Races, races, races! BangShift is at the races this weekend, and we’ve got plenty of coverage coming in, from Atlanta, Tulsa and Bowling Green. But that doesn’t mean we can’t cook up a little bit of Scrapple for you guys! Check out the possibly interesting bits from this week below…and be sure to brush your teeth afterwards!

1. Drive A Million Miles, Get A New Truck?! Hmm…I’ve got an idea.

Victor Sheppard has a pretty solid work commute, and for nine years, his 2007 Toyota Tundra (the one wearing the automotive bra) was the commuter. Nine years, 125,000 miles a year. That’s correct: Sheppard’s Tundra has covered a million miles with nothing more than general service. Same engine, same trans, same seats. That’s a feat for any car, let alone a relatively new pickup. Toyota seems to think so, too, because they gave Sheppard a brand-new Tundra for free (his sixteenth Tundra, at that!) while the million-mile truck is going to a Toyota lab to be disassembled and investigated to see how everything held up over the miles.

2. Just say no to the idea of a front-wheel-drive Chrysler 300.

We know that FCA is actively deep-sixing the Dodge Dart and the Chrysler 200 in favor of getting someone else to build cars for them. But we’ve been hearing a lot of rumors lately that the rear-drive Chrysler 300 is up for some changes, too…the biggest one being a switch back to front-wheel-drive. Considering the popularity of the Hemi Chrysler when it first hit the scene in 2005, we’re kind of stunned, and we imagine that Ralph Gilles, FCA’s current head of design and the guy who penned the LX 300C, must feel like he’s getting kicked in the pills. FCA, here’s a hint: Bring the SRT Chrysler here, and let someone else make your small cars for CAFE reasons.

3. Mitsubishi is now being controlled by Nissan. 

Unfortunately, FCA’s historic partner in that small-car gig has other issues. Mitsubishi pulled a VW and admitted that they’ve been screwing with fuel economy numbers in the Japanese/Asian markets. Whoopsie! Guess those things just keep on happening. While the North American market wasn’t affected, Mitsu’s books were hit hard…bad enough, in fact, that Nissan (who was affected, since Mitsubishi was making tiny cars under Nissan names anyways) ended up spending $2.2 billion dollars to buy a little over a third of Mitsubishi.

4. “Here’s an idea: pump in sound that makes the driver think they’re using a ton of gas!”

The phrase from the official patent is great: “A time period between two directly successive ignition events of the internal combustion engine is determined. A superimposed noise is then generated at a time between the two directly successive ignition events.” Or, in other words, Ford is going to make smaller engines sound bigger so that drivers don’t rev the holy hell out of the smaller engines, sinking fuel economy. The idea is that owners shift by ear, not by the tachometer, and that by using this device, Ford will trick small-car owners into shifting earlier, which will save fuel.

Okay.

5. If only this worked in real life…Fiats would sell by the millions.

Don’t throw out your prescription just yet.