As regular readers of The Garage may have noticed, I’ve developed a bit of a thing for the Lotus Elise. The traditional Lotus concept of light weight and modest power has always appealed to me. Combine that with a reliable, modern powerplant and you get an unbeatable package.

Today, I came across a super blog by a guy named Chris from Kentucky. My Lotus Elise follows Chris’ travels with his new Elise. The blog showcases Chris’ skill with a camera, showing his Elise in som fab locations including the infamous “Deal’s Gap” in North Carolina, reputed to be one of the best driving roads in North America. I’m looking forward to seeing where Chris shoots the Elise in the future.

When most of us take a road test in a used car, it usually means a quick spin around the block. Not so for a 16 year old in Timaru New Zealand. This guy took the car for a weekend & put 500 km on it! Apparently, the kid isn’t facing any charges from police, as the owner didn’t stipulate conditions of the road test.

Another one of life’s lessons….when you are trying to sell a used car, always go along for the road test, or at least keep something of value (like another car) as collateral.

It seems that American kids are FAT! Wow, who woulda thought?

The makers of child car seats are having to rethink the design of many of their seats because there are so many fat kids who don’t fit into the standard seat. Imagine, all those poor 3 year olds who weigh 40 pounds already. That’s a hell of a lot of smarties!

This really is a sad state of affairs, but I just can’t help but see the humour in all these chub balls getting toted around spilling over the sides of their booster seat with those cool cup holders stuffed full of gummi worms & oreos.

I’ve been pretty outspoken on my views regarding the tragic death of Paul Dana. It’s kinda nice to know that Dana’s team mates share my viewpoint. SpeedTV reports that Buddy Rice said “That guy put everything he had into becoming a race car driver. Obviously he got a little bit of a later start than some of us, that’s just the way of the course.”

As I said, it doesn’t matter how old you are, ten years of racing is still ten years of racing.

Technicians ofter nickname the cars they work with. Some aren’t really deserved, while others are well earned. Here at Nissan, the Pathfinder has been known as the Ditchfinder for years.

The folks at the Porsche store down the street have already found a nickname for Porsche’s newest offering:

The Gayman S

I can’t wait to see the first one wearing a rainbow!

Having been around motorsports of one sort or another my whole life, I have unfortunately been touched by the deaths of a couple of drivers that I’ve competed against. Having been a driver, I suspect that the death of another driver tends to affect me more deeply than those who haven’t raced. Because of this I typically don’t feel the need to broadcast my feelings, there are enough people who want to do that. I wasn’t going to write about Paul Dana’s death, as I think enough has been said already. Then on Tuesday, I read an article in the Toronto Sun by Dean McNulty titled “Dana had no place on an IRL track” and it made me so angry that I had to comment.

The author goes to great lengths to explain how inexperienced Dana was and how tragic it was that he was allowed to race cars at this level. From what I can see Mr. McNulty, supposedly a motorsports writer, has no concept of the route an open wheel racer takes to get to the top levels of the sport. Like any pro sport, motor racing has a ladder of sorts that most athletes climb on their way to the top level. Most racers start in karts, or a lower powered formula car like a Formula Ford or Vee, then progress to any number of higher formulas as talent and funding allow. McNulty asserts that Dana had reached the Infiniti Pro Series “a minor league stepping stone and did reasonably well, winning two races and a couple of poles”. What McNulty fails to mention is that the IPS is the last rung on the ladder before progressing to the IRL and that Dana had two full seasons, including finishing 2nd overall in the series. One of his wins came on the Milwaukee Mile, one of the fastest super speedways & he had the pole at the Homestead track that claimed his life. Clearly, Dana was a talented driver, with exactly the background needed to make the step onto the top wrung of the ladder. Mr. McNulty even goes so far as to compare Dana’s experience to that of “rookie sensation”Danica Patrick. Firstly, how is his ten years of race experience any less credible than her ten years of experience? I’ll go out on a big limb here & say that the only reason Miss Patrick is a sensation is that she is a she. Danica Has never won a race at a pro level, she is essentially a fast also ran, Dana was the real deal. Sure, he was able to put together the sweet sponsorship deal, but he also had the goods to deliver the results once he sat in the car.

“If open wheel racing doesn’t change the way it does business, the blood will be on it’s hands”

I’m not normally one to criticize someone elses views in public, I firmly believe in freedom of speech and all that stuff, but this article goes beyond a public opinion. This smacks of witch hunt. For years, media and politicians and at times even the vatican have tried to shut down motor racing due to it’s barbaric nature. The racing community is more aware of safety now than ever and millions of dollars are spent every year researching ways to make racing safer. Even with modern safety equipment, proper driver education and trackside medical support, the reality is that racing is a dangerous sport. It is a obviously a tragedy when a driver dies, and of course the racing community needs to examine each incident to gain knowledge that may prevent similar incidents in the future.

Driver error does occur. Let’s face it, driver’s are human and sometimes they make mistakes and those mistakes can have grave consequences, but we don’t need some journalist sensationalizing those mistakes in an effort to make themselves look like some sort of prophet. If all the reports are correct, it sounds like Paul Dana may have made a mistake. Perhaps he was blinded by the sun, as the photos show some major shadows on the track from trees outside the track. We will never know. Just don’t let the media turn this into a modern cry to banish motor racing again. Paul Dana would want the racing world to go on competing.

Some of you may have noticed that things have been a bit quiet in The Garage over the last week. That’s because I’ve been working behind the scenes with Jaime from random getting version 2.0 ready to launch, and here it is.

So far, I love the new format, as it gives me, the technically inept, much more control over little things. With Blogger, I basically had to stay within the lines of the template. Here, the lines I have to paint within are much broader.

Please take some time to look around. All the posts still have pictures, but they are in the actual post.The pictures are bigger & clearer than they were in Blogger. I hope everyone likes our new home.

I’m assuming this is a Carrera Panamerica vintage racer, but I just love old Mercedes road racers! I look forward to visiting Cars & Photos for stuff like this.

A couple of weeks ago, I was speaking with some other local Nissan types about an article I had read online that said that Nissan was looking to get into the cargo van market, based on the Titan pick up. Now, Autoblog has reported that Volvo has purchased a portion of Nissan Diesel that sells diesel trucks in Asia, with an option to buy more later.
For years, business consumers have had to put up with poorly designed boxes that have terrible seating, because that’s all that has been offered by the Big 3. Lately of course, the Dodge Sprinter has offered a bit of euro flavour as an alternative, but at a serious price premium. If this Nissan & Volvo combo actually comes to North American, at a competitive price, they might actually kick some serious butt in the cargo van market.