Work, work and more work…your loyal BangShift staff are putting in hours for you! With Chad, Brian and I all all busting our humps in the name of advancing the gearhead cause, we’ve got little odd newsbites piling up on the desk, so in order to keep things neat and tidy, we take a few, slightly roast them and put them out as our quick bite of Scrapple for you!
1. Hooray…a hot rod Nissan Leaf.
The less that can be said about this thing, the better, so here goes: it is currently only for the Japanese market, does come with a retuned computer to provide better acceleration, and offers up more performance-oriented suspension tunes and tires. It also adds red striping and as far as desirability goes, is right up there with a cactus enema. No thank you. Moving on…
2. The Pacific Coast Highway is open again.
The Mud Creek mudslide, a 75-acre slide that knocked out a section of California State Route 1 (aka Pacific Coast Highway) near Big Sur back in May 2017 has finally been dealt with after fifteen months. Caltrans workers worked to stabilize a new peninsula and to create a roadbed, and this week the quarter-mile section of roadway has been opened to the public for use once more. Take it from me…if you haven’t driven that stretch of road yet, do it.
3. Do I get a free Wahlburger if I buy a Camaro?
There is now a Mark Wahlberg Chevrolet dealership in Columbus, Ohio, and yes, we do mean that Mark Wahlberg. How long do you think it’ll take before some wiseass comes into the dealership’s service entrance complaining about a “good vibration” from their truck?
4. Cut from the team.
Santino Ferrucci, the Formula 2 idiot who publicly committed career seppuku at Silverstone by deliberately ramming his teammate off of the racing surface, driving around the pits in the race car with his cell phone in-hand and safety gear off, and other actions that infuriated FIA officials and his team at Trident, has gotten his just desserts. The Trident Motorsport team terminated Ferrucci’s contract, claiming not only the incidents at Silverstone as cause, but a “serious breach of driver’s payment obligations”…in other words, Ferrucci was paying for his seat time and failed to do so. Reportedly, HAAS hasn’t as of yet acted one way or another, but is gathering facts to determine what to do with him during his four-race ban.
5. Flying car news…
Photo: EAA via AOPA
Strangely enough, we have flying car news to report this week. One involves the Terrafugia Transistion, a project that has been in the works for years now. The company is now planning production starting in 2019 and has made modifications, including a hybrid mode that utilizes a lithium-iron-phosphate battery, a remodeled interior, airbags, improved seatbelts, a full-frame parachute system, more cargo space and cameras for better rear-view visibility during road operations.
The other is known as BlackFly, and it’s an amphibious single-human drone that is packing eight propellors, has the ability to be geofenced, and has a “Home” button that will allow it to return to it’s home destination autonomously. Check out the vehicle’s takeoff attitude and tell me you’d willingly hop in the seat.
