The looks of racing today are more due to manipulating air than anything. All of those curves, swoops, vanes, etc are about making the air do what the engineers want it to do. If the regulations were left wide open, you’d see even crazier designs (such as the regulation box cars of a decade ago). Just look at WEC…

First of all, that 2% is a goal, not a requirement of NATO membership. Second, even though the Ukraine is not a member of NATO, they are still an ally to the USA and abandoning them to Russia is not within our interests. Remember what happened the last time the West let a country take over neighboring territories…

There are Ukrainian people being killed Russian military RIGHT NOW and you think that’s “circumstantial?” Are you not going to believe Russia is an issue until Putin personally puts a gun to your head?

Russia hacked the email accounts of both American political parties. The majority of untrue news stories that circulate in the far right have Kremlin owned media as their primary source. Russia deploys a bunch of cruise missiles it isn’t supposed to have (by treaty). Russia has been slowly annexing former USSR…

Not at all. This is simply rev matching. All you’re doing is matching the RPM of the input shaft of the transmission, with the RPM of the crankshaft. If done right, you’re actually putting no load on the synchros. On a straight cut gearbox (like in a motorcycle or a true racecar) bang shifting is actually much…

Most DOTs do not independently verify their material: They just trust the supplier’s testing. The few that do test use interns who don’t actually know what they’re doing. Delaware is the only state with a consistent, experienced team, using the same equipment, the same procedures, and the same people. While their…

Know why Delaware’s bridges are in (relatively) good shape? Because they actually knows what they are building with. In almost every other DOT in the US, they just take the manufacturers word as gospel and pave with whatever the hell the supplier says they’re being sold. If you know anything about suppliers, you…

Name me one Trump platform that isn’t based on “[insert group] is coming to take your [fill in the blank]”.

Not exactly a car, but a friend of mine had a pair of Doodlebug minibikes with Harbor Freight engine swaps. We rode them around his neighborhood, then road through a couple neighborhoods to get to a local park trail so we could ride down it. It was of course right next to a creek so we had to be careful not to fall…

I disagree that Russia thought Trump would lose. A lot of the propaganda circulating on the right (and some starting to move into the left) comes from Russia. They’ve been building the fear and resentment on the right that lead to Trump’s rise (if you go through the sources of right wing news you will find an…

I’m assuming this is being done to boost dealership sales of both new and used cars. Obviously new car sales should see a boost as people decide it’s not worth it to keep that old clunker around, but used cars that are well away from that 20 year mark will also see a bump in price as the demand for a cheap but newer…

I can’t bring myself to watch anything past the beach buggy special. It was really bad. I don’t know who’s idea it was to film the entire first half, but they should be drawn and quartered. Not only was watching them wander a beach entirely uninteresting, but it assumes that we the viewer are too stupid to realize…

The two-door coupe, four seat coupe. The only one available right now (and soon to be dead) is the Scion tC. These are incredibly practical cars and a ton of fun. In fact, because the FRS has a standard trunk instead of a liftback, is the only reason I have no interest in an FRS. Sure the body is a bit flimsier…

It was 5 years ago, I don’t remember the exact car it was, but I know it was a Lincoln and I know the tech who screwed up walked out rather than lose multiple paychecks. The bags can’t handle the sudden weight of the car landing on them when fully inflated: that’s why they pop. This was not the first time this had…

I’ve seen this exact thing happen before. I worked at a tire shop for two summers in college. One of the techs lifted up a Town Car and didn’t turn off the bags. When he lowered it BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM. He walked out before the boss was told because all $5000 of those airbags was going to be coming out of his…

It’s broken air suspension. I bet someone put it on a lift without shutting off the airbag system. Do that and you’ll blow out the airbags when you lower it.

No, it has airbag suspension. I bet someone put it on a lift, didn’t turn off the airbags, and then lowered it. With air suspension, if you don’t shut off the system when it’s on a lift, the bags will continue to fill. Lower the car like this and you’ll blow out all four airbags at once. Replacing them isn’t cheap…

Yes, I meant more that you can’t just turn a screw anymore and make more power with better gas. However even with the higher octane and a retune, power gains are going to be minimal. OEMs have to squeeze maximum efficiency out of production engines to meet consumer’s demand for power and fuel efficiency, so there’s…

Countersteer is basically a laay way for Jalopnik to make quick content with minimal effort. Though a followup to this piece with better advice to counter the dumb advice (or just why this bad advice is bad) would be good.

The seatbelt/snow tire/premium gas advice isn’t bad advice: it’s old advice. In the days before crumple zones and crush structures, it WAS better to be thrown from the car than trapped inside of it. In fact F1 didn’t mandate seatbelts until the 70s because drivers were absolutely terrified of being trapped in a car…