Category:

Lamborghini Goes Street Racing With A Couple Of Hondas And Regrets It Immediately!

2/12/2017

Lamborghini gets gapped by a few hondas!

That Honda was way too close for comfort! That Lamborghini probably cost as much as 5 of those hondas… But he still got walked by them. Lining up four wide is always a little sketchy especially when you have a car that cost as much as all the cars around you. At least this guy was a good sport about it, most Lamborghini guys won’t race anyone. Time to put some twins on the Lambo!

1969 CAMARO SS Started After 28 Years RUSTING In Storage! Watch How The Car Runs 3 YEARS LATER!

2/8/2017

In this one, we gain some traction on a 1969 Camaro SS Big Block project. It`s a big block car but it currently has a 327 small block engine in it because the original engine was lost. It was swapped with the 327 back in the 80`s. The car was found sitting idly and rusting in Anchorage, Alaska in someone`s backyard. When the hood was opened, the small block 327 engine was in a very bad shape covered in leafs, debris and moss. It also had no headers, air cleaner and half the plugs were missing. 3 years ago, the car was first started after 28 years of neglect.

After they got the engine running for the first time they added coolant in the radiator hose and discovered quickly that there was water frozen in the engine in the wintertime. Because of this, they removed the intake manifold and discovered that there was a crack in the lifter value causing the water to get into the oil. They did the necessary fixing and now the car has been sitting 3 years in their garage after their first start up. Finally, they decided to give us an update on the 1969 Camaro SS Big Block project. To find out what happened to the car watch the video below.

AWD Doesn't Matter in the Winter. Tires Do.

1/8/2017

One could argue that automakers are responsible for making roads more dangerous during the winter. By putting their vast marketing budgets behind the promotion of all-wheel drive as a safety feature, they’re hiding the one thing that actually makes it safer to drive on snow and ice, and even on dry roads, in cold temperatures: a good set of winter tires. It’s tires, not which wheels on your car are driven, that matter this winter.

I“No doubt, an AWD vehicle on decent all-season tires will get moving pretty well,” explains Woody Rogers. He’s the head of Tire Rack’s testing team, so he has evaluated virtually every tire there is, in a variety of conditions. “But with AWD, you can get moving easily enough that you can overestimate your ability to stop and turn. Every vehicle uses the same four contact patches to stop and turn. AWD is not a benefit there.”

The all-season tires that come standard on most vehicles (including all-wheel drives) should, despite their name, be thought of only as a compromised three-season option, at best. They may be adequate in mild temperatures, but their ability to provide any grip at all falls off as temperatures drop, and they’re not equipped to provide grip on snow and ice. What follows is a broad explanation of how winter tires differ from "all-season" ones.

Modern Winter Tires Were First Developed in Japan, in the Early ‘90s“The air quality in Japan was falling off during winter months due to studded tires chipping away at bare pavement, creating airborne dust,” says Rogers.

Studded tires are primarily designed to boost traction on ice, where the sharp steel studs dig into the surface to find grip. Studs don’t really help on snow and can actually reduce traction in slush or rain, and damage bare pavement. Drivers can’t dictate the surfaces they drive on, they just need a tire that works across all the hazardous conditions they face in winter months.

“So, Bridgestone [a Japanese tire maker] set about developing a studless winter tire,” continues Rogers. “They wanted to create a tire that wouldn’t just work in the snow, but on ice, too.”

They're Made from a Specialized Rubber Compound“You can think of an all-season tire like a candy bar,” says Rogers. “At room temperature, it’s nice and gooey and tastes great. But, put it in the freezer for an hour and you can shatter the thing. The rubber in your tires will do the same thing at extreme temperatures.”

“Flexibility determines your tire’s traction,” he continues. “Somewhere in the 40- to 45-degree range is where we begin to see all-season tires lose traction. The rubber becomes very stiff; it can’t conform to the texture of the pavement, and stops providing traction.”

Winter tires are made from a different rubber compound than all-season tires. Where an all-season works optimally from about 45 degrees, up to 100 or so, a winter tire is made from a compound designed to work best below that 45-degree point. (They actually grip fine in warmer temperatures, they just wear out very quickly.) By remaining flexible at low temperatures, a winter tire is able to provide safe levels of grip, even on dry pavement.

Like a Merino Baselayer, Winter Tires Wick Moisture“A big mechanical problem with tire traction on ice is that, as your vehicle rolls across it, the weight and friction in your contact patch melts a very thin film of water in the moment that it’s underneath the tire,” describes Rogers. “You have a lubricant over an already slippery surface, so your tire isn't even completely in contact with the ice.”

