I have to say, I pretty much agree with him. Watch this video. You'll laugh, I promise.

Now you can. Ride along in the new ZR1 a test track in Germany. The ZR1 is the new $100,000 corvette made out of carbon fiber and ceramic. It has 640hp supercharged v8 in it and is truly a supercar. This car is sick.

My truck was on fumes today. Filled it up. Took two tries because the pump shuts off when you hit $75.00. Now I accept I'll being paying more at the pump because of what I've chosen to drive. But, sheesh, this is getting a tad ridiculous. I'm aware that at some point I may be looking back on this as having it good. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Oh, and my truck takes regular. In case you were wondering. Which you probably weren't.

This was a great car. I kinda hated to see it go, but it was time.

Driving a Bugatti Veyron at 253mph. A million dollar, one thousand and one horsepower supercar. Insanity.

 

So my new Nissan Titan truck is a Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV), which means it can run on e85, a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. "Ethanol is a high octane, liquid, domestic and renewable fuel, produced by the fermentation of plant sugars. In the United States, ethanol is typically produced from corn and other grain products, although in the future it may be economically produced from other biomass resources such as agricultural and forestry wastes or specially grown energy crops."

I finally got around to looking for an e85 fuel station. Do'h. Not gonna happen. At least for now. There's one in Berkeley (insert Berkeley joke here) and one in Livermore. Dammit. So much for using e85 in my truck in the near future. Maybe they'll put a filling station somewhere in San Jose one of these days. If so, I'm happy to go out of my way to use it, but Berkeley or Livermore? Yeah, right.

 

Ok that's not as random as it sounds. I've been working with a broker for this purchase - Dave Sutch of mycarguy-sf.com.  He was searching and searching for the truck I wanted for a few weeks. This was after my months and months of research and driving other vehicles. This one won out with the right combo of features for me. I really love this truck. It's a Nissan Titan LE 4x4 CrewCab and it has pretty much every feature available from the factory, and then some. I love the color. It's called Red Brawn. I'm not sure the pictures really do it justice. I'll take some more shots tomorrow and some shots of the interior too. The shot(s) below I took really really quickly because it was about 105 out there and I had been traveling all day and despite my pleasure at buying the new truck and looking forward to the road trip home, and despite enjoying the Texas sized hospitality - I was about ready to burst into flames and then kill somebody and then burst into flames again. But I had to take a picture of my new friend Buddy Wood. And the truck at the Dealer. Buddy's been with Nissan for like 35 years. Insanity.

I know what you're thinking now though. Texas! Get back to the Texas part! So here's the deal. Finding this truck was a difficult process basically because I'm off my nutt and am so damn particular about what I wanted (also for some other reasons ;). Dave Sutch definitely earned his fee with this job and then some! And then some more! I really apprciate the job he did for me on this one. He really went above and beyond. Thanks Dave! Anyway, we couldn't find the truck on the west coast, we had a false positive in Denver, and finally we found the truck in Dallas. That's the short version. There was much checking and double checking and further checking and a couple of false alarms. I think Dave and I were both ready to pull our hair out. :-P

Also there was some bidness about the factory cash, my financing expiring, and the 2007's coming out that really made it worth my while to take this deal. I got an unbelievably great deal. I'll tell you about it offline if you want to know. But I would have paid thousands more if I had ordered it.

So while the truck wasn't exactly the truck I originally wanted, it's nearly so. The only difference was the interior color and when I saw my new truck, I was hard pressed to remember why I wanted the other interior. I'm super happy. My new truck has kind of a two tone gray on gray leather interior that really looks great. I don't know why I was so fixated on the interior color. I think I over thought it, or it didn't look good on the trucks I saw when I was test driving. Maybe the color combos didn't work as well on those trucks. Dunno.

So right now I'm staying at the Weston near the Dallas/Ft Worth airport. I had intended to get started back today, but after my flight out this morning, and after spending nearly four hours at the dealership, I was nearly willing to trade the truck I just bought for a long hot shower and some pink bunny slippers. Ok, just the bunny slippers. (Hmm, that doesn't even make sense). So I'm here in Dallas and I'm wasted and I'm heading to bed to get up at the crack of dawn and head home. By the way, it's about 1700 miles. So I'll probably do 1690 miles tomorrow and 10 on Sunday.

