Something Interesting

I’m sad to say that hot rod building legend Boyd Coddington has died at he ages of 63.

Body was shot to international fame through the cable show “American Hot Rod” and helped to introduce the world to the West Coast Hot Rod scene, building cars from the ground up with a price tag of anywhere in the region of $500,000. Body was recognised as one of the best hot rod builders in the world, with critically acclaimed creations including the “Cadzilla” car, which was a modified 1950’s Cadillac built for ZZ tops Billy Gibbons, and twice winning the Daimler-Chrysler Design Excellence Award for his designs.

Boyd Coddington died at Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital in suburban Whittier at 6:20 a.m. The cause of death has yet to be released.

I say Rest In Peace to one of best custom car designers in the world.

If your anything like me you have been waiting for the new Grand Turismo game to come out since it was announced for release on the PS3 all that time ago.Since then we have been bombarded with endless screen shots and preview videos showing the game shapping up to be the most realilistic of the 5 games so far making full use of the next gen consoles speed and power.

Now, to top it all off they have annouced that GT5 have teamed up with the guys and gals at the BBC show Top Gear and are replicating the ‘Top Gear test track’ to be included in the new game.

I for one cant wait.

I was just watching this video of 5th gear reviewing the new Mazda 2 on youtube, and its got me thinking about stopping distances.

Now, in the clip Jason Plato is testing the new Mazda’s acceleration, handling and stopping in several tests. The test that interests me is the last test of braking. Jason accelerates to 70mph heading towards a designated point, and when at that point hits the brakes hard to bring the little hatch to a stop as quickly as possible. This is a simple test, and no means a scientific one, but is effective at showing the little cars stopping performance.

Now, the Mazda 2 manages to stop dead in just 25 metres. That’s with just Jason in the car. Then he continues to do the test again with the extra weight of 200kg in the car (in the safe of strong man Terry Holland) and the Mazda 2 manages to come to a stop in 41 metres. This in itself shows the benefit of shedding weight when it comes to performance, but that’s not my point.

My point is this, below is a chat showing the ‘typical stopping distances’ stated in today’s Highway Code:

As you can see, the ‘typical’ stopping distance stated by the highway code is (excluding the thinking time) 75 metres. But, as you can see from the Mazda 2 test, new cars can stop in a third of that distance. and even with an extra 200kg of weight it stopped in almost half that time.

I know that there are still some old cars on the road in the UK (I drive a 17 year old car), but I doubt even these cars would be that much worse then the Mazda (the Mazda even has drum brakes on the rear).

So, when were the current highway code stopping distance last checked, and how accurate are they?? Do we even need to know them, as every car will be different depending on the wear on the drakes, tyres etc, and the amount of people in the car, and even the luggage in the boot.

I’d say that having stopping times in the theory test is a massive waste of time, given that the information will never be used by those taking the test, and are not even accurate.