Conditions also change rapidly during the winter. Snow can turn to slush, or ice in an instant. And even what looks like dry pavement can be covered with patches of invisible black ice. It’s the winter tire’s job to provide drivers with predictability and grip throughout all that.

How? “Bridgestone’s big innovation was that they developed something called a multi-cell rubber compound that’s actually slightly porous," says Rogers. "It works a lot like the technical fabrics in your outdoors gear, wicking moisture away from the surface. The multi-cell compound has empty, void space at a slightly-larger-than-molecular level. It gives the moisture somewhere to go temporarily, putting the rubber in contact with the texture of the ice surface.”

By allowing the tire to interact with the ice directly, it’s able to achieve grip. Other tire brands have adopted the technology as well, and it’s a big part of what makes the studless winter tire such great performers.

Their Tread Grips Much Better Looking at a winter tire next to an all-season, it’s immediately obvious that the former has a much deeper, more open tread pattern that’s covered in small squiggly grooves. These add additional edges to help the tire find more traction. “These additional edges are called sipes,” explains Rogers. “They’re biting edges that provide the traction once the tire is in contact with the surface.”

The zig-zag pattern of the sipes makes them multi-directional. They add bite both front-and-rear, and side-to-side. Because they’re smaller and more flexible than the main tread pattern, they’re able to mechanically key with smaller imperfections in the surface you’re driving across. Think rough ice, or the grittiness in a paved surface.

Of course, the larger, deeper tread provides mechanical traction too, while also better clearing water and slush. “That way you take big bites out of the snow, rather than just nibbling at it,” says Rogers.

Winter Tires Can Actually Save You MoneyA set of winter tires is going to cost you $500 to $800, or more, depending on your vehicle. You’ll also need to pay a shop to fit and remove them every November and April or invest in a second set of wheels to permanently mount them to. Sound expensive? In all likelihood, they’ll actually save you money.

“Most insurance deductibles are $500,” say Rogers. “If they save you just one little bump in traffic, you’ve paid for most of your winter tires.”

They’ll also extend the life of the tires you run the rest of the year. “Statistics say you’ll own your vehicle about six years," says Rogers. "And, in that time, you’ll go through two sets of tires. By buying winter tires, you move forward the cost of that replacement. You can easily stretch six years and five winters out of that combination, with no significant additional expense.”

But where do you store those tires that aren’t on your vehicle? “If you stack them up in a corner, they’re less than 30 by 30 inches,” explains Rogers. “That’s smaller than a couple boxes of my stuff from high school.”

And because you’ve now learned that it’s tires, not AWD that you need to drive safely in winter weather, you can also now save money by buying a cheaper car. On models where AWD is offered as an option, it typically comes at a $1,000 to $1,500 premium. Spend that on tires instead, and you’ll have a car that stops and turns as well as it accelerates.

Which Winter Tires Are Right for You?The short answer: Any of them. “Even an average winter tire is going to be better on snow and ice than the best all-season tire can ever hope to be,” says Rogers. Literally any studless winter tire will improve your ability to drive in the winter.

He’s frank about what a challenge it is to convince people they need to invest in winter tires. You can explain that all-seasons stop working below 40 degrees. You can explain that you need winter tires in order to stop and turn on snow and ice. Countless web videos demonstrate that, on snow and ice, an AWD car on all-seasons can’t out-accelerate a rear-wheel drive car on winter tires. But until people try them, they just don’t understand what a night and day difference we’re really talking about here. Rogers also notes one other finding from his decades of experience: “We know once a customer tries winter tires in real winter conditions, they’re never going to go back.”

“We’re all better off if we have good traction,” Rogers concludes. “As I drive around on appropriate tires, I don’t have to worry about what I can drive through, I have to worry about the people around me. The people behind me who can’t stop; the people who can’t steer to avoid a hazard. Please, Mr. and Mrs. Reader, do the rest of us a favor and be on winter tires.”

tags: breed of speed , rally , tires , snow , drifto , nathan finneman , bos , breedofspeed , winter driving

Autopilot Cited in Death of Chinese Tesla Driver

1/7/2017

Tesla Motors came under renewed questioning about the safety of its Autopilot technology after news emerged on Wednesday of a fatal crash in China that may have occurred while the automated driver-assist system was operating.

The crash took place on Jan. 20 and killed Gao Yaning, 23, when the Tesla Model S he was driving slammed into a road sweeper on a highway near Handan, a city about 300 miles south of Beijing, according to a report broadcast on Wednesday by the Chinese government news channel CCTV.

