Wednesday ORT Part One: M3 CS, Z Wobble, Rumble Bee, AMG Junk, Power Cut

All readers welcome

We have so much automotive news this week that I’m doubling the Wednesday ORT. Today’s episode will be 100% car-related. Tomorrow we will have a new episode of Cat Tales for paid readers. On Friday, we will have our non-automotive OT for paid readers, where we will discuss stuff like the 40Hz FC mechanical watch, a proposed rule about venture capital and youth sports, and Fender’s attempt to win the culture war via their attorneys.

First, our brief racing news: Danger Girl suffered through this weekend’s SCCA Super Tour with an engine wiring harness issue. On Saturday she couldn’t get any revs out of the car and it was stalling at random. On Sunday, she ran well but got hit twice by other cars that were having trouble with the conditions. The second hit put her out of the race on the last lap. The good news is that on both days she made multiple positions at the start, against experienced National competitors and at least one National Champion, before the car let her down.

Now, on to the news you can use:

Will the last real M car turn out the lights?

If you follow our friend Gen X Garage Talk on Substack and social media, you will see that he has been on quite the Bimmer buying spree lately, up to and including a V8 M3. I have long felt that the E90 and E92 were the last M-cars that really conveyed joy in their operation; after that, the M3/4/5/6 got bigger and faster in a major way but suffered a corresponding loss of joie de vivre. BMW has been caught in a unique trap of its own devising that goes something like this: making the cars more powerful no longer translates to a genuine speed increase in owner hands. When I was a kid, I could get somewhere faster in a 182hp 535i than I could in a 127hp 528e, and in a 252hp M5 I could get there even faster. The reason is obvious in their power ratings, and also in the fact that we have 30% more people on the roads now.

At the same time, bumping the curb weighs into the two and two-point-five ton range makes the cars a miserable on-track proposition. I should talk about this more in another article but: The way factories approach track time is not the way people approach track time. When I did ZR-1 track testing with GM a decade or so ago, they showed up with TEN SETS OF TIRES plus all the ceramic disc/pad consumables we could possibly need. BMW does the same thing at the Ring.

Which is all well and good, but when you track the car twenty times a year, you will extend the life of your tires, you will use aftermarket brake parts, and so on, just to keep from spending $8,000 every weekend on non-competitive driver’s ed. This is why the OEMs and the magazines don’t care about how much a car weighs or how much it costs to run, but the actual “track rats” do. And it’s why very few people actually track their high-power, high-weight cars with the same level of intensity they would a Miata or Boxster or E36 Bimmer. Heavy and powerful cars are the death of actual enthusiasm.

So BMW is doing its level best, at least here in the USA, to provide an alternative. Thanks to Scott Stirling, BMW’s American product manager, we now have the “Handschalter”, which is German for “manual switch” more or less. Stupid, cringey name that somehow manages to sound like THE BMW M3 BEATOFF MASTER… but the product is nice. It’s an M3 CS with rear-wheel-drive and a six-speed manual.

It’s seventy horses down on a “real” CS, but it has upgraded suspension and a 75-pound weight loss from the addition of some expensive parts. The car has yellow driving lights so you can pretend to be Joey Hand or Hans Stuck while you’re stuck in traffic on the Hutch. Four colors, two of which cost $4500 more. MSRP is $108,450.

Let’s be real: I’d rather have a Lime Rock E92 and a six-month bout of irritable bowel syndrome than any current M3, even this one. And the whole “limited edition” hype being attached to the car is simply yet another way for the German automakers to pretend that their mass-produced consumer items are genuinely special. (See: 911 GT3, SL63 Black Series, Rolex GMT-Master.)

Let me tell you what could murder this “Handschalter” in its fancy contrast-stitched crib: an actual manual-transmission Corvette Grand Sport. Thankfully for BMW, General Motors is run by Mary Barra and Mark Reuss. The latter of whom is supposedly working on a “super-Corvette” above the ZR1X. Yeah, definitely keep working on that instead of on a $90,000 Corvette that would make everyone happy.

Meanwhile, in the category of giving people what they want

Behold the Rumble Bees! They are a handsome combination of TRX fenders, quad-cab body, and short bed. Basically the closest you’re gonna get to the old Lightning or SRT-10 Ram body style.

• 5.7-liter Rumble Bee offers front axle disconnect for misbehavior;

• 6.4-liter Rumble Bee marks the debut of the 470-hp Apache Hemi in the half-ton.

• Rumble Bee SRT has 777 horses from the Hellcat engine for a top speed of 170mph, plus adjustable suspension.

• There’s a nifty rear lip spoiler on the tailgate.

• The Hellcat model gets 16.1” discs and six-piston Brembos as standard. The 392 has them as an option.

These three trucks are an obvious home run and they will have spawned their own subculture before the average person can pronounce the words “street takeover”. It’s sheer brilliance to give buyers a street-oriented Hellcat. The TRX is too “white-coded” to be successful with a lot of core Mopar owners; the Rumble Bee SRT will suffer from no such stigma.

