Can’t stand the heat? Get out of the engine.

I ran across an article not long ago in the Technology Review about improving the efficiency of the internal combustion engine. The technology it describes turns out to be nothing more than a particularly clever combination of several technologies that have been around for longer than I have been alive, but which when properly used in conjunction generate much larger increases in performance and efficiency than anyone has previously been able to extract.

I find such stories of people combining old dog tricks to obtain racing greyhound results very interesting reading. In addition, the very fact that people are still squeezing such remarkable gains in efficiency out of something as venerable as the internal combustion engine suggests to me that predictions of its imminent demise in the face of rising energy prices are likely to prove premature. It may well be with us for quite some time yet.

There is a strong tendency for established players to want to stick with those things that have already made them successful, and automotive manufacturers, especially in the United States, are nothing if not established. They got to be as big and established as they are on the strength of the internal combustion engine. It is a technology with which they are very comfortable. This means that if they have the option, they’re likely to stick with it for as long as possible, rather than risk venturing out into new and untested waters with some new system for powering cars.

Physics is easier when it’s all in straight lines

I find that I must update my list of Crimes Against Machinery that I began in my earlier post about the shameful mistreatment of a Bugatti Veyron. The BBC is reporting that comedian and actor Eddie Griffin destroyed an Enzo Ferrari. Other news outlets have also picked up the story.

This is, again, likely something the seriousness of which will not be immediately apparent to some of you. I will do my very best to explain why. Once more, I resort to images to speak several thousand words on my behalf. This was a process that turned something beautiful:

 

Into something tragic:

Once again, this incident, and the way it has been handled, leaves me to wonder.

Where are my priorities?

Last week, I opened up a web browser, and noticed on the BBC’s news page an article (now no longer available, sadly) that nearly broke my heart. Some Muppet had destroyed a Bugatti Veyron. Yes, it made me upset enough that I started using British insults. This might have been because the story was on the BBC, and the incident happened in the UK, but I think it was mostly because it grabbed me somewhere down in my gut, and my more usual American-style insults just seemed too standard for me to use at a time like this.

Now, some of you are not likely to have quite grasped the enormity of this crime. I will do my best to illustrate. This person, their name never mentioned in the story or in anything I’ve seen in the news since, took what was once a finely crafted thing of surpassing grace and beauty…

…and turned it into a twisted mixture of shame and tragedy:

This car, in the configuration you see there, has a 16-cylinder engine which produces more than a thousand (yes, that’s 1,000) horsepower. It can go from zero to sixty in a hair over two and a half seconds. This car retails for roughly one and a half million dollars. Let me write that number out for you too: $1,500,000. Its top speed is a little over 250 miles per hour. This car is, in fact, the fastest production model in the world. There have been only a few hundred of them ever built, and now, there is one less.

Oh, yes. In the process, the driver and his young passenger were involved in a 100 mph crash in which their car spun several times before striking another vehicle with several passengers, including a woman seven months pregnant, and then careening at high speed into the trees.