At about $500,000 per copy, there was never going to be a large market for this car. But Honda is reportedly only going to build five in August as overall NSX production begins winding down from its already-stately pace. And if you didn't order yours in March, it's already too late to get one of them.
Bring on the next NSX! Some of us have been waiting our entire lives!
Chevy's Shanghai SurpriseChevy's dinky-dink Aveo is so dang dinky, it's hard to keep our dinked noggins focused on it for very long. But this Daewoo-built runt is due for a next generation, and Chevy put that generation on display at April's universally ignored Shanghai Auto Show in China.
Like the first Aveo, this one was designed by Daewoo and will continue to be built by that Korean firm. However, the Aveo is also going to be screwed together in China by "Shanghai General Motors," which is a joint venture between plain-old GM and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC). It will eventually be for sale in more than 120 countries around the world, giving the Chevy brand its broadest scope yet. And it looks like the United States is still on the Aveo's hit list.
Now a true four-door sedan, the new Aveo carries forward most of the front-drive components used in the current version of the car. In China, it will come with a 1.4- or 1.6-liter DOHC mated to either a five-speed manual or four-speed automatic transaxle.
The big question is, when it arrives in U.S. showrooms late this year, will the car we're getting be built in China or Korea? GM already uses Chinese-assembled V6s in the Equinox SUV, so it's not much of a leap for them to start importing a whole car from China. And a Chinese-made Aveo could be cheap, cheap, cheap.
The SCC Juggernaut Rolls OnRacing, believe it or not, is supposed to be fun. And the best way to ensure the fun keeps rolling along is to win regularly.
As this is written, through the first three races of the 2005 Speed World Challenge Touring Car division, SCC's P.D. Cunningham has been on the podium at all three races. He won at the season opener at Sebring and is on top of the points board. Meanwhile, his RealTime Racing teammate Pierre Kleinubing-who's also carrying the SCC banner this year-has won once and is third in the points.
Early April's Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg was run on a new street course set amid the Florida city. "We like street courses," enthuses Cunningham. "Because the penalty for a mistake is a lot more severe than if you drop a wheel off the road on another track."
As much as RealTime enjoys this sort of track, the team was never really in contention for the win. Kleinubing qualified second and Cunningham third for the event, but both were clearly behind Randy Pobst's pole-sitting Mazda6. In the race, both of the RealTime TSXs faded quickly, only to battle back and finish where they started-second and third, behind Pobst.
In mid-April the World Challenge circus moved to Road Atlanta and the Saturday race itself made a rare live appearance on the Speed Channel. What fans at the race and fans at home saw was one of the most enjoyable battles in the history of the series between Cunningham and Charles Espenlaub in a Mazda Proteg for third.
Nic Jonsson put his Bimmer on the pole, with Kleinubing in second, Espenlaub's Proteg in third, Bob Stretch in another BMW in fourth and Cunningham's TSX in fifth. After the standing start, Kleinubing sped past Jonsson on Lap Seven and stayed in front for the rest of race. Meanwhile, the fireworks behind him were only getting started.
Cunningham had a multilap battle with Randy Pobst, then on the last lap, another one with Espenlaub. It was tough, thrilling, wheel-to-wheel racing that was almost even more spectacular for the fact that the cars themselves emerged practically unscathed despite the heated competition.
"When you run toe-to-toe with another professional, it's a lot of fun," says Cunningham. "On other occasions I've had to start at the back and they'd rather run into your door than let you pass. With Pobst and Espenlaub, however, no one was giving an inch; we were respecting each other's space. There was room to race. These are two of the guys I enjoy racing with most."
Cunningham promises that should he find himself in a similar battle with any of his teammates, he expects the competition for position to be just as intense. "There are no team orders on the track," he asserts. "The only team order is: don't crash."
Racing, after all, is fun. And crashing isn't.