2006 Ford Freestyle 100,000-Mile Review

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

 

After adding an infant, car seat, and stroller to our four-door Saturn L300 we discovered that we needed more room. Although we had primarily driven GM cars (she had a Corsica and Cavalier, while I drove a slew of Saturns) we unanimously decided to look at Ford SUVs. I was partial to the popular Explorer, but on that Sunday afternoon at Coastal Ford, she spotted a new model called the Freestyle. While comparably priced with Ford’s larger SUV, the Freestyle was sleeker and looked like an Explorer that had been sculpted in a wind-tunnel. Since Coastal was closed, we ended up at Treadwell Ford where I had worked during the summer of ‘92. There we took back-to-back test drives in both the Explorer and Freestyle. The decision was undisputed given the Freestyle’s rigid unibody construction. It rode and handled like a midsize sedan, while the clunky body-on-frame Explorer bounced and crashed over bumps and pot-holes. And with post-Katrina gas prices skyrocketing, I was pleased the Freestyle used a V6 instead of a thirsty V8. So, on March 22, 2006 we picked up our new Ford Freestyle with just 4 miles on the odometer.

 

As with any new car, the first year with the Freestyle was a real honeymoon. We took multiple trips to New Orleans and Florida without so much as a hiccup, racking up over 1,000 miles per month. And despite recent warnings of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and health hazards, I enjoyed that new car smell, which my brother-in-law described as “the most expensive fragrance on earth”. Still, there were a couple small complaints early on which centered around the gas mileage and the brake dust. The window sticker stated that the EPA ratings were 20 MPG City and 27 MPG Highway, and I’ve never owned a vehicle that didn’t at least reach (or exceed) the highway mileage. So when numerous fill-ups averaged a disappointing 22 MPG,  I wrote it off as the new engine still breaking-in. However, I was more puzzled by the rear wheels which kept accumulating tons of brake dust. In reality, the fronts should have been dirty and the rear ones clean. At the 12,000-mile service, I asked Treadwell to have the rear brakes inspected, as was subsequently informed that they tested fine.

Roughly six-months later in September 2007, we were getting ready to pull out of our driveway when the Freestyle failed to move. Granted, it was a bizarre experience as it felt like the parking brake was stuck. No amount of throttle would budge it and with no other option, we called Ford’s Roadside Assistance. Then we waited for them to pick the vehicle up. And waited. And waited. And waited some more, until nearly five hours later the tow truck finally showed up. I didn’t know it then, but that was the first experience we had dealing with Ford’s terrible customer service and it wasn’t going to get any better. Not surprisingly, the culprit turned out to be the very brakes which I had asked them to check. They were seized up and replaced under warranty and I discovered it was an engineering fault that affected all the Freestyles produced up until that date.

Our Freestyle soldered on through 2008 and 2009 with no mechanical maladies, but even with some 40,000 miles under its belt, the fuel economy didn’t improve. Despite mostly highway mileage, we never saw more than a paltry 22 MPG, which lead me to surmise that I could have gotten an eight-cylinder Explorer and been no worse off.

Then, during a scorching July afternoon in 2010, the Freestyle suddenly lunged in the McDonald’s drive-thru like a great white after a seal, nearly rear-ending the poor Prius in front of it. My wife was puzzled and concerned as her foot had been firmly on the brake the entire time. I told her I would look into the “unintended acceleration” and see what I could determine. By this time, Ford had already discontinued the Freestyle under the excuse of poor sales. The truth was, it had class-leading sales in its segment but Ford had uncovered a much more serious engineering defect that it didn’t want being brought to light.

 

THE AMITYVILLE SUV

As I perused the online Freestyle forums in search of an answer to  a problem I had never seen before, a common thread emerged.  With the Freestyle being produced from 2005-2007, initial problems were few and far between during those early years. However, by 2010 more and more complaints began surfacing as these vehicles accumulated age and mileage. Terms such as “lurching” and “surging” were popping up an inordinate amount of times and they seemed to point to an issue with the Freestyle’s fancy drive-by-wire throttle. Basically, the Freestyle uses an electronic signal rather than a conventional cable or spring to tell the computer how much the throttle is open. Granted, this sounds great on paper but things don’t work like that 100% in the real world. It’s also unclear what was causing the throttle body to accrue carbon at such an accelerated rate, but our Freestyle’s throttle body looked like it had been sprayed with sticky black tar when I removed it at 49,000 miles. Furthermore, this wasn’t something that could be blamed on cheap gas—from the day we bought it, we only fueled up with Chevron or Exxon and every oil change I used a bottle of fuel system cleaner. I scrubbed the throttle body as best I could, but a lot of the carbon was literally burned on and no amount of carburetor cleaner or elbow grease was going to remove it. Regardless, the cool fall weather was approaching and the erratic behavior seemed to have stopped.

We naively forgot about the previous year’s problems for six-months until the 2011 Spring temperatures arrived and the frustrating problems returned. Other forum members had reported that a new throttle body fixed their same issue so I broke down and ordered a new $350 throttle body. There had been talk of a new non-heated design, so I was somewhat dismayed when I opened the box and realized that I already had the non-heated throttle body. This was my first hint that maybe a larger issue than just the throttle body was the culprit. Still, I dutifully installed the new unit hoping that it would correct the dangerous behavior.

A week went by before the problems returned and then it was clear that the throttle body was not the main offender. Since it was largely undriveable, we decided to take it to Coastal Ford in Mobile which was a lot closer than Treadwell. Once there, the technician diagnosed the problem as a faulty Mass Air Flow (MAF) Sensor. He claimed that using the free-flowing K&N air filter for the past five years and 50,000 miles had allowed so much grit to come in that it had basically sand-blasted the sensor rendering it unable to provide the correct air/fuel ratio thus causing the unreliable behavior. It certainly sounded plausible, but I wasn’t going to pay them $700 for the parts and labor when I had just shelled out $350 on a new throttle body. Instead, I paid the $100 diagnostic fee and then another $100 for the MAF sensor at AutoZone and replaced it myself.

Amanda was positive that the problem was corrected, but by this point I was still a little skeptical. Despite that, we set off for Spring Break and everything went great until our third day when the surging began again. Apparently angry that we had tried and failed to exorcise the mechanical demon, it returned with a vengeance. The instrument panel lit up like a Christmas tree which threw the Freestyle into a “Fail-Safe” mode and it wouldn’t accelerate above 40 mph. We limped the Freestyle back to Treadwell and picked up a rental car while they examined it.

SECRETS, LIES AND CVTs

The next day I received a call from the technician at Treadwell, and while he couldn’t tell me what the problem was, he did tell me what it needed: A new $7000 transmission.

Naturally, I was a little numb and also angry from the gravity of the statement. We had specifically bought the Freestyle new so we would not have to worry about repairs. But the 3 year/36,000 mile warranty was up and the transmission had died before even its first scheduled maintenance at 60,000. Something just didn’t add up. Granted, I’ve abused a lot of transmissions in my life and never had one fail, some with more than 200,000 miles on them. And here I was to believe that our five year-old Freestyle with just 58,000 miles on it suddenly needed a whole new transmission? That was ridiculous!

Since it was worthless without a transmission, my first thought was to tell Treadwell just to keep it. We still owed Ford Motor Credit almost $7000 on it, so they could have it back and we would just break-even and walk away. But cooler heads prevailed and I paid them $100 for yet another “diagnostic fee” and had it towed to a different Ford dealership, Estabrook in Pascagoula, MS. I had met a local Ford Master Mechanic online and he was willing to take a look it it for me. At this point, my hope was that the transmission could be salvaged and would not require a complete replacement.

Once at Estabrook, they started it up and were amazed to watch the Freestyle continue to lurch and surge when locked in park. Even the service manager came out to witness the eerie phenomenon and volunteered that he had never seen anything like that in his life. Soon thereafter, the technician, Matt, began tearing the transmission down and was optimistic about getting us back on the road. However, after several trouble-shooting phone calls with the actual Ford engineers in Dearborn, Michigan, he wasn’t quite so hopeful.

After sitting at three different Ford dealers, countless hours, and hundreds of dollars later, the problem was finally pinpointed as the Mechatronics unit in the transmission. This computer “brain” of the transmission was on the fritz and during warm weather would overheat sending conflicting signals that would cause the vehicle to react violently. One of the chief selling points of the Freestyle was the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) that promised to be quieter, smoother, and more fuel-efficient than a standard automatic transmission. And I’ll admit that the operation was pretty slick too– with an infinitely-adjustable range of gears, you just press the gas and it goes with no bumpy upshifts or downshifts. Given the quick and seamless power, I hit 90 mph during our test drive of a white Freestyle without even trying. But none of that matters if it’s not reliable.

