It's the End of the World as we Know it...

There's not much I can say about what happened last weekend. The losses, in terms of lost lives and destroyed homes, were devastating, to say the least... but it's maddening to think that so much more could have been done to prevent or alleviate this disaster.

Ford versus Ford

I "borrowed" my Dad's Ford Focus TDCi the other week, to use in the Ford Club Philippines exhibition at the Enchanted Kingdom theme park (a most successful event, with sixty cars on display!), but I've been hanging onto it since then. I figured the car could use some exercise, since he takes it out once in a blue moon. The fact that it's only covered 600 kilometers (about 400 miles) in the past year tells you how often it's driven.

Consequently, I have promised to clean the car up and change the oil. This being a two-year old car under warranty, I was mildly surprised to find out that it was twelve months overdue for its next oil change. Oh well... still runs, doesn't smoke, and the dipstick isn't telling me any sob stories. I'm scheduling an oil change for later this week, but in the meantime, the diesel really needs to be changed, and I've been putting a lot of kilometers on the clock draining the tank so I can put a fresh batch in.

Many of those kilometers were spent bringing my daughter both to and from school. While I've been enjoying the cossetting ride of the Focus, the extra sound insulation and the whomping torque of the PSA 2 liter, I've started feel just a wee bit guilty for neglecting the Lynx for so long. Just the other day, I decided to take the Lynx RS out for a spin and put some gas in the tank, because hadn't run it for an entire week.

After getting acclimatized to the Focus, returning to the Lynx was a shock. It felt lighter, nimbler and rortier than I remembered it to be. After driving the turbodiesel for so long, the torque of my cammed naturally-aspirated motor feels a bit underwhelming, but the absolute lack of inertia in the car, in any sense, compared to the 1.4 ton Focus, is refreshing.

That's the reason I keep coming back to the Lynx. After every new test unit, getting back in the Lynx is a breath of fresh air. Sure, the leather is starting to chip in places, the gearshifter's as woefully wobbly as in my old 626 (understandable, considering it's the same gearbox and both cars are well past 90,000 kilometers) and it's tinny and noisy as hell, but the puppy-dog eagerness of the thing always endears itself to me.

Not that the Focus is without driving panache. It handles well for its weight, and the hatchback layout gives it a good balance. And the TDCi engine is tremendous fun, even at a pedestrian pace... but the Lynx just does some things better.

Too bad my daughter doesn't think so. Almost threw a fit when she learned she wasn't going to school in the blue car today. Oh well... she'll survive the disappointment when we use the red car again tomorrow.

Though I think she might be able to persuade her grandpa to let her keep the car on a permanent loan. A little motoring variety never hurt anyone.

The Fallacy of Low Expectations

It's a title that's near and dear to me, as applied to movies... simply... I can no longer stand the dross coming out of Hollywood. Action movies don't need to be smart, I get it! But, as "Iron Man" has shown, non-smart movies don't have to be unbearably stupid, either, not like "G.I.Joe".

Entre Formula One. A sport, yes... and an expensive one, at that, but also a form of entertainment. One team in particular, Ferrari, has been responsible for much of the entertainment value over the past two decades. Right now, they're in a clinch. Felipe Massa's injury last month, and Michael Schumacher isn't healthy enough to make his highly publicized comeback yet... so they're short one driver.

Who do they pick? Luca Badoer. test driver extraordinaire.

Here's a guy who hasn't raced in decades. He was never the best driver or the fastest, though, since he drove mostly for the smaller teams, that's understandable... but he holds the distinction of the most starts without a point in F1. That's not good...

And Badoer doesn't disappoint, given his record. four instances of speeding in the pits.... before the race even starts. Gets a penalty for crossing the white line at the pit lane exit in the race. Doesn't beat anyone who has a car at least half-as-good as his. Sure, he brought the car home in one piece... but so did Jamie Algesuari, who's half his age and only on his second race.

I've been told, here and there, to give the guy a break. He's got to get his feet wet before scoring anything... but the question is: why should we give him a break? Why should we not give Ferrari grief over this strange choice of a replacement for Massa? Renault brought in Romain Grosjean... and in his very first weekend in a Formula One car, he manages to pace his team-mate, double world champion, Fernando Alonso.

