the.[ED]ition

We were talking about the absurd costs of owning supercars over Dot Com Pho this week. I’m not sure about you but I always thought that if you buy a Ferrari F430, it would be $180,000. However, you really don’t think about the ridiculous maintenance costs. Apparently oil for the F430 costs $60 a quart and that’s not nearly the most expensive part you’ll need every so often. Replacing the brakes, the clutch and the sort will ring up a tens of thousands if you drive it on a regular basis.

Of course, this doesn’t compare to the real supercars like the Bugatti Veyron, which requires custom tires to put 1001BHP on the road, which cost a whopping $17,000 for a set of four. There’s also the option for race wheels with a run-flat system for $43,000. At the top speed of 253MPH, these tires will only last you about 70 miles, or about 15 minutes. Oh but most people won’t have to worry about that since the 26.4 gallon fuel tank will empty in 12 minutes.

That must be what this guy was doing…

After months of waiting for some Japanese dudes to forge my wheels in the fires of Mount Fuji, Advance Motorsports finally got my Work Emotion CR Kai’s here. It took me hours to apply the decals and then actually mount them on my car with a friend’s help but it was all worth it. Doesn’t my baby look that much hotter with her new shoes?

Day started out rather normal but after classes, I smoked it out of UBC to Advance, which is annoyingly located in Coquitlam, which is significantly further away from…well, everything. Everything went smootly…except that I forgot to bring the wheel lock key for my stock rims. Doh!

These are 18″ wheels wrapped with the 215/40/18 Kumho Ecsta SPT’s that I drove down to Bellingham for. It’s late and I’ve been either driving or working on this nearly all day so I’m too pooped to take real pictures. I just stopped where there was the most light and snapped a few. Maybe some more when I get some center caps…

We were talking about the new Lamborghini Reventon this week at our weekly Dot Com Pho and the opinions were mixed. John thought it was vulgar and stupid, Gary, Leo and Stephen hadn’t heard much about it and Greg is just amused by shiny objects. Michael was too busy with the pitcher, which had three spouts…something he’s never seen before. Personally, I thought it was genius. The Reventon is designed to look like a F-22 Raptor stealth fighter and, let’s face it, that’s what Lambos are all about. If they’re not the sort of car you imagine when you’re 7-years old, then it’s failed.

The exterior isn’t the only thing that’s designed to be like a F-22 stealth fighter. The dashboard is an LCD that switches from boring ol’ car mode to super awesome jet fighter mode. Top Gear showed this off a couple weeks ago.

In all seriousness, that’s just about the best thing ever. You’d have to be mind-numbingly boring to not want that dashboard in your vehicle, although it is considerably less impressive in, say, a Honda Civic than a 660-horsepower hypercar with a top speed of 211MPH.

Not to mention the entire thing, including the wheels which act as air intakes, is made of carbon fiber and it has been scientifically proven that anything made of carbon fiber is automatically awesome. Too bad there will only be 20 of these made and they each carry a price tag of approximately $1.6 million. While it’s a heck of a lot more unique and better looking, given the choice, I’d probably opt for the faster (253MPH) and more practical (really!) Bugatti Veyron, which is a relative bargain at $1.2 million.

I finally took my Mazda 3 to the body shop this week to get some dents and paint work done before I do anything further. Unfortunately for me, that means I had to drive this.

Yeah, that’s a Honda Civic DX and while it’s only 20HP and about 40 torque less than my car but god, it’s just horribly slow. I put my foot down and, well, I couldn’t pass anything on the highway, whereas I’m usually able to merge and weave with ease. I guess it’s not a terrible car for regular commuters but there are so many annoying things about it…apart from the turtle pace at which it travels.

For one thing, you can’t see the hood so judging distance while parking is made more difficult. That makes the driving position awkward as well. The digital speedometer is sort of cool for a few minutes but then that gets on your nerves too. The stereo doesn’t offer any convenient linkups and there are far too many holes and drawers all over the place.

Either way, I’m glad to get my baby back from the shop today. I don’t think I could stand to be driving around anymore in something that gets to 60 in 60 years.

Late last year, I wrote a little bit about the Tesla Roadster, which I declared the “only cool electric car”. For this most part this was true as basically every vehicle one might refer to as green usually turned my stomach a little. I mean, just about every environmentally friendly vehicle, such as the Toyota Prius, was barf-inducingly ugly. I really didn’t get why they didn’t just make them look like regular cars. Wouldn’t that help sell a few more? Or maybe that was the point…the oil companies pressure car makers to create vehicles so hideously fugly that only the hippiest of tree huggers would purchase them and thus, fuel remains a multi-billion dollar industry.

However, recently, green cars have been getting better looking. In addition to hybrids that look more like their gas guzzling counterparts, there’s the Chevrolet Volt, which we talked about today at Dot Com Pho. Apparently it’s an electric car that has also has a combustion engine, not for powering the car but for charging the battery when it’s low. Plugging it into a regular wall socket will charge the car enough to get it about 40 miles, which is a fairly regular commute distance. If, however, you run out of power, the car’s engine kicks in and you can get up to 650 miles on a single tank of gas. If you never go over 40 miles, though, you’ll never use a drop of fuel. A full charge takes 6.5 hours, so you can charge it overnight to get to work and then charge it at work during your eight hour workday and drive home easily.

That’s a pretty good idea, especially with gas prices being as high as they are right now. But how’s the performance? One drawback to most “green” cars is that they’re as slow as they are ugly. The Volt has a top speed of 120MPH and a 0-60MPH time of about 8.5 seconds. That’s not bad at all…only a tiny bit slower than my Mazda 3. In comparison, the Prius (which, although it’s a hybrid, still uses fuel), has a top speed of 105MPH and 0-60MPH at 10 seconds. I’ve driven the Prius and those numbers are generous…and getting closer to 100MPH takes forever.

Price? Well, it’s not cheap at an estimated $30,000 when it comes in out 2010 but considering the savings on fuel, it could save quite a bit of money in the long run. However, I’d expect a rather long wait list if you’re considering it.

The best of all, the Volt’s looks won’t make you want to gouge your eyes out. It’s actually a rather sharp looking car. It’s not the best looking thing on four wheels but at that price and considering the technology, it’s something I could live with everyday. I’ve always said that I don’t care if the car somehow un-endangers tree moss or if kittens come out of the muffler rather than smoke, if I can’t even bear to look at it after spending 30 grand, I wouldn’t consider buying one. Although this is simply a concept (I’m sure the production model won’t have 20-inch wheels), it does look pretty good.