Ever see a two-door Taurus?
I am continually amazed at the stupidity of most people. Especially in the South.
(I thought I would open with a nice, inflamatory statement, something to set the tone of my mood. What better target than the South? They practically invite scorn, what with claiming they will "rise again" after having their demographic ass handed to them after the Civil War 150+ years ago. "Yey! Let's celebrate being losers! Let's fly the confederate flag, the very rallying symbol that instigated the war in the first place, and hide institutional racism behind the facade of 'culture'. Go, Big Losers!"
(With all those strikes against them -- and more -- my favorite whipping boy from the South has got to be Nascar. The very existance of this organized ignorance defines the tenacious nostalgia that refuses to recongnize defeat and embraces paralyzing stupitdity.)
Henry Ford once said that auto racing, more than any other driving activity, most advances automotive technology. Hell, push any activity to the edge of the performance envelope, put a competitive spirit behind the activity that constantly refines and improves, and you will see marked activity improvement. That's what humans do -- compete. And as they compete, as they search for any advantage available, they put their minds to how to win and find changes that, if successful at the end of the race, become the advances that benefit those outside the track.
So why bash Nascar, you ask? Because this band of inbred drunkards, founded on the nostalgia of illegal alcohol transport, has codified its racing activities to forbid innovation, favoring instead a reliance on automotive culture that hasn't existed since before the '70s oil crisis.
Ostensibly, this was to allow entry into racing. By outlawing the most expensive tech and favoring "stock" cars rather than purpose-built, anyone could cobble together a ride and a team to make it hum and race around and around. And I am sure that for decades this is exactly what happened.
It has congealed into a good ol' boys network of fabulously wealthy teams racing the most expensive stock cars imagineable, cars one can hardly call "stock", since the Nascar rules have fossilized the machines into museum pieces no longer worthy of sale -- or legal for on-road use.
Let's take the engine. A simple internal-combustion engine is pretty much bullet-proof, and designed to run very well within a narrow band of parameters, specifically revolutions per minute (RPM) and a more or less set torque resistance (the load on that engine at any given time). These two specifics are calculated into a measurement called Horsepower (a measurement basically worthless to anyone outside of marketing).
There are basically three running parameters one can change to affect horsepower: ignition timing, valve timing, and the mixing of air and combustible fuel. Nascar engines are based on the most common engines of the 1960s, with mechanical ignition timing (distributors), mechanical and fixed valve timing (based on camshafts driving valve lifters), and carburator mixing of fuel and air, with perhaps a touch of force applied with blowers driven by either engine revolutions (superchargers) or exhaust velocity (turbochargers).
(Come to think of it, I doubt neither super nor turbo chargers are allowed. I just don't know or care enough about the waste of time and fuel called a sport to check.)
Are these stock cars? Hardly. Actually, at one time, they probably were. But technology and innovation has a nasty habit of encroaching on the most carefully guarded prejudices. Take carburation vs. fuel injection.
Carburators are very easy to understand, even for mechanical idiots. The four stroke engine is a repeating series of strokes, starting with with a downward stroke toward the crankshaft: suck, squeeze, bang, blow.
Intake, or Suck: the first downward stroke of the piston draws a fuel/air mixture through the opened intake valve.
Compression, or Squeeze: all valves are closed before the piston rises, compressing the drawn mixture.
Combustion, or Bang: the spark plug ignites the mixture, forcing the piston downward as the explosion causes expansion.
Exhaust, or Blow: the exhaust valves open, allowing any remaining combustion and the remaining exhaust gasses to be forced to the tailpipe by the ascending piston.
Now, a good designer and mechanical team can wring performance from a good engine by exploring the possibilities. Does one have a long stroke with a long piston rod, or a short stroke? Does one time the exhaust to maximize the trapping of the combustion gasses, or shorten the combustion cycle to allow for higher rpms? When is it best to fire the spark plugs? Squeezing the maximum amount of power from the minimum amount of fuel is both science and art.
In the past, technologies that would give engine builders and the racers that use them the ability to change any one of the three "fixed" parameters of engine performance became the holy grail, the elusive goal. Pity for Nascar, that goal was found many times over. And every time the goal was reached, the innovation was banned, to keep costs down for entry level racing teams.
Pop quiz, people: What happens to the cost of any new technology, over time? Answer: the price falls. Thousand dollars, limited function electronic watches wind up years later as happy meal give-aways. A million dollars of processing power in 1960 won't even drive the wireless keyboard and mouse I use right now. That happened to cars as well. Right now, every banned technology Nascar prevents from racers can be found in the cheapest car on the market today. Just about every car in your local showroom has electronic ignition, fuel injection, and some sort of variable valve timing. That's why new cars get so much better mileage -- and smell so much better from the tailpipe.
In fact, the low cost feature of racing has all but disappeared. Sure, thirty years ago, you could drive in from the street and race; but a raft of cheaters getting caught breaking the sanctity of the sport forced the knuckle draggers to impose "official" equipment requirements. Wanna race? First, you gotta buy our engine block, our ignition box, a four-holed plate to insert between the carburator and the intake manifold (to restrict air flow to the engine). And that's only a list of requirements of which I am aware. The cost: pretty damned high, especially compared to showroom cars that can do better with cheap, banned equipment.
What happens in other racing leagues? Innovations are banned only when they threaten the safety of the sport, when they drives speeds to the upper edges of human endurance or ability to react. That makes sense. You don't want cars moving so fast that they will kill with the slightest loss of control.
But you must, as Henry Ford observed, use the creative force of competition to bring technical innovation to more the entire sport -- inside and outside the engine block -- not just to new and better seat belts and more chassis paneling on which one might fly more ads from more companies that tap into the vast nationalistic reservoir of redneck hatred of change.
