Viper ups its horsepower ratings
Dodge Viper
The Detroit Motor Show saw the 2008 Dodge Viper make its
debut. If you were tired of the ‘old’ 500 horsepower Viper,
then does Dodge have a treat for you! Yes, 600 horsepower
for the new Viper!
Up till now, the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 had held the
horsepower crown with 505 hp, but no longer. The Viper’s
output comes from an aluminum V-10 engine. Chrysler group
engineers worked with specialists from McLaren Performance
Technologies and Ricardo Inc. to increase the horsepower by
upping displacement, adding electronically adjusted variable
valve timing, and raising the rpm limit.
Dodge claims the Viper will go from 0 to 60 mph (almost 100
clicks) in less than four seconds and 0 to 100 mph and back
to 0 in about 12 seconds.
The Viper gets a new bonnet with a functional air scoop, and
a series of vents in the top to better manage heat generated
by the big motor.
Chrysler group engineering chief Frank Klegon said the
automaker will make 2,500 to 2,600 Vipers a year at the
company’s Conner Avenue factory in Detroit, about the same
volume Chrysler made of the last generation Viper.
Having driven a Viper on a race track a few years ago, this
will certainly be some muscular beast. A good stab on the go
pedal would have the Viper sideways any time! And that was
the old “underpowered” one!
Toyota climbs on top again
Toyota has been the top seller in almost
all categories in Thailand, other than the one-tonne
pick-ups, which had been Isuzu territory for many years.
However, that has changed, with Toyota’s Vigo outselling the
Isuzu by 5,000 units during 2006, racking up 166,358
one-tonners.
In the total market, Toyota moved 289,108 vehicles out the
door in the 12 months of 2006, with Isuzu second with
179,079 and then Honda at 66,633 units.
Autotrivia Quiz
Quiz
driver
Last week I
asked what did the Taiwanese YLN and the Nissan Gloria have
in common? This was simple. They were the same car, a 2.2
litre diesel, used as the Hong Kong taxis for many years.
What happened to YLN? Sorry I don’t know, but am happy to be
brought up to date!
So to this week. Look at the picture. What is the name of
the driver holding the trophy? Hint - it was 1957. Another
hint, the person on the far right is the manufacturer of the
car. Final hint - he was initially denied a racing license
because he failed the medical.
For the Automania FREE beer this week, be the first correct
answer to email [email protected]
Good luck!
Fancy a Jaguar for B. 399?
Well, one of the chaps who comes to the
‘Classic Car Club’ meetings at Jameson’s Pub on the second
Monday of each month did. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a car,
but it was a wonderful glossy publication he picked up on a
sale table!
Published in the UK, its price there was supposed to be 35
pounds Sterling, which is close enough to B. 2,450, so at B.
399 it was a real bargain.
Having had it for a few weeks, it has more information on
the racing Jaguars over the years than any other Jaguar book
I have seen. I was very interested to see a photograph of
Aussie Bob Jane’s lightweight E-Type racing in the UK in
1964. I actually raced against that car in Australia in
1965.
Prince Bira also gets a few mentions, having been picked by
the Jaguar Team Manager Lofty England to race for them, and
in the XK120’s first race, led the three car Jaguar team
until a puncture stopped his runaway win and the chequered
flag was then taken by the second driver in the team, Leslie
Johnson. First time out and Jaguar winning all the way.
Thank goodness there are people out there who keep all this
information, and it manages to get into print.
The book is called Jaguar The Sporting Heritage (ISBN
1-8522-7889-7), but I’m sure it will cost you more than B.
399!
GM shows Chevy plug-in
concept
The Detroit Motor Show saw the American press
heaping praise on GM’s Rick Wagoner following the revealing
of the electric Chevrolet Volt Concept car. With little else
as a bright light at the show, the Volt was hailed as the
beacon, with GM’s fortunes about to turn around, and even
show the Japanese hybrids the way to the future.
Chev
Volt
Well, that’s what the American press would like us to think.
The real numbers are somewhat different, with Toyota poised
to take over the world. (They may as well take over the
American presidency. They couldn’t do a worse job.)
It seems that the future is now and living in Detroit, at
least if you read the publicity blurb coming out of the
American automotive capital. “GM shows Chevy plug-in
concept. Volt runs on electricity, uses gas engine as
back-up generator. The Chevrolet Volt, which is driven by
electricity alone, uses a small three-cylinder gasoline
engine only to recharge its batteries. The batteries can
also be charged by plugging into an ordinary electrical
outlet.”
So GM has reverted to the electric car concept, something
they touted as the future some 15 years ago, with their EV1.