Matt said the good news was that the Mechatronics unit could be replaced for around $1800, but because the problem went undiagnosed so long, there was substantial damage from the gears slamming back and forth. As such, he couldn’t guarantee that it would even work with a new Mechatronics unit in it. He prognosis was to simply replace the whole transmission. I thanked him and left Estabrook $400 lighter, the cost for tearing down the transmission. I then paid $100 to have the Freestyle towed to my personal mechanic’s shop while I looked for a new CVT.

Finally, my luck seemed to be improving as I found a low-mileage CVT from a wrecked Freestyle near Dallas, Texas. The CVT only had 21,000 miles on it and was from a 2007 model so I jumped on it for $2400. Within a couple days it was drop-shipped on my mechanic’s door, and after another $1000 in parts and labor, the Freestyle was on the road again. With that behind me, it was time to turn my attention to how and why the CVT failed with just 58,000 miles on it.

As I began inquiring on the Freestyle message boards, a lot more owners came forward with similar CVT problems. A lucky few were fortunate and had paid for extended warranties that covered their CVTs, but the majority like myself were left to either fix or forfeit their Freestyles. In my defense, I shouldn’t have to pay a couple thousand dollars for an extended warranty on a new vehicle that doesn’t even require the spark plugs or antifreeze changed until 100,000 miles. My father drove cars for 70 years and never had a transmission fail. And given the complexity and scarceness of the CVT, not just any one could work on them. It quickly became evident that there was a genuine problem with the long-term reliability of Ford’s CVT and mine wasn’t just a fluke. Of that camp, two prevailing scenarios emerged: Owners were either experiencing issues with the Mechatronics Unit (like mine) whereby the gears were shredded like metal cole slaw, or a foundry issue that scored the input shaft thereby hand-grenading the internal components after a random amount of miles.

Naturally, Ford absolved themselves of any responsibility for this and have done their very level best to sweep it under the rug. Initially, I don’t believe Ford was aware of the CVT’s quality-control issues when it went on sale in late 2004 as a 2005 model. But as the CVT problems came to the forefront over the next 24 months, Ford attempted to quickly distance themselves from it by dropping the troublesome CVT for a conventional automatic in the 2008 Freestyle (which was strangely renamed the Taurus X). By 2009, Ford was washing its hands of prior Freestyle owners so it could focus on rebadging the Freestyle as the 2011 Explorer, which coincidentally does not have a CVT either. Despite two unsuccessful class-action lawsuits over the CVT, Ford has vehemently denied any wrongdoing with the Freestyle. However, multiple class-action lawsuits over the throttle body have forced Ford to issue a retroactive recall on them. So does that mean I got reimbursed for the $350 throttle body I bought three years ago? Absolutely not! My warranty claim was refused because I replaced the throttle body myself and did not have the procedure done at an authorized dealer.

THE AFTERMATH

Two years and 42,000-miles later, the Freestyle is still chugging along only slightly worse for the wear. Shortly after the CVT was swapped in 2011, the original Continental tires were down to the wear bars and had to be replaced. Regardless, 65,000 on the factory tires is a new record for the Adams’ household so I can’t complain. The same can be said for the original battery which also expired shortly thereafter. I replaced the tires with B.F. Goodrich Touring T/As and the battery with a new Motorcraft Premium unit. With the tires warrantied for 85,000 miles and the battery pro-rated for 8 years, neither should have to be changed under our care again.  

And not surprisingly, a few minor problems have cropped up: The intake manifold gasket has started to leak periodically, dripping hot oil onto the exhaust pipe. It’s too small to notice a visible leak so I’ve declined the $450 to fix it. Another $400 repair is the fuel sender unit in the gas tank. Once or twice a year it sticks, making the gas gauge drop to empty. But since thankfully neither affect the drivability like the CVT did, I’m in no rush to throw more money at them.

However, a current expense has been for the air-conditioning compressor which was blowing only warm air. The dealer quoted us a price of $2,000 for a new compressor and to recharge the system, but I managed to replace the scroll-valve in the compressor for $30 and completely fix the problem. The take-away lesson from this is that the stealership would rather sell you a new part than fix an existing one. 

 

Over the summer we spent a week with a 2013 Chrysler Town & Country minivan driving it 2,500 miles round-trip to Washington D.C. and it gave me a new appreciation for the Freestyle. Over the hilly sections of North Carolina and Virginia, the constant upshifts and downshifts of the Chrysler’s conventional automatic really emphasized how smooth a CVT can be when it’s working properly.

Finally, as I was wrapping this article up, it was brought to my attention that the Freestyle needed new brake pads and rotors, a not-insignificant amount that totaled $500. But unlike the fuel sender unit or intake manifold gasket, it’s not a repair that could be postponed. And with news of the Freestyle’s transmission woes torpedoing resale values (a dealer recently offered us just $3600) it’s worth more to keep it than trade it for such an insulting pittance.   

Looking back over the past 100,000-miles of ownership, it’s a real shame about the rear brakes and CVT which were clearly faulty from the factory. And given the whole CVT ordeal, I’ve understandably lost all faith in Ford as a company, as have the majority of Freestyle customers. After owning a 1986 Bronco II, 1990 Mustang GT and now the Freestyle, this is the end of the road for my loyalty to Ford.

Barber Motorsports Park

I was recently in Birmingham on business, so I took the opportunity to (finally) drop by Barber Motorsports Park. Primarily know for its motorcycle museum, I had declined prior visits since I’m not very keen on two-wheeled vehicles. But, I noticed that according to our GPS, it was only 10 miles from the Grandview Marriott where we were staying. However, according to the website, the admission to the museum for my wife, daughter, and myself was $40 which seemed a little steep. After all, that’s how much we paid the day before at the Birmingham Zoo, and Victoria got to feed the parakeets and ride a camel. So, given my frugal nature, I decided to drive the ten miles there and then determine if I thought it warranted the admission price.

Since you can’t drop a race track in the middle of Birmingham, it had to be built in a more rural setting and getting there can be a little confusing. For instance, you head out of Birmingham on I-20, passing through Irondale. Incidentally, Irondale is home to the Irondale Café which was the inspiration for the popular southern move, Fried Green Tomatoes. In fact, it remains open and still serves roughly 60-70 pounds of fried green tomatoes everyday. But since we had just eaten what seemed like 60-70 pounds of cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory, we decided to bypass it. Next, we entered the tiny town of Leeds, which is what the official merchandise  lists as the location for Barber Motorsports Park. However, after a couple miles of rural roads, you eventually come across a sign that states that you are entering into Birmingham again. Despite that, I’m happy to admit that all is forgiven once you gaze upon the magnificent glass and steel facility. Set inside an emerald-green forest of Loblolly pines, it looks like a mirage, like discovering a beautiful oasis in the middle of the Sahara. Even my wife, who typically despises cars for anything other than shopping trips, agreed that it looked worthy of the admission price. 

Exit to Eden

George W. Barber Jr. traces his success back to his father who started the dairy business in Alabama during the height of the Great Depression. Over the next few decades, Barber’s business grew and today it’s the oldest dairy in Alabama. I can vividly recall drinking Barber’s Chocolate Milk in grade school and even now, the brand has a 92% recognition rate. This success helped subsidize Barber’s love for motorcycles and in 1988 he began the journey of moving his private collection into a permanent museum. As fate would have it, I actually enjoyed a private viewing of Barber’s collection in 1994 when it was housed in a non-descript building in downtown Birmingham. The occasion was a Ferrari meet and Barber had graciously hosted our dinner there. Later that year, he opened it up to the public before building the new complex in 2003. Even with charitable exemptions, it’s been estimated that Barber invested $54 million of his own personal fortune to fund the park.  

Last year, Barber Motorsports Park celebrated it's tenth anniversary and has quickly developed a reputation as a world-class operation. It’s hosted the Porsche Sport Driving School since opening, was used for filming of the new Need For Speed movie, and was instrumental in developing the new $75,000 Camaro Z/28. In fact, the week before we arrived, the Guinness Book of World Records organization was there, presenting the museum with the award for the world's largest collection of vintage and contemporary motorcycles. That official count was 1,398 but one of the security guards mentioned that there are another “80 to 90” stashed away in the basement. He said plans are to hopefully build another room to display them in the future. It’s hard to believe that with 5 levels in the Museum they don’t have enough room, but a quick look confirms that floor space here is rarer than Tokyo real estate.

We arrived on a Tuesday afternoon and had the entire museum to ourselves except for two other visitors. One was an American, about my age, but of slighter build. We briefly chatted and it was clear he was not very knowledgeable about exotic cars. The other attendee asked me to take his picture in front of one of the motorcycles. He volunteered that he was from Guatemala and that it had taken him 17 days to get here. That’s not surprising since the park drew 270,000 visitors last year and offers exhibits from more than 16 countries.