The report includes in-car video looking through the windshield as the car travels in the left lane at highway speed just before ramming into a parked or slow-moving orange truck. The video, apparently shot by a camera mounted on the rearview mirror, recorded no images, sounds or jolts that would suggest the driver or the car hit the brakes before impact. At that point, the in-car video ends.

“When it was approaching the road sweeper, the car didn’t put on the brake or avoid it,” a police officer said in the CCTV report. “Instead, it crashed right into it.”

In an emailed statement, Tesla said on Wednesday that it had not been able to determine whether Autopilot was active at the time of the Handan accident. The company declined to say when it learned of the fatality in China, or whether it had reported the crash to United States safety officials, who are investigating a fatal accident in Florida on May 7 in which Autopilot was engaged.

11 Supercars Worth More than $8 Million Seized from Dictator’s Son in Geneva

1/4/2017

me of the rarest supercars on the planet were seized from the son of a notorious African dictator in a police raid in Geneva on Wednesday, according to authorities and social media accounts.

The cars belong to Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, vice-president of Equatorial Guinea, a Swiss prosecutor told LeDauphine.com. The vehicles were reportedly seized at the Geneva airport.

Among the 11 cars confiscated in the raid were one of the seven Koenigsegg One:1s on Earth, as well as one of the nine Lamborghini Veneno Roadsters built, according to an Instagram video posted online of the cars being hauled away on flatbeds. A Bugatti Veyron—possibly the one-off Bleu Centenaire edition—can also be seen being hauled off in the clip.

In addition, a Ferrari F12tdf and Ferrari Enzo were also seized by authorities, according to Australian automotive website Wheels. A Porsche 918 Spyder and a McLaren P1 were taken as well, according to LeDauphine.com. An Aston Martin One-77 and a Ferrari LaFerrari also appear to be visible in pictures of the confiscated collection.

As French website L’hebdo pointed out, Mangue may have been trying to smuggle the fleet of ultra-rare supercars out of Switzerland in advance of a recently reopened investigation against him by Swiss authorities. Mangue is also scheduled to go on trial early next year in Paris over his “ill-gotten gains,” Le Dauphine reports.

The raid comes almost exactly five years after Mangue’s previous fleet of supercars, including a Porsche Carrera GT, a pair of Veyrons, a Ferrari Enzo, were seized in a police raid in Paris. The cars confiscated there were sold at auction for $4.1 million...which, let's face it, is kind of a deal.

Mangue is the son of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has served as president of Equatorial Guinea since seizing power from his uncle in a 1979 military coup. Since then, Teodoro has faced extensive criticism from authorities and humanitarian groups for reputedly using the country’s treasury and natural resources as his family’s piggybank, funding a lavish lifestyle while the populace suffers in poverty.

tags : breed of speed , super car sieze , impounded super car , drifto , nathan finneman

Ford, following Trump criticism, cancels plans for $1.6 billion Mexico plant

1/3/2017

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co., following months of withering criticism from President-elect Donald Trump for expanding operations in Mexico, said today it will cancel its $1.6 billion assembly plant in the early stages of construction in Mexico, instead investing $700 million in Michigan to bring to market autonomous and electrified vehicles.

Ford planned to build its slow-selling Focus sedan in the new plant following 2018, but will instead build it at an existing Mexico plant in Hermosillo. The $700 million investment will help transform Ford’s Flat Rock Assembly Plant, which currently builds the Mustang and Lincoln Continental, into a high-tech hub capable of building a yet-to-be-determined autonomous hybrid and fully electric SUV with a 300-mile electric range.

Those new vehicles are among seven new electrified vehicles Ford detailed today, including hybrid versions of its F-150 and Mustang.

The stunning reversal -- which came less than a year after Ford announced construction of the new plant -- was hailed by lawmakers Tuesday, while Mexican officials expressed disappointment and vowed to make Ford pay back any money spent on the now-canceled plant site.

Ford CEO Mark Fields called the decision a “vote of confidence” in Trump and his pro-growth policies, although he told CNBC “the main reason for not building and canceling the plant is just due to market demand.”

“We’ve made this decision independently on what’s right for Ford, but we look at all the factors,” Fields told reporters at the announcement. “Our view, we see a more positive U.S. manufacturing business environment under President-elect Trump and the pro-growth policies and proposals he’s talking about.”

Ford in December 2015 announced plans to invest $4.5 billion in electric car research and add 13 electrified vehicles to its lineup by 2020. Today it announced details about seven of the 13.

