Wednesday ORT: Land-Oh!, Palisade Pimps, Dual 300C Updates, FitWatch Redux

All subscribers welcome

photo credit: the commander

Happy Wednesday, everyone. This is an Open Thread, so interesting new topics from commenters will be pinned. Also, Housekeeping: today I am back in The Free Press.

The “OP” in “OP81” is for “over powered”

green cars are unlucky, ask anyone

Formula 1 is at its best when you have two strong-willed drivers in direct conflict — and the start of the Jeddah race showed exactly that to be the case. Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc have been beaten at the start by Max Verstappen over and over again, but Oscar Piastri had no such deference in mind. Which, unfortunately, sent the race to the stewards. Looking back, Max would have been better off trying the undercut, but it’s hard to fault his decision-making in the moment.

So now we are in the unlikely position of three Piastri wins in five races, putting him in the championship lead. Ask not for whom the Papaya Rules toll, Oscar, because pretty soon it won’t be for thee. It’s hard not to feel for Lando Norris, who appears to be engaging in ever more inventive forms of self-sabotage and negative ideation. He seems like a nice fellow and his insistence on making it to Formula 1 without any Stroll-sized payouts by his wealthy father is admirable. On the other hand, compared to Max and the callous, even-tempered Oscar, he’s just a bit too soft to be a champion. Which means it’s between the Aussie and the Dutchman for the WDC. You’d be foolish to be against Oscar. Would you be foolish to bet on him, I wonder?

Notes:

• Carlos Sainz has the Williams under him now, so to speak, to the point that he was asked to tow Alex Albon around the track for the last third of the race. History shows that a confident Sainz performs very close to a first-rank driver, so expect more of this.

• My pre-season prediction that Leclerc would toast Hamilton’s bread has been proven in spades. Sir Lewis had a chance to break Charles at the beginning of the season, and arguably he got better strategy calls and pit support in that cause. But he hasn’t done it, and now it will be hard. Could 2007-era Lewis do it? Very likely, but we no longer have 2007-era Lewis.

• The Tsunoda/Gasly thing was awful, and not Yuki’s fault. He still looks like the best of the last three RedBull second-seaters.

• Hadjar: the real deal. Bearman: the real deal. Antonelli: especially the real deal. Doohan: headed to Hypercars, and the sooner the better.

• It’s an awful shame when you have a double world champion put in a career-level drive to finish P11. Is Aston Martin doing anything at all to be competitive in 2025, or are they 100% focused on next year?

• Is it just me, or are this year’s pitstops worse for pretty much every team, most of the time? What’s changed?

• At this rate, McLaren could wrap up the manufacturer’s championship quite early in the year. Maybe this would free up some resources to work on the street-car lineup, which could use a little help the way Sean Connery needed a little help in “Outland”.

You like fitness? Try fittin’ dis watch into yo’ life

have to keep it wound tight

A month ago we discussed my narcissistic fitness-tracker quest, which basically resolves to “I’m not going to wear a ‘smartwatch’ on my left wrist, and I’m not going to wear a ‘whoop’ under any circumstances.” Two weeks later, some readers interpreted a picture of me Substacking on the Shinkansen to suggest that I was wearing one, or perhaps two, Apple Watches — an accusation so serious that I am positively forced to respond.

The bullet-train photo akkk-shullly has me wearing a Tudor Black Bay Ceramic on the left wrist, in honor of Yuki Tsunoda and his previous VCARB endorsement, and… a $59.95 Samsung Galaxy Fit3 on the right wrist. I bought it as a stopgap until I could figure out something better, but it’s proven to be very useful. The exercise tracking is better than it is with my Oura Ring, the watch itself doesn’t weigh anything, and it doesn’t require any thought on my part. Recharging requires half an hour every ten days or so.

