A biweekly roundup of automotive news, good, bad and just plain weird:
Range Rover Sport SVR beats Ferrari
The Tianmen Road in China has 99 turns, and is generally about as wriggly as a snake with the hiccups. Surely, setting a hill climb record at such a place demands some kind of hard-core sports car?
Well, consider the racing shoe stomped here by a sort of Nomex Wellington boot. The former record for Tianmen was 10 minutes and 31 seconds, and was set by an Italian driver in a Ferrari 458. The new record holder shaved 40 seconds off that time, and they did it in a Range Rover Sport.
The SVR version of the Range Rover is a sort of riposte to stuff like the Porsche Cayenne Turbo. Fitted with a supercharged V-8, the SVR gets to 100 kilometres per hour in a little more than four seconds, but it鈥檚 clearly good in the corners as well. It鈥檚 the most popular of the vehicles developed by Jaguar Land Rover鈥檚 special vehicles group.
At least it is for now. There appears to be a Velar SVR in development, as one was spotted at the N眉rburgring recently. Expect both vehicles to be setting records in various PR stunts, and/or having their right rear wheels scraped against the curb by people parking without paying enough attention.
Porsche plans flying car
Flying cars have been predicted for more than 100 years now, from a futurist鈥檚 fantasy to the AMC Matador from The Man With The Golden Gun. It seems so simple: why not have a personal aircraft for everyone? Traffic jams would be eliminated!
Of course, the reason traffic jams would be a thing of the past is because we鈥檇 all be dead. People can barely operate a battery-powered toothbrush properly, let alone a car, so handing over the controls of an aircraft to the average schmoe is a recipe for human extinction.
Of course, if you鈥檙e Porsche, you鈥檝e already spent a great deal of money engineering ways for neophyte drivers to zip around a track feeling heroic. Multi-level stability controls keep the shiny side up, meaning if the driver botches an apex, it鈥檚 no big deal.
At the reveal of its Strategy 2025 plan, Porsche global sales chief Detlev von Platen relayed that a flying personal car wouldn鈥檛 be such a bad idea. Specifically, that鈥檚 a flying sports car, capable of being autonomously flown to dodge bad traffic, or driven when the roads are clear.
On the surface, this again seems like a good idea. However, your humble author sees this sort of nonsense as the peddling of the idea that, some day, the proles will have to miserably slog along the ground while the rich arc over us, sneering down from their aerial Bentleys and the like. If anyone needs me in the interim, I will be building a pitchfork-flinging ballista in my shed.
Subaru hints at doom for stick shifts
In Canada, Subaru sells every single one of its vehicles with the option of a manual transmission. You might have to wait for one, but until the seven-seater Ascent comes along, you can buy everything from a manual Outback to a manual Crosstrek.
However, there鈥檚 a rather large problem with manual cars. It鈥檚 almost impossible to get them to work with safety systems like automatic emergency braking. Speaking to Auto Express magazine, a U.K.-based Subaru executive hinted that the brand鈥檚 focus on safety might mean the death knell of the manual.
Obviously this is bad news, and not just for the WRX fans in the crowd. One of the charming things about most Subarus is that they鈥檙e still a bit old-fashionedly rugged, and having the option to get a manual one just cranks up that charm. Incidentally, the manual ones always fetch a bit more money on the used market, thanks to their rarity.
If you鈥檝e got a manual Subaru, hang on to it! If you鈥檙e thinking about buying a new vehicle of any kind, it鈥檚 getting close to your last chance to get three pedals and a stick.
VW spends 20 billion euros on batteries
Mark my words: VW will emerge as the largest EV maker in the world. Doing so would simply make sense, as Germany has the political clout to spend money on the infrastructure to make electric cars as easy to own as gasoline powered ones. Further, VW鈥檚 got a bit of a hill to climb with public image, after the disaster of Dieselgate.
Anyway, here they are putting their money where their mouth is with a 20 billion euro spend on partners to provide batteries and related tech in China and Europe. Never mind Porsche鈥檚 flying car nonsense: VW is aiming for 80 new EV models by 2025, with an electric version of everything they make by 2030.
This all sounds wonderful and lovely, and will doubtless please the EV early adopters out there. Electric power makes a great deal of sense for many people, and particularly in the Lower Mainland, where longer trips are relatively infrequent on average.
However, are there any VW owners out there who鈥檝e had an electrical problem? More to the point: are there any who haven鈥檛? When every VW is an EV, will we end up saving the environment by walking everywhere?
