July 13 = New Jaguar Day!

Brian in the Jaguar F Type

Yes, TODAY, on Thursday July 13th 2017 you can log on to the Jaguar Facebook page at 3pm Eastern, Noon in California, and watch the unveiling of a new Jaguar! The NMS team members are big fans of Jaguars, so we're excited to see what this new Jaguar E Pace will be like. Of course, being normal people with normal jobs, we can't afford any shiny brand new Jaguars, but of course it's important to maintain your automotive research so that one can be a well informed consumer when one wins the lottery. Or finds a billion dollars on the ground. Or gets credit for the idea of "Chocolate Cheerios" ten years before the General Mills folks actually made them.

Jaguar is mostly known for building classic sports cars, but like most other makes they've expanded into the SUV business as well. If you're keeping score at home, that means that SUV buyers can now shop Jaguar, Porsche, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes, BMW, and tons of other builders like Ford, Chevy and Dodge. For many years the Ferrari folks have stated that they will never build an SUV, but who knows, they might just change their minds some day. One final tidbit about Jaguar, is that they are also combined in business with Land Rover, so maybe you should shop both Land Rover and Jaguar if you're in the market.

We don't have any Jaguars, but we have driven some of them at a Jaguar event that helped get us into auto crossing, so we kind of owe the Jaguar folks a big thank you for that! So, tune in Thursday to see the new Jag E Pace, which is their second SUV, along with the current F Pace. Here's the website: JAGUAR FACEBOOK

Mid-Summer Motoring Magazine Mash-Up

I don't know about you, but I've got a bunch of car magazines around the house, and they just don't read themselves, so here's some highlights from the recent batch of reading material. Not a book report, not a summer reading list, and there is no quiz at the end. 

Here's a BREAK THROUGH in automotive journalism, a comparison of a Mustang and a Camaro. Hmm, why hasn't anyone else thought of this before? This time, it's a pair of over $50,000 V8 powered versions of Detroit's finest pony cars (sorry, nothing personal Dodge). The Ford Mustang is a Shelby GT350R, and the Camaro is the ZL1. Hundreds and hundreds of  horsepower in these cars, and both must be a hoot to drive. The other comparison on the cover is the Mazda CX-5 and the Honda CR-V, battling for supremacy in the hyphenated SUV battles. As tested, these two SUVs were around $34,000, so at least that is more affordable than the super-duper Stang/Camaro options. 

Other highlights in Motor Trend included reviews of the new Chevy Equinox, Volvo XC60, four different cool Audis that all seem to cost $55,000, and then a kind of comparison of the McLaren 720S and the new Ford GT. As much as I already complained about so many 55 thousand dollar cars, the McLaren and Ford GT are measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars, so they are purely in the "when I win the lottery" category for us normal people. 

Speaking of the Ford GT at $450,000, it's also on the cover of Automobile! This carbon fiber car has already won at LeMans basically has a cage built into it's body, so if you can afford it you will surely be safe and secure, even if you can ever find enough road (or race track) to take it over 200mph! This month's Automobile gets my pick for best of the month, based on the variety of articles, and I'll even give them credit for slightly increasing the size (width) of the paper it's printed on too!

Other highlights include a story on the Gypsy Rose, the most famous low-rider car from the LA car scene, and a big description of the many car events during Monterey Car Week held every August in California. Two other articles are helped make this issue into my top pick: one was a story about Horacio Pagani and the fabulous cars he builds in Italy, what a cool true story! Finally, a not-super in-depth article on aerodynamics on cars, but to be honest, I'm sure I don't know enough physics and math to understand a real in-depth article on this topic! Do I look like a scientist?

You may not be a Formula 1 fan, but if you are, F1 Racing is made for you. Featuring different drives, teams, history, and cars every month, this one comes all the way from Great Britain, so other than the odd use of "our" language, I look forward to this one every month. Current leader of the F1 drivers championship Sebastian Vettel is on the cover, so Go Ferrari!

Speaking of Ferrari again, here they are on the cover of Octane, which gives us some tidbits from A to Z that cover the 70 years of Ferrari. On the negative side, it's also from Europe, so these magazines cost a bit more than the latest issue of People magazine, but I can't imagine there's a lot of automotive information in that type of publication! Guess what? Just like two other magazines this month, Octane also includes a story on the new Ford GT! It's still incredible, fast, awesome, and still ridiculously expensive. 

SportsCar is the magazine of the Sports Car Club of America, so let me just give the SCCA a plug and encourage you to hit their website SCCA to learn more about the club, and even join. The magazine may not interest you until you are a member, and as far as I know it's not sold on news stands anyway!

Grassroots Motorsports  is always good for some fun articles, and it always comes across as being written by real enthusiasts that are out driving and fixing cars all the time. As proof of that, this (and every other) issue has articles on a few on-going projects that the magazine staff are working on right now. A few of them include: building your own garage, tuning a recent Mustang for better performance, refurbishing an old ramp style tow truck, and converting a Miata to a rotary engine! That's a lot of territory, so whether or not those particular projects interest you, they at least  are inspiring to read what normal folks are doing to their cars in real life. 

A Safety Gear Excursion

A little rain didn't slow down Team Coronautski at AMP!

Today most of the Lemons team took a trip out to Atlanta Motorsports Park to find the home of Discovery Parts to get fitted for all the safety gear we need for the race.

Pretty impressive collection of gear at Discovery.

Even though the cars in Lemons may be rust buckets and absolute junk, safety is still a priority.  Most of us are just starting to get into real track time and needed most of the gear, so here's some of the stuff we bought.

Lots of suits to choose from here.

The most obvious is a racing suit.  Most are made of Nomex or another aramid (fire retardant) material). Suits come in a large range of safety ratings, and different features and styles.  After trying a few of the mid-entry level range on, most of us settled on different styles of the Alpine Stars brand. Finding a good, comfortable fit while sitting in a race-seat position is key here.

With the help of Discovery's pros, Team Coronautski evaluates some new kicks.

Up next we tried a number of gloves and shoes on. Pretty straight-forward here.  Again we looked for comfort and fit in an acceptable price range. All of these come with fire-resistant materials and ratings that will be required for the race.

Head And Neck Safety device signed by the Talladega Nights cast.

We all have helmets, but I still needed a head and neck restraint system.  Every major racing series now requires these devices that work by tethering the back of the helmet to a collar of some sort that helps distribute forces in the event of a crash to significantly reduce neck and head injuries mostly caused by whip-lash. Pretty important stuff. Discovery even has a Hans brand device signed by the cast of Talladega Nights.

Balaclavas...do not taste as good as baklava.

We picked up a few other fire-resistant accessories like socks, underwear, and under shirts to fully round-out the equipment.  Now that the team is looking the part and much safer, now we just need to knock out a few more work days to wrap up the car and practice our pit stops and emergency escapes.

Helmet, Suit, Shoes, Gloves, Hans, Balaclava, Nomex shirt, and Nomex socks all keeping me safe.