One of the great promises of electric cars is the skateboard chassis. An automaker may choose to contain all of the guts of their electric car in a chassis that can scale up or down to fit a variety of bodies. A handful of automakers claim to have some sort of skateboard chassis in production, and that must make the king of skateboarding really happy.
David wrote about how Tony Hawk converted his classic Corvette to electric. Sid Bridge:
People are surprised Tony Hawk would want his car to have more of a skateboard platform?
Kleinlowe:
I mean, it either had a 3-speed manual or a 2-speed automatic coupled to a wheezy carbureted lump of a Precambrian v8 that put out maybe as much power as a Honda Civic on a good day, assuming the WWII-era tolerances let it stay in tune longer than a week.
Now it doesn’t sound like warmed-over taco farts and can get out of its own way. It was either that or a generic LS swap, the automotive equivalent of white New Balance sneakers.
A very beautiful car now is as drivable as it is look-at-able.
Nothing Of Value Was Lost
Buzz gives us some irony:
The problem with the Internet is that every random nobody feels entitled to give you their opinion (this nobody included).
Taargus Taargus:
That guy looks an awful lot like Tony Hawk.
NC Miata NA:
Like the skateboarder?
I wonder what happened to him.
Click here for the reference.
Matt wrote a Morning Dump that contained a story about Ford needing so-called “graybeards.” TheDrunkenWrench:
“Poon in search of experienced Greybeards” is certainly not what I expected to read about today.
Finally, David wrote a review of the Ford Transit and made an offhand comment about housing demand going up after he left Detroit. Alter Id:
Is anyone else unsurprised that housing demand and land values in Troy shot up immediately after David’s departure? And prices in Los Angeles have leveled off and even declined slightly of late?
Have a great evening, everyone!
My quote was completly unworthy of sharing COTD with Sid’s.
But that’s not the point.
A car is two things; one, an object of industrial art, and two, transportation. To a purist, it is primarily industrial art – each degree of authenticity lost is a loss. A blueprinted engine is not authentic. Even hardened valve seats, ethanol-resistant hoses, and other accommodations for modern fuel are not authentic. There is inherently some degree of compromise that must be made to keep the tires on the road; to insist on absolute authenticity is to relegate the car to being a statue. What degree of compromise is acceptable is a matter of personal taste.
There is certainly value in an authentic experience, but you can never have a fully authentic experience. You can drive a ’64 car, but you can’t drive it on ’64 roads – you have to drive it on ’26 roads in ’26 traffic – unless you start some kind of automotive SCA where you all show up to drive slowly in period costume through a recreation of a Levittown housing development.
The C2 Corvette is one of the most beautiful cars ever made. But the original drivetrain is, at best, generic. Mounting a modern drivetrain improves it as a vehicle and, in my opinion, does not diminish it as industrial art. Especially for fun car; having something you can just unhook from the charger and drive without worrying about fuel, oil, or coolant is extremely cool.
Also, there’s plenty of people praising the adequacy of the original small block, but nobody has has stood to defend the honor of the two-speed powerglide. C’mon guys, you gotta commit to the bit!
When I was growing up there was a C2 1965 1/2 Stingray in the garage with the 396 big block and a four on the floor and the drivetrain did not feel generic at all.
When you say ‘396 and four on the floor’ you could be talking about almost any muscle car from the era. It’s not like an RX-7 or 2cv or a Ferrari 512, where the drivetrain is unique to the vehicle. C2 engines and transmissions were from the GM parts bin, which was extremely similar to what would find in any American dealership of the time. Perfectly adequate for the era, but not really notable.
OK, just noting that the “unique” 2CV drivetrain was used in the Dyane, Méhari, Ami, Acadiane / Fourgonnette, and LN / LNA.
I think I’m failing to be clear that when I say generic I don’t mean bad. The drivelines that the Corvette was offered with were the right ones for the car at the time – it was already an extremely unconventional vehicle, with wild styling, a transverse leaf spring rear, etc, etc – if they had put in an engine as distinctive and advanced as the rest of the car, then we’d be reading about it as a wild forgotten tech experiment, like a rope-drive Tempest or a Corvair Turbo.
“396 big block and a four on the floor…”
The Mark IV “Porcupine” Engine?
Here’s what it could have been found in:
So while it was a one-year-only engine in Corvette…
…Yeah – It was generic.
Once again, my teenage mentality snags me a win. Thanks Mercedes!
I feel like Kleinlowe misses the point that the purists are making, and certainly the part about being able to put this back to stock if need be. However, with modern machining and the SBC extra block material, a modern tolerance rebuild is certaily possible, and even a weasy 275 – 327 will definitely outrun even a Civic Sport model. Especially the poorly tuned Fart Can Variants.