Tag: Jaguar

ExNotes Product Review: Waymo Self-Driving Cars

By Joe Gresh

There is a megacity out in the Arizona desert. It runs for miles and miles, ever expanding into the scrublands. Phoenix, Chandler, Tempe, Scottsdale and other towns have merged into one, giant, golf course subdivision splattered with Wal-Marts, drug stores and tilt-up warehouse mattress vendors. It’s hot, dry and thirsty. I don’t understand why so many people willingly bake in the sun. Waymo, the self-driving taxicab company has found a way to eliminate a few of those people.

ExNotes tested the Waymo’s plying the streets of downtown Tempe. Laid out in a grid pattern with tall buildings blocking radio signals Tempe would be a tough test for Waymo. How the system works is you download an app and enter your information. Next you order a car telling Waymo where you are and where you want to go. How long you wait for a car depends on traffic or rider loads. CT and I took Waymo rides three times and the usual wait was 5 or 10 minutes. The Waymo cars we rode in at Tempe are made by Jaguar and look like any generic, white SUV-ish car, except the Waymo’s bristle with cameras and sensors on all four corners and the roof.

Let me cut to the chase and tell you the actual driverless-car part worked great. You can sit in the front seat or rear seat, once inside with your seatbelt on you push the start field on the dash display. The Waymo will watch for traffic and pull out onto the street just like a person is driving. The car still has a steering wheel that spins around as the car makes corners. The Waymo doesn’t pussyfoot around, either. It accelerates right up to speed and takes curves with a bit of hustle. It stopped at stop signs, circled roundabouts and waited patiently at traffic lights.

I felt totally comfortable sitting in the passenger seat letting the computer drive. I suspect that’s because I’ve been installing autopilots in boats for 50 years. From the first Metal Marine Pilot to the latest digital units tied into GPS and radars. I’m used to sitting at the helm with the boat steering on its own. Of course there are a lot less things to run into on the water compared to downtown city streets, but I saw the Waymo as just a fancier version of electronic stuff I’ve dealt with for years.

As there is no driver, there is no need to tip. The short Waymo rides we took cost around $4 each and the money is charged through the app. You get in, arrive at your destination and get out. Oddly enough, the technology of the self-driving car wasn’t where Waymo fell down on the job.

Our problems came during the pick up process. Waymo’s app will tell you to walk 700 feet this way or head 350 feet south on Fifth Street feet while you’re waiting for the car. You can watch the car’s progress on the app and judge arrival time. After following the apps instructions we found it best to ignore the app and stay in one spot and wait until we could see the Waymo, and then walk towards it.  Pick up was usually fairly close but one time the car waited for us about a block and a half away.

We were walking all over trying to find the thing. Waymo’s app has a toot horn feature and we used this to echolocate the car. Upon our arrival the car decided it had waited long enough and drove off. We were 15 feet away. It’s kind of dumb because Waymo knows your location via the phone app. It knows how far away you are and can see you moving towards the car. Also, Waymo needs a “Pick me up where you dropped me off” feature to cut down on walking time. As the software is configured now Waymo might drop you at the front door of your destination but when you call for a pickup the car might be down by the river.

Long time ExNotes readers will know I’m not the sort of guy known for embracing the future. But being a motorcyclist I can see the advantages of ever-vigilant computers replacing the brain-dead car drivers that kill us so often. I’d rather ride in a megacity full of Waymos than the usual collection of phone texters, blind drunks and road ragers.

It’s still early times in the self-driving car business and the road driving part is already amazingly good. I could tell no difference between the Waymo and a human driver. The weather was perfect in Tempe so I can’t speak to how the car would perform in a snowstorm or on icy roads. Maybe it defaults to park? I can see personal self-driving cars becoming popular if we can figure out all the legal ramifications and who gets the blame in an accident. But it’s not like we don’t have accidents now. I say bring on the future.

Indiana’s Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg Museum

The Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg Museum is somewhat misleadingly named.   Yes, they have a stunning and visually arresting collection of Auburns, Cords, and Duesenbergs (one of the best I’ve ever seen), but the collection of more than 120 vintage automobiles includes more than just these three marques.  There’s even a vintage BSA motorcycle (I’ll get to that in a bit).

The Museum is housed in what used to be the Auburn factory.  It’s in Auburn, Indiana, where they used to make Auburn automobiles.  Auburn is north of Indianapolis (the quick way in is on Interstate 69); we stopped there on our way to Goshen to visit the Janus factory.  Janus was fun and I grabbed a ton of awesome photos there, too.  Grab the September/October issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine and you’ll see it.  But that’s not what this blog is about.  Let’s get back to Auburn and the Museum.

