Wednesday O/R/T: Autoblog Belly-Up, Bring The Payne, CR-Z HPD Impressions

All subscribers welcome

photography by, and pointed at: john baruth 3

Good afternoon everyone. After some feedback both on and off this platform, we’re going to have a non-political Wednesday Open Thread, just as a brief breather. So feel free to talk about anything else that might interest you, and I’ll pin the posts that deserve the broadest discussion. As thanks in advance for your good behavior, I’ve commissioned a real-world story about buying, and running, a Land Cruiser Prado in the USA. You’ll have it Friday. Fair enough?

Autoblog joins its competition on the dung heap of history

i could sure use a “2000 pro” level of “jackery”, regardless of whether or it not involves an explorer

Reliable reports say that Autoblog, which has been in operation for two decades, was just bought out by Arena Group, best-known for their role in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit controversy. After a quick review of the current staff, they decided that their combined value was zero, and terminated them all, effective September 13. There’s some concern that Autoblog will be rebooted as a purveyor of AI-written trash, although in perfect honesty I don’t see how anyone would be able to tell the difference. Maybe the AI spells a little better.

Matt Hardigree wrote a big weepy piece on Autoblog’s demise for The Autopian, and after suffering through it I have to wonder if he and I are actually from different timelines. In Hardigree’s timeline, Autoblog was a pioneering and deeply respected purveyor of fresh news, thoughtful opinion, and valuable community. In my timeline, the site was 93% reheated press releases, 2% valuable work by memorable itinerants like Damon Lavrinc, Don Roth, and Alex Nunez, plus about 5% batshit-crazy stuff like when John Neff took it upon himself to clear Carroll Shelby of rape charges, just because, like, the GT-350 was so bitchin’. Our august founder at TTAC, Robert Farago, referred to Neff as “insane”, not entirely without evidence. When Neff was replaced, he was replaced by Silky Sharon Carty, whom history will always remember as The Idiot Who Killed Car and Driver, but who also did her level best to make Autoblog as loathsome and milquetoast as possible.

(Chances are you live in my timeline as well.)

If Autoblog ever did anything worth respecting — and if they did, I can’t remember it — they long ago gave up on that and transitioned entirely to the same “supported by Amazon commissions” business model that supports The Drive and many Hearst publications as well. Frankly, I don’t see how they manage it. I have an Amazon Associates account, which nets me about $100 a year from maybe a thousand click-throughs. It’s not lucrative. There’s no way these sites get enough in the way of ads and click-throughs to pay even a skeleton staff. Which explains why they keep getting sold for peanuts to various venture-capital goofballs who think they have a better idea.

Hardigree’s rose-colored dissociation aside, this is good news for The Autopian, who could use some good news because I’m pretty sure they make less money from subscriptions than I do, and my subscription money doesn’t even pay my racing bills. The minute Galpin gets tired of covering the real bills over at The Autopian, that site’s gone as well.

What will replace it? I’ve been idly wondering if perhaps I couldn’t “hire” a few people from ACF to do a daily auto-news Substack. I’d help out, but whatever money we could raise would be split among the contributors. Would you read such a thing? Would you want to write for it? Let me know in the comments.

Meanwhile, in meaningless regional competition

Mid-Ohio hosted the OVR-SCCA Sprints this past weekend. I couldn’t get my new tires mounted so I qualified behind Ray Mason in the Alliance Autosports GT-2 tube-frame Mustang, but ahead of NASA driver Grant Reeves in his 9-liter, paddle-shift Viper Comp Coupe and ten other “SCCA Big Bore” competitors.

I took the lead in Turn 1 and cruised to an easy overall win ahead of Reeves in second. Sunday morning, outside his stacker trailer, he told me he was “going to fuck [me] up,” and I laughed because I thought he was kidding, but sure enough, as you can see above, he repeatedly swerved at me to take a position, forcing me to stand on the Radical’s brakes for the purpose of preserving my previously-broken nose and the $4500 of billet suspension uprights I’d just installed. I let Ray by to mess with him after a lap or two of watching him swerve around like a goober, largely because my tires were chilling back down to room temperature while driving at the Viper’s maximum pace. Then I dropped back until Grant was out of sight. Then I drove back up to his bumper. But he didn’t get the message, I suppose.

Ray went to talk to Grant afterwards about his behavior, which had included copious amounts of swerving at Ray as well, but I didn’t feel I could do that because I was the idiot who invited Grant to SCCA in the first place. Nor did I want to go through Turn One with him again. So I started from pit lane, behind last place, and had my crew chief tell Grant’s crew I’d see him in five minutes. It actually took me about four minutes to go from dead last to Reeves’ bumper, setting a 1:25.989 in traffic along the way that turned out to be the second-fastest lap set by any car in any class all weekend. (If only I hadn’t slowed down a bit to pass a Corvette! I could have had it all! Stupid formula car with a 1:25.3!)

I then followed Grant’s crazy swerving for 8 laps before, and this is the part that makes me laugh, running out of gas in the last corner. The SR8 shuts off immediately when fuel pressure dips, so I rolled to a halt 100 feet from the finish line while everyone else went by! But since I’d already lapped half the field, I still finished 6th overall and first in the GTX class, with a new SCCA track record as well.

