We Sure Have It Easy Now: Cold Start

Cs Vwt3 Leaves Cover
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As you’re likely aware, every story we put up has a big main image, something we refer to in the biz as a “topshot.” Sometimes it gets abbreviated in slack to “TS” but I don’t like that, because TS means and will always mean, “tough shit.” Anyway, these topshots are made with Photoshop, combining elements of our own photography and other elements either found online or drawn or modeled or whatever. Point is, it all happens at a desk, in front of a computer. So when I see old magazine covers like this it’s worth remembering that this was all physical. If you wanted an all-purple, featureless background, then you had to set up an all-purple, featureless background in some studio. Want a streetlight with a one way sign? You gotta find one, physically drag it over there, and set it up. You need to get a VW Type 3 notchback and park it, and then carefully string up (probably fake) autumn leaves on fishing line and artfully arrange them around and under the car and then run fake vines up the streetlamp. It’s work! So much work!

Damn, we have it easy now. But I bet these kinds of things must have been sort of fun to set up, too. Sure, it’d take half the day, and you’d need a warehouse full of props, but still, it’s the kind of thing I think I’d have enjoyed.

Oh, check out the magazine this cover is from:

Cs Vwt3leaves Track Traffic

Track and Traffic, Canda’s only economy and sports car magazine! I love the idea of a magazine just for economy and sports cars, categories that we now tend to think of as being quite divergent, but, really, are closer than we generally realize now! Back in the 60s, I think this was more obvious. Honestly, I think there’s a place on the internet today for a cheap car/fast car site. Hell, we’re kind of close! Maybe we need to have a subsite called The Fast And Frugal or something?

44 thoughts on “We Sure Have It Easy Now: Cold Start

  1. This image’s background may well have been done via 4-color process stripping and no, get your filthy mind out of the gutter—stripping of “film” not g-strings. Y’all might not remember film but I sure as hell do. You’ve added side pieces to the TS, as they are visible and the original photo is tightly cropped, a bit too close for my taste. There are telltale signs in areas where the stripping is visible to my eye.

    More than likely the image was shot on a white background and floor, as you would have needed a huge background cloth or paper roll especially for that color. The color is made up of screens in the CYMK (four color) printing process. There is no seam at wall and floor intersection. There is also no curve for background “roll” which would be noticeable in final image. The white background/floor intersection could be removed from the film. The film reversed, shrunk and/or spread then made a mask. The mask would be said “purple” color and also serve as the “knock out” of the car and accessories. The shadow under the car is a tad muddy, which is why IMHO it was done in the stripping process.

    Quick history, my background is publishing, specifically magazines and even auto pubs. Before that, I had an art, darkroom and printing background. Learned “old school” and morphed into the digital age. Photoshop, InDesign (desktop publishing) and even Illustrator are all based on four-color printing process and darkroom basics. Back in those dark ages, we did it all by hand, using film, amber or rubylith and opaque paint. Stripping film onto goldenrod for each of the four colors, which was our “layers” palette. People who did this were highly skilled and paid—now all relics of a bygone era. For what it’s worth, at least the multitude of Xacto knife scars have pretty much healed.

  2. In my younger days, I had a photo friend who did some advertising stuff in his studio sometimes. I helped with those (and other) shoots occasionally, and you’re right, it was a lot of fun! Sometimes it seemed like a lot of work for not much payoff, but it was always at least interesting, and we really got to use our imaginations trying to set stuff up!

  3. I was an advertising art director starting in the mid-70s. Many were the times photo sessions started with painting the “seamless” — a 2-wall set with 3-foot-radius seams at the corner and floor. Paint it, wait for the floor to dry enough to bring in the product, props, and models, get everything positioned and lit and repositioned and relit and have the client change their mind, reposition and relight a few more times, then repaint the marks and stains on the floor, check the set for stray items like gaffers’ tape or reflections from off set, triple check the Polaroids, get thumbs up from the client and finally, after about ten hours, expose the film. And figure out how much to budget for retouching, which was done with paint, masking film and airbrushes.

  4. Ooh I would join the Fast and the Frugal! I have a 2003 MR2 Spyder, which I think fits the bill. MR format, small tires and brakes, 30mpg even when driven spiritedly.

