What’s that old joke about it being a good thing that England is an island because the British are, by and large, nuts?

Well here’s example #645,643,985.

The car in question is a Dax Rush, essentially one of umpteen copies of the seldom equaled Lotus 7.

What differentiates this particular Dax Rush from all the others is it’s choice of engines.

Sure sure, there have been 7s with V8s, V6s all manner of turboed and supercharged 4 bangers, not to mention three versions that have high output bike engines (Hyabusa, Fireblade, and one other I can’t think of at th’mo), and one that has a V8 made from two Hyabusa fours (because the regular Hyabusa is such a wimpy mill), but this one has got to take the cake.

This one, is powered by a turbine engine form a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter.

I’ll say that again, just to make sure you heard me: this one, is powered by a turbine engine.

Now, I can find nothing about how this car drives, and, sadly, I’m pretty sure that it probably won’t be that much fun, or as much fun as you’d think. See, turbines are fine, if expensive powerplants. They’re low maintenance (relatively), they can run on a variety of fuels, quiet (in certain ways) and really, really efficient for their size & power output.

They have one big flaw when it comes to auto applications though: they take weeks to accelerate.

From the time you stand on the gas of a turbine, it has to suck in a lot of air, run it through a fan that has to spool up to a certain RPM, that air gets compressed, then it is run through more (sometimes several, in the case of airplanes) fan stages, each taking time to get up to speed, has some fuel injected into the compressed air, then the whole thing is set afire and then you finally get the power output you’ve been waiting for.

Decades ago, Chrysler looked into building turbine cars for the road, they even build a couple dozen as working prototypes. I remember reading R & T’s test of it; they said it was amazingly smooth & quiet and it would get beaten off the line by an ice cream truck.

Remember when Andy Granatelli ran the STP sponsored turbine cars at Indy? Look at any of the restarts and you’ll see what I mean.

So sadly, I bet this 7 variant is a nicely done engineering exercise, but not nearly as fun as you’d think.

Oh, and I read about this on Jalopnik, in case you’re wondering.

More pictures after the jump.

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Did you know that Charlie Chaplin was in a racing movie? He was, it was called “Kid Auto Races at Venice”.

Near as I can tell, it has not one, but two races contained with in the movie. There’s both an actual automobile race going on, but in the last bit of the film, there is also a kid’s soapbox derby-style race going on. They seem to be going on side by side, and the same track … which I presume to be a street circuit in Venice CA.

I found out about this odd little bit of car racing trivia from this blog I check out written by a comedian/writer.

Racing movies are, by and large, crap.

Even the “good” ones are pretty flawed. “Grand Prix” is overly long and has that horrid tacked on soap opera “plot” and “Le Mans” has no plot at all. The less said about “Driven” & the regrettable “Days of Thunder” the better.

“Kid Auto Races at Venice” is also pretty thin on plot … essentially Chaplin is a real pain to a camera crew trying to film the race.

The Film itself and more after the jump.
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OK, so the folks over at Pickuptruck.com (yes, there actually is such a site) have interesting renderings about the supposed, rumored, and (some say) hoped-for VW pick up.

VW used to make a pick up truck based on the Rabbit back in the early 80s. For a while they were real popular with tuners and engine swappers - bone stock PU bodies with blown GTi motors under the hood.

Not sure if that’s the future VW has in mind, but it looks like they’re seriously considering bringing the truck to the North American market. Which makes sense, from a profit margin point of view (e.g. trucks have higher profits than, say, sedans).

Or as Pickuptruck.com says:

“Volkswagen of America denies plans to sell this truck in the US, but then again, the US market is still the largest and most lucrative (ask the Japanese!), something VW is very aware of.”

There’s a picture of the (supposed) real deal testing in the arctic after the jump.

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I must say…I never thought you could do some of these things in an old Hyundai.

If you’re looking for the short version of this, just watch up until about 3 minutes into the video. It starts to get monotonous after that.

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That’s what Kazanori Yamauchi, the guy behind the Gran Turismo series says at any rate.

“We’ve had a lot of discussions with the manufacturers and although at the beginning they hated the idea of deformation, now they’re slowly coming around to it. We’ve still got a few to convince, but we will. Expect deformation in the very near future: very, very soon.”

I’m not sure I’m buying it though, and that’s what some of the commenters at Los Jalops say too.

First off, he says, “Expect deformation in the very near future … ”

Deformation is not a damage model.

A damage model is much more than pushing around some body panels and making the glass break.
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To continue my fan-boy Pontiac posts (yes, I am a devoted follower of the pointy badge), a new version Solstice was unveiled alongside the G8 GXP as well as the new 2009 Vibe at the New York International Auto Show last week.

Named the Pontiac Solstice Coupe, the two seater will still be able to thrill you like the convertible, but buyers can now enjoy a true semi-fixed roof instead of a folding canvas convertible.

“Semi-fixed? What do you mean by that?” Continue Reading…