Wednesday ORT: Corvette Flies, Mosler Cheats(?), Surfs Spin, Actors Portray Men

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this and ‘ronin’ are the two movies i never tire of watching

Housekeeping: Sunday’s thread will feature the winner of the Bob Marley Guild Acoustic guitar. If you want to be eligible, it’s not too late to pick up an annual subscription.

It was only possible because there were no sharp turns

By now, you’ve likely heard that the Corvette ZR1, in an aerodynamic configuration that will require some parts-swapping at the dealership, hit 233mph at a high-speed oval in Germany. Impressive number, to be sure — but given the other numbers in play, one is tempted to ask Is that all? The ZR1 makes sixty-six horsepower more than a Bugatti Veyron and weighs in around the same two-ton mark, but it’s 20mph short on the top end. I’d like to see the frontal area numbers for both, maybe that would tell the tale. Or is it just a matter of the C8 being that all-too-common combination of both unlovely and aerodynamically inept? To be fair, the Tesla Model S Plaid only reaches 216mph with similar power, but that’s a four-door sedan with an optional rear-facing jump seat to seat a total of seven people.

I can’t say I’m terribly excited about this news. The best production Corvette I’ve ever driven was a fully-loaded C7 Grand Sport 7-speed; a 1,064-horsepower automatic-transmission two-ton mid-engined Ferrari lookalike is as much an antithesis of that lovely and balanced track rat as, say, an automatic-transmission small-block C3 from the early Seventies would be. And what’s the payoff for draining all the enjoyment from the car, anyway?

General Motors has long displayed a sort of autistic obsession with getting various numbers long after they stopped meaning anything to the customers or the enthusiasts — cue the various print ads for 1986 GRAND AM REGISTERS 0.84g ON THE SKIDPAD and so on. One could easily argue that the top speed of the C4 ZR1 was relevant and interesting to the automotive discussion, as were the “Life Begins At 150” shirts that various Chevrolet people wore back when the C4 Z51 and IROC-Z 350 were finally able to hit that mark. Thirty-five years later, I don’t think anyone really cares.

One final amusement: all of the early press messaging leaned heavily on the fact that it was GM President Mark Reuss driving the car, with several overly compliant outlets putting his name or title ahead of the actual headline. (“GM President drives 233mph” and similar.) Sadly, I believe I agreed not to disparage Mark Reuss as part of a severance agreement with a former employer. So I’ll just say that it’s nice to see Mark get the publicity he so clearly wants for something other than crashing a pace car on national television, and I’d like to congratulate him for having a father who was a great leader and executive for General Motors.

Speaking of the numbers…

I’ve been chatting lately with James Todd Wagner, whom some of you will remember as the engineer/impresario/ladies-man/handsome-fellow behind the “Raptor GTR” in the above video. (He was also the fellow behind Abbey Cubey, so to speak.) Wagner has been going through all sorts of legal wrangling with Warren Mosler and Mosler Automotive regarding various agreements to build and sell the Raptor back in 2012.

Mr. Wagner has been sufficiently annoyed by Mosler’s tactics during this disagreement to volunteer a bit of dirty laundry to the automotive press. He sent the following information to at least one major magazine. I doubt they’ll publish any of it, so I’m sharing it with you here. James writes:

Cheating To Win

• ALL of Warren Mosler’s Supercars that he used to compete in publicized press events had “Cheatermotors”. Thus, he whipped his competitors who played fair by having brass knuckles under the boxing gloves.

• I am ashamed that I participated in that. I knew, but didn’t say anything. No longer.

• The scumbags work hard to silence would-be whistleblowers. JudgeX.org gives any whistleblower the mathematical power to resolve complex/amorphous observations into a SINGULAR NUMBER that makes it perfectly clear if the person/system being evaluated is a bribe-taker (or not).

• The Car & Driver Lightning Lap 2008 victory by the 2008 Mosler MT900S should be eliminated from the records because of the below facts. The vehicle had a 630hp built race motor instead of the as-certified 505hp Chevrolet LS7 stock motor that went through emissions.

• CARB (California Air Resources Board) required a 25.8lb flywheel. This motor featured an 11lb racing flywheel (which is why the car would buck at low speeds). The “winning” vehicle featured longtube headers and ultralight high-flow catalysts that have no chance of passing emissions. ALL Mosler supercars (with the exception of the 2012 Mosler RaptorGTR) were built and sold with these longtube headers and ultralight catalysts. Thus Warren Mosler claimed on the MSO’s an extra 30 horsepower over the stock Chevrolet engine.

• Mosler Automotive (‘MACC’) didn’t even have EPA Certification for the 2008 Model Year. It did for the 2009 Model Year, but didn’t build any cars until 2010; which made them intrinsically illegal. Of course, they were all built with the Cheater-Catalysts and Cheater-Flywheels, too.

