Steve Parker Motoring / The Car Nut

NASCAR'S EXPENSIVE 3 1/2-HOUR TIRE TEST; 2008's BRICKYARD 400

(This might be the archetypal NASCAR fan photo; Dad spending a ton bringing the family to a race and buying trinkets and food and beer and maybe seeing some drivers; with the Pentagon a favorite NASCAR sponsor).

The only way to run a successful racing series is as a benevolent dictatorship. Never was this so obvious than in Sunday’s three-hour, 28 minute and 29 second tire test run by NASCAR as the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Since its creation by "Big Bill" France over 50 years ago, and now overseen by his grandson, Brian France, NASCAR has been run first and foremost by and for the France family, their partners and minions. This is one place where there is never any question of who is in charge; as a publicly-traded company, International Speedway Corporation, stockholders are happy to leave the running of the organization to those who know it best. In 2007, NASCAR made a profit of just under $3 billion, and was the world's second richest motorsport, trailing Formula One.

Back to Sunday's race at Indy: About two-thirds of the race’s 160 laps on Indy’s 2.5-mile track run under the yellow caution flag (where there’s no passing allowed and the cars are slowed to about 80mph), spectators at the track and those at home were treated to one of the biggest disasters in American racing history.

This past Sunday, ex-Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya, traditional crowd favorite Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Matt Kenseth, Brian Vickers and this season’s winningest driver so far, Kyle Busch, all experienced right-side tire blow-outs which put them out of contention for a win.

As the tire problem became evident, NASCAR threw the yellow flag every 10 to 15 laps, a competition yellow, they call it, so pit crews could inspect the tires on their cars to try and catch blow-outs before they happened. (NASCAR's Sears Craftsman Truck Series is used by many drivers as a minor league series they must get through in order to someday be in the Sprint Cup; some drivers are happy to stay in the series, though, making millions, though not as many as top Sprint Cup competitors).

The last green flag flew with 10 laps left, leaving a  race inside a race --- the race out of the pits --- to determine the winner. Defending NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson got out of the pits ahead of Carl Edwards and held on for his second Brickyard victory. Edwards was second and Denny Hamlin, who had led the race going into the final stop, finished third.

I hate it when races are decided in the pits, and never was a victory thanks to a pit stop more evident than at this Indy race.

NASCAR handled it as they always do; quietly and with no complaints heard by the public from anyone depending on NASCAR for a living, multi-millionaire drivers and team owners included. NASCAR learned a long time ago that auto racing is just another entertainment choice among many, and only a single, dominant story, what politicos call talking points, would work best. Henry Ford II once said, “Never complain, never explain,” and it seems someone at NASCAR took that advice to heart.

Click below for more on how and why NASCAR has become the #1 motor racing sport in the US.

HYDROGEN GOES MAINSTREAM; OH, THE HUMANITY (SAVED)

(A Honda engineer, left rear, shows the couple who had just taken delivery of the US' first leased FCX Clarity, how to 'fill 'er up!' at a West Los Angeles Shell station recently fitted for hydrogen storage and pumping; the Honda dealership handling the lease is about three miles from this gas station ... What a coincidence, huh? And, yes, that's the car its-own-self, glaring at the camera ... You'd think Honda PR people would take better photos, wouldn't you?)

History isn’t usually made at car dealerships, at least pleasant histories, but last Saturday that’s exactly what happened at Honda of Santa Monica, CA, when it delivered a new car, unlike any other, and about which few people could complain.

Local Southern California residents Ron Yerxa and Annette Ballester got the keys to the first FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel cell EV sedan in America. About 200 of the vehicles will be leased over the next three years around the country. Southern California will have three Honda stores with personnel factory-trained to sell, deliver, service and maintain these truly groundbreaking family sedans.  

The timing of Honda getting their FCX cars on the roads of America couldn’t have been better. Just a month ago, a Shell gas station in West Los Angeles, just a few miles from the Honda of Santa Monica store, was outfitted with the equipment to store and sell hydrogen, one of about 45 places in the country where hydrogen is available to the public. Honda, at their US headquarters in Gardena, CA, also has hydrogen fuel “pumps” for filling-up hydrogen fuel cell-powered  vehicles. (GM's Equinox, a fuel cell-powered CUV which will be leased, at Chevrolet dealers; GM says Chevy will handle leasing and sales of all the corporation's coming green fleet).

FCX Clarity is, according to Honda, “a next-generation, hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle. Propelled by an electric motor that runs on electricity generated in the fuel cell, the vehicle's only emission is water, and its fuel efficiency is three times that of a modern gasoline-powered car.”

The company says this latest-generation FCX will travel about 280 miles, or 74-mpg GGE (miles per gasoline gallon equivalent). “GGE?” Great, yet another abbreviation to remember.

General Motors will also lease about 200 Chevrolet Equinox hydrogen fuel cell EVs over the next two to three years, finding their way into government, university and industry test fleets, as well as some lucky private citizens. The monthly lease for Equinox and FCX Clarity is about $600. (The instrument panel in Equinox comes with the now-requisite nifty and just-oh-so de riguer animated screen constantly informing everyone in the car just how much gas they're saving, or is it hydrogen? Aww, forget it! See what Toyota started with that screen on the Prius? Next, a loudspeaker will be announcing mileage each moment to those outside the car, too).

There’s an old joke in the car business about the public doing the last million miles of road-testing for new GM products, but in this case, it’s more true than not.

Click below to find out more about the FCX, the Equinox ... and espeically how they plan to turn all that hydrogen into electricity!

SAT RADIO ALMOST A MONOPOLY THANKS TO FCC

(This 2009 Corvette ZR1, in addition to over 600 horsepower, comes pre-wired for XM satellite radio).

Here at SteveParker.com, we get more questions and comments about satellite radio than any other single topic, with most all of them complaints. And the reasons for that are many of the same reasons sat radio has not grown nor prospered as much as many expected since XM started broadcasting (spacecasting?) on September 25, 2001; Sirius went on-the-air (on-the-space?) on July 1, 2002.

But a Federal Communications Commission decision, due any second now, and perhaps already announced in DC, is going to create a monopoly for sat radio in North America.

Now, it's one thing when a government agency deregulates or otherwise loosens restrictions in an industry (say, like in the banking and mortgage businesses, and that worked out great, didn't it?); it's another when that industry is made-up of just two companies.

This "merger" is going to make people even more confused about the sound system in their vehicle; HD Radio is an all-new product which offers some of the same benefits, sound quality wise, as sat radio. In some ways, it might even be superior. (A benefit to consumers is that sat radio receivers, after the XM and Sirius "merger," will be available from any company that wants to build them; HD Radio already welcomes all radio-makers).

The NY Times on Wednesday night (7-23-08) said the Federal Communications Commission was on the verge of approving a merger between XM and Sirius Satellite Radio, a move that would essentially create a North American monopoly in satellite radio.

The combination of Sirius and XM will create one satellite radio company with about 17 million subscribers and programming running the gamut from NASCAR to Indycar, Howard Stern to Oprah Winfrey, Major League Baseball to Martha Stewart.

Among the conditions that both companies had already accepted were planning for à la carte programming  that would give consumers flexibility in which channels they pay for, permission for any electronics company to develop devices that would receive the new, single-company service, a price freeze for three years and several more.

XM beating Sirius as the first spacecaster is something which has worked to that company's great favor. In the car business, perhaps more than any other, being first out of the gate doesn't guarantee success, but it can sure help. From September, 2001, to July, 2002, there was only one satellite radio company you could actually hear and which was getting all the publicity in car magazines and websites, TV and even traditional radio and newspapers ... you name it, if someone was seriously searching for news about sat radio, they eventually found themselves on XM's website for almost 8 months.

Even more important than XM's earlier launch was one of its owners. In 1988, a consortium of eight companies grouped together to buy one of the sat radio licenses, which were going to be made available by the FCC. Hughes electronics, then-owned by General Motors, was one of those eight.

