Nerd’s Eye View: 2013 LA Auto Show Part 2 – Cars & Stuff
Khiem Dinh is an engineer for Honeywell Turbo Technologies at the time of this writing. All statements and opinions expressed by Khiem Dinh are solely those of Khiem Dinh and not reflective of Honeywell Turbo Technologies.
In Part I, we had a look at engines, turbos, electric motors and stuff. Here in Part 2, we’re going to look at a few of the cars those engines and things drop into. On top of that, we’re going to show you a little bit of what goes on during media days at the LA Auto Show that does not happen during the general public days.
The 2014 Nismo GTR is one fast car. The fastest man in the world, Mr. Usain Bolt, approves; he’s the tall guy second over to the right of the car. If you look closely at the lower trailing edge of the endplates on the rear wing, you’ll notice a jagged edge. It looks sort of like a lightning bolt. Is it coincidence or marketing genius? Are the jagged edges functional or purely aesthetic? I don’t see any other random old school stealth fighter jagged edges, so I’m going to go with functional. I’m guessing they are there to create some vortices to interact in some manner with airflow coming off somewhere else from the rear of the car. Aero guys, help me out!
The exhaust hangs so low, it has to poke out through the rear diffuser. The sides of the diffuser do have vertical plates which I guess seal off some of the turbulent air from the rear wheel wells. Look really closely where those vertical plates start, roughly in line with the rear axles, and you can see a little NACA duct integrated in the diffuser on both sides. Any guesses as to the purpose of those ducts? They are quite small, so I’m thinking they are just for general cooling of the area enclosed by the rear bumper. The exhaust mufflers and transaxle are sitting back there, so maybe it’s just to keep things from getting too hot.
So a big difference between Media days and regular people days is famous people show up. Along with those famous people, you have these film crews interviewing famous people. I might have video bombed, er… inadvertently walked through a couple shootings as there were video crews everywhere. You have to stay on the lookout for the sound guys and the guys moving cable around. The video of Usain Bolt talking about the GTR is up on the internet now of course.
Here’s another random guy with a microphone talking about the GTR. So the Nismo GTR gets this unique front lip with two little slit openings near the corners. I’m not positive, but I think it’s a good bet those are for brake ducts. On a little bit of a tangent, Nissan had two Gran Turismo 6 simulators set up with the GT3 GTR and Deltawing. Note to self, I think the GT3 GTR is RWD after spinning. Willow Springs is in GT6 and the GT3 GTR clicked off sub 1:20 without much difficultly. However, the game doesn’t have the bumps in the middle of turns 2 and 8 like there are in real life.
