19 year old inventor Ben J. Poss Gulak has developed what can best be described as a Segway that would fit in nicely in Blade Runner:

Gulak calls his creation the Uno, and he was inspired to create it when he saw the intense pollution of China caused by the myriad of small gas powered scooters in the cities. He sought to make electric vehicles more chic, and hence the unconventional styling of the Uno.

The Uno is electric powered, has two wheels located right next to each other and, like the Segway, uses gyroscopes to keep things under control. Top speed of the current model is 12.5 mph, although Gulak thinks that 40 mph might be doable in the future.

As reported by wired.com, Ferrari plans to introduce a lighter and far more vicious version of the Enzo, based on the Millechili. Most promising about this new car is that it embodies Ferrari’s new “less is more” ethos. That is less as in less weight - like a lot less weight. The Millechili will weigh exactly 1000 kilos, or 2200 lbs for us American folk. That is less than my Miata weighs, but with its 600 hp V10 it will have over 4 times the power. It is also 660 lbs less than the current Enzo, so the new car version should be ubervicious indeed.

The only downside is that only 300 cars will be made, and each will cost $500k. That means that even if you had an additional $500k to spend, you won’t be able to find a replacement car should you ever have a mishap on the track. And yes, I will only be jealous of anyone that owns one AND takes it to the track, as such refined machine is just a waste if it is not exercised properly.

If you frequent a car forum with a lot of fairly young members, you’ve probably seen plenty of threads that ridicule, insult, and otherwise denigrate police officers. Cops, the complainers assert, give ridiculous, stupid tickets. They abuse their authority. And they are rude.

I don’t like getting tickets any more than you, and I’ve run into the occasional testy officer. In general, though, I can’t complain about the way I’ve been treated and the frequency with which I’ve been cited.

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Detailed gear ratio specifications for the 3000GT and Stealth transmissions, tabulated for easy reference. These specs mostly come from published Mitsubishi or Dodge factory service manuals, but some pieces were filled in from counting the teeth on gears from the physical trans. This covers all AWD and all FWD transaxles in the US Domestic Market (USDM) and the notably different models in the Japanese Domestic Market (JDM).

Key: MT = Manual Transmission, AT = Automatic Transmission, Z11A = FWD chassis, Z16A = AWD chassis w/ 4WS, Z15A = AWD Chassis w/o 4WS

USDM AWD Models:

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I can’t look where I’m going when I’m driving on the track. It may sound like a joke, but I’m serious: If I don’t look ahead—if I don’t make a point of actually turning my head to look 2 or 3 steps ahead—I’m slow and clumsy. I’ll miss apexes, track out carelessly, and go in too hot.

Read any book on driving and you’ll find that I’m using flawless, textbook technique. You should always be looking a few steps ahead: Coming into the braking zone for a corner? Then your eyes should be on the apex or the track-out point for that corner. You’d use your peripheral vision, and perhaps a quick glance or two back, to reference your turn-in point. Not sure where you want to turn in or begin braking? Tough luck for you. You should have been looking at those spots a long time ago.

But is this necessarily the best way? I don’t know. Noah and I have talked about this many times. He does not look ahead, not to the same degree, and not with the same exaggerated deliberateness as I do. He prefers to focus on the upcoming event, be it a braking point, an apex, a throttle application point, or a track-out spot. This is not to say he drives with proverbial blinders, but that we our use of direct and peripheral vision is opposite. And, as you’ve seen from our track videos at Watkins Glen and NHMS, we’re both capable and fairly fast drivers. We have our distinct approaches, and they work for us.

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As reported by wired.com, BMW has built a shape-shifting car made out of a cloth skin. The car is built on a Z8 chassis, and reportedly runs and drives. There are no plans at this time to produce the car, and this example is destined for the BMW museum in Munich.

The technology is certainly intriguing, and it could have some practical performance characteristics if implemented correctly. Cars could be programmed to shift their shape at higher speeds to increase downforce or drag, depending on if you want to maximize top speed or grip. It could function like the myriad of motorized spoilers already gracing the likes of Porsches and other performance cars, but on a much larger, more effective scale.

Whether such a system will prove cost and weight effective shall remain to be seen by people far more mechanically and manufacturing oriented than myself. Then there will also be the hurdle of convincing people that a cloth car is still a safe car. Nonetheless, it is an intriguing idea, even if it is never widely implemented.

As reported by KYW 1060, Philadelphia has employed “virtual” speed bumps in an attempt to slow down drivers:

The “bumps” consist of a flat hologram that makes it look like there is something in the road. This then causes drivers to slow down so that they don’t hit it.

I think that this is a TERRIBLE idea. Speed control can admittedly be a necessity in some neighborhoods, but drivers have enough ACTUAL hazards to worry about without having to worry about whether what they are seeing is actually even an object! Plus, if the hologram looks completely 3D, many drivers would likely come to a complete stop. After all, when I think something is in the road, I don’t just slow down and drive over it - I STOP so I don’t hit it!

If GIR from Invader Zim had a car disguise, he would definitely look like this Volkswagon I saw in Copenhagen:

So I found myself in Reykjavik, Iceland. I’m heading over to Sweden to take a few summer classes, and I stopped in Reykjavik because it just so happened to be on the way.

Iceland is a fairly good sized island with very few people on it. There are a total of about 300,000 Icelanders total on the island, and over a third of them live in and around Reykyavik. Nonetheless, that is still only about 100,000 people in the city, so it was necessarily small and not too dense or busy. Indeed, it did feel like a city, but it lacks the hustle and bustle of other capitals I’ve been too.

In terms of cars, Reykjavik had the most American feel of any European city I’ve been in yet. I’d say half the cars were the typical, small European econoboxes you’d expect in Europe, while the other half were a whole variety of American cars, larger cars, and vicious off road vehicles. And when I say vicious, I mean vicious. Check out these bad boys:
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This column resumes.

Most of you probably saw Car and Driver’s article on the M3, 911 Turbo, and Nissan GTR. And most of you disliked the conclusion: the M3 better than the GTR and the Turbo? Ridiculous. Impossible. Another instance of Car and Driver’s predictable BMW fetish.

When I drafted this article on Friday, CarandDriver.com had 88 pages of comments, many of which rage against the magazine and Tony Quiroga. Autoblog picked up the story earlier last week and threw its proverbial gauntlet down against the “increasingly irrelevant” Car and Driver.

I could do the same and attack Car and Driver’s choices, criteria, and biases. But the larger issue is that this article shouldn’t be read as a comparison because it has no objective baseline or scope. And while I understand that mainstream automotive writing is intended to be subjective, the comparisons in the Car and Driver article are so subjective that I can’t take them too seriously.

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