I never try to come up with a theme for each installment of Car Connections. Even if I did, it probably wouldn’t work because the core of the series is having the Random Word Generator give me three random words that I then somehow associate with automobiles. But this week, thanks to all my brushing up on European hypercars for my upcoming trip to Monterey Car Week, two out of the three vehicles have a definite (but unintended) theme. This week’s words are sequence, inspire, and receipt. How would you associate these words with cars? Tell us in the Comments section below. (And click here for more Car Games!)
Photo courtesy of Bugatti
Sequence: Fibonacci sequence. Numbers. Formulas. The Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Bernar Venet! As a Grand Sport, it featured a removable roof panel and the Veyron’s 8.0-liter quad-turbo W-16. French sculptor Bernar Venet created a 1-of-1 Grand Sport by painting on mathematical and scientific formulas inspired by the car’s power and speed. If you look closely (and carry the nine), you should be able to determine that this creation has 1,001 horsepower and a top speed of 252 mph (with the roof on).
Photo courtesy of Koenigsegg
Inspire: Motivate. Take action. I recently learned the Swedish word that means “to take action” is agera. Agera is also the name of a model that was made by Koenigsegg, the country’s purveyor of extremely fast and impressively engineered road rockets.
Photo courtesy of Koenigsegg
The Agera is powered by an in-house 5.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 tuned to produce 960 horsepower and 811 lb-ft of torque. Koenigsegg worked with CIMA to develop a small, lightweight seven-speed gearbox that acts like a single-clutch unit but shifts as quickly as a dual-clutch transmission. When an Agera driver decides to take action, (s)he can get to 62 mph in three seconds or reach double that speed in eight seconds.
Photo courtesy of Stellantis
Receipt: The other day, it took more than $60 to fill up my Hyundai Sonata, a four-cylinder commuter car that runs on regular gas. Just imagine how much it would cost to top off the Long-Hauler concept that Ram unveiled back in 2011. Ram built it because it knew that there was a potential market for Class 5 trucks (which have a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating between 16,001 and 19,500 pounds) and it wanted to see if there was enough interest in “a vehicle that provides an upgrade from a 1-ton truck without moving up to a full Class 6 truck.”
The crew behind the Long-Hauler took a Class 5 Ram 5500 Crew Cab, converted it to a Mega Cab, and added a fuel tank between that and the eight-foot bed. That tank along with frame- and bed-mounted tanks supplied the 6.7-liter Cummins turbodiesel I-6 with a pump-draining 170 gallons of fuel. Using the recent U.S. diesel price of $5.348 a gallon shows that taking the Long-Hauler from bone-dry to full would cost you $909.16. Maybe Ram never made it because there’s no Buc-ee’s station that administers small-business loans.
Does today’s round of Car Connections make you want to add a Bugatti, Koenigsegg, or Ram to your garage? Find one on ClassicCars.com.