Ferrari many have no chance of winning this year's title, but they owe it to the fans to put up a game fight. And putting in a placeholder like Badoer simply isn't going to cut it. C'mon, Ferrari, I expect more. Give me Robert Downey Junior... not another Channing Tatum.

Lists, lists, lists

It's getting close to that time of year again.

Once again, various organizations are getting set to deliver their verdict on which new cars are the best on sale today.

Of course, the alchemical and sometimes thaumaturgical calculations and machinations involved in deciding the winners of such awards sometimes leaves non-automotive enthusiasts... and even some enthusiasts... hell... even some of the judges who vote on these things... confused.

As well they should be... there's really no system that can't be gamed to produce any results you want. Since bench-racing is a favorite pastime of most automotive enthusiasts, those of you who know what "0-62", "bhp" and "lateral g" signify can understand this. It's tempting to give scores for performance... or for "value-for-the-money"... such cheap tricks the media employs to convince the manufacturers that their cars should be cheaper and better!

But things get awfully wooly when you start adding subjective scoring to the mix. Some awards are decided subjectively for items that most lay-people will never notice... the cleverness of the engineering of a car's engine mounts... the use of cylinder deactivation for fuel economy... hybrid implementation... etcetera. Such subjectively decided criteria have led to some pretty crappy cars being crowned for no other reason than their uniqueness. I'm looking at you, Motor Trend and "European Car of the Year"!

Others may try to rigidly structure subjective observations into a quantifiable table. But they find that the scoring then gives them an answer that nobody was expecting. Car and Driver has all but given up on its methods of calculation and has created a master subjective score: the "Gotta-Have-It" score. One score to rule them all. Or at least one score to make the numbers look nice and neat at the end of the day. Such baldfaced manipulation is tantamount to an admittance that their scoring system sucks, but at least their "TenBest" list doesn't rely on scoring, but are rather editorial picks debated by the whole staff.

Which brings me to the inspiration for this post: the "C! Awards 2009". This is one list I usually agree with. Because it's a list created by car enthusiasts for car enthusiasts... but with an eye towards practicality and grounded in reality. Well... as real as any list with three categories for high-end supercars costing more than my house can be.

One funny disclaimer, though, for the list. It notes that category winners aren't always comparo winners. Even the new editor-in-chief, James Deakin, says he doesn't agree with every award, but hey, that's democracy.

I find it funny that many people have criticized the magazine for dropping scoring from their comparisons in the past. I don't actually care about scoring. I think the way Top Gear Philippines does it works. Just pick a winner. There was a time C! didn't do this for their comparos, which made them somewhat pointless. I'm ambivalent about the new scoring system. It seems to be continually under development, and criteria can vary from comparo to comparo. What I'm not ambivalent about is the category winners for the "Editor's Choice" awards, since they seem to have picked the right winners given their categories, for the most part, though there are some that could go either way.

It's a challenge facing the "Philippine Car of the Year" panel. With a voting panel the size of a small barangay, it's impossible to sit around a table with some beers to decide the winner, so a scoring system is a must. I haven't agreed with all the category winners in the past, and I still think that older cars still on sale should be made eligible (how do the new cars really stack up to the old guard, I wonder?), but you can't deny that most have been good cars. And if you weren't there, you don't know how or why a car won. It could be that your favorite horse rides like a bucking bronco over potholes and got negative marks from the judges for it (as well it should!), or a car you think is "boring" turns out to be more practical and easier to drive than that flashy new model. This is the advantage of having all the contestants available at the same time and at the same place. It's a proper comparison. Of course Gwyneth Palthrow was great in "Shakespeare in Love" (one of the most controversial Oscars of the past decade...), but how would that performance stand out if you had every Academy nominee for that year reprise the role on stage in front of a voting audience? Exactly. The outcome might have been completely different.

I think what the PCoTY lacks is an explanation of how a winner won, which would satisfy both enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts alike. A detailed press release... or... hopefully... a publication? :)

As this is a growing organization, there has to be a continuous refining and tweaking of the rules, to make them fair and balanced. Of course, there comes a point where you have to accept that no scoring system in the world will be perfect. At which point, it's up to the judges to be as fair and impartial as possible, to give the best results possible.

