Anyone conversant with automotive design would expect a car with the name “Fisker” on it to display the required aplomb. And indeed the Fisker Karma, a four-door four-place grand touring car has the calm effrontery to disrupt conversations mid- sentence, to snap a neck or two. Its presence is not immediately definable. I like that. And the design expends no effort to be ingratiating. It’s simply there. At a still point. The rest is up to you.

High wheels are a car’s high heels – they’re meant to add drama to a car like stiletto’s to a woman’s legs. Ah, both come with expected pain. And a long wheel base can smooth a highway ride but plays hob with an acceptable turning circle. (As it turns out the 22” wheels and the 124.4” wheel base of the Karma both neatly evade their expected negatives. Yes, the ride is firm but firm is good. (Clever engineers.)

A car, like a painting, should not be totally available at first look. Nor too pleasing. Designs I like have a hiccup, an interruption of expectation, which creates a tension that gives longer life to mere good looks. The Fisker Karma has it in some interplay of arcs on the long body – a break at the root of the windshield - and a hefty, truncated haunch. Not expected but welcome.

So. Too damn much about styling? Haven’t even reached the interior. But now’s the time. Yes, leather is available. And pretend suede. Leather prepared by an ecologically undemanding process so it is green green whatever neutral color it is. But the upholstery on this LA day of driving is a lush fabric equally eco-pleasing but quite too heavily dotted and textured for me to take to immediately. (I ask - snidely? – was this intended for export to the Middle East?) But the comfort of the four-seat interior and the delightful art deco touches here and there encourage a deeper acquaintanceship with the-less-than-perfect interior. But charming. I smile at the minimal wood touches. Matte in finish and, we are told, either salvaged from a California forest fire or Great Lakes flotsam. How exquisitely whimsically upscale green. Romney-esque one might say. The car, note here, is priced a few thousands over $100,000.

By late afternoon, impressed by the peacefully readily thereness of the low-end torque (ample “torques” is my favorite character trait in a car), the feel-good steering wheel and the prompt response it gets when applied I’m starting to warm not only to the smoothly satisfying driving experience but even to the companionship of the surprise fabric. It is rather like the dubious painting in the exhibition that you’re glad you returned to for the fourth time. I’m beginning to get it.

You’ll find the numbers for, say, 0-60 and horsepower etc. in internet reviews. (Try: http://www.edmunds.com/fisker/karma/2012/.) What I’m doing is a perception-driven piece and my perceivers were charmed. I like small cars that drive Big and big cars that drive Small. The Karma almost qualifies for the latter but its width has to be noted. On traffic-laden twisty streets, like LA’s Sunset Boulevard, the driver next lane over might actually feel encroached upon. But then chances are he’s casing your ride and not as attentive to his own placement as he might be.

It’s fun to enjoy driving a vehicle whose first intent seems to be to cosset and cater to your luxe-sensing nerve endings. But ask it for quickness and you get it. Request a hunkered pose in a fast negative-camber diminishing-radius turn and, by golly, you’ll get it. (Would that it would rain!) Braking can be wrapped in a few words: Brembo for one; among the best of the regenerative sort I’ve experienced, and good feel. OK, it’s no Porsche but the Fisker Karma is very good at being what it is. What is that? It’s been called a four-place sports sedan but I think Gran Turismo is more fitting. And it is really more a two-plus-two with the back seat inhospitable to big folk for long distances.

Rudely, I’ve got to bring up the weight matter – nearly three tons despite a lot of aluminum and lightweight materials. The bulk of the bulk is cleverly amassed in in a central tunnel where the lithium-ion batteries are housed. Batteries? We had to come to that. Of course you knew from the start that the Karma is an “EV er” (Electrical Vehicle, extended range.) But I held off mentioning it because to me the Karma’s association to that stuff that sparked Ben Franklin’s kite is the least involving matter about the car. The Karma is first a particularly attractive, well-performing luxury car. Then, oh yes. You can plug it in and “get” 52 mpg.

But the electric interplaying with the on-board gasoline-powered generator gets intriguing as you tune-in to its possibilities. The EV part of the Karma’s is in two 150kW motors on the rear wheels. That’s what will move the vehicle some 32 miles before you need to attach it to the grid. (Not sure what the roof-mounted solar collectors can do.) However, like with the Chevy Volt, you needn’t fear running out of juice. You have a friend in Mr. Gasoline aboard and you know how readily that liquid can be found. Beats a very long extension cord. In the Karma, gasoline powers a four-cylinder 2-liter turbo-charged 260-hp generator which keeps power flowing to the electric motors. And thus your range before you stop for quick gas or a long overnight plug-in is some 250 miles more. (Yes, diesel-lovers, they actually call that range. Ha!)

In the Karma you can choose electric power alone (Flick the “Stealth” paddle.) “Sport” will bring in the generator as well. Twinned. That ups the horsepower to 403 and is said to be good for 125 mph top (you may be ticketed for around 95 mph using the electric alone.) Electric, like steam, gives you full power at the 0 mark and that is a (WOW!) 981 of them torques. Ah perception is everything and you are rocketing across the intersection, up the ramp, past the truck. It will never stop.

I don’t think any other extended range electric offers the variety of using this mode or that mode or both together. With the Volt I drove you ran it out of stored power and then you were on the generated juice provided by the gasoline engine. With the Fisker there is choice if you choose. Cool.

Another feature of the Fisker that I found so sensually satisfying was the smooth ramp of acceleration. Not gear steps to take, not even ones you barely feel. Just steady winding. Ok, not too helpful while descending hills. All that dab-dabbing at the brakes to control your descent. However flick that paddle and have at your fingertips two different degrees of “engine” braking. Then you discover that toying with that paddle can make entering and exiting turns a different exercise. Another choice. Another cool.

