Edmunds.com’s Inside Line online car publication has scratched at an itch many auto-heads have wrestled with in recent years: buying an old Ferrari for the same amount of money as a cushy new car. For $28,000 they bought a 1984 Ferrari 308 GTSi Quattrovalvole (that’s Italian for “four valve”) for their long-term test fleet (meaning they’ll be living with the car for a year), and are prepared to report on all the joys, trials, tribulations, and inevitable expenses that come with owning such a rare — and desirable — automotive icon.

There is no denying that the 308 is indeed such an icon. The wedge-shaped nose, the side scoops that slice their way through the door panels, and the classic broad five-spoke wheels define, for many, the very nature of Ferrari. Adjusted for inflation, the car’s ~$63k sticker in 1984 is about $130,000 today — making $28k seem like a decent deal. Yet when balancing the purchase of one of these against a modern car like a Camry or Accord, an awful lot of passion has to be injected into the consideration process for the Ferrari to come out on top, because even when comparing performance numbers the Ferrari loses ground to a modern family hauler. As I was reading part one of Inside Line’s Ferrari-owning saga, I was struck by the numbers: a 3.0 liter V8 producing 235 hp, good for a 0-60-mph time of 6.8 seconds and a quarter-mile run of 15.2 seconds at 91.5 mph. That’s not necessarily slow, per se, but for comparison that 3.5 liter V6-powered Camry you could buy with the same $28k makes 268 hp and knocks off 60mph in 6.0 seconds flat — that’s pretty fast, and is becoming the norm for V6-powered family cars these days.

So the win in the power category goes to the modern mass-seller, to say nothing of convenience and safety items (think the Ferrari has traction control, or a dozen airbags, or ABS, or a nav system, or a CD player, or power seats, or keyless entry, or AC that actually works? Nope). But to purists, all that doesn’t matter when you’re in the seat of a rolling legend. And for that feeling alone, that “X factor” as Jeremy Clarkson calls it, some may be persuaded to part with their better judgment (and perhaps their marital bliss) and dive in as the Inside Line editors have. I’ll be following their story over the next year to see what develops…as will thousands of car-lovers everywhere, just hoping for a positive outcome they can use as ammunition in their argument with the wife.

What would you do? Leave a comment. Keep in mind, in these times of stratospherically high gas prices, that the 308 GTSi is currently averaging 16 mpg with Inside Line.

There’s really not much to say about this picture.

“What, it’s not our job to move the roadkill! That’s for the United Roadkill Shoveler’s Union. We’re the Lazy Paint Sprayers Union.”

In some states (West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama…noticing a trend here?) it’s actually legal to eat roadkill. I wonder if there’s any laws about painting it.

Think you’re having a bad day when you get a flat tire? Try having that wheel come off the car. No, better yet, how about all four wheels coming off the car?

A Mazda RX-7 owner at an SCCA autocross event had just that happen, with all four wheels popping off the car a few seconds into his race. To be clear, I don’t know for sure what caused the wheels to come off…but given that guys often change tires at these events, I’m guessing the lug nuts just weren’t torqued down enough. Or at all. Check it out:

http://view.break.com/311885 – Watch more free videos

A couple weeks ago I picked up my new car (new to me anyway…got it coming off a lease), a 2004 Honda Accord EX-V6 with every option except for factory navigation. This is a heck of a vehicle. It’s solid, powerful, quiet, smooth…and I’m coming from a 1997 BMW 540i. This Honda is almost as powerful as my V8 BMW, but rides better and gets much better gas mileage. You get a lot for your money with these Accords, and it should last forever…I think it’s appropriate that my friend who took me to pick it up in Columbus, OH drove us in his 1991 Accord with 220,000 miles on the clock. They just keep on going.

I love the car. Like I said, every option but factory nav…which would have been a fun toy, but most of this car’s life is going to be just shuttling me back and forth to work, and my own brain works a lot better than any $2k navigation system. I was also unimpressed with the voice command on the nav-equipped Accords I test drove:

[ Me ] “Find Honda dealership.”
[ Car ] “Radio off.”
…
[ Me ] “Find nearest Honda service center.”
[ Car ] “Passenger temperature 85 degrees.”

…and so on. Sometimes it worked, but not enough. One of the cars I drove had a fixation with XM channel 39…every time it didn’t recognize my command, it changed the radio to that station.

So no nav, but the rest of the car is utterly fantastic. I may be integrating a touchscreen carputer in the future, with my own navigation, Internet, and music library capabilities…that will be a fun project. But for now, I’m enjoying a nice, smooth car with good gas mileage, and have quickly started applying my 30k+ miles per year to my new wheels.