The Museum is magnificent and the automobiles are stunning.  The Duesenbergs are beyond stunning but don’t take my word for it.  You might consider seeing this magnificent collection yourself.  I took enough photos to fill a book and I had a hard time picking just a few to show here.  I probably went a little overboard, but the cars are so nice it was hard not to.

Here’s a 1931 Duesenberg Model J.  The body was built by the Murphy company of Pasadena, who made more Duesenberg bodies than any other company.  The car has a straight 8 engine.

This is a V-16 Cadillac, another truly magnificent automobile.

Next up is a supercharged 1935 Auburn.  It is an 851 Speedster, with a Lycoming straight 8 engine.  It cost $2,245 when it was new (less than a used Sportster, if you’re using that as a benchmark).  The lines on this car are beautiful, and the colors work, too.

This next car is a 1929 Ruxton, a car I had never heard of before visting the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum.  It’s a front-wheel-drive car, a competitor to the Cord in its day.  According to what I found online, the Ruxton was lower, lighter, and handled better than the Cord.  The looks and the colors work for me.

Check out the Ruxton’s headlights.   These are Woodlite headlights, which  are very art deco.   They look like helmets.

Here are two 1937 Cord 812 automobiles:  A convertible and a coupe.  The colors and the style are impressive.  When I was a kid, I built a Monogram plastic model of a Cord that I think was based on the convertible I saw in Indiana.

Here’s a 1948 Lincoln Continental Coupe with a V-12 engine.  1948 was the last year any US automobile manufacturer made a V-12.  This one had 305 cubic inches and it produced 130 horsepower.  The car you see here cost $4,145 in 1948.

This 1933 250cc single-cylinder BSA is the lone motorcycle in the Cord Auburn Duesenberg Museum.  This one was E.L. Cord’s personal motorcycle, which he kept on his yacht and at his Nevada ranch.

Another magnificent Duesenberg.  This one is a 1931 Beverly sedan, with a 420 cubic inch, straight 8, 265-horsepower engine  It went for $16,500 when it was new.

This is an XK 120 Jaguar.  I think this is one of the most beautiful cars ever made.  It’s my dream car, in exactly these colors.

Here’s a first-year-of-production, 1953 Corvette.  Chevy introduced the Corvette in the middle of the 1953 model year, so there were only a few made.  The 1954 Corvette was essentially the same car.

Chevy was going to discontinue the Corvette due to its low sales, but the dealers convinced them otherwise.  The dealers didn’t sell a lot of Corvettes, but they sold a lot of other Chevys to people who visited the showrooms to see the Corvette.

Another view of the first year Corvette.  Note the mesh headlight protectors.

Ford’s answer to the Corvette…the two-seat Thunderbird.  The little T-Bird never matched the Corvette’s performance.  After three years of production (1955 to 1957), Ford redesigned the Thunderbird as a larger four-seater.

The Thunderbird soldiered on as a four-seater for years, then it was discontinued, then it briefly emerged again as a two-seater in 2002 (that’s the car you see below).  The new Thunderbird only lasted through 2005, and like the classic ’55/’56/’57 two-seat T-Birds, Ford dropped this one, too.  My buddy Paul drives one that looks exactly like this.

Auburn is a cool little town.  Its population is about 14,000 and the town is about 145 miles north of Indianapolis (it’s a straight shot up on Interstate 69).  The town is rooted in automotive history, and other history as well.  In 1933, John Dillinger and his gang raided the local police station and they stole several firearms and ammunition.  But it’s the automobiles and their history that make this town a worthy destination.  Auburn, Indiana, loves its automobiles and automotive history.  We saw several vintage cars being used as daily drivers.  The murals were cool, too.

You can easily spend three or four hours in the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum, and spending the entire day there wouldn’t be out of the question.  One of Auburn’s best kept dining secrets is Sandra D’s, a reasonably-priced Italian restaurant with an exquisite menu.  Try the eggplant parmesan; you won’t be disappointed.

Hit those popup ads!

Never miss an ExNotes blog:

 

The Jagrolet

Last century I worked on a boat called the Attessa. The Attessa has worn many names since and was a steel Kong & Halvorsen dry docked at a National City, California shipyard for a fairly thorough refit. I think it was over 150 feet long by the time we added a stern section. For some reason we didn’t move the rudders aft at the same time, which was kind of weird. I always wonder if it steered well or crab-walked when you turned the helm? We also re-flared the bow to give the front of the boat a less navy, more-yachty look. A complete remodel of the interior was also done. That’s where I came in. I was one of three electricians on the job.

The other two electricians were from Montana and were sent from the yacht owner’s personal supply. The Montana boys were house electricians and had never done boat wiring so I was there to help them with the oddities of marine construction. All three of us got along well. One day I accidentally caught our lead electrician snorting coke down below in the new aft section. “I guess you shouldn’t have seen this,” he said. I didn’t care, there was so much work to do we needed everyone we could get. Besides, the painters were all speeded up.  Why not Sparkies?

