Kudos to Motor Trend for coming up with an interesting comparison on this one. Lets say you are in the market for a mid-range (under 30 thousand) new car with a warranty that is rear wheel drive, has a back seat and is sporty enough to do some autocrosses or track days on the weekend. The best candidates on your list would be the new Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ, Ford Mustang V6, Hyundai Genesis coupe and maybe the V6 Chevrolet Camaro. In reality, probably not too many people are going to cross-shop the two cars in this comparison, but they do belong in the same genre. As with the rest of the high quality FT-86 reviews, there is a lot of talk about being a balanced driver’s car vs. having power and the contrast with the Mustang illustrates it very well. Editor Angus Mackenzie drives both cars on some mountain roads and then they are turned over to Randy Pobst for a lap time around Streets of Willow.
This is footage from the 2011 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It’s the culmination of a promotion program that Ford did for the new at the time EcoBoost V6 that was going into their F-150’s. What they did was they pulled a standard EcoBoost engine off of the assembly line in their Cleveland Ohio engine plant. The engine was put on a dynamometer and put through a simulated 150,000 mile test which also included some thermal shock testing. The engine was then put into a F-150 where it was used to haul 55 tons of lumber up a mountain, tow 11,500 pounds for 24 hours straight around a track, performance hill tow testing and then its last stop was being put into a race truck that won its class in the Baja 1000. After that, the engine was taken back to Ford’s facilities in Dearborn with 164,000 total miles on it and it had only lost 1 of the 365 horsepower that it started out with. They then shipped it to the Detroit Auto Show and disassembled it for the first time in front of a live audience. The engine shows hardly any wear after the barrage of torture tests it was put through which is pretty impressive. It shows they had some talented engineers behind the engine design.
Ford is pretty ahead of the curve with this EcoBoost engine. It has a lot of the key technologies that we are going to see all car makers adopt in the near future to meet fuel mileage standards. Smaller displacement engines with turbochargers harness some of the heat energy produced by the engine to make more specific horsepower (power/liter). Direct fuel injection allows precise fuel control and better atomization in the combustion chambers. Variable valve timing changes how much the opening of the intake and exhaust valves overlap each other making sure it’s always optimized for engine speed. At higher engine speeds, the air coming into the combustion chamber is moving at a higher velocity and has more momentum. You want the intake valves to stay open longer because that momentum will keep carrying the air into the cylinder even while the piston is compressing it. The situation is different at low engine speeds when the air is moving slower. If the valves overlap too much at low speeds, the piston will actually push some of fresh air and fuel straight out of the exhaust before combustion happens. Having variable valve timing on both cams allow a computer to optimize the fuel usage and it also helps reduce turbo lag.
The video covers the entire demonstration and it runs about 50 minutes over three parts.
Motor Trend has been doing this series on YouTube that pits two cars “Head 2 Head.” This episode is particularly interesting for more reasons than just the Mustang vs. Camaro rivalry. It’s old school analog vs. new school digital. The new Camaro ZL1 is GM’s first entry into the world of the electronic sports car that was ushered in by the Nissan GT-R in 2008. It’s been equipped with a sophisticated traction control system and magnetorheological shocks. Traditional shocks use valves that restrict oil flow through its body to control motion. The magnetorheological shocks use electromagnets to control the flow of magnetic fluid through their bodies. This allows a computer to read the road surface with a sensor and then adjust the damping forces of the shock with the electromagnets. The same type of system is used on the Cadillac CTS-V, Corvette ZR-1 and the Ferrari 458 Italia, but the ZL1’s shocks are the latest generation of the technology.
What this showdown boils down to is the digital vs. analog driving experience. The computers in the ZL1 aid the driver in maximizing the potential of the car when putting down lap times. However, it still doesn’t drive the car for you. A driver with skills will still put down faster times than a novice in the ZL1. That’s where cars like the Mustang Boss 302 Laguna Seca come on. The Mustang can be driven without driver aids. What the car does is in direct response to the driver’s input. The analog car gives you plenty of feedback so you can push to the absolute limits. Get it wrong and it will punish you, but that’s how you learn to become a better driver. The digital age of the sports car is great, but I hope that it grows hand in hand with the traditional analog car instead of completely taking it over. I think both are necessary so that drivers can grow along with technology of the cars. The technology has to amplify driver skill, not replace it.
The guys from Hot Rod Magazine and Peterson’s 4 Wheel & Offroad got together to do a cheap truck challenge. The premise was simple: build the best all around off-road truck on a high school kid’s budget. They set the parameters of being able to spend $2000 on the truck and $2000 on modifications. The three teams ended up fielding an old Toyota truck with a Marlin Crawlers transfer case, a Ford Bronco and a huge Chevy Suburban. They drag raced them, hill climbed, jumped some sand dunes and some strange test where they taped a gallon of milk to the hood and ran a course trying to get the fastest time while spilling the least. Basically they got some beaters and flogged them as another tribute to the mentality of “You don’t need to spend a lot of money to have fun.”
It makes me happy to know that a company like Icon can exist and be profitable. The core of their business is to take vintage 4×4’s like the FJ40 Landcruiser, Jeeps and Ford Broncos and turn them into usable drivers with modern running gear. They will scavenge vintage bodies and put them on a modern chassis with new suspension and a new crate engine. Icon have also started to use new aluminum reproduction bodies from Aqualu Industries. Autoblog just posted this mini-documentary on Icon’s latest Bronco project. The restored body sits on an Art Morrison frame with Dana axles and Ford’s new Coyote crate engine (the 5.0 V8 from the Mustang).
Icon has also done a couple of awesome cars as part of their Derelict line. The same premise applies to these cars except for the bodies are purposefully left unrestored to show off the time earned patina. They then go back and get really creative with the interior textures and fabrics to make some truly remarkable works of art. At the time of this video, they had only done two cars like this: a Chrysler wagon with a DeSoto front end and a 55 Chevy. I like how the guy describes how the Derelicts engage people at the end. There’s a couple of bad words in this video.
