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But then Volkswagen released its June sales figures. And its July sales figures. And its August sales figures. And each time, they once again heralded the amazing sales performance of the great “new Golf.” For proof, here are some actual quotes from the press June, July, and August press releases:
“We continue to see strong results from the Golf family, delivering the best June in 15 years,” said Mark McNabb, chief operating officer, Volkswagen of America.
“We are encouraged by the consistent sales growth for the Golf across all models within the family,” said Mark McNabb, chief operating officer, Volkswagen of America.
“We are encouraged by the continued strength of the Golf family and confident that success will continue with the model year 2016 vehicles,” said Mark McNabb, chief operating officer, Volkswagen of America.
Although I am hardly a highly skilled businessman, I believe there is one key message to be learned from these quotes: the success of the Golf has Volkswagen’s chief operating officer encouraged.
And that leads us right up to last month.
Last month, Volkswagen proudly announced—in the second bullet point of the news release where they announced their sales figures—that the Golf had earned an 86.2 percent sales increase over August 2014. Autoblog picked up the story, noting that the Golf was dramatically outpacing the rest of the compact car segment. And I must admit, those numbers are pretty impressive: that long after a new car has debuted, you expect some increase, but not 86.2 percent. That new Golf must be pretty damn good to be pulling down those sales figures.
Except there’s a problem: the traditional Golf hatchback delivered only 1,873 units in August 2015, which works out to merely 100 units more than August 2014—an increase of less than 6 percent. So where does that 86.2 percent increase come from?
That’s right: the Jetta Sportwagen, now renamed the Golf Sportwagen, which delivered 2,478 units in August.
In fact, the “Golf” Sportwagen accounted for more than 35 percent of all Golf sales in August 2015. If you take the “Golf” Sportwagen out of the equation, the Golf’s year over year increase drops from nearly 3,300 units to just 798 units—an increase of merely 20 percent, not 86.2. Not bad, but hardly worthy of repeated quotes where Volkswagen’s chief operating officer insists that he’s encouraged.
And here’s the kicker: in August, the most recent month where Volkswagen insisted its sales resurgence was being led by the mighty Golf, the brand’s total sales were actually falling. Volkswagen delivered only 32,331 cars in August 2015, compared to 35,181 cars in August 2014, for a decrease of more than 8 percent. They’re even down year-to-date, in spite of all those extra “Golf” sales, delivering 238,074 cars through the first eight months of 2015, versus 244,878 cars at this point last year.
Fortunately, I know of one surefire way Volkswagen can turn around that sales decline: they can take the Audi A4 and rename it the Volkswagen Passat Deluxe. This will result in an immediate 200 percent increase in Volkswagen Passat sales, which I have no doubt that the chief operating officer will find encouraging.
I Took My Nissan Skyline GT-R to a Dyno to Find Out How Much Power It Has
Originally published on Jalopnik—September 16, 2015
It isn’t every day that you get to test the veracity of a dubious automotive claim made by an entire nation of car companies for more than a decade. For me, that day came last Tuesday.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s right: I took my Nissan Skyline GT-R to a dyno to measure how much horsepower it makes. But before we get started, a few words about the Skyline’s original horsepower rating.
Back in 1989, when my Skyline first came out, all the Japanese automakers had entered into a “gentleman’s agreement” to limit horsepower to less than 300. This was done for safety reasons. Apparently the thinking in Japan at the time was that a car with more than 300 horsepower would kill small children and possibly cute wildlife, while those items would bounce harmlessly off a car with less than 300 horsepower. Although this does not make sense to me, bear in mind that this is the nation that gave us tentacle porn.
So what many Japanese automakers did is, they claimed their cars made less than 300 horsepower, when actually they made way more. Inexplicably, several automakers decided they would stake their claim on 276 horsepower. I suspect this is like how you’re filling out your tax returns and you don’t want the IRS to realize you actually used all your receipts to blow your nose, so you “claim” a tax deduction of something like $7,345.27 in order to sound more believable. Not that I have done such a thing.
For an illustration of how stupid this whole thing was, consider this: when the R32 GT-R (that’s mine!) came out in 1989, it had 276 horsepower. Five years later, the R33 GT-R came out with a new design and new suspension and new features and a new all-wheel drive system and a new gearbox and new engine bits and all sorts of other new stuff. Horsepower rating? You guessed it: 276. Then four years after that, the R34 GT-R came out with a new interior, and another new design, and more new suspension, and new features, and more new engine bits. The horsepower rating? That’s right! Good ol’ 276.
The funny part is, Japanese automakers had absolutely no qualms about stating the real figures in foreign markets. For instance: the second-generation Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 had a stated 320 horsepower in the United States. Meanwhile, the Japanese version featured the same powertrain, the same transmission, the same styling, the same suspension, the same equipment, the same everything. The power figure? Our old friend, 276.
So you can see why I’ve always wanted to test the Skyline on a dyno to find out how much horsepower it really has.