Aside from all the motorcycles (of which a significant portion are Harley Davidson), it’s clear Barber is also enamored with Lotus. There are no fewer than 60 of these, making the Barber Museum also the world’s largest collection of Lotus race cars. Upon viewing all of them, I lamented to my wife that I certainly wished he had been as passionate about Ferraris. That notwithstanding, there was one Ferrari present, a pristine, silver 1972 Dino 246 GT. The previously unloved Dino has become something of an overnight success story for lucky owners recently. Ferrari purists originally scorned the Dino due to its perceived lack of pedigree, which was punctuated by a lowly six-cylinder and a missing “Ferrari” name plate. However, the past few years have seen the prices skyrocket faster than shares of Telsa stock. Even into the late 1980s, a Dino could be bought for close to its original MSRP of $14,500. But now, concours-quality examples are trading for $500,000, representing one of the best Ferrari investments of all time. 

Barber also has a strong relationship with retired British Formula 1 driver, John Surtees. Surtees holds the unique distinction of being the only person in the world to win a Grand Prix championship on both a motorcycle and a car. As such, there are several showcases devoted to him including a classic Ferrari 158, the vehicle in which he won the F1 World Championship in 1964. Unfortunately, the Ferrari had been shipped to Europe to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the championship, so it was sadly not on display.

The actual 2.38-mile race course and its 16 turns is where the real fun begins. The surrounding 740 acres are as beautifully maintained and manicured as Augusta’s fairway. To that end, the painstaking detail extends to the use of a diamond grinder to smooth the surface of the track after each season ends. This tedious process helps prolong the life of the track as well as add grip for the vehicles that race there. 

The day we visited, the track was closed and security was tight. Did I mention that the guards actually carry firearms? The 1-day Porsche High Performance Driving School costs $1,800 or roughly what a family of three could expect for a week’s stay at Disney World. Those courses offered culminate in a 2-day, $12,000 package more suited for professional racers than weekend amateurs. But it does include track time in a Porsche 911 Turbo and GT3 Cup Car which almost makes it worth it. However, the real highlight of my visit came from watching the new Porsche Macan being exercised on the track. I was told that a group of journalists were in town to do a story on the new Porsche SUV and were spending the day lapping the course in it.

Originally, Porsche’s smaller new SUV was called the “Cajun”, which many thought was an Acadian follow-up to it’s successful Cayenne model. That begged the question if future models might be christened the “Tabasco” or “Coonass”, but it turned out that “Cajun” was a clever portmanteau of “Cayenne” and  “Junior”. Porsche claims that “Macan” was sourced from the Indonesian term for tiger. Unfortunately, their hopes of a dazzling model introduction with real tigers has turned into a Donald Sterling-sized PR nightmare. The hullabaloo began when PETA got wind of Reeves Porsche in Tampa, Florida using three week-old tiger cubs to promote the SUV. Concerned for the cubs’ welfare, PETA contacted Porsche officials who agreed to suspend the whole affair, including an event at Hennessey Porsche in Atlanta with a full-grown tiger.

Regardless, the Macan is a hit in Europe and the Middle East, selling 2,000 units in its first month. It officially goes on sale in North American this summer and seems a perfect fit for the white-hot U.S. crossover market. Based on the Audi Q5, the Macan is the first Porsche to utilize a four-cylinder since the 1995 968. However, Porsche enthusiasts desiring more can opt for a 400hp Turbo model that lives up to the marquee’s legacy.

I’m sure there are not many places in the world that offer a first-rate racing facility in such a remote location. In fact, Barber must have been quite a salesman to convince stoic Porsche execs to open their premier driving school in backwater Leeds. I can only imagine the horror on their German faces when they first landed, smack dab between such redneck afflictions as the giant Bass Pro Shop and Rusty’s Bar-B-Q (Motto: We Smoke The Good Stuff!). They must have thought their plane went down faster than Lynyrd Skynyrd’s and they ended up in Hillbilly Hell. Despite that, the improbable business marriage between American Dairy Magnate and Teutonic Automaker has been wildly successful. The museum is cleaner than some hospitals I’ve visited and the on-track activities make it a Disney World for adults. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend visiting it. The breathtaking inventory alone is worth the price of admission.

 

 

 

Saturn Ion Stage 2 Dyno

It’s been hit or miss for the past year as I’ve been trying to line-up a day to take the Red Line in for an updated dyno reading. My first (and last) dyno was in November 2010, just a few months after I had bought it. Save for a drop-in K&N air filter, it was bone stock and it blew 238 horsepower and 209 torque through the factory catalytic converter. Dyno readings can be a little confusing because they measure horsepower at the wheels. But when a manufacturer quotes their horsepower for a certain model, they always use the power developed at the flywheel. This creates better advertising since flywheel horsepower is before drivetrain losses and is usually about 15% higher. For instance, the new 2015 Subaro WRX STi is advertised as having 305 hp but dynoed at 247 hp. Now, the 15% is a standardized formula and no two engines behave exactly the same, but the 15% correction factor is widely recognized as the most accurate way to calculate the difference between power made at the flywheel and the drive wheels.

With that fuzzy math in place, my stock Red Line produced 273 flywheel hp, some 68 more that the factory estimate of 205. Granted, that is quite a bit more but GM’s guilty of famously underrating engines in the past for insurance reasons, and several other stock Red Lines have dynoed similar numbers. In fact, a dyno chart provided by GM even shows the RL’s power curve peaking around 6000 rpm and declining thereafter. On my last dyno, there is no peak, just a continued upward trajectory until the 6500 rpm redline when the rev-limiter cuts fuel to the engine. The Stage 2 upgrade raises the redline to 7000 rpm allowing the engine to continue making power. Larger injectors (42 lb vs. 34 lb) and a lighter, smaller supercharger pulley (Aluminum 2.9 in. vs. Cast Iron 3.35 in.) supply the necessary fuel and air. Finally, a long-tube header replaces the restrictive exhaust manifold and catalytic converter to help evacuate the spent gases as fast as possible.

But what these mechanical ministrations add up to have been quite a mystery until now. GM claims an increase of 36 hp for the Stage 2 package, but a dyno test by Modified Magazine demonstrated only a gain of 24 hp. And as for the long tube header, Modern Performance tested it and came away with a peak reading of 8 hp.

The Friday before the dyno test was Valentine’s Day, and I was in Wal-Mart buying seven quarts of Mobil 1 so I would have fresh oil for the punishing dyno runs. In front of me was a whole herd of henpecked husbands dutifully buying discounted flowers and cheap chocolates. When it was my turn to checkout, I placed the motor oil on the counter and quipped, “This is what I’m buying my wife for Valentine’s!” as loudly as possible. The elderly sales clerk stopped, looked at me, and then responded, “You can buy that for her, but I sure wouldn’t recommend it!”

With the bipolar weather the South has recently been cursed with, Monday dawned bright and balmy. Naturally, I was hoping for some of the chilly weather we had experienced the week before, since cooler air is more supercharger-friendly but that was not the case. I made the ten minute-drive to Johnson Motorsports (JMS), and in the nearly 35 years I’ve been in Hurley, it remains the sole significant place that I can brag about living close to. Everything else requires a minimum thirty minute drive east, south or west. 

Housed in a non-descript metal building with a barbed-wire fence, JMS is one of the premier aftermarket tuning facilities in the world. Yet, given the unassuming outward appearance you would never know it. The only tip-off is a small sign out front and a steady stream of high-performance cars that pack it’s parking lot. On the day I was there, it was mostly Mustangs, some of which had come from as far away as Louisiana and Tennessee. But the previous week, there was an exotic Ford GT that had been massaged to produce 1100 hp, or roughly double what it originally came with. A retina-searing Chrome Yellow with black racing stripes, it looked like it was going 200 mph just sitting still. Amazingly, it still had the stock clutch and was only now in for a stronger replacement. With an MSRP of $150,000 and just 4,000 built between 2004-2006, it remains the only modern Ford immune to depreciation.

Prior to the dyno runs, the mechanics had some problems getting my car properly lined up. Monty Johnson, the owner, admitted that front wheel-drive cars tend to move around on the dyno and as such, he’s much more comfortable with an 800 hp rear wheel-drive car than a 300 hp front wheel-drive car. Before the first pull, I asked him to observe a 6500 rpm limit so we could see where the air/fuel mixture was. Like all Saturns, the Red Line runs rich from the factory as a safety feature. The stock dyno runs illustrated this when the air/fuel ratio dipped into the 10s during the test. Ideally, you want a stoichiometric air-fuel ratio (14.7:1) off idle and cruising, and a leaner (11.8:1) under wide-open throttle. However, by running an unorthodox 2.9 supercharger pulley, I’m taking a risk that the fuel injectors might not be able to keep up with the demand as the engine reaches it’s 7000 rpm redline. And a lack of adequate fuel at such a stratospheric limit could potentially end with a catastrophic failure (i.e. blown engine). 