I would be delighted to own a 392 Rumble Bee as a daily driver. It couldn’t replace my F-250 because too often we have both the bed and rear seats loaded to capacity for race weekends, but we would certainly find ways for it to be useful. Just in case the Stellantis brass really read this blog, and the traffic data suggests they might: Any chance you could add a flat-fender Tradesman 392 to this admirable lineup?

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Wobble

this really should read “doug and ballaban and stef, and also all sorts of great people”

You, the educated ACF reader, might wonder: Does Jack ever get tired of being completely right about everything? The answer is: yeah, even more than you might think. A full sixteen years ago, I wrote the following:

#1: The (Vanden Plas) Princess And The Pea-Sized Upgrade

“In our previous road test, we shocked the world by declaring the Ferrari 630GTBX to be very possibly the worst car ever made. Across the moors of Brighton-on-Stokes, the 630GTBX was mind-numbingly dangerous and handled with the devastating indirection of a three-wheeled pastry cart. In this drive, however, we confirmed what we had suspected would be the case: that the addition of a 1mm fiber washer in the left front control arm has completely addressed these uncertainties and turned what was a sow’s ear into a true silk purse, flying down B-roads with the furious power of Apollo’s sun-chariot and making gods of mortal men. Once the worst car sold in Britain, the 630GTBX-FibroWasher has become the very best.”

You can blame this one squarely on LJK Setright, who complained that the redesigned nose on the 1995 Jaguar XJ6 completely destroyed its crosswind stability and thus rendered a “perfect motorway car” utterly useless. Setright’s ability to “discover” major ramifications of minor changes was such a cast-iron credibility-builder than almost no English autowriter can resist pretending to discover something similar from time to time. The game works like this: drive an early example of a car that everyone expects will be outstanding — and completely trash it for a flaw so minor that nobody else can find it. This excites readers, generates controversy, and sells magazines.

Unfortunately, it also pisses manufacturers right the eff off, so one is required to promptly test a “revised” car and declare it to be spectacular, possessing qualities that only a very perceptive journalist can distinguish. The smaller the change, the better. After all, any American auto-moron can see the difference between a Mustang 4.6 and a Mustang 5.0, but it takes a true Brit to notice what the 5mm optional spacers on a Porsche Boxster S do for handling.

So, keeping that in mind, let’s see what the automotive press has “discovered” about the new Nissan Z Nismo with manual transmission:

And let’s hear from my friend and colleague, Ezra Dyer:

For the NISMO, the hardware changes are the big news. The manual transmission is the transformative piece, and offering it in the NISMO wasn't a simple bolt-in. Because the NISMO makes more power than its Z brethren (420 horsepower and 384 pound-feet of torque versus the other trims' 400 and 350), the transmission mounts were beefed up and the clutch got a high-capacity pressure plate. The shifter itself has a shorter throw, and the twin-turbo 3.0-liter V-6 has a different throttle map and ignition timing. There's a lot of work that goes into a seemingly easy change—when you want to honor a warranty, at least.

When the current Turbo Z (apologies to Dodge) came out, the automotive press were united in declaring that the car:

• was an ugly revamp of a sad, old platform;

• was no good to drive;

• was outdated on its debut;

• couldn’t match competitors like the MagnaSteyr BMW Toyota Supra for refinement or pace;

• wasn’t worth considering.

The minute I drove a 2024 Z Performance it was obvious to me that the journos were doing the Scott Burgess Wobble, to wit: find a low-volume car from a manufacturer that doesn’t spend big money on European PR trips, and shit collectively upon it. The 2024 Z was, and is, a fantastic car. It’s fast, it rides well, it is quiet, and it kinda handles. In other words, it is what the Z has been ever since it was called the Fairlady 2.4 Yamato Edition or whatever. The Z is such a great car that both the women in my house have six-speed Performance models. Both of them liked the Nismo but wanted a clutch pedal.

The Nismo is certainly a better Z in terms of performance. It has five percent more power and two more pistons in each front brake caliper. But I would bet fifty grand that the average autowriter wouldn’t be able to discern between the Performance and the Nismo in actual daily use.

If you read the reviews of the ASTOUNDING NEW NISMO Z, you’ll find that pretty much all the qualities that have the press so spellbound were present and accounted for in the past three model years. The only difference is the narrative. This reminds me of Rob Henderson’s story about Liam Neeson:

I was hanging out with some fellow graduate students at the University of Cambridge in 2019 when one suggested seeing the new Liam Neeson movie, “Cold Pursuit.” Another student, referring to an unflattering confession Mr. Neeson had recently made, replied, “No, he’s racist, remember?” The first student said, “I read online that people forgive him and he’s OK now.” He pulled out his phone to verify. A few minutes later we walked to the theater.

Nobody had reconsidered Mr. Neeson’s character or weighed the evidence against him. What they’d instead done was consult the social-media consensus to find out what they were permitted to enjoy.

The autowriters, about none of whom can drive for shit and most of whom are either spiritual or literal cuckolds, have collectively decided that it’s now okay to like the Nissan Z. The car didn’t change. The consensus changed.

