A Flash of Idiocy

I just watched the movie "Flash of Genius", which tells the story of Dr. Robert Kearns, who was ripped off by Detroit, when they violated his patent for the intermittent windshield wiper. The movie portrays Kearns' "flash of genius" moment occurring when his Ford's wipers are moving too fast for the light rain, and creating that rubbing sound we all hate when the windshield surface is too dry.

Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry tells a slightly different story, claiming that "the constant movement of the wiper blades irritated his already troubled vision." This alludes to another aspect of the story, which was in the movie, where we find out that he popped a champagne cork in his eye on his wedding night, leaving him partially blind.

But fair enough, the movie acknowledges the fact that the genius of Kearns' invention was that it allowed wipers to be slowed down for use in light rain. What annoyed the hell out of me, though, was how they portrayed his testing of the invention in the movie. The sky opens up, and Kearns grabs his whole family to go for a ride. He switches on the intermittent wipers, and exclaims at how perfect it is. But he does this during an epic downpour, the precise situation when the intermittent setting is least effective. There's a camera shot out the windshield, and you can't see a damn thing, cause the wipers are going to slow. You can even see how hard it's raining in the movie poster.

Is it me, or did the director blow one of most important shots in the movie. When you have an ah-hah! moment, you've got to get it right. Were they too impatient to wait for the right amount of rain? Come on, Hollywood, Dr. Kearns is owed better.

Deutschland, Part 4

I've been stalling. I promised to get to the telling of my time in Stuttgart, and I've put it off for a few posts. The pressure of describing the juiciest part of the trip has gotten to me a little. And tonight's no different. Instead of regaling you with tales of the Porsche factory and the Mercedes museum, tonight you only get a taste of the city itself. Quite honestly most of the people I bribe to read this blog will be more interested in this anyway.

My hostel in Stuttgart, Inter-Hostel, was a very friendly one, if not the busiest of my stops. Stuttgart is relatively minor on the list of tourist towns in Germany, with the exception of the car buffs. When I got to the hostel, there were two guys at the front desk, and one of the offered to show me around that night. My room was on the 6th floor. The place had no elevator, and my pack was pretty heavy. On top of that, at the top of the spirally staircase, I found that the key they gave me opened the wrong door, but I decided to crash in the room that it opened, rectifying the situation on my way out to dinner.

Aside from the labor of getting to a comfy bed, the sixth floor did have its advantages. This was the view from my window.

While Stuttgart is not that touristy, it does have a US military presence, and I wound up meeting a couple of Navy dudes and hanging out with them for a while. One of them even joined my little hostel group for a drink at the bar.

After coming back from dinner, another American happened to be sharing the 6th floor suite of two private rooms, but he complained that his room (the room I was supposed to have gotten) smelled like smoke and he was kinda allergic. After going up to assess the situation, I realized that it didn't smell that bad to me, and Lance, an Asian guy from San Fran, seemed like a pretty decent guy, so I made the swap. Good call on my part.

I proceeded to hit the bar with Lance, the guy at the front desk from earlier, and the Navy dude. I spent the whole time talking cars with Lance, while the Navy guy, who turned out to be a little crazy, talked the ear off the German dude, who probably wanted to shoot himself. And Lance also gave me some friendly advice about my upcoming trip to the Nürburgring, which incidentally, he'd just done himself. Probably a bit more aggressively than I, since he said he'd learned all the corners through Gran Turismo, the video game. Finally, he told me to get to the Porsche museum by 9 to get on a factory tour, and he's the real reason I was able to do that tour. Thank you, Lance.

Well, that's really all I have to say about the city itself. To be perfectly honest, I neglected the conventionally touristy spots in Stuttgart for the sake of the automotive stuff...but what did you expect? Next post will be about the Porsche factory and museum, I swear!

