Steve Parker Motoring / The Car Nut

WHO'S REALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR OFF-ROAD RACE CRASH WHICH KILLED EIGHT?

The horrific racing accident which took place this past weekend in the desert of Southern California now ranks among the top 10 racing disasters of all time.

Eight people were killed when a fully-outfitted off-road race truck took a jump at, more or less, 60mph, then, for some reason, lost control. The driver was not injured but he knew some of the people he and his truck killed.

My first thought when hearing of the crash was, "Well, this was only a matter of time. Now it's actually happened."

First a few facts: The race was run on Federal land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. It was sanctioned and approved by all the necessary parties. The promoter, an outfit called Mojave Desert Racing (MDR) is, understandably, circling the wagons and getting ready for fines and lawsuits which will almost certainly put them out of business. Unless they have a $100 million insurance policy to cover themselves.
Authorities investigate the scene of the crash which killed eight spectators

ROAD TEST: 2011 MITSUBISHI i-MiEV PURE ELECTRIC CAR; AN EV FOR REAL DRIVERS?

"It's not easy bein' green..."

Thus sangeth (singeth?) Kermit the Frog several decades back, and as it turns out, he was not kidding. Especially when it comes to cars.

Car companies worldwide should have paid heed to those simple words many years ago.

Both Nissan and General Motors will be selling, in the US, green cars towards the end of this year.

But Mitsubishi is also bringing out their own version of a green car. i-MiEV (Mitsubishi innovative electric vehicle, pronounced "eye-meev") has been for sale for about two years in Japan and some 20,000 units have left showroom floors at a cost of around $23,000 US dollars.

People who stopped me as I was getting into or out of the car during the week I had it had a natural inquisitiveness, but very few noticed the car was a Japan-only model, with the steering and gauges and controls (and driver!) on the right hand side.

My i-MiEV could be charged by 110 or 220 household current or by using a quick charging station, not yet available in the US market (though it sounds similar to the quick charging station which Leaf buyers will usually have installed in their garages).

i-MiEV weighs-in at 2,376 pounds, and charging times vary from 12 hours for 110 volts to 6 hours using the 220 volt plug-in option and using the quick charge system which will charge i-MiEV to 80% capacity in just 25 minutes.

The Lithium ion (Lion) battery pack powers a 64 horsepower/113 pound feet of torque Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor and it's all expected to have a range of 80 to 100 miles as fast as 80 mph. Not much at all, really, especially for a family's primary car.

Both Japanese EVs are "pure electric" with relatively low and slow outputs. Both i-MiEV and Leaf will be marketed as a second or third (or fourth, etc) car and it's price (around $25,000 US) won't sting the wallet too much.

Only Volt is aimed at being a family's primary car with it's (claimed) 600-mile range and more spacious interior than the Japanese competition.

Leaf claims a 100-mile range and i-MiEV ... Well, poor little i-MiEV needs a lot of changes before it will sell here.

Like Nissan's Leaf, i-MiEV is a "pure EV" which uses no gasoline or fuel other than electricity to go a wandering. Incidentally, in spite of Mitsu's suggested pronunciation, there seems to be a dozen - or more - ways to pronounce i-MiEV, so just take your best shot at it.

GM's Volt sets apart from other "pure green" vehicles because it has a small gasoline engine on board. That engine keeps the lithium ion battery pack charged. All a driver need worry about is the amount of fuel - gasoline - remains in the gas tank.

DOES NHTSA WORK WITH TOYOTA OR AS AN ARM OF THE GIANT COMPANY?

Last week we asked, based on conclusions drawn by a Wall Street Journal auto industry reporter, if Toyota had been right along with their contention that "driver error," and not electronic gremlins, was the main culprit behind thousands of owner claims of "unintended acceleration." Not to mention the hundreds of injuries and even several deaths which are claimed to be the result of known problems in Toyota-built vehicles, cars and trucks both.

