Splendid Auto Monthly - A Motoring Man's Meanderings (Gavin Anderson's Blog)

DeusExMackia · 13 October 2017 12:25

A new review of an old car - it’s the Dolphine Mk. 1 Sprint!

DeusExMackia · 17 October 2017 18:53

Gavin drives the final edition of the Hodan Okayama.

DeusExMackia · 25 October 2017 19:24

Gavin drives another budget supercar - the Scarab Ceres SR.

DeusExMackia · 5 November 2017 21:43

It’s not often Gavin gets to drive a concept car, but when the offer comes along…

DeusExMackia · 19 November 2017 19:44

The ultimate in Italian luxury; the Zavir Squalo Ultimate gets driven.

FX04 · 20 November 2017 17:01

Hey, It’s the Ganter Motors museum. We can give a 1953 Ganter Indiana V8 Auto Coupe for testing and showing up.

http://discourse.automationgame.com/t/ganter-motors-co-52-indiana-here/22592/7

DeusExMackia · 20 November 2017 20:07

Heya @FX04, if you’d like something reviewed, PM me and I’ll add you to Gavin’s list of cars he needs to review

DeusExMackia · 12 December 2017 20:42

Review: 2018 KHT Eau Rouge (Street)

“Hypercar 101”

I’d like to begin by saying thank you to the team at Kraft Haus Technic for such a nice day. You managed to make the usual corporate event feel of car reveals far more bearable, plus the food was great. Anyway…

KHT know how to make fast cars. They are the yard stick, and that’s an end of it. The Eau Rouge is no different; a smooth, sculpted jet fighter of a mid-engine hypercar. An 825hp, ultra advanced performance machine.

The front looks like something out of the new Blade Runner film. The rear is wide, but cool. The whole body conveys motion. There’s no emotion, anywhere; it’s as against beautiful as you’d expect any German car to be. It’s pretty vulgar in parts, but it oozes performance. Functionality over style.

KHT took us out to the Nurburgring for a pre-production drive, a location that couldn’t be any more suitable.

Sadly it won’t have enough room to get up to this cars top speed of 247 mph, but it’s certainly enough to feel the impact of the 2.4 second 0-60 time. It’s surprisingly unbrutal, but you can hardly miss it. Back to that jet-fighter analogy, it’s very much like putting the afterburner on every time you even merely stroke the throttle pedal.

I am not accustomed to the Nurburgring, and my passenger-cum-instructor from KHT is a welcome bit of help. Thankfully once I’d got the hang of things, I could get a brief glimpse at what the Eau Rouge is capable of.

It feels like a race car, even on this ‘road’ trim. And an American one at that. The 7L V8 isn’t ultra responsive, rather the power builds and swells, but there’s so much of it to deliver that any input makes a big difference. The brakes are sledgehammers, and good ones at that. You will stop. The suspension is phenomenal; absolutely no body roll and yet it still manages to be somewhat comfortable. Thank the active suspension for that, otherwise it would be unbearable anywhere else.

One word does come to mind though; frantic. The whole car feels like a rat with rabies, only contained and controlled. Give it an inch and it’ll send you right into the nearest tree, and even when I was hardly pushing it beyond 50% of its capability, it was more than ready to kill you. You’ll definitely need to keep the driver aids on at all times until you’re life insurance is sorted and you’re sure you have nothing left to loose.

This is how you do a hypercar. It’s a mathematical example, and a near perfect one at that. Just one problem; it has no heart. It is an out-and-out machine. There is no soul here, though I feel it might be somewhere behind all the carbon fibre and electronic gizmos.

It’s not beautiful, it’s very calculated, it is purely function over form. But you won’t love it; you’ll love what it represents, the result of hundreds of thousands of hours of R&D, the result of years of testing in the world of motorsport and many, many millions of dollars of funding. That is worthy of the utter most expect.

But as a car, it’s not something you’re going to feel a connection with. It’s incredibly good as a machine, and nothing more. The passion is in the performance, and it’s been thoroughly camoflauged.

The Eau Rouge, then, is the A-10 Warthog of the Hypercar roster. It’s not beautiful and it’s hardly soulful, but that thing is still in regular service 40 years after its introduction, and there’s a reason for that. Something tells me the Eau Rouge will have a similar status 40 years from now.