When my Saturn was finally ready for the first tentative run, it looked like an open-heart patient. With the hood popped, there were no fewer than three thick cables running from the engine bay: The first was the cable intercepting the tachometer signal, the second was to read the air/fuel mixture and the third one was new, a cable they had to splice-in which could display the supercharger’s boost (PSI).

Monty started my car, commenced giving it gas, and the front wheels began slowly turning the huge drums. He methodically shifted through the first three gears before he flattened the accelerator in fourth. The engine began rising to a crescendo, and it was here that I fully understood how much louder it was without the sound-deadening properties of the cast-iron exhaust manifold and the catalytic converter. It was roaring like Hurricane Isaac and in the small enclosed shed, it sounded akin to a giant circular saw slicing through sheet metal. After a seeming eternity, Monty lifted at 6500 rpm and I stole a glance at the monitor which read 269 hp and 242 tq, increases of 31 hp and 33 tq over stock. He also pointed out that the supercharger had made a maximum boost of 18.5 PSI, quite an improvement over the factory 12 PSI.   

After studying the air/fuel ratio and determining it was safe to press on, Monty was convinced there was more left in the final 500 rpm. Unfortunately, he didn’t allow it any time to cool down and these cars are notorious for heat soak. The second run, Monty took it to an ear-drum shattering 7000 rpm but maximum power dropped to 266 indicating that the extreme temperatures were causing the engine to pull timing on the top-side.

He immediately moved a mobile air conditioner in front of the radiator to pump cooling air into it, and directed a huge fan to blow on the engine. He came back in ten minutes for the final run, even though after four years of driving it, I knew it was no where near cool enough.  

Regardless, he pushed the engine until it bounced off the rev-limiter at 7100 rpm, but it paid off as it spun the rollers to 270 hp (or 310 flywheel) from 20.3 PSI of boost. Personally, I was hoping for 275 at the wheels, and I think that was attainable had the weather been more conducive and it was given enough time to cool down. For instance, the conditions during my first dyno in November 2010 were much drier and cooler. 

That notwithstanding, Monty and the mechanics present agreed that it was still a heroic output for a stock 2.0-liter engine originally designed twelve years ago. Current engines such as the 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder in the Focus ST benefit from new technologies such as direct-injection and variable valve-timing that help boost horsepower. But even tested the same week at JMS, a friend’s tuned 2013 Focus ST only made 241 to the wheels. Monty also mused how far four-cylinders had come with mine as it makes the same horsepower as a 2010 Mustang GT V8, but weighs 1000 lbs less. I also told him not to forget that it gets 30 mpg, a feat no supercar can replicate at any price. In fact, following the three wide-open throttle runs from idle to redline, it still turned in 28 mpg at the next fill up. Click the picture below for the full, record-setting dyno run. 

Caffeine & Octane 2013

I recently spent a week in our nation’s capital, and as Marion Berry, the crack-smoking ex-Mayor once observed, “If you take out the killings, Washington actually has a very very low crime rate.” Fortunately, we didn’t encounter any of that but rather it was the traffic congestion that was so horrendous. Perpetual roadwork on I-95 meant that at one time we spent nearly two hours in traffic to go just 30 miles. Understandably, this can be quite an inconvenience when you have to cover 1000 miles each way.  

While exotic cars were few and far between (I spotted an Aston Martin Vanquish Convertible in Georgetown) I managed to hit the Caffeine & Octane event in Atlanta on the way back. I covered this event last year and it does not disappoint.  The emphasis is on exotics and muscle cars, and where else can you see a circa 1960s Mercury Cougar race a Ferrari F430 and Porsche 911 down I-75?

Caffeine & Octane is held the first Sunday of every month and the weather on that early August morning couldn’t have been nicer. The event officially kicks off at 8 a.m. but I stumbled out of the Marriott behind it at 6:15 when it was still dark and found the parking venue was already half-full. Larry the Cable Guy once joked that even a cheerleader couldn’t arouse him out of bed at 5 a.m. and I feel the same way. But despite dragging in from D.C. just five hours earlier, I was determined not to miss it.

Off in the distance, I could hear the quiet morning being shattered by random bursts of high-pitched acceleration as the cars drew closer. Only owners and enthusiasts with gasoline in their veins are dedicated enough to sacrifice a Sunday morning for this. And at Caffeine & Octane, the mantra “If it’s too loud, you’re too old” doesn’t apply to music but to a car’s exhaust system. Georgia has smog testing but clearly there were a lot of clever individuals who had circumvented it as the air was rife with the sweet smell of race gas and horsepower. 

BEVERLY HILLS CONVERTIBLE: I was hoping for a good Ferrari turnout so I could see some newer models such as the 458 Italia and 599 in the flesh. Unfortunately, the sole new 2013 Ferrari California there was more country-club cruiser than racetrack corner-carver. Introduced in 2008, this 2+2 hardtop convertible resurrects the "California" name used on the 1950s Ferrari 250 GT (a model some may remember from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). It has been speculated that this vehicle was originally destined for Maserati until high manufacturing costs forced Fiat to rebadge it as a Ferrari. Nevertheless, it represents a number of production firsts for a Ferrari such as direct gasoline injection, a folding metal roof, multi-link rear suspension, a seven-speed dual clutch transmission and a 480hp front-engine V8.      

DOG DAY AFTERNOON: “You Lucky Dog!” takes on a literal meaning as this pit bull looks pensively from the passenger seat of a Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Thankfully, Michael Vick was not driving  but the thought of the dog’s claws digging into the soft Alcantara seats makes baby Jesus cry. The GT3 designation comes from the FIA European race series of the same name and signifies a lightweight model stripped of such luxuries as air-conditioning, rear seats, sunroof and sound deadening materials. The RS for “Racing Sport” lightens it further with a carbon fiber hood and rear wing, ceramic composite brakes and a polycarbonate rear window. The bizarre orange-on-black color scheme also attests to either a really strange fascination with Halloween or a history of bad decisions such as letting a canine ride in a $100,000 sports car.   

STRIKING DISTANCE: I can now cross this off my automotive bucket list as I’ve been wanting to see one since they debuted last fall. However, the Gunmetal Pearl paint and the $5000 racing stripes are not a combination I would have chosen. With “Dodge” noticeably dropped from the name, the 2013 SRT Viper slithers on with a 640hp 6.4-liter V10 and numerous upgrades and improvements over the last generation.  Standard amenities now include electronic stability control, traction control, xenon projector headlamps and LED daytime running lights, turn signals and tail lamps. Despite being slightly slower than the Corvette ZR-1 around a racetrack, the Viper remains the most visually arresting domestic available.

BLACK SUNSHINE: Regardless of sporting the oldest design here, this 2004 Porsche Carrera GT was easily my top pick at this year’s Caffeine & Octane. Like the Viper, it also uses a V10 that generates 612hp and traces its roots back to the 1992 Formula One Footwork team. Strangely, the Carrera GT’s development was stalled in 1999 so Porsche could focus on its new mass-market Cayenne SUV. However, interest in the project and revenue from the Cayenne allowed Porsche to build 1,270 units with 604 of those coming to North America. In tribute to its Le Man heritage, the Carrera GT’s ignition is to the left of the steering wheel and has a wooden gear knob similar to the one in the legendary Porsche 917. 

WEAPON OF MASS DISTRACTION: The highest horsepower award goes to this 2006 Ford Shadrach Mustang GT by Pure Power Motorsports. Surprisingly, this bruiser-blue pony make 900hp from the factory 4.6-liter V8 courtesy of twin water-to-air Precision turbochargers, dual water-to-air intercoolers, a Metco billet turbo plenum and a Kinsler 8-Stack injection system. And keeping the highly-stressed engine in one piece are (among other things) forged aluminum pistons and Manley H-beam connecting rods. It may not be pretty, but it sure is powerful!

DUKW DYNASTY: This was the only vehicle I actually rode in (aside from the 2013 Chrysler Town & Country we rented) but it was faster in the water than anything else here. The DUKW (colloquially known as “Duck”) is part of DC Ducks, a company that offers 90-minute land and sea tours of the city. Originally built after the invasion of Pearl Harbor in 1942, it was the bastard offspring of a British deep water sailor, a Lieutenant from MIT, and a yacht designer. Powered by a GMC 270 cubic-inch six-cylinder, it weighs 6.5 tons and has a top speed of 50 mph on the highway and 6 mph in the water. Unfortunately, ours was missing its original .50-caliber machine gun which is something I would have loved for the traffic jams.   

Nvidia GTX 670 Benchmarks

With Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli promising that Crysis 3 will "melt your PC" due to its uncompromising next-generation visuals, I recently upgraded to Nvidia's GTX 670. Truth be told, I was a little astonished when I realized my GTX 570 would be blowing out its second candle in a couple months. It's done so well in recent games like Borderlands 2, Dishonored and Far Cry 3 that I tended to forget its age. But it was the arrival this year of brand new benchmarks such as 3DMark 13 and Unigine Valley that emphasized just how long 20 months can be in the technology industry. Herewith is a look at the generational improvements in moving from the GTX 570 to the GTX 670.

