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This is a joke, right?

BMW wants to spearhead new automotive technology. Okay.

They want to be at the forefront of the eco-car trend. Fine.

But a self-driving car from the automaker synonymous with driver engagement? You’ve got to be kidding.

Alternate title for this post: Worst idea ever, or simply worst acronym ever? BMW’s ConnectedDrive Connect (CDC) system festoons an unsuspecting, innocent BMW with an array of sensors, cursing the vehicle with a kind of unwanted self-awareness as it navigates its own way through traffic, crosswalks and city centers.

Particularly in BMW’s case, given the erstwhile emphasis of their cars, but overall, I simply fail to see the purpose of the self-driving car. Is it to make us more safe? If so, it’s difficult to perceive how dangling a kind of electronic sword of Damocles between the driver and sudden, high-speed death would make him any safer. That’s asking us to place an awful lot of faith in our digital overlords, so to speak. Is it, as with the PDA or smartphone, to unburden us from one of our daily “chores” and so enable us to relax and/or be more productive? If that’s the goal, then again, you’re asking a lot of the occupant-of-the-car-formerly-known-as-the-driver to place complete and utter faith in the vehicle’s electronic helmsmen to point where he will be able to relax enough to, well, relax and/or focus on other tasks. I, for one, would be a white-knuckle basket case at Autobahn speeds.

Here’s an idea, BMW: How about spending the money otherwise allocated to the CDC program on dealership-based driver’s ed courses? It would save development resources on the cars themselves, make the eventual buyers better, safer drivers and teach them to appreciate the finer points of what makes driving a BMW such a sublime experience More people than you think actually crave the responsibility of driving a car, especially one of yours.

Left Lane reports today that many Chevy dealerships have been turning away shipments of the automaker’s much-hyped Volt:

Dealers across the country are cutting back on their Volt orders, largely due to the NHTSA’s investigation that has scared off potential buyers. The federal investigation was launched late last year after three crash-tested Volt models unexpectedly caught fire.

The article offers its theory for the decline in orders, and I’m sure that’s a part of it, just as Toyota’s bad publicity last year over their largely debunked “unintended acceleration” glitches, but in the Volt’s case, I’d conjecture there’s more rotten with the car than has been uncovered by the NHTSA investigation.

It’s not that there’s anything further technically amiss with the American hybrid, it’s the concept, the idea that enough buyers would be driven by misguided environmental concern to shell out twice as much for a car less usable and less efficient (in the real world) than another vehicle offered by the very same automaker—a car, by the way, that’s been selling like gangbusters; in its first year on the market, it claimed 9th place in the 2011 best-selling vehicle rankings.

As the fog of hybrid hype recedes, outliers like the Volt and Nissan Leaf are looking increasingly isolated, and automakers are starting to get a taste of whether buyers, past the initial sales rush, are willing to move in the direction of pure electric vehicles in quantities that would make them profitable. As the Volt’s misfortunes remind us, at this point, the answer seems to be a resounding no.

There’s been a slight change of plans.

Up until this point, my restoration strategy had comprised three phases: Preparing the garage, restoring the body and interior, and rebuilding the engine. The third phase was necessitated by the fact that in early ’04, I had run the Z’s engine without oil pressure for about three-quarters of a mile. Even after a fresh oil change, the car exhibited somewhat odd behavior after being started, characteristics I had chalked up to my carelessness.

But after consulting with knowledgeable Z enthusiasts, I’ve decided to try to start the engine in hopes it’s not irrevocably (or at all) damaged. Why try to start it instead of just rebuilding? A few reasons:

1. All the parts and work necessary to start the engine I’d have to invest anyway. It makes no difference whether the engine is rebuilt or in its current state, fuel lines, spark plugs, gaskets, battery, etc, are going to have to be replaced.
2. I can do the work on the Z while simultaneously prepping the garage. The main goal of garage preparation is storage and organization. Just getting the Z running doesn’t require a long-term home for any of the (few) bits I’d pull off. Those two efforts can move forward in parallel.
3. The behavior the Z displayed after the no-oil-pressure incident wasn’t a sure sign of internal damage. There were no metal shards or flakes in the oil after the incident. When I started the Z’s L24, the engine would cycle between bogging and racing, but… I had had some issues tuning the carbs, and had just replaced the distributor points—two factors that could cause the behavior in question all by themselves. As one Z buff put it, “Let the engine tell you what’s wrong,” rather than jumping to conclusions about what, if anything, is amiss internally.
4. It would save a huge amount of time and money if the engine is at least somewhat okay. The most obvious advantage of the new tactic. What a load off my mind if the body and interior restoration—daunting as it is—is the sole focus of my efforts to bring the car back to 100%.