Readers responded with their own thoughts on what could now be called "the Toyota scandal". It appears that, among this blog's readers, at least, the majority of people responding felt there was something wrong with these Toyotas and that owners were possibly being left out in the cold with Toyota's claims of driver error.
Toyota's 1967 2000GT was campaigned by Dan Gurney's All-American Eagles race team, based in Santa Ana, CA, on road race courses throughout the US; the cars never did very well but did help establish Toyota as a potential road racing power --- which they did indeed become

A report in Tuesday's Automotive News, the world's daily publication of record for the auto industry, would seem to bolster the company's claims ... especially so, considering Toyota says their source for this information is from NHTSA, the US' agency of record when it comes to automotive safety.

Here's what Automotive News said:

"Brakes weren't applied by drivers of Toyota vehicles in at least 35 of 58 crashes blamed on unintended acceleration, U.S. auto-safety regulators said after studying data recorders.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also saw no evidence of electronics-related causes for the accidents in reviewing the vehicle recorders, known as black boxes, the agency said today in a report to lawmakers.

The preliminary findings bolster Toyota's contentions that there's no evidence of flaws in electronic controls on its vehicles and that motorists in some cases confused the accelerator and brake pedals.

Toyota, the world's largest automaker, has recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide in the past year for defects such as pedals that stuck or snagged on floor mats.

INDYCAR, F1 AND NASCAR -- CHEATING AND BAD CALLS

On July 25^th, motor racing fans worldwide got two separate doses of being treated like know-nothing idiots by the captain of the Ferrari Formula 1 team and the man who essentially runs IndyCar.

 

It’s no secret that there are plenty of behind-the-scenes dealings in all forms of racing, from the under-10 set starting out in go-karts to NASCAR, IndyCar, F1 and every other major racing series in the world.

 

And of course flat-out cheating has been part of racing since the first two cars met on some dirt road.

 

“If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t racin’” is heard in the NASCAR garages, usually being said by someone who knows a thing or to about getting away with trickery in that sport.

 Four-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson's team has been accused of cheating

 

In NASCAR, in particular, there’s something known generically as “the call.” What that meant, whether delivered by phone or in person, was that NASCAR wouldn’t be looking too closely at that team’s race cars when they went through NASCAR pre- and post-race inspections. This was reportedly one of the ways NASCAR has been able to have so many dramatic finishes where, as in “professional” wrestling, sometimes the fan favorite wins and sometimes the most-hated driver is victorious.

 

While “the call” or some form of it certainly exists in other motorsports, all series see a lot of stunts means to affect the outcome of the race. For instance, drivers have been known to, under orders from their crew chief or owner, stop their cars on the track or even crash them, in order to bring out a yellow flag which bunches up the competitors, allowing a front-running teammate in better to have a better shot at a win.

 

And throwing all sorts of stuff out of windows or cockpits (usually balled-up duct tape) in order to bring out the yellow flag is also a well-known trick meant to affect the race’s end.

 

And we won’t even cover the hundreds of cheating tricks used on engines, wings, suspensions and every other part of a race car which can be fiddled with, adjusted, lightened or moved for extra performance. “Add lightness” is the creed of the racing crew chief.

 

“It ain’t cheatin’ if you don’t get caught” is another oft-heard garage-area refrain.

 

As far back as 1934 (and no doubt even before), race winners were being “chosen” by someone outside the car rather than decided by actual on-track competition.

 

Daimler (whose cars now know as Mercedes-Benz) introduced their phenomenal “Silver Arrows” open-wheel race cars that year.

One of the very few extant Daimler W125 Silver Arrows
 

Why the Silver Arrow sobriquet? Legend has it that the race cars  were slightly overweight, so team manager Alfred Neubauer ordered the team to strip all the paint off the cars. After that exercise, the cars met the weight limit and of course they were the color of their sheet metal; hence, the Silver Arrows.