Danger Girl’s race weekend wasn’t as good, thanks to an engine issue; she picked up 2nd in class Saturday and was a no-start on Sunday.

The driver who had the best weekend in the extended ACF family, however, was Detroit News autowriter Henry Payne. He and his two sons entered their Sports 2000 racers in a 15-driver class that included multiple National Champion John Fergus and current S2000 driver of the moment, Joey Selmants. On Saturday, Payne qualified a strong fifth, while his son Henry The Fifth (for real!) beat Fergus to finish just two seconds behind Selmants. His other son, Sam, picked up 10th despite not feeling physically well. In the race, Henry V and Henry got 4th and 5th behind Fergus.

In the Sunday main event, however, Selmants and Fergus both failed to get even a lap in, so Henry Payne V was the overall winner, with Henry in 3rd and Samuel in 4th. What’s better than winning a big race? Having your son win a big race, of course! I was super impressed with the younger Payne on the move. All three Paynes turned laps in the 1:28-29 range, but Henry V was fastest, with a 1:28.729, just about two seconds off a lap record set by Fergus in 2004 with, let’s be honest, a seven-figure budget.

I’m hoping the Paynes will come back and race in SCCA “Wings and Things” with me and my Radical PR6. I can run a 1:29 in that car, and that was before we made a couple of minor improvements, so we could have a lot of fun.

The final neat thing about the weekend: I was formally notified by SCCA that I was chosen as Regional Driver of The Year. Rather ironically, I found out the next day that Great Lakes NASA has suspended me permanently from competition, no doubt because I hurt someone’s feelings in a discussion about lapped-traffic behavior. How am I so beloved in one sanction and so reviled in another? Readers, I contain multitudes.

Thinking about Phil, driving the lowest-mileage CR-Z you could imagine

This year, the OVR Sprints honored my friend Phil Alspach, who drove the pace car for the region until his death last year. The trophy plaques had a picture of Phil and all the cars he’s raced with the region, and I’m honored beyond words to have a pair of them. His ashes were scattered on the track, by his request, using a very special pace car.

I’m Phil’s designated successor on Pace, usually driving an Acura ILX from the Mid-Ohio School. For this race however, and in recognition of what he meant to all of us, the track freed-up a CR-Z with HPD package and stick-shift transmission. It had just 1,078 miles on the odometer at the beginning of the weekend.

I’d never driven a CR-Z before, although young Dominic from my race crew drives one and so there’s often a CR-Z in my immediate vicinity. Quoting Top Speed on the relevant changes:

First on the list of changes is the HPD Sports Suspension. Showa completely re-valved the stock twin-tube shocks to give them a sportier behavior. This results in a considerably harder ride, with the front dampers 103-percent and 114-percent stiffer in bump and rebound respectively, while the rears are eight- and 137-percent stiffer. New lowering springs reduced the ground clearance by about 10 millimeters. They feature 150 pounds per-inch spring rates at the front and 168 at the rear. HPD upgraded the tires from the stock 195/55R16 low-resistance tires to much meatier 215/40R18 Michelin Pilot Super Sports rubber, wrapped around 18 x 7.5 wheels made exclusively for HPD by Enkei. Using the company’s famous MAT process, these wheels tip the scales at 20 pounds a pop. They are specifically fitted to clear HPD’s front big brake kit, which comprises 11.8-inch (up from stock 10.3-inch) one-piece directional rotors clamped by four-piston fixed aluminum calipers and sports compound brake pads.

While the auto-show HPD CR-Z had a supercharger, this one did not. Here are my thoughts on the car:

• Space is reasonable for me, although I don’t think I’d have wanted to wear a helmet. I could reach all controls and operate the car easily, without feeling cramped. As was Honda practice in this era, a lot of the secondary controls are clustered between the instrument panel and where the center stack would be in a more conventional car. It’s clearly a product of the “spaceship Honda” people who gave us the 2006 Civic.

• Visibility is brilliant to the front and sides, a bit compromised to the rear. During my pace laps, I used the side mirror, rather than the center rearview, to keep track of the lead car.

• Even when the simple hybrid system of the CR-Z is in full “assist” mode, rather than “charge”-ing, this is not a fast car. I’d say it’s in the vicinity of my stick-shift Milan, but way behind my Accord.

• It’s quiet at speed.

• The stick-shift is traditional Honda: almost zero effort, not super-precise in the gear slots. Heel and toe is trivially easy.

• At the same speed through Mid-Ohio’s “Madness” that makes the ILX squeal a bit, the CR-Z was dead silent. So I’d say the special (and light) 18-inch wheels are worth it.

• There are two nice and deep cubby trays behind the driver and passenger seats, which can keep a bottle of soda from flying out while, say, trying to go quickly through “Madness” in front of some Formula F cars.

• The speedometer is an LCD display that “floats” in the domed glass center of the tachometer. It seems to float and jiggle as your head moves in relation to it. A bit unsettling, but futuristic in a fun way.

Overall, I liked the CR-Z and would spend real money on a new one powered by, say, an Si-spec K24. That would have been a brilliant car and a true inheritor of the CRX sporting tradition. The HPD car is going back into the Mid-Ohio archives — but if it comes back again, you should hop down to pit lane and take a look. It’s special.