Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Turns out they've got "street-legal" racing over there at Pomona, for $20.00. You have to meet the safety rules and specifications (one being which your car can't be faster than a 10-second quarter mile, heh). You wear a helmet if your car is faster that 14 seconds, which would be my Challenger V-6. But it's all cool and above board. Meaning safe.
The Dodge Challenger Demon is a street-legal dragster. That's it. It's a race car, bottom line.
I've been reading about it at Road and Track and Car and Driver, and will post more later.
But watch the videos. It's seriously as mean as you can get. It's not built for Grand Prix racing. Or for Daytona, even. It's built for the drag strip and will blow your mind. (At the second video below the Demon pops a wheelie.)
Firing hundreds of workers all at once is rare, at least in the auto industry. But Tesla Inc. does things differently.
Word leaked out Friday that the electric car, battery and solar roof company had bulk-fired several hundred employees.
The San Jose Mercury News, which broke that story, said Tesla made clear that workers were dismissed for subpar performance, not laid off. Layoffs tend be blamed on business conditions or overstuffed payrolls, not on job performance.
It's unclear how many of the company's 33,000 workers were cut. Tesla won't pinpoint the number. News reports put it between 400 and 1,200.
A factory employee told the Mercury News that about 60 fellow workers were told to head for the exit. The company said, however, that most of those dismissed work in administrative and sales jobs.
Some workers at the Tesla plant have been trying to organize a union.
"I had great performance reviews. I don't believe I was fired for performance," said Daniel Grant, who told The Times he's worked at Fremont factory since 2014 as a production assistant. He suspects he was fired because he raised safety issues and supported a union drive.
"The company didn't show me or others our most recent reviews when they fired us," Grant said. "I would like the company to release our full reviews, including peer reviews, to us."
An assembly line worker, Mike Williams, said his firing last week could not be the result of a bad performance review because, in his last review in 2016, "my supervisor had nothing but good things to say about me."
Other fired workers were treated the same, he said. "Our reviews were due in June. In June they told us they would be in August. In September they told us October."
Williams said he received a disciplinary write-up about a year ago for playing music that contained profanity but stopped when he was ordered to.
He was fired, he believes, because he spoke up about safety issues at employee meetings and because he wore a union shirt on what's become Union Shirt Friday for some workers at the Telsa plant. "I had a union sticker on my water bottle, too," he said.
Tesla declined to discuss the claims of either fired worker...
Cadillac's CTS-V is a mild-mannered monster, a Clark Kent car that transforms instantly from milquetoast sedan to high-horsepower track master.
Moderately styled inside and out but massive under the hood, the CTS-V represents Cadillac's ambition to build the perfect all-around performance car — or what the company calls "the ultimate sports sedan."
"This is a car for someone who wants a car that can do everything," said Tony Roma, chief engineer for Cadillac's ATS, CTS and V-series family. "They don't want a fleet full of sports cars and luxury cars."
Cadillac has stuffed the CTS-V with sports car and luxury car appointments.
The four-door, five-passenger sedan is propelled by a 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 engine, jointly designed by engineers from Cadillac and its GM sibling Corvette, that makes 640 horsepower and 630 pound-feet of torque.
The CTS-V engineers said they were trying for the throttle response of a Ferrari 458 and an engine growl that "barked with a special signature," helped in part by the quad exhaust system.
Check off that box. The rear-wheel-drive CTS-V is a rubber-burning, tail-wagging hooligan car.
The eight-speed transmission comes with a track mode and a launch control function. (The daily driver modes are Touring and Sport.) The 19-inch wheels are clad in performance tires. A front splitter and rear spoiler come standard.
Together, those elements allow this refined rocket to jet from zero to 60 miles per hour in a claimed 3.7 seconds, on the way to a top speed of 200 miles per hour.
Brembo brake calipers bring the vehicle back to earth. A magnetic ride control suspension system keeps it stable. A head-up display keeps the driver's eyes on the road, and the magnesium paddle shifters allow for a pleasantly engaged drive experience.
Of course, not all buyers will be ready to take advantage of the power, speed and handling of the CTS-V. So, Cadillac has thoughtfully included in the price of the car two days of "performance training" at a race track...
The Demon makes the Hellcat look like a church mouse.
The wide-body Dodge Challenger SRT Demon is a barely street-legal drag racer with a V8 that can produce up to 840 HP and 770 pound-feet of torque, making it the most powerful American car ever. It’s also the quickest car in the world, with an NHRA certified 0-60 mph time of 2.3 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 9.65 seconds at 140 mph...
Ever since high school, my dream of dream cars was a Porsche 911. Not necessarily a turbo, though, although the new 911 Turbo S is out of this world. (And obviously way out my price range, with a starting price of just over $200,000.)
I still think, when I'm a little older, that I'll find a way to pick up a pre-owned 911 one of these days. I'll save up for a while, if I need to. Gotta check that off my bucket list.
Porsche’s 2017 911 Turbo S is a faintly measurable fraction superior to the 2016 model. It’s so barely better that only a really first-rate driver would even notice.
I didn’t notice. To me, the 2017 version of this delicious sports car is virtually identical to its predecessor. Because that needed no improvement to impress me, I might not have been impressed by the upgrades.
They’re real, even if I can’t feel them. The 2017 911 Turbo S is equipped with bigger turbochargers, with larger impellers, plus modified cylinder heads and a throttle boost device designed to eliminate turbo lag.
Together, they help produce 20 more horsepower in the 2017 than was available in the identical 2016 version (580, up from 560), a 7-mphr increase in top track speed (205 mph, up from 198) and a 0.1 faster pace from zero to 60, (2.8 seconds, down from 2.9 — though the convertible version still takes that 2.9 seconds).
That makes this the quickest and fastest 911 ever built, and the quickest and fastest mass-production Porsche — after the limited-production 918 Spyder, which posted a 2.5-second sprint to 60 and a top track speed of 214 mph.
Somehow, along with the improved performance, the 2017 also offers improved fuel economy — about 2 miles per gallon better EPA mileage numbers — for a combined 21 mpg.
Like many of its Porsche siblings, the new 911 Turbo S is a rear-engine, all-wheel-drive roadster, designed as much for daily driving as for track-level performance...
British IndyCar driver Justin Wilson remains in a coma and in critical condition after a piece of debris that broke off another car hit him in the head at Pocono Raceway yesterday.
