Here I sit broken hearted. Paid a dime and? Ok, so I’m not really suffering from a bathroom wall related incident. I’m just a tired old fat guy who is sore from taking yet another header during a kid’s hockey practice. Last week, I think I chipped an elbow, so today when I went down I kept my arms out of the way. Big mistake! All 270 pounds of me landed on my right ass cheek! Needless to say, I’m a hurtin’ unit. Fortunately for the CoW, I can still read some great posts and my fingers still work. We’ve got a couple of newcomers this week and Jeff Fisher has been working overtime, so crack open a cold one, strap in and get ready for yet another quick lap around the auto blogs.
First up we have a general rant from Jeff at DrivingEnthusiast about the nastiness that is the fake air vent or hood scoop. This style vs. function debate has been raging as long as I can remember, and it’s not just on performance cars. A neighbour dropped by yesterday to check out the 08 Focus in the driveway yesterday and the first thing he commented on were the odd looking chrome faux vents in the fenders. Dumb.
Chris from DropKick Monkey publishes a blog about viral marketing and unique ads. This week he has a cool ad from Down Under for the new Toyota Land Cruiser 200. Cool ad, but it’s a shame that Chris doesn’t provide a bit of commentary to go along with it. Perhaps some of our Aussie regulars can explain what a “crump of land” is.
The **** of the year has become pretty much a media standard at this time of year and Jeff Fisher offers up his COYT and his top 3 disappointments of the year. While the thumbs up is no big surprise, the thumbs down may raise a few eyebrows here and there.
To finish up, we’ve got two posts about S2000 track cars, and different ways to get there.
First up, we have CoW newcomer Aishwish from AutoCarsBlog who has a post about the Bulletproof Automotive S2000 GT. Sounds like a pretty cool beast if you were to lose the silly car show paint scheme.
Finally, we’ve got another post from Jeff. As you may know, Jeff is a bit of a track dog and has spent more than a bit of time working with the S2000. This week Jeff is announcing a new series where he is building a serious track day car from a well used daily driver.
That’s it for another week! Be sure to swing by next week when we take another look at what the auto blogs have to offer. Bloggers, remember to get your submissions in by midnight on Saturday to be included.
1 comment so far ↓
Regarding Jeff’s post on scoops over at DrivingEnthusiast I must admit I was a bit surprised as to several incorrect comments. I will agree that some fake scoops seem to be overwhelming but in the same breath I do understand several reasons why they are present. For years racing organizations have disallowed modifications to certain body styles on cars “unless” those styles where present at time of manufacture. For that very reason, many “potentials” have been included to make a car more appealing to the crowds most likely to race them. Then there are some designs that are applied to cars as some sort of a historical tribute to what used to be. Shelby’s being a very good example. Besides, what does a 50 year old baby-boomer that’s planing on driving her car to the grocery store care about “real” performance issues?
The first thing I found to be inaccurate was the comment, “Why aren’t hood scoops functional anymore? Because we don’t have carburetors….” I am not sure why Jeff wouldn’t realize “fresh” air or “cooler” air is as important to a FI motor as it is a carbureted motor. Fresh air is even more important to helping cool a performance engine and every racer understands the old adage of heat is friction… friction is wear, thus any cooling is good cooling.
As for Shelby scoops here are some more accurate facts. The roof vent scoops were not designed for cigarette smoke but in fact to help with removing air accumulating inside the car and introducing it as a layer of air over the rear of the car at speeds. This created what is known as a “Laminar flow” a principal that added an extra 5 horsepower to the car’s top speed not to mention helping to stabilize body roll. This was originally designed in part by Peter Brock one of Shelby’s top designers and Chief instructor at the Carroll Shelby Driving School.
For drivers who have a good comprehension of what constitutes good hood scoop operation it’s a well known fact that the majority of hood scoops work more efficiently when put on backwards thus creating “Cowl Induction.” If you look closely at any Mustang ore Shelby many times you will notice two long oval holes cut in the firewall area that allows fresh/clean air to be inducted into the engine compartment via the opening in the cowl area. To the untrained eye these holes often go unnoticed. Example; http://bp0.blogger.com/_iBxAzFjPTxU/Rtjxa_QbZvI/AAAAAAAAAxM/WDWfoHZy4nU/s1600-h/IMG_1719.JPG
To make the statement that the side scoops were not very functional in helping cool the rear brakes is partially wrong and besides those same vents were also and are still used by some drivers to help cool off the cabin of the car when supplemented with electric motors.
If every scoop was in fact made to be functional and quantified the cost of many cars would be out the price range of many buyers. Simply because of those fake scoop and duct openings being there, drivers and racers alike now have “potential” performance enhancements made available to them.
But then again, I think some hubcaps looked pretty cool too.
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