It's a Congested Life

Traffic in Manila nowadays, is, I don't need to tell you, pretty shitty.

Thanks to Gloria's promise to finish the Skyway ASAP, I'm stuck with Ramos-era congestion on my trips up north. I should be glad I no longer do this on a daily basis, but I feel sorry for anyone who still does.

I haven't resorted to being a complete asshole, yet. I don't drive on the grassy shoulder to get around traffic. But I have found that sometimes it's much, much faster to just get off on the long detour to the Filinvest Toll Gate and U-turn after the Toll Plaza and get back on just before the bridge.

Saves me twenty or thirty minutes. Still leaves me with two hours of clutch-pumping, finger-tapping boredom. Two hours to go a mere thirty kilometers. I could walk faster than this.

What's even more maddening is the Lynx's tendency to either die out on my "rich" map as the ECU enrichens the fuel mixture even further to deal with the heat, or to start idling high on the "lean" map because it's still running too lean.

That's something I finally attempted to fix yesterday, with a borrowed laptop at Speedlab... leaning out the mixture on the "rich" map slightly, and adding fuel to the areas of the map it would only see at high idle. Copy-pasted different iterations of this map, with slight fueling differences to three of four of the available mapsets on the Unichip Q (leaving one blank except for idle enrichment, just to see how LPG runs without interference) and consigning my previous "lean" map to the rubbish bin. (It never worked well in the cold, anyway)

Works much better now, although I still have some hot idle problems with the leanest of my maps after a really stressful flog. But at least I'm getting a better handle of ECU tuning.

Eventually, I'm going to have to learn how to use the temperature sensor intercepts and the Lambda function, but that's something best done when I have more time on my hands.

Hopefully, by then, I will have figured out how to make the Dastek tuning program work with Windows Vista.

Fuel Consumption Conundrums

Fuel economy is one of those topics that everyone seems to have an opinion on, but which very few can give accurate facts about. Unless you're a hypermiler or a Prius owner, you're probably about as adept at calculating your fuel usage as I am at calculating income tax returns (and no, I don't know how to do that).

But even for those of us who do know something about calculating fuel use, sometimes, the numbers just don't add up. We fudge some numbers, try to make concessions to test methodology variations, and... well... sometimes we just have to guess.

Terrible, isn't it?

This has been on my mind for the past few days due to a very unusual car... the Toyota Corolla.

It's not an unusual car, per se, but it's unusual in the fact that it has a very big engine in it... a two liter lump from the Toyota Camry. Now, I've always championed the fuel economy of Toyotas... though their cars of late don't impress me otherwise... as a sign of engineering expertise used correctly. I wasn't expecting Yaris or Prius-like numbers from the combination of small car, big engine, auto-box, but I was hoping for the Corolla to post numbers significantly better than some of the two liter porkers that have gone through my hands, lately, like the Dodge Caliber or two-liter Ford Focus.

But did it? No. Maybe. I don't know.

Confused? So am I.

My co-tester, Carlo, drove the car for two days. Claimed brilliant economy... doing 9 km/l on one day, and an amazing 16 km/l the next. All in-city driving, though the 16 km/l was not stop-go traffic. I was, frankly, skeptical, but he had the gas receipts to back it up.

My turn at the wheel got me two days (with two separate fill-ups) of 6.5 km/l in pure city weekend driving. Mostly low speed stuff between stoplights. Just about what you'd expect from a slushbox equipped two point oh on Manila streets... so... maybe the car is better on the highway, right? Automatics love highway driving, with their long gearing and smooth shifting.

On the highway, the trip computer, previously pessimistically under-rating economy by 0.2 km/l, was enthusiastically proclaiming a mixed 12.5 km/l, with highs of 16-18 km/l at maintained speeds of 80 km/h. It only sunk down to 12.5 km/l due to the stops we made along the way.

Imagine my disappointment when a trip to the pumps and a quick set of calculations on the back of the gas receipt netted me 10 km/l. A quick drive around, to do acceleration and handling testing, (with the trip computer reset) gave me 7 km/l by the clock and 8 km/l on the receipt from the same pump.

What the hell was going on?

