Automotive News & Concepts
The so-called Ruf CTR 3 is produced by the engineering mavens at German manufacturer Ruf. Ruf has long been known for tuning the snot out of all sorts of Porsches, but the CTR 3 is its own unique beast 鈥?despite the fact it picks liberally from Porsche鈥檚 parts bins. The original CTR 3, as released in 2007, and featured a tweaked version of the Porsche 911鈥檚 3.8-liter flat-six engine, which was good for 691 hp and 657 lb-ft of torque. Coupled with a curb weight of just over 3000 pounds, that made for a veritable road rocket 鈥?but Ruf apparently believes there鈥檚 always room for improvement. The new model also has a 3.8-liter flat-six, but output has been increased to 750 hp and 708 lb-ft of torque 鈥?all of which is sent to the rear wheels through a six-speed sequential manual gearbox. For those keeping score at home, that鈥檚 130 ponies more than the mighty 911 GT2 RS. With that amount of power, it鈥檚 no surprise the car is quick. Ruf says gear ratios limit the CTR 3 to 236 mph (1 mph better than before), and 0-60 mph runs are ticked off in a scant 3.2 seconds. For the first time, Ruf will stuff the massaged flat-six into the middle of the car, within a custom modular tube space frame. Body panels are crafted from lightweight Kevlar composites, aluminum, and galvanized steel. The new CTR 3 uses MacPherson struts up front and a pushrod suspension in back, and engineers have stretched the wheelbase to help high-speed stability. All four brakes receive six-piston setups to make sure the car can stop just like it goes. Sound like a road-legal racer? Perhaps that鈥檚 also why Ruf fits an integrated roll cage into the interior, which is otherwise trimmed and customized for each customer with leather and Alcantara materials.
In Experiment 1, face images of two well known actors, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, were used as stimuli. We constructed two unique face sets for each actor, with each containing five frontal and five profile/three-quarter view faces of the actor. In addition to faces, we also constructed two name sets for each actor, each containing their last names printed in 10 unique fonts (for a total of 20 unique fonts). The face and name images subtended 鈭?1.5掳 脳 8.5掳 and 10.5掳 脳 3.0掳, respectively. Each run contained four face blocks and four name blocks with no oddballs, and one or two face or name blocks, each containing a single oddball. Blocks containing an oddball were excluded from further data analysis to remove any effects of oddball detection from the analysis. When only one oddball block was present in a run, a dummy block containing no oddball was added to ensure that all runs had the same length whether or not the run contained one or two oddball blocks. The dummy block was randomly chosen from one of the face or name blocks and was removed from further analysis.
Each observer completed 10 runs, each lasting 2 min and 45 s. In Experiment 2, the same oddball detection paradigm was used with the images and names of two distinctive car models, BMW Mini and Volkswagen Beetle. Cars were shown in different sizes, from different viewpoints, and on different background scenes to more closely resemble how they would naturally appear in everyday visual perception. The car images and car names subtended 鈭?1.5掳 脳 7.5掳 and 8.0掳 脳 4.0掳, respectively. In Experiment 3, face images of eight famous actors (Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Nicolas Cage, and Russell Crowe) were used as stimuli. These actors were the top 8 from among a total of 40 actors that an independent group of observers rated in a behavioral familiarity rating test. As in Experiment 1, two sets of unique face images were constructed for each actor, with five frontal and five three-quarter view faces in each face set. As no profile view images were used in this experiment, to ensure that face images from all actors were easily recognizable, the face images of both DiCaprio and Damon included some used in Experiment 1 and some new ones.
If there is not a further sign that our economy is in peril, then look no further than to the motor sports community. In the last couple weeks we have seen most major forms changed. We have Honda pulling out of Formula 1. Then Suzuki pulls their World Rally Championship program. Followed a few days later by Subaru. Next Audi and Porsche suspend racing in the American LeMans Series, with a triple blow by the announcement canceling the 2009 Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix after its short two year stint after nearly a decade off the circuit. Nascar is pretty much in shambles because of the Detroit Big 3 cutting spending. And now off road racing is feeling the effects. Land Rover is canceling the G4 Challenge. While we do hate to see this happen. But given the current economic conditions it is understandable to see major changes like this. Especially since that is the reason given in each case. Hopefully 2009 will be prosperous for the economy and many of these series will resume to normal operating procedures.