 

YIN & YANG

"Kepler", Nvidia's code name for the 600-series, says as much about the GTX 670 as did the "Fermi" moniker for the Three-Mile Island GTX 480. In 1601, noted scientist Johannes Kepler wrote, "Where there is matter, there is geometry." Unlike Nostradamus, there's no way Kepler had any inclination that four centuries later he would be named after the fastest line of consumer graphics cards the world has ever seen. And while his quote was initially applied to astronomy, it is equally apropos for the 102,480 Million texels per second generated by the GTX 670. He would also not have understood that his namesake video card represents more than just a die shrink from 40nm to 28nm. In fact, this new architecture allowed Nvidia to pack more circuits in less physical area. In the GTX 570, Stream Processors (SM) are the basic building blocks of the graphics pipeline. Inside each Fermi SM block is 32 cores, so with 15 SMs the 570 had a total of 480 Stream Processors. But with the 670, Nvidia redesigned the Stream Processors enabling a whopping 192 cores to fit inside one Kepler SMX. And the extra overhead didn't stop there. Each Kepler SMX also benefits from its own tessellation engine known as Polymorph which contains 16 texture units. These improvements are why the 670 has so many more Stream Processors and Texture Units than the 570.

The only items (on paper) not significantly higher in Kepler are the Raster Operations per second (ROPs) and the Memory Bus Width. Kepler’s ROP count has been reduced from the 40 ROPs of Fermi down to 32 (eight per memory controller). However, this reduction is offset by Kepler’s increased core clock speed. And assuming the basic ROPs are unchanged between the two GPU architectures (which there's nothing to indicate otherwise) 32 Kepler ROPs at 980MHz are still faster than 40 Fermi ROPs at 732MHz. The same goes for the memory interfaces-- Fermi's 320-bit memory interface has been replaced with Kepler's 256-bit. Impressively, Nvidia has managed to push this GDDR5 to excessively high frequencies, with the GTX 670's 2GB’s memory running at 6GHz. This means that despite the reduced memory interface, the 670's resulting memory bandwidth is still higher than the GTX 570.

 

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

 

Additionally, the GTX 670 sports a new feature known as Bindless Textures. While previous Nvidia GPUs were restricted to 128 simultaneous textures, Kepler removes that limitation and allows up to 1 million simultaneous textures. Another great Kepler feature is TXAA which stands for Temporal Anti-Aliasing. This technology will be quite a boon for games as it improves the image quality without sacrificing performance. With TXAA, the sampling pattern is spread out over multiple frames. By doing this, the effect is better image quality than even 8x MSAA, but with a performance hit similar to just 2x MSAA. Lastly, Kepler introduces Adaptive Vsync which is basically an intelligent form of vsync. Without vsync, screen tearing can be very distracting, but enabling it locks the refresh rate and hurts performance. Nvidia's Adaptive Vsync ties the frame rate to the refresh rate like traditional vsync until it detects a drop below the standard refresh rate. Then it temporarily disables it until the framerate reaches the standard refresh rate again. Nvidia claims this creates a much smoother overall experience. These hardware improvements make Kepler a compelling purchase, even without the raw performance boost over a GTX 570.

 

Remarkably, the 670 is nearly an inch longer than the 570 it replaces, and as such necessitates that the dual six-pin power connectors be moved from the end of the card to remedy clearance issues. With an Antec 1000 Server case, I've never had to worry about a video card not fitting, but I can certainly see how it might present a problem for smaller enclosures.

In my July 2011 review of the 570, I complained that PNY's installation disk contained drivers that were five-months old. Sadly, the 301.42 drivers included for the 670 were left over from May 24, 2012, nearly ten months ago! I stress this point because updated drivers can make or break a game. For instance, Nvidia rolled out brand new 314.07 drivers optimized specifically for Crysis 3 that improve performance by up to 65%. I can't imagine anyone who pays $400 for a GTX 670 would load the drivers from the disc, but if they do, they are needlessly sacrificing performance. I was hoping at least that the disc included the "A New Dawn" program designed to showcase the abilities of the 670, but I was not so lucky. Instead, I was forced to download the 772 MB demo. Regrettably, the disc looks to be a carbon copy that has been circulating since 2007 with only new drivers added every year or so. Based on my experience with the 570, and now my 670, PNY builds solid hardware. However, the department that cranks out the installation discs is another matter all together.

 

BENCHMARKS

All tests were run on my system which consists of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with a Core i7 3770 overclocked to 4.0 GHz, GIGABYTE GA-Z77-D3H mainboard, OCZ Fatal1ty 750W power supply, OCZ Vertex 4 SSD and G.Skill 8GB PC1600 DDR3 memory. For both cards, I used the newest 314.07 WHQL drivers from February 18th. Save for Passion Leads Army, all benchmarks were released in February 2013 making them the most current and comprehensive available.

3DMARK 13: It wouldn't be a complete video card test without throwing in 3DMark 13, the newest installment of the world's most popular graphics benchmark. However, the testing methodology is a little different than in years past with a three-tier system that covers everything from mobile devices to laptops to dedicated gaming machines. On the bottom rung is Ice Storm, a DirectX 9 test intended for the most basic hardware such as integrated graphics. Cloud Gate is more advanced with a DirectX 10 feature set designed for a discrete video card. And Fire Strike utilizes next-generation graphics and physics applicable for world-class PCs. In short, Fire Strike is as "Future-Proof" as currently possible and absolutely crippled my 570 with single-digit frame rates. Fortunately, my 670 fared much better with the pyrotechnic benchmark scoring nearly 51% higher.

 

PASSION LEADS ARMY: Released last summer, this is a DirectX 11 Unreal Engine 3 benchmark from Chinese developer Giant IronHorse. It takes the viewer on a whirlwind tour of an ancient oriental city, complete with heavily-tessellated cobblestone walkways and glass storefronts that seemingly explode at random. If there's a message to this demo, it was clearly lost in translation. But like a Godzilla movie, the plot is secondary and the real star is the DX11 eye candy. In fact, the limited benchmark is so good it looks like it came from a North American Triple-A studio and not some communist country situated on the Pacific Rim. Unfortunately, I'm at a loss to explain the slim performance discrepancy between the cards. Both the average and maximum frames per second (FPS) reflect only a meager 20% improvement. As the other benchmarks illustrate, this divide should be closer to 50%. Visually, PLA looks better on the 670 with more realistic lens flare and smoke, but whether this accounts for the missing performance is still unknown.

 

RESIDENT EVIL 6 BENCHMARK: This benchmark is an anomaly in that while I appreciate the complexity of the MT Framework engine, it's a game that I will never play. Gruesome horror shooters such as Dead Island, Dead Space and the Resident Evil series don't appeal to me. That notwithstanding, the graphics are impressive given that Capcom designed this as a straight DX9 title, an obvious nod to its console roots. However, the stress test comes from rendering over 100 zombies on screen at one time in a scene reminiscent of the World War Z trailer. Despite the older API architecture, RE6 at 1920x1080 with FXAA 3HQ drags even the 670 down. Judging by the proprietary score, the 570 is 56% slower here.

 

UNIGINE VALLEY: Released within a week of chief competitor 3DMARK, this new iteration builds on the popularity of its sibling product, Unigine Heaven, with an all-new benchmark. Unlike Heaven's utopia in the clouds, Valley is literally down to earth as it focuses on grasslands and heavily wooded forests where environmental effects such as rain and wind tax even the most powerful video cards. A few times my 570 briefly climbed above the 30 FPS threshold, but overall it recorded just 25.5 FPS at the Extreme HD Preset (1920x1080 8xAA). With the 670 at the same settings, it averaged 38.1 FPS. As a whole, the performance delta between both cards was 56%.

CONCLUSION

A couple weeks after I bought it, I was casually checking some websites when the entire display suddenly blacked out. My first thought was that we'd lost power, but after a few seconds it popped back up with the message "The Nvidia driver driver stopped responding and has recovered". I didn't think much about it until it happened again about five minutes later. At this point, I was beginning to be concerned that I had a faulty new graphics card. Thinking maybe it was a corrupted display driver, I downloaded the latest Beta drivers released the day before. Initially, this seemed to stop the problem until it returned thirty minutes later. Then, as I was deleting the temporary folder created by the beta Nvidia drivers, I noticed a new folder created right around the time I started having problems. I discovered the folder was tied to a running process called IEHighutil.exe. This process was causing my video card to overheat and when it did, it would stop and restart. Unbelievably, I determined it was stealing my GPU cycles for Bitcoin mining using Poclbm, a python-based OpenCL framework that quickly performs the hashing computations. Fortunately, it was simple to remove, but more troubling was how easily it snuck past my three anti-virus programs. The only place I can believe I might have picked it up was when I downloaded the new Tomb Raider game. Incidentally, the Tomb Raider reboot is fantastic, but regrettably arrived too late to be included in the testing.

