Vaughn Gittin Jr. entered the seventh and final round of the 2012 Formula D Championship at Irwindale Speedway with a slight lead in a tight battle for championship points. As luck would have it, he was eliminated early when he made a mistake while blinded by smoke. Network A put together a highlight reel of Vaughn from all of the rounds of this year’s season.
Source: Network A on YouTube
Triple-X Motorsports and Outdoors continues to bring us coverage from this year’s National Hot Rod Diesel Association World Finals that took place in Ennis, TX. Here is a compilation of the fastest runs of the event. They were put down by a pretty unique lineup of vehicles.
The Ferrari FF is an interesting car for a few reasons. It’s the first four door or four wheel drive car to come out of Maranello. The Shooting Brake wagon body style is fairly hideous, but everybody says the car drives amazingly. This is due to the unique all wheel drive system that Ferrari invented for the FF. The rear wheels are driven through a standard Ferrari 7 speed transaxle, but the front of the car is driven by a separate two speed transmission connected to the front of the 6.3 liter V12 through a torque vectoring differntial. The layout that Ferrari conceived eliminated the need for an external transfer case and an extra drive shaft for the front axle. The gearing also ensures that a larger majority of the engine’s power is going to the rear wheels for sporty driving dynamics. Check out this animation from Ferrari showing how it works:
Big Muscle is back on the DRIVE channel with this feature of the fastest 0-100 mph American production vehicle of 1978, the Dodge Little Red Express. This was the first real Muscle Truck with Dodge taking advantage of a loophole for trucks in the smog regulations of the time. The result was this pickup with a hot rodded version of their 360 police car engine, side stack exhaust and wood paneling. What an amazing crazy oddball piece of American automotive history.
Automobile Magazine has just announced the Tesla Model S as their 2013 Automobile of the Year. This is big news for the electric vehicle world because the Model S has won out in direct comparison to equivalent gasoline cars. The car is praised for universally recognized strengths and not for being the best of a standard that was lowered for EV’s. Tesla has finally given the world an electric car that is designed and executed well enough for regular customers to consider purchasing it as a daily use car and not because it’s a novelty item. An EV that’s better than a gas car? It can be done.