The new fully electric small SUV will be coming by 2020 and will be built south of Detroit in Flat Rock, Mich. It, alongside a high-volume autonomous hybrid and the hybrid version of the Mustang, will be built in Flat Rock. A Transit Custom plug-in hybrid, available in 2019, will be built in Europe; and two new pursuit-rated hybrid police vehicles will be built in Chicago.

To support this, Ford plans to invest $700 million and add 700 direct new jobs in Flat Rock over the next four years. Part of that money will go to create a new Manufacturing Innovation Center in Flat Rock. Fields said the plant will become “one of the world’s most flexible and high-tech manufacturing centers."

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, in a statement, cited the state’s push to become a national leader in mobility. He thanked Ford for its “continued confidence in our state and our people.”

UAW-Ford Vice President Jimmy Settles said he cried tears of joy when he found out about the announcement, roughly a week ago. He called the investment “the equivalent of a new assembly plant.”

Settles said that an unspecified number of UAW workers will move from temporary status to full-time. He expects Ford to add a third shift to Flat Rock.

"It’s very significant," Settles said. "I’ve seen a lot, many peaks and valleys. This is at the top, because I know what it will mean for people at this plant and also in America."

Settles said Ford chose to make its investments in Flat Rock for a combination of reasons.

“It’s had very successful launches of the Mustang and Continental, and they have acreage here and they’re not at full capacity,” he said.

Hiring for the 700 new jobs will begin in 2018, Fields said.

'Pro-growth policies'

Fields said Ford was “encouraged” by “pro-growth policies” Trump and the new Republican Congress are likely to pursue, citing them as one of several factors in the company’s decision to invest in the U.S. and cancel the Mexico plant.

“We believe that these tax and regulatory reforms are critically important to boost U.S. competitiveness and of course drive a resurgence in American manufacturing and high-tech innovation,” Fields said.

Fields cited changing market demands and slower sales of small cars as the decision to keep the Focus in Mexico.

Trump has threatened to slap Ford with a 35 percent tariff on any vehicles it imports from Mexico, as well as renegotiate or pull out of the North America Free Trade Agreement. This morning, Trump also targeted GM in a tweet, threatening to impose a "big border tax" for making its Chevy Cruze model in Mexico. In response, GM reiterated that Cruzes built there will mostly go to the domestic market and that it will continue to build the compact in the U.S.

Fields said Executive Chairman Bill Ford called Trump and he called Vice President-elect Mike Pence to tell them of the news this morning. A Ford spokeswoman said the calls came after Trump’s tweet about GM, and the two were unrelated.

Ford’s electrified-vehicle announcement comes the same day Fiat Chrysler Automobiles plans to reveal an all-electric minivan concept, called the Chrysler Portal, that gets 250 miles of range. The automaker recently began selling a hybrid version of its Chrysler Pacifica minivan.

General Motors is also making headlines for its Bolt EV, which went on sale in California last month and boasts 238 miles of range. It comes out a year before the planned release of Tesla’s much-hyped Model 3, the California automaker’s own 200-plus range EV.

Fields in May confirmed Ford was developing an electric vehicle with range comparable to the Bolt, Model 3 and next-generation Nissan Leaf.

Ford said it is testing a fleet of 20 Transit Connect hybrid taxi and van prototypes.

Fields said he informed officials in Mexico about the plans to cancel the plant.

“Obviously, there was some disappointment,” Fields said. “But we’ve been in Mexico over 90 years, and we’re moving our Focus down to Hermosillo, so we’ll be safeguarding the 2,900 jobs that are there, plus we’ll probably add about 200 jobs when we add Focus there.”

Mexico’s Economy Ministry said it regretted Ford’s decision to pull its investment from San Luis Potosi. The federal government has guaranteed that the automaker will reimburse the state government for its expenses on the project, the ministry said in a statement. It made no mention of Trump.

“The growth of Ford Motor Company in North America, and particularly in Mexico, has been the result of a strategy of competitiveness based on global value chains in which North America competes with other regions of the world,” the ministry said. “The jobs generated in Mexico have contributed to maintaining manufacturing jobs in the United States that otherwise would have disappeared due to Asian competition.”

The now-canceled plant was supposed to employ about 2,800 workers, Ford said when it announced the news. Fields said ground-clearing at the site began around May, but a spokeswoman said no actual construction had taken place.

“Where we’re at in the construction of the plant, any assets -- and there aren’t many -- can be redeployed throughout the Ford system,” Fields said.

It’s unclear how much Ford is investing in Hermosillo to add the 200 workers to build the Focus.

