How to Cheat a Tire Test

Let’s say I want you to test my tires, versus my competitor’s.

Sure I’ll send you around the same track, in the same car, on comparable tires… except

… I’ve secretly deflated the competitor’s tires, which ensures they under-perform and makes mine appear even better.

Learned this trick when BFGoodrich invited me to test their all-new g-Force COMP-2 A/S tires.

It was one of the first things they said in the morning press conference, ” go ahead and test ’em, we inflated everything identically.”

Over the years I’ve attended hundreds of press events, and never once have I heard a company be this upfront. That’s good integrity, nice one BFGoodrich.

Cool eh.

***

See alsoHow to cheat at motor-sports

 

 

Downloaded the 2015 Buick Regal

Found the “Save Vehicle Info to USB” when exploring inside the car’s Settings. Curiously, there was no mention of this feature in the instruction manual?

It took 4 attempts, but after I formatted the USB correctly, success.

USB goes into my laptop, and I’m looking at a small XML document.

Here’s a portion of it.

It was kind’ve anti-climactic.

I ended up with the car’s VIN number, that it passed its “last manifest status,” plus a bunch of boring part numbers.

And like all GM products, Buick’s infotainment system uses “Infotainment Silverbox“, which is built by Bosch, like so many are.

Blog tag = Buick Regal