Video: eGarage takes a look at J&L Fabricating, comes away with warm hearts
Filed under: Motorsports, Classics, Videos
"It's one thing to put a car together, it's another thing to make it work." Truer words have never been spoken, and in the case of Louie Shefchik of J&L Fabricating, the man who opens the video below with those words, 'making it work' has practically been elevated to an art form.
From humble beginnings - a garage back behind the duplex in which Louie and his wife Jeanette lived - J&L has grown to become a highly respected track-side crew that keeps its clients' vintage race cars on the track and competitive. And, judging by the commentary of his customers, friends and family, he's a downright great person.
Check out the video below for the complete story of J&L Fabricating from eGarage.
Continue reading eGarage takes a look at J&L Fabricating, comes away with warm hearts
eGarage takes a look at J&L Fabricating, comes away with warm hearts originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 23 May 2013 16:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsVideo: IIHS goes behind the scenes of its own frontal offset crash tests
Filed under: Etc., Safety, Videos
It would be glib to say that safety equipment has had a huge influence on automobiles in the past 20 years. The result of cars being massively more safe than they were not long ago has made them bigger, heavier, more expensive, more challenging to develop, harder to fix and harder for emergency responders to deal with. That's just what it takes to try and keep people safe when they're wielding two-ton battle tanks in close quarters.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is one of the entities in the greyhound-and-rabbit jockeying that keeps pushing the bounds of safety. It uses its testing to confer the Top Safety Pick designation that carmakers seek and it launched the small overlap frontal crash test that tripped up a number of vehicles.
It has begun a video series demonstrating what it tests at its facility in Virginia and how, with its crash test dummies, it assesses the results. There are two videos so far, one detailing the front offset test, the other examining the specifics of the crash test dummies who do all the 'work.' There will be eight videos in total, with another released every Tuesday. You can watch the first two below. They're a short and fascinating six minutes of viewing.
Continue reading IIHS goes behind the scenes of its own frontal offset crash tests
IIHS goes behind the scenes of its own frontal offset crash tests originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 23 May 2013 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsVideo: Watch Carrera Cup driver Connor de Phillippi’s first lap of the Nürburgring
Filed under: Motorsports, Coupe, Europe, Videos, Porsche, Racing
American race driver Connor de Phillippi was recently added to the roster of Porsche Juniors, the arm of Porsche's factory racing program that develops new talent. The 20-year-old is contesting the Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland series with FÖRCH Racing by Lukas Motorsport, and last weekend, he raced the series round at the Nürburgring. Starting 15th on the grid, de Phillippi would cross the line in ninth out of 32 finishers.
Courtesy of his in-car camera, you can watch his entire first lap in the video below - there's no music added, just engine whine during nine minutes of crests, turns, bumpy straights and that wicked Carousel. Enjoy.
Continue reading Watch Carrera Cup driver Connor de Phillippi's first lap of the Nürburgring
Watch Carrera Cup driver Connor de Phillippi's first lap of the Nürburgring originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 23 May 2013 12:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsZippy Picovico attempts to take on Animoto from the mountains of Nepal
Picovico founders Suraj Sapkota and Manish Modi
If you thought it was hard doing a startup in Silicon Valley, try Kathmandu. The capital of Nepal struggles through daily electricity cuts, unreliable Internet, and Maoist protests and strikes that cripple the city’s infrastructure. But, yes, even in Nepal, there is a fledgling startup culture, and just a couple months ago the country hosted its first Startup Weekend.
To an extent, there’s also a bit of cultural isolation in Kathmandu, which is not exactly an integral part of the global tech ecosystem. So, it’s kind of understandable that one of its startups, a photos-to-video animation app called Picovico, wasn’t even aware of its biggest international competitor when it came time launching its own product in beta last year.
Soon after launching Picovico in beta, the founders realized that a very similar video-slideshow product had existed since 2006: Animoto. The San Francisco-based company, backed by $30 million in venture funding, had something of a headstart.
Picovico, started by computer engineering graduates Manish Modi and Suraj Sapkota, freaked out just a little. “We were like, ‘Why will people use our product if they have something which is already popular, which is already good?” community manager Shilpa Singhal recalls.
They realized they had no option other than to try to provide something different. So Modi and Sapkota worked on making the product as fast as possible, and have now got the video-rendering process down to 15 seconds for a 30-second video. Speed is now Picovico’s chief selling point. The app is free while the company focuses on building a user-base.
