Editorial: Is the I-110 Express Lane really serving its purpose?

On November 10, 2012, parts of the I-110 freeway HOV/Carpool lanes in Los Angeles were fully converted to Express Lane toll lanes, with a fee now charged for utilizing the lanes. To use the Express Lane, a driver must obtain a "FasTrak" transponder, the very same transponder used for the other toll roads throughout CA, and register it with the Metro Express Lane website. Tolls vary based on occupancy of the vehicle and volume of traffic at the time of travel. To distinguish between a solo driver or a carpool, the driver merely has to flip a switch on the transponder. In order to prevent solo drivers from abusing the lower cost of the carpool switch, Metro has installed cameras at various points along the I-110 as well as at Metrolink station bridges that cross over the I-110. Qualifying carpools and vanpools will be allowed to use the Express Lane free of charge. Metro has also guaranteed that the Express Lane will maintain a minimum speed of 45 mph. But is this really the best way to manage traffic flow and encourage carpooling behavior among metro LA drivers?

Road Trip: Riding along the coast of Oahu on a 2009 Triumph Bonneville

My wife and I had the pleasure of traveling to Hawaii for a friends wedding, and on one day, when we slept in and most of our other plans fell through, we found ourselves with a half a day of free-time, so being the kind of person that I am, I suggested that we look into renting a motorcycle and do a little riding around the coastal roads of Oahu. When calling around to see what was available, the selection was paltry, to say the least. Mostly heavy HD cruisers or tiny step through scooters, neither of which were my taste. However, I eventually stumbled upon one place that carried a newer Triumph Bonneville, so I jumped at the opportunity. The gentleman who answered the phone was pleasant and event told me he'd give me the rest of the day  (6+ hours) for the 3-hour rental rate. Sweet!

Every road we were on that day looked
like this; smooth as glass and
hugging every curve of the island.

So we grabbed our stuff and walked the handful of blocks to the shop and signed the paperwork and picked up the keys to a 2009 Triumph Bonneville. The heritage look of the overall design works surprisingly well with the more modern looking wheels on the black one that we picked out, though the fake carburetors were kind of a goofy touch, given the bikes fuel injection. The low flat seat made pillion accommodations surprisingly comfortable for the wife and we got set quickly and headed out onto the streets of Honolulu.

Being what it is, it was no surprise that the somewhat heavy feeling Bonnie became nicely light and sprightly once you got moving. Low speed maneuvering, especially with a passenger, feels heavy, in spite of the wide bars. And while the seating position is upright and comfortable, for me, it just did not offer the level of control that I am used to, since I mostly ride a sportier bike. However, once the grunty twin is fired up and the copious torque at low RPMs is used to get the bike up to speed, it all starts to make sense. The slow and heavy steering gives way to light easy effort and the pounds seem to just melt off as the speed climbed.

We hopped on the freeway and made our way out of the city, heading east towards the windy mountain roads that we had driven days before. With somewhat limited time, we avoided making the usual stops and just rode for a big. The non-existent wind protection was not terribly problematic at these cruising speeds, but I could see it getting tiresome after a longer ride. Of course, I was also concerned as we had not come to Hawaii planning to ride, so we were not in our usual bevy of protective gear. It was weird riding in my street clothes and even weirder riding without gloves. And while not required, my wife and I opted to take the shop up on its free helmet offer, though the brain buckets were likely to do little should anything have actually happened.

Tossing the Bonnie through some corners and cruising along the ocean, this was what motorcycling was all about. The sun, while warming, was tempered by the cool breeze coming off the ocean making for some wonderfully comfortable conditions. And for a relatively low tech ride, the Bonnie was proving to be quite the entertaining partner, especially when kept to the sane speeds dictated by traffic. The roads on Oahu, outside of Honolulu to the east become a collection of fast sweeping turns that hug the curves of the island, allowing one to enjoy not only the beauty of the island, but also the amazing views of the ocean. It really is an amazing place and should be a stop for any motorcyclist.