I'll blog more about this tomorrow if I can find some wifi.



More pictures here.

P.S. The only bummer about this adventure is that I had to embark on it alone. B. couldn't make it. I wish she was here!

Here’s the video…

I forgot something important when planning to install the battery brain on our BMW X5. The fracking battery is in the back, under the spare tire, and I couldn't fit a wafer thin mint back there, much less the Battery Brain. Should have thought of that before ordering it, dambit. I guess you can do an "advanced" install and hang it off of the fuse box, but that makes me a bit more nervous. I'm not sure what I'm going to do here. I could have Ted May install it for me perhaps. The X5 hasn't done its drain the battery and refuse to start happy dance lately, but I'm sure it's just lulling us into a false sense of security.

I love cars. I hate cars. I love cars. I hate cars. I love cars. I hate cars.

Blast!

 

My friend Jimmy bought a Aston Martin V8 Vantage. What a beautiful car. I'm simultaneously thrilled for him and seething with jealousy. Uh oh, I'm breaking one of the ten commandments. The question is, which one?

We've been having a problem with our BMW X5. Normally a fantastic car, there's is something that is intermittently draining the battery so that every couple of weeks it won't start and we have to jump it. This sucks mainly because B drives around the bay area a lot with a side job in Berkeley, going to grad school in SF, and working in Palo Alto. She can't be getting stranded in Berkeley. Not an option. The car has spent days with my friend and car doctor Ted May at Valaya Racing with no luck. We've hooked every computer known to man up to it and still we're not sure what the problem is. If the car isn't exhibiting the problem, then it's really not very possible to track down what that problem is. So basically Ted suggested we get rid of the car. And when your car doctor tells you this, you listen. So, long term, replace this car. Short term, make it reliable if we can.

Today I found this "Battery Brain" device on the web which hooks up to your battery and detects if the charge is becoming dangerously low. If it is, it cuts all the power to the car and when you get in the car and it won't start all you have to do is reset the Battery Brain (which allows the juice to flow again) and the car will start. This kicks ass. Cars should have this built in! Anyway, I ordered one of these and we'll see if this gives us the reliability we need for B's driving needs. I ordered type II with the remote control, that way she doesn't need to pop the hood to reset it. Nice. Not as good as the car working properly but better than having to jump the car. Plus draining the battery all the way will ruin the battery very quickly. Car batteries aren't designed to be drained all the way.

If this really works, I'll probably order one for our other cars too and I recommend everyone ordering one for your car.

I'll post again about this once we've given it a go.

I like the new BMW Z4 M-Series Coupe car.

Though if I were to buy a two seater performance coupe in this class, I'd probably go for the new Porsche Cayman.

Of course, what I really want is a new Corvette C6R. Though my neighbors wouldn't like me too much when I rattled their pictures off their walls as I drove by. You would not believe how loud this race car is. You really have to hear it in person to truly appreciate it. The ground literally shakes when it goes by. Gah. Chills down my spine. Not so good for daily driving though...

Really really cool toys. They have a bunch of different models all with interchangable parts. I love the retro wood. I'm tempted to pick up one of the c9 Sports Cars. Check out their website here.

What caught my eye about these is the spy shots of the new model over at AutoBlog. Too funny. If you're not a car person and don't know what a spy shot is, you'll probably be scratching you're head on this one.

Anyway, here's the spy shot:

Read about the new Unimog U500 here.

I'm a car nut, so this amuses me. You may think it's a little over the top though...

 

Building a CarPC is on my short list of projects. I want to put one in my Corvette. I already have the 7" touch screen. Here's a overview one what this project is all about...

It's a little hard to tell from the pictures, but the new Z4 Coupe looks like a cool car! More here.

 

The ebay auction for my H2 ends tonight. The bids aren't high enough yet. More bids! More Bids! I'm having a hell of a time selling it. Gas prices are probably the culprit (gee, ya think?). Not a good time to be selling a full sized SUV, either as a dealer or a private owner. Sigh. I'm very good at pointing out the obvious.