Picovico’s homepage
While the six-person company is based in Kathmandu, it is targeting a global audience and has registered as a company in San Francisco. Picovico has so far gone through two accelerators: Bangalore’s The Morpheus and Startup Chile, which it applied to in an effort to get closer to the US market. South America, they decided, was near enough. All the company’s funding has come from those accelerators and numbers in the tens of thousands of dollars.
There’s no sense in underplaying the huge battle Picovico will face in establishing itself with an American market in the shadow of Animoto. The tech behind the app may be solid, but video creation is such a design-driven concern, and, compared to Animoto, on that front the Nepali startup looks decidedly second-class. There may, however, be an opportunity to cater to an Asian market that has different, and sometimes unique, design tastes. Meanwhile, it must also compete with FlixTime, Stupeflix, and ProShow Web, among others.
Even for a startup from a nation of mountain climbers, the incline for Picovico might ultimately be just too steep.
Hamish McKenzie
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Video: 2014 Nissan GT-R Track Pack squares off against Audi R8 V10 Plus
Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Videos, Audi, Nissan
The team over at Motor Trend has pitted the new Audi R8 V10 Plus against the Nissan GT-R. While both of the bright red all-wheel-drive supercars are comparably matched in power output, the similarities end there. Audi offers a mid-engine aluminum coupe with a naturally aspirated V10 that spits out 550 horsepower. Nissan shows up with a more traditional coupe equipped with a 545-horsepower twin-turbocharged V6 at the front of the car.
The Head-to-Head video takes both cars to the Streets of Willow Springs in the California desert for some track work with professional racing driver Randy Pobst behind the wheel. After a day at the track, the pair head to the local mountains for some spirited real-world driving. One dominates on the circuit, while the other earns back its credibility in the canyons. We won't tell you which coupe comes out on top, but we think you may be surprised. Follow the link below to watch for yourself.
Continue reading 2014 Nissan GT-R Track Pack squares off against Audi R8 V10 Plus
2014 Nissan GT-R Track Pack squares off against Audi R8 V10 Plus originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 22 May 2013 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsVideo: The first Forza Motorsport 5 trailer is here
Filed under: Toys/Games, McLaren
Those of you who were following along with the live Xbox One keynote this afternoon have likely already seen this video, but for the rest of the world, this is the first look at the all-new Forza Motorsport 5. Slated to be a launch title for the new Xbox gaming console, Forza 5 is tipped to offer racing like no other video game before it, with controls and graphical presentation on a new level.
The demo seen here shows that, to no one's surprise, the McLaren P1 will have a star turn in the next-generation game. The video shows both the P1 and its F1 forefather in a race through narrow city streets, with both cars rendered in eye-popping detail. Actual game play footage will ultimately have to win us over, but it's safe to say that all signs point to a killer racing sim. Check out the video for yourself below.
Continue reading The first Forza Motorsport 5 trailer is here
The first Forza Motorsport 5 trailer is here originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 21 May 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsVideo: Zach Sobiech was a Nissan GT-R fan, will always be our hero
Filed under: Etc., Videos, Nissan
Like presumably any other 17-year-old out there, Zach Sobiech was ecstatic when a Nissan GT-R rolled into his driveway. As you can see in the image above, he had an ear-to-ear smile as he got to spend a week driving his dream car - but what you can't see is that he was just weeks away from losing a four-year battle against a rare form of bone cancer called osteosarcoma.Nissan found out about the teen and his dream of driving a GT-R, and actually did something about it. Says Mike Disser from Nissan Marketing Communications, "The team at Nissan was inspired by Zach's story. Loaning a GT-R to Zach to help make one of his dreams come true was an opportunity to do something uplifting and rewarding for a very special car-guy."
Diagnosed with the cancer at the age of 14, Zach fought back with inspiring optimism and an infectious smile, but he ultimately lost his battle with cancer on May 20. In the video posted below, Zach says "you don't have to find out you're dying to start living," and hopefully, his heartwarming spirit will live on with those who watch it. Zach's love for the GT-R starts to show around the 5:30 mark, but we definitely suggest that you grab a box of Kleenex and watch the entire 22-minute video."You don't have to find out you're dying to start living"
This video was posted on his 18th birthday - May 3 - when he had just weeks to live. Be sure to check out some of the videos for songs that he wrote including "Clouds" (also embedded below).
Continue reading Zach Sobiech was a Nissan GT-R fan, will always be our hero
Zach Sobiech was a Nissan GT-R fan, will always be our hero originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 21 May 2013 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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