With a half day worth of riding behind us, I was disappointed that we had to return the Bonnie at the end of the day. In fact, the brief time my wife and I spent with this bike has me contemplating getting one of our own as an around town, local jaunt, two-up bike which I think the wife would love.

Or, I guess we could just keep coming back to Hawaii since I suspect my location may have had some influence on my demeanor. Regardless of all that, the Triumph Bonneville shows why it is one of the longest enduring designs in the world. It's comfortable, handles well, torquey enough that you never feel like you would be caught out for power while running around the city, and it is so simple that maintenance should be a breeze. It just goes to show that sometimes, when you keep things simple, they can all come together and just work. The Bonneville proved a wonderful companion during our time with it and really added that extra little bit to an already awesome vacation.

Test Drive: 2013 Chevrolet Malibu LTZ

This trip started poorly, with weather forcing the cancellation of an important leg of my flight to South Carolina and a re-routing through a city over 100 miles away. Of course, as the opportunity presented itself, I jumped at the chance to spend some time behind the wheel. Stepping off the slightly rickety-feeling prop plane in Hilton Head, SC, I strolled up to the rental counter and before long, had the keys to a 2013 Chevrolet Malibu LTZ. The gray-brown metallic sedan stood alone in a sea of mediocre SUVs and made me glad I had opted to take the sedan instead.

Editorial: The future of green cars - how the Tesla Model S changed everything for me

The perfect example of the horrid looking EV, the
Mitsubishi i-MIEV (photo courtesy of Mitsubishi)

I was not a fan of green cars. To me, they were always pitifully under-powered, insect-looking, miserable little cars that could never meet the real needs of an enthusiast. When I was growing up, electric cars were little more than glorified golf carts and hybrids had been adopted by such a particular set of buyers that being remotely associated with that group made me sick to my stomach. Deep in my psyche, though, I knew that the era of the fossil fuel swilling internal combustion engine would have to draw to a close someday, quite possibly within my lifetime, but as an enthusiast, I saw no viable alternative.

Tesla Roadster (photo courtesy of Tesla Motors)

Then, a ray of hope breached the gloom, illuminating an underdog manufacturer scrambling to demonstrate that electric vehicles did not have to be horrible, whiny, plasticky pieces of junk that crept along at a snail's pace. The arrival of the Tesla Roadster marked a turning point in my paradigm, opening the door to a whole world of possibilities of alternative energy powered vehicles. Sure the Lotus-derived roadster had some rough edges and the range was still far below that of a fossil fuel powered car, it at least demonstrated that electric cars could not only be fun, they could be stylish as well.

Test Drive: 2014 Acura RLX P-AWS Tech

Power Acura of South Bay received their allotted two demo units of the 2014 Acura RLX and I had the good fortune of the dealer contacting me for a test drive. Both my brother and I have been following the development of the RLX quite closely, so naturally, I could not pass up this opportunity. The two units Power Acura had received were a white tech package model, and a dark blue advanced package model. Unfortunately, the general manager of Power Acura had decided to take the advanced model home with him, leaving only the tech package available for preview.

Preview: Quick look at the Tesla Model S

Earlier this winter, I had the occasion to pay a visit to the Tesla store in Santa Monica, CA where they had the Model S on display. While I have seen the Tesla Model S in photos, this was the first time that I had seen the luxury EV in person and I must admit, it looks every bit as impressive in person as it does on paper. In addition to being able to see the exterior, I had the opportunity to sit in the car and play with some of the controls, touch the surfaces, and see many of the cars basic functions in action. Unfortunately, a test drive was not in the cards, but I was able to spend enough time to get some good impressions of many aspects of the car.

Editorial: College Cars

Top Gear USA had its season premier a few weeks ago, and the topic of the episode was about the cars the hosts owned when they were in college. Tanner Foust owned an early 90's Eagle Talon, Adam Ferrara had an old Cadillac and Rutledge Wood owned an old VW micro-bus. After watching the episode, it got me thinking about the cars my brother and I owned when we were in college, and some of the things we did with them.