How about building the world's fastest supercar? Saaaaweeet!!! This car does 0-60 in less than three seconds. Top speed of like 240. Quarter mile in like ten seconds. Wow. Seriously, I'd love to do build one. I'd probably take me like a year, but I'd sure enjoy it. What you do is buy the car in stages and put it together. Supposedly it's easy done. I mean relatively. It's a little more elaborate than say buying a pressboard desk from Ikea. They send you everything you need, and then you put a small block chevy engine in it (up to 700 hp!!) and you have a real barn buster.

The only concern I'd have is the day to day driveability. I'm sure it's awesome when you're in the mood for performance driving or on the track, but what about when you're tired driving home from work in traffic? It's probably quite loud, and it doesn't have power steering or anti-lock brakes. So it might be a bit of a pain to drive slowly. I could do some stuff like add some sound deadening and modify it somewhat to make my old butt happier day to day, but I'd hate to build it and then not be able to live with it. And of course I'd have to install a CarPC to have all my ripped music and navigation and wireless internet at my fingertips...

Ah, the possibilities are vast and unbounded. I'm weeping like a little girl.

 

Watch out for the somewhat NSFW bikini girls (sorry about that), but the rest of the pimped out ride pics are worth a laugh. An amazed head shake. At least a WTH were they thinking moment of judgmental bliss.

An example:

I like the wheel size sticker.

Sold a vehicle lately? Any tips you'd care to share? Mine just ain't selling.

BTW, this isn't an opportunity for any off topic ranting, you off topic ranters.

Selling the H2 on Craigs List was a bust. So I posted it here on Cars.com. This was much cheaper than ebay. Plus I didn't want to do an auction.

Now, I should have known this rule: don't drive behind big dirty dump trucks. Doing this is not compatible with keeping your car's paint nice and ding free. But I wasn't paying attention and I broke the rule. So I'm rocking out and drumming on the steering wheel to my bay city rollers eight track, doing the head bob, fixated on the big dirty butt of a air craft carrier sized dump truck just ahead of me. I was at a spot where the road narrows and we merge and all slow down. Maybe it was the truck slowing down, or maybe a the driver pushed some James Bond type button designed to fend of pursuers, but suddenly I was caught in a hail storm of tiny black pebbles. As if a storm cloud had opened up just above me. There must have been hundreds. Maybe thousands. Seriously. Bouncing off my hood and windshield. I almost turned on my windshield wiper. All I could do was take the lord's name in vain at the top of my lungs (sorry Lord) and run down my list of nasty words only sailors are supposed to say. In the end all I can do is apologize to my Corvette. I'm sorry Corvette. When I got to work I looked briefly at the hood and it looks like I escaped okay. Maybe they were all small enough to just bounce off. I just got the car waxed so maybe that saved me. But then again, maybe I didn't look hard enough and the hood now looks like the surface of the moon. A bright red moon. With tiny craters and abandoned NASA equipment.

A moment of silence please. I'm selling the H2. I'm a little sad. I hate to see it go, but it's time. So somebody buy it already. Jeez it's been fifteen whole minutes already.

Here's the ad on craigs list.

Instead I modified it to make it easier to get into...

Looks pretty sweet. Check out the pictures. Also there are some pictures there of the new forthcoming Audi A5.

If I was crushingly wealthy, I'd add this racecar to my garage. If I were crushingly wealthy I'd probably have 25,000 square foot garage and 10,000 square foot house and I'd probably still run out of room in the garage. I'd fly around the world in my Gulf Stream jet. I'd have a ginormous yacht to land my helicopter on, and I'd moor the yacht in Monaco. Damn, I need a higher limit on my Visa card.

BTW, what committee decided how to spell "yacht"? This is one of those words I have no idea how to spell and end up spelling it like yaught before the spell checker saves my ass. What an irritating word.

For you that don't know, every year there is a race in France called LeMans (they have a truly lame website unfortunately). It's one of the most famous auto races run each year and has years and years of history. Like, a lot of stuff has happened there and junk. You know, with cars, and crashes, and drivers, and teams - you know, racing stuff.