- Gavin Anderson

image1600×964 694 KB

Photo by @squidhead because none of the pictures I took could do this justice and his photoshop work is fantastic. Read the full article here, the story behind this car is fantastic.

Awildgermanappears · 12 December 2017 21:39

Literally how I’d describe a 1980s Monolith S76 lorry.

squidhead · 12 December 2017 21:49

That is… surprisingly correct. Pure maths and engineering approach. A veyron with a different set of goals, and i did not notice that till you pointed that out. Thanks for the review mate!

abg7 · 13 December 2017 04:21

I agree with you fully. It’s a pragmatic, rather than emotional, hypercar, but still crazy enough to give most drivers a real fright if they’re not prepared.

Hshan · 13 December 2017 08:55

I don’t remember where, but I did write it long ago - it’s like a scalpel. A very precise tool.

DeusExMackia · 16 December 2017 21:17

A Motoring Man’s Meanderings - Gavin’s Favourite Cars of 2017

It’s been a busy year for motoring, and as it draws to an end, it’s a good chance to reflect on some of the best cars I’ve seen and driven this year. So, in no particular order…

Adenine Valence - A fools guide to making a mid-size sedan
Proof that corporate designed cars aren’t always dull. It’s one of the smartest looking cars of the year, and its solid specs should sell it to anyone who isn’t convinced. What a range too; sure, the sportier models aren’t exactly presitigious but they’ll save you a lot of money compared to the averge Rennen or Bonham. You’d be an idiot not to at least consider it if you’ve got $25k to spend on a car.

Sachiuri Sagitta - Yep, the Anikatians do know how to have fun.
It’s a bit too overstyled for its own good, but it sure has soul, and as a piece of engineering, it is outstanding. This is the kind of sports car that you admire for its achievements, and the also the kind that will keep impressing you every time you drive it. My new benchmark for the sports coupe.
Read the roadtest here

DSD Saratoga - Pyschotic sports perfection
Nope, the Saratoga still isn’t and will never be pretty, but heck it’s a good car to drive. The R+ trim that I drove in Switzerland was such a stellar driving experience that I’ve struggled to find things that compare to it. Pure sports cars aren’t all that common any more, and to find one this fast, this balanced and this mad makes it unexpectedly special too.
Read the roadtest here

Scagliati Serenisima - The one GT car I’d buy if I had the money
Ultra comfortable, seriously quick and with just the right amount of vulgarity to complete that Grand Tourer arrogance. It’s the kind of a car a dictator would turn up in to arrive at the UN for, the kind of car Mafia bosses would demand to be driven around in, the sort of GT car that pompously and smuggly flips the bird to the establishment. How can you argue with that?
Read the review here (at the bottom!)

Merciel Corsaire GTE - I’m still soiling my pants just thinking about it
Race cars aren’t made for the road, which is exactly why they should be driven on damp, narrow Yorkshire Dales b-roads at very illegal speeds. You can’t afford it, you’d hate to live with even the detuned production version, but what I’d give just to drive this again. 722 hp never felt so good.
Read the review here

Zenshi Nimessa Newman R…ish - There’s a reason I bought the damn thing
Oh man. I got it oh so very wrong in my review. I wanted to like this car so much that I was able to glare over it’s major, major issues. The massive understeer, the messy sway bar set up, the insanely expensive engine, the cramped rear seats; there’s an idea here, but it’s executed with sloppiness so bad that it is thoroughly detrimental to its package as a sports car.

How did I end up solving these issues? By complete chance, in fact. After Gryphon Gear and GBf, er, ‘responded’ to my review of the Bellua, I ended up getting in contact with them in the following months. One thing leads to the next and I manage to bump into some of them at a car event, which I drove my Nimessa to. They were interested to see what it was like, and came to the conlusion that I was talking out of my arse and that it really wasn’t very good.

After offering to take them out for a drink and indeed quite a few drinks later, we managed to agree a little deal; they’d rework my Nimessa Newman R into the car I wanted it to be, in return for a few more reviews - not paid for, might I add, just some priority towards them in terms of what gets published.