Deutschland, Part 3

On my way to Stuttgart, I passed through Neckarsulm, home to Audi's higher-end production, including its "center of aluminium competence". Here, the put together the A6, A8, and even the R8 supercar. To be perfectly honest, the latter was my only reason for coming to this small town just north of Stuttgart.

And of course the R8 production was not part of the tour.

I did get a minor thrill at seeing an R8 body-in-white. We also supposedly got to stand closer to a stamping press than any other place in the world, with the glass being only about 6 feet from the press.

Because they work with aluminum to create lighter vehicles that are just as strong, manufacturing can be a bit more complicated. Along with the three joining processes of gluing, bolting and welding, Audi adds riveting for the aluminum components because of the unique challenges associated with that metal. Still, the tour guide insisted that after many years of fine tuning, Audi has gotten it so that its aluminum-intensive vehicles—like the A8 and R8—are no more expensive or time-consuming to repair than the competition.

One fact that surprised me was that the plant was not air conditioned. It was a perfectly sunny day, but the plant didn’t feel uncomfortable, so it must take an impressive feat of architecture to achieve this.

These are some photos of the Audi Forum, the building dedicated to the customer experience of picking up the car. While smaller than the complex in Ingolstadt, it's just as gorgeous.

On the same day I arrived in Neckarsulm, I jumped on the train to Stuttgart. But I've run out of time, so that's for the next post.

The worst eBay listing I've ever seen

My dad is interested in buying a BMW Z8. It would be the perfect retirement car for him: beautiful, rare, and a roadster with a manual transmission. So I have an eBay alert saved that tells me whenever a new Z8 is listed. Most of them are nice cars, with plenty of pictures to prove it, and a full list of their features and specs.

But the listing that showed up today was perhaps to most absurd, intelligence-insulting piece of garbage I've ever seen. In the email that notifies you of a new listing, there is usually a picture of car. This one had only a photo of two hands exchanging some keys. Hey douchebag, those are house keys.

When I went to the listing, I found that it has very little information about the car, just the fill-in-the-blanks stuff that eBay requires. And the kicker is, of the four pictures in the listing, there is only one picture of the car itself (presumably). The other three are the keys pic, a press photo of a Z8 with a different color interior, and a shot of the douche selling the car, who, I must say, does look quite douchey. The picture of the actual car (again, presumably), is just a picture of the side of the car from wheel to wheel, with the front and rear cut off.

This listing was the ultimate waste of time, which is why I decided to waste more time and post about it. If you want to see it for yourself, check it out here. But by no means bid on this car and reward the turd who put up this listing.

Deutschland, Part 2

I knew that while I was on automotive pilgrimage, I would definitely need to take advantage of being in Germany for a bunch of non-car stuff. I'd heard that the city of Nuremberg was beautiful and interesting, and it has a lot of WWII history, so I continued north from Ingolstadt.

Nuremberg is full of architecture spanning from the middle ages forward. It also has the classic castle-on-a-hill layout, and an old city/new city dividing line. The old castle is actually built into the side of a cliff. In fact, the reason it's called Nürnberg (in real German) rather than Nürnburg, is that berg means mountain or hill (whereas burg means town).

Here are some more pictures of the town and the Kaiserburg Imperial Castle.

Later in the day I went to the Nazi Rally Grounds, which had been an enormous construction project during WWII, but had been only partly finished. They had turned the Congress Hall, the planned HQ of the Nazi party, in a Documentation Center, a giant Holocaust museum. That was fascinating, with a great audio tour.
I also walked to the zeppelin field, where there were giant rally parades, and actually stood in the spot where Hitler watched them. Talk about strange emotions.

Interestingly, these kids are playing roller hockey right where the German soldiers used to march, which kind of drives home the point of how difficult it must be for Germany to reconcile its past and present. Clearly the greatest shame of its history is something that must not be forgotten, but Germans must also make peace with this legacy and continue with their lives.

As a tourist, it at first strikes you as a bit perverse that these people are doing such light-hearted activities in a place that makes your own heart so heavy. But these are people who grew up living among these historical landmarks, and to them it has a different significance, or at the very least, multiple levels of significance.