You may remember the Attessa as the boat featured in Goldie Hawn’s movie Overboard. The owner of the boat was an ultrarich Montana guy named Washington. The project was pretty massive. The boat even had two captains at one time. Something about overlapping contracts. I spent months just doing interior lighting. For some reason one captain of the boat hated me and would go around sabotaging my work. He bitched constantly even though I was getting more done than the other two guys put together. The other captain was fine and we worked well together.

One day Bad Captain cut out a low-voltage lighting transformer because he didn’t like where it was. I just followed the plans, man. The wires were cut at the worst location making them unusable, meaning I had to run new wires or splice them. Splicing is never good on a boat. I was pissed off. “What the F is wrong with you?” I asked the captain. “You just destroyed 8 hours of work! It was done! It was tested! Now I have to run new wires and re-do the transformer. Like we don’t have enough shit going on!”

I went to the main contractor on the project, Neil, and told him about Bad Captain’s constant needling and tampering. It caused a real hubbub. Neil was already under the gun for cost overruns and hearing about the sabotage made him mad as hell. We had a team meeting where Bad Captain was told to leave me the F alone and that if he had any problems with my work to go see Neil. We maintained a frosty relationship after that but Bad Captain let me work undisturbed.

The engineer aboard the Attessa also hated Bad Captain so naturally we hit it off in grand fashion. He was the cool kid aboard the boat. He was a lovable cad and everyone liked him, which should have tipped me off. He had a Jaguar sedan with the straight 6 and wanted to repower the car with a small block Chevy. I had a sweet, 400 cubic-inch small block Chevy trapped inside a giant green station wagon.

It was a pain in the ass to work in National City. You had to park far away and check in or out. It was like working at a factory. The shipyard had a huge floating dry-dock and did a lot of contract work for the Navy. The metal grinding was constant, every day you’d have to blow the iron dust off the decks or the next morning you’d have rust stains bleeding all over. When the new bow and stern were finished we launched the Attessa and took her to Shelter Island for completion. I was much happier on Shelter Island.

I sold the 400-inch Chevy Wagon to Attessa’s engineer for 400 dollars. He didn’t have the money right then but we were good friends, you know? He pulled the engine and transmission from the Chevy and installed it into the Jag. I guess there is a kit that makes this swap particularly easy. The Attessa re-fit job was starting to go sour. The budget was blown to hell and the owner was getting tired of shelling out so much money. In the afternoon Neil would come aboard and ask each of us what we did that day. I’d show him what I was working on and he’d tell me to speed it up as he was getting heat from the owner. Our lead electrician was fired for drug use. People were quitting. Good Captain was gone. The engineer left.

I started getting parking tickets for the Chevy Wagon. The car was abandoned without plates in downtown San Diego racking up charges. They cops traced the car to me by the VIN number. I guess the engineer never changed the title to his name and just shoved the scavenged car into the nearest parking spot. At the same time Neil was bugging me to get the old 6-cylinder Jaguar engine out of his shop. My engineer buddy had given it to me as partial payment for the small block. I had no use for the Jag engine but that didn’t deter his generosity.

The Chevy was towed followed by more bills and notices. I had a hell of a time convincing the department of motor vehicles that I didn’t own the Chevy. The tow company kept the car. Nobody knew where my engineer buddy had gone. I had nowhere to store the Jag engine and no one wanted to buy it. This was pre-internet days and advertising the engine for sale would cost more than it was worth. I called around but even Jaguar repair shops wouldn’t give me 25 dollars for the engine. I told Neil to toss the double overhead cam, inline 6 engine in his dumpster.

Everybody on the Attessa was starting to get on each other’s nerves. It wasn’t a happy workplace since the crew stopped using drugs. There was constant bitching about how long the job was taking. On lunch break one of the welders told me, “I don’t know why they’re bitching at you, you’re the only one doing anything on this boat.” Morale was falling apart. After 5 months of hustle and push the Attessa needed a fresh team. We were burned out. I got a better offer from another boat builder (twice as much per hour!) so I told Neil I was quitting.

Neil took it well, we are still friends today, and had me use my full two-week notice to get the remaining Montana electrician up to speed as best I could. We kicked ass and when I left the lower decks were all done and we were working in the pilothouse so the electrical part was nearly finished. Starting the next boat project felt like I was in a prison early release program. The new boat build was full of happy workers. Some of the welders and painters from the Attessa got there ahead of me. It was like a family reunion except you were being paid to attend. I never got a penny for the Chevy small-block and I never heard from the engineer again. Which is just as well or I probably would have given the lovable cad another damn car.

More Joe Gresh is right here!