Hughes made the satellites for XM's system, and GM was the first car-maker to announce sat radio would be available across their entire product line. GM bundled their OnStar service with XM, the two systems using the same exterior antennae for both. GM cars and trucks with OnStar are already pre-wired for XM and in most cases, the radio in that car or truck is ready and able to receive XM. All someone has to do is activate the service. Ask someone at the dealership to do that. It's not difficult, but based on my mail, it's a little too tough for a lot of people.

Click below to find out why car dealers are one of sat radio's biggest problems.

STREET RACERS DESERVE RESPECT - AND A SAFE PLACE TO RACE

Illegal street racing is a huge problem in the US and many other countries, and even the high price of gasoline won’t stop it. The truth is, whether we like or not, whether it makes any sense at all, racing is going to continue until the last drop of high-test is gone. (In this photo from the NY Times, former illegal street racers in Lodz, Poland, compete on a public street closed to all traffic by the police commissioner; the city spent more than $20,000 for timing equipment and this Christmas tree, and the track is open once a month).

Soon, gas/electric hybrids and clean diesel engines will be tuned for racing; hydrogen fuel cell EVs will be competing as soon as they hit the streets in any numbers. There will always be competition between cars and their owners, and there’s no reason that racing won’t continue with tomorrow’s cars. These people will start showing-up at the annual Las Vegas Automotive Holy of Holies, the SEMA Show, probably this year.

Today’s hot rodder is often a computer nerd.

Here’s why this problem needs to be addressed in new ways:

In Maryland a few months ago, a car on a turnpike where illegal races were being held ran into a group of spectators and killed eight bystanders. (In this 1950s photo from an LA-area auto show, NHRA founder Wally Parks, in the light suit, and his wife Barbara spread the word about legal NHRA drag racing).

In San Diego, where the street racing problem has been termed "epidemic," 16 deaths and 31 injuries were directly related to illegal street racing in 2001.

And an incident which has garnered worldwide coverage, being discussed at length even on Larry King Live, Nick Bollea, the son of wrestling personality Hulk Hogan, drove his Toyota Supra, which had been highly-modified for racing in a sport called drifting, ran into a tree at over 100 miles per hour. When that happens, the tree always wins. Bollea was, amazingly, unharmed, but his friend John Graziano, in the passenger seat, didn’t fare as well.

Doctors say he’ll remain bed-ridden and unable to communicate for the rest of his life in a near-vegetative state, his brain severely damaged and part of his frontal lobe having been surgically removed. Nick Bollea, lawyered-up with dad’s money, got  eight months in a county jail near his home. Eight months.

(Nick Bollea's mug shot; Hulk Hogan's son escaped injury when he drove his Toyota Supra, modified for racing, into a tree at over 100-miles per hour; his best friend, US Marine John Graziano, who saw action in Iraq, was in the passenger seat and doctors say he will never again be able to walk, eat normally or engage in any meaningful communication. He had to come home to suffer because Bollea couldn't drive his car, which incidentally is registered in his father's name. It also bring up the subject of driver education and training, but that's for another, future posting.).

Click below for more on the need for illegal street racing to be brought to controlled racing environments, and the history of Big Wille and Brotherhood Raceway.

DISCOVERY-HD ON THE GOODWOOD FESTIVAL OF SPEED; DON'T MISS IT!

HDTV is running a wonderful one-hour documentary on the Goodwood Festival of Speed (FoS) called Goodwood Revival Meeting on their series, HD Theatre. If you see it scheduled, set your DVR to record; it's something you'll want to play again and again, and it's a fabulous show for your kids and friends, too. (Ferrari at speed on Lord March's driveway; and get a load of those skinny little tires!).

Impressed as I was with the quality of the video in this production, seemingly even better than the usual HD channels, a friend of mine who knows about these things says, "Discovery-HD is also the best looking picture you can get.  Much better than broadcast.  No idea how they do it.  It has something to do with their compression algorithm." Well, he lost me there, but at least my impression that the picture was extraordinarily good was confirmed.

When 53-year old Charles Henry Gordon-Lennox, Earl of March and Kinrara, heir apparent of the 10th Duke of Richmond, 10th Duke of Lennox and 5th Duke of Gordon took his place as master of the Goodwood grounds, he was determined to once again turn some of his acreage into a venue for racing of all kinds. But this time it was not to be for prize money or points paid to some championship title, but to showcase great old cars and motorcycles and, whenever possible, the men and women who drove them to fame. (It's not all Euro iron on display; that's Junior Johnson behind the wheel of a 1950s Chevy NASCAR racer).

Goodwood's FoS for this year was run last week, so there's nothing on the show, produced at the  2006 FoS, from the most-recent festival. But what's so compelling about the program are the vivid descriptions of the event and the cars by Doug Nye, one of the world's great automotive and racing historians. Also, the quintessential wealthy, aristocratic, erudite and highly-informed Euro, Alain de Cadenet, reports on the cars and the personalities driving them. As if all that wasn't enough, he's also a good race car driver.

More than anything else, though, the old, historic and black-and-white films of Goodwood's history as one of the best-known racing venues in the world for three different decades sets this TV show apart from anything else we've seen about it. Goodwood, the estate, offers a hotel, horse racing and riding, golf, stables, a spa and many other opportunities to engage in what a luxury vacationer might enjoy, and some surprises. The new Rolls Royce factory was built by owner BMW on the estate's grounds, too. So you can probably take a tour of where that Roller which I'll never be able to afford is made. If you go, drop me a line, okay? Visit Goodwood's website by clicking on this line. (Honda F1 cars on a stick; photos, sculpture, paintings and all manner of motor-related artwork are on display and definitely for sale at the FoS).

Since the last century (1998, actually) a great UK motoring tradition was reborn in the same place where, in years both pre- and post-WWII, the name Goodwood meant close, exciting racing by the sportsmen and sportswomen of the times and their fabulous cars and motorcycles. These were the days when commoner and royalty were made equals on the race track. Wealth, maybe an engineering background and definitely gobs of courage were the price of admission to racing then, before corporate sponsors came into the sport and ruined it in many ways, and that great kinship and closeness felt by all racers, no matter their nationality, background or social standing, left the sport forever.

From 1948 through 1966, Goodwood events saw drivers including Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, winner of the 1965 Indianapolis 500 and Phil Hill, the first American to win the World Championship of Driving in Grand Prix/F1 race cars. (British Spitfire fighter and Hurricane, at top, fly in formation).

During WWII, a small portion of Goodwood was a Royal Air Force scramble base for UK Spitfires and,  towards war's end, US Mustangs, all used as interceptors for German bombers and their Messerschmidt fighters heading towards or already over England. Mustangs, especially, escorted Allied bombing missions throughout Europe, thanks for their long range ability to stay with the bombers throughout their entire mission to points as far as Berlin and then back to the UK.

Because of that history, Goodwood also showcases, each July, as many restored models of those Allied planes as can be found, both in the UK itself and around the world. The planes are displayed not just as museum pieces in the middle of a field, but, like the cars and bikes which take to the track at the FoS, they take to the skies and let the crowds see and hear what these warbirds were like in action. (Goodwood exhibits and lets race some of the world's greatest sports cars and all-out open-wheel racers, too).

While the cars, the people, the planes, the artwork on display and the overall event are given their due in this upbeat, interesting HDTV show, it closes with a reminder of how inherently dangerous racing remains. In spite of all the technology which makes serious injury or death quite rare in today's racing, it nonetheless still happens, and any life lost is too many.

The show solemnly reminds us that Peter Brock, the great Australian race car driver who is seen in the program while being interviewed, was killed in a racing accident just two weeks after the program completed filming at Goodwood.

If you get the HDTV channel, be sure to record this show, and never erase it. Many years from now, you  just might want to call it up and relive that trip to Goodwood, which perhaps you never made. (That's Rene Arnoux with the F1 car which he drove to a third place finish in the 1979 French Grand Prix).

DETROIT THREE'S FUTURE VEHICLES; SOON ENOUGH OR TOO LATE??

