We aren’t the sort that goes to auto shows, generally, but I found myself at the annual New England Auto Show tonight. It was your standard auto show fare: A lot of boring cars, boxy cars, ugly cars, and cars I’d never drive. Among the highlights, however, were the new STI and the Nissan GTR.

The production photos don’t lie: The STI certainly does look like a Mazda3. Yet there’s something about the squat hatchback body that I like. I don’t exactly prefer it to the previous generations, but in person the Mazda3 resemblance grew on me quickly. There’s wasn’t much of an opportunity to sit in the STI because it was on one of those ridiculous turntable altars, but the interior is typical WRX simplicity: clear gauges, positive shifter feel, well-bolstered seats.

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6 months ago, when Henry and I decided we were going to put his 2 Miatas into a U-haul and drive from Seattle to Boston in a week, we figured it wasn’t going to be a culture trip. We weren’t going to stop much. We weren’t going to drive through big cities like Chicago unless we had to. We weren’t going to sample any of the local culinary fare. It was a trip with a singular purpose and with few educational opportunities. What we would see, we would see in snapshots.

We saw copper mines, limestone quarries, triple-trailer trucks, burning fields, and huge gas plants. We learned that parts of Montana are flatter than parts of North Dakota, that the country as a whole is less flat than we imagined, but that parts of Illinois are flatter than we thought possible. And we learned that everything west of Chicago was designed for trucks and truckers. Everything east of Chicago…not so much.
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This is Part 2 of a series written by guest writer Ricky Nietubicz on his experience on the Formula SAE team at the University of Delaware. FSAE is a competition where students design, build, and compete with small formula-style racing cars. Ricky was President of his FSAE club, and his team went to the Nationals in Detroit during the 2006-2007 season.

FSAE requires manpower. Lots of it. Nobody will have much experience, and the sum total of the knowledge on many teams is less than the knowledge gained by Ferrari’s F1 team in a single testing session, and that’s just fine. There are many things that must be remembered when forming a team and recruiting, not the least of which is the fact that you are essentially constantly forming and re-forming your team, as people graduate and move on, run out of time, or simply drop off the face of the earth (Garrett, if you ever read this, give me a call. Or give anybody a call. We just want to know how your ///M3 is doing. And whether or not you’re alive.) freshmen and upperclassmen join to replace them, every team is in a state of constant turnover.

Problem number one is to get warm bodies into the shop and onto the team. Problem number two is retaining said warm bodies, and problem number three is getting them to do something useful and/or productive. Sounds easy enough. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be on a racing team? Who wouldn’t want to build race cars and get to drive the crap out of them? Plenty of people, unfortunately. And lots of other people would be more than happy to, but they never know your team exists, or they don’t have the time to participate. Read the rest of this entry »

As reported by Worldcarfans, Ferrari has an SUV in the works. This is sad. Very sad.

Specs are typical of overpowered SUVs: weight comes in at a portly 2.2 TONS (yes, thats about TWICE what my Miata weighs) and the engine produces 600 hp. It has 4 wheel drive and a bunch of other fancy things that shouldn’t interest anyone who likes Ferraris. Off-road capabilities were apparently low on the priorities list for the Ferrari design team, which simply makes the 599 a really bad joke.

Why oh why would you design a 5000 lb refrigerator to be sportive on the ROAD?? How do you reconcile producing the Enzo (already a bit overly techno-whizzbanged) that at least PERFORMS and then producing this? The 599 will do nothing well. It is too heavy to accelerate fast (0-60 is around 5 seconds, which is forever with 600 hp), too much like a brick wall to go fast, and waaaay too heavy to corner even half decently.

I’ll take my Miata, thank you very much.

And to top it off, its ugly too.

This is Part 1 of a series written by guest writer Ricky Nietubicz on his experience on the Formula SAE team at the University of Delaware. FSAE is a competition where students design, build, and compete with small formula-style racing cars. Ricky was President of his FSAE club, and his team went to the Nationals in Detroit during the 2006-2007 season.