One thing the Fit3 does not do is provide ECG data, so I also have a proper heart monitor to tick down the years or day until my personal “Tears In Rain” moment. That’s a hassle to wear, however, so as of yet I’ve not done as much with it as I should. I also might stop wearing the Oura Ring, because although it’s a lovely piece of equipment with a very fancy application, it’s also fundamentally incompatible with: barbells, kettlebells, mace swinging, pull-ups, chin-ups, acoustic guitar, and many other things. The Fit3 is cheap-looking and has zero “rizz” but it does what I need it to do, which is remind me to exercise 60-90 vigorous minutes per day lest I run out of replicant time before my son finds his seat in either the F-22 Raptor or the A380 Stewardess Carrier, depending on whether he follows his dreams or mine. $59.95 well spent — plus it justifies whatever it will cost me to keep all the attention on my left wrist, rather than my silicone-wrapped right.

“If you look closely you can pinpoint the moment his heart breaks in two”

wait until they find out about the backup cameras

From a respected part-time autowriter who wishes to remain anonymous, we have this delightful rant about the lowest common denominator in the biz — and I’m afraid that I have some personal responsibility for the situation, as I’ll detail afterwards. Over to you, Anon:

“It's abundantly clear to me now that failing to make any serious money in the autowriting beat (not enough to quit my day job anyway) was actually a blessing in disguise, at least for now. The Drive posted this article two days ago (it just came across my Facebook feed today) with the headline of how the 2026 Hyundai Palisade Hybrid can continue to operate the A/C while it's in EV mode and the gas engine is not running.

That's the 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦.

As though that's some industry-disrupting technological breakthrough by Hyundai or some earth-shattering revelation by the author.

Well, let me do some ACTUAL reporting for you... and I'm not even getting paid for it either. (This is true — jb) A/C compressors that are electrically operated, with no mechanical connection to the crankshaft of the gas engine, have been in common use in hybrid automobiles for FIFTEEN YEARS now.

The busted white 2010 Prius I saw yesterday, with a cracked windshield, a blue left fender, and a smashed taillight, that belched blue smoke out of the tailpipe as the gas engine started up to power it onto the interstate, has 𝘕𝘌𝘝𝘌𝘙 𝘐𝘕 𝘐𝘛𝘚 𝘓𝘐𝘍𝘌 used the gas engine to power its A/C compressor. Its A/C compressor is operated electrically, and always has been. The 2010 Prius 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨𝙣'𝙩 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙗𝙚𝙡𝙩𝙨.

The 2010 Fusion Hybrid and 2011 Volt have electrically operated A/C compressors too. I checked. And let's not ignore the elephant in the room: how, pray tell, do you think A/C compressors work in fully electric vehicles?

Now you could argue that The Drive is just meeting a daily post quota for the algorithm, or you could call it a "slow news day," but I know better, and this is not a one-time occurrence either.

I'm not claiming to be the great master mechanic of the world myself, nor am I claiming I was cheated out of a Pulitzer when I was involved in the automotive journalism business. But I do have now decades of experience in the automotive industry as well as a bachelor's degree in English from a 4-year state-accredited university. I know I can put out better, and when I say better, I mean more accurate and informative, as well as more enjoyable to consume, automotive content than the tripe that's the subject of this article.

The vast majority of people at these rags who claim to be automotive "experts," have the mechanical aptitude of a goldfish, and I've spoken with several of them who have blatantly admitted that. Oh sure, they can rephrase automaker press releases for you (which you can see yourself nowadays on the manufacturers' websites, with no middleman) and they can search Wikipedia for engine and chassis codes. But that about encompasses the extent of their automotive ‘expertise.’ Many of them got their positions writing about cars through political or ethnic/hereditary alliances (that's actually just me courteously calling it nepotism), and those that are outside of those nepotic circles will fight an uphill battle, unless they walk in carrying briefcases of cash with them.

Or they're quietly getting "assistance" from the manufacturers themselves, violating the moral obligations of impartiality implicit in the title of "journalist."

It's frankly mystifying to me how, in the age of the all-seeing, never-forgetting, timestamped Internet, where everything posted on a public forum can be theoretically be fact-checked against innumerable sources (and, if necessary, debunked) at the actual speed of light, we are not in a BRUTALLY unforgiving meritocracy, where even journalists with the most ironclad reputations are walking a knife edge on a daily basis to make ONE HUNDRED percent sure their i's are dotted and their t's are crossed for fear of losing their credibility, careers and livelihoods. Even the readers of that article chimed on in The Drive's website and Facebook comment sections by the dozens stating this is not new technology.