(GM EV1s in a parking lot at a General Motors facility in Burbank, CA, waiting, as it were, to meet their maker. The cars were produced between 1996 and 1999 and 2,234 of them were leased through Saturn dealers and Southern Company,a public utility power provider. In 2003, GM sent flatbed trucks to find all their EV1s, which were eventually destroyed, save for a few given to universities and probably some for museums, too. The repossessions created a firestorm of negative publicity for GM. Even a successful feature film, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" was produced about the EV1 story. Some believe that GM's intention for this first electric vehicle produced by a major auto-maker in the modern era, was for it to fail in the marketplace, proving that the technology was not yet ready for public consumption. Others now say they believe that GM's announced plug-in hybrid, the Chevrolet Volt, might be headed down the same path; we hope not).

Now that the government has called for increases in fuel mileage for the car-makers, the Detroit Three and several of the captive imports (overseas companies which have factories in this country) have started their predictable litany of complaints.

When John McCain’s (former) economic advisor Phil Gramm last week called America “a nation of whiners,” the first thing which came to my mind were car company executives.

Here’s what the government wants: that automakers achieve a 25% increase in fuel economy from the 2011 to 2015 model years.

Why and how do we find ourselves in this situation, where American companies seem decades behind their Euro and Asian competitors? This story goes way back. The early 1970s were bad times for American car-makers. First, the Environmental Protection Agency was created, and for the first time, car companies had to meet specific mileage and emissions standards to be able to sell in this country.

Those years also saw the first oil shortages, and Americans were, for the first time, found themselves waiting in line for gas and they didn’t like it. (Ford's Ka has been a hot product and best-seller in Europe for almost a decade; so, where is the US version of this car?).

As if the EPA’s creation and oil shortages weren’t bad enough as far as the Detroit Three were concerned, there was an even bigger problem on the horizon. European and Japanese imports were getting their first serious footholds in the American car market, the world’s largest. Many of these new, interesting cars and trucks had been developed in places where gas and diesel had always been relatively expensive, and they were immediately attractive to US buyers.

All this created problems for car-makers. But that was almost 40 years ago, which seems enough time for all of the Detroit manufacturers to develop cars to not only meet government-mandated goals, but even better them. (The Smart car, sold in Europe for several years, has had several aftermarket performance companies make engine, exterior and interior kits for the popular mini-car. This one is from Brabus, a German parts-maker; we think Americans would love a car decked-out like this).

Those 1970's imports were also making most of the products from Detroit seem old and boring. Snazzy new imported cars not only met the EPA goals, they often came with more standard features than Detroit offered (rear window defoggers and side-mounted mirrors, for two examples, which were then options on most of Detroit’s cars, if available at all).

Click below to read more about the future product we might expect from the Detroit Three and what obstacles there might be to these all-new cars and trucks.

NASCAR SERIES TITLE SPONSOR MAY BE SOLD; GM CUTTING WAY BACK IN NASCAR

Like the rest of us, NASCAR has been having all kinds of financial problems. Some large organizations, including well-known huge businesses and some which are not companies but rather are connected to the Pentagon, are leaving their multi-million dollars sponsorships of teams, races and racers as soon as the current deals run out. (Dale Earnhardt, Jr., in his National Guard-sponsored Chevy leads the Toyota of ex-open wheel star AJ Allmendinger in a Sprint Cup event).

Now we come to find out that NASCAR's most important sponsor, the title sponsor of the entire series, Sprint Nextel, is apparently not only open to acquiring some partners by selling parts of itself, but might even allow Sprint Nextel to be taken over by a South Korean company. More on that a bit later, but first some background:

Just last week, the US Navy announced they are dropping their multi-million sponsorship of the #88 Chevrolet in the Nationwide Series, driven by Brad Keselowski, after the contract runs out at the end of this season. JR Motorsports is a first-year team in the series, owned by Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Both Earnhardt and Keselowski have worked hard for their Navy money, the military service going so far as to create a "Dale Jr. Division" an 88-person boot camp division at Recruit Training Command.

General Motors announced cutbacks this morning amounting to more than $10 billion, and no motorsport will be immune from cutbacks. GM has already notified two racetracks that run NASCAR events that their current contracts will not be renewed as part of an overall $10 billion cost-cutting program. And no one likes to cut racing from their budget because ... apart from the potential marketing and promotional boosts, it's so much fun! The execs are not sitting in some Detroit office when they're at the track. (Dale Jr., and his mother, Brenda, after one of Junior's wins).

"Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday" was for decades the non-stop mantra of car-makers and their hotshot marketing departments. But the facts are that motor racing, especially in the US, doesn't have that kind of direct influence on the public anymore.

GM's cuts are just the first in what could be a huge drop in support by GM, Ford and Chrysler for tracks and teams in NASCAR, the NHRA and more in the face of the weakest US auto sales in a decade. Speedway Motorsports Inc., which owns eight tracks that hold NASCAR events, already has been told GM will not renew contracts at two tracks — New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway. Bruton Smith is CEO of Speedway Motorsports, and, like International Speedway Corporation, which was created by the France family, both are public corporations and answer to stockholders above all else. (With tobacco thankfully gone from almost all motorsport sponsorship and advertising in the US and worldwide, NASCAR decided to accept advertising from hard liquor distillers and distributors; a family sport?).

GM has contracts with 12 of the 22 tracks where NASCAR's top Sprint Cup series races and is the title sponsor for the fall race at Richmond International Raceway. GM and the other American car companies will to continue purchasing hospitality, suites and track displays, although perhaps not at the same level. Which probably means more potato chips and pretzels and fewer shrimp cocktails in the hospitality suites of NASCAR (GM prides themselves on always having the largest shrimp at their numerous cocktail receptions). All of the Detroit Three and other companies paying the way for racing in NASCAR and other American series will be forced to make cuts before long if the economic downturn continues. The way things are going with the economy and the value of the dollar versus the Euro, it might be cheaper for Formula One to run their entire series in the US for the foreseeable future.

The Navy says about the newly-formed division: “Everything JR Motorsports does is centered around excellence, teamwork and professional development, and that squarely places them in that number one seat – and that’s where the Navy sits in the defense of our nation." They also have a cool website with a talking Dale Jr., kind of like one of those audio-animatronic characters at Disneyland, and you can visit by clicking anywhere on this line ... And oh, when you visit there, remember: no flash photography, please. At least that's what they always say at Disneyland, just before "Mr. Lincoln" gets up from his chair and speaks ... (Brad Keselowski is driving his Nationwide Series Chevrolet, with big-time US Navy sponsorship, to a possible series title; they're dropping the sponsorship at the end of this season. The Army, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and US Border Patrol have all been major sponsors in NASCAR over the years. If the US public knew how much the Pentagon and Homeland Security were spending on NASCAR alone, do you think they'd be surprised, or shocked or want to see more of it in the sport?).

A couple of ironies here: Keselowski is a good bet to win the Nationwide Series this year, meaning that Navy is losing a pretty good chance of next season sponsoring the series champion. Also, while JR is losing the Navy, team owner Earnhardt, Jr., driver of the #88 Chevy in Sprint Cup, appears safe for next season with the National Guard ... yes, the National Guard ... as his primary sponsor. These are not coincidences, these are ironies. You should know the difference, especially at your age ... (And yes, that is a Dale Jr., Barbie).

Click below to find out more about NASCAR's financial problems and the possible impending sale of the Sprint Cup series title sponsor to a South Korean company.

FASTEST, EASIEST SAVINGS AT THE PUMP; "JUST SAY NO!" TO HIGH OCTANE

We've just begun a new column for the Santa Monica Daily Press, and it will run every other Tuesday. We'll reprint the columns here right after they run. We'll have some different material here, though, because we're able to add comments and observations which we didn't have room for in the newspaper. At the bottom of this posting, you'll find information on how to get the column, and the newspaper, online and about another new outlet ... The Huffington Post).