After hearing that our friend, well-respected club racer and bon vivant Eddy Eckart, enjoyed the red-stripe Fairlady during his press drive, Danger Girl asked me, “Should I just get a Nismo Z to replace mine?”

“I think you could tell the difference,” I replied, “but why would you want to get rid of this one? It’s great.”

“Well, it doesn’t need to go anywhere. It could be a race car.” Reader, if we end up with four turbo Zs in the house, and I don’t own any of them, what am I going to do — and why is the answer to that question “hoodrat-spec G37 Coupe”?

Call It “The Vibrator Catfish”

The new AMG GT4 is a staggering, spellbinding, astounding achievement in the area of spending several billion dollars to develop a car that not a single person in the world could possibly want for any reason whatsoever. How was it created? I can only imagine a board meeting where someone asked,

“Ja, can ve do zee Porsche Taycan, only ugly?”

needs more blurring, stat

There is no angle from which the new AMG is even remotely acceptable-looking; it’s the Elana Scherr of 1,000-horsepower golf carts. I never thought I would find myself defending the Taycan, but at least Porsche used the battery platform and its crumple-zone advantages to create a svelte silhouette. Just look at a Taycan next to a Panamera to see how much nicer the proportions are. By contrast, the AMG EV retains the same pregnant-feral-hog profile as the unlovely AMG GT four-door currently infesting Westchester and La Jolla. There is no reason — no reason! — for it to look like this.

Except one:

I have no doubt this thing will look super dope outside the Patek store in Beijing or wherever. The Mercedes stylists have weaponized its ugliness to the point where you won’t be able to look away from the thing. Plus you will have to listen to it:

Inside, the experience is equally uncompromising, from the SKY CONTROL panoramic roof to the AMG sound design, meticulously engineered from over 1,600 individual audio files and 16 microphone positions. The result of all these features combined? 860 kW, 1,169 hp and a top speed of 300 km/h. Because the Autobahn has almost no limits – and neither does this car.

You know what else was meticulously engineered from over 1,600 individual audio files and 16 microphone positions? The song “Rockstar” by Nickelback. What kind of a jagoff do you have to be to drive a car around that combines 1,600 audio files for the purpose of sounding like something it is explicitly not?

As Elaine Benes would say, “It’s weak. Nobody’s buying it, and you shouldn’t be selling it.”

From the folks who brought you the Handschalter

True story: My son’s mother enjoyed her two-year lease of a Ford C-Max so much she replaced it with the C-Max Energi. “Where are you going to plug it in?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” she replied. And she spent the next two years without ever opening the charging door one single solitary time. Which was fine, because she still liked the Energi better. It was quiet more often and it went a little faster. I thought she was silly to never plug it in but ya know what? She paid the money and she got to choose how she used it.

This level of prole self-determination is too much for BMW, apparently. As reported in BMWBLOG:

In an interview with German newspaper Die Zeit, the automaker’s Chairman of the Supervisory Board proposed an interesting idea. Nicolas Peter said it’s technically possible to monitor how PHEV owners use their cars and how frequently they charge the battery. If they never plug in, a technical measure could persuade them to use the charging port: reduced engine power.

“This is a behavioral problem that discredits a climate-friendly technology that could actually be a good way to introduce people to e-mobility – especially where the infrastructure is still too sparse. One measure would be for car manufacturers to be able to document and even penalize usage patterns. If a driver never charges their battery, the engine power could be reduced; technically, this is feasible.”

This reminds me uncomfortably of a passage from Catch-22:

Finishing last in three successive parades had given Lieutenant Scheisskopf an unsavory reputation, and he considered every means of improvement, even nailing the twelve men in each rank to a long two-by-four beam of seasoned oak to keep them in line. The plan was not feasible, for making a ninety-degree turn would have been impossible without nickel-alloy swivels inserted in the small of every man’s back, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf was not sanguine at all about obtaining that many nickel-alloy swivels from Quartermaster or enlisting the cooperation of the surgeons at the hospital.

The difference between Nicolas Peter and Lieutenant Scheisskopf is that the latter is at least slightly concerned with the real-world implications of his actions.

Incidentally — and I apologize in advance for a passage that will strike some of you as uncomfortably racist — this is why German-Americans, as a whole, have probably contributed more to humanity in the past hundred years than have Germans who never leave Germany. There’s something about crossing the Atlantic that opens one’s mind to the possibility of not exercising the maximum amount of rule-following possible at any given moment. Look at Eddie Rickenbacker versus Manfred von Richthofen: a rowdy open-class oval racer vs. a serious aristocrat. Both great pilots, but only the former survived the war.

All of the truly great German-Germans acquired a reputation for disobedience, whether we are talking Rommel, Skorzeny, Schumacher the Elder, or Rudolf Schenker. (Where do Bob Lutz and von Braun fit into this? The reader is encouraged to opine.) A little bit of disobedience is a good thing, you know. Not everything has to be alles in Ordnung. The idea of punishing people for not plugging in their plug-in hybrids? Utterly ridiculous.

Herr Nicolas Peter, I have an idea for you: monitor to see if you’re using your personal equipment to the maximum, and if you aren’t, consider applying an electric shock to the affected area.