Quick summary: never mind that this is an electric car, that’s just one attribute of a pleasurable, appealing, “driverly” vehicle that will say something about your taste, style and wheel habits. And even your sensitivity to the likelihood that humans are mistreating the homestead. It’s an intriguing package, all told. Someone in his review asked if the Karma was worth its six-figure price tag. Frankly, Paul, that’s a stupid question; a question all but meaningless for a rolling object over $100,000. You need to ask worth it to whom? And for doing what with?

Think about it. Would a capital-S Star really drive a Prius or a Volt to the Oscars? Yes, they have done so but weakly. That’s making a statement? One ending in an upward inflection at best. It pales your green cred to a Granny Smith hue. If you want to line your suit jacket with a shimmering deep jade then wheel up in a Fisker Karma. Now that’s a statement with !!!!.

And one I see young Justin can now be making.

Ah youth. I sing the auto electric. But this one is fine.

Tesla’s battery problems provide a much-needed warning.

New technologies — or new developments in old technologies – require their users to click out of their half-asleep automatic response and be consciously aware of the best way to deal with this new stuff. When the new patterns of response are tweaked to the most appropriate actions then it’s safe to revert to robot mode.

From long ago I recall my country cousins on the family homestead had a hand pump on their kitchen sink. The town-kid in me thought this “new” thing was the cat’s pajamas. But then it was updated to mundane faucets much like we had. Star-shaped with “C” and “H” in the center.

The old hand pump simply stopped its intermittent gushing when whoever was pumping stopped pumping. And when the faucets were first installed I remember my cousins had to sometimes turn back to the sink to turn them off. But not for long. The new twist-off behavior quickly replaced the pump technology in their automation map.

So leap decades ahead and ask Prius owners how many left their new car “on” all night when they first got it. Count the sheepish looks and not the hands. Shows you not everyone had Windows and were thus trained by Bill Gates to push “Start” to shut something off.

Now it seems that any owner of Tesla’s lovely little Lotus-derived Roadster, which is dependent entirely on lithium-ion batteries for its motive force, need to examine their automatic responses to a vehicle’s needs or suffer some egregiously costly consequences.

Range anxiety doesn’t relate just to distance any more but to time as well. If left too long without an incoming charge a Tesla will become, gasp, a brick. What’s too long? Depending on juice level when you park the car “too long” can be as little as a week.

“Brick” is not exactly a term an owner is keen on associating with his $100,000+ car. Yet brick is a Tesla Roadster’s destiny if the person in charge of its well-being is ignorant of battery technology and fails to realize that inattention and time can turn his car into an oblong lump incapable of even being towed without draconian measures.

In brief, if the batteries in the Tesla are allowed to discharge completely they are useless. As in dead. Dead as in they cannot be recharged. Furthermore the car with the useless dead batteries cannot even be rolled out of the way, onto a truck, into a garage. It is a brick. A big costly brick. And replacements for these prematurely deceased batteries cost $40,000. Furthermore that cost is not covered by any warranty from the company or any existing insurance policy from anyone. Tesla, it seems, is not bending over backward to please wayward owners who didn’t pay attention to the owners manual.

The facts of brickdom in a Tesla Roadster has been reported in the plural (maybe five known bricks) by blogger Michael DeGusta who is actually on a waiting list for a different Tesla model, the Model X SUVish one. DeGusta is aghast. He thinks the company is less than adequately active in warning owners of the dire consequences of not providing their parked Tesla Roadsters with a juice source to suckle.

But John Voelcker of Green Car Reports, in an “aha” sort of story headlined “The Tesla ‘Bricking’ Story Might Just Be An Angry Owner’s Warranty Claim,” writes that the company insists that warnings are “prominently” called out in warranty and owners literature. In other words, read your manual. Who knew it could be that important.

A Tesla owner named Max Drucker apparently did not know and now he’s trying to shame Tesla into taking responsibility for his own shortcomings – or so I gather that’s Voelcker’s defense of Tesla. I am, however, unused to seeing a belittling word like “just” in association with a $40,000 loss, so I checked to see what it was that Tesla told its owners. And I’m with DeGusta on this: the words are there but the incredibly grim, horrible, disastrous results of ignoring the words are not all that clear. Not even as clear as the pidgin-Japanese warning with an electronic gadget I ordered recently. In capital letters with margins replete with red skull and crossbones I was warned “NOT DROP THIS BOUGHT ITEM IN WATER!!!!” I understood such forbidden action would put me out $4.99 plus shipping. Tesla folk, facing a $40,000 loss, got no red skulls.

In a Tesla communique issued since the bricking splashed the internet it is correctly pointed out – the meandering purpose of my piece here – that, in short, all technology has its no-nos. Users should learn them. For instance, Tesla says, a conventional gasoline engine must be provided with adequate oil or it will be destroyed.

Oh-oh, Tesla people, a confusion here. You are ignoring the difference between active and passive risks.

Permit me another personal anecdote to point out how I learned this lesson. In my days of occasionally riding motorcycles and frequently racing sports cars I recognized that conventional wisdom held these pastimes to be perilous. I acknowledged the dangers, chose to reduce their possible impact on me and accepted them. In those heady days I also tried sport parachuting, then truly new on the sporting scene. I knew immediately as I stepped out of the small Cessna into unsupportive air I was in alien territory quite different from my familiar pastimes. Thusly: for me to be at serious risk in racing something had to go wrong – a tire down, a piston thrown, another car running into me. In this new sport I was dead as soon as I left the plane and something had to go right to save me. A silk umbrella had to blossom properly out of my chest and back pack and I had to avoid being re-introduced to earth’s surface in the midst of a large body of water.

