Ryan Weyman

Posts by Ryan Weyman

April 13th, 2017 at 01:55am by Ryan Weyman

Swan Song

Chrysler and Dodge are dying. It’s not hard to read the tea leaves. They are decades behind in hybrid/electric technology, their mainstays are built on decade plus old platforms and will be until at least 2022, and they are lead by a CEO that seems more interested in the US dealer networks of Chrysler and Dodge than the brands themselves. Dodge and Chrysler both experienced sales drops in 2016, with Chrysler total sales coming in a whopping 27% lower than in 2015. Ram trucks still sell, ranked third among full sized pickups in 2016, but they also aren’t Dodges anymore, a split that occurred fairly quietly 6 years ago. FCA also attempted to distance the Viper from the Dodge brand around the same time, placing it under the SRT moniker before reluctantly bringing it back into the fold a short time later and ultimately ending the production of one of America’s most interesting cars this year. Without a major change or capital infusion, we may be seeing the final years of the Dodge and Chrysler brands as we know them, and when the final bell rings for two iconic American auto makers it will be a mournful occasion, especially for the millions of Mopar fans across the US and the globe.

For now though, car enthusiasts around the world can rejoice because Dodge is giving us the greatest swan song in automotive history. A beautiful symphony of large displacement V10’s, whining superchargers, squealing tires, and raw, unapologetic horsepower. So enough of the doom and gloom, we’ve got a few seriously awesome vehicles to discuss.

2015: Year of the Hellcat

While the early 2010’s saw Chevrolet and Ford in the middle of a horsepower race with the Camaro and Mustang respectively, Dodge had remained quiet with it’s Challenger. The 580hp Camaro ZL1 had prompted Ford to drop an all new 5.8 liter supercharged V8 with 662 horsepower into the 2013 Mustang GT500. It was a wonderful time to have a mullet.

(Via Motortrend)

When Dodge finally responded, it did so in a big way. Seven Hundred wonderful horsepower big. A 6.2 liter Hemi V8 with a 2.4 liter IHI supercharger force-feeding it over 11 lbs of boost. Final output? 707 horsepower, 650 pound-feet of torque, 0-60 in 3.6 seconds, and a quarter mile in 11.2 at 125mph. The best part? It wasn’t just going into the muscle car Challenger, oh no, we were getting a 700 horsepower, 200 mph, all American (unless you count the old German chassis) sedan. There was a new horsepower king, and its name was Hellcat.

(Via DigitalTrends)

Hypercar, who?

The world’s first batch of hypercars started to light up the stat sheet and the race track in 2013. With hybrid-electric drivetrains, near as makes no difference 1,000 horsepower, and price tags north of one million dollars each, the Ferrari laFerrari (dumb name, but awesome car), Porsche 918 Spyder, and McLaren P1 took performance to an unheard of level. Lap records started to fall to these hybrid behemoths, and they appeared to usher in a new tier of performance that was only achievable with the same recipe of high power gas engines complemented by the instant torque of electric motors. For a couple of years it appeared they would continue to stand alone as the track thrashing elite, but then the Street and Racing Team (SRT) over at Dodge stepped in and gave us this:

(Via DriveSRT)

The Dodge Viper ACR. And what did the ACR bring to battle? Hybrid tech? Nah. Turbocharging? Nope. All wheel drive? Don’t think so. Just the largest displacement engine on the market, an 8.4 liter, 645 horsepower V10, a six-speed manual transmission to deliver power to the rear wheels, a lowered and tightened suspension compared to the base Viper…oh and an aero package that can create a literal ton of downforce. 2000 pounds. The wing ain’t just for show, people. This simple combination lead to the Viper crushing lap records at 13 different tracks, including beating the Porsche 918 by over a second around Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, and came in at roughly a tenth of the price of those aforementioned hypercars. Cause who needs technology when you have brute force?

Not a Beast, a Demon.

The Dodge Hellcat is a beast. It retained its position as the highest horsepower engine fitted to a muscle car from its launch all the way up to April 11, 2017. On that day a Demon was unleashed. And demonic is a very apt way to describe the new Challenger SRT Demon. 840 horsepower, 770 foot-pounds of torque, factory drag radials, and lots of first-time-ever-in-a-production-car items to make all of it travel a quarter mile in 9.65 seconds at over 140mph. That’s holy shit fast. And it comes with a warranty. Some of those one of a kind items? A 100 octane button that changes the tune in the car to accept race gas in order to achieve the full 840hp. An air conditioning powered charged air cooling system that can drop intake temperatures by nearly 50 degrees fahrenheit. It also does wheelies. How unnecessarily great is that?