Test Drive: 2011 Toyota Prius

The Prius looking at home at a beautiful house on Oahu

My wife and I had the good fortune to travel to Hawaii a while back for a friend's wedding. We were going to spend our entire time on Oahu so we took the opportunity to rent a car and drive around the island. Of course, being the gearhead that I am, I wanted to rent something fun and impractical, but unfortunately, since we had a decent amount of luggage and would be traveling with a few friends, we needed something practical and at least somewhat spacious. In looking down the line at the rental car location, I first spotted a 2011 Jetta among the various GM detritus littering the lot. Rushing over to it before anyone spotted it, I found that it was locked, indicating that someone had beat me to the punch. Damn....

Beautiful scenery abounds throughout the island

Looking down the line again at the sad collection of GM products, I spotted a 2011 Toyota Prius. Figuring that since the fuel was expensive ($3.73 a gallon for regular was the norm on the island) and that we needed some practicality, the fuel sipping hybrid with its hatchback shape might just do the trick. So we quickly rushed over and claimed this one, before anyone else could beat us to it.

Getting into to Prius, the layout of the interior felt odd and somewhat disconcerting, with the instruments way out towards the base of the windshield and centered in the car, rather than in front of the driver. While I had driven with this layout before, it is something that I have never really been 100% comfortable with. After getting situated in the seat, my hand fell to the nub of a shifter that looked like some sort of candy colored vestigial limb. I am still not quite sure why Toyota bothered with keeping this feature. Perhaps it was to make people feel like they were in a car and not some spaceship?

Foot on the brake, push the start button, and the dash begins its dance, but not a peep to be heard. It is an odd sensation getting nearly no aural feedback when starting a car. Looking up at the dash and checking to make sure that we were "Ready" to go, I slide the shifter into reverse and am greeted by the shrill cry of annoyance that I would be intimately acquainted with during the next week. Yes, the Prius beeps every time you put it in reverse. That sound made me want to crash the thing every time I heard it just so I would not have to hear it again.

Out on the road, I began playing around with the different buttons on the console and steering wheel, quickly discovering the 3-D overlay effect used for every press of a button on the wheel. It is mesmerizing and a totally unnecessary distraction to the driver. Maybe if Toyota would take some of that engineering time to sort out the rest of the rather blah interior, all might be forgiven. Getting onto the highway, with the car set in Eco mode, I ever so slowly managed to crawl up to the 50 MPH speed limit. Holy crap this thing is slow. I swear there were bicyclists passing us by accelerating up to 25. As much as I wanted to squeeze the entire trip in on a single tank of fuel, I knew I could not tolerate using this mode the entire time.

Weather was highly unpredictable,  but added to the
character of the island

Hit the button and switch off Eco mode and get on the throttle again. Hmm....better. Ever so slightly more responsive to throttle inputs, less resistance to additional throttle pressure, and we were getting going at slightly better than the glacial pace while in Eco mode. Let's try the PWR mode. Another slight bump in responsiveness and the damn thing finally was starting to pick up speed like a slightly anemic Toyota Corolla. I guess there would not be much in terms of tire spinning antics on this trip...

 Over the course of the next several days, I got to acquaint myself with the characteristics of the Prius even more, playing with the different settings and learning a sense of the chassis. Oahu is a driver's dream during the off-peak hours. There are miles and miles of windy twisty roads for one to explore and are lined by lush green vegetation on one side and sparkling blue oceans on the other. Driving around in this environment makes even the Prius tolerable.

Windmills are present throughout the island

To be honest, the Prius actually tracks surprisingly well, despite the skinny tires and tiny wheels. While the steering is clearly overboosted, there is adequate feedback for the amount of speed that can be attained. There is certainly little engagement for the driver, but as an appliance for getting from A to B, it really is quite easy to get comfortable with. In fact, it is almost relaxing since without even the capability to compete with most cars on the road for position, it is easy to just stay in the middle lanes and cruise.