I'll actually touch on this a bit later when I post about Berlin. I'm hoping to post more tomorrow. That will be when things get really cool: Stuttgart, with both Porsche and Mercedes-Benz.

Video Games vs. Reality

While I was in Germany, I got to drive the world-famous Nürburgring (more on that in a later post). To prepare, I visited a few websites which gave the advice of playing Gran Turismo to learn the track. And then of course I saw this on an episode of Top Gear:

Within less than an hour of watching this episode on my DVR, this commercial played on live TV:

Both at Laguna Seca. What are the odds? I was amused. I hope you were, too.

The Power of Preconceptions

I've been pondering this issue for many years, in the context of my role as an automotive analyst. When you read a review of a car, odds are the writer's opinions will be hard and fast, giving you the impression that the car in question offered a unique driving experience in every way, with some traits good, others bad.

As a semi-experienced road tester with some good track time under my belt and access to some of the best roads in the country when I head out to Santa Barbara where my company is located, I must declare that my experience has been quite different.

For the most part, new cars drive pretty nicely, with much more parity than Car and Driver would have you believe. I know that I'm still working on tuning my own senses to be able to detect the minute differences between machines, but the fact is that most of the characteristics under discussion in car reviews are minimally felt differences that are amplified by the writer for the sake of drama and usefulness.

After all, who's really going to pay attention to a writer who declares that his experiences in the Nissan 370Z and the Hyundai Genesis Coupe were too close to call. Readers demand conclusions, which is why C/D ranks their road test subjects in every face-off--and possibly why Car and Driver is the most popular enthusiast rag.

But aside from the most obvious cues, like exhaust note (in which the Genesis absolutely shone) or parking lot steering effort (the Genesis was a bit too heavy here), the ride and handling can be tough to compare accurately, even when driven back-to-back. And this is where I feel like preconceptions play a big role.

Going into this particular duel, the Nissan would naturally have a big advantage, purely because of its badge. The driver believes that the Nissan is a better-handling car, and it may well be, but the only way he or she will give the Hyundai the advantage is if the Nissan has noticeable deficiencies, which it really doesn't.

Which brings me to what set off this rant in the first place. I'm catching up on the Autoblog podcasts, which by the way, are fantastic. If you want to learn about cars, and how auto journalists think, these hour-and-change rant sessions are a gold mine, and a great source for honest opinion. But I was just listening to blogger Dan Roth talk about the Audi Q5 he has in his garage right now, and the first phrase he used to describe it is, "It's a fancy Tiguan." That was quickly pointed out to be untrue, and you could just hear the wheels turning in his head as his conceptions of the vehicle were adjusted.

After learning that the Q5 is actually based on the A4/A5 platform, it felt like his impression of it got more favorable. Not to pick on Dan, though, since I know that I do the same kinds of things. When discussing cars with my colleagues after a test drive, we'll often have wildly different impressions, especially since we're struggling to pick out the traits that stood out in any way, and exaggerating them to show that we really noticed something. When this happens, the viewpoint that is most supported by preconceptions of a brand is the one that always seems to carry the most weight.

Perhaps this is just me wrestling with my frustration at the trouble I have with evaluating cars. But I really feel that, especially in every-day, public-road driving, most people wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between a front-drive and rear-drive car, let alone which car has the best handling balance.

And when it comes down to it, having fun in a car is usually more a function of the road than the actual car. Even with wildly different abilities, I had about as much fun in a Nissan Altima as I did in a 1-series BMW, simply because the road was a blast.

No doubt any auto journalist who reads this will take complete umbrage with it. But part of the point is that cars have just gotten so good that it's tough to find a sub-par driving experience anymore. Sure, few machines can approach the experience of a Lotus Elise on a twisty mountain road. But daily drivers are all tuned within such a narrow spectrum that a lot of the time, they all seem to blend together.