(Via Freep)

There are more things to come from Dodge, the Hellcat powered Grand Cherokee Trackhawk for starters, but the SRT Demon is the crescendo of their Swan Song. The epic climax to a story built around defying progress and logic in favor of simplicity and pure power. I truly hope that I am wrong. I still ponder the what if’s of Pontiac and the potential of that lineup right before it was shut down for good. Dodge and Chrysler are on a completely different scale from that, and losing either would be a massive blow to the American automotive industry. If it comes to pass, however, at least we can say that they didn’t go quietly into the night.

November 26th, 2016 at 02:54am by Ryan Weyman

Life Happens and Other Topics.

And We’re Back.

Hello, everyone! I’m a little further behind, but as Bryan mentioned previously, lots of things going on in the last few months. My wife and I welcomed a wonderful little baby boy at the end of August. What has followed since has been a blur of adjustments, learning, and no time, but a lot of fun. Little guy already loves rolling around in the GTI with dad. I think. He falls asleep immediately after the car starts moving, so I’m assuming he likes it a lot. And because I can’t possibly be busy enough, I’m starting graduate school in January. But enough about me, let’s talk about some of the happenings in the car world and otherwise (and my opinions on them) since my last foray into writing.

Absolutely, definitely, totally NOT Top Gear. We swear.

(Courtesy of Autoweek)

Episode two of The Grand Tour went live last night on Amazon, and if you were, like me, left with a bad taste in your mouth after the revamped Top Gear flopped harder than every early 2000’s Chrysler product, you’re in luck. What Jeremy, Richard, and James did with GT is, well, take everything people loved about Top Gear…and call it The Grand Tour. And that’s not a bad thing. The trio seems refreshed after the debacle with the BBC, and the Chemistry from 20+ seasons together on Top Gear is ever present. Some may bemoan the cost of Amazon Prime, $99 for a year subscription in the US, but most that do are already paying $95.88 a year for Netflix or HULU ($7.99 times 12, math is great). Plus, the free 2 day shipping that Prime allows you for things bought through Amazon quickly pays the fee by itself. So subscribe, watch, enjoy.

Mazda makes beautiful vehicles, why won’t they make them faster?

(Courtesy of Autoblog)

The LA Auto show happened. Unless you’re super stoked about the rice-tastic Civic Type-R’s still ricey and much slower little brother, the Si, the star of the show was the new Mazda CX-5. In the dull and boring world of Crossover SUV’s, the CX-5 looks stunning, and the great styling cues in the little CUV extend to the rest of the Mazda lineup. Only issue? Everything is slow. Even the fantastic new MX-5, which is simply a blast to drive, I’d recommend a test drive to anyone having a shit day/week cause the smiles per mile rate is quite high, still underwhelms in raw power. Where’s Mazdaspeed when you need it? What happened to the rumors of the new Mazdaspeed3 with 300 turbocharged horsepower and all-wheel drive? When will the rotary return in all of its triangle shaped glory (EPA regulations be damned)? Hopefully soon, but for now, keep killing it on the design front Mazda.

All jokes aside…

(Courtesy of Autoweek)

The new Honda Civic Si doesn’t look nearly as bad as the Type-R, and will probably be another sub-$30k performance bargain which is nothing to complain about. The sheer number of sporty cars that can be had for less than $30,000 is remarkable. And they come in all shapes, sizes, and configurations, from RWD coupes to FWD hatchbacks to AWD sedans. It’s a good time to be an enthusiast.

Post-baby, the MK7 GTI is still great.

I’ve got an article in the works on my current vehicle, a 2015 Volkswagen Golf GTI, to give everyone a break from my friend Bryan’s constant mullet flaunting. It may not have a ‘Murican Five-point-oh liter vee-eight under the hood, or run a 12 second quarter mile (yet), but in terms of performance bang for the buck and everyday versatility, I’m not sure there’s a better new car on the market. And unlike the crowd clearing Mustang, I can comfortably fit a car seat in the GTI. (I know Bryan claims he can, but I’ve never seen it happen.) More on this subject at a later time.

More to come.

