20 posts tagged with automobile and car (View popular tags)

Fuelly tracks your gas mileage over time, helping you save fuel and expenses as you drive.
posted on Aug 21, 2008 - View this thread

The Tata Nano (pic) is a car that costs less new than the amount I've spent on gas during single car trips, recently announced to the auto market in India. The Chery QQ ^, successful , widely exported, and recognized as the Hostage Taker's Vehicle of Choice by China Car Times, is the runner-up for the world's cheapest car but is still approximately twice as expensive. Yes indeed, the price of gas is not going to come back down. So much for my coast-to-coast road trips.
posted on Feb 3, 2008 - View this thread

"The Toyota Prius is much too powerful and luxurious a road car," thought Walter Mitty. "What I desire is a Zest Roadster. Pocketa-pocketa-pocketa."
posted on Nov 27, 2007 - View this thread

A two-ton 21-mpg 8-passenger V8 Chevy Tahoe? America, meet your 2008 Green Car of the Year!
posted on Nov 27, 2007 - View this thread

"She was the first and only girl I kissed in the car. It's priceless because of that, as far as I'm concerned." Clarence Cleveland Curtis, 84 years young, is still driving his first car, a 1929 Ford Model A he bought used (for $10!) as a teenager in 1938. It's the car in which he kissed his future wife 67 years ago, when he was 17 and she was 14... Related: "My First Car" at HotRodder, "My First Car" at Motortrend, and "My First Car" at "AutoWeek.
posted on Aug 22, 2007 - View this thread

SUV sales are up. In spite of higher gas prices and concern about global warming, Americans still want bigger cars. It might not be enough to save the Hummer H2, though.
posted on May 24, 2007 - View this thread

"Q: Is that another car on top?
 A: Yes, it's a VW bug."
-- Carthedral. A few more (clearer, daylight) photos here.
posted on Feb 19, 2006 - View this thread

The Bugatti Veyron, according to Jeremy Clarkson on last night's Top Gear, may well be the Concorde of cars. So Clarkson is a man prone to hyperbole, but this time the facts might just back him up. A throw-away remark from VW boss Ferdinand Piëch became the informal design brief. A 1000 horsepower car capable of the north side of 400kph/250mph. It looks futuristic, but has the stats to match. 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds. In an acceleration race with a McLaren F1 (the previous fastest supercar), the Veyron can give the F1 a head-start to 120mph, but will still beat it to 200mph. At 250mph, the 100 litre fuel tank will empty in 12 minutes, and you can brake to stand-still in just ten seconds (albeit covering the length of four football pitches in the process). The car will set you back most of UK £1,000,000 but that's barely an indicator: the few that exist are being sold at loss because they "just wanted to see if they could". With an industry facing shifting priorities, there may never be another super-car quite like this.
posted on Dec 12, 2005 - View this thread

"The Car Music Project was conceived in late 1991 by composer Bill Milbrodt, when his personal car, battered and road-weary, was nearing the end of its useful life. It had endured close to 200,000 miles of road life with little mechanical maintenance and even less cosmetic attention. It would cost more to repair than it was worth and the poor thing had virtually no value as a trade-in. The paint was faded, pesky springs poked through the upholstery, knobs and handles were missing, and the electrical system was iffy. It dripped oil, blew smoke, and made more noise than a cement mixer. It was time to turn the car into music."
posted on Nov 11, 2005 - View this thread

The Honda Civic GX NGV is a car that you can fuel up at home by using a unit that taps into your home's natural gas line. There are two major benefits of owning a natural gas powered car: (1) they can use HOV lanes in California; and (2) using residential natural gas as fuel can save a heavy commuter up to $1,000 per year in fuel costs. Ultimately, though, the Honda Civic GX NGV is only for penny-pinching clean-air fanatics who have arduous daily commutes, don't like music or driving and are too anti-social to carpool.
posted on Jul 13, 2005 - View this thread

The Aurora   (mostly pictures, slightly more info here). One car, two men, three decades of rust. Guy buys truly hideous 1957 prototype car from junkyard, restores it to gleaming unsightliness. Conne_ticut?
posted on Mar 30, 2005 - View this thread

Hack your car. AutoXRAY scans internal vehicle computers and gives detailed diagnostics and real-time graphing output.
posted on Jan 12, 2004 - View this thread

1.26 million people killed every year on the road or from subsequent injuries... ..Four Qld road deaths in 5 hours. 42,815 people died in 2002 in automobile crashes in the United States. Shouldn't these facts give us the resolve to explore a better solution to our transportation needs? I do not see the national debate that these deaths would evoke if the cause was different. Why are we numb to this?
posted on Nov 24, 2003 - View this thread

Last Saturday afternoon, Rep. Bill Janklow (SD) ran a stop sign and hit and killed a motorcyclist. Janklow has a history of driving poorly. In fact, his speedy habits have been the subject of jokes in the past. Will Janklow receive special treatment because of his fame? What kind of penalty does a crime such as this deserve?
posted on Aug 19, 2003 - View this thread

Sure, we all know the story about how Detroit developed, and then kept under wraps, a 100mpg carburetor is false. However, affordable 80mpg family sedans are real: behold the Supercar! They are the results of a nearly decade-long partnership between The Big Three and the Clinton administration. However the program was quietly shelved last June, the victim of the Bush administration, and corporate backpedaling. Read the whole sordid tale here. [use username/password for login] In the meantime, you'll have to settle for one of these.
posted on Dec 13, 2002 - View this thread

Drive on air. A new engine design that not only runs on air, but cleans it too.
posted on Sep 20, 2002 - View this thread

Study: Mobile Phone Users Worse Than Drunk Drivers
It took mobile users half-a-second longer to react than normal, and one-third of a second longer than when they had been drinking.
They were also less able to maintain a constant speed and found it harder to keep a safe distance from the car in front. Participants in the study stated that they found it easier to drive drunk than when using a cell phone.
Here's the fun quote:
"Eventually," said Dominic Burch, road safety campaign manager at Direct Line, "we would like to see the use of mobile phones when driving, both hand-held and hands-free, become as socially unacceptable as drink driving."
Nice graphic Here that explains the time/distance it takes to stop. That fraction of a second = +46 feet stopping time over normal, and +33 over being drunk. More Here and The Full Report[PDF].
posted on Mar 24, 2002 - View this thread

Goliath lost. This and other pro-small billboards are popping up in downtown Atlanta. No doubt they have cousins (little ones, I'm sure) springing up in your cities. I couldn't believe my eyes, because the billboards seemed to be promoting the ever-so-British Mini Cooper.

The Mini is... well... just like it says, the veritable opposite of the stereotypical American SUV. Yes, it is the type of car Mr Bean would drive. But when you see them in their natural Anglo habitat, you can't help but notice they're just perfectly suited to zipping to and from wherever. The site lets you find a dealer, build your own Mini and save it for future reference. The catch is that you have to fill out an opt-in form, but with lines like this as part of your agreement, how could you resist?

"- I agree to chase squirrels around the park now and then and giggle like a madman while doing it."

Yeah. I want one. But will the American public?
posted on Mar 14, 2002 - View this thread

Calling All Pod People: there's a car for you! "This concept car explores the potential for communication between people and their vehicle," Toyota said in preview information released on Thursday. I don't want to communicate with machines (using machines to communicate with other people is more my style). What is it about Japanese culture that produces all these machine-human "relationships"? Tamagotchi, Aibo, NeCoRo, ad nauseam.
posted on Oct 18, 2001 - View this thread