10 Best (Attainable) Engines

Ward's Auto has released this year's list of Ward's 10 Best Engines. 32 engines were nominated. To make the list, the engine needed to be available for most of the year in a vehicle with a sticker less than $52,500, and be explicitly selected by one of their editors. I tend to think it's a little bit biased, and I don't like that they're not too clear on how engines get nominated (the Lancer Evo engine, for example, did NOT get nominated for some strange reason). Despite those reservations, I still think the list is worth paying attention to... the engines that make it are almost certainly noteworthy.

Here's the list, along with the vehicle it was tested with. A lot of these engines come in other cars as well (although they are usually tweaked for that particular car), and I put some of those in for the ones I know about.

• Audi AG 4.2L DOHC V-8 (S4)
  
• BMW AG 3.2L DOHC I-6 (M3)
  
• DaimlerChrysler AG 5.7L Hemi Magnum OHV V-8 (Dodge Ram)
  
• DaimlerChrysler AG 5.9L Cummins 600 OHV I-6 turbodiesel (Dodge Ram Heavy Duty)
  
• Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. Subaru 2.5L DOHC turbocharged H-4 (Subaru WRX STi) [also WRX, Legacy GT]
  
• General Motors Corp. Vortec 4.2L DOHC I-6 (GMC Envoy)
  
• Honda Motor Co. Ltd. 3L DOHC V-6 (Accord Coupe) [also Accord Sedan]
  
• Mazda Motor Corp. 1.3L Renesis rotary (RX-8)
  
• Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. 3.5L DOHC V-6 (Infiniti G35) [also Nissan Maxima, Altima SE, 350Z]
  
• Toyota Motor Corp. 1.5L DOHC I-4 Hybrid (Prius)

Save the Penguins

This is just fun.

I should probably get back to work...

Fun with Microsoft Comments

On a lighter note, someone looked through the leaked Microsoft source for funny comments. Anyone working in the software industry (or, really, anyone who's written code) should gain new appreciation for the crap that Microsoft coders have to go through to support interoperability with every big, bloated, badly written, Windows-compatible application on the planet.

I know. Poor, poor Microsoft...

Carry ID Or Else

Nothing like a constitutional debate to spice up a dull afternoon. This guy was arrested off the side of the road for failing to show ID. The case has been appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. The primary 'constitutional concern' is summed up best by the following quote:

"On the 22nd of March 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether Dudley and the rest of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show "the papers" whenever a cop demands them."

I'm not a constitutional scholar (or an expert in law... and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night), but it looks to me like being arrested for refusing to show ID flies in the face of the fourth amendment (search and seizure). Many will make the argument that it's much easier today for enemies of the U.S. to get into the country than it was when the amendment was written. I don't know that that's true. I also can't really foresee any case where an individual who fails to produce ID upon request by a law enforcement officer can endanger the officer, or society, if no other evidence exists that a crime occurred.

A PC in Macintosh Clothes

A blog is born! I guess I'll start things off with this: someone put the guts of a PC into a PowerMac G5 case and wrote about it to a website. After the story got posted, his inbox exploded with death threats and other invective from the fanatical arm of the Mac community.

I'm sure that a reasonable Mac person (while agreeing with me that the actions these people took were deplorable), would say that Mac fans have a much deeper personal attachment to their machines than their Dell-owning counterparts, and that this attachment helps explain this kind of behavior. Bull. I love BMWs, and I know a lot of other people do too... but someone who swapped the M50 engine out of one for a 4-banger from a Cavalier wouldn't get anywhere near the abuse this guy took for putting an Athlon motherboard into his PowerMac. Heck, these guys turned a Porsche 944 into a golf ball retriever just because they could, and their TV show has quite a following.

Somehow, this migrated into a car post. I have a feeling that's going to happen a lot.