One Lap of the Web: California, Corvette

-- Los Angeles is a city so tied to dysfunctional traffic that locals give it nicknames. Carmageddon, Rampture, Carmageddon II -- construction closure names become coping mechanisms. Hence Jamzilla, the name given to the closure of the 405 Freeway this long President's Day weekend, serving to impede the wanton roaming of Angelenos just when they finally have time to do so. (Curiously enough, all three of these closures are related to a highway expansion that -- in theory -- should alleviate traffic. Down with the medicine, and all that.) But there were fewer delays than originally feared, and lane reopenings happened ahead of schedule -- as is with the case with every major freeway closure of the past three years. Get the word out to the citizenry and they'll do anything to avoid traffic. By the time you read this today, the 405 should be fully reopened, bringing Los Angeles to its proud, glorious, standstill of noble tradition. When the 405 sneezes, Southern California catches a cold.

-- Is the Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ/Toyota 86 a design classic? It's obviously sporty enough, but an inexpensive, mass-produced car has to strike the balance between sporting intent and budget sensibility, design purity and modernity, stock capabilities and aftermarket affections. "More Fisher Price than Ferdinand Porsche," says Car Design News, whose writers have a better grasp on car design opinions than most people's -- whose opinions fall along the lines of "if Car A had a love child with Car B."

-- Last week, we mentioned a video tribute to DTM, the bonkers touring car race series from the 1990s that saw fearsome racing between Alfa Romeo, Mercedes-Benz and Opel. Motorsport Retro runs down the reasons why it was bonkers -- and the best racing in the world, filled with massive bucks from these three rivals, insane high-tech, and a shower of sparks and bodywork littering every bounced-over apex. The food was good, too. Some great DTM videos are thrown in as well, including Tiff Needell's drive of Klaus Ludwig's Mercedes at Hockenheim. Needell, it must be said, is more qualified and easily excitable than anyone on staff.

-- Over at Hooniverse, Jeff Glucker puts on his fanciest Balfour-imitation coat and drives the Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible. He drives it around the industrial Port of Los Angeles at a speed that won't arouse suspicion, and proclaims, "Maybe the rest of the world will accept that it's a damn good sports car." Then, he takes the top down. 'Course, we already know that he's right.

-- And in other Los Angeles construction news, the concrete pouring for the Wilshire Grand skyscraper in downtown LA set a new Guinness World Record for longest continuous concrete pour, which has little to do with Congress or intermissions at sporting arenas. It took 20 hours for 200 concrete trucks to bring 2,000 truckloads of concrete, dumping a total of 21,200 cubic yards of concrete that weighed about 84 million pounds, according to the LA Times; the USC marching band even played to kick off the construction. Curbed LA has great photos of the pour, which are much more interesting than all those other pictures of concrete pouring you've seen before.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

By Blake Z. Rong