Read on for pictures.
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Samuel L. Jackson’s memorable phrase from Jurassic Park was the only thing that came to mind when I read the stats on the upcoming Caparo T1 supercar: it weighs 550 pounds less than a Lotus Elise, which itself is only marginally larger than a go-kart, and has a bigger engine producing 575 hp, resulting in 1,045 hp per ton. That’s astonishing! As Autoblog points out, even high-end crotch-rocket bikes rarely break the 1000 hp/ton mark.

Ready for the real numbers? 60 mph in 2.5 seconds. 100 mph in less than five. And they’re not done tuning the engine.

For the uneducated, today’s average car hits 60 mph somewhere in the 8 to 9 second range. A normal car is considered pretty quick if it can hit that speed in about 6 seconds — like most regular (non-”M”) BMWs, Lexuses, and even a V6 Honda Accord or Nissan Altima. Some of the fastest production cars you can buy off the lot will hit 60 in 4 to 5 seconds, like the BMW M5 or Corvette Z06. The Caparo can hit 100 mph in that same time. That is truly astonishing. The G-forces felt when that car accelerates must be like nothing else ever created.

Because using Google Maps and Google Earth to peer into your neighbor’s back yard and look for naked sunbathers just wasn’t fun enough, the search giant has now rolled out a new feature in Maps for select markets called Street View. Currently best demonstrated in — where else — New York City, Street View does exactly what it sounds like: you pick a point on the map, and you get a 360-degree view of what the world looks like for realz right down there on the sidewalk. Or in some cases, right in the middle of oncoming traffic (which makes you wonder how they captured the photos).

Is anyone else getting scared? If not, then check out the helpful demo video, with the super-dorky guy in the way-too-tight orange spandex suit. Hey, at least they have a sense of humor while they’re taking over the world.

Sorry I haven’t been writing much lately — the new job and weekend travel have kept me quite busy — but I just had to post this one.

Volkswagon has thrown down the gauntlet with their latest creation: the VW Golf GTI W12 650 Concept. That may seem like a long and cumbersome name, but all is forgiven once you see what it’s got under the hood in the back seat: a 12-cylinder engine producing 650 horsepower and 530 ft-lbs of torque, resulting in a 0-60 time of 3.7 seconds (which, while blisteringly fast, I think is probably conservative, and with some really sticky rubber it could probably go even faster).

That’s more horsepower than an M5, Viper, Vette, Gallardo, Murcialago, and pretty much every other exotic save for the 1000-hp Bugatti Veyron. And it’s in a car the size of a shoe! This thing must be the ultimate beast to drive.

How cool would that be to get assigned that project: “OK, I want you to take the smallest car we make and the biggest engine we make, and then put them together and get something really light and stupid-fast.” The engineers must have been grinning like idiots. Too bad VW’s not going to sell it.

You have to wonder at the mental states of these overpaid gasbags who are in charge of enormous companies, and in turn responsible for tens of thousands of employees’ and shareholders’ (and even the economy’s) livelihoods. Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman, has responded vehemently to the Bush administration’s proposal that automakers must raise CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) and CO2 standards 4% per year over the next several years (I know, Bush doing something good for the environment — shocking, although it took 10 states suing the federal government to make it happen). Lutz has now created a standoff of sorts, saying GM will halt development on a number of RWD vehicles, the very cars that many people are looking forward to and that are supposed to get GM out of its profit rut. He said to the Chicago Tribune, “We’ve pushed the pause button. It’s no longer full speed ahead.”

Lutz claims that improving the fuel economy will raise consumer prices by $5,000 because of the investment required by the automaker. And here’s his logic-bomb on why raising CAFE is not a good idea: “If we legislate CO2 from cars, why not legislate we take one less breath per minute since human release capricious amounts of CO2?”

What? Did the man really just compare exhaust from cars to a person’s right to breathe? And now he’s holding hostage some of the very vehicles that are supposed to save the American auto industry? What an idiot.

That car behind Lutz in the above image is the new Pontiac G8 — one of the awesome new vehicles that might be delayed (Motor Trend described the G8 as an “American M5″). That was the one vehicle that may have actually made me consider purchasing something from GM, but I think Bob Lutz’s attitude just killed any chance of me shopping with the General. Since Ford’s cars are boring and breakable, and Chrysler has lost their way and is now being sold, looks like I’m once again looking at just the stuff from overseas, where they actually know how to make cars and make a profit at the same time.