After reading this posting, you’ll be able to save a minimum of 25 cents, and in many cases a lot more, not just per tankful, but per gallon of gasoline. (The oil which sprayed out of James Bond's 1963 Aston Martin DB5 can be put to better use refined and in your gas tank).

And you don’t have to call some 800 number for “magic pills” or order a “secret report the government doesn’t want you to see” about a 100-mile per gallon carburetor; this “trick” is free.

Unfortunately, diesel fuel buyers can’t benefit from this ploy.

Which is: Just say “pass” on the high-test gasoline and stick with the lowest grade of gas your car or truck can guzzle without getting ill.

The truth is that very few unmodified cars will run best only on high octane. Most every car and truck sold in the US will run just fine on “regular,” usually 87 octane, and mid-grade gasoline, usually 89 octane. The highest grade gas sold in California is 91 octane. (George W. Bush leaves from the airport at Daytona International Speedway; either that or Harrison Ford stole his plane! Wonder how many gallons of kerosene that critter uses every year? By the way, be sure to click on this photo to see it greatly enlarged; it's quite an amazing shot!).

My long-time old friend, John Dinkel, author of the “Road & Track Illustrated Automotive Dictionary,” offers an authoritative word on the subject: “If a carmaker recommends gasoline with a minimum RON (a method of measuring a fuel’s anti-knock abilities) of 91, fuel from a pump with a rating of 87 or higher can be used”.

My point exactly. Dinkel may tell the world’s worst puns, but knows his stuff when it comes to automotive issues.

Pontiac’s all-new 2008 G8 sedan, made in Australia by GM’s Holden division (and called Commodore down in Oz), is available in the US with either a V6 or V8 engine.

Pontiac recommends “regular unleaded” for use in both engines, but also says that “premium (octane gas) maximizes performance”. Is it worth paying between an extra 25 cents and a dollar-per-gallon in order to access, say, those last 20-or-so horsepower? That’s up to the car’s owner. (The Owner's Manual of the new Pontiac G8, both V6 and V8 flavors, says using something other than 91 octane gas will have the kitten purring along just fine ...).

Here’s how to determine which grade of gas your car or truck needs: Experiment, just like we all did in junior high science lab, but without trying to blow something up.

If your owner’s manual says use high-octane, and you’ve been filling-up with the premium stuff, simply stop --- and try a tankful of the mid-grade. Or even the lowest-octane available.

Here’s the important part: If during or after running a tankful of the low-grade, unlabeled, Ripple-version of gasoline your car or truck starts exhibiting some nasty tendencies which it didn’t on the high-grade, including engine knocking, pinging or even “dieseling” (turning off the ignition doesn’t stop the engine from running for a few seconds) and/or a noticeable drop in acceleration (“bogging down” when you try to pass on the 90 Freeway) or there’s a drop in mileage, using a tankful of high-grade the next time you fill-up will usually cure every one of those problems exhibited on the cheap swill. (This week, George W. Bush lifted a White House Executive Order barring offshore drilling which had been signed by his father, President George HW Bush, in 1981; his frankly mean and petulant actions have no effect, because, thankfully, Congress has passed its own law, now US Federal law, banning offshore platforms from America's coasts. Good thing, too, because if they started planning a rig like this today and placed it and drilled and actually found oil, it would bring us some gasoline in, maybe, about five years. That gasoline will only extend our chronic, national addiction. Today's gas/electric hybrids and even the coming 'clean' diesels, which get much better mileage than their gasoline counterparts, could be seen as the drugs they give addicts to help get them through the withdrawals; but if the addict doesn't want to stop, no amount of drugs or persuasion will help. Addicts have to reach, they say, 'rock bottom' before they'll decide to get help. Seems to be that's where our nation is right now, hitting bottom, and asking for relief and a new way to live. You want to see this when you look out the window, or experience what happens when oil washes up onshore? Trust me, we in California have had the complete experience, and we won't let it happen again. You Go, Arnold the Guvernator!).

There’s nothing wrong, and money to be saved swapping between the high, mid and low grades every tankful.

With the price of gasoline (and diesel, heating oil, jet fuel and anything else made from plastic or other petro-related products) only going up, with perhaps just an occasional and temporary dip, the trick of swapping gas grades might be completely new for you or something you’ve been doing for years. (Some say that whatever 'national energy policy' we do have was developed, and approved, by Big Oil in secret meetings with VP Dick Cheney. We know they had the meetings, we just don't know what they talked about, apart from wanting to drill, drill, drill and then drill some more. Where's the no-budget, all-hands-on-deck, Manhattan Project, Apollo-style national campaign to create the new energy economy for our country and the world? Did Cheney and his employers come up with that, or did I miss something on the news?).

Our nation’s fearless leader’s only suggestion to lower gas prices has been to recommend rescinding rules which prevented offshore drilling, and to blame the high prices on Democrats.

So, never has the grade of the gas Americans use in their cars and trucks been so important. Not to your car or truck, but to your wallet.

(Steve Parker's newspaper column, Tornante, runs every other Tuesday in the Santa Monica Daily Press, www.SMDP.com; He also writes and moderates the only all-automotive blog on The Huffington Post at www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-parker; His daily national radio show, American Racing Today, focuses on NASCAR and can be easily accessed on this site by clicking on 'Our radio shows ...' in the Sections column found in the right-hand column on each page on this site).

Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki, Champion Off-Shore Racer, Sportsman, Benihana Founder, Is Dead at 69

Rocky Aoki, who founded the theatrical Benihana chain of over 100 steakhouses worldwide, where Japanese chefs with flashing knives double as performers, died Thursday night, July 10, in Manhattan, NY. He was 69.

The cause was pneumonia, said a spokeswoman for the family.  He was also known to suffer from diabetes and hepatitis C, contracted from a blood transfusion. In 1964, when Aoki opened his first Benihana steakhouse, on West 56th Street in Manhattan, he introduced New Yorkers to dining as theater, and chefs as culinary acrobats. Seated around a flat steel grill, customers watched chefs sharpen their knives, toss them in the air, drizzle the grill with oil, sizzle the chicken, shrimp or steak on the grill, and flip the food onto the plates. Children stared goggle-eyed. Benihana’s style of food is called teppan-yaki. (Aoki was a skilled and championship-winning offshore boat racer, but he was nearly killed more than once in the unforgiving sport; Below, Aoki had his own look and style, clearly comfortable with himself).

Aoki also introduced many Americans to Japanese food. “He was the first one who made it accessible for non-Japanese people to enjoy the Japanese experience,” said Drew Nieporent, whose Myriad Restaurant Group runs a number of restaurants including Tribeca Grill and Nobu. “The key thing was he made it fun,” he said.

Before Benihana opened, most Japanese restaurants in New York were styled only for the Japanese population, Nieporent said. Aoki changed the environment. (Some of the information in this posting is from the NY Times' obituary on Aoki, and let's face it, isn't that where we all want our obits to be, too?).

Living in New York with my family at that time, I can remember going to a Chinese restaurant somewhere   in Brooklyn which was known to us kids by the name, "Avenue M," though that almost definitely wasn't the place's real name. But to our family it was the height of Asian cookery, though we didn't call it Asian, we called it Oriental or used some slang term. The thought of going to a Japanese restaurant never entered any of our minds; we certainly didn't know anything about what Japanese people ate, and don't think we'd ever even seen a Japanese restaurant, and this in the world's most cosmopolitan city. If it were Chinese, though, or of course, Italian, there were always Chinatown and Little Italy, right next to each other, on Manhattan Island, and those areas are there to this day, more than 40 years later.

But when we moved to Southern California in 1969, I was exposed for the first time in my life to Japanese people, in my school and working at local businesses. Being brave (at least I thought so) I even visited a few of the Japanese restaurants in Westminster and Garden Grove in Orange County, and liked some of what I ate, and as time went on I learned what Japanese foods I enjoyed and which I didn't. During this period, while the Vietnam War was still on, with Orange County serving as home to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Base and the Marine base called LTA, because it had housed submarine-hunting dirigibles before WW II and the letters stood for Lighter Than Air (with the two largest wood buildings in the Northern Hemisphere serving as the blimps' houses; buildings so large they had their own weather!).