The dry oil sump is analogous to the risk of racing and the parachute jump, by golly, is the Tesla. To destroy the gasoline engine someone has to actively drive it when there’s no oil in it. To ruin the Tesla it simply has to sit unattended past its Charge By date. To keep a Tesla from meeting its natural sad destiny someone has to act. Has to provide it with a reliable, adequate supply of electricity. And keep doing it. Operative words “adequate” and “keep doing it.” One Tesla was bricked while plugged in and thus believed to be safe. Except its charge had to traverse an over-long extension cord and by the time it reached the Tesla it wasn’t strong enough to feed the Tesla. Alas, time has its way and — brick.

Message: even a fully charged Tesla Roadster if you do not keep the electricity coming will – over time – go to brick. Another Tesla having been shipped to Japan could not be connected to the grid there (duh) and completely ran out of juice and time and died a $40,000 death.

“Active” and “passive” have other meanings and I think it is Mr. DeGusta’s point that Tesla is too passive in this matter of costly battery deaths and should show more active interest. The company points out that the Roadster 2 had software constantly monitoring its SOC (state of charge) and if the SOC is too low you’ll get an automatic SOS by e-mail. (So a quick flight home from a Nepal mountain top costa less than bricked batteries. As long as your iPhone or your Sherpa gets the message.)

The question arises: Why is normal use with the Tesla so close to abnormal disaster? Some have suggested that Elon Musk, Tesla’s man at the wheel, wants bragging rights for the highest range numbers for a battery car and thus leaves little safety margin. Possibly. But he must realize that adverse publicity for any electric vehicle hurts the entire field of EV transportation. In my experience only a few car buyers are people keen on specifics. Most deal with generalities and half-understood answers to vague questions. And all they know now is that they heard something bad about electric cars. Pull a face. Not for me thanks! That’s why the battery fire of a test-wrecked Volt, actually inconsequential to the real-world use of a Volt, created such a ruckus. The folks with a politically-motivated anti-electric agenda are still kicking this football all over their playground.

Nonetheless, attention must be paid. As the point of this piece peeks out here and there: new technology requires new awareness.

If you are considering a Leaf, Mitsubishi “i”, Tesla or other plug-in car that is dependent entirely on electric power then you must acquaint yourself with the ways in which it differs from the old hand pump at the sink. Update your software regularly, check out user sites on the web to learn about quirks the official sites might ignore and keep your mind open. If you are not prepared to do this then wait a few more cycles of discovery before you get the diamond lane denizen you crave.

Based on recent news Tesla requires more attention than most both because of its lordly price and its poor history of customer service. And its battery pack design. Though both the Nissan and the Tesla rely on lithium-ion batteries Nissan uses a more conventional pack (once dissed as “primitive” by Tesla’s Musk) while Tesla uses a clever, though scarcely breakthrough, arrangement of some 6800 batteries more at home in a laptop. The Leaf, Nissan reports, has a designed-in safety floor in its battery system. They say its batteries will not discharge beyond this floor and thus cannot totally discharge. Though a touch of skepticism even here might be protective.

The type of lithium-ion batteries Tesla uses have been known when in the more familiar setting of a laptop to burst into flames on more than one occasion. Maybe this penchant prompted Tesla to develop a sophisticated monitoring system to keep the multitude of mini batteries operating properly without the risk of inopportune combustion. However the monitoring requires that the batteries are always on. And always on means at least a slow discharge is always happening. In that on-going discharge lurks the risk, as some Tesla owners have been horrified to discover, of the heartbreak of bricking.

In the reported bricking episodes it appears to me that Tesla has come across in as unduly defensive and less than sympathetic. Righteously it has pointed out how many warnings are scattered through the Roadster literature. Yet this, at the same time, points up the strange inadequacies of those warnings. Particularly given the severity of the consequences.

It’s likely Tesla will face some litigation from irate brick owners, which has some poetic justice given the litigious nature of Elon Musk (not – by the way – my favorite character in the car biz.) Recently an English court ruled against him in his suit against the TV show Top Gear. The show’s typically taunting review was less than benevolent toward the EV from the US. Musk’s main complaint was that a crew was shown pushing the Tesla away from the test track to a garage with the implication that the car had run out of charge earlier than Tesla’s forecast. That this would irreparably harm the Tesla rep in the public’s view was, I gather, the crux of Musk’s unconvincing claim.

Oh my. When the bricking reports burst upon my computer they prompted in me a thought tinged with amusement and – I sadly admit because it is unbecoming — a touch of Schadenfreude (see not-my-favorite above.) It was my smug little notion that the reason Musk knew the batteries were still charged in the Top Gear Tesla was that the car was being pushed by a handful of guys. It takes a bleeding crane to move a bricked Tesla.

Judging from the ads for it (which I also don’t like) the Veloster (I don’t like that name either) is meant for the youth market. (And I’m not keen on that to stretch my crochets about as far as they’ll go.  The intention of the Veloster to appeal to young buyers accounts for its lack of cohesive purpose. In my experience today’s younger buyers are more interested in extreme “stylin’“ than in style and in gadgetry that caters to their obsession with texting and talking (if they must), constant music feeding directly to the inner ear and other forms of acute distraction from actual driving.

My take on all that is given credence by the fact that youngsters today are waiting longer to become licensed drivers. Then there’s that TV show of some apparent popularity called “Pimp My Ride” that was more about extreme appearance than even adequate performance. It went for the wows in looks and slighted the hows in handling, accelerating, braking or steering. Outrageous appearance ranked first in preference.

The Veloster is decidedly on the glitz side of appearance and the glum side of performance. And it’s got all the “networking” bells and whistles. Give it an A grade for that, but it flat flunks mobility. The price of in and around $20,000 well-equipped is on the plus side, too.

