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Gnarly Books
Driving Ambition: The Official Inside Story of the McLaren F1
- Karl E. Ludvigsen: Porsche: Excellence Was Expected : The Complete History of Porsche Sports and Racing Cars (An Automobile Quarterly Library Series Book)
The V12 Engine: The Untold Story of Technology, Evolution, Performance and Impact of All
Gnarly Brethren
- Alltop Autos
- Automotive addictions and general tomfoolery
- Bicycle Design
- Bolly Blog
- Bring a Trailer
- Cadillac Drivers' Log
- Citroen Hot Rod
- Cool Tools
- Dinosaurs and Robots
- eggbaconchipsandbeans
- english cut
- FastLane Blog
- Gas, Tires, Oil
- Hoopty Rides
- Jeff : Blog
- Peel Out!
- Perpenduum
- Telstar Logistics
- Winding Road
All hail Cadillac!
The new CTS-V had broken the lap record for the Nurburgring! All hail Cadillac! All hail the CTS-V!
The world has needed a truly gnarly Cadillac for a long, long time. M5? We don't need no stinkin' M5!
Part of the reason behind the emergence of cars like the CTS-V out of General Motors is the presence of product development executives like John Heinricy, who is the one who pedaled the CTS-V to this record time. Watch his magic here:
Viva Jerrari!
Now, I've been accused of having really weird taste in cars, and I can only honestly say that all of those accusations are true, reasonable, and well-founded.
Exhibit A is the one-and-only Jerrari, available now -- right now! -- to the highest bidder on eBay. Could it be you? For a kid who grew up in a Chevy/GMC Suburban family and lusted day after day for a Ferrari or Porsche to magically appear in the household garage, this is the stuff that dreams are made of.
I mean, who wouldn't want a V-12 with a vinyl roof, tailgate, and four-wheel-drive?
And quite possibly the best automotive badge ever. Forza Jerrari!
How to drive a 911, part III
Ramming the Ruf CTR "Yellow Bird" 911 around the 'Ring.
How to drive a 911? Parts I, II, and III of this exploration show us that some key ingredients are:
- Quick hands
- An agile right foot
- Total commitment
Gnarly machines tend to share in common a need for total commitment. If mishandled, a F-16, a Ducati, or a 911 will bite you. It takes commitment to take one to and beyond the limit.
UGG = chutzpah?
Nick Heidfeld adjusting the attack angle of his BMW F1's front wing at a BMW corporate event.
Oh well, at least no people were hurt. Come to think of it, standing a meter or two away from an F1 doing doughnuts might not be the best idea in the world. But -- dude! -- I would have been across the barriers in a flash, and running away three seconds later with a very, very gnarly carbon fiber trophy for my living room wall! A carbon fiber BMW F1 wing! Come on, people!
Chutzpah, gravitas, conjones -- critical ingredients in UGG?
via Winding Road
How to drive a 911, part II
See part one here
Rockets and the First Law of Gnarlyness
Being loud, fast, and potentially out of control is an essential part of gnarlyness. Thrust to weight ratios greater than unity are gravy. As an envoy of the First Law of Gnarlyness, rockets are right up there with nitro funny cars, Ferrari F1 cars, and, well, things that go boom.
The First Law of Gnarlyness: Embrace the visceral
The bliss of a Matchett chalk talk
I can't get enough of these "chalk talk" videos done by former F1 mechanic Steve Matchett. There's nothing quite like hearing a guru walk you around a piece of gnarly technology (be sure to look at his books The Mechanic's Tale and The Chariot Makers the left column of this blog).
If you don't geek out on these, then you're simply not a gearhead. Mechancial dampers, extended dorsal fins, Dali front wings, slick tires: this is the stuff of mechanical bliss. Amazing, ingenious designers at work.
UGG Ferrari Friday
The Ferrari 330 P3
GT-R photography by Jim Marshall
Check out this amazing photography of the new Nissan GT-R by ace photographer Jim Marshall.
Don't know what I want more: a real GT-R or the virtual version in the new Gran Turismo!
I began my engineering career with a college internship at Nissan's R&D center in Atsugi, Japan. Hot damn! All the cars, car magazines, and car talk a gearhead could possibly want! This was back when George Bush the elder was president, and the GT-R wasn't the player on the American automotive landscape that it is now. I spent the summer working with a testing group wrenching on pre-production Nissans and prototypes, as well as on competitive makes. This guaranteed lots of quality time with some amazing Nissan engineers and technicians, and made it possible to get a ride in the then-current GT-R (I begged to drive it myself, but no dice...). I've been a GT-R believer ever since!
How to drive a 911
How to drive a Porsche 911... more or less. But certainly a lot more than I could!