(I thought I would open with a nice, inflamatory statement, something to set the tone of my mood. What better target than the South? They practically invite scorn, what with claiming they will "rise again" after having their demographic ass handed to them after the Civil War 150+ years ago. "Yey! Let's celebrate being losers! Let's fly the confederate flag, the very rallying symbol that instigated the war in the first place, and hide institutional racism behind the facade of 'culture'. Go, Big Losers!"
(With all those strikes against them -- and more -- my favorite whipping boy from the South has got to be Nascar. The very existance of this organized ignorance defines the tenacious nostalgia that refuses to recongnize defeat and embraces paralyzing stupitdity.)
Henry Ford once said that auto racing, more than any other driving activity, most advances automotive technology. Hell, push any activity to the edge of the performance envelope, put a competitive spirit behind the activity that constantly refines and improves, and you will see marked activity improvement. That's what humans do -- compete. And as they compete, as they search for any advantage available, they put their minds to how to win and find changes that, if successful at the end of the race, become the advances that benefit those outside the track.
So why bash Nascar, you ask? Because this band of inbred drunkards, founded on the nostalgia of illegal alcohol transport, has codified its racing activities to forbid innovation, favoring instead a reliance on automotive culture that hasn't existed since before the '70s oil crisis.
Ostensibly, this was to allow entry into racing. By outlawing the most expensive tech and favoring "stock" cars rather than purpose-built, anyone could cobble together a ride and a team to make it hum and race around and around. And I am sure that for decades this is exactly what happened.
It has congealed into a good ol' boys network of fabulously wealthy teams racing the most expensive stock cars imagineable, cars one can hardly call "stock", since the Nascar rules have fossilized the machines into museum pieces no longer worthy of sale -- or legal for on-road use.
Let's take the engine. A simple internal-combustion engine is pretty much bullet-proof, and designed to run very well within a narrow band of parameters, specifically revolutions per minute (RPM) and a more or less set torque resistance (the load on that engine at any given time). These two specifics are calculated into a measurement called Horsepower (a measurement basically worthless to anyone outside of marketing).
There are basically three running parameters one can change to affect horsepower: ignition timing, valve timing, and the mixing of air and combustible fuel. Nascar engines are based on the most common engines of the 1960s, with mechanical ignition timing (distributors), mechanical and fixed valve timing (based on camshafts driving valve lifters), and carburator mixing of fuel and air, with perhaps a touch of force applied with blowers driven by either engine revolutions (superchargers) or exhaust velocity (turbochargers).
(Come to think of it, I doubt neither super nor turbo chargers are allowed. I just don't know or care enough about the waste of time and fuel called a sport to check.)
Are these stock cars? Hardly. Actually, at one time, they probably were. But technology and innovation has a nasty habit of encroaching on the most carefully guarded prejudices. Take carburation vs. fuel injection.
Carburators are very easy to understand, even for mechanical idiots. The four stroke engine is a repeating series of strokes, starting with with a downward stroke toward the crankshaft: suck, squeeze, bang, blow.
Intake, or Suck: the first downward stroke of the piston draws a fuel/air mixture through the opened intake valve.
Compression, or Squeeze: all valves are closed before the piston rises, compressing the drawn mixture.
Combustion, or Bang: the spark plug ignites the mixture, forcing the piston downward as the explosion causes expansion.
Exhaust, or Blow: the exhaust valves open, allowing any remaining combustion and the remaining exhaust gasses to be forced to the tailpipe by the ascending piston.
Now, a good designer and mechanical team can wring performance from a good engine by exploring the possibilities. Does one have a long stroke with a long piston rod, or a short stroke? Does one time the exhaust to maximize the trapping of the combustion gasses, or shorten the combustion cycle to allow for higher rpms? When is it best to fire the spark plugs? Squeezing the maximum amount of power from the minimum amount of fuel is both science and art.
In the past, technologies that would give engine builders and the racers that use them the ability to change any one of the three "fixed" parameters of engine performance became the holy grail, the elusive goal. Pity for Nascar, that goal was found many times over. And every time the goal was reached, the innovation was banned, to keep costs down for entry level racing teams.
Pop quiz, people: What happens to the cost of any new technology, over time? Answer: the price falls. Thousand dollars, limited function electronic watches wind up years later as happy meal give-aways. A million dollars of processing power in 1960 won't even drive the wireless keyboard and mouse I use right now. That happened to cars as well. Right now, every banned technology Nascar prevents from racers can be found in the cheapest car on the market today. Just about every car in your local showroom has electronic ignition, fuel injection, and some sort of variable valve timing. That's why new cars get so much better mileage -- and smell so much better from the tailpipe.
In fact, the low cost feature of racing has all but disappeared. Sure, thirty years ago, you could drive in from the street and race; but a raft of cheaters getting caught breaking the sanctity of the sport forced the knuckle draggers to impose "official" equipment requirements. Wanna race? First, you gotta buy our engine block, our ignition box, a four-holed plate to insert between the carburator and the intake manifold (to restrict air flow to the engine). And that's only a list of requirements of which I am aware. The cost: pretty damned high, especially compared to showroom cars that can do better with cheap, banned equipment.
What happens in other racing leagues? Innovations are banned only when they threaten the safety of the sport, when they drives speeds to the upper edges of human endurance or ability to react. That makes sense. You don't want cars moving so fast that they will kill with the slightest loss of control.
But you must, as Henry Ford observed, use the creative force of competition to bring technical innovation to more the entire sport -- inside and outside the engine block -- not just to new and better seat belts and more chassis paneling on which one might fly more ads from more companies that tap into the vast nationalistic reservoir of redneck hatred of change.