Actually the Veloster boasts many bright styling ideas but far too many of them to put in one small vehicle. It’s like a rolling catalog from which you would choose one or two ideas at most.  If it were your teenage daughter about to go out for an evening you’d insist she settle on either the dangling earrings, the gaudy necklace, the dozen bracelets, the nose ring or the sequin eye makeup. Not all at once.

A friend, once head of a major design studio, said this Hyundai reminded him of the work of his avid young designers who put enough ideas for five cars into one. (Note: this friend had also spent a lot of time admiring the Kia Optima when I parked that in his driveway.)

But the unforgivable part of the Veloster for me is the wimpy performance of the engine. OK, I apologize to the new 1.6 liter 4-cylinder (138 hp) for asking it to act competent at 7000 feet, but the Kia Rio did, the Fiat 500 did, the Mazda3 did. Etc. And with this engine’s direct injection it should do better. Particularly when the car, though over-burdened with character-line doodles and unceasing sculpting, is not all that heavy (2600 lbs). There’s simply no low-end torque and at the top end no speed. If I understand engine speak this four-banger was crying plaintively to be turbocharged. (And I understand will be soon – 208 hp.  Wait!)

The Veloster I drove sported a six-speed manual (a paddled-shifting automatic is available). Fortunately this gear box performs smoothly because a driver has to keep stirring it to find a rev level at which the engine produces anything useful. (Oh yes, I didn’t like the novacained steering either.) However the chassis is rigid enough for a touch of pleasure in treasured twisty bits.

And, too, I did find the seats handsome and I was quite taken with the flat metallic upside-down U on the doors’ interior - handy to grab for closing. And I think the asymmetrical doors – two on the curbside and one larger on the driver’s side – was innovative and useful. (However I found the car the most difficult to get in and out of in my recent experience. And precious little sense of space once inside.)

The car also promises good mileage – 40 mpg highway. But perhaps because of my fruitless search for power I encouraged the thirst of the little engine. Lucky if it made it into the 30s in mpg. And the small gas tank shortens range. (Ever hear of diesel in Chosen you guys?)

Now if they would or could de-busy-fy the IP, lower the dash so you can see out (and improve sight lines out the back), settle on one or two design elements for the hatchback body, lower the lift-over height into the trunk and put an actual engine under the hood getting rid of the weary squirrels laboring therein, then they might have something worthy of the Hyundai group’s recent advances.

Did I say I didn’t like this car? Well, I don’t. But then I haven’t been near a youth market since long before they decided there was one. Text on, kiddies. You may luv it.

McCluggage observation: Leo was there, the book’s author was not. The difference? One gets it; one does not.

When writing about people in a particular line of work, if your effort is to have any validity you should be familiar with – should understand – the milieu in which they function. When attempting to get into their psyche, it is practically mandatory that you spend time with them.

If you didn’t have the needed experience(s), there would seem to be little point in trying. This is one of the principal reasons biographies of persons no longer with us so often reflect the writer’s prejudices rather than reality.

In the case of The Limit, which concerns itself with Phil Hill and Wolfgang von Trips and their competition for the 1961 world driver’s championship, we have been given to understand the author has never been to a race. In addition, Hill’s family informs us that Cannell spoke with Phil only on the phone—and briefly—when the champion was in his declining years. That he never spoke with Von Trips is obvious, since the latter did not survive the Italian Grand Prix in which Hill won the title.

As a consequence, what we have here is something considerably less than adequate. To be charitable.

But if YOU don’t know that HE doesn’t know, then you might find the book vaguely entertaining if a preoccupation with death interests you.

More’s the pity, because this is little more than a pieced-together collection of quotes taken from a variety of sources, most of them magazine articles written by a variety of talents, with only a few of them having any first-hand knowledge of either the persons or the events. I had the privilege of knowing Hill for more than 50 years and Von Trips for about six. We were two of the five founders of the German Sports-Car Drivers Club,  I probably saw him drive in a dozen races and hillclimbs, including one or two in which I also participated. I was at the finish of the 1957 Mille Miglia when Trips gave the race to Piero Taruffi (but not in the manner described in the book),  spent time with him at the driver’s school he ran at the Nurburgring, and was at his funeral.

He was not the person depicted by Cannell, and neither was Hill, who is particularly ill-served and misjudged, about which more later.
The writing is spotty, and the lack of accuracy is dismaying. As a small sample:

• One does not “adjust the gas level in the carburetor.”

• The corner at the end of the Mulsanne Straight is one of 90 degrees, not 300.

• The Ferrari Formula One cars of 1961 had slightly less than half the 400 horsepower Cannell credits them with.

• The Mercedes win in the 1952 Carrera Panamericana was not the company’s first in the Western Hemisphere (try the Vanderbilt Cup of 1914 or Indianapolis in 1915, among others).

• A particular gem is “pistons shorter than the diameter of the cylinder bore.” Someone should tell him pistons are neither long nor short, strokes are.

But you get the idea.

The lack of professionalism is all too evident. These gaffes could have been avoided by having someone who understood racing review the manuscript.
A copy editor would have also been helpful. Sentences like “Monza decided fates” could have been excised. Since when does a racing circuit have an influence on fate? One thinks it was the other way around.

Although it was in one sense peripheral to the chase for the driver’s championship, by 1961 Hill was generally considered to be the world’s best long-distance driver, having won the Sebring 12 Hours three times and Le Mans three times in addition to various other major events, at a time when the classic sports-car events were more popular than those counting for the driver’s title.