Coming from a GTX 570, I was concerned that the 670 might be more of a lateral move than a true upgrade. Originally, I had wanted to wait until the new 700 Series was available from Nvidia, but Crysis 3 changed all that. After shelling out $65 for it, I was determined to enjoy it in all its CGI glory. That meant buying a new video card and the PNY GTX 670 fit the bill. Unfortunately, as the benchmarks illustrate, the 670 is not the leap forward I was looking for. The continuing improvements in graphics and image quality have helped nullify the corresponding hardware advances. As such, the perceived progress between video cards becomes less than what we're accustomed to. As with any high-end toy, it all boils down to having to pay if you want to play. 

 

  

 

 

BURGER DASH

You may remember that this time last year I had a street race with a mysterious Honda. It inexplicably imploded not far into our highway match, thereby leaving me with an ambiguous victory. The intervening twelve months have been pretty uninspiring, thanks in no small part to the State of Mississippi funneling $7 million of our tax-dollars into over 100 new members of the Highway Patrol. With this, each of the six southern counties saw their Gestapo-like presence swell from 16 to 36 full-time officers. And these new recruits have been patrolling the roads with all the zealousness of the Third Reich, convinced they are saving the world one traffic ticket at a time.

The evening began innocently enough with me picking up my mother for our first visit to the new Edd's Drive-in located in Wade. A Pascagoula family institution since 1953, the residents of north Jackson county have been salivating over their new location since the announcement in 2010. My mom has ridden in my car only a handful of times, so as I pulled onto Highway 63 I instructed her to watch the boost gauge on my Aeroforce Interceptor. I explained that under normal conditions, the boost gauge displays the manifold vacuum pressure, but under full-throttle the number quickly jumps from negative to positive as the intake manifold pressure exceeds atmospheric pressure. After a quick blast through second-gear, I pointed out that the supercharger generated 15.1 PSI but I could tell that number didn't mean a thing to her. Instead, she was just excited that her sun visor was equipped with a mirror.

After a year of inconsistent operation, my cruise-control finally stopped working so I've been having to manually keep the accelerator pedal down until the new part arrives. While this isn't too bad, it's much harder to keep my lead foot at a safe and prudent speed. Previously, I had relied on the cruise-control for this, so it's been a bit of a challenge lately. But as I was squirming around trying to comfortably position the gas pedal, I spotted a sinister-looking Camaro pulling up to the highway.

It was as black as a coal chamber and a vintage model at that. I literally did a double-take because it looked like something I'd see at a classic car show, not roaming the woods in Wade. As I passed by, I glanced behind to see it pull out. Unexpectedly, the backend whip-sawed around. Then it snapped back to the other side as the driver struggled to keep it between the ditches. With driving like that, I was willing to bet that he had me in his crosshairs. However, I maintained the speed limit as I watched him draw closer and closer, until the Camaro's visage completely filled my rear-view mirror.

From the profile, I could tell it was a '69 and I saw the red and silver Z/28 emblem on the grille. But muscle-cars like these are always a gamble; I'd seen enough to know that it could be packing anything from a mild 302 all the way up to a monstrous 454 V8. Still, I wasn't going to let him bully me and if I was going down, it wouldn't be without a fight.

We were stopped at a red light, there was a truck in front of me, and my mind was running through a thousand different scenarios, none of which I hoped ended with me going to jail for street racing. As the light turned green, I cautiously pulled away but couldn't do anything yet with the truck ahead of me. Meanwhile, the Camaro was lurking right behind me, like a black panther waiting to pounce. Around 40mph, the truck moved over, inviting an empty lane ahead. As we passed the truck, the right lane opened up as well, save for a car that was maybe an eighth-mile ahead. Suddenly, the Camaro darted into the right lane and I knew it was now or never. Instinctively, I nailed the throttle and realized I was in a gear too high, fourth instead of third. This observation hit me with stunning clarity as the Camaro roared alongside. And like my life flashing before me eyes, I had a brief moment to reflect on what was possibly wrong with the picture: I recognized that the wrong gear and the extra 200 lbs my car was encumbered with, courtesy of my mother and a full tank of gas, might possibly be the nail in my coffin.

The Camaro was pulling ahead and my front bumper was at his door. I stole a quick glance at the tachometer and saw it was passing 4500rpm, still some 2500rpm before my engine develops maximum power. But up ahead, the solitary straggler in the right lane was looming fast. If I could hold off the Camaro for just a couple more seconds, he would have to hit the brakes and concede defeat.

With my foot flat against the accelerator, and the supercharging continuing to build boost, I froze the angry Camaro from pulling away. Perhaps two-seconds passed-- although it seemed like an eternity-- and the Camaro was hard on the brakes, swerving in behind me to avoid rear-ending the hapless motorist.

"HA!" my mother exclaimed in a surprising outburst of solidarity.

Just then, the turn-off for Edd's was in front of me and I began slowing for it. The Camaro blew past, its full-throttle exhaust an effigy of failure. My mom observed, "There goes your friend!" To which I replied, "He's not my friend, but I bet he sure was shocked that this little four-cylinder kicked his V8 ass!" Some research later turned up that the '69 Z28's solid-lifter 302 was conservatively rated at 290hp but a host of options (twin 600-cfm Holleys with a cross-ram manifold, 4.10:1 gears and Chambered exhaust pipes) made it a potent performer. A quarter-mile time of 14.8 seconds at 101 mph is given which sounds about right for what I saw. Regardless, I'd love a side-by-side rematch in third gear with no passenger and no interference from the local gendarmerie.

Aside from the twenty-minute wait to order, and the forty-minutes to receive our "fast food", dinner at Edd's was unremarkable-- the hamburgers were tiny, the fries were stale and the cold drinks were warm. But the night was certainly memorable for my mother who, at eighty-years young, got to experience her first highway drag race!

Little Red Corvette

Although we all know Prince's Little Red Corvette from his "1999" album is not actually about a car, I still couldn't resist using that song title as it's so appropriate for the Corvette I drove recently. The occasion was East Central's Homecoming parade on September 27th and Victoria was eligible to ride in it since she won "Tiny Miss Hurley 2012" at Old-Fashion Day. I had contemplated using the del Sol but it really wasn't suitable since it's a targa top, and not a true convertible. Fortunately, my brother-in-law's father graciously volunteered the use of his red 1999 Corvette convertible.  

The fifth-generation Corvette, or C5 as it is commonly called, was built from 1997-2004 and to my eyes looks much better than the more-angular current model. The deep-red, sweeping front fenders and signature hidden headlights make it look like it should be wearing a prancing horse emblem instead of a bowtie. In comparison, the C6 has exposed headlamps which don't look quite as exotic. 

Despite driving a lot of performance cars in my life, I've had surprisingly little experience with Corvettes. In college, my girlfriend's mother owned a black '74 Stingray, but I hadn't driven another Corvette since then. Truthfully speaking, the Stingray wasn't anything to brag about as it was very hot, loud, and always breaking down. In what could be considered heresy in the Corvette cult, she traded it in on a Lincoln Towncar.  

At an Auto-Show in 1993, I sat in a new LT1 Corvette and was instantly turned-off by the hard, low seating and the worst visibility this side of a Sherman Tank. Since that time, I've held a preconceived notion that all Corvettes were similarly uncomfortable. So, there was some trepidation as I slid into the black leather seat and proceeded to start the car. The first thing I noticed was that, like Porsches, the ignition is actually on the dash instead of the steering column. I twisted the key and the V8 instantly fired up with a familiar rumble. It settled into a steady idle and I was surprised by how quite it was. There was barely a burble from the four exhaust pipes protruding out from under the license plate. Clearly, the factory exhaust hadn't been touched, right down to the stock catalytic converters.

I grabbed the thick leather-wrapped shifter and pulled it back into reverse. The venerable 4L60-E automatic transmission engaged with a heavy, solid clunk and the Corvette began easing backwards.  After a few feet, I shifted into drive and pulled onto the highway. At low-revs and part-throttle, it felt surprisingly civil and (almost) ordinary. Prior to pick-up, the owner had admonished my wife to exercise caution because he said the rear-end could step-out in the blink of an eye. He clarified that he wasn't so much worried about the car getting hurt as he was my seven year-old daughter. However, in my time with it, I discovered that only with the most careless application of the throttle could the car become dangerous.

Although standard on my 2006 Ion Redline, the C5 was the first Corvette to incorporate a drive-by-wire throttle and speed-sensitive steering. Around some low-speed curves, it felt remarkably stable and planted, and it's no wonder with the nearly ten-inch wide 275/40 ZR-18 tires on the back. Originally, all C5s came with Goodyear Eagle Run-Flat tires which were intended more for weight-savings than performance. On this car, they had been replaced by grippy Nitto tires which I'm sure helped the acceleration and handling even more. 

