That’s a good point. I guess I have a bit of a myopic view when it comes to powertrains, and somewhat ignore the rest. I remember when we got the first STi in the US and that kind of power was unheard of from an engine of that displacement. Just wish they kept releasing products that continued to shock us engine guys.

Interesting. I wasn’t aware Subaru had announced a hybrid STi.

Sorry. Subaru isn’t exactly willing to budge on their formula.

Going to the track seems to work pretty well for me.

And don’t even think about driving in the rain...it’s chaos!

I like the hot laps idea. Just started thinking about the challenges of programming in changes in weather, tires, performance parts, other traffic, etc.

I’d be curious to see what field this engineer actually works in.

Subaru WRX STi...

There are many things I really got away with that I won’t share here, but this is one of my favorite.

Me. I was the car guy fixing up garbage wrecked cars. And similar to the referenced movie, there was a kid with a brand new Viper handed to him by daddy. Dude would rev his engine at me (whenever he wasn’t lined up next to me) and sounded like a brochure when I asked him about the car.

I’m not a photographer. I just have an old phone camera and refuse to bother with editing. However, I’ve always liked this one. This was the first car I completely restored and I did it in a college apartment parking garage. I had some pretty wild experiences with this car, but this is the only picture I have of it…

Love it in person...looks better than these pictures.

See you there! Flying in tomorrow.

Not that I agree with his approach, but to be fair Uhaul tires are garbage. The last two car trailers I have rented both suffered blowouts on the highway at the advised 55 mph.

I’m going to assume you’re joking...

Certainly not this one:

I was standing near turn 6 and watched that happen yesterday...certainly surprised me!

I have a wall of shame for catastrophic failure parts that I take a weird sense of pride in. Everything boring (brake rotors, clutches, old engine blocks, etc.) gets recycled for a bit of extra cash.

I think the most effective thing would be keeping people from lining up along the exit street. A lot of people who buy performance cars and actually show them tend to have large egos, and those egos can’t say no when some kid on the corner yells, “Do a burnout! You won’t!”

I think part of it is that most OEMs aren’t really interested in engineers with degrees in Automotive Engineering...or Automotive Engineering Tech or whatever they call it. Our company pretty much only looks at engineers with a degree in Mechanical or Electrical coming straight out of college.