Archive for July 22nd, 2008

Riding in one of our interns’ summer daily driver sans-A/C yesterday — a Volvo 142 — one of us kind of laughed a little when he started thinking whether we could stick an air conditioner unit between the braces of his roll cage. Then we found this. And we haven’t stopped laughing for twenty minutes…. »

Filed under: Emerging Technologies, EV/Plug-in, UK

The moment many green-loving speed enthusiasts have been impatiently waiting for has finally arrived with the unveiling of the all-new Lightning GT at the British International Motor Show. The sheet was pulled back around 1 o’clock London time to reveal metal that stays quite true to the earlier rendered version…. »

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Legislation and Policy, UK
The United Kingdom’s PM Gordon Brown is meeting car manufacturers to try to persuade them to mass-produce electric cars. The carrot he’s offering is selling them with payment plans that emulate cell phone contracts, à la “Better Place.” This scheme, already been taken up by Israel and Denmark (and… »

Filed under: Diesel, EV/Plug-in, MINI, USA
Click above for a high-res gallery of the MINI Cooper D
It looks like it will be even harder to get your hands on a MINI Cooper than ever before. Sales of the diminutive little hatch have been hot so far this year, as MINI had just a four day supply… »

What has a rear-mounted, air-cooled V8, was made in Czechoslovakia, and had a reputation for killing Nazis? That’s right, the Tatra! This example is a 1938 Tatra T87, owned and operated by none other than self-proclaimed member of the “more money than brains” club, Jay Leno. And if it that wasn’t impressive enough, Jay, as… »

Subaru has unveiled a threesome of high-performance WRX Imprezas at the British International Motor Show today, one of which could even be considered a 911-killer. First of the three was a lightly massaged Subaru WRX-S, with power bumped from 230 HP up to a very respectable 251 HP. But that’s a mere pittance compared with… »

There’s nothing like a well-earned victory, whether it’s a walk-off homer in the ninth or a profitable day at the lemonade stand. In that spirit, New York Magazine ran a feature on kids and lemonade stands this month that included some pretty hilarious insights. Mimicking the auto industry, one girl mentioned that “last year, we… »

Filed under: EV/Plug-in

At the Plug-In 2008 conference in San Jose CA Coulomb Technologies has announced its new Smartlet charging stations and ChargePoint network system. The plan is for the company to sell the Smartlet stations to municipal governments and parking lot owners and then provide the ChargePoint network to provide a subscription based public charging… »

With the upcoming Death Race movie the re-make on the tips of everyone’s tongues these days (yeah right, you did see “The Dark Knight” didn’t you?), the good folks at Universal decided to add a “Death Race Your Ride” feature to their website. You can pick from a number of canned cars OR you can… »

This fall, the General Motor Heritage Collection will be shipping all three of Harley Earl’s turbine-powered Firebird dream cars, first to Pebble Beach and then to Hershey, PA. The ‘birds normally reside in Michigan, so if you live near CA or PA, now’s your chance to see retro-futuristic turbine optimism in the flesh.
First off will… »