 

The heart of any Corvette is always the engine, and the C5 was the last to have a small-block 350 under the clamshell hood. Despite the low-tech, overhead-valve design, the pushrod V8 still manages to crank out 345 horsepower at 5600rpm and 350 lb-ft torque at 4400rpm. And thanks to extensive use of composite fiberglass, magnesium wheels, and even balsa wood in the floor boards, the weight is kept at a relatively svelte 3,282 lbs. That low-mass gives it a 0-60 sprint of 4.9 seconds as well as a quarter-mile time of around 13.2 seconds at 109 mph. Top speed of the convertible has been observed by Car and Driver as 160mph, though truthfully you probably wouldn't want to go more than 125mph with the top down. Regardless, those are world-class numbers and despite being more than a decade old, still in line with what a 2013 Camaro SS or Mustang 5.0 will run right off the showroom floor. 

               

With the shiny red paint and just 87,000 miles on the odometer, the Corvette had obviously been well-cared for. And from afar it might even be mistaken for a new model. But one thing's for sure, and that is everyone loves a red Corvette convertible. Whether I was at the high school, the coffee shop, or the Lotta Burger parking lot, it never failed to draw a crowd. As I was driving it home after picking it up, my neighbor who never speaks suddenly shouted "Nice car!" and waiting in the parade line-up, an East Central freshman admitted that it was his dream car. Two teenagers even drove 100mph in their V6 Mustang to catch me for a closer look. There's also the Corvette cachet whereby passing Corvette owners give a friendly wave and smile. Similarly, traffic-blocking maneuvers that would normally elicit an angry honk and a raised middle finger from other motorists are replaced with unprecedented patience and courtesy.  

The afternoon was particularly hot for late September and the parade route entailed roughly three miles through downtown Hurley at nothing more than 5 mph with frequent stops. I cautiously eyed the temperature gauge the entire time but it thankfully never got above 230 degrees (with a redline at 260). However, the cooling fans operated almost constantly and the carpeted transmission tunnel that runs between the two seats radiated enough BTUs to bake a Thanksgiving turkey. Granted, it's kind of crazy to run the air-conditioning in a convertible, but with the ambient temperature in the high 80s and the transmission tunnel doubling as a space heater, I sure thought about it.   

On the highway, with room to run, the Corvette is a red rocket. Plant the throttle at 60mph and the 4L60-E automatic responds with a sledgehammer blow that sends the car hurtling forward. However, the brilliant red paint also makes it as conspicuous around Hurley as a U.F.O. so prudence is advised. The Corvette is actually more fun in town where its tugboat-torque makes for neck-snapping acceleration. The steamroller rear tires dig in and the car shoots ahead like a NFL field-goal kick. 

The Vette really is an everyday exotic. It's sacrilege to admit, but after a few minutes of driving it, you completely forget about the flashy exterior. The seats are comfortable, the driving position is good, and there is ample leg-room. Personally, I've never been a fan of chrome wheels, but they complement the Corvette's flamboyant character. And on this car they look much better than the popular powder-coated or anodized wheels. Visually speaking, perhaps the only thing I'd change is the quadruple tail pipes. I like them, but I'm not fond of the bare stainless steel finish. They definitely could use some chrome tips. The Corvette was also largely trouble-free, except for an episode in my garage when the pop-up headlights wanted to do just that. They seemingly had a mind of their own and it didn't matter if I turned the headlights on or off. Finally, I coaxed them down but I wondered it if was a recurring problem?  

The evening sun was setting and it was time for me to return the Corvette. Despite spending just the afternoon with it, my wife, daughter and I had all grown attached to it. "Daddy, can we keep it?" my daughter asked innocently, as if inquiring about a lost puppy she'd just found.  I laughed and tried to explain to her that as a family, we needed a vehicle with more than two seats and a tiny trunk. But I understood what she was feeling, because I felt the same fondness for it. The Corvette might be the quintessential American sports car, but it's also a great car in general. And if it just happened to have four seats, it would be perfect.           

 

Poison Ivy: Benchmarking Intel's new Core i7 CPU

After a phenomenal four-year stretch, I'm finally as far as I can go on Intel's P45 architecture. I've really savored being able to squeeze this much use out of the same platform and the result is quite a lot of improvements for my new processor, an Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770.

Truthfully speaking, I knew it was time to upgrade when I recently tested a 3.3GHz Core i3-2120 processor in our new entry-level Dell Optiplex 790 workstation. Despite the budget-nature of the PC, the eighteen month-old Sandy Bridge CPU proved to be a tough competitor for my overclocked 3.3GHz Q9650. I figured the i3's newer architecture and same clockspeed would make the single-threaded tests close. But with it being a dual-core, I figured my quad-core would walk it in the multi-threaded tests. However, much to my surprise the two additional threads courtesy of Intel's Hyper-Threading (HT) technology enabled the Core i3 to keep pace. As embarrrasing as it was, the Core i3 with just two physical cores was clearly as fast-- or faster-- than my four-core Q9650. It was a humbling defeat for my once-mighty processor at the hands of Intel's $125 upstart.

MATERIAL SCIENCE

Still, it wasn't altogether unexpected given the architectural enhancements that the i3 is blessed with. In fact, taking into account the specs for both CPUs, it doesn't take Stephen Hawking to see that my new Ivy Bridge CPU is smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient. However, the Q9650 does excel in the equity department as even in today's market it fetches almost as much as my new i7 processor.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

Intel's Ivy Bridge represents five generations (Bloomfield>Lynnfield>Sandy Bridge>Sandy Bridge-E>Ivy Bridge) of engineering improvements over my Yorkfield-based Q9650. It also showcases the world’s first use of tri-gate, or 3D transistors. These 3D transistors literally rise up off of the die to dramatically reduce power consumption while increasing performance. But the most significant of these (for me) is the addition of native USB 3.0 support in the Z77 Panther Point chipset on the motherboard. "Panther Point" is Intel's name for the 7-series line and an onboard USB 3.0 controller means better compatability and higher performance than an aftermarket offering. Additionally, Panther Point enjoys an upgrade to PCI-E 3.0 which doubles the bandwidth from 500MB/s to 1GB/s. Earlier versions such as Lynnfield and Sandy Bridge were limited by PCI-E bandwidth when sharing memory lanes. Finally, the integrated HD graphics is what Intel's most proud of. Chipzilla has been trying to get this right for over a decade, and the HD 4000 Graphics are almost good enough to make people forget about the horrible i740 integrated graphics. However, buying Panther Point for the onboard video is like buying the Bayeux Tapestry to use as a beach blanket. Granted, the integrated graphics are DirectX 11-compliant (and can actually run 3DMark 11) but only a casual gamer would ever use them. Games like Max Payne 3 will always demand high-end discrete graphics.

 

TECHNOLOGY TSUNAMI

My new Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H motherboard boasts a spec sheet wet with technology at a price that didn't break the bank. Remarkably, it was cheaper than the Gigabyte board it replaced, a GA-EP45-UD3R from 2008. And all three Gigabyte boards I've owned have been rock-solid despite my overclocking antics which is the main reason I bought another one. However, following Gigabyte's history of brightly-hued boards, the wacky blue and white color scheme is definitely an acquired taste. The GA-Z77-D3H is also my first motherboard capable of multiple-GPU gaming, supporting both SLI and Crossfire. Given the inherent problems with juggling dual graphics cards, I think I'll continue with a single-slot solution but it's a nice option if I ever do change my mind.

I'm also admittedly a little behind the times in adopting DDR3 memory. So much so in fact, that a Gateway P-7811FX gaming laptop that I owned in 2008 was equipped with 4GB of DDR3 RAM while my desktop was still lumbering along in 2012 with 4GB DDR2. But with memory prices falling faster than New York propery values after Hurricane Sandy, it's easy to pick up 8GB DDR3 for what I paid for 4GB DDR2 four years ago. And even now, benchmarks prove that 8GB is still overkill so the only real dilemma is picking either 1333, 1600, 1866 or 2133MHz modules. As it turns out, 1333 is on the lowside with a slight performance penalty while 1600 yields the best performance for the dollar. The minor speed increases associated with 1866 and 2133 don't warrant the inflated prices of such boutique memory.

And while I had originally intended to limit my upgrade to just a new processor, motherboard and memory, the project began to speed out of control like a technology tsunami, collecting various other parts along the way. Suddenly, there was a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD sound card swept up in the frenzy. That was followed by an OCZ Fatal1ty 750w power supply with modular cables and a Samsung 24X DVD burner. Finally, the financial erosion of my bank account ceased with an OCZ Vertex 4 SSD. The logic behind this last purchase was simple: The new processor and memory would only be as fast as the hard drive and I was still saddled with a 7200rpm mechanical model. With an SSD, I had to compromise between speed and capacity so I picked the Vertex. This fourth-generation solid-state drive is one of the fastest available and features sustained sequential reads up to 560 MB/s and writes up to 430 MB/s. The fact it was also chosen for Maximum PC's $15,000 2012 Dream Machine didn't hurt either.

