We’re sure you’ve been sitting, patiently waiting for another serving of everybody’s favorite snack. Reconstituted, slightly roasted news clips from the week are perfect anytime! So belly up to the table and get yourself a serving of Scrapple!
1. Living out a childhood fantasy!
At some point in time as a kid, the idea of taking the family car for a drive, without permission, had to have crossed your mind. I wasted many a minute thinking of it myself as a lad. But a 12-year-old kid from near Sydney, Australia ganked the keys to the family car and proceeded to roll out on a trip to Perth…all the freakin’ way on the other side of the continent. He was found 800 miles into the trip and we highly doubt that the youngster has the ability to talk himself out of this one.
2. Look, Ma! No skidmarks!
Loris Baz could be forgiven for scaring the crap out of himself literally. While diving into Circuit of the America’s Turn 20, he pretty much slid off of his bike, then while trying to re-mount, nearly high-sided (read: launch himself into low orbit). Professional rider or not, that’s a bad day. But just in case anyone really wondered, no, he didn’t poo himself. He put a picture of his underwear up on Facebook to prove it.
Hey…how will you know they aren’t just a clean pair of skivvies from the drawer? Just putting that out there.
3. Rally Nissan Leaf. 10,000 mile course. Bless you, sir.
10,000 miles in an electric car on the Mongol Rally. What will get to driver Chris Ramsey first: dead battery, lack of infrastructure to charge the horrifyingly ugly Leaf, or the roasting from the peanut gallery about the Leaf being a big-dollar showoff on a rally meant for beaters?
4. A new take on that “new car smell”…
Here’s a Mexican-American trade story that recently made headlines: it was discovered that an employee at the Hermosillo, Sonora Ford plant had a deal worked out with dealers of a different kind in the United States. Ford Fusions and Lincoln MKSs would be intercepted between a final standards check and the point where they would be loaded onto a train and would have the under-trunk area packed with weed, to the tune of $1.4 million dollars at this point. Three cars were found loaded after they had made it to a rental lot at the Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN airport!
5. I’m really not that scary, Mister!
Finally, we have to touch on the subject of Automotive News and their hit-piece on the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon. Whether you view the editorial as a bit of clickbait or the written word version of the Reverend Lovejoy’s wife from The Simpsons howling out, “PLEASE think of the children!”, we have to highlight it, if for nothing more than it’s hysteria.
“The 840-hp Dodge Challenger SRT Demon from Fiat Chrysler is so inherently dangerous to the common safety of motorists that it’s registration as a road-worthy automobile should be banned.”
“Oddly enough, for a vehicle designed to be a purpose-built drag racer, the Demon — as delivered from the factory — has already been banned from regulated drag strips by that sport’s sanctioning body, the National Hot Rod Association, allegedly for being “too fast.””
Remember: the Demon is not banned from competition. It will be welcomed once the chassis and roll cage are up to NHRA specs for a car that runs in single-digit territory. If you don’t understand that, stay away from the car. It will kill you without mercy.
Just settle down a little. Everyone seems to get a little Ralph Nader in them when things like this come around. Yes the Demon is a purpose built street legal car. No one is going to buy one of these 100K units and mash the loud petal from the minute they get the keys. There are a lot of \”street cars\” today with this and more horse power. I read a few years ago that 47percent of riders that bought a Hyabusa new died on it . If that was the fact why didn\’t they just become a junky. I think they would have better odds. Anyway,I\’ll just bet ya that this is all put out by Dodge . They had this wrote up. So web sights like this will do things like this. I can not remember any car having a longer and bigger showing. My hats off to them ,they put as much spin on things as the White House.They are sure enough getting their money\’s worth out of the advertising company that is putting all this on. They have yet to say the price. I\’ll bet north of 100K.Heck Vipers start around 90K. So all this BS they are writing is just that. You need not worry ,Demons will not be flying through every house that sets at a \”T\” in the road. When they finally start to sell them. We will see the zillion aires that will go buy one . And with their egos . They will tell everyone all about it . And next year it will be bigger and better . So I\’m gona keep looking at good old BangShift . They will keep us all up to date . So don\’t worry ,there won\’t be a Demon criuze missle landing in your living room any time soon. I just want to see what real performance from real people will look like. I personally have not read or watched much of the spin they have put out. Now its show time.
I think the ‘banned’ thing is just to crank up sales and future collector values. I really see very few actually driven/used for their intended purpose. With that being said, I’ll put one in my living room to use as a TV stand, along with my ’66 Hemi, 3spd, 4 dr Coronet coffee table and my aluminum case A833 door stop
All cars are dangerous in the hands of anybody that dont know how to drive them. You dont need a 800 horsepower challenger to kill yourself or others on the Road. As long as you have a vehicle capable of speeds above 5 miles an hour, you will have dum people running people over or slideing sideways in to things. If the demon is so dangerous, we need to outlaw all cars with more than 0,8 liter motors.
At dealership we had a middle eastern gentelman purchase a GT 500 Mustang. Wadded the front end up with temp plates still attached. Bought ANOTHER one and DID IT AGAIN!!!!
If you’ll excuse me, I need to catch a flight to Minneapolis.
One of those weed stuffed fusions made it to the dealership here in town and was sold before the police figured out the scheme. http://krocam.com/rochester-mans-new-car-came-with-50-pounds-of-pot/
I wonder how much of it made it to it’s intended destination.
Damn and blast! Why aren’t new Fusions on sale here in the UK?
That would have saved a ton of money on weed and I’d have a car to play with as well….
My one cousin is a design exec at GM in Detroit. A few years ago he bought a Suburban for his wife. Obviously it’s cold there in the winter and every time she had the heater on for awhile she was getting violently ill and disoriented.
After the 2nd time it happened they took it back to the dealer and told them what was happening. They ended up taking the entire heater box out of the truck and found bags of Crack stuffed inside it!! Once the scalding hot water ran over it long enough it was putting “fumes” out.
They later found out that somebody on the assembly line was dealing drugs and they got tipped off that the bosses were close to figuring out who so they just stuck their supply in the nearest car. Just happened to be her’s! Not sure if they ever caught the guy or not.
There\’s always those with cubic money but lack cubic driving skills, just look at YouTube. I swear there are more telephone poles and parked cars out there to create the \”safety barrier\” and keep the skill-less contained.
the kid driving across Australia ( all over the news here as you’d imagine) reminded me of a simpler time – when I was 11 my parents and I went on a road trip to Pt Lincoln in South Australia – around 8 hours drive from the next biggish town where we were booked in to stay the next night. That morning when we had to leave dad had a migraine and mum didn’t drive so they said to me ` do you think you could drive for a bit til dads headache gets better?’ Uh, yes, 11 year old going on for 18 said… they both fell asleep within 10 mins of leaving Lincoln so the old boy’s Falcon got top speed tested…we hit over 100 mph on several occasions on that trip. No dramas, no hassles, even overtook a cop car at speed at one point, didnt notice or didnt care..Ah, the joys of the 1970’s…