MetaFilter posts tagged with automobiles

UFO or Solar Car?

mrgrimm — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:09:49 -0800

Marcelo da Luz has been attracting a lot of attention with his snazzy solar car. He's hoping to set a new world record by driving the car from Buffalo, NY, to Inuvik, Northwest Territories.

Model T Body Modification

Knappster — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:50:54 -0800

Ford Model T owners "transformed the cars into tractors, pickup trucks, paddy wagons, mobile lumber mills and power plants for milling grain." Add to this list school bus es, snow mobiles, railway locomotives, firetrucks, and military ambulances. One man turned his into a cottage on wheels "complete with its own sunroom and back porch"; an itinerant minister in the Midwest turned his into a church: "He installed a pint-size organ inside and designed the steeple to fold down so the road-going chapel could be garaged." The production model wasn't built for speed, but modified "Fronty Fords" performed well at Indy. This aeromodded Model T could reach 70 mph with its original engine. And let's not forget the Comedy Ford—a "sawed off bug" that was "funny just to look at."

The Great Automobile Race of 1908

peacay — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:32:08 -0800

On 30th July 1908, after 169 days of competition, the 4-cylinder, 60-horsepower Thomas Flyer, driven by George Schuster from America, crossed the finish line to win the Great 1908 New York-to-Paris Automobile Race. After driving to the West Coast, the vehicles were shipped to Vladivostok from where only three teams managed to continue with the race across Asia and Europe. [I wonder if Time will change their title to 'New York-to-Paris'?] See also: -The Great Auto Race 1908 -The Greatest Auto Race on Earth

chomp

plexi — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:34:01 -0800

A new sort of pop art has sprung up in New Orleans - cars emblazoned with brand names, usually snack foods.

R.I.P. Arizona Parking Solutions

five fresh fish — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:55:21 -0800

R.I.P., Arizona Parking Solutions. Guy parks car without displaying his pass. APS boots car. Guy dollies car into his garage and invites APS to reclaim their boots. Or not; their choice: either way, they can't tow, he won't pay the fine, and he really doesn't need to be driving the car. This catch-22 upsets the owner. And eventually APS goes off the deep end, booting nearly everyone's car in the community. The media becomes involved. And we become witness to a business owner suiciding his own business.

Does the Nucleon come in Cherenkov blue?

cog_nate — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:22:49 -0800

Car of the Future , NOVA's latest episode, is fully online and includes a slew of extras including CC-licensed content, a brief historical overview of "innovative" automobiles, Amory Lovins flogging his Hypercar concept, the Car Talk guys making nuisances of themselves, and much more. (It's no Design for Dreaming, but really, what could be?)

Speed, Style and Beauty: The Ralph Lauren Car Collection

Fuzzy Skinner — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:26:40 -0800

Speed, Style and Beauty: The Ralph Lauren Car Collection photo gallery. More photos here (although some are duplicates). Details of the automobiles at Motor Trend. The cars were the subject of a Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibition in 2005, and an excellent Discovery Channel documentary last October. If you missed the broadcast, you can buy the book. (There's no DVD that I can find, but watch for a repeat broadcast. Or maybe you can catch it some other way.)

Lee press-on car

XMLicious — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 05:16:25 -0800

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 , wide ly ex por ted, 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. Forbes magazine's The World's Cheapest Cars (javascript slideshow)

Action painting

ardgedee — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:18:19 -0800

How to Paint a Picture With a Car (Bandwidth-saving Youtube version) Transcript. Selected works of other car-painters. Explanatory nomenclature. Other works.

Adding up US subsidies for auto travel with and without the costs of war

salvia — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:02:34 -0800

In the U.S., motorists do not pay their way. The US government spends more on highways and other auto-related expenses than it receives from auto-related taxes, unlike almost every country in Europe. In a recent report [pdf], Mark Delucchi calculates automobile-related costs and revenues in three different ways and concludes the subsidy is around 20-70 cents per gallon or $24-105 billion in 2002. But what are automobile-related costs, you ask? Largely tucked away in footnotes and background papers [pdf] are his careful considerations about which expenditures to include and what portion of costs relate directly to automobile oil use, for everything from the highway patrol, to fighting brushfires, to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to military activity in the Middle East. Don't miss Report #15, in which Delucchi and coauthor James Murphy seek to calculate: “If the U.S. transportation sector did not use oil, how much would the U.S. federal government reduce its military commitment in the Persian Gulf?” [pdf] (especially Table 15-12, which summarizes much of the paper). [previously] [originally via]