Sheet Metal Fuel Tanks

LAS VEGAS -- When the Lucas Oil Modified Racing Series, presented by Rockstar Energy Drink, brought their high energy brand of open wheeling racing to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Bullring, August 28th, there was a lot of excitement in the air as well as some pretty strong wind gusts. It would turn out that there was even more excitement throughout the course of the Lucas Oil Products 75 due to multiple story lines that captured every one's attention.

Absolutely topping the story lines was the presence of Tim "Poncho" Morse standing in victory lane at the end of the evening. It marked the Burbank-California driver's first series win after two years of coming oh so close to seeing a checkered flag. Morse was formidable on this night in Las Vegas and led every lap of the Lucas Oil Products 75.

But it wasn't an easy win. Every time Morse opened up a sizable lead on his competition it seemed that a yellow caution flag came out. Morse had to endure the field closing up on his rear bumper eight times during the race. An example of this came at approximately the half way point of the race when a single car spin brought out the caution flag and wiped out Morse's 4.2 second lead.

The last of the caution flags came with only 11 laps to go. Morse had to fight off a hard charging effort from young Dylan Kwasniewski who rode his bumper to a second place finish. Jim Mardis, Jimmy Dickerson and Tom Lovelady completed the top five. Dickerson, earlier in the evening, won the Dart Machinery trophy dash and the $200 bonus that comes with it.

Morse Lights up Las Vegas in Lucas Oil-Rockstar Energy Drink Action - WhoWon.com

Remember the Nissan NX of the mid-'90s? The tiny, econobox-based sportster was as cute as a bug and spent its brief lifespan mixing it up with other long-gone, sporty front-wheel drive affordables like the Mazda MX-3, Honda Civic CRX, Toyota Paseo and even the Hyundai Scoupe. While there were a lot of inexpensive, racy looking coupes back then, most automakers just don't see any money in that segment anymore. Instead, when they look to spin something off of their entry-level B-class chassis, most veer toward the white-hot crossover segment.

Consider the latest example, Nissan's 2011 Juke. Come to think of it, this in-your-face city slicker has some startling similarities to the NX. For one, at 162.8 inches long, it's deceptively small – just 0.4 inches longer than the '90s coupe. Further, both the Juke and the NX1600 rely on 1.6-liter four-cylinder power. And like the Sentra-based NX, the more emotional Juke is based on the same humble underpinnings that give structure to Nissan's workaday offerings, in this case, the Versa and Cube . And while the Juke may not be cute as a bug, there's something downright insectian about its Predator-like mug.

Despite not being a traditional sporty car, Nissan has been talking up its controversially styled mini-ute with many of the same descriptors, so we hopped a plane to Vancouver to see if the Juke could bob and weave its way into our hearts. Follow the jump to find out how it fared.

We would love to just dive into a discussion of the Juke's performance – especially considering it offers such goodies as a new turbocharged, direct-injected powerplant and torque-vectoring all-wheel drive. Thing is, we can't. Like you, we're still puzzling over its appearance. So before we go any further, yes, the Juke's face is sure to be its biggest bone of contention – but among the young buyers that Nissan is seeking, it's also just as likely to be among its chief selling points.

First Drive: 2011 Nissan Juke - Autoblog (blog)

Dan Roberts from Orange, Texas, says he remembers seeing a prototype of the SSR at a car show back before Chevy put them into production. The design impressed him so much that he decided to apply some of that same styling to a classic truck. He even went so far as talking to a GM engineer about the lines and dimensions of the SSR.

Dan already had a truck in the works. His friend George Glach had uncovered a rough, old '54 Chevy five-window in a backyard garage in the late '80s. Dan paid $700 for the body, frame, and fenders and started working on it little by very little. Inspired by the SSR concept, Dan got busy figuring out how to use some of the old-time styling of the brand-new Chevy truck to contemporize the look of his old-time Chevy truck.

