"Congratulations, Es! You just saved your company hundreds of thousands of credits in medical claims, because I was THIS close to caving in XSquare's kneecaps with a shovel and waterboarding him with the roof of a Jeep before you called!", bellowed out Sarah on the phone. While usually bursting with positivity and cheerfulness, recent events have granted Sarah her long harboured wish of dragging out that uglier side of her she had kept locked away for so long, she had long since lost the keys to.
"I uh... I'm sorry for not calling sooner. It appears I was too late, but please, Rahrah, don't take this personally, ok—"
"DON'T TAKE THIS PERSONALLY?!" Twirling a full sized steel shovel with suspiciously adept motions with just one hand up to this point while talking, Sarah pokes the concrete floor of the garage with the pointy end to cause a deathly cold clang to ring out in the garage, so loud that no noise canceling technology could hope to hide it. "He just told me to shut up! After all the smiling I do and acting as a cheerleader for him, THIS is how I get treated?!" Perhaps it was her own odd way of expressing trust to someone, but finally being able to let loose felt so, so good. Almost too good.
"Rahrah, Rahrah, listen, please, Lee has an awful history with militaries, okay, so for—"
"And now I have an awful history with him, and he's about to have an awful history with this winch when it pulls the testicles out his crippled body!"
"Please don't! He's hurt enough! Please!"
That struck a chord with Sarah. She's never heard her best friend, the almost criminally cool and collected Esther, sound so desperate and concerned for someone before. "What are you even talking about? I haven't started! Your phone call let him bolt!"
"Lee, he... *sigh* Look, it's... really not my story to tell, so you're gonna have to keep this a secret, okay?"
Letting go of the handle of the shovel and causing it to fall over onto the ground, Sarah regains her gleeful personality, as though a switch had been flipped. "Well, Esu–nee, you sure know how to calm down an angry kid! Now I'm interested! Come on, spill it! What are friends for?" She skips her way over to rest her body on the slanted front left wheel arch of the 1945 Jeep Willys MB; the car that had instigated this whole ordeal. Only this time, her gleefulness needn't any exaggeration or forcing. Maybe she was genuinely happy for once, or it had already become a bad habit for her.
Esther hesitates. She's successfully diverted attention from the crisis at hand, but at the price of having to show the ill–gotten dirt on hers: "Lee... is a Singaporean male. They're made to serve in the military for two years by law when they turn 18—the most important time of their short and fast careers. I think it cost him his career, basically."
"The heck are you talking about? He seems to be doing just fine. He has two 2–door sports cars in his garage, and I'm willing to bet each of them have more money thrown at them than a whole new S Class Merc!"
"That's... only recent events, Rahrah. I feel like he... made an exception that time. He doesn't think he's good for much else other than driving, but at the same time, he's been trying to learn to live a life without being embroiled in competition and validation from the podium. Learning every week to lose gracefully. To live a normal life starting in his mid twenties, basically. He's not doing so good at it, but we're trying our hardest. I apologise on his behalf for his childish outburst—I'll give him a proper bop on the head later... um... with a... uh... magazine. Not the military kind! The paper kind... you read. His neck can't take any more."
That snapped Sarah out of her trance, and suddenly, her world became more than this elaborate knot she's taking her time tying around the stem of the left searchlight. "He has neck issues?"
"He sustained a very serious injury in that two–year time frame, which may go some way in explaining why he stopped racing at a high level. Hard to say from documentation alone what caused it—you know militaries and their secrets—but he never could get back to his usual pace after the two years. He used to be unstoppable in the fastest machinery of his age group, but now he putts around in slow cars and holds his neck in pain when no one's looking. Mentally, I... wouldn't know what it must feel like to have your hopes and dreams ripped away like that."
Sarah slowly pulls on her end of the rope with glee, tightening ever so slowly, but surely, the knot she made. "You... got all that from editing his reviews?"
"It helps to know your employer, you know?"
"You scare me sometimes, you know that, Es?"
"You're scaring me more right now, Rahrah."
