I have a whole list of things that indicate to me that someone isn't a good driver, but I primarily look for people who use their indicators on lane changes, actually use the throttle, and maintain a decent position in the center of their lane (especially around turns.)

It's because they didn't want to design the Scirocco to comply with US Federal regulations, or want to deal with the expense of Federal testing - the GTI gets a free pass on crash testing since the important bits are the same as a Golf, the Scirocco would have to go through it's own round of tests. It just wouldn't…

Heh, after the historics this year, everyone I talked to about it basically responded with "Woah, I had no idea, I would have totally gone to that!" They were universally under the impression that the only thing going on was the Concours.

They schedule the interesting things far enough in advance that once every month or two, is probably sufficient. Also don't forget Laguna Seca, where the Historic races are particularly poorly-advertised, and very worth going to.

The WTCC race has been on the Sonoma online schedule for months (since May, at least,) you must have just categorized it as 'BS.' You also seem to have written off the recent Indy race in a similar fashion.

We've got two localish tracks in the Bay Area - If you're into seeing motor sports events live, just check the Laguna Seca and Sonoma calendars once a month (or less frequently) to see if there's anything interesting going on. There's a fair amount of stuff that's never well-advertised.

Ah yeah, I managed to go to both the NASCAR and WTCC races at Sonoma this summer - I'd have to pay something like $170 a month for the cheapest cable package that has SPEED (getting SPEED2 costs more on top of that,) so I get most of my racing online too. One tip for next year: Fox airs 4 or 5 Formula 1 races each…

Going to have to say that the NASCAR race at Sonoma had way, way more action, and far, far more contact than the WTCC race did. NASCAR doesn't get up to all that much more speed at a road track, there are twice as many cars, and the race is four times (as I recall) as long as a single WTCC race.

Hmm, here I was thinking it was reasonably promoted - I almost never watch TV, but managed to catch 2 commercials for the race during one brief sports bar visit, plus I got a phone call from the track promoters, to confirm that I had received a discount voucher by mail.

The EPA enforces RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) in the US, and Lead is one of those substances that has been affected by enforcement. Almost all soldered products sold in developed nations these days are soldered with lead-free solder.

That depends on the car (mostly weight) and largely on the driver - people have a tendency to brake when they don't need to actually slow down, which causes loads of unnecessary wear.

I agree with your list, but I personally add another exception for shaming pictures, on the basis that if you can't be bothered to fit your BMW in a single parking space (for example,) I won't bother to edit out your plate.

Ah, a perfect donor for my dream caminoizing project! Well, technically I want a Red Label, you know, for towing power.

To be clear, I was talking about over heating the rotors, not the pads. Once you get standard steel rotors over 1100 degrees F, you ruin the heat treatment, interstitial carbon comes out of solution, and you lose most of the friction available on the surface of the rotor.

Well obviously the brake-throttle override wasn't working in this case, what I meant was: Does the ABS system handle the situation when the throttle cut doesn't work.

It's not just about brakes being able to hold back the engine torque, it's how long the brakes will last. I imagine Kia brakes are designed with enough cooling to handle a single hard stop - more than that will probably over heat them, at which point you would be lucky to get about 35% of nominal braking torque out of…

I've pondered something like this for my girlfriend. It's not critical, since she can drive, but in order to press the clutch far enough in, she has to move the seat up a lot. The seats have reasonably aggressive bolsters, which interfere with her upper arm when she shifts, so she has to grip the shifter pretty…

Agreed, it's over-sculpted, just like most of the retro muscle/pony cars. I blame the baby boomers, since they're the demographic with the most buying power, and they're all getting old, so they need things to be soft, rounded, and easy to chew.

You know, not everything in life has to be motivated by the prospect of getting laid... oh, who am I kidding, of course it does.

Yeah, the stereo and climate control are about as minimally distracting as possible, which is the only reason I like them.