Australian GP next week
The F1 enthusiasts have been hanging out
for this one - the first GP of the 19 race series for 2005 and
is being held at the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne.
Albert
Park
The Australian contingent will be waiting
to see just how the home hero, Mark Webber, goes in the BMW
Williams this year, having taken the seat that became
available with Juan Pablo Montoya having moved to McLaren.
The quickest cars during the off-season
have been the Renaults and the McLarens, but you never know
what configuration they were running, what weight, how much
fuel, etc. The proof of the pudding will be at Albert Park,
but never, never write off a certain Michael Schumacher.
The starting time ‘should’ be around 10 a.m. here, but
I will try and be more specific in next week’s column. I
will be trying out the sports TV facilities at the new
Jameson’s Irish Pub, so join me for a late breakfast!
Renault Clio
Sport
A couple of years back I had the
opportunity to go around the Bira circuit in a Clio and have
been raving about the cars ever since. Despite a strong
tendency to swap ends that was present in the first versions,
Renault have made the Clio into a well mannered performance
hatch, and John Weinthal, our Down-under correspondent managed
to wangle his backside into one. Here are the Words from
Weinthal.
Renault
Clio
“Some cars beg to be driven again and
again. The occasional week in a spirited ‘hot hatch’ is
among a motoring writer’s special privileges.
“The Renault Clio Sport from France is
just such a thrill machine. They should be storming from
Nissan/Renault dealer showrooms at an unchanged AUD 33,000 for
the latest model (just under 1 million baht on a straight
currency exchange).
“The latest Clio Sport’s styling is
pretty much as before, except for twin chromed exhausts and
bigger 16 inch alloy wheels. It combines a Gallic face with a
practical box space for a young family and its luggage, or for
two with acres of space when the rear seats are folded.
“This new model also has an extra 7kW
giving 131 to push along a two-door four seater weighing in at
a miniscule 1090 kg. It also boasts a terrific new six-speed
manual gearbox.
“But this is no bare metal performance
special. This is a car for everyone who enjoys more than a
dash of flair, luxury equipment galore and quality feel along
with a big dose of excitement when appropriate.
“This car is in fact a sort of baby
brother to the most compelling challenger to date for the all
conquering Subaru WRX. That is the highly individual 165 kW,
AUD 43,000 Renault Megane Turbo - a four door hatch of
breathtaking ability (which we also do not get here). But it
does cost nearly a third more than the Clio Sport and is a
size larger, so we will concentrate on the hot baby of the
Renault clan.
“New Clio Sport rides and handles
marginally better than its brilliant forebears thanks to
suspension and steering tweaks, slightly wider front and rear
track and an increased wheelbase. And the handsome, hip
hugging leather and alcantara seats are comfortable over the
longest haul.
“Take it from me - Renault has made a
terrific driver’s car into an even better one, with no price
increase.
“Now for the equipment story: For safety
there are large disc brakes with anti-lock of course plus an
Electronic Stability Program which can be switched off for an
even more exhilarating ride when the mood takes you. There are
front and side air bags.
“Standard gear includes climate control
air-conditioning, remote locking, power windows and mirrors,
aluminium pedals and an excellent radio with above average
range on the medium wave. It has rain-sensitive wipers and
brilliant automatic xenon headlamps. New to the Clio Sport is
a cruise control with its buttons on the steering wheel which
also lets you set a maximum speed you wish. Metallic paint is
an AUD 600 option.
“There is a useful supplementary wand to
control the sound system although in rather typical European
fashion it is cunningly concealed behind the right steering
wheel spoke. An LCD info centre keeps track of fuel usage and
distance to empty.
“On our test the fuel economy was
excellent with an easy 600 km plus on a 50 litre tank of
premium unleaded. There’s an abundance of storage spaces,
split-folding rear seat and a luggage net to hold small items
down in the boot. The glove-box has a chiller.
“This is a fully-equipped,
thrill-a-minute machine which is also refined well beyond
expectations. There’s also a great bonus in a ride which
simply sneers at almost all road imperfections.
“The Clio Sport deserves great success.
Together with the Megane Turbo it should put Renault high on
an enthusiast motorist’s list of must-consider brands.”
(Thank you John for that report on what is
obviously a GLC, great little car! The Renault/Nissan group,
under CEO Carlos Ghosn, seem to be producing better and better
cars. It is such a pity we get only a small number of the
Nissan models, and none of the Renaults! Dr. Iain.)
Autotrivia
Quiz
Last week, I mentioned that the red flag is
used in motor racing to stop a race. However, the red flag
also gave a name to a car released at the Leipzig Fair in
1960. I asked what was this car, and the clue was to think
chopsticks! An easy one. It was the Chinese Hong Chi, which
means Red Flag (or a steamed rice and chicken feet to go, or
something)!
