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This show is a "Drive" exclusive first ever look at
the world's greatest, most unique, most ugly race cars on
the planet.
Not really, but isn't that how the internet works?
Big over the top statements to get your attention and views?
Have you listened to some of the presentations in some of
these videos?
Not the "Drive" videos of course.
Then you take all these over the top best-ever platitudes,
put all that in the title, search tags, and description.
Put an attention grabbing but out of context picture on the
title page and there you go, internet success.
Stupid me, I've been trying to make this show work with news,
info, ideas and thinking.
So today the ugliest race cars on the planet, best ever.
And I ask for your nominations.
To get you through this topic we'll discuss Moto GP, you'll
hear why soon enough, the Nurburgring 24, Indy,
[INAUDIBLE]
and Pike's Peak.
Ugly versus beauty in racing defined in my
mind and your comments.
Really now that could get ugly.
Today on Shakedown the topic is what is becoming of
today's race cars.
Ugly?
Awesome?
OK for you?
And to get to that discussion and your opinions we'll trip
through the Nurburgring 24, the Indy 500 pole qualifying,
the [INAUDIBLE]
and a Pike's Peak hill climb preview.
But let's get started with an ugly baseline.
Ugly an opinion call.
An aesthetic judgment of taste versus current thinking.
Real cars are designed that way.
Racing, and by extension function, often influences
race car design.
And we all understand functionally ugly can equal
race car beautiful.
Really, do wings really look right on cars?
But we like them.
But sometimes it's rules or budgets versus function that
create the eye mess in racing.
And when there's more than one design option, and ugly is
picked for rules or low cost, which is bad judgment, does
everyone understand the impact it has to the sport of racing,
its perception, and its popularity?
Today, we're picking on designs that are different,
judgment calls on execution, ugly ones or not.
This is all for you to comment upon.
Let's get started with MotoGP, and you'll
understand why in a second.
Casey Stoner and Valentino Rossi, because this was a
battle about two guys, and they're making statements
about the essence of racing.
Then they raced each other.
While not a design debate, it is a what is racing all about
debate, and we can tie that to the cars and what race cars
should represent.
Stoner's belief is in the purity of the sport.
That's why he's retiring.
He feels that's drifting.
Not drifting the sport, drifting from MotoGP.
Rossi's opinion is kind of a corporate replay.
He says whatever business dictates, I'll ride it.
And while this is not a beauty discussion of MotoGP, it does
set the mind for why race cars look the way they look.
Are they design driven, or is it a business decision?
Let's get to ugly because it was ugly on so many levels.
I'm going to spare you the details of poll weekend, but
there was enough to go around to make it not feel pretty.
But the race cars are what we're talking about.
Ugly?
Didn't have to be that way.
Here's a 1970s McLaren.
Of course, age and time didn't stop ugly.
They found ways too back then.
That's the [INAUDIBLE]
from I think '74, '72.
Point is, is all this good or bad for for ugly race cars?
Or am I just being an old guy, and I'm not
comfortable with it?
Let's go to the [INAUDIBLE]
24.
That one's not ugly.
The race ending was.
Audi won, but the Porsche, the [INAUDIBLE]
Porsche, was about to finish third, was running low on
fuel, stopped trackside after crossing the start-finish
line, and got hit from behind and destroyed and kicked out
of the race by a little Renault Clio.
But the cars are beautiful.
The BMW, the Asten Martins, all of them, even the LFA.
While it's not one of my favorites, it works is a race
car and flies beautifully.
Just like the old days of the [INAUDIBLE].
And the [INAUDIBLE]
four and five, now a hybrid, but obviously inspired by
older beauty.
So one of the questions is, how much of the popularity of
sports car racing is because the cars are attractive to
more people?
Mile Miglia ran this weekend.
Are they beauties, or just old ugly beasts?
Alfa One, this 1933 Alfa Romeo 6C 1500.
The Mile Miglia runs from Brescia to Rome and back.
375 historic originals.
No advertising on the cars.
All beautiful.
A 1939 BMW 328 Roadster took second place.
Third went to this 1933 Aston Martin Le Mans.
So are they all pretty to you or something else?
Let's talk Pike's Peak, coming July 8.
Team APEV.
This is the Japanese Association for the Promotion
of Electric Vehicles, and they're all over Pike's Peak.
Monster Tajima is coming back to repeat his under 10 minute
record, but with a new car.
This time, the reigning champion for the past six
years will switch from gas power to a new EV racecar.
Do we like it?
Functionally beautiful, ugly, and don't do any Batman jokes.
But apparently, all pavement at the 2012 Pike's is not
going to be the only big news at Pike's Peak.
Electric will be.
Mitsubishi is entering two all-electric vehicles, a
regular production i-MiEV, and this specially prepared
competition version.
Let me add right here, ugly doesn't help racing, and it
ain't going to help electric vehicles' acceptance either.
Weird and funky may be a Friday night date choice, but
it's not a car choice or a life choice.
Well, except for you two guys over there.
OK, and it's not that Pike's Peak was all beauty until
Monster or Mitsu arrived.
Sorry, Paul Dallenbach.
That's his 2011 car.
OK, the point of the show is to discuss ugly race cars, the
world's ugliest, because we're doing an internet thing.
So now I need to know what you are all
thinking about all this.
Are the new cars good for your eye, good to your eye, or not?
Here are the two WEC Audis and Toyotas.
Or is history better aesthetically?
We all know this car.
Even the old stuff got weird.
But it all kind of fit, at least in my eye.
That's a mid '90s Peugout Evo Le Mans car.
F1 is so ugly, they already agreed to fix
the rules for 2013.
And Indy cars we've discussed, and Monster's car.
So what's your verdict?
Is ugly hurting today's racing, like
Indy and Pike's Peak?
And give me your list of your most ugly race cars from today
or from history.
Let's see if we can create a list, and we can create the
best ever internet ugly racecar show on
the planet and beyond.
I mean, this is the internet.
We better use it properly.
God.