Instead of trying to salvage the '54's frame, Dan decided to upgrade the entire chassis, and bought a '97 Chevy S-10 for the framerails, suspension components, rearend, steering box, and fuel tank. The motor mounts were adjusted and a new transmission crossmember was added to fit Dan's application. He also added 2-inch lowering spindles up front and modified the rear leafs and front coils to bring the whole thing down to the altitude he was looking for. A front Panhard bar and rear sway bar maintain the ride quality. A Corvette master cylinder and booster from Parr Automotive operate the front disc brakes and rear drums.

The smooth, curved lines of the '54 lend themselves to some of the influences of the SSR, but it took a whole lot of sheetmetal fabrication to bring the truck this far. Ray Richard from Port Arthur, Texas, stepped in to help. The top was not chopped but the bumpers and running boards were eliminated and the body was channeled over the framerails and the fenders were radically reshaped to fit the modified lines. The rear lower portions of the front and rear fenders were swapped with each other; the same thing was done with the front lower portions. The result is that the fenders are sized right, but the fronts are a little rounder than stock and the rears a little flatter. The front fenders were further customized with eyebrowed headlights from a '55 Chevy.

1954 Chevrolet Five-Window Truck - Custom Classic Trucks Magazine

There was a ubiquitous television advert for sweets in the 1980s where the catch line featured an endearing moppet saying "Don't forget the fruit gums mum!" You no longer see this ad. But the right of the Labour Party has it's own ubiquitous recurring theme where someone pops up and says "Don't forget the middle classes!" The latest tribune of the right to utter this sentiment is my leadership rival David Miliband.

At first hearing this appeal sounds like simple common sense. But it is not the pragmatic statement of the obvious that it purports to be and actually masks a different purpose. For one thing it is unlikely that anyone, in any political party, is going to forget middle classes any time soon. They largely dominate the discourse and personnel of modern politics. Most newspapers are written by the middle class, for the middle class. Even when they deal with issues of concern to the poor, the writer is almost always a middle class commentator. Most metropolitan think tanks are peopled by the children of the middle class. And the number of working-class MP's in the Labour Party has sunk to an all-time low.

There are many examples of the failure of the Labour Party to reflect the concerns of the working class in its policy making. The obvious one is the way that Gordon Brown (supported by Ed Balls) scrapped the 10p tax rate solely to fund a cut in the basic rate for Middle England. This despite the fact that his own Treasury officials warned him of the consequences for the low paid.

Another example is the narrative that has emerged during this leadership contest about tuition fees. I voted against them. I am the daughter of a sheet metal worker, who himself left school at 14. It was easy to imagine his response to the idea that, not only was I going to stay on at school past 16 but I was going to rack up thousands of pounds of debt to go to university. I would have been packed off to become a nurse like my mother. My leadership rivals, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, supported tuition fees at the time. Seven years later they have come out against them, claiming they have been persuaded by talking to working-class constituents on the doorstep. What a shame they did not talk to working-class people about the policy at the time.

Diane Abbott: The myth of the forgotten middle class - Independent

Nissan's newest five-door is being called a Sport Cross -- another new segment within a segment that's getting sliced thinner all the time. But I understand Nissan's quest for a suitable tag to hang on the all new Juke.

The name alone gives no indication of what it is, so a descriptive segment title is important. According to Nissan, the 2011 Juke combines the best qualities of a sporty sedan and the functionality of an SUV -- hence, Sport Cross. I'll just call it fun.

And fun is what driving this zippy little urban scrambler is. Here on the Sunshine Coast of BC, the Juke revealed its inner skateboarder to me and, apart from wanting to tell it to pull its pants up, I liked it.

This little five-door hatchback is what all five-door hatchbacks are -- practical; but that's where the comparison ends. From practical, the Juke takes a hard left turn toward quirky and stylish. The front end is what catches the eye first with its massive turn signals folded into the front fenders and headlights pulled so far back the car looks like it's grinning.

Juke is sporty, functional, fun - Canada.com