Hill’s feel for his cars, and his ability to keep them in one piece, vis-à-vis Trips’ low mechanical IQ (and his nickname “von Krash”) was evidenced in a taped interview Phil did for a “Road and Track” magazine piece in the fall of 2004:

R/T:  Because of the fact that you were good mechanically, do you think this helped you keep cars in one piece in races, as opposed to, say, Von Trips, who probably didn’t know how an engine worked, and didn’t care…

Hill: He didn’t have to know… I had to, and it was beyond some lofty principle…It was just part of my basic nature that I had to know why it did certain things.

R/T: The first year you won at Le Mans [1958, with Olivier Gendebien] there was something wrong with one of the brakes, but you were aware of it and you could live with it.

Hill: Well, I experienced it in some of our bedding-in of the brakes.

R/T: Now if this had happened to Von Trips he probably would have blown the brakes.

Hill: He probably would have.

Two different people.

That a Ferrari driver would win the world driver’s championship in 1961 came as no surprise to anyone who followed the sport in that era. It was the first of four years of the 1.5-liter Formula, with the cars having a minimum allowable weight of 450 kilos (about 990 pounds) with oil and water but without fuel. The British teams started the season with their old four-cylinder Coventry-Climax engines that produced not much more than 150 horsepower, the Ferraris had 190 at the start of the season and probably 200 at the finish. The new Climax V8 that appeared in August was still 15 or 20 horses short of Ferrari, and the only thing the opposition had going for it was the superiority of British chassis design (Lotus, Cooper, Brabham, BRM), the great Stirling Moss in a Lotus, and the rising Dan Gurney in a BRM.

(Ferrari, despite Cannell’s praises, was the last to use disc brakes, and the last to put the engines behind the drivers. But Ferrari had the horses, and in those days, despite the book’s singing the praises of Ferrari’s technical sophistication, that was to come much later. At this juncture Maranello was an Italian smithy with bells and whistles, a marvelous 12-cylinder engine for its sports cars, and the good luck to have some of the world’s great designers located not far away.

Cannell’s estimate of the end of Hill’s career is also far off. “Hill never regained his form,” says Cannell. The team had a bad year in 1962, Phil took much of Ferrari’s criticism, and left for the new Italian ATS team in 1963. That was worse. And then he put up with John Cooper’s abuse while driving a second-rate car in 1964.

Back to that 2004 interview tape:

R/T: Was there any race that gave you a great deal of satisfaction?

Hill (with no delay in responding): Yes. The best race I ever did, in my opinion, was at Longford, Tasmania, in 1965, where I finished third. I was the other half of Bruce McLaren’s team and he took my engine the night before the race because I was going to win with it, and he did [instead]…He took the good engine, and I was in second a good part of the race, had a race-long battle with Jimmy Clark…we traded off many times. Tasmania was good.

That was the year Clark was almost untouchable as he won his second driving championship.

Hill was back home then, spent a lot of 1965 with Ford’s (at the time) faltering sports car team, then joined Jim Hall and Chaparral for the next two seasons. The Chaparrals were by far the most advanced racing machines the world had seen up to that point, and despite the cars’ ongoing teething problems, Hill managed to win the 1,000 Kilometers of the Nurburgring driving one in 1966 (with Joakim Bonnier), and win the BOAC 500-miler in Britain (with Mike Spence) in 1967.

That was his last race.

R/T: When and how did you realize you were finished?

Hill: I had come from Brands (where he and Spence won)…when Jim [Hall] started getting into a little bit of trouble with the cars for the season to come…He didn’t know if there was to be a second car or not. All that stuff. So I just made up my own mind that I didn’t want to ever go down in the quality of what I’d been driving… By Christmas of ’67 it became pretty clear to me there was a possibility I wouldn’t be racing and I welcomed it, because it was getting to be a big dilemma to keep on. I didn’t like it. You know motorracing is something that if you don’t like it, you’d better get out.

And so he did, without even announcing the fact. It was several months later that a journalist discovered Hill was retired through a casual conversation.

He didn’t lose his form, he just lost his interest.

And finally, that business about Von Trips backing off at the end to let Piero Taruffi cross the line first at the 1957 Mile Miglia: Since Trips started three minutes ahead of Taruffi he would have had to finish at least three minutes in front to win. The elapsed times for the 1,000 miles were 10: 27.47 for Taruffi and 10:30.48 for Trips, which put the latter a second behind in the finish-line photos.

The real drama took place about an hour earlier, with no witnesses except the drivers. Taruffi was about seven minutes ahead of Trips at the Bologna control, but his car’s transmission was having problems and he had to slow down. The technically-oriented possessor of an engineering degree was nursing his Ferrari toward the finish when Trips caught him about 100 miles out. Trips knew that Taruffi, in his 50’s, would retire if he won and when Taruffi gave him The Look, he tucked in behind for the run to the finish. It was Taruffi’s 13th Mille Miglia.

In the garage that served as the parc ferme, Trips leaned against a concrete pillar, tired and dirty but somehow satisfied, looked at me and said: “I knew this was his last one, and I’ve got a lot of years left.”

He was only half right.

You should have been there, Michael. It was something to write about.

L.L.

About my guest contributor, Leo Levine:

Leo Levine, like many of his generation, compiled his car guy credentials in Europe, primarily while on the staff of Stars and Stripes, the army newspaper. He was a sports reporter and later Stuttgart Bureau chief. His sports car racing career included factory rides for Porsche at the Nurburgring 1000Ks and NSU in Argentina. And notably at the ‘Ring a class victory in a six-hour BMW drive with motorcycle side-car champion Walter Schneider. Back in the US by 1963 he joined the New York Herald Tribune sports page to cover skiing and motorsports until that glorious paper folded in 1966. That gave him time to finish the first of his books on Ford’s dramatic racing history: Ford: The Dust and the Glory. Then Mercedes Benz lured him to “the dark side” where he became director of public relations until 1991 when he retired early to accept several executive positions in the golf world. He continued writing for automotive magazines (Road & Track) and added another volume to his history of Ford’s racing experiences (2001.)   

