Saturday Car Thread 9/20/14 - [Niedermeyer's Dead Horse and KBDaBear]

Howdy.

Gas Turbine Engine Concept Car from 1963

In the early 60's, Chrysler experimented with the idea of developing a turbine engine for use in passenger cars. Chrysler's A831 gas turbine engine was fitted into a concept car built by Ghia of Turin and design was headed by a former Ford design studio head which is why the car had a strong resemblance to the 1963 T-Bird

Chrysler built 55 of the cars and was beta-tested by 200 consumers in actual everyday driving conditions. The A831 mated to a Torqueflite automatic generated 134 hp and had a 0 to 60 time of 12 seconds. As for acceleration, the turbo lag of the entire engine was quite bad.

The turbine car never did catch on enough for Chrysler even to produce it in limited numbers as production cost of each car would have been at least $50K in 1964 dollars. Once the beta tests were done, the cars were returned to Chrysler and obstentiously for tax reasons all but 9 of the cars were destroyed. Six of the cars were donated to museums, three of them were purchased by private collectors, one of them being Jay Leno

Jay features the Turbine Car in this video

Those Rich Corinthian Leather Seats Were Comfy While Waiting for the Tow Truck

The Chrysler Cordoba was introduced in 1975 to compete in the Personal Luxury Car market with the Monte Carlo, Grand Prix, and Thunderbird through iconic commercials by Ricardo Montalban. Like its competitors it was overweight and underpowered, but it wasn't a bad looking car and it was comfortable to ride in. The smooth ride of course was due to very soft suspension which made the Cordoba handle like a Greyhound Bus in an ice storm.

Which brings us to this...

Ick.

Jeremy Clarkson will return for new season of Top Gear unless he's eaten by a pack of wild dogs

While many would wish to lock Clarkson into a steel cage with Piers Morgan in a death match with the winner being shot as he exits the cage, I for one am very happy to see Jezza's return. As an avid watcher of the show on BBC America, I myself have often either laughed at Clarkson's antics or wanted to reach through the TV to strangle him. Love him, hate him, or both, you can't ignore him. His style has always been to flip the bird to political correctness and he's insulted just about every nation and group on earth. When he aims that mouth at America and Americans, I put on my Big Boy Pants and accept that once in a while my country and countrymen have to take our share of the bombs he throws.

That lack of inhibition or if you will, self-control got him in trouble once again when during filming a segment which did not make it to broadcast, Clarkson recited the eenie meenie miney moe rhyme using THAT word. Predictable outrage followed with his many enemies demanding his firing and presumably imprisonment in The Tower of London, but BBC decided that to break up the team would kill the Beeb's golden goose. The BBC suits were aghast at the slurs, but they weren't THAT aghast.

To be honest, Clarkson is the volatile ingredient in the chemistry that makes the show work. James May and Richard Hammond are marvelous presenters in their own right, but without Jeremy the show would become as boring as the American version shown on The History Channel. I also have decided that it's easy to overlook Clarkson's anti-
American cheap shots because the man publicly decked Piers Morgan not once but twice. You can't help to laugh at what Clarkson said of knocking Piers Morgan on his ass when he says this in an interview about it;

Women ask me why I punched Piers Morgan. Men ask me where I punched him.

Here's Clarkson test driving the BMW M1 with a hilarious slap at Piers thrown in:

A public service announcement from Twitter:

And, of course, elbows:

Please feel free to send any complaints or commendations to us at Twitter: Nied's Dead Horse and KBDaBear.

Oh! And, I guess I should remind you of Movie Night with the Morons at 8pm tonight.

posted by Open Blogger at 06:51 PM

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