Latest news with #PontiacFiero
The Drive
3 days ago
- Automotive
- The Drive
The Sound of Halo's Mongoose Is Actually Two Very Different Vehicles
The latest car news, reviews, and features. Kids today will never understand how much Halo 3 meant to millennials of a certain age. It was one of those rare occasions where a long-awaited game met the hype, but it also arrived at the perfect time, as broadband networks were expanding across the country, and many of us entered the arena of online multiplayer for the first time. I must've sunk thousands of hours into it—and even today, I'm learning things about the game. Like how the Mongoose ATV's exhaust note was the combination of a scooter and a Pontiac Fiero. If you're a Halo nerd, you probably already know this. It was a detail shared in the 'Making of' film that shipped with collector's editions of the game way back in 2007. Looking back, the UNSC vehicles in Halo always sounded detailed and guttural in a way you rarely heard back then, even in racing games. (Don't get me started on Gran Turismo's vacuum cleaners.) In the documentary, Jay Weinland, the game's Audio Lead, explains that the Mongoose's particular growl is a combination of a Vespa he owned with an aftermarket muffler and a colleague's Fiero fitted with dual, six-inch pipes. You can hear it in the embedded video below at 50:22. The way Bungie captured that exhaust note isn't really different from how it'd be done today. You can see a microphone mounted to the edge of the sports car's rear deck, pointed down. It's pretty amusing seeing a random Fiero rigged up in such a way rather than, say, a sparkling new hot hatch. But gritty sources of sound make for a suitably gritty result. 'As I jump in [the Mongoose], you can hear the growl of the two-stroke,' Weinland explains in the video. 'And then you've got this really growly, you know, four-stroke—huge-sounding exhaust.' As Master Chief sets off, the sounds blend. Those weren't the only vehicles recorded for Halo 3 . Another engineer captured the hydraulic hiss of his Subaru wagon's tailgate opening, then morphed that into the whoosh that the automatic doors make in the game. Who knows what other sounds were created using cars? All of the discussion around audio capture in the film is actually very interesting, because it reinforces how designers hear the essence of a potentially good clip in everyday life, record it, and then tune it in post to make it fit in the game world. Who wants to guess where the Ghost's sound came from? No Googling. Got tips? Send 'em to tips@
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
This Lamborghini Diablo Kit Car Has More Aura Than Any Real Supercar Ever Could
Kit cars are typically an inherently uncool subgenre of the enthusiast world. By driving a kit car you're living a lie, pushing a narrative that you can afford more car than you really can. Supercars are already decidedly uncool, but spending the time and effort to emulate the supercar looks without any of the supercar performance is just pure dork behavior. That is, unless you lean into it and build something that nobody would ever mistake for the real deal. Pushing your kit car build from mere facsimile to wild manga drawing brought to life is a step toward making your fake Lamborghini kind of cool again. This fiberglass job is slapped over the top of a stretched Pontiac Fiero chassis, because of course it is, and it's on its way toward being a really cool machine, but I think I know how to make the switch flip all the way to cool as heck. It needs an engine swap. All V6 Pontiac Fieros used the unkillable but hardly high-performance L44 2.8-liter making 140 horsepower and 170 lb-ft of torque. This engine is holding this Lam-faux-ghini back from its true potential. Some Fiero enthusiasts will swap in the relatively easy-to-install Cadillac 4.9-liter L26 V8 with a slightly more impressive 200 horsepower and 275 lb-ft, but this is even still not enough. An early 5.7-liter Lamborghini Diablo, by comparison, pushed 485 horses and 428 lb-ft of torque from its V12 engine, so in order to make this kit car really something special, it should be able to exceed that number. Thankfully General Motors made a 303 horsepower transverse FWD V8 that can be installed in the Fiero engine bay, and fitted with a supercharger for at least 550 ponies. Yeah, that should do it. Heck, maybe I should buy it and do that very thing. Read more: Apparently It's Illegal To Put A 'For Sale' Sign In Your Truck Now From the seller: "I have a lamborgini diablo kit car runs drives stops and everything functions as it should both doors go up and down custome interior new exhaust car was built on a fiero frame that was stretched v6 motor 5peed trans" This car is an aesthetic victory looking like it was ripped from the pages of a comic book, it needs enough power to back up its good looks. The show should never outshine the go, it has to have enough cash in the bank to cover the checks its bodywork has been writing. The Fiero is pretty uncool, but fitting it with a Diablo body made it deeply uncool. Kicking it up a notch with a "manga livery" makes it slightly cooler than a stock Fiero, but it won't be truly cool until it can embarrass a stock Diablo at every race track in the world. Spend a lot of time and effort perfecting the handling, balance, grip, and power of this mean green machine, and you could have one of the coolest cars ever made. A factory Diablo ran a quarter mile in about 12 seconds, so you'll want to make sure this one can do it in 11 seconds. Don't worry if it makes sense, just do it. Beating a Diablo at its own game with good old-fashioned American hot rodding is the way forward, my friend. None of us can afford to go pick up the Diablo we dreamed about in the 1990s for a cool quarter mil or more, but maybe we can build our own. This seller, in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, is asking a measly $15,000 for this car. At this point it's just another cool-looking kit car with nothing to back it up, but with another fifty to one-hundred thousand dollars invested, you could have a home-built hypercar for a fraction of the money. Oh dang, we can't afford that either, can we? Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