BERNARD CAHIER, PREMIER F1 JOURNALIST, 81

Formula One photojournalist Bernard Cahier, who began photographing Formula 1 in 1952 and was instrumental in founding the International Racing Press Association (IRPA) in 1968, has died in France at the age of 81.

Cahier was perhaps the witness to the "Golden Age" of Grand Prix racing who began his life work in 1952, using a Leica, and later Pentax, to bring us a unique and intimate description of the world of his closest friends: Juán Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss, Graham Hill and Jim Clark, Phil Hill and Dan Gurney, Jackie Stewart and Emerson Fittipaldi, and so many more heroes who raced when motor racing was too often deadly yet always exciting, sexy and flush with international characters and money ... always the big money.

Cahier began his career in Grand Prix racing in 1952 and was a leading figure in F1 until the early 1980s. His photographs, and those of his son Paul-Henri, also an F1 photographer of note, have chronicled the sport’s history. (One of the last of the true "LeMans starts," which had drivers run across the track to their cars, get in and belted, then take to the course; Photo by Cahier).

He was born in Marseilles, France, in 1927 and caught the racing bug early after attending the Marseilles Grand Prix at Miramas in 1932. He was 12 when World War II broke out, and at 17 he joined the resistance in Brittany. After the war he went to UCLA and became involved in the Southern California sports-car scene.

Cahier worked at Roger Barlow’s International Motors, the largest import-car dealership in Los Angeles at the time. One of his fellow salesmen was a young man from nearby Santa Monica named Phil Hill, and the store's chief mechanic was Ritchie Ginther. For non-racers, Hill became the first American Formula One World Driving Champion in 1961 and is still a force on the world's racing scene at age 81. Ginther was the US driver who piloted Honda to their first victory in the F1 in the 1965 Mexican Grand Prix. Ginther died at 59 in France in 1989. (Ginther's racing life was chronicled to some degree in the 1966 John Frankenheimer movie Grand Prix, with James Garner playing the Ginther character and Toshiro Mifune appearing as "Izo Yamura," modeled on Soichiro Honda, founder of the eponymous company; Ginther himself appeared in an uncredited role in the movie as "John Hogarth," a driver in the Japanese-funded Yamura (Honda) team. He was also acted a technical advisor for the movie).

(The infamous Mercedes "Silver Arrows" at the 1954 French Grand Prix; Photo by Cahier).

In the days before motor homes, when reporters were on a more equal level with the drivers, Cahier was one of the best-known people in the paddock, a true 'international jet-setting racing celebrity' before there were jets. One motor journalist from that time wrote, "I was at the hairpin in Sebring in 1957 and Bernard was nearby. Stirling Moss slowed and Cahier handed him a bottle of Coke. The next time around, Moss threw out the empty bottle and Bernard retrieved it and put it in a safe spot. Those were the days."

Cahier handled European PR for Goodyear when they entered road racing and his party each year during the Monte Carlo GP weekend was the social highlight of the season. For a time, he was President of the International Racing Press Association. Cahier produced a two-volume book containing many of his classic photographic images of the period, writing his own behind-the-scenes stories and photo captions. In 1952 he moved to Paris and quickly became part of F1’s inner circle. He then became the public relations consultant for Goodyear in F1. He continued to play a role in F1 until 1983, when a change in Goodyear management meant the end of his job. He stepped away from the sport, leaving the work to his son, Paul-Henri, who is one of today's leading Grand Prix photographers.

The voluminous, amazing "Cahier Archive" can be found by clicking here. It is a "must stop" for racing fans who appreciate the Web for all it offers, and for non-fans interested in the history of the sport which Cahier documented in its modern era. All of Cahier's photos and books are available there. (Phil Hill muscles his Ferrari through a corner in the 1961 Dutch Grand Prix, on his way to the World Driving Championship that year, the first by an American; Photo by Cahier).

SOLAR CELLS, MILLER CYCLES AND TURBO-DIESELS; MAY WE PRESENT THE FUTURE

Many news reports the past two days have been about Toyota’s intention to build the next-generation gas/electric hybrid Prius at a factory now under construction in Mississippi, scheduled to open in late 2010, which was originally planned for making the company’s Highlander SUV.

A lot of this reportage included the news that Toyota will use photovoltaic solar cells on the car’s roof to power the new Prius’ air conditioning system, making Toyota the world’s first car-maker to announce an intention to use solar cells to power an auto’s onboard system. In fact, my own first draft of the Toyota/karoshi posting below this one included that information, but when I fell into bed after posting, I asked my wife if she remembered something about Mazda using solar cells on one of their cars. (Mazda won the 1991 24 Hours of LeMans with this 787b race car ... No, really, they did! They just didn't tell anyone afterwards; plenty of racing fans still don't know about this victory. Mazda remains the first and still only Japanese car-maker to win LeMans and the one and only to win with a rotary-powered engine).

My memory is not as bad as I thought, at least my long-term memory, because when I got up today and logged onto the Web, I immediately did a search for “Mazda solar cells power” and sure enough, the company’s excellent but short-lived Millenia sedan was the first production car to utilize sun-power to run any on-board system. (Prius has been a blockbuster for Toyota; future models will use solar panels on the roof to power the car's HVAC and other systems; Prius' next-generation will be built at a factory still under construction in Mississippi, slated originally to build Highlanders).

I’ve always liked Mazdas and have owned several through the years, from an early RX2 coupe to a RX4 station wagon and a sporty Cosmo coupe (anyone remember that one?), all rotary-powered and tons of fun to drive, except when you pulled into a gas station.

I also drove one of the first, original RX7 coupes in the US, picking it up at an Oxnard, CA, shipping dock, fresh off the boat, and drove it south on Pacific Coast Highway towards Los Angeles for a photo session using the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop.

Those little, round and oh-so-very-smooth engines perform like a race car’s, just modified slightly for the street, but they used fuel much like a race car, too. Meaning a lot of it. And the news wasn’t so good on the other end of the cars, either, because rotary engine emissions have always been on the higher end of the allowable scale.

President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, just as Mazda had begun selling cars in the US. The company and the EPA didn’t get along from the start. (Mazda's RX rotary sports cars have been favorites for amateur and pro racers since they first became available).

For the first time in automotive history, companies selling cars were being told how many miles per gallons their cars and trucks had to achieve and the amount and what kind of emissions a car produced were also now limited by law. To say this was a big change for car-makers doesn’t do the word “change” justice; this was absolutely the worst news possible for them, because they were going to have to invest billions in research and development and put all their engineers to work meeting the new rules if they wanted to sell cars in the US. This is the major reason US cars were so uniformly bad in so many ways from the end of the 1970s through almost the late-‘90s.

Click below to read more about solar cells being used on cars to power onboard systems, and the coming revolution in diesel-powered cars and trucks.

KAROSHI! DEATH BY OVERWORK AGAIN IN JAPAN

For the second time in a year, a court in Japan has found that an employee of Toyota has been killed by “karoshi,” a relatively new term to the Japanese lexicon which means “death by overwork.”

The most-recent court finding, which enables the surviving family members to receive compensation from the government, concerned the death of a 45-year old lead engineer for the Toyota Camry hybrid.

This employee, who worked in Toyota City, the company’s huge headquarters near Nagoya, a few hundred miles south of Tokyo, had worked more than 80 overtime hours in at least each of the two months before he collapsed at his home, where he was determined to have died from ischemic heart disease, now clarified by a court as being a result of karoshi.

The man was found dead at home by his daughter, and was scheduled to leave Japan the next day for the US. The project on which he was working was to be exhibited at the 2006 North American International Auto Show, known popularly as the Detroit Auto Show.