So while over the course of week, where we saw a wide variety of weather conditions and enjoyed the fantastic scenery, I gradually began to understand why people like the fuel sipping hybrids. Even with driving around the island and traveling over 400 miles, we averaged close to 50 mpg driving normally. And while I still would never purchase a hybrid for myself, I have finally come to realize why there are people who like these contraptions and why they drive the way that they do. Definitely not an experience I plan on repeating anytime soon. The next trip we have lined up, I am looking to work a proper sports car into the plans.

News: 2014 Corvette Stingray Wrecked in Arizona

Picture courtesy of Digital Corvettes forum user gpetry

It would appear that GM personnel testing a pre-production model of the 2014 Corvette Stingray has already managed to wreck the car in Arizona. 

While the car looks fine in pictures, the original shooter of the picture says the car is in worse shape than it looks. Looks like someone at GM is getting fired soon.


Link to original article: Yahoo! - First 2014 Corvette Stingray wreck captured in the wild

Game Review: Forza Horizon

Any avid Xbox and Xbox 360 owner will know of Microsoft's Forza Motorsport series of racing games. When it was first introduced on the original Xbox back in 2005, it was clear that Forza was clearly aimed at competing with Sony's Gran Turismo 4 for the Playstation platform. Both games focus on automotive realism and track driving, rather than arcade style racing games such as Electronic Arts' Need for Speed series. The difference between Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo though is that Forza is generally seen as being easier to get into that Gran Turismo as Forza's tuning options are much simpler than those of Gran Turismo's. In the end though, you have two great racing simulators on two different consoles.

Forza Horizon, released last year in November for the Xbox 360, is a completely different direction for the Forza game series. Looking to muscle in a bit on the arcade style racing game category, Forza Horizon attempts to takes the simulated realism of the main Forza Motorsport series and takes it to the streets. Horizon sees you playing as a young, up and coming racing prodigy, looking to take part in the annual "Horizon Festival," located in the fictional city of Horizon, Colorado. Your ultimate goal is to become the champion of the Horizon Festival and dethrone four time Horizon champ, Darius Flynt.

The fictional city of Horizon, Colorado occupies roughly 63 square miles of virtual real estate. Forza Horizon encourages the player to explore all 63 square miles by placing races all throughout the city, and also leaving hidden "barn finds" for the players to discover. Every road in Horizon, even the dirt ones, can be driven on. 

The Good

As expected, Forza delivers a graphically beautiful game. From certain angles, it can be difficult to determine whether a still shot is in-game footage or a real life photo. Adding to the graphical splendor, Horizon now includes daytime and nighttime, meaning those headlights on your car now actually get some use. For the most part though, Forza Horizon basically borrows all the graphical cues from Forza Motorsport 4, which is not a bad thing since Forza 4 is an incredibly beautiful game. Everything from the in-car camera to the landscape of the fictional city of Horizon, Colorado looks absolutely stunning. Even if you get tired of racing, just picking a car and driving around the beautifully rendered roads of Horizon is an experience in itself.

Forza Horizon's game play is really not that far off from Forza Motorsport 4. The physics of both games feel roughly the same, but with the main difference between the two being that one takes place on closed course tracks, and the other one on city and suburban streets. The one type of course not available in Forza Motorsport are dirt courses, yet Forza Motorsport 4's physics engine handles dirt courses incredibly well in Forza Horizon. Dirt courses cause the car to rumble and slide, just like what you would expect from driving on a real dirt road. Attempt to take a car with racing slicks onto a dirt course, and things can get very amusing, very quickly. Thankfully, Forza Horizon does include the option to buy specialized rally car equipment, but at a cost. More on that later.

Many of the races in Forza Horizon are very entertaining. Horizon does include the standard closed course lap races and point to point racing available in every version of Forza Motorsport to date, but also tries to include many more race types. One of the more amusing race types involves racing against an aircraft, a lá Top Gear. Your first opportunity to race against an aircraft involves racing a 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 against a P-51 Mustang.