But, alas, it seems to be the opposite now, where the more easily swayed a potential autowriter is by the agendas of the automakers, the more likely they are to get the job. And the quality of automotive journalism is plummeting as a result. The automobile is a complex machine, and that there MUST be standards of competence and familiarity with automobiles at a fundamental level to which people who wish to report on them are held.

Or we just shut it all down and let Reddit take it over completely.”

You can’t say Anon is wrong — but I was saddened to see that the target of his venom was Byron Hurd, an old colleague of mine from the prehistoric Dubspeed Driven, later known as Speed:Sport:Life, days in 2007. I like Byron and I think his heart is always in the right place. He’s definitely from that “Joel Feder generation” of people who wandered into autowriting as a part-time gig during their twenties and eventually just kinda got grandfathered into respectability despite not really having any background or particular qualifications. In many cases, they stuck because they were cheap, or flexible, or both.

In fairness to Byron, the ridiculous headline and social-media share text is not a reflection of what he actually wrote:

And to juice the hybrid’s feature set a little bit, Hyundai pilfered a bit of tech from its EV portfolio. The new so-called “Stay Mode” is designed to optimize battery life to prolong the function of the Palisade’s climate control and entertainment features while the gasoline engine is off, allowing you to run the air conditioning for longer without the need for assistance from the ICE.

That sounds to me like “the car will run the A/C off the hybrid battery, instead of from the 12-volt battery,” and is very different from OMG IT CAN RUN THE A/C WITHOUT THE ENGINE ON! We can probably thank Andrew Collins or Kyle Cheromcha for that. Neither of those fellows will ever be mentioned in the same sentence as “LJK Setright”, unless the intermediate text is something like “would jump out of a window before agreeing to spend ten minutes with”.

Brothers gonna work it out

insert quotes from “there’s something about mary”

Two Chryslers, each alike in dignity, as they say — or nearly so. The black one at the top of this article is mine, with 7,657 miles on the clock. The red one belongs to the infamous Bark Maruth, chief executive officer and primary evangelist for COOPABLE, and it’s just swung past 52,000 miles in 21 months of driving. “Nothing but oil changes,” he notes, “although the brake pads now look like they could use a swap.” He’s on the original, and awful, Eagle RS-A tires, which are still at legal tread depth. It’s common for him to get 27mpg or thereabouts on long trips, too.

The 300C in my garage has had a much more pampered existence. It’s been rained on maybe twice and it’s never been touched by a brush of any kind. The wheels have the original factory sequence paint-pen markings on them, even. On the other hand, it’s been tracked, autocrossed, and 40-rolled with as much regularity as I can muster. The back tires are half gone from backroads dorifto, and the brake pads are cooked into a different color. I don’t bother to drive it unless I’m in the mood to hustle.

Bark will likely sell his Chrysler in the near future and replace it with something fancier. I’ll keep mine for a long time to come. The sensible thing for me to do would have been to get a Lexus ES350UL — and God willing I’ll do that when the Chrysler is paid off, but as St. Augustine once wrote, not yet. Although it looks identical to a 2011 model and has all the same parts, it costs me as much to insure this single car as it does to carry the other five cars on my policy, combined. I can’t leave it in an airport parking lot and I don’t leave it out of my sight anywhere but in my immediate neighborhood. 97% of people think it’s a $15,000 used rental car and will actively sneer at it. The other 3% know exactly what it is, and would like to steal it.

And yet, when you have three passengers and a bit of ground to cover in a hurry, it truly does carry the eternal mail, as Melville once wrote. The 6.4-liter Hemi sounds furious and frisky at once in a way no LS engine can match. It steers well, all the controls are in the right place for enthusiastic driving. I know the men who engineered it for track use and I trust them. Most importantly, after redlining it up to fourth or fifth gear a dozen times I get out of the 300C in a better mood than I was in when I entered it. So, yeah. No regrets.