OK, so Volvo means “I roll” in Latin or some such. (Actually, I think it means “I’m very safe so I can mosey out in front of you whenever I want.”) Anyway, it sounds made up to me and I don’t like it. I don’t like Vega and Vigor and Valiant either. Even Veyron though the car is fabulous. VW, as initials, is sort of OK.

But mostly I don’t like what Suzuki did to a perfectly good American name with its “V” word replacement. Sidekick, a name with open-space, friendly connotations was replaced with Grand V-something, a name I can’t be bothered remembering. (No, not Viagra, but close.) Apparently this V name means nothing in any language so it is acceptable worldwide. That’s modern car-think.

I don’t like it.

An admirable thing about SUVs have been their names. Generally rugged and descriptive they ring with appropriateness: 4Runner, Pathfinder, Explorer, Navigator, Expedition, Blazer, Bronco, Trooper, Rodeo, Tracker, Discovery, Land Rover etc. Even those named for Indian tribes – Cherokee, Navajo – sound right. And the place names – Yukon, Dinali. The SUV record is certainly better than the sedan names, increasingly computer-generated.

So Sidekick is a perfect moniker for a small, efficient, useful SUV. I’ve got one in my driveway. A 1993 two-door softtop version. Its license plate says PODNAH. (I think I’ve mentioned I had considered BRENNAN or GABBY, the ultimate sidekicks, but I settled for the obvious.)

I realize that it gets progressively harder to come up with new names for cars that are not negatives in some part of the world market. Or that someone doesn’t already have a claim to. The idea seems to be to create a name and let time and performance fill it with meaning. Golly, Camry seems downright comfortable with significance now. Miata sounds even more sprightly Italian/Japanese than when the name was invented. (It is also the RX-5 but I don’t call it that.)

And we turned to alphanumerics versus word names, meaningless or not. Which letters are best – X, J, Q, L, M, C, Z, E, K, T, S, R – hey, make your own list of hot ones. Some programmer-type could probably come up with a weighted list of letters most often used in car names and those slighted. (Where would W and Y fit I wonder?)

We agreed that letters that stand for something are best. Like GTO, at least it meant something when Ferrari used it (Gran Turismo Omologato). Pontiac just up and borrowed it though I recall no Pontiacs ever being homologated as a grand touring race car. (But then General Motors does have this sneaky penchant for bouncing its image off of other people’s trophies. For shame.)

Some alphanumerics are easily remembered; some are not. I for one tend to recall names more readily than numbers (I can still recall old New York phone numbers with exchanges like Chelsea, Pennsylvania, Butterfield etc. and forget pure numbers.)

And of course there’s the matter of how “RL” replaced “Legend” at Acura. What were they thinking? They said that “Legend” was overwhelming the Acura name. That’s right, if something is successful kill it before it gets out of hand. So never mind what Juliet enunciated from her balcony, a rose by any other name – call it Clyde - is no longer a rose. (Send her two dozen red Clydes.) And please stop using computer-generated “V’ names on cars.

Anyone reading or most certainly writing about cars is delighted that Bob Lutz hasn’t gone gently into that good afternoon of retirement after all. Consultant to GM renewed. (Insultant to all deserving of it, if the Lutzian manner hasn’t changed.) Bob was always the go-to guy if a deadline loomed and no lively quotes sprang from a reporter’s notes.

Bob continues to swerve off course when it comes to what is officially OK to talk about. Wow, truly inside info beyond the press release. And he is sure to talk about it in more colorful terms that most. He’s always a car guy; he’s always his own guy. I join the gang that’s glad he’ll be around.

That said I take the opportunity to disagree with what he said in an interview with a German writer. (I read what only was translated into English not being bilingual as Bob is.)

Bob told the German journalist that the top three car companies in the world were now GM, the Volkswagen group, and the Hyundai group. Read more >>

Now some details. The Korean car maker did not take an easy way to offering electric assist to a gasoline engine and thus earn the right to scribble ‘hybrid’ on the handsome flanks of its midsize award winner. No way. Lots of engineering savvy, innovation and collaboration between stylists and engineers have produced what I think is even a better looking Sonata and one that claims it can score 36-40 mpg.

(Parenthetically, my take on mileage figures: they’re to be treated as an index for casual comparison between cars. Altitude, weather and most of all the driver’s mind set and weight of right foot are among the variables that determine actual mileage.)

The engine, a 2.4 liter four-cylinder, converted as in most hybrids to the Atkinson cycle is joined by a 40 HP electric engine. The combination is good for some 200 HP and 193 ‚‘torques.’ A unique feature here — the engine and the motor are separated by a clutch so it is easier to drive on electric power only at higher speeds than in most hybrids.

The Sonata Hybrid, unlike its hybrid rivals on the market, uses a LiPo battery. Not a folkloric Asian princess that I like to fancy is in the trunk, but a lithium-polymer battery. That’s instead of the customary nickel metal hydride. Hyundai spent more and got more. LiPo is lighter, takes less space, and generates less heat. Still it deducts 5.7 cubic feet of trunk space from the 16.4 in the regular Sonata.

In my experience the hybrid version of an existing model has a frugality about it that reminds me of a maiden auntie’s apartment. Not so the Sonata. The admired interior is little different and the refreshed exterior is actually trimmer, sleeker and more aerodynamic (an impressive coefficient of drag of .25.) The new cave-dark hexagonal-shaped grille houses a working flap inside — at slow speeds open for cooling, at high speeds closed to reduce drag. I think the hybrid’s grille looks a ton more sophisticated than the bling-bling grin of the traditional Sonata. And the side sculpting and squarer tail section are winners too. And the handsome 17” wheels. (An option I think.)

