Tag: Fifth Gear

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Cars

Crash Test @ 193 kph (120 mph) in Ford Focus

Many people may not have heard of the Fifth Gear. Unfortunately, it is not well known like Top Gear around the world. However, Fifth Gear always provides critical knowledge about road safety. Recently, they did an extreme crash test with a Ford Focus.

They tried to see what would happen when you crash a Ford Focus to a concrete wall at the speed of 120 mph (~193 kph). This speed is the triple of the usual Euro NCAP crash tests and never been tested. Also, concrete wall increases the impact more than the deformable wall! Just watch the footage and see, what would happen if a car crashes at the speed of 193 kph!

Video’s copyright
Fifth Gear

Categories
Cars

What is torque?

Everyone knows what horsepower means is (actually we don’t, and we just pretend we knew it), but there is a big speculations about the torque! Most of the people define it as that’s something, doing something and that something turns that thing and something moves this thing. Actually many people has no idea and that’s normal because it has a very complicated definition for most of the people. (The definition of torque is the tendency of a force to rotate an object about an axis, fulcrum, or pivot. Just as a force is a push or a pull, a torque can be thought of as a twist.) I know you are more confused!

Eventually I found something which describes the meaning of torque and its advantage. Thanks to Fifth Gear team (Jason Plato and Tiff Needell) you can understand what torque really means. This time in their dog-fight session, they drove Porsche Cayenne Turbo and Audi Q7 V12 TDi. The Q7 has a lot of torque, 1000 nm! This means, it is clinically powerful, thanks to diesel engine. Porsche Cayenne Turbo has only 700 nm of torque. This might sound small but it is still huge amount.

If you are planning to pull a car with brakes on, try to pull with Q7 V12 TDi. Actually this is the only Audi which can be buyable :)


 



Pictures’, Videos Copyrights
Audi, Porsche, Fifth Gear

Categories
Cars

I know the next Stig!

After seven years of curiosity, we finally found out who is the Stig. Honestly Ben Collins’s appearance on FifthGear might boost the ratings but it will not create the same attention. We all know who is the Stig and his capabilities. So the case is closed now.
However the new Stig case is just beginning. Someone is going to take place of the Stig and we have no clue about what will happen next. And while looking at Stig’s book (I didn’t start reading), I noticed that Jordan (aka. Katie Price) has a special place! Especially her aggressive driving style was a very remarkable moment of TopGear! And her pinky style. Interesting some websites are talking about pink Stig. We had black and white Stig, now we may have a pink one or a gray one. I guess pink will be more colourful for the show!
When I combine two notions together, I found out something! The next Stig is Katie Price. She loves pink, drives aggressively on TopGear track, there are many rumours about Stig’s colour. So the I am nominating Katie Price as the next Stig :) With pink Stig, TopGear can have the highest ratings on earth !!!

 
Pictures’ Copyrights
BBC, Stig’s Book, FifthGear

Stig, Tigs, Igst, Gsti, Stig = Ben Collins

Since last seven years automotive industry was looking for an answer to a very important question! That’s not lowering CO2 emissions or selling more cars to people who already own one. Their main problem was The Stig. He was the person or something which can push the limits of any object with four wheels attached to an engine. He was the TopGear’s top secret mission. His identity was much better protected than Intel’s new CPU technology.
But the dream end up quicker than everyone expected. As we all know that, Ben Collins did not like his pay check and started writing a book. Actually I couldn’t get that point. He wrote a book while being Stig. Okay, his book will not be nominated for Nobel Awards but he wrote a book. Many people cannot manage to write one page of something and he wrote book and at the same time he kept working. Besides his ability to pushing limits of cars, he is very well at writing also.
Unfortunately I did not buy his book yet but you can find it very easily. The Man in White Suit and you can order from Amazon or from Blackwell. I am planning to read the book in couple weeks. I am sure it will be a very book to read!
If you are not satisfied by the log book of The Stig, you can hear his voice and watch his face on FifthGear. On their last episode (Season 17, Episode 11) Ben Collins was able to talk and we were able to see him. He was also sarcastic about his previous occupation in BBC and complained for being silent for seven years. Actually we didn’t miss something very exciting!
As usual, FifthGear assigned him very interesting and pointless duties, like driving drag car and trying to achieve some lap time. I am pretty sure that it will be more boring!
Pictures’ Copyrights
The Stig (I guess)
Categories
Cars

