, they are nonetheless equipped with a very odd sense of humour, and are mostly excellent drivers. Think how boring F1 would be if Kimi Raikkonen wasn’t around to serve up bon mots like, “Leave me alone, I know what I am doing,” as he turns off his team radio for the rest of the race.
Apparently, Finns are also extremely fond of Christmas ham (I mean, who isn’t?). When oil refining company Neste put out a campaign called Kinkkutemppu – literally “ham trick” - they expected to get a few litres of ham pan drippings, which they could then convert to biodiesel as a nice publicity stunt.
The company also partnered up with the Finnish Water Utilities Association, who point out that pouring fat down the drain just leads to all kinds of revolting sewage problems. It is to be expected that this information was relayed in suitably blunt Finnish fashion.
In the post-Christmas period, a scarcely conceivable 12,000 kg of rendered pork fat was collected, which was converted to 10,000 litres of biodiesel. That’s enough to lap the world several times, even if your car is a bit of a pig (sorry).
Several question arise. First, how is the rate of heart disease in Finland not effectively 100 per cent? They must have arteries like pool noodles. Second, if collecting and rendering fat like this makes sense as a one-time event, could collection not occur regularly? With many communities trying to figure out ways to get cooking fat out of the sewage pipelines, maybe this is just one more thing we could be recycling.
Canada builds a better supercar than Ferrari, McLaren
The new Ford GT is built by Multimatic, an experienced racing company based out of Markham, Ont. So, while it was engineered in Dearborn, Mich., that makes this twin-turbo, mid-engined supercar a Canadian affair. They ought to offer a livery based on the Avro Arrow.
Already a success in international endurance racing, race-spec versions of the Ford GT have won several important races, including coming first in its class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Now, it would appear that the street version will be taking the fight directly to competition like Ferrari and McLaren.
Powered by a twin-turbo V-6 making 647 h.p., Ford is claiming the production street version of their car is some 3.1 seconds faster around the challenging Calabogie track near Ottawa than either a Ferrari 458 Speciale or a McLaren 675LT. That may not sound like a lot, but 3.1 seconds is an eternity in lap times. Further, the Ford GT is a bit old school in the transmission department: the competition has lightning fast dual-clutch gearboxes, the GT has a six-speed manual. That means the GT’s active suspension and aerodynamics must be paying off hugely at the track, especially as the car weighs a little more than either the Ferrari 458 or McLaren 675LT. Granted, the supercar world is one of constant one-upsmanship, but it’s nice to see that a Canadian-made machine can take on the world’s best.
Watch this space for all the best and worst of automotive news, or submit your own auto oddities to [email protected].