The Bad

What some may deem as a good thing, others may deem as not so good. While removing the tuning menu from Forza Horizon lets Forza newbies get into the game much quicker, it does remove the primary element of adjusting your car for specific conditions. Rather than tweaking your car to a specific track or race type, you just have to hope that the pre-adjusted settings are to your liking. Also, the physics of the game, while still very good, do feel slightly dumbed down from the Forza Motorsport series. Turn 10, the studio behind the Forza series, wanted this game to be more arcade like in its focus, but that focus comes at the expense of the realism that made Forza Motorsport a true challenge.

Gone from Forza Horizon is the giant list of cars made available in the main Forza Motorsport series. Granted, Forza Motorsport never had the same gigantic list of cars Sony's Gran Turismo series had, but more than half the cars available in Forza Motorsport 4 are missing from Forza Horizon. Granted, Horizon does have some new cars not available in Forza Motorsport 4, but the choice of available cars feels very constrictive. I also miss being able to pick your first vehicle rather than being stuck with a Volkswagen Corrado VR6 by default. Sure, there is nothing really wrong with the car, but it is probably not the car I would pick as my starting vehicle.

Turn 10 seemed to try a bit too hard making Forza Horizon hip. A lot of the one liners spoken by your various rivals throughout the game are incredibly cheesy. The races against aircraft, while cool, are a blatant rip-off of BBC's Top Gear. If the developers were going to include Top Gear like challenges, the least they could have done was let Jeremy Clarkson narrate part of the game like they did with Forza Motorsport 4.

Of course, just like any other game today, Forza Horizon is available with a plethora of downloadable content...at a price. I can understand charging a small fee for monthly car packs to keep the game fresh, but charging roughly one-fourth the price of the full game to include a "Rally Mode," a mode which the game should have had to begin with, seems a little absurd. There are plenty of dirt roads around the city of Horizon, and quite a few races already take place on these dirt roads, so having a "Rally Mode" right out of the box seems like common sense. Of course, if you are willing to pay for the downloadable "Rally Mode," then more power to you. Personally, I feel that if I have already spent $60 on the game, why in the world should I pay more for something that should have been included in the first place?

Versus the Real Thing

As mentioned before, Forza Motorsport was designed to be a fairly realistic driving simulator. The physics of the main Forza Motorsport series was always done relatively well, with the exception of cars with torque vectoring all-wheel drive systems. Unfortunately for Forza Horizon, that sense of realism just is not quite there. You would think that Turn 10 would try and improve the realism of the game since it would give players an opportunity to experience their favorite cars on open streets, but Turn 10 instead opted for a slightly more arcade like approach.

For example, I picked up an S2000 and modified it to include everything that was available on my own S2000. When I first took it out on the open road in Forza Horizon, the car felt twitchy and unsettled, even at freeway speeds. Having driven my own S2000 on a day to day basis for nearly three years, I can confidently say that the S2000 should not behave like it is going to oversteer all the time. Of course, my experience with Forza Horizon is with the Xbox 360's standard controller. Playing the game with a full racing wheel setup (wheel, gated shifter, three pedals) may yield a completely different result.    

From a graphical standpoint, Turn 10 got Forza Horizon to look as realistic as possible. Every car model looks exactly like the real thing, from the exterior of the car, all the way down to the details in the in cabin view. As mentioned earlier, it can be somewhat difficult to discern an in-game still shot from a photograph. Horizon's landscapes are also stunning to behold. The incredibly rendered environments along with the new day/night feature add to the stunning visual realism.

Summary

Overall, Forza Horizon is a good game. It is fun, entertaining, and very pleasing to the eyes. Since a lot of the very technical details do not exist in Horizon, it is much easier for newcomers to the Forza series to get into that game, and hopefully branch out into the main Forza Motorsport series. However, if you are expecting a technical racing game in the model of Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo, you may want to look elsewhere. This is definitely a game that I would recommend renting before making the decision to buy. If you do decide to buy it before trying it, give the game some time for the price to drop. Getting the game cheaper may help with the sting of having to pay for all the extra content.