Welcome to Must Read, where we single out the best stories from around the automotive universe and beyond. Today we've got reports from Sympatico, Petrolicious, Hooniverse, and Wired: AUTOPIA.
‘Shut up and drive’ says Porsche GT3 boss – Sympatico
The biggest knock against the 2014 Porsche 911 GT3 is that it doesn't come with a row-yer-own gearbox. Porsche's response in this great interview by Matt Bubbers?
The PDK that is so discussed so much—‘Why! How can you do this! Holy Manual and skip it overboard’—I say it’s a shut up and drive.
It’s a crucial period now, people complain, forming strong opinions about something they can’t judge because they didn’t have any opportunity to drive it and judge it realistically.
But that will pass as soon as the first journalists come back with their feedback—and I know exactly what this feedback is going to be like.I experience it too often. With every new RS: ‘Oh no! This colour scheme; Oh no! These decals; How can they do this; Blah blah bloop.’ And everybody bought it nevertheless and is happy.
The Buses And Vans Of The Pan-American Highway – Hooniverse
The Pan-American highway snakes from Alaska to Chile, conveying thousands of people along the way. Here's a look at some of those conveyances.
Hyundai van: Humberstone, Chile, to Iquique, Chile. After visiting the abandoned mining town of Humberstone in the middle of the Atacama Desert, I was shitting bricks because I didn’t know how I was going to find a ride back to town. Miraculously, a black Hyundai van appeared out of nowhere and picked me up. It was completely full and I practically had to sit on the driver’s lap. Here we are, descending to the port city of Iquique. Note the humungous yellow sand dune between the road and the city.
How Renault Put A Turbo In The Trunk And Made The R5 Turbo – Petrolicious
It's not my goal to run a Petrolicious article every day, although I can't say that won't happen.
The resultant car exuded a friendly, cartoonish aggression, like a pissed-off koala bear. Nearly wide as it was long, with wild, heavily ventilated hips only slightly narrower than a Ferrari 512BB’s, plenty of large, prototypically 80s “TURBO” decals, and more air intakes than a Dassault Mirage, it remains to this day one of the most iconic performance car silhouettes of all-time—there’s simply no mistaking one for anything else.
Voice-to-Text Just as Unsafe as Touch Texting, Study Finds – Wired: Autopia
It's reasonable to think voice-to-text is much safer than just texting with your fingers, but it isn't.
For every minute of baseline time behind the wheel, drivers would spend an average of 37.3 seconds looking forward at the road (obviously, that doesn’t include checking the speedometer, mirrors and dash-mounted light). When texting manually, that average dropped to 27.2 seconds. When using Siri, drivers were looking up for an average of 28.6 seconds, while the Vlingo method dropped it down to 25.8 seconds.