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Sex and the single driver

What is it about cars and sex? The two go together like Frick and Frack. The Providence Auto Show had its share of leggy birds expounding the virtues of various cars and trucks and leftlanenews.com has a gallery of photos of various beauties at the current Geneva Auto Show in Switzerland. I suppose it's all very irregular nowadays, but maybe cars and sex go together so well because both activities are such jolly good fun!

Posted by   at 11:45 AM to Shows | Permalink | Comments 0

Knock, Knock. Now you see it, now you don't

Check out how the boffins at MIT are doing in their efforts to make ­the century-­old internal-combustion engines smaller and to reduce engine knock. "An engine this size," says Daniel Cohn, a senior research scientist at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, pointing out an ordinary-looking 2.4-liter midsize gasoline engine, "would be a rocket with our technology."
By combining turbocharging technology and direct fuel injection and augmenting them with a novel way to use a small amount of ethanol, Cohn and his colleagues have created a design that they believe could triple the power of a test engine, an advance that could allow automakers to convert small engines designed for economy cars into muscular engines with more than enough power for SUVs or sports cars.
By extracting better performance from smaller, more efficient engines, the technology could lead to vehicles whose fuel economy rivals that of hybrids, which use both an electric motor and a gasoline engine. And that fuel efficiency could come at a fraction of the cost.
The full report is in MIT's Technology Review.

Posted by   at 11:28 AM to Technology | Permalink | Comments 0

Nanjing to start production of MG this month

Nanjing Automobile Corporation of China is scheduled to start production of a convertible MG sports car this month, according to The New York Times.
"The rebirth of MG is the latest and most splashy example of how China’s growing economic might is reaching carefully into foreign markets, buying up troubled companies with established brands and using them to build bridgeheads for some of the hundreds of billions of dollars that the country has to invest overseas," writes NYT correspondent Craig S. Smith. Nanjing acquired the legendary MG marque last year.

Posted by   at 12:20 PM to Companies | Permalink | Comments 0

A domestic solution for Chrysler?

Check out venerable auto columnist Jerry Flint's suggestion that a group of wealthy Americans buy up Chrysler and put it back together. Flint sees billions of dollars to be made and suggests starting by recruiting proven leaders - such as Dieter Zetsche f- or the job.
"(Zetsche) should be happy to quit that pain-in-the-neck job as chief executive of Daimler and join a bigger company, American Chrysler," Flint writes. "If Zetsche could offer Wolfgang Bernhard the No. 2 position, it would be perfect."
Then focus on product, the company's biggest challenge, he writes. Read Flint's wide ranging analysis, Dreaming of a new Chrysler, on leftlanenews.com.

Posted by   at 12:06 PM to Companies | Permalink | Comments 0