Triumphant Return

Yes. I know, I know. It has been forever since I have updated my blog. I could get into all of the reasons for this, but ultimately they are boring and not work reading; so I will just jump back into blogging with both feet.

Now, since I last posted, there has been much talk of Toyota and its many large-scale recalls. Everyone has gotten quite worked up, and rightly so, about the sheer number of unintended accelerating cars and the disturbingly long time it took Toyota to deal with the problem. Obviously cars behaving unexpectedly and costing people their lives is no laughing manner, but a more recent Toyota recall seemed to deal with a problem that many younger drivers would call a feature.


Apparently, the 2010 Lexus GX470 has a tendency to exhibit what is called "lift-off oversteer". This means that when the car is cornering near its limit of grip and the driver lifts off the throttle, the rear tires will lose grip before the front. This is called 'skidding', 'sliding', or 'fishtailing' when a soccer mom in her monster truck SUV. A video of this behavior can be seen below.

Interestingly enough, in racing or other high performance driving situations, this behavior is simply called 'oversteer'. In fact, most race cars are set up deliberately to exhibit mild lift-off oversteer, as this can allow them to accelerate through corners more effectively.

If you are a teenager this is called 'a sweet drift'. In fact, many drift cars are set up deliberately to exhibit oversteer in all situations.

Now obviously some people may not want this 'feature' in their cars, which is why most cars nowadays have electronic stability control (ESC) systems to use a combination of throttle, individually applied brakes, and torque vectoring(I'll hide my nerdy-ness by not explaining what that is) to keep the cars from performing an Unintentional Sweet Drift or USD. The lexus in question does, in fact, have one of these systems, but it seems that it intervenes too little or too late to control the truck. From what I understand, the recall is a simple software fix and all will be right with the world once again soon.


The fix for the Citroen Nemo may be a little more difficult however. This minivan (or people carrier if you are British…or obnoxious) lacks ESC entirely and while some people like driving on two wheels, the vast majority prefer to keep all four safely on the ground. While ESC might provide a band-aid fix for this people-carrier's tendency to perform an Unintentional Barrel Roll, it does not address the inherent design flaw of a vehicle that can tip over on flat pavement.

Even the tallest, heaviest SUV's like the Lexus above are designed to keep the wheels planted even when engaging in an USD. Yes, USD can lead to an UBR if the outside wheels find themselves on something like grass or a curb, any reasonably well designed car should be able to survive any combination of steering and throttle input and still keep its tires on ground on flat pavement.
In any case, be careful out there, especially in your SUV's and people-carriers, because I don't think having a wake with you displayed in your cherished Nemo would have the same effect as your dead body riding your motorcycle.

Badges

It has been a while since my last post and for that I apologize, but I offer a great big post with lots of pictures to repay my debt. While eating my daily morning sausage egg and cheese bagel, drinking my coffee and checking the news I stumbled upon this article in the New York Times. The gist of this article is that for luxury automobile brands that offer a great deal of engine options, buyers (mainly in Europe) are opting to have the badges removed from their cars. Looking at this from an American perspective, one might think that the reason for this is that buyers don't want other people knowing that they bought the very cheapest version of a luxury car. From a European, and particularly German, point of view, the goal is not to look ostentatious or flashy. European owners don't want to stir jealousy from those around them.

Unfortunately, making those around you jealous is EXACTLY why many Americans buy cars. In fact, that is why you see so many look-alike packages being offered by the manufacturers themselves. You can buy AMG wheels for your Benz and get a nice AMG badge on the back as well. The same is true of the BMW ///M sport package and the Audi S-line appearance package. These are cars that look extremely similar to their more expensive relatives but have none of their substance….and entirely American phenomenon. Other American phenomena in the same vein are:

Grillz (you spell it with a 'z').

Chainz (also spelled with a 'z').



Rimz (you get the idea).


And finally, Skillz.

Now clearly, the common theme among these attention grabbing accessories must be the key factor: the edgy and dangerous way they are spelled with a 'z' at the end rather than its more predictable and common cousin the 's'.

That said, I have seen a few examples of cars recently with badgez as well as the enginez to back them up.

The first of these was a nice BMW M6 with the coveted ///M badgez on it.I don't know what LELIK means but I am going to assert that it stands for Living Entire Life Inside Kingdom (if he is royalty), or Leading Every Looser In Kills (if he's a gamer), or Love Entails Lurking In Kitchens (if he's a pervert).

Later that same day I parked next to a similarly fast and expensive BMW M5.

This one was modified however and had the requisite rimz, and yellow brakez as well as very special badgez on the back.

In big chrome letters it said DINAN, which is a company that takes already expensive and fast BMWs and makes them even faster and more expensive. Judging by the fact that it had the big yellow brakez, this car either cost an additional $15k or $50k on top of the normal 80k price tag, depending on what was under the hood. This is a lot of money, and as with most things that cost a lot of money, I thought it was most likely bought by a man who wanted it to impress women. Unfortunately for most men, however, women are much less impressed by rimz and badgez than they are by pursez and shoez, so this money is usually wasted.

Much to my surprise, a woman, and an older woman at that, walked up to and drove off in the 550-650 hp BMW. This was baffling, as women don't need to try to impress men with things men don't actually even care about. In fact, most men would be intimidated by a woman who drove a car with bigger badgez than his own. (Men say the size of your badgez is correlated to the size of your testez, women know that the size of your badgez is inversely correlated with the size of your peniz). I can only assume that this intimidation is the desired effect of the car, and it was used in business to give its owner leverage against others. That, or she is simply taking the inverse correlation mentioned above to an extreme. Is there a correlation with the size of the clitoriz? Ladies, you need to answer this for me.

Also of note is the fact that cars that have badgez also tend have many exhaust pipes. These pipes are usually grouped in pairs, and typically the more powerful the car the larger the tips on the exhaust. Because of their appearance and the message they attempt to send, I will refer to these as exhausticles (not to be confused with TruckNutz). Both the M5 and M6 above have nice sets of exhausticles, with the M5 having larger, augmented examples. I'll end this post with a big AMG Mercedes SL63 I saw parked in Bethesda with a matched set of 4 badgez as well as 4 very nice meaty exhausticles.

Now, Excuse me while I go de-badge my car

-CLDC