Audi’s TT-RS will be imported into the U.S. in a limited quantity of just 1,000 units, and each one features 360 horsepower and the latest generation of Audi’s quattro AWD. North Carolina’s Tail of the Dragon, on the other hand, features 318 curves in 11 miles of road, complete with plenty of elevation changes. Unfortunately, it’s also complete with plenty of idiot drivers and motorcyclists, driving (or riding) above their ability. As a result, accidents (including fatalities) are commonplace, and law enforcement is paying more and more attention to speeds on the Dragon.

In the words of Yogi Berra, “No one goes there anymore – it’s too crowded.” If you can manage to hit The Dragon mid-week and off season, your chance of having fun is greatly increased. If you can hit it under those circumstances in an Audi TT-RS, you can call us jealous.

Audi TT-RS Meets The Tail of the Dragon

I’m not sure what’s more frightening: the fact that 86 year old Mary Lee Fine is still driving, or the fact that she really has no idea how she drove her car through a metal fence and into a swimming pool. Luck was on her side, since Fine knocked a metal chair into the pool, which ultimately prevented her car from sinking (and Fine from drowning).

Fine says the accident happened when another car parked too close, forcing her to climb through the passenger door. In sliding over into the driver’s seat, she claims to have accidentally hit the “key or the gear shift,” causing her car to bounce off a neighbor’s Toyota before crashing through the fence and into the pool. The whole thing was captured on security camera footage, and this much is clear: the accelerator was matted when Fine crashed through the fence.

Remind me again, why don’t we re-test all drivers above a certain age?

Source: Autoblog

Let’s be clear about something: speed doesn’t kill, but disparity in speed does. Thus, when you’re demonstrating your manhood behind the wheel of a 604 horsepower Porsche Carrera GT, there are better places to do it than the freeways outside of Houston, TX. A buck-thirty in traffic doesn’t prove that you’re a competent driver and it doesn’t prove that you’ve got huevos mas grande. It does, however, prove that you’re likely living on borrowed time, and that (sadly), you’ll probably take someone else out when you finally do stack your Porsche into a bridge abutment, courtesy of a cell-phone addled driver in a clapped-out Toyota Camry.

I like driving fast as much as anyone (hell, more than most), but I’d also be the first to say there’s a time and place for everything. The middle of the day, in moderate traffic, isn’t the place to stretch the legs of a Porsche Carrera GT.

If you’re a fan of all things Clarkson, then you’ll want to add the new TomTom Top Gear edition GO Live to your holiday wish list. In addition to voice guidance from none other than Jezza himself, the special edition GO Live includes Top Gear themed startup and shutdown screens, and unique icons (although we can’t confirm whether or not one is really a hamster). In case that’s not enough, there are also Top Gear-themed points of interest, which leaves us Americans scratching our heads wondering what they may be. Perhaps the Miami used car lot where the salesman showed Clarkson his Saturday Night Special?

If you get tired of Clarkson verbally berating you en route, you can switch over to “Stig Mode,” which includes no voice narration at all. On the plus side, it doesn’t play 1980’s power ballads, sung in Italian, either.

If you want one of your very own, the price of admission is $269.95, which is $20 more than the standard GO Live. Top Gear licensing doesn’t come cheap, and someone has to pay for Jezza’s ever-expanding vehicle collection.

Source: CarTech

Image: Flickr user Alan Cleaver

Today, the fastest speed you can legally travel on a highway in the United Kingdom is 70 miles per our. Like our own 55 mile per hour speed limit (or our current 70 mph speed limits), the number is considered by most drivers to be a suggestion, not an absolute. Reflecting this, Britain’s Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond, has announced his intention to raise the UK’s maximum speed limit to 80 miles per hour, beginning in 2013.

Applying common sense isn’t something you necessarily expect from a government official, but Hammond is clear about his reasons. “I want to make sure that our motorway speed limit reflects the reality of modern vehicles and driving conditions, not those of 50 years ago,” Hammond was on record as saying.

The secretary also cited the economic benefits that shortening journeys could create, which is more logic that we’d buy into. Still, don’t expect common sense to take hold in the United States, not with the “speed kills” mentality of government officials. I’d be willing to bet that Britain’s roads are in better shape than our own crumbling infrastructure, and I’ll bet that Brits are less likely to be texting, reading, eating, applying makeup or shaving behind the wheel than their American counterparts.

Source: Carscoop

Why worry about top speed, when most cars spend a very small percentage of their lives anywhere near maxed out? Instead, why not use acceleration as a benchmark of performance, since that’s something we enthusiasts tap into every time we get behind the wheel? That’s the premise behind the latest video from Road & Track, which introduces us to the “Two Second Club.”

Membership is open to any stock, production car that can sprint from 0 to 60 in under three seconds. That’s a short list, although I’m guessing that Road and Track may have missed a few possible candidates. The Lamborghini Gallardo LP 570-4 Superleggera, for example, can make the trip in 2.8 seconds, as can the Lambo Aventador. The McLaren MP4-12C can reel off a 0-60 time of 2.9 seconds, and the Ferrari 458 Italia just misses out, clocking in at 3.0 seconds flat. In other words, the cars in the video aren’t the only ones capable of a sub-3.0 second 0-60 run.

