Bedard

Bedard.

Last Wednesday (May 6, 2009), while waiting the see a urologist, I happened to read an interesting viewpoint by Car & Driver magazine columnist Patrick Bedard (“beh-DARD”).
Bedard has been a columnist at Car & Driver magazine for eons; probably since the ‘80s.
He was hired away from Chrysler Corporation in the ‘70s, where he had been a suspension engineer.
At first he was one of the grunts that put together the magazine, but now is just a columnist and editorial contributor.
He raced for a while, mainly Showroom Stock when Ford’s Pinto raced the Chevrolet Vega.
One time he picked up a used Vega sedan, and put everyone on-the-trailer. The Vega was compromised, probably the worst car GM ever fielded, but it sure could handle.
Incredibly stiff (when not rusted), and well balanced.
I had one myself, a Vega GT. About the only thing wrong it did was jump sideways in a corner if it hit a bump.
That was that heavy rear axle. Well located and stable, but heavy. It had so much momentum it took a while to get the tires back down on the pavement.
Bedard raced other things; a C/D Pinto, and eventually an Opel (“OH-pull”) that outhandled even the Vega.
It handled so well it was outlawed in Showroom Stock racing.
He then went on to race a Mazda rotary that trounced everything.
Don’t know as it handled that well, but it was incredibly powerful.
He went on to race Indianapolis — an Indy-car powered by a turbocharged Buick V6 motor.
There were a few other Turbo-Buicks racing at that time, but I don’t know as they ever won anything.
Too fragile.
Bedard’s racing ended when he flipped his Indy-car 89 bazilyun times.
The accident nearly killed him, but didn’t. He survived incredible violence.
I’ve always liked Bedard’s writing; very spare and to-the-point. He has a habit of finding the right single word to express things.
He also thinks about things at a higher level than the average person.
Unfortunately, he’s very much a car-enthusiast, so he tends to be somewhat a tub-thumper.
Recently he used questionable statistics to pan transit.
Every time I see that I think of PATCo, the incredibly successful rail-transit line that attracted Philadelphia commuters out of their cars in south Jersey.
This month’s column (June, 2009) suggested, in essence, that Obama’s Green-Power initiatives are like trying to change the direction of a cruising aircraft carrier.
Ya don’t just turn it around.
The total contribution in power-generation of wind and solar is 45,493,000 megawatt hours, 1.1 percent of the 4.118 billion megawatt hours generated nationwide over 12 months.
A lot of that total is generated by burning carbon; coal and natural-gas.
Wind and solar are subsidized HUGELY; way more than coal and natural-gas.
Bedard suggested nuclear is a better deal; it’s subsidy not much more than coal.
But of course nuclear is on-the-outs — it generates extremely toxic waste material.
So where do we go?
Doubling Green-Power generation, as Obama promised, won’t make much of a dent when burning carbon dominates as much as it does.
For those not knowing, I have seen the future, and it’s from the Mulholland Drive overlook in the Hollywood hills.
That view was used many times as background for TV sets; a grid of lights spreading out toward the horizon.
I saw it again not too long ago, and the grid has filled in. It’s become a solid carpet of light.
It’s not a grid any more. —And something has to be pushing all those lights. Acres of coal are being burned, spewing the atmosphere with carbon-dioxide.
One morning you could see all the mountains surrounding the L.A. basin; and the next morning everything was socked in with thick smog.
Also interesting was a recent comment by another columnist, one Kevin Cameron at Cycle-World magazine.
Cameron was once a mechanic and tuner in motorcycle racing, and is interested in technical stuff.
His son suggested switching to plug-in electric cars, charged by the electric-grid, is just switching from gasoline to coal.

“On-the-trailer” is an old drag-racing term. Many drag-racing cars were brought to the drag-strip on trailers, so that when two cars raced, and one won, the loser was said to have been put back “on-the-trailer.”

“GM” is General Motors.

“C/D” is Car & Driver.

“Opel” is the German General Motors car-making division.

Years ago Mazda sold a small economy sedan with a Wankel (“von-kull”) rotary engine, a principle whereby the various cycles of an internal combustion engine were designed to work a rotating wedge-shapped thingy inside an oval-like epitrochoid-shaped housing. Ignition would rotate the thingy at high speed. —It was an idea General Motors tried to develop, but they never marketed. The Wankel rotary engine has become more-or-less moribund, because its seals don’t seal well over a long time.

“Turbocharging” is exhaust-driven supercharging. (—Supercharging being compression of the intake-charge, either with or without fuel. Supercharger compressors are driven directly by the engine; turbochargers by escaping exhaust gases through a turbine.)

“PATCo” is Port-Authority-Transit-Corporation, a rail rapid-transit line along an old railbed into the south Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia. It’s affiliated with the Delaware River Port Authority. It connects to an old rapid-transit/subway over the gigantic Ben Franklin Bridge across the Delaware River into Philadelphia, opened in 1926. PATCo was built to avoid building another highway crossing of the Delaware River into Philadelphia. PATCo has been phenomenally successful, because it shortened portal-to-portal (garage-door to company parking-lot) by about 20 minutes. It also avoided parking in downtown Philadelphia, which was inconvenient and costly. It also initiated automated ticketing.

“Plug-in electric cars” are not hybrid (part gasoline; part electric); just straight electric. A battery is charged by “plugging-in” to the electric grid. (Like in your garage, or from a company parking-lot circuit.)