So with that in mind, I pulled the SU carbs (shown at top) off the engine earlier this evening to send them back to ZTherapy for refurbishment. They’d been remanufactured by the Oregon outfit about 15 years ago, but I had been getting a vacuum leak around the throttle shaft—the very issue the ZTherapy process focuses on curing. So we’ll see what they say.

After that, it’s just a matter of replacing almost every rubber hose on the car, loads of gaskets, new brake and clutch master cylinders, new plugs, battery, oil, etc… All in a day’s work, right?

Editor’s note: This post is Part 7 of an ongoing series chronicling my efforts toward the restoration of my 1972 Datsun 240Z, originally my father’s. Read the other installments here:

• Part 23: Gutting the Interior
• Part 22: The Teardown Begins
• Part 21: …And the Engine Comes Out
• Part 20: Treasure Hunting
• Part 19: Beginnings
• Part 18: VIN Discoveries
• Part 17: The Bad News
• Part 16: On The Road
• Part 15: Getting It Back On The Road
• Part 14: It Lives!
• Part 13: Restoring the Fuel System, Part I
• Part 12: Meat on the Wheels
• Part 11: Inspiration (Sort Of)
• Part 10: Carbs’ Return
• Part 9: First Triad Z Club Meet
• Part 8: Wheel Work
• Part 6: Little Things
• Part 5: Coming Home
• Part 4: The Rollout
• Part 3: Confessions of a Poor Car Enthusiast
• Part 2: Opening the Tomb
• Part 1: Projecting Forward

On occasion, it behooves me, as a designer, to draw my readers’ attention to a classic but often forgotten automotive shape.

One of the most beautiful profiles ever to grace the automotive landscape, the legendary stylist Giorgetto Giugiaro got it exactly right with the ’67-’73 Maserati Ghibli—and I do mean exactly. Not a line, not an angle, not a proportion is out of place or poorly-shaped in the image above. The harmony of visual masses does all the talking; there’s absolutely no need for more adornment than the car is given. It’s just…perfect.

Pitched as the consummate GT car, the Ghibli arrived on the scene just as the Miura sparked the mid-engined supercar revolution. It thus belongs, like its contemporaries the Iso Grifo and Ferrari Daytona, in the golden age of the front-engined Italian GT, the last hurrah before the powerplant of any respectable range-topping exotic was relocated behind the seats. Motivated by an incredibly thirsty 4.7-4.9l DOHC V8, the four downdraft Weber carbs poured enough fuel down the engine’s gullet for it to crank out 350 hp in the ultimate Ghibli SS iteration.

It’s an Italian thoroughbred, to be sure, with all the temperamental-ness and heartbreak that implies. That said, the car was certainly more comfortable to drive than many of its rivals, chalk that up to a reasonably spacious cabin and the fact that it was made by an automaker with more experience than anyone at that point with the big Italian GT; they’d been doing it since the 3500GT took the world by storm in ’57. Maserati knew what their customers wanted, and pulled out the stops with the Ghibli—but just the right ones. The combination of excess and restraint is key to the car’s mystique; it goes exactly as far as it needs to go both power- and styling-wise, without putting a toe over the line. The Ghibli was a car that hit the bullseye in so many ways, and it’s a shame its tenure was overshadowed by more flamboyant, more forward-looking yet more exasperating Ferraris and Lamborghinis.

• Left Lane reports on new details released concerning the upcoming McLaren F1 successor, tentatively named the P12. It won’t be the quantum leap its forebear was, using a only a breathed-upon version of the 3.8l twin-turbo V8 employed by the lesser MP4-12C instead of a bespoke V12, but it will have some tricks up its sleeve, including a KERS “booster” system, similar to the one optional on F1 cars, that could augment the engine’s output considerably in limited bursts. Should be interesting.
• Meanwhile, Bosch is burning the midnight oil in their effort to get gasoline engines to emulate diesels. The promise of a 30% increase in efficiency is driving their development work on the homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) concept, in which a spark-less engine ignites the gasoline fuel-air mixture using heat from compression alone. Will it be the wave of the future? Doubtful, but Bosch’s research could spawn other, more incremental improvements in efficiency.
• What’s it like to live surrounded by a coterie of expensive supercars? A wealthy Evo reader gives some insight. It turns out that in spite of its utter ugliness, the Ferrari F50 is actually a great drive, and a handbuilt Mosler track weapon can be as reliable as a Camry.
• Just the facts, ma’am. Ever found yourself completely bewildered by circuit maps of the legendary 12.8-mile Nürburgring, in all its glorious intricacy? I have. Fortunately, a cheat sheet of sorts has been put together, distilling the track’s myriad twists and turns into a nice summary of the numbers and potential tricky areas.