"Nnmm? Why oo you fsay jaat?", asked Sarah in between nibbles of the rope with her soft, painted lips.
"I don't know if I'm wrong, Rahrah, but I sometimes feel a very similar anger and dissatisfaction emanating from the you too when we talk about... things. You and Lee... are a lot alike, despite appearances."
"HEY!" Sarah snaps up into a standing position, her fists clenched so tightly it almost towed the Jeep in park. "Watch your mouth! Don't compare me to... I'm the victim here! He abused me verbally! You're supposed to comfort me, Es!"
"*sigh* Look, Rahrah. We both know Lee won't go anywhere near the Jeep, much less review it. Do you think you could step in for him this week?"
"ARE YOU INSANE?!"
"You wanted to see how close you were to his skill level, didn't you?"
"I...!" And just like that, the Sarah that couldn't keep still the whole phone call froze in a daze, almost dropping her phone entirely. Flashbacks of her very recent crash with Lee flooded her mind, washing away any anger and resentment she had been feeling and replacing it all with guilt, still too fresh.
"It's in much slower machinery than last week, at sanctioned racetracks with paramedics on hand. It's a safe environment, I promise. Why don't you put on his racing suit and see if his friends notice anything? Our drivers are gentlemen... on their good days. I can vouch for most of them... sometimes. Okay, you know what, nevermind, scratch that, I spoke before thinking, and—"
"YES! YES! YES! I'LL DO IT! SEND IT OVER! I'll show that jerk!"
"Oh crud..."
********************
Jeepers Creepers! The Driving Experience of a 1945 Military... Sports Car?
by Sarah Çuhadaroğlu
Edited by Erina "Esther" Mami
May 1, 2023
Did you know? Rumours abound that Enzo Ferrari once called the Jeep Willys MB "the only true American sports car." Of course, evidence of this is hard to come by, but if you ever find yourself deployed into the hard, padded seats of an MB one day, you might well find yourself believing it with your butt more than your ears!
With reportedly only 60 Gross HP (54HP Net) from a 2.2 Litre NA Inline 4 going through a 3–speed manual gearbox as standard issue, one would be pardoned for not believing that at first glance. That being said however, the MB is still good for a rather surprising 118km/h (73mph) when unfettered by loose surfaces or rough terrain, which is plenty for a car without doors, seatbelts, or airbags. Despite the low top speed, the Jeep gets up to it rather quickly, and being exposed to so much means it often feels faster than it is. On the handling side, the Jeep may only be armed with primitive leaf spring suspension and live axles, which would quickly make many dismiss it on–track. However, these leaf springs have very little compression travel in them, making the off road specialist surprisingly taut and agile on a paved track, as though a soldier at attention. Any pitching and rolling that the Jeep undergoes is done with in an instant, making the Jeep feel more poised and immediate than many sporty and GT cars. In fact, despite the fact that it has 1,113kg (2,454lbs) being propped up at an ample 222mm (8.74in) above ground by skinny Comfort Hard tyres and leaf springs, the Jeep I daresay corners slightly faster than my 2002 Copen on modern Comfort Medium tyres—imagine that! Its cornering speed is comparable to that of a lightweight Kei sports car, some 60 years younger than it with three quarters its weight! Being completely unable to reach 120km/h in clean air, the meek looking 180.18PP of a showroom condition Jeep is utterly misrepresentative of its absurd on–track capabilities: It will obliterate any car within its PP range, most notably the Abarth 595, so badly that the Geneva Conventions might have to step in and take a look. Below speeds of 70km/h, it will still outperform many civilian sports cars, such as Britain's beloved Mini Cooper. In other words, the Jeep is more Mini in spirit than the Mini itself!
The Jeep, a sports car? I can certainly see the reason why that intel spread, even if the source cannot be verified.
