[MR2] What is a Tuscani 2.7?? and NASCAR, too

[Ken Meyer]

Thanks to all who have responded about the Hyundai.  Of course, with a
rather unique name, punching Tuscani into Google brings up many hits right
on top, including the requisite crummy YouTube vids.  But it's much more
interesting and fun to hear from all of you out there.

The review in the Canadian magazine mentioned the shoehorn fit of the
seating, and it really boggles my mind that the car companies will spend
hundreds of millions to design a new car, put lots of performance goodies on
it, and voila: a car that is fatally flawed for some stupid, obvious reason.
And why put up super brakes and suspension, and then add a wussy FWD engine
that clearly has a lot of unrealized potential?  But it sure looks nice.

Back in my sailboat design and racing days, I recall that one famous
designer sold a design to a builder in Japan, but these designs are often
"interpreted" by the builder.  They built a boat on the basis of Japanese
requirements -- in this case short stature.  Most gringos had to stoop in
the cabin, and the boats could be had real (comparatively) cheap when people
bought them because of the designer's name and then got tired of bumping
their heads.  That's even though, as I recall, the boats were pretty fast,
which makes up for a lot.  Suppose it would for the Tuscani also, if it were
that fast.

----------------------------

By the way, anybody following NASCAR?  In Toyota's second season, they are
kicking butt so bad, mostly by the Joe Gibbs team and mostly there by Kyle
Busch, that Jack Roush is whining foul and NASCAR is apparently allowing
Ford and Chevy some engine mods to try to keep up.

Kyle Busch leads the Sprint [cellphone] Cup points and is close in the
Nationwide [JV team with some major drivers participating] series.  Toyota
is not doing quite so well in the Truck Series, which it used to dominate.
Tony Stewart is leaving Gibbs to honcho another team, but Gibbs has an 18
year old in the magazine who is merely sitting on the pole for today's
Nationwide series.  Ahh, the surfeit of bounty.

The Red Bull team is also looking pretty good, but Mikey Waltrip is still
wallowing around in the 30th place, plus or minus, where he frequently gets
crashed-out by the less good drivers pushing over their heads.

I once looked down my nose at "left turn racing", but have been somewhat
contrite about that of late.  My conception of racing is now that the
ultimate objective is always to get those four little patches of rubber to
meet the track surface in the optimal manner, no matter what kind of car or
what kind of track it is, so it's not all that different anywhere.  With
left turn racing, you just can optimize for one direction, but NASCAR does
include a couple of road racing tracks.  And with real short tracks to
"super speedways" on the schedule, the teams have a lot of optimizing the
optimizing to do for the different conditions.

I still hate the autocratic nature of NASCAR, but they do keep the racing
very close and exciting, with many wins by less than a car length after
hundreds of laps -- of course there are often caution/restarts after
pell-mell crashes in the final laps, and that closes-up the field.  Almost
seems as if it is planned that way, eh?

What I would like to do is learn more technical descriptions of the cars,
their systems, even the size of the engines; but I haven't found any decent
descriptions of these aspects.  Anyone have any?  NASCAR wants to make this
a cult of the driver and even downplays the auto makers' role.

But I LOVE the sound of the field winding up for a start.

Ken M.


-----Original Message-----

From: mr2-bounces at mr2.com [mailto:mr2-bounces at mr2.com]
On Behalf Of Andy Champ
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 1:52 PM
To: 'mr2.com'

Subject: Re: [MR2] What is a Tuscani 2.7??

Neither Tuscani nor Tiburon are names I know - it's sold over here (UK)
as plain "Hyundai Coupé".  2.0 or 2.7 engines, not exactly highly tuned,
but OK to drive - safe rather than fun though.  I tried one before I
bought my '2, couldn't get comfortable.  My feets too big.

Andy