The kicker for this race is that the race is 24 hours long. This year I watched most of it. As much as was on the Speed Channel anyway and as much as my Tivo recorded. I think around 15 hours. It took me a couple of weeks to watch all the footage. There's three drivers per car, and most cars spend at least an hour or two total in the pits. Anyway, it's quite the racing spectacle. I enjoyed watching it immensely.

No surprise here, but I'm a Corvette Racing Team fan and I was definitely rooting for them. The C6r is a brand new car based on the newly redesigned Corvette C6. Wow, the ground shakes when this beast flies by. This is where a lot of the technology of the new Z06 comes from, and if you're paying attention to my blog you know how much I think they suck and would never, ever, own one even if you paid me.

Here's some information on the Corvette Racing team and some eye candy of the C6R at LeMans.

A new team has joined the ranks of teams competing in the GT1 class in the (American and French) Le Mans racing series. It's the Aston Martin team and their beautiful race car built up from James Bond's DB9. How cool is that? The Aston Martin DBR9 race cars were actually a few seconds faster per lap than the Corvette C6R cars. The Corvettes chased them for most of the race. The Corvette strategy was consistency, no mistakes, and reliability. A very successful strategy indeed.

The race was very exciting. The Corvettes zooming along, the Astons passing them and then the Astons would have a problem. For example they had a couple of off track adventures (including one where one of the cars got airborne) and a few mechanical problems (front splitter, a water leak, etc). So the Aston's would pit and the Corvettes would regain the lead and then the Astons would zoom back out and retake the lead and repeat. Unfortunately, in the end, the Astons lost due to mechanical problems with both cars having problems at the very end of the race, giving the Corvettes the win. The Corvettes just had much better reliability - the only problems they really had were a couple of blown tires. 

So the Corvette team ended up in first and second place, with one of the Aston's taking third. The fourth Aston didn't finish the race. It got parked after something went wrong in the engine and it lost fuel pressure. Bummer. Never like to see that happen.

It was a great race. Think about it, after 24 hours of racing they finished on the same lap. That's incredible. It was a fantastic win for Corvette, the only thing that would have made it better was actually being faster that the DBR9s, but that's racing for you. Anything can happen at any time. Winning is a combination of the best car, the best driving, the best preparation, the best engineering, and luck. And the pit babes. Mmmm. Pit babes. Oops, was that my out loud voice?

Anyway, all the cars are beautiful. Hence my post. Initially I just wanted to post some pretty pictures of the Aston Martin race cars but I wanted to give some context for these cars for people who aren't race fans. Which was probably a waste of time. You probably clicked away to watch movies of Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch, but I tried. I've already posted a bunch of Corvette pictures, so for today I'm posting pictures of the Astons.

If you're interested, here's some more info about the Aston Martin team and BDR9. I for one welcome the team to the LeMans racing circuit. Here's to some great racing and competition! Hoohah! (Hmm, who am I, Al Pacino?)

 

BTW, these teams and many more will be coming to Infinion Raceway in July and Laguna Seca in October. I'm going to try to go to both races. There's just something about the screaming engines and bumper to bumper driving that just gets my blood pumping. I get chills. I need to be alone with the cars. Unfortunately, the last time I tried that I had to cool my heels in the lockup. The big house. The clink. Next time I'll bring along someone who can create a diversion for me. Reeves bring your clown suit and the slip n' slide, I need some quality alone time...

Anyway, go Corvette Racing!

Recently, I took some pictures (and here) of some freaking huge rims on a Hummer H2 I saw at the local dealer (these are on my MSN Spaces blog). I couldn't believe these rims. Daayum. They be blingtastic. They be ginourmous. They be ridiculous, actually. It's like the cold war. Out of control escalation and stock piles of armaments. You know, the whole mutually assured destruction strategy of national defense. No matter that you have big enough wheels to destroy the world several times over. Maybe that's the whole idea. Hmm, at this point *I'm* not even sure what the hell I'm talking about.

