Picture of the Week - Abarth

Carlo Abarth built some of the best sportscars in the 60ies and early 70ies. Many won big races despite a engine size deficit. And many great driver was a works driver with the Abarth team. Many of the cars were beautifully shaped, but efficiency was more of a concern for Carlo Abarth than beauty. When he sold his company to Fiat the end was soon to come, too bad. Today you can again buy Abarth cars, but they are mostly tuned Fiat derivates. However there's a rumour that a new lightweight sportcar might be arriving!

Porsche 924 Carrera GT versus BMW M3 (E30) - which one to choose?

In first sight the Porsche 924 Carrera GT and the BMW M3 (E30) seem to be difficult to compare. But when you look closer there are actually many similarities.
Both cars have been designed and built with homologation rules (FIA) in mind, so both cars are Evolution Specials. Both cars are based on a mass production everyday car, the Porsche is based on the not too popular but still well sold 924 (with Audi engine), the BMW on the very popular 3 series.
Performance of the two cars is pretty similar, despite the 7-10 years of difference in age. They accelerate in roughly 7 seconds from 0-100 km/h and reach a top speed around 240 km/h. Both cars are equipped with 4 cylinder engines. And in both cases the car manufacturers decided for more or less traditional tuning options to make the cars faster and better looking, i.e. body kits, aerodynamics improvements, engine tuning, weight saving, etc.. In both cases the result is absolutely convincing! And this is appreciated by people owning and buying these cars. Both cars hold their value much much better than their mass production sister. A well maintained M3 (E30) from 1987 to 1990 will fetch prices around Euro 15'000 to 25'000, the Porsche 924 Carrera GT typically trades between Euro 25'000 to 35'000 for examples in good condition. And, yes, both are fairly practical cars, can seat 4 people and take some luggage too. And both cars are astonishingly economical in terms of fuel consumption, at least if you believe the ECE/DIN average consumption levels.

But let's get to the differences between these cars! The Porsche 924 Carrera GT is 30 years now almost, so basically can be called an oldtimer, while the M3 still needs to wait for another 8-10 years for this "honor". While the Porsche has a turbo engine with more then 100 hp/liter, the BMW uses a high revving 4 cylinder racing oriented 4 cylinder without turbo or compressor.
The Porsche has been built 406 times and probably 90% of these cars are still around. The M3 in comparison has been produced about 17'000 times, so in terms of rarity there's quite a difference! Interestingly this doesn't impact the value too much!

If you want to buy one, then color choice will not be of great concern as the Porsche only was delivered in three colors (red, silver, black) and the M3 in only few mores (e.g. white). Condition and history are critical, as maintenance bills can become quite significant for both cars!

I have been writing about these two cars before, so if you want to read more about them, have a look here and here.

BMW's Diesel Hybrid prototype - the future of sportscars?

BMW just reveiled a prototype that will be showcased at the coming international auto exhibition (IAA) in Frankfurt. It combines a 3 cylinder diesel engine with two electrical motors and a battery of 85 kg. The car is supposed to be very efficient with less than 4 liters per 100 km and at the same time quick too with less than 5 seconds for the sprint from 0 to 100 km/h. Sounds good, doesn't it? In addition is is supposed to have a very low drag coefficient with 0.22 and it isn't as heavy as you could expect looking at all the technology on board, the weight is actually less than 1'400 kg. So this all looks like BMW has invented the sportscar of the future. Well, I don't think so. This thing will sound awful with its 3 pot diesel engine and the look is more suited for a non-production prototype than for something you can really use. It's an interesting engineering object though, but I will still prefer the really light weight and no thrills alternative that hopefully somebody else (Lotus, where is the successor of the Elise?) will build.

The best car I ever owned?

Recently I wondered why I still do own the same car for my everyday drives. Maybe, it's because this is the best car I ever had? Well, this triggers a number of thoughts, as this BMW 330i Touring probably cannot really be the best car I ever owned. Comparing to other cars ranging from high performance saloons to super cars and beautifully shaped convertibles, from slow small cars to fast racing cars, there must be something that is better than the BMW. Well, the first question of course is, what means "best". If "best" means to optimal compromise between economy, fuel efficiency, usability, safety and sportiness, well maybe, this is the best car I ever had. At least I don't see a real reason to swap it against something else. It's very efficient with its direct injection six cylinder engine, it's small enough to still handle well, it's roomy enough for a family with three kids, it's safe with many airbags and the latest in passive and active safety features and it's quite good in terms of usability too, if you forget the small windows and the not optimal navigation system. And, it sounds amazying, without being noisy. So, it's maybe the best compromise, but that's it. And that's maybe enough. And that's why I have kept it until now, that's why I have covered already 30 tkm with it and probably will add quite a few on top.
But to come back to the initial question, it's certainly not the best car I have owned in absolute terms. Frequent readers of my blog will know why.