How does it drive? First, sing along with me: “Praise be no CVT”. Although a continuously variable transmission may make economy points few delight the heart of driver-drivers. The six-speed automatic in the hybrid is fine, thanks. The steering feel is not my favorite with its ultra-strong centering force and other attributes of drive-by-wire systems I don’t find attractive. But I must have become used to it because it stopped bothering me. And other pleasant characteristics won me over.

The off-the-line torque of an electric assist is both grin producing and counterproductive, assuming economy is your intent. But, hey, why should jackrabbits have the fun starts? They say 0-60 is in the 9 second range but in the real world 0-30 is more important. And the perception of quickness will suffice, really. You’ll find that here.

I still prefer a diesel for my torque and range but I will be suggesting this hybrid to anyone seeking one. To see the Sonata Hybrid in motion try www.hyundaiusa.com/sonata-hybrid/. And read more detailed reviews on the web.

Is it just me or are there more fuel management problems than usual in racing?

Take Chip Ganassi’s team at Indy’s 100th anniversary run. A one-two finish looked to be a lock with either Scott Dixon or Dario Franchitti crossing the line first. Dario had set fastest lap of the race; Scott the fastest lap while leading. Combined they were assured of having led more than half the race already. At worst, with the pair on different fuel strategies, Chip was confident that one or the other of his drivers would be guzzling milk in Victory Lane.

Then the one-two finish turned to five-twelve as the checker dropped. Thanks to bloody running low on gas!

My new favorite bungee cords are aptly called The Perfect Bungee. They feature modifications, like looped ends or a gated hook or spider-like arms to suit specific tasks. Look at the photos here and think of the exact place you need them to do it for you. To order click here: http://www.justduckyproducts-store.com/

Held captive by disbelief we watched on TV that improbable tsunami, dark with disturbed sand, textured with the detritus of people’s lives ranging from children’s plastic sandals to grown-ups’ cars. How could this be? An uncontrollable King Kong nightmare flinging recognizable everyday things across a mundane landscape.

Our brains struggled to wrench some sense from the sight of seaside warehouses and absurdly colored plastic tubs, equally freed of normality, floating off together in a frothing soup in which cars bobbed like Halloween apples. Cars! And inexorably the invading wave rolled ever higher, up concrete stairs step by step where observers certain of their safe perch, were suddenly faced by a frothing mastiff broken free of its chain.

Disbelief. Theirs and ours. How often did we go back to our computers to view it again, stilled stunned.

But did we have any idea how it would disturb the way cars are bought and sold in our own neighborhoods?

Sam Mitani made a point in his May Road & Track column that resonated through me like a temple gong. I’ll get to that but first you’ll welcome some background. Trust me.

In the first running of the Indianapolis 500 in 1911 Ray Haroun strapped a mirror in his race car instead of toting the usual swivel-necked riding-mechanic to keep him informed on conditions to the rear. That rear-view mirror found its way into road cars and was about the only thing we could cite as argument that “racing improves the breed”.

“I think this is the nicest car you ever had,” my mother said to me from the passenger’s seat. Her eyes, still a snapping dark brown in her late 80s, choked off my emergent laugh though that’s the response the remark deserved.

After all we were not in my Porsche, my Alfa, my Lancia, my Ferrari – cars I had owned serially over a few decades. We were not even in the MG-TC in which she had shared an at-limit dart up Mt. Diablo — clinging tightly and smiling broadly though precariously exposed to traffic in this right-hand drive roller skate.

Numbers have a specificity that is irresistible to our embattled minds. That’s why cops give you a ticket for 87 mph in a 75 mph zone and not to someone else for “unimaginably idiotic attempts to maneuver an automobile in the presence of others.” The mildly observant might well see more of the latter but a radar gun communicates in numbers and not judgments.

The absence of judgment when it comes to dealing in numbers is also commonly evident in the fascination with such statistics as 0-60 times and miles-per-gallon.

I’ll also write about the old days, sometimes referred to as the Golden Years, but everyone thinks their old days were the golden ones. The difference is the ‘50s and ‘60s were really as gold as gold gets. So I’ll try to bring that era alive to those unlucky enough to have missed it. (Or those who didn’t notice the gleam when they were living through them.) But I won’t ignore what’s happening now. Hardly. Because, oh wow, is it happening in the car world. More variety. More choices. More or more.
 
I will continue to write my column for A/W since that publication and I go back to its founding as Competition Press more than fifty (50!) years ago. And I will do an occasional McBlog for the A/W website (one of the best of the automotive sites on the web, by the way). And also for The Detroit Bureau (because I’ve known Paul Eisenstein a long time and still like him.
 
Thanks to the power of click-click what I write there can be brought instantly to this very screen, but I hope you’ll hang out there a bit, too.
 
I’ll also do some pieces, as I have done in the past for Road and Travel Magazine. So I’ll be hard to miss.
 
Other subjects I’m apt to say something about: jazz, travel, food, design, skiing, epistemology, shoes, dance, racing, chairs, speaking voices, ice cream, basketball colors, words, books, misc.
 
Come back often. I’ll be aiming for insights several times a week. And then there’s all that stuff dredged up from some 60 years of writing from my days on the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Herald Tribune right up through Car and Driver, Road & Track, Motor Trend all of ‘em.
 
Did you know I was in Cuba at the Grand Prix when Fangio was kidnapped? I broke that story. It was a front-page byline on the Trib. I’m going to find it and run it here….
 
Ciao.

Thirteen Vermont winters and a class win in the Monte Carlo rally might lend me cred as a driver in snow. However, probably even more useful, and certainly more concentrated, are a number of sessions I had over the years at the Bridgestone Winter Driving School in Steamboat Springs CO.