Punch the throttle, brake brake brake brake, catch the rear end, muzzle the wheelspin, throttle HARD! Brap brap. Brakes, squirm squirm squirm. Punch it again. This is what ten-tenths looks, feels and sounds like.
Observation: gnarlyness can have a strong dynamic component. Bravado, danger, gravity, horsepower -- they're all key ingredients.
UGG Ferrari Friday
I can't help but admire the guts it takes to rally a Ferrari 250 SWB. It is, after all, worth many multiples of a decent house, even one in a crazy place like Silicon Valley.
But.
Listen to the sound of this V-12 as it races up and down the rev range, and revel in the balanced handling of the SWB. Poetry in motion, to be sure.
I think there's a fifth law to be added to the four laws of gnarlyness, and it has something to do with chutzpah. A point to ponder...
Why Subaru is my favorite car brand today
It's all about a brand that is based on a truth rooted in getting real stuff done in the world. It's not about selling the sizzle, it's about selling a steak that sizzlers. Hot! And a juicy one at that.
What makes it all authentic is the relatively close tie between the WRX's you see pogoing around in this video and what you or I could buy down at the corner Subaru dealer. They're a lot closer to the civilian models than anything you'd find in NASCAR, let alone Le Mans racing or even touring cars. Effective marketing is about brands that are real, not fake. Truth, not myth.
minivan = performance icon, Part 2
Okay, so it's not a stock minivan, but it looks like one... All hail the F1-powered Renault Espace minivan. Piloted by Alain Prost, no less.
When will manufacturers embrace us, the performance-loving-but-have-a-few-kids-and-too-many-strollers driving enthusiasts? A Honda Odyssey with around 300 horsepower, a dash more torque, a dual-clutch manumatic transmission, and a more sporting suspension would be just the ticket.
UGG Ferrari Friday
Law of Gnarlyness No. 4: Be visceral
minivan = performance icon
All of us here at Metacool Media are fervent believers in the minivan as performance vehicle. They're just tall cars, as opposed to cars that stand tall (also known as SUV's), so with just a little imagination they lend themselves well to sporting modifications.
If I told you I had a mid-engine, turbo-charged, rear-wheel-drive car that I went drifting in, would you think it was a hot dog Toyota Previa minivan? Why not? Why not, indeed.
thanks to our gnarly brethren at Winding Road for the tip
Shotgun with Alonso
Wouldn't you like to ride around the Nurburgring with F1 ace Alonso? I would.
Watch these slightly nervous passengers get a hot lap as Alonso keeps a calm running commentary (in Spanish). It's amazing how easy he makes it all look, even as he tells us he's turned the A/C off to make the car go faster, or remarks that -- hey! -- there's a chick driving that other car.
It helps if you understand Spanish, but if you don't, the moaning tires and the body language make it clear that the front seat passenger is wishing for a brake pedal in his wheelwell.
Performance Envelopes
Understanding your performance envelope... or how to land a 757 at Toncontin Airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Thank goodness for modern engineering. Using mathematics to predict real-world behaviors, and then testing the hell out of stuff to make sure what works in theory also works in practice. Theory and practice, thinking and building, it all comes together in these miraculous machines.
UGG Ferrari Friday
Law of Gnarlyness No. 4: Be visceral
Law of Gnarlyness No. 3: Celebrate Workmanship
Gnarlyness need not be about metal or even fiberglass or carbon fiber. A spirit of fine workmanship must infuse a gnarly object. In this world, even a knit Ferrari can be very gnarly indeed. This is why we dig the underside of a Galaxie rocket car even when it is standing still:
Look at the beautiful finish on the leaf springs. And at the triangular truss structure bracing the live axle. Beautifully worked, mindfully executed.
Hakosuka!
I have a thing for late 60's European sedans, and occasionally I have to remind myself that Nissan was cranking out some amazing vehicles during this period, too. For an example of what I'm talking about, check out this lovely 1966 Datsun PL411 (with body styling by Pininfarina, natch!). I want one enough to put it on my life list.
So, the rosters of great tin-top racers from BMW and Mercedes and Lancia, check out this wonderful video of a PGC10-type Nissan Skyline GT-R "hakosuka" being rammed around Fuji Raceway. A big brother to the PL411, blessed with a truly wicked sounding inline six.
I advise listening to the startup sequence on the video, then forwarding to about 1:39 to avoid the cheesy soundtrack.
Big Dog walks
This thing freaks me out yet delights me.
It's too bug-like and too big not to give me the heebie-jeebies. Its ability to negotiate uneven terrain, abrupt transitions to split-mu surfaces, and the occasional random kick blows my mind and makes me admire all the people who scored A's in our mechanical engineering dynamics classes back in undergrad.
link courtesy of gentry i/o
On time and Porsche
Metaphysical commentary on the design philosophy of Porsche, by Porsche. Great stuff.
