After 3 weeks of motorsports madness here in The Garage, we have a racing free weekend. We are having a floor laying good time however, as we are installing our new laminate in the living room. You now the stuff, we bought it months ago, did the dining room and then spent May and June recovering from an oddball illness in the house. So today, it’s nice that we’ve got a short CoW. The only problem is that I’m groovin’ to The Clash and not concentrating on reading! Why not join me, top up your coffee, crank up some old punk and see what this week’s hot lap will bring.

There were a few notable happenings in racing last weekend. From wild and woolly John Force finally breaking his slump, to wild and woolly parents from the IRL at The Glen, to NASCAR fighting passing on the grass, Brian from RaceDriven has a bunch of details. As a racing parent, I have to weigh in on the Hornish incident, but I think it may take a post of it’s own!

On occasion, I find that Jeff Fisher at DrivingEnthusiast can be a bit over the top in his negativity, but today I can’t help but agree with him. The topic? VW’s upcoming R32 Golf. To be honest, I haven’t really followed the car but as Jeff points out, the Golf has become dated, fat and boring and I’ll add my own little concern. Will it have the long term reliability of an STi or Evo X? As VW seems happy to rebadge old models and sell them as new, why not re-release the first gen GTI and sell it as the next best, greatest thing and market it for 8 grand! The car will sell like hot cakes…again!

I just love getting submissions from Kevin, our fave pizza wagon guy. He always has some neat insight into the world of cars and this week he’s seen the best of the independent service world and the best of the department store service world. After a catastrophic failure of his Hyundai, Kevin received some great personal service from an independent shop owner who was kind enough to offer a discount for paying cash. Kevin’s wife’s car needed an oil change, so he decided to try out the new local WallyMart. Big mistake. Don’t be too hard on the service advisor though, last week he was working in the garden department!

This may surprise many of you, but I’ve never been a big fan of engine swaps. Why, when we can built great gobs of reliable horsepower from OE based engines, do we need to build unreliable Frankenstein cars? For the second time this week, Jeff from DrivingEnthusiast and I are in agreement. The topic? A huge horsepower S2000 with a twin turbo Supra mill shoehorned in where the original 4 cylinder once lived. Very cool, but very dumb.

That’s it for this edition of the Carnival of Wheels. Thanks for stopping by and be sure to swing by next Sunday for the next big Edition. Bloggers, don’t forget to drop by our submissions page before midnight Saturday to be included.