Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:11:32 GMT

Before There Was an Austin Healey

Herewith another Nigel Matthews photo from the inaugural Barrington concours where he was a judge and, luckily for us, unofficial Classical Drives reporter. I chose the 1950 Healey Silverstone for today's blog because I'm an admirer of bare-bones sports cars built, not for comfort, but for sheer driving fun. It arrived several years before the Donald Healey/Austin collaboration which gave us the much more famous Austin Healey. Only 105 of these hand-built machines were built during their 1949-1950 run so obviously the survivors are rare and expensive. According to conceptcarz.com the Silverstone was driven by a pushrod twin-cam Riley 2.5-litre engine which produced 106 horsepower, more than enough for a lightweight, aluminum-bodied vehicle weighing just 2050 pounds. Top speed was an impressive 110 mph. There were no bumpers and very little luggage space but it did have an independent front suspension and must have been sheer pleasure to handle on the narrow, winding British roads of the day. The concours car is owned by David K. Hans of Barrington, Illinois. Posted by: Philip Powell      Read more     Source

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:53:21 GMT

VW Returns to Rear Engines

Ferry Porsche, son of the great Ferdinand, once honored me with an interview for a radio program that Volkswagen was sponsoring. It was an odd situation inasmuch as I was employed by the company as a p.r. assistant while at the same time announcing (and getting paid for) a weekly show for the CBC, Canada's national radio network. Such a thing would never happen in today's corporate culture but I had a fantastic boss, Dr. Hal Albrecht, who'd hired me when I was a freelance announcer doing occasional car stuff. He thought I should continue those efforts and was willing to put VW ad money behind them. He later did the same for a TV show.

Volkswagen Canada was the Porsche distributor in Canada, thus when Ferry Porsche came to visit an interview seemed a natural. We did it in a company office with a wind-up portable tape recorder. Wind up? Yep. In those years portables were not battery-powered. VW bought this device for me and I used it until technology made it obsolete. Wish I had it now.... would be a museum piece. The only question I can remember from that interview was this: "Mr. Porsche, where should the engine be: in the front or the rear?" His reply: "It doesn't matter, as long as the engine and the driving wheels are in the same place." We didn't discuss all-wheel-drive.

This long-ago interview suddenly seems relevant as Volkswagen is showing a small concept car at the Frankfurt show with the engine (are you ready for this?) in the rear. According to Australia's Drive.com.au The VW Up! is about 136" long and 64" wide with seating for four and modest luggage space under the hood. This, my friends is the real new Beetle! But don't expect to see the engine hanging out the back. It fits under the floor, where engines rightly belong. It will be part of the company's new Small Family lineup and hopefully will come to North America. I suspect the late Ferry Porsche would approve. I certainly do. Posted by: Philip Powell      Read more     Source

September 11, 2007, 11:30 PM CT

Parking spaces outnumber drivers

From suburban driveways to the sprawling lots that spring up around big retailers, Americans devote lots of space to parking spaces - a growing land-use trend that plays a role in heating up urban areas and adding to water pollution, as per a recent study.

Purdue University scientists surveyed the total area devoted to parking in a midsize Midwestern county and observed that parking spaces outnumbered resident drivers 3-to-1 and outnumbered resident families 11-to-1. The scientists found the total parking area to be larger than 1,000 football fields, or covering more than two square miles.

"Even I was surprised by these numbers," said Bryan Pijanowski, the associate professor of forestry and natural resources who led the study in Purdue's home county of Tippecanoe. "I can't help but wonder: Do we need this much parking space?".

Pijanowski said that his results are cause for concern, in part, because parking lots present environmental and economic problems. They are, for instance, a major source of water pollution, he said.

Tippecanoe County parking lots turn out about 1,000 pounds of heavy metal runoff annually, said Purdue professor Bernard Engel, who used a computer model to estimate changes in water-borne runoff caused by land-use changes. Engel, head of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, said lots are troublesome because pollutants collect on their non-absorbent surfaces and are then easily carried away by rain......... Posted by: Jim      Read more         Source

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 12:17:48 GMT

Take a Ride in a 1910 Packard Limousine

It is difficult for us living in this modern age to imagine what riding in the 1910 Packard Model 30 must have been like. Almost certainly it would have been driven by a chauffeur as the wealthy owner would not have been willing to get his hands dirty maintaining it, nor would he want to go through the extensive starting procedure, including the cantankerous hand crank. No, Mr. Industrialist and his family were happy to enjoy the protection of an enclosed cabin in an era when most automobiles were either open to the elements or at best had a folding top with side curtains for windows.

The Model 30 dates back to 1907 and when 1910 arrived its expanding ring clutch was replaced with a dry plate type and shock absorbers became standard equipment. The engine was a 431.9 c.i. four, producing 30 hp at just 650 rpm. There were three forward gears plus reverse in the transmission and with mechanical brakes on the rear wheels only we assume the chauffeur was not inclined to tailgate. So what was it like to ride in one? Well, you can find out by bidding on this Packard at RM's Hershey Auction, being held in conjunction with the legendary AACA Hershey Fall Meet on October 12. It is one of 60 cars being offered from the estate of Helen Swigart. Posted by: Philip Powell      Read more     Source

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 19:14:16 GMT

BMW M3 Sold Out In UK

[Image Source: Australian CarUpdate]

By Gunnar Heinrich

Blame it on the hopeless vanity of those with the requisite funds in Essex and Cheshire. Blame it on the insatiable need by the velocity-crazed few to outrun the speed cameras. Or blame it on the weather.