Scientific show off by VW Passat

Four years ago on Fifth Gear Jon Bentley drove something very extra ordinary! Actually the car was not that extra ordinary but its ability was extra ordinary. It was a normal VW Golf GTi. I know, that’s not something very special. You can see Golf GTi anytime on street!
However, there was something different underneath this Golf! It was cleaver :) Thanks to its laser radar, Golf is able to learn what the obstacles are around! And Golf was not doing this just to show off. It was doing this to learn its path which will be driven by its own. This Golf had an auto pilot, like an air plane and unlike air plane you don’t have to take off by yourself. You just need to start the engine. Anyway, this prototype model was designed to go around cones!
Now it is 2010 and VW did not go on wintersleep for four years. They really worked hard with Stanford University. And the result is; a VW Passat Estate which is able to make a J turn and park itself. Yes, the cleaver boys from Standford spend their hours to calculate how to make a J turn with computer. Actually, they could have asked many people it is not that complicated. Anyway, they formulated as F = m a. Honestly, I don’t know how they manage to shortened this manoeuvre with only three letter :)

In the end, they manage to make this complicated maneuver with the help of silicone chips :) What we learn from these experiences? Silicons are not only used for making boobs bigger; VW never sleeps for long time and in future if Microsoft makes a car, we would probably hitting to each other in every second :)

Honestly, VW and Stanford University made a remarkable excellent job :) Even if we trained to do that turn, we cannot learn that quickly!
Pictures are taken from;
VW Website

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Cars

Top Gear; just only a big budget ?

Even if you are not interested on car shows, you would probably once watch a small clip from BBC Top Gear. For more than 30 years and from different producers and presenters, Top Gear is a living legendary. Yes, some people don’t like them but they should be respected for keeping Top Gear alive for long years. I know that car shows sounds very easy. Make a call to media relations of manufacturers and request test cars and make some shooting then add music and speech. That’s all ! Here is the senseless, pointless, meaningless car show. I think some people are not aware that, you can find hundreds of videos like this on YouTube. And therefore, most of the car shows are very boring. Some of them are changing their show’s name every year. It started from 5. Gear, next year 6. Gear, next year 7. Gear and next year 8. Gear (This show does not have any relation with Fifth Gear). Finally and eventually the show ended, it suppose to end because car show was very close to be turned into truck show. “As we change the gear every year, we are in tenth gear and it is only in trucks. And here is the new MAN TGX”. Before this happened, they stopped the show :)
If you Google about car shows, you can find millions of like this and they always make the impression of “this is a totally different show”. Yes, totally different some of them are confusing the features of vehicles, or exaggerate so much even the manufacture is shocked! When we think about Top Gear, they are saying what true is or wrong about the cars. Clarkson, exaggerate time to time but I cannot agree him more about BMW X6.
And if you talk with producers, they will say “Top Gear has lots of money and we don’t”. That’s a real excuse and I cannot say anything. Until today, I have just found a car show in Cypriot TV, Mega TV. Its name is Traction. As I know very very little Greek and I have no idea what they are saying but it was entertaining! I don’t think that, they have budget like Top Gear to spend for Range Rover crew car! However, they did an excellent job with that limited budget. So, what we learn from this; if you want to do something very well money is not the issue all the time. Because, creativity is not nourished by wealth. You are just creative or not and this is making the difference ;)
Sorry the poor picture quality for Traction. I could not find their logo :(