Welcome to the Hooniverse News – Really Slow News Week Edition! Normally I bring you a convenient weekly recap of some of the biggest stories in the automotive industry without the fluff or bull, but this week it’s whatever I was able to find. There’s the usual opinions of mine thrown in as well and hopefully more of your automotive news (especially since I ain’t got shit). This week:
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Uhhmm
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Things
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Stuff
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Other things
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What’s your automotive news?
2016 BAC Mono gets more power and a Goodwood record
[youtube]https://youtu.be/_5Nlzl7WFLg[/youtube]
Briggs Automotive Company (BAC) has had a smash hit with their Mono single seat race car for the road. It’s light, nimble, and powerful and it’s neat to look at. For the 2016 model year, they’re looking to make it even better by keeping almost everything the same but adding extra power. It’s a simple formula but it’s already given the BAC an unofficial record at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
Power for the previous BAC Mono used to come from a 2.3-liter four-cylinder tuned by Cosworth and it was good for 280 horsepower. That’s insanely high for a car that weighs just 1,278 pounds. The 2016 model weighs about the same but now has an all-new 2.5-liter four-cylinder from Mountune capable of 305 horsepower. An easy 25 horsepower gain would hardly be noticed in a larger car, but in a car like the Mono, that’s a substantial gain. The car is still very new so many of the performance stats aren’t available yet – but there is one.
At this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, BAC brought out a 2016 model and their test driver, Oliver Webb. Driving what was technically a prototype, he ran up the hill in as little as 47.9 seconds. They also said “he wasn’t really going for it” but that might just be the marketing people talking. The runs in their class were not timed though, so those numbers come from BAC’s onboard telemetry. Either way, it was faster than any other road car that weekend.
[Source: Briggs Automotive Company]
2017 Ford F-150 Raptor plays in the sand
The 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor debuted at the Detroit auto show this year and Ford has gotten straight to the point and sent it to go play in the sand. After more than 1,000 miles [marketing speak for 1,001 miles] in the American southwest on a desert trail designed to parallel the Baja race course in Mexico. They had a 66-mile route mapped out that they lapped on to offer a wide variety of challenges for the truck including fast sandy washes, deep-rutted silt beds, steep climbs in deep sand, and slow meticulous crawls through tight trenches. You know, truck stuff. Speed ranged from a crawl to 100 mph blasts but they averaged a ~50 mph speed throughout testing, which sounds impressive off road.
Throughout the entire test, the 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor suffered no mechanical failures they were willing to talk about. All of this work goes to ensure that the new Raptor will be well-suited for sitting in traffic when it goes on sale in fall 2016.
[Source: Ford]
2016 Mazda 3 gets new options and a new price
2014 model is shown, but it looks more or less the same…
I like Mazda. They sell your typical range of family cars in all shapes and sizes, but there’s something a little different about them and how they build their cars. This generation of the Mazda 3 is a great looking car and it looks like a fun little car to take the scenic route in on your way back from doing family things. So it makes me sad when I see this pop up in my news feed and think “oh yeah, they’ve been building those for a while now” because I hardly ever see these on the road. Maybe I just don’t notice them… I hope.
Anyway, Mazda has a few new updates for the 2016 Mazda 3 sedan and hatchback in the form of more standard features and a lower base price. That low price comes partially because of some trim level management on their part – the once optional i Sport trim is now the standard baseline model, which costs about $600 less than it did last year. The base price for the 2016 Mazda 3 is now $17,845.
New standard features on the 2016 Mazda 3 include the legally required backup camera as well as radar cruise control, HID headlights, Bluetooth phone connectivity and audio streaming, a six-speaker audio system, and everything else you’d expect from a compact car in this price range. All drivetrain components are unchanged for the 2016 model year.
[Source: Mazda]
What’s your automotive news?
I probably should have just made this the entirety of the news this week. I’m really more interested in what you guys had going on this week, so if you saw, drove, bought, broke, or otherwise did anything newsworthy this week, sound off in the comments. Even if you saw a squirrel it’s more interesting than this.
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