Time to see how it fares in racing conditions, then! The Jeep may not have been built for that purpose, but there's another saying I quite like: "adapt and survive", and this week, we're going to see how well the Jeep adapts to the racetrack! Recon has already established that it can corner well, and its low speeds often mean that most corners won't involve the brakes coming into play; partial lifts are all that will be required for most corners, especially if in the high rev ranges of the 4,200rpm capable engine. This results in a car that places extra heavy emphasis on being smooth and measured in your driving to preserve every bit of speed you've built. The leaf springs may not have much travel in them, but the setup is still very soft within their travel, and so the Jeep can often find itself tangled up by quick, sudden asks by a driver, and because of its live axle setup and passive transfer case, one tyre losing grip and slipping quickly brings the others with it if not immediately eased, paralysing the whole car. My advice to driving the Jeep fast, therefore, is to not only be very smooth with your inputs, but also to make sure you use every millimetre of the track on offer; the Jeep is surprisingly narrow by modern standards, and you as a driver sit far further to the edge of the car without a door, and so oftentimes you can bring yourself much, much closer to the walls than your brain is likely wired to think is safe. Ditto for competitor cars!
In practice, the racing may look incredibly tight quarters and closely contested, with us drivers often getting close enough to bop the other over the head with our shovels if we so chose, but it's extremely difficult to actually overtake a comrade in equal machinery owing to the very poor top end acceleration once past 70km/h. There isn't much gaining on a competitor even with a solid corner exit, especially outside of slipstream. A lot of times, races in the Jeep end up with everyone in a straight, orderly file, with nobody being able to step out of line, lest they get dropped from the battalion. The only chance for a promotion then, is to hope that someone ahead makes a costly mistake and gets dishonoroubly discharged from the pack, or by forcibly engineering an opportunity for yourself like a true gentleman on a good day.
While cheap, cheerful, modest, and maybe a little meek on a pretty racetrack, the MB does have a VERY lethal side to it if even lightly provoked by the right conditions. You might think a vehicle built primarily to handle rough terrain would be adept at landing from jumps, but its stiff leaf springs will very often launch the car from mild kerbs, and the MB lands from jumps with all the grace of stepping onto a landmine, often bouncing every which way there is a barrier or a spectator instead of following the road. Mind you, this is a car with no seatbelts, airbags, or even doors, and so a high impact landing can fling a driver clean from the car... in the best case scenario. I highly recommend at the very least, a properly fitting helmet for anyone looking to drive the Jeep; ask your local friendly GT Auto or logistics department for a custom fit if you don't want your soul shaken loose from within an ill fitting helmet! Another point of caution to note is that the Jeep came at a time way before ABS was invented, and while the drum brakes on the Jeep aren't strong enough to cause a skid on their own, they are strong enough to make the entire car extremely nervous under full braking, and it's nigh impossible to use more than a mere fifth of the brake pedal's travel with any sort of steering lock applied. The rear end also becomes incredibly airy on downhill sections, lacking any damping in the springs, and so braking your Jeep willy nilly is a surefire way to cause the car to go rouge and get oneself K.I.A..
But don't let any of that discourage you from trying the Jeep for yourself if you're able to one day! "Know thyself, know thy enemy, and victory shalt be yours". You have to know what you have to be able to maximise it and avoid its weaknesses, right? The Jeep may look incapable based on its exposed hardware and meek numbers on the spec sheet, but it has an unbelievably violent bite for both its competitors and its own driver alike if anyone dares disrespect it. It blends together an ease of access with difficulty of mastery, something even video games struggle to get right. GT Auto, to this day, still has a wide array of period correct parts for the Jeep, and I had an utterly otherworldly experience being able to superimpose the MB into photographs of the world with the help of my friend, Oliver! Tom Matano, head of Mazda design US with a hand in designing some of the brand's most influential and beautiful cars, even approached me to talk about the Jeep in GT Café! Now, you didn't hear this from me, but I've been hearing whispers about people somehow slipping Hellcat engines into this thing, but the stiff necks at Car of the Week won't let me cover it! Something about insurance not extending far enough for a temporary staff? Boo!
That little bummer aside, I think the Jeep Willys MB '45 is a certifiable Sleeper of a car. I think it really suits me :)
No comments:
Post a Comment