Add this one to my “bucket list” of cars to at least drive before I die.

Forget all that namby-pamby Z-car stuff, this was and forever will be Nissan’s sports car flagship, for years the most performance-oriented car offered by a performance-oriented automaker: The Skyline GT-R.

Among the 5 generations of the GT-R offered between ’69 and ’02, my favorite is the ’89-’94 “revival” generation, the R32. The storied nameplate having been dormant since the second generation failed in the wake of the gas crisis in ’73, Nissan affixed it to their new homologation special in ’89, and initially intended to only produce the required minimum of 550 for the car to be able to participate in Japan’s Group A racing series. Once the automotive press and public got a whiff of the R32 GT-R’s sophistication and capability, they lobbied Nissan to manufacture the car in regular series production, which the automaker promptly did a few months after the car’s debut.

Most of the car’s innovations were designed to optimize the car for Group A competition. The 2.6l displacement of the well-nigh indestructible (underrated) 276-hp twin-turbo RB26DETT inline-6, the computer-controlled torque-spitting AWD system and the passive rear-wheel-steering suspension geometry allowed the car to utterly dominate Group A to the point where the racing series was discontinued, making the competition version of the car a victim of its own success. The Skyline GT-R continued to win races in other series, however, and evolved through two further generations, the R33 and R34, before being phased out in ’02 in preparation for the ’07 release of the GT-R, a car which paid homage to its namesake in many ways but was no longer an outgrowth of the regular Skyline.

Why do I love the R32 in particular? For one, it manages to pack an incredible amount of sophistication and kit into a four-seat car weighing under 3,200 lbs. Not a lightweight in objective terms, but when a modern-day BMW M3 tips the scales at 3,600, the R32’s lightness is commendable. Its lines, too, are more “pure” than the later generations, more aggressive than the swoopy, elegant R33 and more understated than the extroverted R34. No GT-R is truly an unfiltered, elemental go-cart like a Lotus or even one of its archrivals, the Acura NSX, but without having actually been behind the wheel of a Skyline, and omitting the first two generations, the R32 seems like it would be the closest thing to a driver’s car in the GT-R lineage. With just enough electronic and mechanical complexity to augment, but not overwhelm, the driving experience. One day, one day…

Any American V8 from the ’70s. These came from the “We’re being hit from all sides by regulations and don’t care what our engines look like” era. Truly awful, every American powerplant from this era is completely blacked-out, bathed in a sea of hoses and vacuum lines, and sports a hideous round air filter housing atop the engine. The ’75 Cadillac De Ville engine shown above looks downright pre-industrial.

Most older Citroën engines. It wins points for actually looking like an engine and featuring some au naturel aluminum, but the placement of the spare tire and random plastic orbs scattered throughout the bay definitely detract from the engine’s appearance. I understand the cars’ packaging efficiency was a priority, and their unique hydraulic system was a selling point, but c’mon. Is the top of the engine bay really the best place for all of that?

The Jaguar AJ V8. I include Jaguar’s first V8 engine not so much for its appearance, taken in isolation, but for the fact that it exemplifies the inevitable trend toward completely plasticized engine bays. The Coventry automaker’s sin of making their otherwise-excellent engine look like a kids’ toy is all the more grievous given the utter beauty of classic Jaguar engines, like their XK inline 6 from the early ’60s. Give me some aluminum to look at! Plastic, plastic, plastic…

Click here to read Part I of my series on ugly engines.

A few notes from the last month or so of having the Z home:

• I bought How to Rebuild Your Nissan/Datsun OHC Engine last week as a sort of early birthday present for myself. Its purchase completes my acquisition of the “trilogy” of glossy Datsun Z-Car books. The other two books are How to Modify Your Nissan/Datsun OHC Engine (lots of naturally-aspirated race-prep stuff; very little on turbocharging) and How to Restore Your Datsun Z-Car (an absolute gold mine for the would-be restorer, with step-by-step instruction on teardown and reassembly, parts diagrams and loads of photographs). Gotta get a set of the factory shop manuals next.
• The battery is removed from the car, but last night, in a kind of experiment, I hooked up my battery charger to the leads, turned the knob to “low charge” (5A or so) and turned the car on. Everything was as weak, as you’d expect from say, a dying battery, but it did something for me to be able to turn on the hazards, illuminate the lights and fiddle with the (original!) radio. Sometimes you just need to see a sign of life, you know? First time that’d been done in 8 years.