In 2007, another widow was ruled by a court to be eligible for the same kind of government benefits, as her  30-year old husband collapsed and died at work. In that case, a Toyota employee died of overwork after logging more than 106 hours of overtime in a month, a judge ruled in November, 2007, reversing a government ministry’s earlier decision not to pay compensation to his widow. The employee, who was working at a Toyota factory in central Japan, died of an “irregular heart beat” in February 2002 after passing out in the factory around 4am. In Japan, it should be noted, the average worker uses less than 50 percent of paid holidays, according to government data.

The Japanese Ministry of Health made news around the world in 1987, when they adopted and clarified the concept of karoshi as law; Japan is thought to be the only industrialized country which accepts death by overwork as a legal cause of death and can implicate both the company involved and the government in paying benefits to the person’s survivors.

But before any of us in America start to “tsk, tsk” those hard-working Japanese, try the following on for size, from a United Nations 2007 report: “US workers put in the longest hours on the job in industrialized nations, clocking up nearly 2,000 hours per capita in 1997, the equivalent of almost two working weeks more than their counterparts in Japan, where annual hours worked have been gradually declining since 1980, according to a statistical study of global labor trends. Americans also work the longest hours among industrialized countries, Japanese second longest. Europeans work less time, but register faster productivity gains.”

Japanese society is so different from the United States that it might as well be Mars. European countries with a long, recorded past have some social similarities to Japan, but when it comes to the concept of teamwork, the Japanese make a championship NBA professional basketball team look like a bunch of guys who just happened to show-up at the gym at about the same time.

Click below to read more about karoshi and one man's experiences with Japanese culture over the past 30 years.

PLANES CRASH; MORE LOSS FOR KALITTA FAMILY, AND CALLS FOR FAA ACTION

(Doug Kalitta, cousin of Scott Kalitta, takes-on the traditional 1/4-mile-long race course in a Top Fuel NHRA race car, an 8,000-horsepower monster which can cover the 1,320 foot track at over 320 miles per hour and in less than 4.5 seconds).

Incredibly, bad news keeps coming for the Kalitta family. Drag racer Scott Kalitta died on June 22, killed when his Funny Car exploded and crashed into a retaining wall at an estimated speed of over 200-miles-per-hour during the National Hot Rod Association's annual event at Englishtown, New Jersey's Raceway Park. Almost a month before his death, one of the B747 freighters owned by his father's charter company, Kalitta Air, broke into pieces on a taxiway in Belgium. Now the news is worse for Kalitta Air, with another B747 crashing this past weekend in Colombia, killing two people on the ground. And another huge jet freighter, not one of Kalitta's, crashed in Mexico this past weekend, also, but all three planes have something in common, something which might lead to answers for all of these air accidents.

Three different airplanes owned by two different private companies. Two crash, one in Colombia, another in Mexico, and one falls apart, literally, on a European airport taxiway, all in the span of less than two months. These are huge jet freighters, B747s and a DC-9-15 which regularly fly the globe, carrying everything from flowers to car parts to soldiers, weaponry and secret diplomatic materiel and, possibly, more dangerous items, such as radioactive waste. In fact, the US announced just this past week that the moving of 550 metric tons of radioactive, enhanced yellow cake uranium from Iraq to Canada has been completed --- and on one leg of that trip, aircraft were used to fly this sinister payload, though officials say military, not privately-owned, planes were used. (Scott Kalitta in his Funny Car; these cars are often both faster and quicker than their Top Fuel relations).

Here's what all three privately-owned freighters had in common: They were all based at an  industrial airport just outside Detroit called Willow Run Airport. Located between Ypsilanti and Belleville, Michigan, the Willow Run Plant was built during World War II by Ford Motor Company for production of B-24 Liberator aircraft. The site of the plant was a farm owned by Henry Ford. Ford, like virtually all of the United States' industrial companies, directed its manufacturing output during World War II for Allied war production. The firm developed the Willow Run site to include an airfield and aircraft assembly facility. At its peak, in August 1944, Willow Run produced 428 B-24 aircraft, or almost 14 planes for each calendar day.

The airfield continues to operate as Willow Run Airport to this day. After the war, ownership of the assembly plant passed to Kaiser Motors and then to General Motors, which still owns and operates part of the facility. The airfield is primarily used by cargo, charter, private and corporate general aviation aircraft. When the government "gave" the plant to Henry Kaiser following WW II, he assumed ownership for a king's ransom price of $1.00. The area around the airport is dotted with car- and parts-making operations and other heavy equipment manufacturers, both in the US and nearby Canada (which is, interestingly, actually south of Detroit).

We think the Federal Aviation Administration has some very serious questions to ask about the maintenance facilities and the people working at them at Willow Run.

On June 22nd, the NHRA's Kalitta family suffered tragedy of the worst kind with the death of second-generation drag racer Scott Kalitta, The Kalitta family patriarch, Connie, was one of the sport's first champions who worked hard to help popularize professional drag racing nationally and worldwide. (One of Kalitta Air's 18 B747 freighters lies in pieces after breaking apart while awaiting take-off at a Brussels, Belgium Airport on May 25, 2008).

But there have been two other tragedies which befell the Kalitta family and others, just before and after Scott's death. And they involve sadly, unfortunate deaths.

The family business, Kalitta Air, is a Michigan Limited Liability Company owned 100% by Conrad "Connie" Kalitta. Kalitta Air began service in November 2000 with three Boeing 747 aircraft and the fleet has grown to a present total of eighteen B747 freighters. Capable of air express delivery of virtually any type of freight, the company provides scheduled or on-demand charter service for customers in the United States and around the world.

Click below for more on these events and what some think might possibly be a cause.

NHRA SHORTENS RACES TO 1,000' --- IS THE 1/4-MILE GONE?

Following the death of two Funny Car drivers and the near-crippling of the sport's most-popular figure in just over a one-year period, the National Hot Rod Association has determined that shortening the traditional length of drag racing's 1/4-mile track is one answer to these troubling problems.

Is racing made safer by making the race track shorter?

If most of the serious crashes in the Indy 500 are found, after study, to occur in the final 10% of the race, or the last 50 miles, does that mean running the Indy 450 every Memorial Day weekend would result in fewer serious, injurious and even deadly wrecks? Or maybe changing the length of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the world's first-ever purpose-built auto racing track, from 2.5 to, say, 1.5-miles would make for safer events and a better show for the fans. (Scott Kalitta's Funny Car leaves the line for a 1/4-mile drag race; Below, Scott's cousin Doug Kalitta in his Top Fuel racer).

These are just some of the questions, both serious and foolish, which the National Hot Rod Association, NHRA, is going to have to publicly answer as they have, in one fell swoop, changed the sport in a way some thought improbable, if not impossible.

Between March, 2007 and today, NHRA saw an over $120 million purchase offer for much of the organization fall through at the last minute, a driver on John Force's Funny Car race team, Eric Medlen, was killed in a testing session and Force himself, drag racing's best-known and most popular driver, was nearly killed in a racing wreck which has left him with injuries he'll carry through his lifetime. And Scott Kalitta, a member of one of the founding families of the sport, died in yet another Funny Car accident. The popular sport now finds itself in a bind: NASCAR, following the death on live television of its most important driver, Dale Earnhardt, in a crash during the 2001 Daytona 500, went on a crusade to develop safer cars and equipment for its drivers, so, must NHRA go a similar route?

In the wake of the death of long-time NHRA star racer Scott Kalitta at Englishtown, New Jersey on June 22, NHRA has made a surprising decision which on one hand seems reasonable enough, but on the other --- is going to stir-up strong emotions on every side of the issue. And there are at least two sides to every issue in auto racing.

The 57-year old sanctioning body has unilaterally decided to shorten the races in the sport's two fastest professional classes, Top Fuel and Funny Car, from the traditional 1/4-mile, or 1,320', to 1,000' even. The reasoning can be found below in NHRA's official notification and statement on this change, what most fans, racers and observers would probably call the single biggest change in the history of professional drag racing. (Ashley Force's Funny Car seen from above; Below, Angie McBride pilots a Pro Stock motorcycle).