You might not agree with James Todd Wagner, but he’s clearly neither insincere nor a coward. My experience is that most people walk away from courtroom battles chastened and depressed by the near-impossibility of confronting a monolithic entity that exists largely just to preserve existing power structures. Wagner’s willingness to call out what he sees as corruption and malfeasance, regardless of the consequences, is admirable. Let’s hope he doesn’t end up, uh, feeling the proverbial fire as a result.

An unqualified success

trophy inception

I didn’t watch any racing this weekend — the usual suspects are invited to put their recaps up so I can pin them — because we had a three-car effort this weekend at the SCCA OVR Autumn Classic. It was especially important for me to win my races because, as OVR Driver Of The Year (ahem), I was featured on every winner’s plaque.

As has been the case ever since SCCA eliminated the Prototype X and put me in Grand Touring X, I was bringing a gun to a knife fight, at least in terms of overall pace. My primary competition was an LS-swapped 350Z that can’t live with me in a straight scrap — but he was smart enough to get qualified near the head of the pack both days. Your humble author, on the other hand, had a transponder error on Saturday, so I started from dead last. Oh, and it was raining, so I had to be ultra-careful around the much heavier GT and American Sedan cars. In the end I was able to drag my car up from 22nd to 4th, but I wasn’t close to the winner because I just couldn’t get past the other cars quickly enough. It was still enough for first in class, because the Z spun in the first lap and I caught him right away.

Day Two I missed qualifying again because I was taking my son to a friend’s birthday party with a very specific start time. Or, rather, he was taking me, since it was his first time driving my 300C with his learner’s permit. Just sitting in the right seat as The Commander repeatedly ran the car to the very outside edge of the road (“Sorry, Dad, I’m used to being in the center of the kart, er, car”) used up all of my available courage for the day.

Maybe that’s why I was a little cautious around the GT2 cars. Not normally a bad thing but I was too cautious to get all the way from 25th to first, settling instead for 3rd place, the fast lap of the race, and a 17-second gap to the front. In clear air I can run 4 or 5 seconds ahead of Ray Mason so had it been an 18-lap race I’d have won. Unfortunately for me, it was a 13-lap race. But it was still enough to win GTX. If you watch the above video, you’ll also see the Avoidable Contact Forever Memorial Improved Touring “S” battle between Danny’s RX-7 and Eddy’s Miata.

Danger Girl had a scrappy weekend finishing 2nd in a 3-car class both days, She was quick in the wet but in the dry she was clearly down on power. She also lost an overall second place due to a late safety car that bunched a more powerful E-Prod Miata behind her at the restart, at which point it was basically a green/white/checker situation determined by top speed. I believe she threw her event plaques in the burn barrel and/or gave them to charity, largely because I offered to sign them the way I’d been signing plaques for the volunteers and track staff.

photography: the commander

The most eventful weekend across our little team was had by Mini Danger Girl. She qualified her SRF2 13th of 23 in the rain, ahead of several more powerful SRF3s, and ran as high as 8th during the Saturday race before spinning three separate times and falling to DFL, at which point she regained two positions in the last few laps. It’s really interesting to watch MDG on track, to put it mildly. On Sunday, she (over-)drove up to a podium spot, setting second fastest lap of the class, before tossing the car into the gravel at the end of the back straight. Once she rejoined she was able to make up a few positions (again!) but ended up 24th of 27 cars. After just three race weekends she’s had more spins and offs than I have had in 20-plus years of sanctioned competition, combined. I find this to be quite encouraging. Ask any race coach: it’s easier to “dial it back” than it is to “dial it up”.

The end of our regular season is at Nelson Ledges next weekend. It’s been one to remember.

Soothing the base via pandering to the outlier

The video above is not a product of the Harris/Walz campaign; it’s an independent effort from “Vote Save America”, a pro-Harris group of left-wing creatives. Written and directed by Jimmy Kimmel Show staff member Jacob Reed, it talks about “not being afraid of women” and rehashes some usual Team Blue talking points. The ad has been roasted on Team Red media because the “real men” in the ad are all Los Angeles actors, at least one of whom does porn. There’s also been quite a bit said about how the ad is “unintentionally hilarious”. I’m not sure the hilarity is untentional; Reed is a comedy writer and this is at least comedy-adjacent work.

Here’s what fascinates me about the above advertisement: it dovetails very (un)comfortably with this.

who dresses you?

Long-time ACF readers know all the Wes Siler highlights, from the betrayal of his best friend to his absurd pretensions at “outdoorsman” status. I often call him “Glamping Zoolander”, because the way he goes about trying to be a Man Of The Woods reminds me of this scene. Wes has all the clothing, all the gear, all the name-dropping… he has just about everything he needs to be some kind of mountain man, but he just fundamentally is not one, and never will be one.