Granted, you expect onboard fuel consumption computers to be inaccurate, but you don't expect this kind of schizophrenia. The odometer was accurate by our GPS meter, but that doesn't really matter if you're comparing onboard calculated economy to trip economy based on fuel consumption and odometer readings.

The first clue I had when trying to puzzle this all out is the "Range" readout on the Corolla's trip computer. We make it a practice to fill up the tank to the automatic shut-off on whatever pump we're using. Of course, there are pump variations, but with our schedule and drive locations, you can't always return to the same pump. But looking at the "Range" readouts showed how ridiculously large the variance in fill-up levels was on the Corolla. On most pumps, the "Range" went up to 299 kms at the "full" mark. On the last pump I used, it went up to 360 kms. That's a difference of potentially 3-6 liters! And the "Range" calculations don't reset with the trip computer... they're calculated internally, and don't change whether the last hour was driven like a hypermiling loon or a gas-guzzling hoon.

This indicated that, much like the Prius Toyota had lent us two years ago, the Corolla's filler neck is a literal pain-in-the-neck for accurate fuel consumption. Most cars will have a variance of one or two liters, but this was off the scale.

Given some quick corrections based on assumptions of how far off each pump was, we ended up with the 16 km/l trip being around 12 km/l... one 6.5 km/l trip being 7.5 km/l, and the 10 km/l trip being 12-13 km/l. The trips where we were able to fill up at same pump (6.5 km/l in the city... 8 km/l in hard driving) remain unchanged. Maybe. Maybe there are bubbles in the system that make these inaccurate, too. We're not really sure.

But short of jumping up and down on the rear bumper at the gas station and topping off till gasoline comes out of the overflow pipe (which would render all calculations moot, anyhow), I don't know of any other way we can assure reasonable accuracy, except to drive far enough to deplete the tank and lower the percentage of inaccuracy.

If you're doing this kind of testing at home, that's what you've got to do to make sure you're getting real numbers. Drive as far as possible on one tank then fill her up (at the same pump) and measure from there. It's not 100% accurate, but it's the best you can do without taping a fuel bladder to the hood of your car.

For our next Toyota test... that's what we'll probably be doing, maybe with an IV bottle stolen from the hospital dispensary.

Pacquaio vs. Wolverine

This weekend played host to two media events of significance to males aged 15-35. The first, many contend, was over too soon, the second, personally, took two hours too long. Both included lots of rock'em sock'em action, the old-school nitty-gritty... blood, sweat and...

Ahurm. First was the Pacquia-Hatton fight. The big one. I love Pacquiao fights, because when he's on, I can turn off my TV, go out for a nice relaxing drive and lunch, and not have to put up with annoying crowds and traffic. It's not that I'm not interested in the fight, far from it, but I don't have pay-per-view, and listening to the fight on the radio is never as satisfying as watching the replay that inevitably comes on when I get home, so, at the very moment "The Hitman" hits the canvas for the third and final time, I'm in the shoe section of the department store.

The buzz of conversation, even here, where salespeople are thicker than shoppers (yes, the fight really does thin out weekend crowds, even on a payday weekend), is Manny, Manny, Manny. The Pac-Man is the Philippine equivalent of Elvis, though you wouldn't play his music at your wedding. And while Manny's philanthropic sprees don't quite match Elvis's Cadillac giveaways... they come close.

To be fair, though, Elvis really isn't all that great an actor, either, and he's definitely no action hero. Manny, on the other hand, has beaten the best of the world, and has beaten them so badly it seems like they aren't even trying. Even then, life in the Philippines comes to a stand-still every time he knocks another hapless foreigner out cold.

The sight of Manny standing triumphantly erect over the flaccid, pale body of the British hometown hero probably has some historical or symbological significane, but to many fans, it simply means that he's proven that he's "it". No longer can you question whether he can fight at this weight class (dela Hoya was visibly over-the-hill in that last fight), but you question whether any of the other mugs in this class can last all twelve rounds with the Pac-man.

Another superhero moment this weekend was the premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. This one featured a similarly buff Hugh Jackman in some similarly exciting action, but despite outlasting the measly two-and-a-half-minute Pacquiao-Hatton match by an hour and a half, the movie fell flat on its face.