So there I was, a freshman registered as a Political Science major at the University of Delaware. On the second or third night after you move in, there is an “activities night” in one of the student centers, where all of the organizations, clubs, fraternities and whatnot on campus show off what it is that they do in order to recruit new members. I wandered about with a couple people from my dorm, seeing what there was. A little bit of everything. Not having any interest whatsoever in stand-up comedy, plays, or the countless politically-oriented clubs, I just kind of wandered aimlessly. But then, tucked way away in the back corner of the room, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but four slicks and gleaming, polished-aluminum wheels. A little race car. Right there. I couldn’t abandon my companions fast enough.
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We woke this morning to dreary, gray skies, so we went to the fireworks store just this side of Erie and bought just under 2000 bottle rockets. In Pennsylvania it is legal to sell fireworks to non-PA residents only. You must sign a form promising to take them out of the state and provide proof of non-PA residency. Fireworks shops dot the PA borders so that people passing through or who live in states like NY where fireworks are illegal may get them.

The Sky King Fireworks Outlet in North East, PA, is probably the biggest fireworks store I’ve seen: Row after row of bottle rockets, mortars 60% off, and firecrackers by the brick and the wheel. The clerk was friendly and helpful. We came away well-stocked for the next year.

There is not much left to report. It cost us 50 dollars in tolls to use the New York Throughway and made excellent time across MA. We arrived in Boston around 9.

In 4 and a half days of driving we had no breakdowns, no problems, no rain, and no snow. We barely ran into traffic. In all, it went about as smoothly as possible. Tomorrow is the final phase: unloading the two Miatas, putting them back together, and returning the truck.

The Holiday Inn Express just west of Erie, PA, might have the least comfortable sofa-bed mattresses possible. I can feel most of the springs, and I’m not quite sure why one end turns up like a spoiler. But it is larger than the air mattress and sleeping bag that has been my bed since Monday. Our room, too, is larger, and we have a jacuzzi that is the perfect partner of the sofa-bed.

Not too long after we left Black River Falls we saw a grain silo with a gigantic pumpkin on top. It had a painted buck-tooth face. After passing through lower Wisconsin we arrived in Henry’s orginal hometown state, Illinois. Traffic looked bad in Chicago, so we drove a 60 mile loop around the city that took us through some of the flattest terrain we’ve seen. Many of the farms had their own large windmills, and one boasted a large windfarm with about 30 mills. It covered enough area that it was impossible to photo, even with no trees or mountains blocking our view.

With Chicago behind us we resigned ourselves to blowing through Indiana. When you cross from Illinois to Indiana on I-80, you go over a large rock quarry so deep you cannot see the bottom and so wide you cannot see the end. And then there are tolls and truckers until the next state. In Ohio we stopped at a Kohl’s in Ohio to fix an underwear supply problem, then hurried along towards Cleveland. There we found one of the most extreme corners we’ve seen. I-90 takes an extreme right at the airport and then runs along the shoreline. The posted limit is 35, and the U-haul couldn’t handle much more. And there is not much left to report about what is, so far, the least interesting leg of the trip.

Tomorrow is our last day. We have about 550 miles to go.

We completed our longest day today–a 760-mile through the last bit of Montana, through North Dakota, down past Minneapolis, and well into Wisconsin. Tonight we are in the self-proclaimed Black River Falls Oasis, home of several budget hotels, the Orange Moose Bar and Grill, and some gas stations. One of the lodgers has a gutted deer tied to the roof of his SUV. When we walked over to the gas station so that Henry could buy some nasty cookies or some such thing, I stood outside and took a look around. The attendant watched me through the window with a spyglass.

I’m not sure what he thought he would see me do. Abuse the Dumping Station, perhaps? Violate a object marked “Drinking Water” that was actually a large white pipe coming out of the ground, looping around, and ending in a garden hose patched with duct tape?