The result is the Zenshi Nimessa Newman R GG-Tune; I really need to fix that name, but it’s made quite the difference. Gone is the active suspension and the 2.5l turbo i6. Now, it’s a V6 powered, all-analogue super sedan. It won’t cost me half my annual wage to service it. It handles like a dream now. It’s engine still has that 6 speed ring to it, but now the turbos are far more usable.

In short, it’s the car that I feel Zenshi wanted it to be, and indeed what it should have been. I can’t promise GG are going to do this for everyone (it was essentially me exerting some industry privelege), but hell it’s made a difference. I can’t really call it my car of the year when it’s been modified, but I’m certainly not going to be letting go of it any time soon.

Honourable mentions
Cavallerra Fiacci Rally Concept: What a great looking car. Now if you wouldn’t mind making it a real thing Cavallera…

Maesima Devina and Znopresk Zap!: It doesn’t matter what your age is or who you are or which Bruce Springsteen album is your favourite, these are the two small cars you need to consider if you’re buying anything under $15k.

IMP Impakt range: Still one of the most solid mid-size sedan offerings in the world. It’s German dependability at its best.

Bonham Chaucer: Great news, yuppies! Now you can have a luxury saloon that doesn’t make you look like an arrogant prick.

Zavir Luna Spider: Almost makes you wonder why anyone would spend any more than this for a comfortable soft top coupe.

That does it for this year. See you in January folks, I’m off to consume 4 metric litres of Snowballs, Eggnog and Mulled Wine over the next 2 weeks. Adios!

- Gavin Anderson

Hshan · 16 December 2017 21:36

Yay, Zavir got mentioned! I like the idea of a subjective press summary

strop · 17 December 2017 00:17

Haha oh I didn’t actually intend to that to happen, but I guess now it has truth be told the edits made to the Zenshi was pretty much akin to a total rebuild. In a list:

Replaced the hypercar spec brakes with something a bit more in budget
Stripped out the multi -mode Sport suspension in favour of our own versatile spring setup
Tunnelled out the front wheel arches and completely refixed the suspension mounting points
Replaced the MacPherson struts with double wishbones
This necessitated completely reformatting the engine bay so as a result pretty much none of the drive components are OEM anymore
That new engine is an oversquare 2.8L V6 we had lying around from mule testing. It has a very similar DOHC VTEC DI setup to the original i6 but while it spools at a similar 3500rpm it has a powerband that goes all the way to 9200rpm
ECU reflash
Removed the cooling flaps.
New set of gears and geared diff
Mounted the same wheels front and back
Upgraded front diffuser with no-lift setup

In short… most of the rear end and the cabin remains original but the front end has been heavily remodelled. The car may have less failsafe reliability built in but it should save at least 50% in servicing! Edit: and fuel costs. Try 8.8L/100km as opposed to 11.4 with also 400hp. The net result is that it goes 18 seconds faster on Nordschleife.

Also the Fore Eagle GTi didn’t get a mention, sad Boye

Grandea · 17 December 2017 01:19

Yikes.

That didn’t sound too good!

I’ll look into making the Nimessa Newman R, I guess… More accessible and easier on the wallet?

strop · 17 December 2017 01:25

Just pay a lot of attention to what each tech slider does to which component. The engine had +5 on everything which would have hit hard particularly on the block, the valve train and the injectors. In addition, unless you have a historical reason to use a pure Alu block and cylinders it’s inferior to AlSi. I used a total of 4-5 tech points in the engine I replaced, unfortunately as much as I would have liked to keep the i6 it ended up being too much of a compromise dynamically and to get the power out, hence switching to a V6 to accommodate everything else.

DeusExMackia · 17 January 2018 15:18

The new Enemigo S Tourer gets a review!

Radster · 17 January 2018 16:07

Thank you for the review! Glad you liked the car despite the flaws. I must say that I tried to go for a more comfy approach when it came to suspension tuning, but probably did it uncorrectly and became a game of rapidly diminishing returns.

DeusExMackia · 17 January 2018 16:18

Well, it’s hard to judge the comfort score anyway at the moment so I went down the performance route instead in terms of judging. Still though, that makes it more rounded for daily use.