Learning to drive in conditions of limited traction is the most valuable experience for acquiring car control on any surface. Go take a day’s basic lesson on snow. Or if you’re already hot on the cold stuff stretch your skills with the session suitable for winter rally wannabes. Then treat yourself to a day on the welcoming slopes of Steamboat and make it a winter holiday for the books. Or Facebook.

Think brake pedal and accelerator. If an engineer today came up with the idea that two controls governing opposite outcomes would be placed inches apart and be operated by the same foot performing the same pushing motion he would be forthwith stripped of his pocket protector and directed back to the drawing board. Nincompoop.

Think brake, accelerator and the driver’s right foot.

Almost since the horseless carriage was loosed on public thoroughfares it has been SOP that a pushing motion of the right foot directed a car to Go as well as to Stop. Exactly which is ordered — Go or Stop — is a matter of barely two inches either direction. Maybe the notoriously hard-headed Henry Ford was right in his reluctance to move the wheel-mounted hand control for the accelerator on his Model T to the floor where those of his competitors dwelt. Conveniently next to the accelerator pedal.

He yielded. And now universally Stop and Go pedals sit side by side in the darkened reaches of the floorboard to be down-pushed in the quest of opposite outcomes by an assortments of Air Jordans, Doc Martens, Fryes, Thom McCanns, Manolo Blahniks, Guccis, flip flops, Crocs or bare tootsies. Clearly this configuration triggers that familiar law: If something can go wrong it will.

And it has.

The automobile has been with us for more than a century. In that time countless drivers have yielded to Murphy’s Law. They have pushed the accelerator when they meant to push the brake, and probably vice versa. But unintended braking at worst raises ire and bruises a bumper. Accelerating without intending to has killed and maimed many: hand-holding kindergartners lined up by their school door; office workers waiting for a bus; Saturday shoppers browsing a street market.

Then there are the florist shops, store-front clinics, tobacconists and newsstands that have hosted the rude front quarters of invading cars and trucks. Their drivers thought that they were braking, right foot down. Right motion, wrong pedal. Errant vehicles with similarly certain but mistaken drivers have also invaded the kitchens, foyers and bedrooms of houses.

This wrong-pedal acceleration is worsened by what is an almost universal human tendency: if something doesn’t work, keep doing it - but harder. The right foot pressure isn’t stopping the car! So increase the effort. Wrecked cars have been found with the accelerator pedal bent or broken, witness to the power of effort renewed in the face of failure. If the “braking” you’re doing makes you go faster then push that same pedal with all you’ve got. Sound reasonable? Of course not, but reason has fled in the face of panic. Push!

The first thing out of the mouths of these drivers, stunned amidst the shattered glass and scattered roses, in the tangle of broken and crying children, is “my brakes failed.”

Later the police report might amplify those words: “I was pushing as hard as I could and the brakes wouldn’t work.” Closer scrutiny might find the broken accelerator pedal. The driver was indeed pushing hard but not on the pedal he assumed he was pushing. That was what was found in some of the cases of “unintended acceleration” that were epidemic in the late 80s and, after a biased report on “60 Minutes” (and a rerun) almost drove Audi off the stage. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) cleared the company of any responsibility but sales of “the killer car” fell precipitously and it took at least a decade to recover.

Audi wasn’t the only one with “unintended acceleration” problems back then but the public can deal with only one name at a time. It was Audi that became the poster child and suffered most.

Now history, like a brain-befuddled crone, has repeated itself. Now in the first decade of the 2000’s it is Toyota’s name leading the disaster parade. And something new has been added — electronic controls with Ford’s cruise control system also creating problems and drawing attention.

In 2004 the mystery of unattended accelerating began making news. Ill-fitting foot well carpets were blamed, then — shades of HAL and another 2000-based disaster — Toyota’s electronic accelerator attracted fingers of blame. Toyota was stunned, befuddled and late to respond leaving the schoolyard kids to nyah-nyah-nyah. Goodie-Two-Shoes is making mistakes.

Even before the ordered report by NASA for the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration was completed the evidence was mounting that most of the crashes (some with fatalities) that were associated with Toyota’s unintended acceleration were — as with Audi’s — a result of driver error. A locking of the right foot to the wrong neighboring pedal. (The NASA report released February 8, 2011, said that no flaws were found in Toyota’s electronic throttle control system that could have caused the unintended acceleration problems. The causes had to be mechanical such as a sticky gas pedal or an intrusive floor mat or driver behavior. But the matter wasn’t ended: lawyers for several California plaintiffs immediately disputed the findings saying the investigation was not extensive enough.

Toyota, once at the zenith of the world’s respect for reliability, safety, and all the good things (at least those on the dull side) in motordom was severely damaged in the marketplace. Forced to offer un-Toyota-like incentives and rebates and deals that at least kept the turnstiles busy Toyota was the only car company not scoring sales increases as the recession looked as if it might recede.

Toyota lost market share and sales gains in both October and November while America’s bankruptcy twins – GM and Chrysler – were scoring double-digit upswings. Toyota correctly pointed out that some blame for the lack of sales was clearly because they rejected most fleet sales, an easy donor of high sales figures. Toyota, perhaps, was looking to the future and did not want a reputation as a rental fleet Nancy. The company has plenty of cash reserves and new product coming and apparently hopes to wait out the effects of the blow the unintended acceleration has dealt them

Given patience, and their past successes, Toyota can look over the seas to Audi, now arguably the healthiest of the European breeds with startling new cars meeting up with eager buyers.

In the meantime all you drivers should keep in mind that Go and Stop are inches apart on your floorboard. And above all keep this is mind: If what you’re doing doesn’t work STOP DOING IT.