I Frowned

At the Rightosphere a couple weeks back when Al Gore’s son was arrested on drug charges after leading police on a chase in a Toyota Prius, in which speeds were recorded at over 100mph. Gore Sr. got some ribbing about his boy, some bookie didn’t specify that it had to be Gore the Elder that got arrested and had to pay out multiple thousands of dollars, and a lot of people made a funny about being surprised that the Prius had been clocked in the triple digits.

Simple jokes for simple minds, I guess.

I suppose I can’t get in trouble for saying this, not that there is a staute of limitations or anything of that sort, but when the Prius first hit the states I was lucky enough to get to play with one along with my friends at a local Toyota dealership. They had a sort “Come and Test Drive” event at one of the local (ok, THE local) road course track. I was tagging along with a friend as he drove the car to the track, slightly interested in the new electro-jalopy.

We arrived at the track a couple hours early to help with set-up and while no one in management was looking each took the little beastie “round for few”. While not the fastest thing I’ve put round there, the torquey little bastard pulled itself right upthe hill, in/out and straightening the last elbow, rocketing itself down the straighaway and through “The Kink” at an in-car measured and Dr. Emmett Brown approved 88mph before having to making the discs glow entering the teardrop.

That the felon Al Gore, Jr was able to get it past 99mph on an interstate surprised me not in the least. And it shouldn’t have surprised anyone else. I understand the need for a laugh, but puh-leeze.

Oh and by the way, since no one else seems to have watched it

Hybrid Toyota Supra Wins Tokachi 24 Hour Race

Toyota Team SARD’s specially-prepared Supra HV-R hybrid GT racer has won the Tokachi 24-hour endurance race in Japan. The converted Super GT-spec racing car did so convincingly, too. As the only GT-class car in the field, the Denso SARD Supra HV-R maintained a steady lead of several laps throughout the course of the race, and in the later hours, it essentially dialed things up a notch and ran away from the rest of the field. After starting from the pole position, the Supra completed 616 laps in the ensuing 24 hours — 19 more than the second-place finisher. The victory marks the first of its type for a hybrid-powered vehicle. The Supra HV-R began life as a retired 480-horsepower Super GT racing car, which then had regenerative braking technology and a trio of hybrid motors added to it for this event. What bearing, if any, the success of the Supra HV-R has on Toyota’s plans for production sports hybrid vehicles is unknown. With reports that the FT-HS concept is on its way to production, however, we’ll likely be seeing how well a production-spec hybrid sports car fares soon enough.