  5. The most frugal cars will generally have as low mass and as low of a CdA value as possible. If it’s a modern-ish engine with at least VVT, DOHC, and EFI, engine size and cylinder count doesn’t make as much difference in fuel economy as the road loading of the vehicle itself.

    Fast cars of course have more power for a given amount of weight, power which is most reliably achieved with a big displacement naturally-aspirated engine.

    It’s a travesty that the traits of an efficient chassis/body design are rarely ever combined with a big, powerful, reliable engine. Arguably, the closest we’ve ever gotten is a Corvette C5/C6, which can get 30 mpg highway in stock form and stock engine tune. But the Corvette by that point had long since evolved into a big car with lots of luxury features, driving up cost and adding frontal area plus more mass.

    If something truly extreme were done to reduce road loading, say a car the size of an Opel Eco Speedster, with similar CdA value to the Eco Speedster(the Eco Speedster had a 0.20 Cd value to help it get over 90 mpg), but a bigass LS V8 was shoved in it, building the car with conventional materials. Bare minimum safety features to pass. You could have a Miata-like weight car that gets Prius-like highway fuel economy when the driver is careful with the throttle, with way more power than it could handle, and an understressed engine that will last for practically forever with maintenance. Regarding driving dynamics, it would be like a TVR, on crack. Keep its features and luxuries to a minimum, and it wouldn’t cost much to build, perhaps coming in at a Miata-like price point.

    Would people buy a sub-$35k car that got 50 mpg highway, was reliable, could do 0-60 mph in 3 seconds, and might top over 220 mph? I think they would.

      1. They might not care, but LS swaps into small, light cars tend to get good economy anyway, when driven as most normal cars on the road.

        I saw an LS-swapped Triumph GT6 at a car show. It had a roll cage and gai ned a bit of weight to the 2,200 lb mark. The owner claimed it ran 11-second 1/4 mile times, AND could still eek out 30 mpg cruising 70 mph on the highway.

        The GT6 did not have all that great of a drag coefficient. Its overall CdA value was in fact very Corvette C5-like. Among production cars sold to the public, the C5 is one of the more slippery ones. Imagine what happens when you have this powertrain in a small car with a CdA value more like a VW XL1 instead?

        I know of no LS-swap of this description that has proven the concept, because extremely slippery cars simply haven’t been sold to the public. But if you take a BSFC chart and do some basic math, a 50+ mpg V8-equipped bare-bones streamliner of a sports car is theoretically possible, at least regarding highway fuel economy. Mass reduction to a Miata-like weight would still allow 25+ mpg in the city, vs upper-teens/low 20s for the C5 Corvette.

        1. Makes one wonder how well such a swap would do with the LS based drivetrain tuned for maximum fuel efficiency. Even as such there should be plenty of power left in an LS for a small, light chassis. Probably the best, easiest testbed for that would be a C5 especially if it could be a simple matter of programming in an extra “eco” mode. An LS swap into an MX5 adds about 200 lbs bringing it up to about 2550 lbs. A stock C5 is about 3200 lbs. IIRC each 100 lbs of excess weight reduces fuel economy by about 1/2 mpg so the ‘vette should get 3-4 mpg or so worse than the MX5.

          Still I’ve seen a TDI swapped into a 1st gen MT Insight which you’d think would be about as good as it gets MPGwise yet in the ad the owner only claimed 60-70 mpg on the highway, not much better than the original setup. Given the cost premium for diesel and the hassle involved it hardly seemed worth the effort.

          1. The video below shows a C5 Corvette tuned to operate in lean burn mode. The owner got 40 mpg cruising on the highway:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNIZ25eBMco

            The MX5 has worse aero drag than the C5. I’m doubtful it would see a benefit over the C5 overall, and maybe even a decrease in mpg on the highway vs the C5. It certainly would do better in the city than the C5 because of the weight reduction.

    1. It would probably need to be mild hybrid, have an efficient start/stop, cylinder deactivation or all 3 to really get 50mpg on the highway and decent mpg around town.

      1. I’d prefer to keep mass down for such a thing, as well as complexity, and thus reduce cost and preserve reliability. Keep it NA, no cylinder deactivation, no added mass for a hybrid powertrain(otherwise, you might as well replace the V8 with a 4-cylinder, or go full-EV altogether).

