The Gumball 3000 started its 2008 tour this weekend, and we caught up with the rally in Huntington Beach, CA where the drivers stopped for a brunch and fashion show hosted by Lux5 Events at the Hilton Waterfront Beach Resort. The group of 120 cars started out in San Francisco on Saturday and will also makes stops in San Diego and Las Vegas. From there the tour jumps continents and heads to North Korea, eventually ending in Beijing to catch a live view of the Olympic games.
We criticize the idea of design by committee when it comes from a major automaker, but Local Motors touts its open, inclusive process of collaboration as a deep strength. LM has decided to put Sangho Kim's Rally Fighter concept into production. Just like a proper automaker, lots of words bloom on the webpage -- most of them the etymological equivalent of weeds. The Rally Fighter is intended to scream across a variety of surfaces in glorious four-wheel drifts. Watching the progression of Kim's styling from sketch to metal will be intriguing. The drawings show a vehicle with the typical bombastic proportions of a concept, but if this thing ends up in production with its outlandishly large wheels, impossibly low roof, and exoskeleton-inspired body sculpting, we'll definitely be clamoring around the auto show stand to check it out.
Ever since 2006, when Peugeot, Skoda and Mitsubishi pulled their factory works teams out of the World Rally Championship, the WRC has been desperate to attract another major automaker back to reinvigorate the series. Emerging reports suggest that Volkswagen has been inquiring about joining the championship after the company's motorsport chief Kris Nissen visited the Finnish rally to meet with series officials and team leaders.
Despite being one of the largest automakers in the world, the Volkswagen Group's racing division is proportionately very small. Audi's programs in Le Mans-class prototype racing and German touring cars (DTM) stand out as the biggest exceptions, while SEAT campaigns Leons in both the British and World Touring Car Championships and Skoda in the production-car-based Intercontinental Rally Challenge. Nothing in Formula One, NASCAR or the WRC. The Volkswagen division itself only dabbles in racing periodically, with the Touareg in Dakar and the Scirocco at the Nurburgring 24-hour enduro, in addition to its low-level Formula 3 program. However, the top-tier World Rally Championship would give Volkswagen a chance to claim honors against Ford, Subaru, Citroen and newcomers Suzuki, as well as the privateer teams. Fiat and Renault have also been touted as potential additions to the WRC roster. However, only time will tell which automakers will take the big step up.
You can bitch and moan about the X Games version of rally racing being less pure than what you see on WRC, and while there are no trees whizzing by or bottomless pits in which to careen, the Home Depot Center in Carson, CA offered many opportunities for competitors to crash their cars in spectacular fashion. This year's event at X Games 14 was divided between driving on dirt within the stadium and pavement outside with a big jump smack dab in the center of the stadium giving fans the best view of the biggest car-nage.
The most spectacular example of mechanical mayhem from this past weekend's two-hour competition was during the quarterfinals in which Andrew Comrie-Picard didn't quite make the big jump and smacked his rear end on the lip of the receiving ramp, which flipped his car end over end (see above and more in gallery). His competitor at the time, Dave Mirra, who is an X Games alum competing for the first time in a car rather than on a bike, just had to finish to win. He tagged the wall halfway through the race, however, and was forced to finish without being able to turn left.
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Lee Iacocca is a smart man. Father of both the Mustang and the minivan, the well revered auto exec was Chrysler's savior in the '80s. As such, the current Chrysler LLC will be holding a rally to honor its former patriarch on June 26th at its headquarters in Auburn Hills, MI. The rally will be attended by employees and Iacocca himself (no word on whether his BFF Snoop Dogg will make an appearance). Today's Chrysler, of course, bears little resemblance to the strong automaker helmed by Iacocca in the '80s. During the '90s, Chrysler followed its Big 3 brothers down a path of big pickups and SUVs for which now they are all paying dearly, and Iacocca made no bones about his feelings toward Daimler after the German automaker cut and ran away from their "merger of equals", saying in an interview with BusinessWeek last year that "Daimler screwed Chrysler royally." We can't help but wonder how the 84-year-old would run his old automaker today if given the reigns, but chances are he wouldn't want them if they were offered.
