Good morning everyone and welcome to the lazy Sunday morning, I slept through the start of Turkish Grand Prix edition of the CoW. It must have been the excitement of being at the track yesterday, or maybe just the residual soggy feeling, but I just didn’t want to get out of bed. The coffee is ready though, so let’s get rolling through another big honkin’ Carnival of Wheels.
First up, the folks at Automotive.com are all excited that Top Gear has found it’s way to BBC America and it’s a damn sight better than Pimp my ride. If you’ve never seen Top Gear then you owe it to yourself to give this a look. It’s damn good TV. The Brits manage to do the crazy things we just wonder about. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could blow up a limo to see what would happen? These guys do it. Now if we could just figure out a way to get it back on BBC Canada.
While we’re talking about TV, let’s visit Brian from Racedriven where he’s got a bit of a rant going about the new ESPN coverage of NASCAR. It’s no secret that the networks are always trying something to distance themselves from the others and in sports it’s often the addition of flashy but dumb techno add ons. Are they a bit too much? Brian thinks so and I would tend to agree. Don’t worry though, most of the stupid pet tricks won’t stick around. Remember when they thought American viewers didn’t understand hockey because they couldn’t see the puck? They put a glowing streak behind the puck to make it easier to see. It was dumb and it didn’t last long. Neither will this stuff.
Still on the topic of TV, let’s bring in a little of that Pimp my ride style. Kevin Fleming, otherwise known as the Satellite TV Guru has the goods on how to get satellite TV in your car.
Mazda has announced that the Miata MX-5 will be receiving the 2.3 liter powerhouse from the Mazdaspeed 3 and Jeff Fisher from DrivingEnthusiast is getting excited about it. Jeff’s got some great advice for new buyers: get yourself to a high performance driving school before you kill yourself in it!
One of the most frequent questions car shoppers ask is: Should I buy or lease? Over at Surfer Sam Online, they have a great post outlining the pros and cons of each. Definitely worth a read if you are going to be in the market.
With any business or hobby, sometimes it’s easy to forget that what some of us consider the basics are really elusive to the newcomer. Peter at Succeed with this likes cars, but he’s not a gearhead. So when a conversation on cars with a couple of buddies went technical, he went looking for some education on the basics. What he found was a great video that visually explains the build up and function of a modern engine. This one would be a great tool for shop teachers.
When they were first introduced, run flat tires were heralded as a revolution in the tire world. As Super Saver points out, that revolution doesn’t always translate well into the real world, where the limitations of run flats become readily apparent. In his conclusion, there is one item he missed out on. Most vehicles that come with run flats, from sports cars to minivans, do not have provisions for a spare tire. In other words, even if you want to switch to conventional tires, you can’t mount a spare tire. A poorly thought out revolution.
As a teenager, we spend most of our waking hours being taught. If we are lucky, we are taught how to drive. As we get older and our brains fill up with the responsibilities of life, we lose bits and pieces of the knowledge we gained in our youth. Over at The Driving Woman, Sheila Scarborough has a teenager who is going through driver training. That teenager is constantly pointing out the error of Mom’s ways. Does it make her a better driver than Mom? Of course not, experience is key to driving, but we can still forget a lot of little things along the way that the new student has fresh in her mind. The moral of the story? Driver training isn’t just for the young ones, but for all of us. Find a local school and take a refresher, before your kids become your teacher.
Oh yes, a dab of Tide To Go will help with those errant bits of taco!
Over at DrivingEnthusiast, Jeff has had his happy pills this week and he’s excited about another car. The EVO X, which is slated to be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in October. I’ve recently heard that there may be a couple of them around town next week and they’ll be available for photos, though a drive is unlikely. If that’s indeed the case, you can be sure that you’ll see them here in The Garage.
To finish things up, we are going to swing back to Automotive.com where Edward Sanchez has launched the latest salvo in the American vs. Japanese battle. It’s not enough for the Traditional Domestics to have great halo cars and so so bread and butter cars. It is indeed time for them to sweat the details on all of their cars if they want to gain a foothold against the Traditional Imports.
That’s it for another week’s Carnival of Wheels. Be sure to swing back next Sunday for the Labour Day edition of the CoW. Bloggers, even though it’s a long weekend, we’ll still be taking submissions as normal, before midnight on Saturday. See you then!
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