Now that things have normalized, expect more content with more regularity from Machscribe. That’s the plan, anyway. Life with a three month old can be a little hectic at times, but I will definitely be setting some time each week aside to write. It’s good for the soul. Also, wonderful readers, on behalf of myself and Bryan, hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

-Ryan

July 27th, 2016 at 02:07am by Ryan Weyman

Rigmarole Week 30: Setting Sun

In the early Nineties, while the American auto industry was still dragging it’s way out of the automotive cesspool that was the Seventies and Eighties, the Japanese were hard at work pumping out some of the greatest enthusiast cars ever. Skyline. Supra. RX7. Silvia. Evolution. STI. VR-4. Type-R. GT-Four. GSX. 300ZX. MR2. NSX. These words, letters, and numbers defined an era. A generation of power, performance, and style that could stand against any other in history. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda, and Subaru set the standard for performance in the Nineties. And the legacy of these cars spans well beyond the street. Subaru, Mitsubishi, and Toyota dominated rally racing. Honda won four F1 championships in a row. The Nissan Skyline GT-R owned touring car racing. The Mazda 787B? Well that just speaks for itself. These weren’t just cars, they were icons.

Today however, the Japanese auto industry sings a different tune. Most of those iconic models? Gone. Lost in the quest for the bottom line. Who needs a Supra when the new Prius is “faster than you think?” Want a true FD RX7 successor? How ‘bout a 150 horsepower Miata instead? There has been a paradigm shift across every lineup amongst the Japanese manufacturers. One after the other these mighty names of Nineties fame have fallen. This year brought another victim, the last flare of spirit left in the once great Mitsubishi lineup, the Lancer Evolution.

So what happened? How did these brands go from making some of the best cars to ever put rubber to asphalt to having family sedans and bloated, lifted wagons as flagships? The reasons, I’m sure, are many and varied. So much can happen within an economy and culture, small events and shifts that ripple out well beyond what any would expect, but the best place to start looking for answers is the homeland.

Since the late 80’s, the “Land of the Rising Sun” has more accurately been the “Land of the Stagnant Economy and Aging Population.” Several periods of deflation and lack of GDP growth have haunted Japan for nearly three decades. In this time the culture has become very risk averse, saving rather than spending and always maximizing efficiency. At the same time the birth rates have fallen and the population has aged. Recent estimates put Japan’s over 60 demographic at 33 percent of the total, triple the global average. And as of 2011, the population has started to decline because of the low birth rate and the lack of willingness of the Japanese government to allow immigration. The enthusiasm and excitement that carried over from one of the fastest growing economies in the Eighties into the early Nineties has been replaced by skepticism and inflexibility. Who can blame them? In the early Nineties the Japanese GDP (Gross Domestic Product) was just over $4 trillion USD. Today? It’s just over $4 trillion USD. In the same time period the United States GDP more than doubled from roughly $7 trillion USD to nearly $18 trillion.

Ok, so economic mumbo jumbo aside, what does this mean for the auto industry? Well if you look closely, the pattern of exchanging performance for efficiency in cars has followed the cultural and economic patterns of the last two decades. Adventurous and costly projects like the Supra have been fazed out to make way for more vehicles that can be pumped out and sold by the tens of thousands (read: Camry), and in the case of Mitsubishi, bad financial decisions right before the recession, Daimler/Chrysler pulling out, and endless failures across the lineup for the last decade plus have left them a battered husk. Poor Mitsubishi may be beyond saving (barring a buyout and some serious capital investment), but what about the others? Is there redemption around the corner?

Well, you have to at least give Honda credit for trying. The new Civic Type R is every Honda fanboy’s wet dream. Turbocharging, VTech, and a ridiculous body kit come together to make the fastest front wheel drive car ever! Only one minor issue, it’s trying to make it’s way in the “super hot hatch” segment with a bunch of All Wheel Drive competition. That makes the Type R a tough sell when you can get a Ford Focus RS for the same money. Then there’s the new NSX (Acura or Honda depending on where in the world you reside), which by all accounts is a great supercar, but it is an NSX in name only. The marvel of engineering, simplicity, and affordability (relatively) has been scrapped in favor of a powerful, expensive computer with wheels. Not a hint of the original left to be seen.

The others? Well, Subaru is running out a new STI with a decade old drivetrain, Nissan has an aging Z and quasi-supercar with a GT-R badge on it, Mazda teases a new rotary every year while supplying mainly 4 cylinder econoboxes (albeit good ones), Toyota refuses to give the GT-86 more power (I guess they’ve already got a “fast” Prius), and Mitsubishi…they’re dying a slow and painful death. Can any of these brands be returned to their former performance glory? Sure. Will they? That remains to be seen.

And what of those Japanese sports cars of the 90’s? Those glorious vehicles long past? Well, there’s a new crop. They’re not exactly the same, but carry the same spirit. High performance, affordability, great styling, the same recipe that gave our favorite JDM their iconic status can still be had today. The badges are just different. And, for the most part, they’re made in America.

-Ryan