Only those two classes of NHRA race cars use nitromethane and other toxic, highly-explosive chemicals as fuel, producing incredible speed from the cars and an in-person experience as visceral as, some say, being on-scene for the 1960s-era Saturn 5 rocket launch of an Apollo moon rocket. Top Fuel cars are known to some as rail dragsters; a long, low body with small bicycle-like tires up front, the driver to the rear and the massive engine behind. Funny Cars are basically the same as Top Fuel racers, but with fiberglass and carbon fiber bodies on top of them to give something of an appearance of a road-going car. NHRA's fans love the Top Fuel cars; NHRA sponsors love the Funny Cars (because they have more space for their corporate logos and names).

Their engines make somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 horsepower, and that's only an estimate because there's no way of measuring such high horsepower figures from a V8 engine, no engine or chassis dynomometer built for the job. Seeing an NHRA event in person is something not easily forgotten; the chemicals used in the fuels sting the eyes, nose and throat and the engines, when fired, suck the breath right out of your lungs. A visit to the races creates either a lifelong fan or a person feeling as if they're witnessing the end of the world. And Top Fuel and Funny Car races are over barely 5 seconds after they've begun with the cars now regularly hitting speeds over 300 miles per hour.

Will changing the length of the races, in reality adding another 320' to the run-off, or slow down, area  allowed the cars in both lanes, solve whatever NHRA perceives to be the "problem?" With the investigation into the Kalitta crash and his death still near its beginning, with very few hard facts known and at least two organizations, the NHRA itself and the New Jersey State Police conducting their own inquiries, why make drastic changes to the sport before the facts are in hand? But, on the other hand, if those in the NHRA hierarchy have considered tracks with too-short run-off areas as being a systemic problem throughout the sport, why have they waited until the death of a favorite driver to make the change?

For the NHRA's statement on the topic and other opinions on these sudden and surprising changes to the sport, click below.

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD BIKER ON LARRY KING LIVE; WAS COLOMBIAN REBEL CAPTIVE

Glen Heggstad is a "neighbor" of ours, a fellow resident of Southern California's Coachella Valley, where the Colorado Desert landscape reaches 118 degrees and more from Memorial Day weekend through mid-October. The weather between November and late April is some of the best in the world, and the Valley, home to Palm Springs and other well-known resorts, draws nearly 5 million visitors from around the world every year, many of them among the planet's wealthiest. (This photo is from a National Geographic special on Heggstad's capture, captivity and release, and in it, Heggstad is held prisoner).

Known locally as the Striking Viking, a name Heggstad coined to describe his appearance, his motorcycle trips around the world were fairly uneventful until he came to Colombia in 2001.

When the producers of CNN's Larry King Live show were planning their first program since three American hostages were returned to a military base in Texas following a complicated rescue operation called "impeccable" by one of those released, they tried, through e-mail, to contact Heggstad, and they found him in Mazatlan, Mexico. It was early on July 3rd, and after finding Heggstad near the US after getting his e-mail reply, CNN flew him to Phoenix to be a part of that first post-release show, guest-hosted by CNN White House correspondent John King. (In the middle of that group of camels you'll find Heggstad and his trusty BMW motorcycle).

Even in a Valley where General George Patton lived while training his over-100,000-strong WW II tank corps in the nearby desert, which has certainly had more than its share of interesting history and characters, with residents and visitors ranging from Walt Disney, Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, US Presidents Dwight David Eisenhower and Gerald Ford, Sidney Sheldon and Barry Manilow, all the Marx Brothers and their families, US Ambassadors Mr. and Mrs. Walter Annenberg, every great in women's and men's professional golf and tennis, Merv Griffin and President John F. Kennedy, who was greeted at Palm Springs Airport in 1961 by, among others, the town's first mayor, Frank Bogert, who, now in his 90s, still rides horseback every day, Glen Heggstad is a stand-out.

Heggstad was kidnapped and held captive for five weeks in Colombia shortly after the devastating and coordinated attacks on the US on 9-11-01. On the King show, during his segment, Heggstad first took a moment to congratulate Colombia's President Carlos Uribe and the forces which effected the release of 15 long-term hostages, including former Colombian presidential candidate and Colombian/French national Ingrid Betancourt, and three Americans, Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes. The Americans' small plane, reportedly being used for observation of coca fields, had crashed or may have been shot down by FARC forces over five years ago. Another American on the plane was shot dead by rebels after they found the crash site. All were "civilian contractors" for the US government, and according to the Los Angeles Times, they were directly employed by Northrop Grumman Corporation. (FARC stands for Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

When King asked Heggstad, "Did the kidnappers beat you, do anything physical, try to somehow intimidate you?" Heggstad answered, "All of the above." (Heggstad and Bimmer reached the Kremlin).

He told a chilling story of being stopped on a jungle road by rebel forces of the ELN, not FARC. Heggstad described being forces to stand in a circle twice a day for an hour at a time, while anti-American radio broadcasts were being played, and Heggstad was forced to "confess" to certain crimes while his young, armed captors surrounded him. He said he was chained to a tree every night to prevent him from escaping and said that never, in the course of his five-weeks of captivity, was he kept in the same place more than two nights in a row.

HOW NHRA's $120-MILLION SALE FELL THROUGH

In mid-2007, things were looking up for the National Hot Rod Association, the NHRA, for over 50 years the nation's premier promoter and sanctioning body for amateur and professional drag racing. HD Acquisition Partners seemed a money-flush suitor, and described themselves thusly on their website: "HD Partners Acquisition Corporation is a special purpose acquisition company formed in 2005 for the purpose of effecting merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition or other similar business combination, with one or more domestic or international operating businesses, in the media, entertainment or telecommunications industries." HD Partners Chairman Eddy Hartenstein, founder of DirecTV, led the charge on buying NHRA. (Angie McBride leaves the line on a Pro Stock Motorcycle, below, Ashley Force is a top Funny Car driver; NHRA has always welcomed women in the sport as fans, team members, owners, sponsors and racers, well-ahead of all other motorsports in the US).

And this group was offering around $120 million for the NHRA, lock, stock and Wally Trophies. Though there was a lot of snickering by long-time NHRA followers and some of the sport's more savvy businesspeople, feeling that HD was getting away with buying NHRA for much less than it was worth, as things worked out, everyone, in a sense, became a loser.

In January, 2008, months after HD's purchase of NHRA had been trumpeted worldwide while fans and participants hoped for the best, HD Partners decided against the deal, and in fact, in April of this year, HD Acquisition Partners was itself dissolved, liquidated, they were, as Mel Brooks might have said, ka-put.

Bruton Smith, a wealthy and successful drag racing strip and NASCAR track owner and promoter, might be waiting in the wings to make a new attempt to take over NHRA.

The episode left NHRA and its top officers looking foolish, to say the least, with the final drama happening just days before the running of NHRA's annual season-opener, the Winternationals, at Pomona, CA. Quietly, though, many of the sports' biggest promoters and sponsors and racers were happy with the outcome, glad with NHRA continuing as the sport's biggest sanctioning body. And all involved knew that if another buyer was to be found, $120 million would be the minimum, the starting bid, as it were.

Here's how Jim Peltz in the LOS ANGELES TIMES wrote about it in February of this year:

“I felt like someone punched me in the stomach,” NHRA driver Ron Capps said shortly after shareholders  of HD Partners Acquisition Corp. rejected the deal. HD Partners executives did not comment on the failed deal. The Santa Monica company would have paid $121 million for NHRA’s Glendora headquarters building, four race tracks and its Powerade Drag Racing Series. NHRA planned to use the money to finance its popular amateur racing program, and HD Partners hoped to run the Powerade series as a for-profit business.

Some drag racing industry insiders believe that the deal fell apart because of the troubled financial markets. Others suspect that savvy investors were leery of investing in a lesser-known racing circuit that lagged far behind the popular NASCAR series.