But there’s a problem: the Skyline is all-wheel drive. Now, it’s very easy to find a two-wheel-drive dyno. Two-wheel-drive dynos are everywhere, like bicycles, and rubber bands, and Tylenol. But finding an all-wheel-drive dyno is like finding the perfect emoji: you search and search and eventually you give up, only to find out later that it’s under the tab with the bell on it even though you were looking for a goose.
Fortunately, I recently made friends with the good people at AWE Tuning, which is a well-known European car tuning shop that makes exhausts, intercoolers, intakes and other stuff right here in the Philadelphia suburbs. They have a four-wheel-drive dyno they use to measure performance gains in all-wheel-drive cars they modify, from the Audi S4 to the Porsche 911 Turbo. And while they don’t normally let people use their dyno for this sort of thing, I begged and pleaded and wished and hoped, and eventually they said: Sure, you can bring in your Altima.
No, what they really said was, they’d be happy to let me bring the Skyline out and see what kind of power it’s making. And this how I found myself standing next to my Skyline as an AWE Tuning technician accelerated it to the end of fourth gear without moving an inch.
Now, at this point, I know what you’re thinking: Come on! Show me the NUMBERS! You might also be thinking that there is no goose emoji. To which I would reply: Have you checked the tab with the bell on it?
But before we get to the figures, one last quick word about dynos. Dynos measure horsepower at the wheels, whereas manufacturer-provided horsepower numbers come from the engine crank. This is an important distinction, because wheel horsepower tends to be about 15 percent less than crank horsepower. So for the Skyline to be making 276 horsepower, it would have to be producing about 235 at the wheels. Unsure whether I really believed the whole “underrated power” thing—and factoring in the car’s increasing age—I guessed it would hit 237.
It actually hit 281.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen: not 281 crank horsepower, but 281 wheel horsepower, which translates to roughly 320 crank horsepower. Unsure of what to make of this dramatically-higher-than-expected figure, we did a second run, which resulted in … 281 wheel horsepower. So we gave it a third go. Once again, 281 horsepower. The dyno wasn’t the problem. The dyno was consistent and precise. Something must’ve been done to the car.
My next action was to ge
t in touch with the good folks at Japanese Classics, who sold me this car as a “stock, unmodified example” whose sole upgrade was an exhaust system. Did they lie? Does this car really have all sorts of unseen modifications? Installed by a crazy person? Might it blow up at any second? Is Tylenol really “everywhere”?
So I called Chris, the owner of the dealership, and I told him we had put the car on a dyno and received some surprising results. Before I hinted at what the numbers were, he replied: “Let me guess. Around 320?”
After assuring me that the car is indeed unmodified—save for that exhaust and potentially some other hard-to-reach bits under the hood—Chris told me that many people who dyno completely stock, unmodified R32 GT-Rs with healthy, low-mileage engines like mine usually get a figure somewhere in the neighborhood of 320 horses. It’s not that the car is modified, Chris told me, it’s that “276 horsepower” was never an accurate figure to begin with.
And so, I think we can say that we’ve all learned something here today. The Japanese gentlemen’s agreement was a lie. The “276-horsepower” Nissan Skyline GT-R makes 320 horsepower without any serious modifications. And you should never use an important business receipt to blow your nose.
I Raced My Hummer at a Quarter-Mile Drag Strip
Originally published on Jalopnik—September 23, 2015
Have you ever wanted to test the drag racing capabilities of an 8,000-pound vehicle that’s shaped like a file cabinet? I have. And that’s how my friend Matt and I ended up spending last Tuesday night drag racing my Hummer at Atco Raceway in suburban New Jersey.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s right: I drag raced my Hummer at a legitimate drag strip with a legitimate drag racing timer, and legitimate drag racing grandstands, and a legitimate drag racing ambulance that’s there for legitimate drag racing emergencies, such as someone choking on a giant wad of chewing tobacco.
You’d know all this if you followed me on Twitter, because I posted several pictures of the Hummer at the drag strip. We also had a little guessing game of quarter-mile times, and dozens of you participated with guesses ranging from “Sixteen seconds” to “Does the drag strip have a calendar?”
Even Top Gear USA host Rutledge Wood submitted a guess of his own, though I must say that Rut’s prediction didn’t quite give the Hummer’s aging, tired, 190-horsepower Chevy V8 the drag racing credit it clearly deserves.
But we’ll get to the times in a second.
First, I would like to explain the feeling you get when you show up to Atco Raceway on “anything goes” night in your Hummer. Mostly, you feel absolute dread. This is because you have decided to inflict this vehicle on a large group of people who clearly take this sport seriously. Very seriously. As seriously as German schoolteachers treat children who violate major classroom rules, such as “No Fighting,” or “No Skipping Class,” or “No Smiling.”
Now, I have been to many drag strips in many places over the years, and what I have typically discovered is that on an “open” night, people bring all sorts of stupid cars out to race. Daily drivers. Economy cars. Full-size pickups. Minivans. Saturns.