CINEBENCH RELEASE 11.5

My last test of this video rendering software (Version 10) two years ago showcased that clockspeed and core-count are equally important for this punishing benchmark. In fact, this program was voted the most likely to send CPU temperatures through the roof once it got started. Rendering the image is deceptively simple, yet as bizarrely effective as waterboarding. Since my GTX 570 video card was the sole component left over from my Q9650 system, I expected little difference in the GPU-dependent OpenGL benchmark. That notwithstanding, it jumped from 42.57 FPS to 57.48 FPS indicating a 35% improvement. And the actual processor test was exactly twice as fast with the Core 2 managing 3.87 PTS to the Core i7's 7.54 PTS. Here, Intel's Hyper-Threading technology really struts its stuff as both processors have four physical cores, but the 3770's eight threads effectively give it the power of an octo-core CPU.

CONVERT X to DVD 4

Counting the aforementioned eight threads at my disposal, this was the benchmark I was most salivating over. Convert X to DVD is perhaps the most popular and complete suite for burning multiple video formats onto DVD, but waiting for the actual conversion is the most tedious part of the process. With my outgoing Q9650, it took 11 minutes to convert a standard 700MB AVI file to a DVD image before burning. But my new system did the deed in a scorching 3.5 minutes which makes it almost 75% faster! The time savings alone justifies the cost of the hardware upgrade to me.

CRYSTAL DISK MARK 3

A republican was in office the last time I purchased a new hard drive, so this is the sole benchmark I've not used before. The unit was a Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s drive that was plenty fast out of the box. But technology is not stagnant, and mechanical hard drives will soon join the scrap heap littered with other obsolete storage technologies such as 1.44MB floppies and Iomega zip drives. Since 2008, solid-state drives have been increasing in speed and size while prices have been declining. Current fourth-gen SSDs are averaging around $1/GB, although you can get a bargain on earlier models if you don't mind sacrificing some performance and stability. And beyond the synthetic benchmark, the results were reflected in real-world file transfers. For instance, when unzipping a game like Dishonored that is eighty 100MB files, it took my old system 8 minutes. However, with the SSD it took under 2 minutes for the same task. More so than any other upgrade, the Vertex swap was the most dramatic. Can you spot the SSD below? (HINT: Faster is better)

WINDOWS EXPERIENCE INDEX

Admittedly, there are more sophisticated applications for determining overall performance than Microsoft's WEI. But it remains an interesting one nonetheless and can be something of a cruel mistress, heavily penalizing the user for perceived indiscretions. In 2008, despite having a blazing-fast dual-core than ran at 3.6GHz, I was docked several percentage points simply because it wasn't a quad-core. On my Q9650, the overall WEI score is a paltry 5.9 (on a scale of 0-7.9) simply because I was still using a 7200rpm hard drive and the composite number reflects the lowest-scoring component in the system. With the 3770, my subscore was an excellent 7.8 with that going to both my memory and CPU. Once again, it seems I just fell short of maxing out the CPU and Memory categories, possibly because I don't have a hexa-core processor nor an excessive amount of RAM.

OVERCLOCKING

With Intel's new Turbo Boost function, traditional overclocking is taking a back seat. After all, upon startup and regular single-threaded tasks the dynamic overclocking automatically adjusts the speed to 3.9GHz. However, I noticed that in multi-core tests the clock-speed was only dropping to 3.7GHz instead of 3.4GHz, which tells me the Gigabyte BIOS was probably overclocking the processor 10%. Gigabyte does include its Easy Tune software which is supposed to automatically adjust the settings for various overclocks, but it kept crashing Windows. Finally, I disabled Turbo Boost and manually bumped the clock ratio from 34x100 to 40x100 which gave me a steady 4GHz. My system has been torture-tested over the past month with several multi-hour Borderlands 2 sessions and I'm proud to report there hasn't been a single hiccup.

CONCLUSION

In my Q9650 review from 2010, I complained about Intel's flimsy plastic fan and heatsink that has no business shipping with a $300+ processor. Surprise, two years later it's still the same cheap design but at least this time it went on much easier. And even running at 4GHz, the temps rarely get above a frosty 40 degrees celsius so I guess I shouldn't grumble too much. And while I expected the star to be the shiny new Ivy Bridge processor, the real surprise was the Vertex 4 SSD which completely blew me (and my existing benchmarks) away. Finally, I could have gotten a similarly-clocked i5 processor and saved $100, but I opted for the top-tier i7 due to the availability of Hyper-Threading. And as the benchmarks illustrate, it was money well spent!

Royal Purple vs. Mobil 1 Oil Analysis

In the field of commercial motor oils, there's a longstanding rivalry between synthetic brands Mobil 1 and Royal Purple. To the brand loyalists, the competition is every bit as fierce as Ford vs. Chevy, Coke against Pepsi or (locally) Alabama opposed to Auburn. Additionally, advocates of each brand feel compelled to dole out unsolicited advice when they see you buying the offending brand. Recently, when I bought six quarts of Royal Purple at my local Advance Auto, I was practically interrogated by the sales clerk who ended the conversation by succinctly stating, "You should have bought Mobil 1" even though he could present no compelling evidence it was better.     

Although my Ion Red Line came from the factory with Mobil 1 5w-30 in the crankcase, I was persuaded to try the purple stuff by friends, co-workers and in-laws who purportedly gained fuel economy and horsepower just by switching to Royal Purple. Unfortunately, these results were not substantiated by dyno reports and no two engines respond exactly the same. 

The biggest difference I've noticed between RP and M1 is the price. A 5-quart jug of Mobil 1 can usually be found at Wal-Mart for around $25 and it typically goes on sale elsewhere. A current promotion at Advance Auto has 5 quarts and a Mobil 1 oil filter for just $29.99, a savings of more than $20 off their retail prices. Royal Purple, on the other hand, is about as rare as Kobe Beef and just as expensive. It never goes on sale and retailers who do carry it, don't budge off the price which is close to $10 per quart. In essence, I wanted to determine if Royal Purple was worth twice the cost of Mobil 1.

So I figured the best way to settle the dispute was to obtain samples of both Mobil 1 and Royal Purple from my engine after 5,000 miles of use. While it wouldn't conclusively demonstrate a gain or loss of horsepower (a dyno would be needed for that), it would illustrate which provided more protection from engine wear. I had already debunked Royal Purple's alleged increase in fuel economy as after 5,000 miles I hadn't come close to exceeding my all-time high set in July 2011 with Mobil 1. 

One of the criteria Blackstone sets for its used oil samples is that they prefer it come immediately from an engine that has been properly warmed up. Typically, this can be achieved through thirty-minutes of highway driving which helps burn off any moisture and other particulates which might skew the findings. This sounds easy and convenient on paper, but in reality means exposing tender bodyparts to various hot exhaust pieces that can exceed 800 degrees. Furthermore, with the RL on jackstands in my yard and only a couple inches of clearance, it really makes things interesting. Suffice it to say, after two separate oil samples from my car and one from my wife's Ford Freestyle, I'm glad I won't be needing to gather any more in the near future.

I shipped the sample on Monday and by Friday afternoon had the results in my email inbox. While Mobil1 doesn't acknowledge any specific properties in its synthetic oil, Royal Purple likes to point out its patented Synerlec additive which utilizes high concentrations of zinc and phosphorus as anti-wear additives. When guys stand around and toss out the old adage, "They don't build them like they used to", it could very easily relate to today's fancy motor oils.  Tightening emissions requirements are primarily responsible for squeezing zinc almost completely out of new motor oils. The American Petroleum Institute (API) has continuously cut the amount of zinc down to just .08 percent, from .15 a few years ago, and even higher than that in the early '90s.  Royal Purple's Synerlec attempts to correct this by adding more zinc and phosphorous than currently allowed by API-certified oils. They also point out that this should not be used by newer cars still under factory warranty due to potential problems.

The higher levels of zinc and phosphorus are present in the findings below, but surprisingly didn't seem to really help. The flashpoint is also lower in the Royal Purple sample which is not desirable, although in all fairness it is slightly above the minimum value. But the big news is the Total Base Number (TBN) which determines the remaining acid-neutralizing effectiveness of the oil after 5,000 miles. Royal Purple scored a commendable 6.1 but the Mobil 1 sample was nearly 15% higher with a 6.9 TBN.

Disappointingly, the conclusion based on these results is that Mobil 1 is the obvious winner. It clearly provides better protection at half the cost. I had honestly hoped for a better showing with Royal Purple but it wasn't in the cards. It looks like my next oil change will be with Mobil 1.