The Red Monkey

The Dodge Challenger 1320 concept was designed with one thing in mind: drag racing. 1320 feet equals a quarter mile. The 556 HP car’s been stripped of everything that won’t make it go fast in a straight line.

Here’s the official info:

Mopar Dodge Challenger 1320 Image Vehicle: Exploring a Street-legal Drag Pak Challenger
The Dodge Challenger 1320 began life as a Mopar Drag Pak http://jalopnik.com/tag/dodgechallenger/” title=”Click here to read more posts tagged #dodgechallenger”>Dodge Challenger. The current Drag Pak option is a light-weight, stripped-down, race-only, special-order version of the Dodge Challenger designed for competitive drag racing.

For the street-legal design, Mopar’s design team took the vehicle back to its roots with styling reminiscent of vintage Mopar muscle, updated with today’s technology. The Dodge Challenger 1320 image vehicle, named for the 1,320 feet on a quarter-mile drag strip, features Mopar’s 426 cubic-inch, all-aluminum, HEMI® V-8 crate engine that generates 556 horsepower. The engine is equipped with unique Mopar-designed valve covers and a dress-up kit. Mopar’s long-tube headers and exhaust system allow the cubic inches to breathe. Electric cutouts allow the exhaust to bypass the muffler system, which exits through custom side pipes for added rumble at the dragstrip. Power is put to the ground via a six-speed manual transmission through a custom Dynatrac rear housing with Mopar Dana 60 internals and a selectable, ARB locking differential. Mopar police wheels, widened in the rear, are strapped with Nitto street-legal drag radials to provide extra grip at launch. A four-corner, adjustable coil-over kit is provided by Mopar as an option for the Dodge Challenger. This system improves the handling of the vehicle under extreme loads of 556 horsepower and 540 lb.-ft. of torque.

Following Mopar’s high-impact color heritage, the design team layered the 1320 in Acidic Hue, a non-metallic yellow paint and added matte black graphics. The body is lightened with the following carbon-fiber components from Mopar’s design team and Seibon:

• Bulged hood with HEMI scoop
• Front spoiler
• Grille panel/headlamp surround

The interior is equipped with bare necessities-Dodge Viper seats, a sport steering wheel and a Hurst shifter. The rear seat, center console and radio have been removed in order to reduce vehicle weight and maintain the 1320′s no-nonsense theme.

Send an email to Wes Siler, the author of this post, at wes@jalopnik.com.

Study: More Gov’t Funding Of The Press, Less Political Corruption Reporting

from the questions-abound-however dept

There’s been some talk of having the government bail out newspapers or somehow fundamentally support newspapers. Of course, for good reason, that scares a lot of people who believe that news organizations (not just newspapers, mind you) play an important role in acting as a government corruption watchdog. So it’s interesting to see a new study that found that the more government support the press gets, the less they covered government scandals. Of course, this is a correlation — so it’s entirely possible that governments that support the press are simply less corrupt and less prone to scandal. However, the study did look at the timing of gov’t funding as compared to press coverage which suggests that there might be a causal relationship, as the lower incidence of press coverage for gov’t scandals tended to lag funding slightly. There are still some questions, but this certainly suggests that if you believe news organizations are important in holding government accountable, pushing for gov’t support may not be a good idea.

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There is absolutely no way I’ll be able to make this relevant to tech. But I’m posting it anyway. Our Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, vetoed a California legislative finance bill – AB 1176. The letter is terse and to the point. And the first letter of each line in paragraphs 2-3 are even terser and more to the point.

Schwarzeneggers battles with the state legislature are epic. But this just goes way beyond epic. It’s something for the history books.

I wish I had the time to do this kind of thing in my posts here on TechCrunch.

See the SF Chronicle for all the quotes and denials.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programing.

This is for Amanda! YYYEEEAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

By Alex Chasick, 5:26 PM on Mon Oct 26 2009, 600 views

CBS 5 exposed a “gaping hole” in the code of California’s state-run employment website that allows anyone who views the site to access and modify other users’ resumes and personal info simply by changing some numbers in the URL.

CBS 5 spoke with a man who had uploaded his resume to CalJOBS, the state jobs website where residents must register in order to receive unemployment benefits. The man bookmarked the URL where his data was, but each subsequent time he viewed the link, he saw different users’ information, including addresses, employment history, and other information that could easily be used by identity thieves.

After CBS 5 showed the glitch to a computer security expert, they discovered that it was possible to modify other people’s resumes.

California says they’ve since fixed the glitch and are going through the site to make sure there aren’t any more giant security liabilities. We’re glad it’s back up, as there are probably a few former state IT workers who need unemployment benefits.

Security Flaws Discovered in California EDD Website [CBS 5]
(Photo: Amazon)
Thanks, Matt!

Dodge’s gutsy Challenger SRT8 is powered by a 6.1-liter V-8 and leaves the factory with 425 hp under the hood. If that’s not enough for your tastes, stop by SpeedFactory’s stand at November’s SEMA show in Las Vegas. They claim that their modified Challenger puts out close to 700 horses. Laying the groundwork for such output is an all-aluminum block from Mopar (the factory block is iron), a new aluminum head, and forged engine internals. SpeedFactory then bores and strokes the engine to a whopping 7.2 liters (for a nostalgic 440 cubic-inch displacement) and straps on a centrifugal supercharger. With 91-octane fuel, SpeedFactory asserts a 700-pony output at the crankshaft, or 570 hp at the rear wheels. That necessitates a host of other changes: there’s a new oil pan, coolant tank, fuel system, and Corsa stainless-steel exhaust system. The driveline now features a tougher Mopar performance transmission and new rear end that can handle up to 1000 hp without snapping axles. Keeping everything under control are stiffer springs and anti-roll bars, extra chassis braces, 15-inch Brembo brakes, and grabby Bridgestone R Compound tires wrapped around 20-inch wheels. Other changes include visual flair for the interior and a hood and trunk spoiler made from carbon-fiber. SpeedFactory says the Challenger is a development mule for the new all-aluminum engine and uprated transmission, and will be used for more testing.

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