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This junkyard '91 Grand Am is as hooptie as it gets

I spend a lot of time in junkyards. A lot of time. With all this experience, I have learned to recognize a perfect hooptie when I see one, a car whose final owner got every last bit of use out of it when its value was hovering right about at scrap value. This 1991 Pontiac Grand Am that I spotted in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service wrecking yard a few days ago, from the final model year for the third-generation Grand Am, checks all the hooptie boxes just right. First of all, it's a low-option coupe with the wretched and unloved GM Iron Duke engine, a rattly, gnashy, thrashy 2.5-liter four-cylinder kludged together using off-the-shelf parts from the Pontiac 301-cubic-inch V8 during the darkest years of the Malaise Era and used in cars whose buyers just didn't care. Most of the paint has been burned off by 25 years of harsh California sun, but the car spent sufficient time in a damp, shady spot for lichens to build up here and there. There are skeletons-with-sombreros stencils sprayed here and there, plus a big moonshine-guzzling skeleton mural painted on the hood. Goodbye, property values! Still, someone felt some affection for this car, giving it the name "Good Ol' Snakey" and painting that name on the decklid. We can assume that the Iron Duke was a bit loose by this time, probably leaving a serpentine trail of blue smoke behind the car at all times. So, the combination of cheapness, ugliness, menace, and who-gives-a-damn functionality make this Grand Am an excellent example of a pure hooptie. Within a couple of months, it will be crushed, shredded, shipped out of the Port of Oakland, and reborn in China as refrigerators and Geely Emgrands. Somewhere in Northern California, though, a few of Ol' Smokey's friends will remember this car fondly.

The U-2 spy plane needs high-performance cars to help land

Typically, aircraft deploy their landing gear from three main points. Most military aircraft, for example, deploy two gears at the back and one forward, like a tricycle. Some civilian aircraft flip the layout, with two in front and one in back - tail-draggers. The U-2 Dragon Lady is wildly different than any of these. With a 103-foot wingspan but a body that's just 63-feet long, the layout of the U-2 makes a traditional landing setup infeasible. Instead, the U-2 utilizes a pair of wheels, one up front and one in back. With such a bizarre layout, landings are so tough that since the U-2's earliest flights at Area 51, the US Air Force has used high-performance chase cars to guide the pilot down safely. The landing process isn't over there, though. As this video from Sploid shows, balancing out the aircraft to fit the detachable "pogos" – think training wheels for spy planes – is a comical procedure requiring a number of airman using their full body weight to even out the U-2. This video also recaps some of the great vehicles that have served as chase vehicles for this legendary spy plane. They include Chevrolet El Caminos, and the Fox-body Ford Mustangs so favored by the California Highway Patrol. For the last several years, the USAF has utilized products from General Motors, using fourth-generation Chevy Camaros, before switching over to the Pontiac GTO and most recently, the awesome Pontiac G8. It's fair to say that if you're a gearhead in the Air Force, this is the job you want. Check out the video, embedded up top. News Source: Sploid via YouTubeImage Credit: Sploid Chevrolet Ford GM Pontiac Military Performance Videos

Porsche Boxster Spyder to get GT3's 4.0-liter flat six?

It's been a merry-go-round the past few months, the rumormill focused on what will power the next Porsche Boxster Spyder. First came hearsay of a flat-six going into the special edition of a model line known for its turbocharged four-cylinder engines. Then came tattling that the flat-six in question was the naturally aspirated, 4.0-liter from the 911 GT3. A couple of weeks ago we wrote " we'd be surprised if Porsche packed anything other than a turbocharged flat-four under the skin." But Autocar has a new report that, indeed, a downtuned version of the 500-horsepower 4.0-liter from the GT3's rump will move to the Boxster Spyder's midsection. The Autocar piece follows a Wheels magazine article from last November, and the prediction isn't outrageous. When Car and Driver reviewed the last Boxster Spyder, it wrote, "the hand-me-down six comes from the older 911 Carrera S, not to be confused with the new turbocharged 3.0-liter flat-six that powers the refreshed 911." If we can believe a recent report from Automobile about the 992-series 911 due later this year, the same thing is happening: The 991.2-series GT3 bequeaths its powerplant to the smaller sibling, and the 992-series GT3 moves to a 3.8-liter, twin-turbo flat-six with around 550 hp. Autocar quotes Andreas Preuninger, the Porsche engineer leading the development of all of these wunderkinds, saying of the Boxster earlier this year, "Natural aspiration is one of our main USPs. ... [We] think we can achieve throttle response and immediacy a little bit better with an atmospheric high-revving engine than any kind of turbo." We'll guess that means, by inference, that the GT3 is about to age out of naturally-aspirated university. The limited-edition Boxster Spyder might carry the torch with the 4.0-liter, with output somewhere around 430 hp. The Cayman GT4 could do the same. Or, who knows, an evolution of the 375-hp, 3.8-liter flat-six in the previous Boxster Spyder might burble out of left field. We expect to see the Boxster Spyder late this year. Until then, we'll wait to see what the merry-go-round says next time the Zuffenhausen horse comes around. Related Video: Featured Gallery Porsche 718 Boxster Spyder spy shots View 13 Photos News Source: Autocar via JalopnikImage Credit: CarPix Rumormill Pontiac Convertible Luxury Special and Limited Editions Performance porsche 911 gt3