I’d love to see a video database of 0-60 times and quarter mile times, since it would give you a benchmark when building a car or sizing up your on-track competition. Sounds like a great idea for a website project to me.

Source: You Tube

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's about to be a distraction...

I’ve never heard of the Russian girl band SEREBRO, and I don’t speak a word of Russian (which, to my untrained ears, sounds a lot like forcing a weasel into a garbage disposal). I’m not a big fan of pop music, either, but I will suddenly admit to being a huge fan of SEREBRO. It’s got nothing to do with the band’s music, and I think you’ll enjoy the video a lot more if you turn the sound down. If you’re a heterosexual male, however, I assure you of this: you WILL like this video.

See if you can spot all the distractions to the driver in the 5:33 second video below. I’ve watched it a few dozen times now, only because I keep losing count; besides, is slapping your front seat passenger’s ass considered a distraction if you don’t take your eyes off the road?

Source: You Tube, via Autoevolution

I-90, somewhere in Montana. Image: smithje77

You Tube user smithje77 was moving his family from Seattle to Maine, so he did what any of us would have done: he wrote a script in python to have his Droid take an image every ninety seconds, then he set this to video and dubbed in a Woody Guthrie tune, which he also performed.

And by “any of us,” I mean not me. I’m adept with an iPhone, but I draw the line at writing apps. As for setting images to video, I still struggle with Photoshop, and I’m fairly sure that people would pay me large amounts of money to NOT sing. I sure as hell can’t play guitar, but I have driven across this country more times that I care to ponder.

So has Mike, which may be one of the reasons we get along so well. If you’re a fellow brother of the road, you’ll get this video; like us, I’m sure you’ll recognize a few frames, even if they do flash by rather quickly. If you don’t have the Road Jones, you probably won’t understand the attraction of this video, or the appeal of driving twelve hour days, fueled by truck stop coffee and bags of beef jerky. If you don’t understand, I sure as hell can’t explain it to you.

Source: You Tube via Straightline

http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2011/09/video-time-lapse-footage-from-seattle-to-maine.html#more

Buried deep in the wilds of Collier County, FL, is a test track that backs up against the Everglades. To call it “remote” and “inhospitable” is like calling the Mojave Desert “sandy”; you’re guaranteed to have alligators, snakes and mosquitos, but you’re also guaranteed that you won’t have too many pesky neighbors to worry about. The location made the track ideal for hot-weather testing, which is why Ford originally built the facility. Ford sold it to Harley-Davidson, and Harley is now looking to divest itself of unneeded real estate. If you’ve got the $7.5 million asking price, the test track can be yours.

Your money buys you a two-mile-long runway, several skidpads, a small road course and an assortment of administrative buildings. If you like driving really fast in a straight line, the two-mile long straight has unbanked curves to allow use as a road course. There’s even a small-but challenging circuit on the property, with lots of run-off. Not that we’d recommend sinking a car axle-deep in the soft Florida soil, since walking back to the track would probably involve encounters with fire ants, snakes and hordes of mosquitos.

The track would be ideal for the enthusiast owner as well, but only from November through March. Florida in the summertime, next to the Everglades, isn’t exactly our idea of a vacation paradise.

Source: LoopNet, via Autoblog and Visor Down

Image: Pat Hawks

From 1974 though 1987, 55 miles per hour was the national speed limit. In the early days, the limit almost made sense, since those were the dark times between our first and second gas crisises. Back then, most cars on the road weren’t getting 30 miles per gallon, so restricting speed in the name of fuel savings became the logical thing to do. Somewhere along the line, groups embraced the 55 mile per hour speed limit since it was “safer” than the old 70 mile per hour limit. When the double-nickel fell in 1987, those opposed to raising the national speed limit predicted carnage, death and highways flowing red with blood.

It never happened, of course, and today it’s easy to look back on 55 miles per hour and laugh. The national speed limit was the most widely ignored law since Prohibition, and by the time it was repealed few drivers even remembered why it was enacted in the first place. I remember the heady rush of being able to drive at 70 miles per hour, sans radar detector, without fear of getting pulled over and ticketed. It felt a lot like the freedom you experience as a new driver, but the novelty of being able to drive at speeds that would have drained your bank account the year before didn’t last long.

In the years since, speed limits have generally crept up as states realize that inattentive drivers, not speed, kill. The sole exception I can name is Montana, whose “reasonable and prudent” speed limit fell when sports car drivers kept insisting that 140 miles per hour, during daylight hours, was indeed reasonable and prudent. Today, speed limits vary by state, county and even municipality. To help keep track of the states with the highest speed limits, I give you the list below, which names every state with a maximum posted speed limit higher than 65 miles per hour.

Speed Limit 85

Parts of west Texas, although not until the Texas DOT has a chance to review traffic on highways currently posted at 70, 75 and 80 miles per hour.

Speed Limit 80

Interstate 10 in west Texas, Utah

Speed Limit 75

Maine, Louisiana, west Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma

Speed Limit 70

Washington, California, Texas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan

As for the rest of the states, all except Hawaii have a maximum speed limit of 65 miles per hour. Hawaii, which isn’t know for long stretches of deserted interstate highways, has a maximum speed limit of just 60 miles per hour.