The E-Tracer - faster and more economical than a Tesla Roadster

The Monotracer has been around for quite a while. It followed the so called Ecomobile and uses the same design and engineering principles as its predecessor. Basically it's a motocycle with a full body and two supporting side wheels that can be retracted almost like an airplane. The standard Monotracer is fast, 0-100 km/h in roughly 5.7 s, top speed 260 km/h.
Now Pevates AG, the company behind the Monotracer came with a new one, called the E-Tracer. It's what you would expect, an electrical version of the Monotracer. 100 kW enable it to be even faster than the Monotracer. What is even more impressive is the reach of 150 to 250 km. Now, this is much better than what you can expect in reality from a Tesla Roadster. The reason for this is a) the aerodynamic shape (0.19 cw) combined with a tiny shape (looking from the front) and b) low weight (550kg) and c) clever battery technology (lithium polymer). Now that's good engineering coming from Switzerland! And if you can live with the motocycle like behavior and can afford to pay even more money than what you put down for a Tesla then go and order one today!

How much car do you really need?

When I spotted these two cars recently I really thought that's a very nice illustration of the question "how much car do you really need". The two cars couldn't be more different.
The Honda S800, built in the sixties, is really small (lemgth: 3.30m, width: 1.40m, height: 1.20m), light (735kg), but still accommodates two people and bit of luggage. Its 791 ccm engine delivers 70 HP at 8'000 RPM, enough to run 160 km/h. It is economical too, with some 6 to 9 liter per 100 km (travel mode). By the way, 8'000 RPM was really exciting in the 60ies, most cars didn't even rev up to 6'000 RPM at that time. There's a lot fo motocycle technology in this car.
The Bentley Arnage, built between 1998 and today (final series) is sort of the pure opposite. It
is large (length: 5.40m, width: 1.93m, height: 1.52m), heavy (2'585 kg) and yes, it seats 5 people and the ones sitting in the back will not be unhappy. Its fuel consumption is certainly not greenish with 19.5 liter per 100 km, or up to 28.8 liter in the city. With 6'752 ccm and more than 500 HP there's enough power in this former Rolls Royce engine with lots of tradition coming with it to accelerate the car in less than 6 seconds to 100 km/h and reach 288 km/h.
So, both cars can transport people from A) to B), both use the same basic engineering concepts (rear wheel drive, gasoline powered four stroke engine), but the way it's packaged and built couldn't be much more diverse. And none of the typical Bentley driver would ever look at the Honda, and none of the S800 aficionados would ever consider a Bentley as being fun to drive. Which means at the end, that everybody has to find HIS answer to the question of how much car he really needs.

The V10 Hybrid Connaught D-Type GT

Car manufacturers have been trying to convince us that modern sports cars need to have a curb weight of almost two tons, need to be wide and long, thirsty and very very expensive. What looks like a law of nature isn't though!
In Wales (UK) a small company is building a sports car that weighs roughly 850 kg, and is with its V10 2 liter engine very economical thanks to a hybrid modul and the overall construction of the car. And it even carries 4 people with a serious amount of luggage. Where else could you find something like this?
What Tim Bishop and his boys at Connaught Motor Company are able to achieve is really impressive! Have a look at a video on youtube that introduces the car and highlights some of its features. It's very lightweight, as said, roughly 850 kg. That's 500 kg less than a Lotus Evora! It still has been constructed with crash tests in mind and the CAD/CAE tools used are the same as the ones used by the large manufacturers. The masterpiece is the front-mid-mounted V10 with a 22.5 degree angle between the two banks of cylinders. The engine is so small that it can be fitted where normally the transmission would be, resulting into a 50:50 kg distribution for the car. Thanks to a hybrid module energy is consumed in small bits giving a CO2 efficiency second to none in the same category. Yes, it's sort of a green car (not just the paint!). Everything has been constructed with ecology in mind, craddle to grave as Tim calls it. What is also highly impressive is the fact that this cars summons 40-50 years of car engineering and takes the best ideas from these years. You find things in this car that were pioneered in Reliants or Tatras, there's more tradition in this car than in any Aston Martin I would guess.
So here's a potential super car with a price tag of roughly 120'000-130'000 Euros, developed with a budget that was a fraction of what the biggies like Porsche, Jaguar or Maserati spend to come up with cars that are far less innovative than this one. Let's hope Tim Bishop and his great team will be able to lead this project to success and influence the motor car industry with it.
P.S. If you believe you heard the name before, yes, Connuaught built racing (and street) cars in the fifties with quite some success. So, there's even more tradition to this ....

