It sounds to me like those running this competition have misplaced their emphasis. Everyone knows you can achieve insane MPG figures with creative engineering - much of which makes vehicles far too expensive and/or impractical for the real world. Specialized vehicles have achieved over 250mpg in special competitions…

In terms of raw performance, the Factory Five GTM is awesome. The only production car that can hang with it is the Ferrari Enzo. And it only costs about $70k to complete. In case of Nibbles: [www.vincentwong.com]

That's only true for performance autos though. Street vs street, manuals are much quicker. Drag racing auto trans are much quicker for several of the reasons you noted, but most prominently because you can set the stall converter to launch at X rpm, giving extremely consistent launches, which is what contributes…

Thank goodness; now Billy Ray won't have to put down his beer to shift.

Still NP.

Allan's right-front tire somehow got caught in the wall and that was the only thing which kept that car from flipping into the photographers. 6" higher and the car wouldn't even have hit the wall at all and we'd have 3-4 dead photographers. Simply amazing no one was hurt. Very scary crash; great to see McNish walk…

Not gonna happen; no way. The teams have flat out refused to go.

Re: #3, the GT40- It isn't the only American car, run by an American team, driven by all-American drivers, to win at Le Mans. Rather, the GT40's predecessor, the Shelby Daytona Coupe, did that in 1964... and was a hell of a lot better-looking, aerodynamic, and easier to drive (so sayeth Mess. Gurnery and Bondurant) […

No, no, NO. The motor means nothing... any large commercial vehicle, if you're crazy enough to get one powered by gas, is going to have a large displacement relatively powerful engine as per requisite to the task. It also means it's going to suck down gas like a jet fighter on afterburner. And the auto transmission…

Hoverbikes? Guy Martin is unimpressed (the bike at 0:15).

Australian NASCAR drivers... can't turn left.

AWESOME! How many more things can we do to distract drivers from the abhorrently dull task of simply piloting a 2-ton+ vehicle through an obstacle course of people, animals, random objects, and, oh yeah, other randomly unpredictable 2-ton+ vehicles wandering about doing God-knows-what other than driving.

Ahem, "photos come courtesy of our friends at QuattroWorld.com"

For the record they could be sequential but manually shifted a la Rolex GT, WRC '11, or motorcycles. But in this case it's paddle-actuated.

Do the astronauts climb into a rocket and then complain about the interior? No, they don't. You know why? Because they're blasting off to space; who gives a shit a/b the interior.

@jodark

For clarity, a road block does NOT convey the right to search you vehicle. As always, officers can look in the windows and see anything that's in plain view, OR if you're doing something fishy (or smelling drunk), then that can lead to other things. But a road block alone can lead to no more than a license/insurance…

So far I haven't seen this mentioned, somehow. The EV-1 is one of the most ironic car failures of all time, and easily, what should have been an awesome car. But it was 10 years too early for the market and, in the words of Casey Stoner, its ambition outweighed its talent.

/startsgooglingbmwandaudipics...

Hopefully soon, and against a concrete wall/pole/cliff/spontaneous combustion, rather than against another innocent motorist.