Limbo Limbo, Cathay Pacific...
Hey sure, let's buzz the airfield. No problem!
Check out the video here.
But.
We all know these things don't even count unless you barrel-roll the plane:
Sheesh. Come on! Those who don't know their history are doomed never to repeat it.
Many thanks to our strategic associates at Telstar Logistics for notification of this sub-par buzzing.
Once more, with feeling
I love the way this little 356 motor revs and revs and revs. What valiant little pushrods!
Slippery when wet...
Perry Rijnbeek shows us the finer points of opposite-lock Alfa Romeo aquatics.
Pontiac G8 GXP
The Pontiac G8 GXP.
As a brand, Pontiac is back. Bad timing given macro economics and the price of crude, but they're back.
Ditch Witch
Directional boring, made possible by Ditch Witch.
Ingenious, amazing stuff. Who says "high tech" is all about stuff with electrons and silicon?
More One Lap Honda Odyssey!
Honda's Bradley Buchanan takes us through all the design work that went in to the creation of an Odyssey that hauls at both ends.
What a sound this thing makes! And how it hunkers! It has all the gravitas of a hairy-armed first-generation Porsche 911 Turbo.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there's a market out there for vans that pack the punch and handling of a BMW 535i. People in my demographic and psychographic could easily absorb 10,000 of these a year in North America alone. I'd buy one in a second, especially if it were powered by a turbodiesel.
Space is the ultimate luxury.
Space coupled with warp-speed performance? Well, that's nirvana. Honda, are you listening?
Robotfly
(click thru to witness an amazing video)
Here's an excerpt from the accompanying article:
Designing an automated fly implied having the ability to make lightweight, miniature working parts, a process that Wood says took up the bulk of his doctoral study, because of the lack of any previous research on which to draw. “For years, the thrust of our work was ‘How do we do this?’” says Wood. “There was no existing fabrication paradigm, given the scale we were operating on, the speed we wanted to operate with, and things like cost, turnaround, and robustness.” His research group developed and fabricated a laser carving system that could meticulously cut, shape, and bend sheets of carbon fiber and polymer—both strong but lightweight materials—into the necessary microparts.
And how to power those wings to beat 120 times per second? To keep this 60-milligram robot (the weight of a few grains of rice) with a 3-centimeter wingspan to a minimal size and weight, Wood says, you can’t simply use a shrunken version of the heavy DC (direct current) motors used in most robots. So he and his team settled on a simple actuator: in this case, a layered composite that bends when electricity is applied, thereby powering a micro-scale gearbox hooked up to the wings. Wood says the actuator works even better than its biological inspiration. The power density—a measure of power output as a function of mass—of a fly’s wing muscles is around 80 watts per kilogram; Wood’s wing design produces more than 400 watts per kilogram.
That's some kick-ass engineering at work. Professor Wood, you are one gnarly dude.
Many thanks to the folks at Telstar Logistics, a key member of the metacool horizontal keiretsu, for bringing this innovation to the attention of our R&D group.
More GT-R!
GT-R. Probably my favorite performance car brand ever. Capable of spanking a Porsche 911 Turbo around the famed Nurburgring. The new version of the GT-R is here, which means it is time to start saving up my quarters. Yowsa.
Panerai titanium
Were I an atom of titanium, I'd try and pull every string I could (bear in mind that I would be Italian titanium) in order to be packed in to this amazing Luminar Marina Automatic by Panerai. I'd lobby hard to land some choice real estate near that tasty winding mechanism.
The Weekend approaches...
Tachometers with telltales...
... and straight-sixes from M Power...
... rallye timepieces...
... it's the Monterey Weekend!
Forgive my lame attempt to ape the Sound of Music. I'm just so excited about the gnarlyness I will experience over the next 48 hours or so!
I'll be hanging around the Monterey Historics and BarCamp this weekend. Two days of atoms and bits, dorks and geeks. Drop me a line if you'll be at either one -- I'd love to meet up.
Props to the gnarly boys at Bring a Trailer for the tasty photos.
Whence cometh gnarlyness?
What makes something gnarly? And when can one be sure that one is experiencing true unabashed gearhead gnarlyness, and not some flimsy substitute?
Weighty questions.
I'm not sure of the answer(s). I know gnarlyness when I see it, but I'm only just starting to tease out the underlying design principles. Perhaps I'll embark on a public journey, a la John Maeda and his Laws of Simplicity, of surfacing the true drivers of gnarlyness via a public conversation. Let's see. Where this goes depends largely on you.