So to this week. What Japanese car was
known as the hare in flight? (And it was not the VW Rabbit!)
For the Automania FREE beer this week, be
the first correct answer to email [email protected]
Good luck!
Hybrid vehicles. The future
or the past revived?
Over in FoMoCo land, Bill Ford’s crystal
ball sees a future of hybrids and hydrogen power, saying,
“In 25 years, as many as 75 percent of light vehicles
produced could be hybrids with the rest powered by
hydrogen.”
Now just about every manufacturer has a
hybrid gasoline and electric power somewhere it its model
list, with Honda and Toyota at the forefront. So have we
really come up with something new to take us into Bill
Ford’s 25 years hence? While I do believe that hybrids are
an important part of the future, I have to emphatically
disagree that this is something new.
Apollo
Moon Buggy
The first hybrid, according to my research,
was built in 1902 by the son of an Austrian tinsmith. His name
was Ferdinand Porsche - yes the same Porsche who designed
vehicles for Daimler, Auto Union, made the Beetle and finally
gave birth to the line-up of some of the greatest sportscars
ever seen, the cars bearing his own name - the Porsche’s. It
is now time to go back in history, and the tale of Dr. Porsche
and his involvement in the hybrid movement.
Ferdinand Porsche was born in 1875 in
Mattersdorf, a village close to Reichenberg, in what was then
North Bohemia, later Czechoslovakia. The young Porsche
demonstrated excellent mechanical aptitude, for example wiring
his family home for electric light when he was just 15 years
old. Despite his father’s desire for him to become a
tinsmith, at age 18 he was recommended for a job in Vienna
with Bela Egger (later Brown Boveri). In Vienna, he sneaked
into night classes at the Technical University, the only
‘formal’ engineering education he ever obtained.
In 1898, he joined Jacob Lohner’s
recently-formed automobile company. This was Austria’s first
production car company but Lohner believed in electric cars
and Porsche designed a car which had an electric motor fitted
to each front wheel hub. This was radical stuff and the
Lohner-Porsche was exhibited in the Paris Exposition of 1900
and attracted international attention. This was, however,
still an electric car, powered by heavy lead-acid batteries.
The hub motors had been designed by Ferdinand Porsche, who was
just 25 years old at the time. His employer, Jacob Lohner,
boasted to the press, “He is very young, but he is a man
with a big career before him. You will hear of him again.”
And how prophetic was that? By the way, the same basic motor
design was used to power the Apollo buggy which American
astronauts drove on the moon 69 years later.
Porsche was a sporting fanatic and spent
many hours at the drawing board to see where he could refine
the design and in 1902 fitted one of his electric hub motors
to each wheel, producing the world’s first four wheel drive
vehicle.
Porsche then looked at the weight problem
with the lead-acid batteries and worked out that what he
needed was a lightweight generator to provide the electric
current, rather than batteries, so he harnessed Daimler’s
and Panhard’s internal combustion engines to power the
generators for the wheel-mounted electric motors in a new
technology that he called ‘System Mixt.’ The system might
have been ‘mixed’ but the results were not. More speed
records were won by his 4WD hybrid race car, European acclaim
followed, and in 1905 Porsche won the Poetting Prize as
Austria’s most outstanding automotive designer.
During WW I, Porsche was directed towards
designing equipment for the war effort. One of his designs was
the ‘Landwehr’, a train designed for the road. The leading
car, or engine, was powered by a Daimler gasoline engine of
100 horsepower, linked to an electrical generator. In keeping
with his proven race car approach, all four wheels were
equipped with an electric motor. This progressive design
became even more ahead of its time when Porsche decided that
all of the cars should be equipped with the same four wheel
drive system, with the electrical power supplied by the engine
car through long cables.
The next hybrid was the C Train. It was a
purely military concept and was equipped with an 81 ton gun
and four cars, each with eight wheel electric hub drives,
following the concept of the Landwehr train. The total weight
with cargo was in excess of 150 tons. That was some hybrid!
After these hybrid designs, Dr. Porsche
became involved with the VW, which returned to
‘conventional’ propulsion, even though he went air-cooled
and rear engined.
So should we just go electric? The answer
is no. A growing fleet of ominously silent General Motors
electric cars are testament to this. Dozens of the green,
metallic blue and bright red futuristic vehicles are lined up
behind a chain-link fence at the edge of a freight rail line
in Van Nuys, as the world’s largest automaker pulled the
plug on a vehicle it heralded, only a few years ago, as ‘the
car of the future.’
Dr. Porsche also saw that pure electric
vehicles were not the way to go over 100 years ago and built
the hybrids. It is a pity that the automakers did not look
into history a little more!
