Another beautiful Spring week passes on, and another week of racing and automotive tomfoolery is occupying our time. Chad is doing the Livestreaming thing, Brian is doing his thing behind the television camera, and as for yours truly…I’ll be out at the track driving. But it wouldn’t be good to leave you high and dry, so I went digging through the recycling bin for some rehash-worthy, roast-worthy tidbits for this week’s Scrapple. Enjoy!
1. Oh, no, not this **** again….
Every blue moon this rumor reappears: the Corvette will go mid-engined. Ever since Zora Arkus-Duntov brought up the suggestion, it’s been the Loch Ness Monster of the fiberglass fanatic community. Admittedly, a couple of years ago the rumors started to become a little more than vaporware when spies handed Car and Driver photos of what appeared to be a kit bash of Corvette and Holden ute at a testing location. Well, once again the rumors have flared up, this time because Chevrolet re-upped their trademark on “ZR-1”, the code for the top-tier heavy hitter. We can’t wait to see what the ZR-1 will look like, but as for the mid-engined car…well, call us faithless if you must, but until it’s parked before our eyes, the long rumored “Zora” Corvette isn’t happening. We’ve seen this movie before.
2. The Dude Abides.
Of all the things that I’ve been told about the 1998 flick The Big Lebowski (since I’ve never sat through the film), cars don’t stand out as one of those items. Ok, maybe the Corvette that gets trashed does. But now, if you really want, you will soon be able to get 1:43 scale replicas of the cars from the movie, from The Dude’s Gran Torino and the hapless C4 to the Volkswagen. Um…ok. Moving on…
3. Pedestrian safety has finally gone too far.
I want to say it clearly: if you can’t understand “Don’t play in traffic”, maybe you should be expedited from the gene pool. You might not share that opinion, but compared to this idea, the human race could use a little bit of natural selection. The idea is from Google, and consists of two layers on the front of a vehicle: an eggshell-like coating that will shatter upon impact, and a sticky layer that will capture the wayward idiot or kid running out from between parked cars and keep them attached to your hood or fender like a fly trapped on flypaper.
4. Don’t forget about little ol’ me!
The Model S didn’t make Tesla. The Roadster did. Why? Because it proved the concept of a useable electric car. As much as I bag on these cars, the idea behind them is actually well thought out: take the smallest, lightest sports car (Lotus Elise), convert to electric power, and call it good. And it was…up until everybody forgot about the sparky little doorstop over Model S, Model 3 and Model X production. But Tesla hasn’t forgotten, and intends to go back and revisit the electric hot rod…just after they start moving hundreds of thousands of Model 3s.
5. Will the star actually get into the reasonably-priced car now?
The revamped, re-staffed and potentially disastrous re-appearance of TopGear UK will reappear on BBC America on May 30th, and if the rumors are true, one section of the old format has been changed up for the better. In the Clarkson-May-Hammond era, the “Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car” feature was typically a fast-forward inducing yawnfest, unless a wildcard driver appeared (like Tom Cruise, pictured above, who damn near rolled the Kia Cee’d on his lap.) But if the rumors are true, the new version won’t be a lap of an asphalt circuit so much as it will be an autocross lap…complete with a jump, a “water splash area” and two celebrities facing off in rallycross-prepared Mini Coopers. First two up: Jessie Eisenberg and Gordon Ramsey. Please, BBC: Unedited audio from Ramsey’s car. I want to hear every last word when he realizes he’s airborne.