        But do consider the effects of cutting the horsepower requirement to maintain a given speed in half, on an engine that is already decently efficient and able to stay efficient at low loads. The C5 is already at a very low thermal efficiency point on the BSFC curve as it is cruising down the highway, and it’s not going to get much lower by cutting the road loading. Almost every bit of mass, rolling resistance, and wind resistance cut, will directly translate into more fuel economy. If and only if you have the discipline to keep your foot out of it.

        1. “The C5 is already at a very low thermal efficiency point on the BSFC curve as it is cruising down the highway, and it’s not going to get much lower by cutting the road loading”

          Do you mean to say “high thermal efficency”?

          1. Thermal efficiency increases with load. The higher load will cause you to consume more fuel, BUT a larger percentage of the energy stored in that fuel is converted into mechanical output instead of heat while that higher load is demanded. Most internal combustion engines will see their best efficiency at roughly 1/3 of max RPM and roughly 2/3 max torque.

            This is why hyper-milers use a technique called “pulse and glide”. They accelerate hard, then put the transmission into neutral, then coast back down. When the speed gets low enough, they accelerate hard again. This way, as much forward thrust possible is made from the quantity of fuel available.

            This is also why cars built for fuel economy also use smaller engines. The difference isn’t as large as you would think though by changing the engine displacement, all other things being equal. There’s 1 mpg of difference between the V8 5.0 Mustang from the 1980s and the inline 4-cylinder equipped with auto transmissions, with regard to highway fuel economy(23 for the 5.0 vs 24 for the 4-cyl). Most economy cars have less mass and less drag than is normal in order to save fuel, while the big, wasteful vehicles are given the big displacement engines in order to get out of their own way.

    2. A Daimler SP250 isn’t far off the mark from what you’re talking about.

      They have a small but eager, thoroughly understressed V8 in a small, lightweight chassis with a reasonably aerodynamic body. Even with their relatively primitive, low compression engine and carburetors, 30MPG is normal. 40MPG is very attainable with careful use of the throttle, even though the car was designed in the 1950s.

      They’re a hell of a lot of fun, rather fast, and an extremely reliable for a car of that era. The biggest knock on them is the styling.

      I wish I’d been able to afford the one I was once offered by a friend.

      1. It is as wide and as long as a MY2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Damned right that’s big.

        That is extra mass and extra frontal area, sapping away at fuel economy potential and performance potential while increasing the material costs that go into producing the vehicle.

        I wish Corvette would go back to its roots using the comparatively diminutive C1 as inspiration, but applied with modern aerodynamics knowledge and material sciences. And of course, the current generation of LS V8.

  6. Trash and Tragic! It was a little before my time, but I have a few issues. Considering we’re the nation of the Micra Cup, the Economy and Sports Car thing makes sense.

    Their biggest footnote was publishing an article covering a fake race through one of Toronto’s bigger parks, and proceeding to get in trouble with locals who swore it actually happened, and they had to proceed to publish an article explaining the ruse a couple months later (I’ve got both issues buried somewhere).
    https://varac.ca/documents/publications/Pit-Signals-201404.pdf

    1. It makes a lot of sense when you realize that speed typically had little to do with the concept of a sports car at the time. Sports cars were small, light, open two seaters with sharp handling that were fun to drive, but very often weren’t especially quick. And sports cars and economy cars were usually both imports, which was somewhat unusual in that era, and usually from the same manufacturers, so, what the hell, group them together

    2. “with locals who swore it actually happened” just… wow. People are incredibly dumb. Reminds me of the Moab subplot in that Neal Stephenson book who’s name I don’t recall.

  7. Cool thoughts, but tbh, I don’t think that’s true. Good old-fashioned manual rotoscoping was still a thing even decades before computers. Amongst other compositing techniques

    1. Yeah, I think Jason’s pulling our collective leg here. Given his artistic proclivities, he certainly knows photo editing and photo fakery both have long and storied histories. Rotoscoping, perspective tricks, airbrushing, even just cutting and pasting bits together…and I am not up on photography and art, so I know there’s a lot more that don’t come to mind for me.

  8. Yeah, it gets old fast when car sites focus on the fast and expensive, so this site is greatly appreciated! It’s always fun reading about how double-digit-horsepower VW buses (and Panhards!) had better drag coefficients than (spoiler alert) Jaguar E-Types, for example.

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