Watch: Frozen Lake Stunt Goes Horribly Wrong

12/29/2016

We kinda expected that... A man in Russia tried to drive a land cruiser around a frozen lake in spinning circles, but the vehicle broke through the ice and started sinking. Friends rescued him.

tags: breed of speed , drifto , car through ice, ouch , nathan finneman , drifting , fail

1st $400,000-plus Ford GT Supercar rolls off the assembly line: Nathan Finneman

12/21/2016

The eagerly-anticipated, brand-new 2017 Ford GT supercars hit a major milestone Friday, Dec. 16 when the first one rolled off the production line.

Ford Motor Co. is manufacturing the cars at a low-volume facility in Markham, Ontario, according to a news release from the Dearborn-based automaker. The 2017 Ford GTs were first unveiled at the North American International Auto Show in 2015, and now the company is touting the global delivery of the first round of cars.

"When we kicked off 2016, we had two primary objectives for our Ford GT supercar - to excel at Le Mans, and to start deliveries before year-end," Raj Nair, Ford executive vice president of global product development, said in the release. "We've achieved both."

The automaker said it will only produce 250 of the Ford GTs each year, so only a fraction of the 6,000-plus applicants will receive one of the $400,000-plus cars.

The supercar have a new, twin-turbo, 3.5L EcoBoost V6 that will produce more than 600 horsepower. As many as eight exterior colors are available with seven different striped colors.

It is rear-wheel drive, mid-engine GT is being made with carbon fiber, aluminum and other lightweight materials. The attention to aerodynamics from Ford is clear in the "optimum tear-drop shape" and an "aircraft-inspired fuselage" design.

tags: ford gt rolls off assembly line nathan finneman colorado breed of speed drifto

Oklahoma speeder caught at 208 mph

11/16/2016

An Oklahoma man was arrested on Saturday after leading police on a 208 mph chase.

Nineteen-year-old Hector Fraire first tripped a radar gun doing 84 mph on the Kilpatrick Turnpike in Oklahoma City, before speeding away as police tried to pull him over.

Slow down! Dale Earnhardt, Jr. pulled over for speeding

According to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, Fraire’s heavily modified 2011 Ford Mustang was then clocked doing 176 mph and 208 mph, and he tried to elude the chase vehicle by turning off his headlights and brake lights.

An Oklahoma Highway Patrol spokesman tells FoxNews.com that as the pursuing officer lost contact with the vehicle, he radioed ahead to any units in the area. A Canadian County Deputy sitting in a parking lot spotted the car and was able to intecept it. The driver then pulled over, dropped his keys out of the window, and was arrested and later charged with reckless driving and felony eluding.

Founder of legendary tuning company HKS has passed away

11/10/2016

With a long list of accomplishments and world firsts, Hiroyuki Hasegawa has died at the age of 71.We recently have heard the founder of legendary Japanese tuning company HKS, has passed away. The company's website in Japan posted news that Hiroyuki Hasegawa has died at the age of 71.

The cause of death is unknown at this time but we have reason to believe it was of natural causes. Hasegawa-san lived and worked in the area Fujinomiya City in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, where the HKS world headquarters are based.

In a picturesque area of Japan located near the the base of Mount Fuji, Hasegawa-san set out to create an empire in the emerging Japanese vehicle tuning market. Starting in back in 1973, a young Hasewgawa-san along with Goichi Kitagawa began tuning engines in a simple shed prior to an investment by Sigma Automotive to form the three initials of the company HKS Co. Limited. The former Yamaha engineer worked tirelessly at putting his new company on the map and by 1974 had developed the world's first aftermarket turbocharger kits available to the public.

By the 1980's, turbocharger kits and upgrades became the core business of HKS. Hasegawa's company, HKS also became the first in the world to offer staple tuning electronics like the turbo timer and the boost controller, where users could find extra horsepower and control boost through their HKS turbo kits or even factory turbo cars.

But HKS also set many new benchmarks in the world of racing by proving their product in competition. HKS was involved with Japanese Grand Touring Car (JGTC), Formula 3, Time Attack, the D1 Grand Prix drifting series and of course, drag racing of all kinds. HKS even developed a V12 engine for use in Formula 1 but the technology didn't see competition thus preventing the course of HKS history from changing. But HKS still became renowned around the world and set up expansions: HKS USA in the U.S., HKS Europe in the U.K. and HKS Thailand to meet the exploding demand for tuning parts and electronics.

We wanted to reflect on HKS founder Hiroyuki Hasegawa with some personal stories:

tags: nathan finneman , racing , hks , car , motorsport

<<Previous

Forward>>