So today I was posting an auction on eBay and I ran across this ad for some these huge dubs you can buy for yourself. For a cool $8,000.00. I've got to say that as soon as my rap single hits the top ten, it's "buy it now" time, baby. Yeah, me rapping. Not sure I could be more whiter. Hmm, not sure that was very "PC" of me. Sorry about that. I guess white guys CAN make good rappers. Sure why not. Just look at Vanilla Ice. Hmm, maybe I should stop typing now, there's some lawyers knocking on my front door.

Pretty neat truck. Not what I need or want, but I'd rather have it than most other vehicles in it's class. Read about it here.

 

 

Acceleration 0-60, 3.7 seconds. Wow.

Price, starting at $65k. Fully loaded, a bit over $70k.

Links:
Announcement
Price Sheet

Bottom line for Mike? That's a lot of moolah. I'll probably wait and get a used one or something. I wish it were less, but I think it's a good price for what you get. Exciting times for Corvette lovers.

I just got my Corvette washed and waxed at the local hand wash place. $85 bucks, but holy cud eating cow, does it look down right spiffy and shiny and sweet. There was so much dirt and grime on it, it had changed it's shape into a 1973 lime green pinto. Not good! Not good at all! But now it's back, it's bad-ass, and it's wanting to rumble (yeah, that's it ). Even my shiny semi-thrashed steel wheels look great.

Anyway, thought ya'll might like to know that get a car washed actually cleans it! Who knew?

 

Here's a great video of one of the factory Corvette drivers, Johnny O'Connell, flinging a new 2006 Corvette C6 Z06 around the track. Scccchhhhwiiiingg! (The video only worked in IE for me). What a beautiful car this is! Whimper.

No word yet on pricing though today a local dealer offered to order one up for me for a cool $75k, which is about $10k over the sticker. Or so he said. Could be a big fat lie. No pricing has been announced yet from the factory. $65k seems about right to me. I hope it's lower. In the fifties would be nice. I hope to someday be able to get one of these. But if it's $75k, I'm going to half to sell a kidney on the black market or something. Friends, you better guard your kidneys. You know who you are. For now, I GUESS I'll have to "make do" with my current Z06. Sigh. ;-P

Here's some nice pictures of the car I found while drooling on my keyboard and obsessively searching for more and more and more pictures. Click. Oh baby. Click. Now THAT's what I'm talking about. Click. Whoa, look at those fender flares. Click. Mommy! Click. Mmm, shiny. Click. Come to papa! Click. Look at the ass on that! Click. Oh baby... and repeat.

Hi, my name is Mike, and I'm a Z06-a-holic...

Hi Mike!

Well, it all started one day when... sniff... my convertible scared me at Buttonwillow... sniff...

Lordy, lordy, lordy. Me wanty now. Time to start saving. I'm worried about suffering from fatal sticker shock. I haven't seen a price yet. Mike wrings his hands... Oh, but it will be mine. It will be. It just will.

Some great info below. Looks like the Chevy PR train is on the tracks.

Corvette Museum

Chevy.com

Want a lot of pics and wallpapers? Here you go. Some more here.

One thing though. Enough with the yellow already!

click the pic for a big version

Here's some pictures of the new Corvette C6R race car. Nice.

Daaayumm.... 425hp.

http://www.chrysler.com/300/300c.html?context=300-index&type=promo

More pics and info here.

 

found these lurking on my harddrive... enjoy.

ferrari_test_driver.mpeg (1.32 MB)

lamborgini test driver.wmv (13.2 MB)

I nearly wet myself...

http://www.czabe.com/audioclips/mustangspin.wmv

 

I haven't written much about my "other" interest here. Cars. Fast cars. I own a 2002 Corvette Z06. If you're not a car person, you probably haven't heard that the new Corvette C6 has been released. More info here and some great pictures here.

The "Z06" version of the Corvette is the high performance version. It's pretty much a street legal race car minus some stuff like roll cage, oil & transmission cooler, and some other boring car stuff. It's not quite as fast as a viper off the line (better brakes though), but the Z06 is faster than many much more exotic cars (some ferraris etc). It's a wicked fast car (some say stoopid fast). I love driving it.

