Month: February 2021

Hello everyone,

I might be changing cars again soon … It’s only a “might” at the moment but there are a few compelling arguments either way. The “No Change” route would mean keeping what I have and paying off the remaining finance on it when the PCP* period finishes next year.

*PCP is Personal Contract Purchase. It splits the cost of the car three ways. There’s a deposit at the start and the value remaining at the end is engineered to be the same as the expected future value of the car. So on a car costing £35,000, the up front would be anything from £2,000 to £10,000 and they’d expect the value after 3 years to be around £10,000. And then the finance is for the difference.

The other way would be to hand mine back in early and jump into a different car after delivery.

Erm … we interrupt this post for a very important thumbnail.

More on this later.

It’s a curious choice this time around because Lexus have been busy rejigging their range for the UK … You can still buy the CT for now :

This was my first Lexus, the Tardis Blue Car CT. (That was a shameless attempt at invoking search engine optimisation 😀 ). It was a lovely car too, very well put together, probably as close to perfection as I’ve had in a car and extremely practical besides that too. It had only one problem, under the bonnet there was the Prius hybrid powertrain that struggled somewhat for power. The electric motors give it excellent starting speed but it ran out of puff fairly quickly. It also had to be worked a little harder than the IS300h, which meant the fuel economy while great on paper, would suffer.

I’ve enjoyed my last 3 cars, all three of them being IS300h’s. That’s a saloon shell with more power. It’s a bit sad but there’s been issues with these … they haven’t been the image of perfection that the CT was. I’ll leave the issues I may or may not have with the current one until after it’s gone but … Car 1 had drive by wire issues where it would kangaroo hop into traffic light stops where it should have been smooth. And Car 2 had what I believe was a broken power steering pump. So that was another reason for jumping on the Offer I Couldn’t Refuse last time. Oh and Car 1 had the dead car incident caused by someone in the delivery chain not bolting the battery terminal on correctly.

I know, hard to believe that last one isn’t it. Anyway, both the CT, the IS and the RC coupe version of the IS are being discontinued in the UK. If I change, it’d either be an SUV shell (I don’t like these, too much metal) or the bigger ES saloon. I’ll be pondering on it for a few days.

One thing for this post is racing cars … I have the Steve McQueen Le Mans film on at the moment …

And EEK. Crash time. We’ve had a car spin and the next car through following went out of control and off the road, landing off the track and exploding into flames as the driver attempts to run away. And then another crash with one of the Porsches which also hit the barriers out of control.

The picture and cinematography work is incredible. They’re doing a lot of slow motion and freeze frame to capture the heavy drama of what’s going on.

I saw the film a while ago and was impressed back then. Both this Le Mans and the more recent Ford vs Ferrari (Le Mans 66) are well worth a watch. They’re both remarkable films.

Things I have been noticing from both though is the differences between racing then and racing now. I’ll get to the Follow The Race stuff later but the opening sequences of the Steve McQueen movie shows the drivers getting set up for the start of the race. They’re wrapping what are essentially bandannas around their mouths and neck before putting on open face crash helmets. Yep. That’s moved on since. Full face helmets, balaclavas and the HANS (Head And Neck System) are mandatory now and have saved many lives. There is also communications between driver and team which can warn the driver if they’re approaching an incident.

The pit stop sequences shown in both movies show the cars moving a little off the main straight and into the service areas. The cars are being refuelled about 10 feet away from where the racing is happening. And it’s side of the road stuff, they have a proper pit complex now with garages. Curiously, a lot of the IMSA races still operate with pit boxes without garages, although these are a long way away from the race track. If an IMSA car has a serious issue, it’s said to be “going behind the wall” to where the garage is.

Another huge difference is the cars. Ford vs Ferrari was in the time of the GT40. It was the story of the 1966 Le Mans when cars looked like :

Picture is from this Motorsport Magazine article (Link). It’s from the days when streamlining and aerodynamics were just starting to be thought about. They knew to smooth out the cars to get more speed and maybe a little about downforce with that lip spoiler at the back but they understood very little about the more subtle aerodynamic efforts. Developments continued and designers looked more and more at this thing called Downforce, where if they engineered an extra force pushing down on the car, it would mean the drivers could push them harder through corners.

The Steve McQueen film features the Porsche 917 from 1970 :

Picture taken from a Road And Track article (Linky). See the extended bodywork at the back ? It was intended to improve the downforce, which apparently it did. However … it also led to instability and a likelihood of the car going end over end.

That’s been one issue with racing cars over the years … They’re great going forwards and around corners but if something disrupts that like a crash, then they can quickly turn from racing machine into a sail that catches the air, taking the car out of control. The tolerances were so fine that the Mercedes cars ended up flipping at 200+mph as they went over the Mulsanne Hump, the crest allowed enough air to get under the car and catastrophically disrupt the airflow, after which the driver would be just a passenger.

(Don’t worry about this for road cars, we don’t go fast enough although sidewinds can make driving into Interesting Times sometimes).

Things have improved a lot … The endurance racing fraternity took a look at why the crashes were happening and enforced design changes like the shark fin that acts like an airbrake if the car goes sufficiently sideways to get in trouble. (It also pivots the car back up the right way). The endurance cars also have cut outs above the wheel arches which counter the tendency to flip before it happens.

(Rabbiting on detector alarm is going off).

I think that’s enough from me about the racing cars for now.

Steve McQueen’s Le Mans and Ford vs Ferrari (Le Mans 66) are both excellent movies and I’d thoroughly recommend a watching. They have more than their share of tragedy though amongst the drama.

Before I close up though, the information around the races is SO MUCH BETTER now. In the movies, there’s an announcer that also acts as a narrator for the audience and the people in the pits are using stopwatches to time their cars. Nowadays, we have streaming video services covering the races that usually offer extra feeds as well as the main feed. The official timings are available and in races like Le Mans and Nurburgrings with their very long tracks, the timings get split up for the various parts of the course. There are also the twitter feeds for the teams and organisers keeping you up to date.

Yep, close time …

But first … today’s out among people job was the car service and on the way back there is the farm shop service station … It’s at a lower level of service at the moment due to Pandemic Things but they’re still offering hot sandwiches (no running to the loo this year – hurrah!) and drinks and the farm shop is mostly open.

I may have visited the farm shop while I was very hungry, hence the opening picture and thumbnail. Alas though,

Gosh that film flew by. (Steve McQueen’s Le Mans). Almost at the end, the race is over and we’re getting long lingering looks between two of the stars.

Munchies ? Yep. Munchies happened. Sadly no chocolate dwagonsaur yet this year. Maybe later. They only had minimal Easter Stuff out there earlier. That’s pretty understandable given the current times. Hopefully later :-).

In the meantime, time for the traditional send off : Stay safe, be well.