There is a fine American tradition of effeminate or sickly young boys turning themselves into “real men” via a deliberate, self-directed program, with Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway being the alpha (so to speak) examples. I think that Wes had something like that in mind a few decades ago, but at some point he realized that he loves the accessories and styling of the outdoors a lot more than he loves the actual outdoors. So now he’s kind of a third-tier male model who portrays a “real man” in the media… just like the fellows in the “Man Enough” video. In both cases, the pretense to masculinity is beyond threadbare.

Yet somehow this is desirable to the Harris/Walz campaign. Why? After all, there are millions of authentic “real men” who will cast a vote for Comma-la this November. I know plenty of them myself. It wouldn’t take a day to dig up authentic examples of what Siler, and the actors above, are trying to portray. Hell, we could do a roll call right here at ACF and get everyone they’d need. If there isn’t a registered-Democrat combat veteran with big-game hunting experience in my subscriber list, I’ll eat (a portion of) my hat. So why do the fake stuff, knowing that

a) it’s obviously fake to everyone;

b) it’s probably offensive to the actual “real men” who will vote blue this year?

I have a theory — and if you look at this video, maybe you’ll come up with the same theory.

This “Black Voters For Trump” is a little bit, er, more real than the “Man Enough” ad, but I’d suggest to you that it is intended to serve the same purpose, namely: to energize the base.

Both teams of American voters suffer to some degree from a self-image issue, inflicted both by relentless messaging on the part of the other side and a kernel, however small, of truth on theirs. Normie everyday Trump voters absolutely despise the idea that their support for Trump is based on racist or xenophobic notions, so whenever there’s some sort of “Blacks for Trump” or “Latinos For Trump” they embrace it at warp speed. It’s how people like Milo Yiannopoulos and Candace Owens make money. They offer absolution from the inner voice that “hey, maybe I’m voting for Trump because I really do harbor racist notions.”

The Blue Team equivalent to that is normie Harris voters asking themselves, at some level: “Hey, am I voting for the destruction of traditional America, including the absolute obliteration of anything resembling normal American men?” They know that the “progressive agenda” involves the complete remaking of this country into something different. They may be very much in favor of that, and they may have very sound reasons… but they also know that something will be lost along the way. They’re also fundamentally empathetic individuals, for the most part. So this group would like a little “co-signing” from the people who will be shunted aside in the future.

Putting “Montana gun guy” Wes Siler next to “Minnesota gun guy” Tim Walz reassures these aforementioned urban Blue Tribers that the so-called “heritage Americans” are, in fact, fully on board with the policies that will lead to their disappearance. Why, even the gun nuts want more gun control! Even the rural white men want abortion!

So the purpose of displaying shotguns in Blue propaganda isn’t really to get NRA members to vote left, any more than RFK Jr.’s endorsement is meant to sway Catholic Democrats to the dark side. This stuff happens so the voters in the base will feel better about going to the polls. Periodt, as the kids say.

Incidentally, this is why Kamala Harris has no discernible platform and why the media keeps tying Trump to the “Project 2025” despite his many disvowals. In the modern feelings-based votescape, any fully-stated position on an issue is likely to cost you something in terms of support, the same way I lose three subscribers any time I suggest that Israel doesn’t have an absolute right to wipe out Palestine or vice versa. It’s better to campaign on “joy” or “reclaiming America”. In an honest world, Democrats would campaign on banning every gun, pickup truck, and gas stove in the country, because that’s what they would do given the chance — and Republicans would campaign on doing exactly the same stuff but also lowering the marginal tax rate. Don’t hold your breath for that to happen.

Alright, so let’s say I’m correct about all of this. Why use fakes like the porno actor and Wes Siler instead of authentically masculine Democrats, of whom there is absolutely no shortage? Oh, that’s simple. It’s because much of the base despises the latter, even if they’re politically aligned with them. I have a neighbor down the street who has “Harris/Walz” signs out in front of his modular home, right next to his rotting collection of 3/4-ton pickups. Judging by his other stickers, he’s some kind of union laborer. He’s the real deal — but you can’t use that dude. He’s inherently repellent to the people who write checks and turn out the votes. They don’t want to see him. They’d rather see an actor portrayal. The same is true for my crew chief, who hates Trump and votes Democrat every chance he gets. He could beat the stuffing out of all those actors and Wes, likely at the same time… but the average Bushwick or Trousdale voter doesn’t like being confronted with a man with misaligned teeth and a “Sons of Anarchy”-style scar on his face. Brings down the tone, dontcha know.

In preparation to write today’s piece, I took some time to watch parts of the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960. I’ll admit that it’s hugely depressing to contrast the four reasonable, thoughtful, and genuinely interesting conversations those candidates had with the mess we get today. All I can say by way of reassurance is: this state of affairs cannot long continue before the next big change comes. Let’s hope that we’re all “man enough” to handle what comes after that.