Anyway, the point of this post is that we Corvette fans are eagerly awaiting the new Z06. Nobody knows anything about it. Inquiring minds want to know. So here's the thread at corvetteforum.com about a possible sighting of a prototype Z06. You decide...

One of the main reasons I was going to do it was to save money. It turns out it wouldn't really save me much, if any. It also doesn't feel like the right thing to do right now, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to hold off doing anything. We'll see what happens later this year.

Misc Quotes:

The Titan offered class-leading V8 power, best in class torque, best headroom, largest interior volume, best rear legroom, class leading towing, best 4x4 approach angle, best 4x4 ground clearance, and the largest 4x4 tires in the class.

The engine sits low and back on the chassis providing an excellent pickup truck weight distribution of 55/45 (front/rear). Generating an impressive 305 horsepower, and 379 lb-ft of torque, the chain-driven DOHC valvetrain system represents a departure from the full-size OHV of GM and Ford while offering more standard power than any other full-size truck in the category.

The standard (only available) transmission for the Titan is a 5-speed automatic with electronic controls. The drive-by-wire throttle sends signals to the transmission (with tow/haul modes) for precise shifts through all gears. The gated transmission selector has fourth and fifth gears across from each other – offering quick manual shifting while towing or passing.

The Titan’s 5’6” bed offers the first available factory-applied permanent spray-in bed liner (part of the Utility Bed Package). Offering distinct advantages over aftermarket spray systems and aftermarket “drop-in” liners, the material is very durable and designed to last the life of the vehicle.

The bed of the Titan offers yet another unique offering in the pick-up market. An aluminum aircraft-style “Utili-track” tie-down system is available as a factory option. Nine open section C-channels line the Titan’s bed and (with their aluminum-alloy brackets - each with 500 lb. capacities) offer nearly unlimited cargo arrangements. The brackets can be moved, without tools, to nearly any position on the rails in seconds. Once in place, they are twisted and locked down.

The 2004 Titan offers another industry-first (among full-size trucks) with rollover protection for outboard passengers. The system includes available curtain airbags which deploy (and stay inflated for six seconds) to protect passengers from both fast (highway) and slow (off-road) rolls. Working in conjunction with dual front and side airbags equipped with Nissan’s AABS (Advanced Air Bag System), front seat belts with pretensioners and load limiters, safety has (finally) taken a priority in the full-size arena.

You’ll find all of the amenities now required in modern full-size pickups - including steering wheel controls for radio and cruise, heated seats, and an available DVD player. Though I never had a chance to test it, there was a small 1/8” RCA stereo jack for an external MP3 player to pump tunes into the head unit.

Some other cool features:

1. passenger seat folds all the way back or all the way forward (to make a desk like surface)
2. adjustable pedals
3. rear seats fold up
4. 350 watt 9 speaker + SW Rockford fosgate stereo (with aux in for ipod) Note: I know this doesn't compare to a killer after market system, but I won't by buying one of those and this is much better than my current Blose system in the H2.
5. memory seats
6. in dash 6 CD player
7. xm radio
8. cool nav system / info 7“ screen
9. bedside lockbox
10. extendable tow mirrors

So the first car I was halfway considering was the Cadillac Escalade, mainly because it has a big engine and has the reputation for a bling bling interior. We looked at the new large version that's new this year. It's the Caddy version of a Suburban, while the original Escalade is the Caddy version of the Tahoe. The smaller, original model was too small for what we want.

This is the new, larger version: Big escalade

We were NOT impressed. It's a suburban with fake wood trim. Come on, this is bling? The interior looks okay from a distance or in a picture, but all the fake wood (except on steering wheel) looks like ass in person. It has no depth like real wood. There's a little flip up compartment on the center console that just lame and destined to be broken and always open. I thought the little analog clock was cheesy, and the whole time I drove it there was a glare on it and I couldn't read it.  It uses many of the same interior parts as the H2 - though I prefer the plastic looking plastic of the H2 over the plastic looking wood of the Escalade. It did have a big engine though. In the end it was too much like the H2 and too expensive (and not worth it) to consider. I'd buy a suburban before an Escalade.