But not to Atco. Oh, no. When we showed up at Atco, we were surrounded by serious-looking pickups hauling serious-looking trailers containing serious-looking drag racing vehicles with rear tires wider than a regulation-size sleeping pillow. To say we were intimidated would be an understatement. It felt like an early season college football game where some big team like Nebraska tries to pad their record by scheduling some small team like Little Sisters of the Poor.
Given how seriously everyone seemed to be taking things, I was also very worried about tech inspection. For those of you who don’t know about drag racing tech inspection, it’s where they go over your car in great detail and check the tires, and the brakes, and the engine, and the battery, and the fluids. They do this to ensure it is prepared for the grueling task of driving in a straight line for approximately four city blocks.
So we rolled up to the tech inspection booth, and we handed the guy the tech inspection sheet, and we were fully prepared for him to say something like “No Hummers” or “You can’t run this here.” Instead, the conversation went exactly as follows:
Tech Inspection Guy: This is a real Hummer!
Me: Yeah!
Tech Inspection Guy: Is it a diesel?
Me: No, this one has a Chevy 350. They made a few with a gas engine.
Tech Inspection Guy: Ah.
[Tech Inspection Guy writes my drag racing number on the windshield]
Tech Inspection Guy: This is a real Hummer, not one of them later ones, built for bitches.
And with that—and the friendly reminder “Don’t run anybody over”—we had passed tech inspection. There was no tire check. There was no brake check. There was no fluid check. We were ready to race.
Now, before we get into the Hummer’s drag racing time, a little note about general drag times for those of you who haven’t devoted your union pipefitter overtime pay to building a Fox Body Mustang with an engine that sticks up so far out of the engine bay that it looks like you’re driving a V8-powered grain silo.
Here’s the deal: a very fast street-legal car runs a ten- or eleven-second quarter mile. An average midsize sedan runs a fifteen- or sixteen-second quarter mile. A tremendously slow economy car runs an eighteen- or nineteen-second quarter mile.
I predicted the Hummer would run a twenty-five.
So we waited, and we moved up, and we waited, and we moved up, and then finally it was the Hummer’s time to shine. Matt was in the grandstands filming, and I was in the Hummer thinking the kind of things a person thinks when he’s behind the wheel of a giant, military-spec vehicle at a competition event for performance cars. Namely: I wonder if this is the slowest vehicle in Atco Raceway history.
And then … GREEN! The Hummer shot off with all the verve of a guy pushing a mail cart around a corporate office.
Inside, I was flooring the pedal, and waiting, and flooring the pedal, and waiting, and flooring the pedal, and … eventually, I crossed the line. Nervously, I slowed down in the giant braking area and pulled around to the booth where the drag strip worker gives you a printout of the time. And it was…
Twenty-two point two seconds at 61.3 miles per hour.
Given that I thought the Hummer would run a twenty-five-second quarter mile, I was ecstatic. The Hummer had beaten something other than a rival nation’s understaffed military! So I smiled and I pumped my fist and I shouted with glee and I celebrated my excellent time the only way a drag racer knows how: by getting back in line and trying to beat it.
Unfortunately, this was quite a long process, because several other classes had to run before us. But the waiting gave us an opportunity to check out the wide selection of other cars that had showed up to race. Oh, sure, there were the usual modified Mustangs, and modified Camaros, and modified CTS-Vs, and modified Challengers. But there were also some real gems. There were three different semi trucks that ran fourteen-second quarter miles. There was a modified Hyundai Accent with the bumper removed and giant drag slicks on the front wheels. And some guy had taken a Volkswagen Beetle body, mounted it to a drag racer chassis, and stuck the engine in front.
It was quite a scene.
After about an hour, it was once again the Hummer’s time to shine. We waited, and moved up, and waited, and moved up, and finally I was back in position: sitting at the lights, helmet on, perfectly situated, ready to move down the track with the vigor of a competitive bicyclist.
Once again, the light turned green, and once again, I WAS OFF!, creating more noise than actual acceleration. Everyone in the crowd waited, and watched, and yawned, and had a snack, and went home to let the dog out, and waited some more. For that one drag run, I was the C-SPAN of Atco Raceway.
But eventually, I crossed the line and I picked up the time slip. This time, it read 21.6 seconds at 63.5 miles per hour.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s right: the Hummer runs a 21.6-second qua
rter mile at a lightning-fast 63.5 miles per hour. I was tremendously impressed by this figure. Not only did it dramatically surpass my expectations, and Matt’s expectations, and my Twitter followers’ expectations, and Rutledge Wood’s expectations, but I previously had no idea it could even go 63 miles per hour. This led to all sorts of questions: Could I break twenty-one seconds? Does my Hummer have more power than I thought? Could it go sixty-four miles per hour?
Unfortunately, we will never answer these questions, because the Hummer will never return to the drag strip. The good people of Atco Raceway can breathe a sigh of relief.
My Aston Martin Already Broke Down
Originally published on Jalopnik—January 14, 2016
The open road. A two-seat cockpit. A sporty, rear-wheel-drive layout. A powerful, thunderous V8 engine. These are all things the tow truck driver experienced as he hauled my new Aston Martin to the dealership on Saturday morning.