For now, though, I think gnarlyness happens when four design principles are held in mind:
1. Embrace the visceral, dude:
2. Have a strong point of view:
3. Celebrate workmanship:
4. Be red. Really, really red:
One Lap Odyssey
How does a 400 horsepower, fire-breathing Honda Odyssey strike you?
Not exactly the greenest of conveyances, but I bet some hyper-fast minivans would go a long way toward changing the "vans are for soccer moms" story which makes people go and buy silly, tippy SUV's for road use. A powerful van would at least be greener than an equally powerful SUV. After all, a mini van really isn't a small van; it's a tall car. And space is the ultimate luxury.
Shell Ferrari retrospective
Here's a nice medley of Ferrari Formula 1 Cars through the decades, thanks to the marketing communications folks at Shell. Lots of nice touches, from including a front-engine Ferrari race car (that's the first one), to the use of period-correct large-window full-face helmets for the racer from the 70's, to the exquisite V12 & V8 soundtracks, well done. Bravo.
It does feel like a bit of an homage to the Honda Impossible Dreams commercial, which benefits from tighter editing, a humorous plot line, and a wonderful soundtrack. Not trying to be overly critical here, just calling it like I see it. While the Honda commercial evokes a strong emotional reaction, the Shell ad leaves one feeling a bit flat in comparison. Nothing wrong with it, but if brands are all about how they make you feel, then a commercial which is all about building meaning should fire on all emotional cylinders, as it were. A reminder of how great reflective design is so hard to do.
Okay, excuse me while I go listen to those V12's on overrun once again... Forza Ferrari!
Many thanks to Doug from out in metacoolland for pointing this video out to me.
26march update: here's a link to a Quicktime version of the Ferrari-Shell ad, much higher quality
The new Nissan Skyline GT-R
I'll take mine in gunmetal, thank you.
Iso Rivolta
When people send me emails or text messages containing the word "ISO" (which I believe stands for "in search of", as in that weird Leonard Nimoy show which used to air on TV), I get confused, because I'm a believer in the idea of Italo-American hybrids by the name of Iso. No, no that kind of hybrid. This kind of hybrid:
The Iso Rivolta. Corvette horsies meet Italian tailoring. Accept no substitutes.
Props to my man Zeh for the guerilla street photography
Zonta + F1 Honda + Laguna Seca = Doughnuts
Ricardo Zonta pulls some doughnuts at the Monterey Historic Races in his 2006 Toyota F1 car.
And, be sure to watch this in-car video of Zonta breaking the Laguna Seca lap record between racing sessions of the Historic races. The first lap is just a warmup. The second is the record breaker.
So fast it's scary.
Mini Marcos
As driven by Paolo Arbizzani of Scuderia Bologna at the Gran Premio Bologna-San Luca. I've got to figure out a way to be hanging around (or driving?) in Bologna -- a rabid center of gearhead gnaryless if there ever was one -- come June 2007.
Citroen 2CV Sahara
Need four-wheel-drive off-road capabilities? Stick a second engine and transmission in the rear. Panoramic sunroof? A roll-back canvas roof will do.
Audacious. French. A way of thinking beyond the obvious that's gone missing from Citroen in the decades that passed since a gnarly old Sahara last roamed the rocky roads of southern Spain, but whose iconoclastic sensibilitly can still be found in the work of the crazies at Honda.
Lafitte pedaling a Ferrari F40
Ah, the scream of a Ferrari motor at full boogie
In this case a twin-turbo V8 from a F40LM expertly pedaled by none other than French F1 hotshoe Jacques Lafitte. How about that recalcitrant shifter trying to move gears around in a cold box? At about the 60 second mark you can hear Lafitte really get into the turbos, and I just can't get enough of the exhaust spitting, burping and rip snorting as he heels and toes down the gearbox around the 90 second mark.
Sacrebleu! Forza Italia! It's like, visceral, dude.
thanks to the crazies at Winding Road blog for the link
Pure Gnarlyness
Thermodynamics 101, brought to you by the warmup sequence of a Formula 1 motor.
If you "get" why I find this compelling, then... well, you're probably a gearhead!
If you don't understand the attraction of a V-10 motor spinning up to 18,000 RPM while shrieking loud enough to make ears bleed, then consider this a good example of our irrational fascination with technological aesthetics (where "our" means the human species). We just love this stuff. It just manifests itself in different ways. If you're proud of your Prius, you're expressing something irrational, because the Prius is certainly not about an economically justifiable technology choice, no more than a Formula 1 car is.
In the end, it's worth going back to Norman's Visceral-Behavioral-Reflective model of cognition. This video is all about the power of the visceral. It's absolutely, postively worth designing for, no matter if you're working on a financial website or a F1 car.
