2008 Pontiac G8 Base Sedan 4-door 3.6l on 2040-cars

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24 Hours of Le Mans live update part two

We tasked surfing journalist Rory Parker to watch this year's live stream of the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans. What follows is an experiment to experience the world's greatest endurance race from the perspective of a motorsports novice. Parker lives in Hawaii and can hold his breath longer than he can go without swearing. For Part One, click here. Or you can skip ahead to Part Three here. I write about surfing for a living. If you can call it a living. Basically means I spend my days fucking around and my wife pays for everything. Because she's got a real job that pays well. Brings home the bacon. Very progressive arrangement. Super twenty first century. I run a surf website, beachgrit.com, with two other guys. It's a strange gig. More or less uncensored. Kind of popular. Very good at alienating advertisers. My behavior has cost us a few bucks. I'm terrible at self-censorship. Know there's a line out there, no idea where it lies. I still don't understand any of the technical side. Might as well be astrophysics or something. For contests I do long rambling write ups. They rarely make much sense. Mainly just talk about my life, whatever random thoughts pop into my head. "Can you do something similar for Le Mans?" "Sure, but I know absolutely fuck-all about racing." "That's okay. Just write what you want." "Will do. But you're gonna need to edit my stuff. Probably censor it heavily." So here I am. I spent the last week trying to learn all I can about the sport of endurance racing. But there's only so much you can jam in your head. And I still don't understand any of the technical side. Might as well be astrophysics or something. While I rambled things were happening. Tracy Krohn spun into the gravel on the Forza chicane. #89 is out of the race after an accident I missed. Pegasus racing hit the wall on the Porsche curves. Bashed up front end, in the garage getting fixed. Toyota and Porsche are swapping back and forth in the front three. Ford back in the lead in GTE Pro. #91 Porsche took a stone through the radiator, down two laps. Not good. The wife and I are one of those weird childless couples that spend way too much time caring for the needs of their pet. French bulldog, Mr Eugene Victor Debs. Great little guy. Spent the last four years training him to be obedient and friendly. Nice thing about dogs, when you're sick of dealing with them you can just lock 'em in another room for a few hours. You don't need to worry about paying for college.

Looking Back At Oprah's Free-Car Giveaway 10 Years Later

Molly Vielweber's Pontiac G6 appears unremarkable at first glance. It wears forest green paint, rolls on five-spoke aluminum wheels, and it has a sizeable scrape in the driver's side door, the scar of a decade's worth of hard use. You wouldn't notice it parked at a big box store or cruising on the highway. Pontiac made hundreds of thousands of G6s in the 2000s, and a lot are still on the road. It's unremarkable in every way except for the front license plate, which reads, "Oprah 6." But this is not just any G6. This car is a part of television history. Vielweber won her G6 10 years ago at a taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show, when Oprah kicked off her 19th season in dramatic fashion by giving all 276 members of the studio audience a free car. It was an unprecedented stunt that changed lives, generated controversy and ultimately failed to provide enough of a marketing lift for Pontiac, which would be shuttered just over five years later. September 13 marks the 10-year anniversary of the memorable event, which caught everyone, including audience members, by surprise. In a masterful display of showmanship, Oprah dialed up the suspense to match the enormity – and cost – of the event. First she gave away 11 cars, which would have been a landmark TV promotion by itself. But then she coyly announced: "I've got a little twist." Models circulated throughout the audience carrying silver platters loaded with white boxes wrapped in red ribbon. One contained a set of keys, Oprah implied, for another audience member to win the final car. "Do not open it. Do not shake it," she commanded the crowd. Finally, with the suspense built to a fevered pitch, everyone opened their box. They all had keys. "You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car!" Oprah exclaimed. "Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!" This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Everybody did get a car. But not everyone kept it. William Toebe attended the show with his wife, Jillaine, and he immediately thought of the tax implications, which stretched to $6,000 or more for some audience members. It was a tough reality for many in the audience that day, some of which had been selected based on their need for a new car. "That responsible part of me stepped forward and wondered 'where am I going to get the money to pay the taxes?'" he recalled.

CNN chronicles young girl building Pontiac Fiero

At fourteen years of age, Kathryn DiMaria has already done what many self-proclaimed gearheads won't even attempt in their lifetimes. The Dearborn, Michigan teen is rebuilding a car from the ground up.
The intrepid youngster asked her parents when she was just twelve to start a Pontiac Fiero project, even offering to pony up all the funds herself. Father, Jerry DiMaria only expected the project to last a few months, but two years later, Kathryn is still at it. In this CNN video, the two are at Maker Faire (a DIY festival) rebuilding a 3.4-liter V6 engine out of a Chevrolet Camaro to replace the 2.8-liter mill found in the Fiero.
The whole family hast pitched in, with Kathryn's mother teaching her how to sew in order to complete the interior, father Jerry providing much of the technical know-how, and even her sister is chronicling Kathryn's progress through photos. Jerry even started a thread in a Fiero forum which has been live for two years and is now 22 pages long. Of the project, one forum member wrote, "welcome to the madness."