• I’ve been trying to determine whether or not the Z’s engine is original. Its status that way will have a big impact on how I go about restoring and/or upgrading the car. If it’s original, then I’d like to keep it original, which makes upgrading a bit more difficult (overboring the block from 2.4 to 2.8 liters isn’t quite as easy as I had thought it might be). If it’s a replacement engine, then all bets are off and, rather than rebuild it, I can swap it out for an engine that was 2.8l from the factory, the L28. So, how to establish the engine’s credentials? There’s an ID plaque (shown at top) affixed to the passenger side strut tower in the engine bay with the VIN and engine block number stamped on it. I hadn’t noticed it until now because when the Z was repainted in the late ’70s, the engine bay was blacked out and the ID plaque painted over. So, last night, I located the engine number on the block, shown above: 118555. I then removed the voltage regulator, allowing me to access and remove the ID plaque. I scraped as much paint off it as I was willing to last night (will eventually do the whole thing), but enough for me to read the block number listed: 110555. I’m almost positive it’s just a typo, but plan to ask those more familiar with these things for their take on the matter.

Editor’s note: This post is Part 6 of an ongoing series chronicling my efforts toward the restoration of my 1972 Datsun 240Z, originally my father’s. Read the other installments here:

• Part 23: Gutting the Interior
• Part 22: The Teardown Begins
• Part 21: …And the Engine Comes Out
• Part 20: Treasure Hunting
• Part 19: Beginnings
• Part 18: VIN Discoveries
• Part 17: The Bad News
• Part 16: On The Road
• Part 15: Getting It Back On The Road
• Part 14: It Lives!
• Part 13: Restoring the Fuel System, Part I
• Part 12: Meat on the Wheels
• Part 11: Inspiration (Sort Of)
• Part 10: Carbs’ Return
• Part 9: First Triad Z Club Meet
• Part 8: Wheel Work
• Part 7: Tactical Changes
• Part 5: Coming Home
• Part 4: The Rollout
• Part 3: Confessions of a Poor Car Enthusiast
• Part 2: Opening the Tomb
• Part 1: Projecting Forward

Update (01/16 9:01 PM): Received some information about the VIN/ID plate numbers mismatch from a knowledgeable gentleman on one of the Z forums:

Looks to me like you have a mis-stamped service block.
The numbers don’t have the familiar “cursive” bent normally associated with Nissan OEM Stamps.

See the “L24?” The scripted numbers for the engine block should be similar, with the top section of the “8” looking somewhat like an onion with the green chopped off, if that makes any sense, along with the bottom section of the “5” being a bit more “open” and not a “reverse C” configuration.

I have never seen a mismatched plate/engine from Nissan, ever.

My surmise would be that you have a “service block” which arrived with no serial number in it, and generally the dealers left that blank when they installed it.

Looks like someone sometime got a letter-number stamp and just put the numbers on your block.

And they mucked it up.

Having a service Block in with no serial number arguably can be said to have a “Factory Service-Replacement Nissan Engine” and wouldn’t necessarily be knocked down for not having an “original” engine. (Some Z owners blew their ’70s engines at autox and got replacement engines from Nissan under warranty! What happened to those days GT-R tranny owners?)

Unfortunately, what you have is most definitely not “matching numbers,” but if you had service history to show the swap/change you could argue the accident like you theorize.

I’m querying my dad (the Z’s original owner) to hopefully get more of the story, if there is more to it. I just wanna know, you know?

In my July 15 post, I wrote:

I believe a “de-militarization” of the sports car arena is needed. Automakers need to take a deep breath and announce that the next iteration of a particular model will have *gulp* less power than the outgoing model. But in that same breath, they can hopefully also announce that its weight is lighter, it’s more efficient, and most significantly, that it’s more fun to drive. That lowering of the bandwidth would improve the cars we drive by bringing them back into focus for the average driver, and bring the driver up by encouraging and rewarding his involvement of in the act of driving. Win-win.

Chris Harris agrees, by way of an unusual experiment. Making the case that the absurdly narrow 255-section rear tires are completely inadequate to control the 480 hp emanating from the great whacking 6.2l V8 under the hood of the Mercedes C63 AMG coupe, rather than add more tire, he decides to go the other way and fit a set of 4 125-section space-saver spare tires (“donuts”) all around.

The results are entertaining, to say the least. He makes a great case for predictability as a handling attribute, noting that prodigious levels of tire grip can lull a driver into false sense of security—not to mention entice him to drive beyond his ability—until they abruptly let go at speeds where “things” could occur quite rapidly on the track, to say nothing of the street environment. Click on the jump below to watch the segment. It’s worth it.

Watch the clip!