Granted, prequels often struggle to match the excitement of the originals... take Star Wars, for instance... you know Anakin Skywalker = Darth Vader... and neither he nor Obi-Wan Kenobi are ever in any real danger of dying or being horribly disfigured over the course of Star Wars I-III... oh... Anakin is, but you know how horribly disfigured he's going to be... so any time he gets a limb lopped off, your only reaction is: "Oh, so that's how that happened..."

With Wolverine, we know from the first three movies that his skeleton has been implanted with an indestructible metal, he's lost his memory, and that he's really got it in for this guy called Stryker. Oh, and he hates Sabretooth. Thus, we know that none of the three are likely to die, Wolverine will suffer one of the most excrutiating bondage and torture scenes in cinema, and he will forget absolutely everything that happens here... although how everyone else from the other three movies who plays a part here forgets him is an even bigger mystery.

The movie starts out in grand fashion, showing the origin of Sabretooth and Wolverine, segueing to a montage of their lives over the past century, fighting in every military action engaged in by the United States... strange, I thought they were Canadian... Too bad they left out Captain America during the World War Two sequence... leading up to their recruitment by Stryker for a special ops team, which Wolverine, here, still called "James", then quits in disgust over all the killing. Strange, he didn't have a problem with that part before.

This leads to a romantic interlude with a schoolmarm up in the Canadian wilderness. Now, this may be a bit spoiler-ish, but obviously, Wolverine doesn't have this girl, anymore, which means that she is either going to die, or going to betray him, because for all his traipsing around the world afterwards, she never shows up again (at least, in the movies). So we get exactly what we expect, a bloody betrayal, a revenge plot and the creation of the iconic Wolverine.

And this is where the plot collapses in a mess of Machiavellian manipulation, wasted cameos and sillier-than-comic book logic. The fights are pretty enough, but the computer graphics are glaringly bad, at times... most notably when our hero has his metal claws out, which is most of the movie. Patrick Stewart's brief cameo has him looking so face-liftingly tight that I wondered, at first, if he was another figment of the computer's imagination. The attempts to tie this flick into the current movie mythology while staying reasonably true to the comic book mythology seem strained. Especially woeful is the introduction of Wolverine's classic jacket and motorbike-look, neither of which he has (nor remembers having) at the end.

While Hugh Jackman's half-naked physique is arguably more impressive than Pacquiao's, and his patented muttonchops are certainly the better hair arrangement, not even his muscular buttocks (lovingly showcased in the first half of the movie) can save this film from its ultimate mediocrity. "Wolverine" is too poorly scripted, too poorly paced and too cliched. The best movies are like a good boxing match, there's drama, tension, and a sense that you don't really know what's coming next, but you know that it's going to be good. In fact, even if you know who's going to win, eventually, the fight itself will be a nail-biter.

But all that I was biting was my tounge... to distract me from the distinct pain of watching the cinema destroy one of the more interesting comic book characters so thoroughly that not even his mutant healing factor can save this flick.

Not as thoroughly as Pacquiao destroyed Hatton though. While Wolverine woke up and walked away before the credits started rolling, Ricky Hatton, much wiser than the be-clawed Canuck, decided to sleep them out.

Pac-Man 1 : Mutants 0

Hyundai i10 Review now up!

Hyundai i10 review now up!

Nice little car. but a little bippity in the suspension department.

In fact, a lot of new cars are this way. The only Honda of late that I've driven that didn't have a spleen crushing ride is the new Accord. Jazz/Fit? Stiff as a board. Civic? Stiff as a rail. CR-V? Don't even ask.

BMWs? Run-flats and the need to corner with supernatural poise means that a 3-series will shake your fillings out on a gravel driveway.

That's why the Corolla was such a pleasant change. Didn't handle worth crap, but rode beautifully.

It's nice to see that one manufacturer has their priorities straight. Still wouldn't buy one, though.

Gran Turismo Blues

My life, of late, has been utterly boring. A tight schedule, a lack of media test units and a car waiting for a replacement gear synchro have left me twiddling my thumbs at home doing nothing but watching paint dry and my daughter's favorite song and dance routines. Thankfully, I have a brand new PS3 at the house, and, to my wife's eternal disgust, I've actually had some time to bond with it.