Changing gears - 100 years of evolution and preferences

When you bought a car in the 60ies the choice of the transmission type was pretty clear, and often there wasn't even an alternative to the manual 4 gear transmission you could buy. Changing gears manually was a key skill trained and practiced in motoring for most of the 20iest century. Only luxury cars could be ordered with an automatic transmission, making driving easier, more comfortable and smoother. There was a period when fast cars were delivered with pre-selector gearboxes before the second world war. And Porsche pioneered the double clutch gearbox in Le Mans, but didn't bring it to the consumer world. Racing adopted sequential gear changes in the 90ies. And Daf enjoyed mostly lady drivers with the so called "Variomatic". The standard however was for a long time, even until recently, changing 4, 5 or 6 gears manually. With the introduction of computer power and with the progress in robot technologies though new forms of transmissions became possible. Alfa-Romeo (Selespeed), Ferrari (F1) and many others offered robotized manual gear changes. The clutch was operated by motors, same with the gear change. "Flappy paddles" behind the steering wheel were used to command the gear change. The first versions were not at all convincing, but with every new version the systems became better. In parallel Audi brought back the "Variomatic", now called "Multitronic". And Volkswagen and Audi again also introduced the "DSG", the modern version of the double clutch transmission, allowing for instant gear changes, in the meantime adopted also by BMW, Porsche, Nissan and many others. Traditional automatic transmissions were also improved and are now offering 7 and 8 gears, direct by-passes and therefore better fuel consumption. More and more cars today are sold without a clutch pedal, many don't even show a gear change stick. Welcome to the modern world of motoring.
Having driven most of these engineering wonders and having enjoyed the convenience and comfort of some of the solutions I still remain a fan of the old fashioned manual gear change. Automatic gear boxes are fine when I commute, drive for business and try to find parking spots in the city. But whenever I want to drive for fun and prefer to be engaged in a real driving experience, then my preference is changing gears manually, feeling the mechanics of the transmission and listening to the engine sound when going from one gear up or down. I know that many petrolheads feel the same. But besides this nostalgic perspective, manual boxes also offer some other advantages, as they are much simpler to repair, last usually longer, are lighter and allow for more changes, i.e. the gear ratios. The complex and electronically sophisticated solutions in modern cars will make it difficult to maintain these cars in 30 or 50 years, while you will always be able to find somebody to fix a manual transmission (hopefully).
What's your opinion here?

Electrical cars cheaper than gasoline or diesel cars?

A big inhibitor to modern electrical (and even hybrid) cars today are the high costs of batteries and the rather marginal reach. A recent study of IFA (in Germany) now said that by 2020 electrical cars will be more economical than their oil fuelled counterparts. They assumed decreasing costs for the batteries and increasing costs for fuel (3 Euros by 2020, instead of 1.20-1.50 or so today). This seems to be a quite realistic scenario, maybe the assumptions were even taken with too much care. The progress around battery technologies is astonishing and it's quite clear that there's only so much oil still to be found.
A key problem of course remains how the electricity is produced. It is already possible to produce your own energy on the roof of your house with solar panels. But again, it's not quite economical to do so. So we also need some real progress here if the whole chain is supposed to make sense.
Let's see and continue to observe this space!

3.9 liter gasoline (europlus) for 100 km with a Toyota Prius

Well, not exactly. At the end, when I was able to take the picture, the fuel consumption was 4 liters per 100 km. But still, it's not a Diesel, it's unleaded gasoline and it's a car of 4.5 m lenght with 5 seats and all the comfort we are used today. So, not bad at all. The display is shown the German language, but the bar chart is understandable anyway. With a modern hybrid car you can stay substantially below 5 liters and most of the time below 4 liters even. The 80 kms included city traffic, highway and other streets, nothing artificial. Average speed probably something like 70 km/h. I must admit that I tried really to safe fuel, for example by not using the air condition (it wasn't hot anyway) and by not rushing up the hill. The good thing about the Prius is that it motivates the driver to save energy. But it takes experience also and it's not well enough explained in the manual. For example, braking isn't braking all the times, it depends on how much you step your foot on the pedal. I actually think Toyota should do a campaign with pictures like this (ideally with a number 2 or 3 for the consumption), this could be impressive.

Is a Super Car a super car?

The term "Super Car" probably was coined in the 80ies. Lamborhini Miura, Ferrari Daytona and BB, Porsche Turbo and others really defined the benchmark of what was possible. And we had fairly empty streets, much less speed limits and the regular car for most people was a VW Golf, Open Kadett or Renault R5, barely able to go beyond 160 km/h. So Supercars really were super. But how is it today? What can you really do with cars producing 600+ HP and going faster than 300 km/h? Where do we want to leverage these impressive performance figures and the ecquisit handling? Any Golf GTI does 200 km/h, even a family estate car like the BMW 330i produces 272 HP, which is substantially more than a Ferrari 308 GTB in the 80ies. So wouldn't it be time for Engineers to do something better than adding more power and more weight to the so called Supercar? Ferrari announced that they want to change the direction and produce lighter and smaller cars in the future, however the new Ferrari California with a heavy top construction is not a good evolution in this sense. Maybe the Artega GT is a more modern Super Car? Maybe, at least it's less heavy than most others. In my eyes the next generation Super Car should have the following characteristics:

• Effective both on the track and on regular roads
• Great looks
• Impressive sound (specifically towards the driver)
  
• Doing at least 250 km/h and 0-100 in less than 6 seconds while still consuming less gasoline than most family cars

There's not much to choose from today, Lotus had a good grip on this, but even the Elise almost added 300 kg over the last 10 years. I remember that my own Elise Mk1 with alluminium disk brakes was moving less than 700 kg of weight, while the latest versions are closer to 925 kg.