“I think the real bean counters on Wall Street looked at [HD Partners] and said, ‘What are you thinking?’ ” said Jeff Burk, publisher of DragRacingOnline.com. “I think they started to wonder, ‘Where’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?’ ”

Longtime drivers and team owners were stunned last May (2007) when NHRA announced plans to sell most of its assets, including its pro racing circuit. “In years past, the NHRA said that selling anything was pretty much a closed issue,” said longtime racer and team owner Don Prudhomme. “Then, lo and behold, someone figured out how to sell it.” (End of TIMES story excerpt). (NHRA's top personality, John Force, drives a classic Mustang while Carroll Shelby waves at a Ford Motor Company event; Force has suffered through the death of a team member and his own near-death crash in the past year, and he now says he is committed to leaving a legacy of safety in the sport).

Another factor which might have affected how the NHRA looked to HD was the non-profit status of NHRA. Formed in 1951 as a group dedicated to traffic safety, taking drag racing hot rods off the streets of America and putting it on professionally-run race tracks, the group has remained a non-profit to this day. This status affected how NHRA could handle their own money made from TV rights and other ventures.

When I interviewed several Top Fuel an Funny Car drivers in the 1990s for a British TV show, all of them said that NHRA had, for lack of a better term, put its claws into each of them, trying to control every aspect of the products each driver could sell at their own souvenir trailers at the races or by mail or internet sales. One of them told me that NHRA "allowed" the drivers to "keep" just 10% of monies they made selling items with their own image or name on them, giving 90% to NHRA. "And we signed those contracts if we wanted to race," she said. (Wally Parks, in suit on right, and his wife Barbara, seated, talk to young racing fans about the NHRA at a Los Angeles event in the 1950s).

Many teams and drivers feel that the non-profit status might have made sense when NHRA began, but as  time has gone on, more and more of the organization should have been made a for-profit business. This way, even while its non-profit status could have been sustained, but relegated to a separate foundation, such as the NHRA Museum in Pomona, CA, and other appropriate uses, it would free-up other cash for needed track repairs and other high-cost maintenance jobs. Such a plan might have been able to achieve everything NHRA was trying to do, remaining a sort-of home-town safety-oriented group, but allowing whatever growth the market would bear as far as its four best-known and professional classes (Pro Stock Motorcycle, Pro Stock, Funny Car and Top Fuel).

In the meantime, though, while some in the NHRA's executive suites might be looking out their Glendora, CA, office windows, looking for Bruton Smith bringing baskets of cash down the smoggy 210 Freeway to lay at their feet, unfortunately NHRA has been going through one of the most tumultuous periods in its 57-year existence, none of it doing with the HD acquisition. With founder Wally Parks having passed away in September, 2007 at age 94 and many of its early personalities long gone from the scene, a fourth generation of well-financed teams and racers are taking the sport into the 21st century, having to deal with serious questions of safety which need to be handled realistically, professionally and transparently.

The fans, racers and sponsors demand and, more importantly, deserve, no less than that.

BELL AURENS UPDATE

UPDATE!

Less than 24 hours after we posted the story below (on the Bell Aurens Longnose project) we received an e-mail from the "spokesperson" for the project, Holger Kelvelage. He very much believes in this project.

Having been involved in the creation of more than a few show cars, magazine project cars, concepts and prototypes myself, working with everyone from Gale Banks to Mickey Thompson to the legendary Metalcrafters to the folks who make and maintain all the original Disneyland and Disney World vehicles (and yes, those ARE real steam engines!) we've seen a bit about what goes into actually producing a working vehicle.

And as Carroll Shelby once told me, "Steve, you gotta work just as hard and spend just as much to make one car as you do to make a million of 'em," and I know he's right, at least about that.

We wish the Bell Aurens folks are the best and hope they have success with their Longnose project! They are up against a tough economic environment and perhaps we'll someday see the HYBRID GAS/ELECTRIC LONGNOSE! Hey, anything to sell a car these days, right?

Clicking anywhere on this line will take you directly to the Bell Aurens Longnose website.

WHAT TO DO WITH OLD LAND ROVER? OH MY GOODNESS! DON'T DO THAT,DEAR GOD, PLEASE! NOT THAT!

Everyone needs a laugh just about now, right? Gas is skyrocketing and our very way of life in the USA is in danger of collapsing ... But, if you can't laugh, at least you have your health. Or something like that; I never was very good at turning a witty phrase. And I'm still getting over the shock of finding out there really is a car company in India called, of all things, Tata. (Apparently, judging by the custom artwork, these folks are looking for a big-time Red Bull sponsorship ... Can you imagine seeing this monstrosity at the airport, all decked out in these crazy colors with the blinking lights on the rear deck? I'd wonder in what country we were landing ...).

So, if this press release had come across our transom on April 1st, I'd have no problem believing it for what it was: A joke. But to tell you the truth, I can't say whether or not this stuff is for real or a late April Fool's Day take. Now, every other auto website in the world has run with it, treating it like every other press release they get every day and electronically post it without reading it ... very much, apparently (didn't you ever wonder why those sites all have the same so-called news, with absolutely no perspective, opinion, background or explanation?). At this site, we tend to look at these kinds of things with a slightly more jaundiced eye, which no doubt comes from more than 30 years in the business ... and is, trust me, one of the very, very few things even slightly positive about getting older.

Here's a few details we gleaned from our research: Prices will start around Euro 125,000, which is just a tic under USD$200,000. One engine choice: A 27-litre supercharged V12 Merlin engine, produced by Rolls-Royce for airplanes, producing, they say, over 1,500 horsepower. Also, one can choose from a Land Rover-built V8 4.6 liter making 235 horsepower, a 5.0 liter producing 280 horses, or, as long as you're spending all those Euros, why not be a real man and double-up that V8 and make the V16 it's screaming for! Come on, buddy ... You can't afford to look cheap to your friends! And if you do go that route, your very own V16 can be made into an 8-litre making 420 horsepower, or a massive, throbbing, bucking 10-litre producing a very necessary 700 horses. And we still don't believe a thing about this Longnose. (Only thing missing in these photos is a lion laying on the engine hood).

We've done our usual due diligence, and apart from the scant, few details described above, have been able to find out zip, zero and just about nothing about the companies named in this release. If you know about them, please let us know! In the meantime, we'll print their nice photos (which appear to be not-very-well-modified Hot Wheels, at best) and print a lot of their really long press release, and hope everyone can get some much-needed automotive enjoyment. And note: There is no price mentioned, nor any date when production might begin ... Only that each one of their Longnose models will be designed and styled, inside and even outside, to allow the buyer to have real input into their new car (or truck?).

Ready? Here goes ... and remember ... we're running this completely 'as is' from the car-maker:

2008 Bell Aurens Longnose Concept - Full of Character

Slowly the heavy roller shutter opens and the sun eliminates inch by inch the shadows from a familiar face. Distinctive, a glance out of narrowly positioned headlights, framed by a pair of broad, vigorous wings and a fender that lives up to its name. Nothing distracts from the clear, self-confident facial expression that in an instance captures even novices in the fraternity of Land Rover enthusiasts. This face has written automotive history. As a synonym for endurance and functionality. Character defining for generations of automotive grandchild’s in its almost provocative reduction to the absolute essential. (Black and brown might be the new two-tone. Nyah, Probably not).

By the time the engine raises its sonorous, powerful voice for the first time even the most experienced Land Rover owner will listen closely and take a closer look.

One look onto this very special offroadster is enough to get the impression one had missed out on something for centuries in the history of classic British automobiles. So consequently stylish and consequential comes this evolution of a Series Land Rover 109 that one is likely to search for drafts or indications of such a special edition in the archives of the 60ties and 70ties of this traditional brand from Solihull.

Truly an offroader from the front fender to the rear lights – yet still a roadster. Who ever searched for evidence that cross-over can be an art in itself – here is the answer.

Click below to find out more about the Bell Aurens Longnose Concept, and for the funniest automotive-related paragraph we've read in some time ...