Sebastian Loeb and Citroen had a comfortable win at the Acropolis Rally in Greece this past weekend, but much of the attention was paid to the race debut of the Subaru WRC2008. With Petter Solberg behind the wheel, the new Subie took ten top-five stage times the first two days and captured second place overall. The result was Solberg's first points since February and his first podium finish since last year's Acropolis Rally. The problem-free weekend and the fast pace were encouraging for the Subaru team, who see the new race car as a turning point. "This is it, we're coming back!" Solberg declared after the race. The next rally in Turkey will determine whether the initial success of the car was a fluke or for real. For now, check out the gallery below of the WRC2008 sliding its way to a second place finish.
WRC teams are gearing up in Greece ahead of this week's Acropolis rally, and just before its world racing debut, Subaru has released the details on its all-new Impreza rally car. You can pore over the specs after the jump, but the highlights of the Impreza WRC2008 include a 1994cc turbocharged flat four, running an IHI turbo equipped with the WRC-mandated 34mm restrictor plate and Subaru's own anti-lag system to produce 300 hp at 5,500 rpm and... wait for it... 479 lb.-ft. of torque at 3,000 rpm.
Power is sent to a six-speed electro-hydraulic transmission, through an electronically controlled center diff and down to the wheels through mechanical differentials, fore and aft. Bos shocks are being used in conjunction with the front and rear MacPherson setup, while AP Racing, 310mm discs are clamped by six-piston calipers both in front and in the rear. BBS wheels are fitted at all four corners, with 15-inchers used for gravel stages and 18-inch rollers for tarmac attacks. The rally racer's weight is set at the WRC minimum of 2,712 pounds. As always, you can follow the progress of the Impreza and the rest of the teams at the WRC website.
Next week's Acropolis Rally in Greece will be the first event in the 2008 WRC season to feature Subaru's new rally car. The Impreza Rally WRC2008 car was originally previewed at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September, but Subaru has yet to announce the final specifications of its new rally rocket. Obviously, Prodrive has had its hand in developing the new racer, but a BOS sticker indicates that Subaru will be utilizing the French outfit's dampers. Petter Solberg and Chris Atkinson will pilot the new Impreza in Greece and Prodrive head David Richards is convinced that this is "the most radically different Subaru World Rally Car in 15 years." We're looking forward to seeing how it fares next week.
After all the trials and tribulations, the first event in the Central Europe Rally took place this past weekend and Carlos Sainz took the overall win behind the wheel of a heavily prepped Volkswagen Touareg 2, while NASCAR driver Robby Gordon's team finished 10th.
The race, which spanned some 1,670 miles across Hungary and Romania, took Sainz and his co-pilot, Michel Perin, 11 hours, 18 minutes and 8 seconds to traverse, followed by the team of Stephane Perhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret driving a Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution, while Dieter Depping and Timo Gotschalk came in third, behind the wheel of another Touareg 2.
Gordon, whose total time was 1 hour, 25 minutes and 38 seconds behind Sainz, completed the race with the help of a HUMMER H2 and Andy Grider at his side. The full race results can be viewed after the jump, and we've assembled a gallery of some seriously awesome shots from the Central Europe Rally below.
Last year, Porsche built a series of race-ready Cayenne S Transsyberia SUVs for use in the rally event bearing the same name. Lessons were learned, and so for the 2008 running of the Transsyberia, Porsche is offering the teams who bought the trucks last year a conversion package that features a number of upgrades. These include a new sump guard, a beefier tire package, tweaked air suspension, a shorter final drive ratio (same as the new Cayenne GTS), plus updates to the transmission programming, dynamic chassis control and traction management systems. Driving from Moscow to Mongolia is no picnic, and these upgrades should make the already-robust Cayenne S Transsyberia even better-suited to handle the rough-and-tumble 4,400-mile course. You can check out the full specs after the jump, and see last year's post on the truck's unveiling for a peek at many of the other modifications that came as part of the standard package.