My videogame addiction of late has focused on Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. Being a “Prologue” title means that it shows what you may or may not get in the actual Gran Turismo 5, which was supposed to be released 6 years ago (it honestly feels like we've been waiting that long). In other words, it has better graphics than Gran Turismo 4, better driving physics, a handful of cars and races, and a measly five tracks.

Now having a small selection of cars is annoying, and being able to finish all of the game's challenges in a fortnight makes for poor single-player replayability, but for a racing simulator junkie, the limited selection of tracks is the worst crime of all. The wide selection of tracks in Gran Turismo 4 has me spoiled, I'll admit. It was just so much fun to waste endless hours practicing lines on random tracks. On GT5P, you'll become so well acquainted with each track that you could probably drive them blindfolded.

Thus, with the single player experience played out, I went online, curious about the competition in the online races. At first, I was surprised that my incredibly bad internet connection actually worked with online, despite the occassional twitch lag of the other players. Second, I realized that most of those other players drove like they were actually blindfolded.

One day. That's how long I lasted. I'd start from 12th position, fight my way up to 6th, then have some idiot bump me off on the last lap, relegating me to 12th. I'd start from 6th, have someone shove me off in the first corner, fight my way back up to 6th, then get punted off again by someone else. I'd start in 1st, get punted off... fight my way back to first, then get punted off by someone who, in the previous five or six races seemed to be a good, clean driver, just as I was rounding the last corner.

No “ban” buttons. No “report to administrator” function. No “private rooms”. Nothing. It was like being stuck in a boxing ring with a bunch of gibbering monkeys carrying brass knuckles and chains.

When I actually got a fair shot at winning, the loser (the session host) turned off his Playstation and cancelled the race. The bastard.

The next day, I went back to playing solo. Next time I do multiplayer, it'll be in a face-to-face LAN contest. At least there, when you get punted off, you can smash your chair across the other guy's skull. In the meantime, I think I'll practice for quick lap times in my Suzuki Cappuchino.

Corollas

Just put up my Corolla article. Of course, I can't say on a consumer oriented site that I think it's pure merde, because, from an objective point of view, it isn't, but I'm really not feeling this car.

Which is a shame.

Corollas weren't always dull, boring econoboxes. I've never driven one that excited me much to drive, though there were some undoubtedly quick ones (Corollas with 20-valve, high revving 4AGE engines)... but I could respect the fact that they were pretty decent sport compacts. In fact, every time I see an old AE92 on those geeky four-spoked TOM'S rims, I actually stop to admire it, even if I've seen that combination a hundred times before. Corollas, before the jumbo-bodied “Altis” generation, were actually fun cars. The 9th generation “Altis” body may have had better-than-expected handling, but it was about as much fun to drive as a Toyota Hiace. This new one promised a return to the Corolla's sporting ways of old, with a more exciting, sleeker shape:



But even at the launch, just getting in the seat and feeling the suspension gently sag around you, twirling the feather light steering wheel... I'd gotten the feeling that it wasn't going to be all that.

And, surprise, surprise, it wasn't.

Now, I'm not typically anti-Toyota... in fact, I think the MR-S is the bee's knees and the AE111 is on my list of "might buy it on a lark for a secondhand toy" cars... ...but their cars of late have been disappointingly sterile in the fun department. Which is a shame... here's a company that produces great motors... ultra-stiff bodies and cars that are a few hundred pounds lighter than their competitors... they should be fun to drive, but they aren't. Now I don't know if this is part of Toyota's mass-market bias, but I don't see people dumping the Honda brand in droves just because their cars have a little extra zest.

The Corolla seems to be the pinnacle of Toyota's current addiction to novocaine. Everything is soft. The steering. The brakes. The body roll. I can honestly say I'd rather drive a Toyota Previa around the racetrack than the Corolla. At least the Previa has some balls.

And to think, the improvements needed to make the Corolla a decent car are minor. Just a little bit of tightening in the steering... a little less understeer dialled into the suspension, a tiny bit less body roll... but there's scant chance of that happening now, is there? As the Corolla sells awfully well on its own, and given that Toyota went a whole six years without changing a single damn thing on the old one, it's going to be a long wait for a "better" Corolla.