Whatever the reason (and I'm sure it actually must have something to do with the car itself) the British love the new BMW M3. So much so, that they've bought every last one slotted for UK delivery.

That means that all 2,000 '08 models have been spoken for at an average price of £55,325 ($110,179 - weak dollar (!)).

Something tells me that a few profiteering owners will be flipping them for a tidy profit on the used car market.

[Source: Australian CarUpdate via Autocar] Posted by: Gunnar Heinrich      Read more     Source

August 23, 2007, 10:26 PM CT

SUVs Bigger Polluters

The pollution produced by light trucks, SUVs and minivans is only half a percent higher than that produced by conventional cars, based on a recent study.

But scientists say that this tiny difference becomes enormous when considering the number of light trucks moving along the nation's highways.

"That small difference becomes tremendously magnified when you consider the billions of miles traveled by automobiles every day in this country," said Timothy Buckley, the study's senior author and an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Ohio State University.

"There are easily tens of millions of light trucks on the roads every day".

While the findings are associated with vehicle driving, the conclusions derive from a study of air quality inside an inner-city parking garage, one of the a number of "micro-environments" found within cities.

It's the first study to take a comprehensive look at the concentration of certain automobile-correlation toxic air pollutants inside a parking garage, said Sung Kim, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral fellow with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The scientists observed that the emission of key pollutants from light trucks - a category that includes SUVs and minivans - was 0.5 to 0.6 percent greater than the pollutant levels released by cars......... Posted by: Jim      Read more         Source

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:53:18 GMT

How Front-Wheel-Drive Looked in 1930

Sports Car Market magazine's editors were free to attend the 2007 Meadowbrook Concours and graced us with a photo gallery of the cars on display. And what a concours it was, with, as SCM duly notes, "a tour, fashion show, and hangar party, along with the traditional RM Auction and the Sunday concours." I won't bore you with aircraft details, having already done so with blogs from our local open house, and SCM hasn't included photo captions. But here's one I recognise and I can assure you it's an L-29 Cord convertible sedan, circa 1930.

This luxury car has a significant place in automotive history, not as the first front-wheel-drive auto, which it wasn't, but as the first application of FWD to a modern production automobile, beating the Ruxton by a few months. Front-wheel-drive made for a lower silhouette and many connoisseurs consider this the best looking car of its period. The L-29's inline 8-cylinder engine produced 125 hp initially but was later bored out to deliver 132 hp. The depression unfortunately cut the L-29's lifespan to just three years but the Cord was revived in 1936 with designer Gordon Buehrig's magnificent 810. Posted by: Philip Powell      Read more     Source

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 12:13:13 GMT

Ford Endeavour: An Enigmatic Ad Campaign

Ford launched this perplexing print advertisement campaign to promote Endeavour 4×4 in India. It is really being difficult to make what exactly the campaign wants to convey through these advertisements. The campaign is no doubt visually compelling but the purpose remains well shrouded into the various lawyers of the advertisements. The advertisements are showing different wild landscapes such as tough mountains, snowy mountains and thick jungle, which probably depicts the rugged and tough aspect of the sports utility vehicle.

Each landscapes includes overtone of 4×4 on both end of the displayed mounds, consequently promoting 4×4 aspect of the brand. Though, the advertisements are visually fantastic but the weak art direction somewhat failed to provide it the desired direction. The product benefit too does not seem to be clear enough in the advertisement. Following the notion that these visuals need no supporting text, no copy has been used in the campaign. The campaign was created by JWT, India.

Via Twenty Four Posted by: Balendu      Read more     Source

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 22:51:23 GMT

Limited Edition Porsche Boxster is Coming

Originally displayed as a design exercise in the New York auto show, Porsche has decided to produce a limited edition Boxster and Boxster-S. The limited edition models are coated in a bright orange paint.

Built on the standard Boxster platform, only 500 cars will be produced. The number will be split evenly between the Boxster and the Boxster S models. Some features that are typically sold as options on the Boxster models will be standard for the new edition. Black wheels with silver rims, Porsche’s Sport Design body-kit package and an Alcantara-trimmed interior will be standard for the Limited Edition Boxster.

Alcantara trims help in giving better performance. Alcantara helps the occupants to remain planted on their seats firmly during high speed driving (u dont fly out of the car when the car goes zoom!).

The colour scheme has been handled well and it does not die out with the exterior. The interior is a part of the colour scheme, the cabin with the soft surfaces flaunting black and orange colours.

Pricing of the new models has not been revealed yet, but it may be only a little higher than the current base model.

[Via: Edmunds] Posted by: Harshpaul      Read more     Source

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:56:13 GMT

Jaguar Removes Fabled Hood Leaper From XJ Flagship

[Image Source: Jaguar Cars USA]

In a move that's about to go down as smoothly with the Party Faithful as putting a cobra in a pit of Indian mongooses, Jaguar Cars is removing the fabled leaper from the hoods of U.S. bound XJ sedans.

It wasn't enough that the folks in Coventry butchered the flagship's front end with hideous 1970s inspired aero kit in the most recent refit. They had to take away what to Americans was the marque's single defining emblem.

Piloting a Jaguar behind a leaping chrome cat is as unmistakable as wafting behind the Spirit of Ecstasy or cruising behind the Tri-Star. It's a priviledged experience that inspires the driver.

That bit of inspiration is now gone, doubtless due to cost cutting and to what will likely signal a transition into a world of leaperless Jags. Or no Jags at all.

[Source: Jaguar Cars USA] Posted by: Gunnar Heinrich      Read more     Source