This was the car that the ‘green’ forces believe was killed
off in a clandestine fashion, in conjunction with the oil
industry. A recent documentary film, “Who Killed the
Electric Car?” focused on GM’s role in ending California’s
experiment in the 1990s with promoting all-electric cars. It
is claimed that GM and other companies, including Toyota (so
there could be a skeleton in the cupboard), produced
electric cars that were sold in California at that time. All
of them dropped plans to make and market the vehicles once
California changed rules requiring them.
Be that as it may, GM’s new electric vehicle has an electric
motor powering the front wheels, while the on-board gasoline
engine only turns the generator to recharge the battery,
making it quite different from the hybrids as seen in
Toyota’s Prius, for example, in which the electric motor and
the gasoline engine both power the vehicle. In the Toyota
model, the two forms of propulsion assisting each other.
GM
Volt
Plug-in hybrids (as these are being called) are seen as a
more viable alternative to all-electric vehicles because
they do not need to stop and recharge when their batteries
run out. They can still run on purely electric power, but at
relatively low speeds and for relatively short distances.
However, charging a battery takes 6.5 hours, not the few
minutes it takes to fill a car with gasoline.
The generator gasoline engine in the Volt, says GM, could
also run on “renewable” fuels like ethanol or biodiesel, or
even compressed natural gas (CNG).
According to GM sources, Volt can go 1,000 km or more before
needing refueling or recharging, and the batteries should
last for about 65 km before needing recharging. To reduce
fuel consumption, owners can plug the Volt into a standard
110-volt (US voltage) electrical outlet to recharge the
batteries.
So the simple concept is that GM’s Volt is an electric car
that can go up to 65 kays before the batteries need a
charge, but you can charge while on the run, by using the
on-board gasoline engine powering a generator, so you can go
much further. Even 1,000 km says GM.
Interestingly, GM’s Wagoner said this about electric
vehicles, just two months ago (before the Detroit Auto show)
when asked where did he see the industry heading. Was it
electric? “The feasibility is going to be driven by battery
technology. It sort of depends on what standards you want to
put around it. But if you’re not requiring a very long range
of battery-only operation, then it could work. But if you
really want to get a battery-powered vehicle, you’re going
to have to have significant progress in lithium ion
batteries.” Wagoner knows how to keep his cards close to his
chest, that is for sure!
Though the new car uses a different technology, the
batteries in the Volt perform nearly identically to those in
the EV1, which GM developed in the 1990s. Today’s
lithium-ion batteries can store about the same amount of
power (16 kilowatt-hours) and provide nearly the same
vehicle range (60 km or more) as the EV1’s lead-acid
batteries. However, the lithium-ion batteries, located under
the Volt’s chassis are about a third the size of the EV1’s,
and should last the vehicle’s lifetime, but this is still
not good enough for all applications.
Building an affordable plug-in hybrid will certainly require
more advances in battery technology. Batteries powerful
enough to allow the kind of highway speed drivers are
accustomed to also tend to produce a lot of excess heat.
Battery companies are researching ways to produce batteries
that last longer and do not run as hot, while still being
able to store and release ample power.
Returning to the technical side, there are however, many
good reasons to go electric. Electric motors offer more
torque - the pulling power a car uses to accelerate -
relative to their kilowatt (or horsepower) output than
gasoline engines do. Motor racers know that horsepower
figures look good in press releases, but it is torque that
wins races.
The Volt’s electric motor can produce up to 121 kilowatts,
the equivalent of about 161 horsepower. It can produce 320
Newton-meters, or about 236 foot-pounds, of torque. In a
sedan car, those are stunning numbers.
At 4.3 metres long, the Volt is slightly smaller than a
Toyota Prius and goes from 0 to 100 kmh in less than 8.5
seconds, and whilst the vehicle on display at the auto show
was a concept car, GM is intent on developing a production
version, said Tony Posawatz, GM’s vehicle line director;
however, he declined to give a date the car would be in
production.
Lohner-Porsche
electric AWD
So far, so good. But has GM stolen a march on the others?
Unfortunately for GM, the answer is no, but it requires
someone with a long memory. The first hybrid, according to
my research, was built in 1902 by the son of an Austrian
tinsmith. His name was Ferdinand Porsche - yes the same
Porsche who designed vehicles for Daimler, Auto Union, made
the Beetle and finally gave birth to the line-up of some of
the greatest sportscars ever seen.
Porsche designed the Lohner-Porsche electric car in 1900 but
then looked at the weight problem with the lead-acid
batteries and worked out that what he needed was a
lightweight generator to provide the electric current,
rather than batteries, so in 1902 he harnessed Daimler’s and
Panhard’s internal combustion engines to power the
generators for the electric motors in a new technology that
he called ‘System Mixt.’ The system might have been ‘mixed’
but the results were not. More speed records were won by his
hybrid race car, European acclaim followed, and in 1905
Porsche won the Poetting Prize as Austria’s most outstanding
automotive designer.
So GM might appear to be in front, but they are actually 103
years behind! Sorry about that, Rick Wagoner!