Unfortunately we didn’t get to see much of Minnesota because we blew through it in the dark. What we did see–the town of Moorhead, which is directly across the border from Fargo–seemed very harsh, blue, and industrial. Smoke from factory smokestacks was unusually thick-looking; I think the cold may have been condensing the exhaust very quickly, causing a denser smoke.

North Dakota was the highlight of the drive. The western part is very interesting steppe country, with an odd mix of fields, gentle rises, and unusual mounds and rock formations. Gradually this gave way to flatter plains, and not too long after we passed a huge metal sculpture in the shape of an eye, we found the only thing, so far, that we’ve picked up to bring back with us: tumbleweeds.

I had never seen a tumbleweed before save for in cartoons and Married With Children. When the first one–a small, almost perfectly spherical specimen–rolled across the highway in front of us, I couldn’t help but laugh. I thought it was going to be the only one. Little did I know that North Dakota is the perfect place for these interesting plants. They grow along the highway, break off, tumble to the fence indicating a pasture or field border, and stopped. I imagine the biggest ones mount the fence and get a little farther from home.

A tumbleweed is in the thistle family. To spread, the stalk breaks off from a its extensive root system and rolls along, shaking off seeds that will eventually become new tumbleweeds. It struck me as a remarkable strategy. The tumbleweed itself is very light and very dry, with tremendous surface area. The ones we saw were about 3-4 feet across. Trying to hold one in the North Dakota wind isn’t easy. We loaded 4 into the truck. 2 to keep as souveniers, and two big ones–two nice, hefty tumblebeasts–to release in Boston. They tend to grow in dry and slightly acidic soil, but we’re having fun imagining that we’re going to be responsible for a massive tumbleweed infestation along I-95 back home.

Tomorrow we’re shooting for the Ohio/Pennsylvania border, just beyond Ashtabula.

First, special thanks to Craig from Bozeman, one of our readers. He was kind enough to treat us to dinner. It helped break up an otherwise long trek that started this morning in Wallace, Idaho and ended in Glendive, Montana at about midnight, a total of 678 miles.

Craig, keep in touch. We want to know how your Protege project is coming along.

On to the day itself: We drove the entire state of Montana today and learned a few things. The U-haul will do 75mph under its own power, but it will coast to 81 down a steep incline. And I-90 in Montana has a series of steep inclines that wind down mountain passes between Missoula and Butte and Butte and Bozeman, which gave us plenty of opportunities to exceed the speed limiter.

We also learned that Montana has a 26-year old annual tradition called the Testicle Festival and that before you reach Glendive you must pass Bad Route Road and Whoopup Creek Drive.

Some of the rock formations around Butte and Bozeman are beautiful and impressive. But what really stood out to us today was the sheer size. Being from Boston, it’s hard to grasp the idea of a state so large that you can barely drive across in a day. If you drive 200 miles in any direction from Boston, you’re in a new state (or the Atlantic). It was a little different today.

We anticipate being in Minneapolis by tomorrow night, which puts us on schedule to arrive in Boston late Friday.

We left Seattle at about 6 on Monday and traversed Washington. The western part of the state has some interesting smells. Near Moses Lake there is the distinct smell of cigarette and cigar ash. Then, a bit past Moses Lake, it smelled distinctly of…um…poo. We weren’t sure what to make of that, nor were we sure what to make of the towns of Steptoe and Fishtrap, which are between Moses Lake and Spokane.

Spokane, for what it’s worth, seems to be the only city that is 5 times wider than it is long.

We aren’t seeing much of Idaho because 90 runs through the upper part–and because of a thick fog that made doing 50 in the U-haul was difficult. We arrived in Wallace, the self-proclaimed silver capital of the world, just before midnight. We haven’t seen much of the town, of course, but we did find out that the U-haul will bottom out in the exit ramp of the hotel. We got stuck briefly bringing the truck around to the back parking lot. After a quick U-haul burnout, we dragged the trailer along the ground a bit and then pulled free.

Tomorrow, Montana. Lots and lots of Montana.