For seven years, William D'Arcy drilled well after well in Persia, now known as Iran, looking for oil. With his funding running low, and his employers getting quite impatient, D'Arcy drilled one last well and hit a gusher on May 26, 1908. The rest is history.
Six years after the discovery of the vast Middle Eastern oilfields, D'Arcy and the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. almost went out of business. They literally had oceans of precious oil and, by then, a pipeline to remove it from its remote resting place. What they did not have, ironically, were customers. Cars were the toys of the wealthy, ships mostly ran on coal and so did electrical plants. Winston Churchill, however, saw the benefits of running his navy on oil and soon had World War I to fight. Black gold quickly became one of the world's most coveted resources.
Years later, the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. bought the government-seized assets of a German firm that sold oil in Britain before the war. That company was called British Petroleum, a name adopted later by Anglo-Persian and shortened to BP in 2000.
As the pair of specially-prepared Ferrari 612 Scagliettis make their way across the subcontinent in the Magic India Discovery tour, news has emerged that Ferrari plans to enter the growing market there by 2010. The reports emanate from India's Economic Times, which quoted tour coordinator Gabriele Lalli as saying that Maranello was preparing a sales and marketing network in the country with an eye towards opening there in 2010.
Currently there are a few dozen Ferraris in India (aside from the promotional 612s) that were purchased from Ferrari's dealership in Singapore. Sponsoring the Magic India Discovery is Tata, whose close relationship with Ferrari's parent company Fiat may come into play as the Prancing Horse gallops towards India.
Over the weekend, Dylan Weiss from Cry Havoc Productions, Inc. let us know that his latest motorcycle-specific documentary went live at Discovery's Turbo online site. We've spent some time watching the footage, and we think it's awesome. Focusing in on Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki, BMW, Ducati, MV Agusta and Bimota, the crew took plenty of footage home with them and managed to ride some of the greatest modern sportbikes ever created along the way. Best of all, over four hours of video is available online for free at their mini-site, broken down into 50 segments.
The whole shebang was shot in High Definition, so we have some serious hopes that it will air on The Discovery Channel, be offered on DVD or both. It's extremely entertaining and we definitely recommend checking it out.
You'd be well rewarded for picking a Ferrari GT car for a road-trip, but for an off-road transcontinental rally? Ferrari says "Why not?" once again with the Magic India Discovery Ferrari. The latest of the company's continent-crushing tours, the Indian event follows the China 15,000 Red Miles tour in 2005, the Panamerican 20,000 tour in 2006, and the latest 60th anniversary around-the-world relay last year.
The 12-stage event starts and ends in Mumbai, covering 7,000 miles of the subcontinent along the way, kicking off on February 25 and ending on May 8. Like the 612s in China and the 599s in the Americas, the pair of Scagliettis being driven for the event are essentially stock, receiving only a slightly raised suspension and some aluminum plates to protect the undercarriage, plus the special paint job you see in the images in our gallery below. Follow the jump to read all the details of the 72-day journey.
Evenflo has announced a voluntary recall of 1 million of its Discovery car seats. Discovery seats with the model numbers 390, 391, 534 and 552 manufactured between April 2005 and January 29, 2008 are affected. If you currently own and/or use an Evenflo Discovery, you are advised to check the white label on the underside of the seat, where you'll find the pertinent information listed. The problem which caused Evenflo to issue the recall is that the possibility exists for the car seat to separate from its base in the event of an accident. Customers who have affected units and participate in the recall will be sent an additional fastener that corrects the problem.
Additional information and/or instructions can be found at these resources:
NHTSA Announcement
Evenflo Announcement
NHTSA Consumer Alert
Evenflo customer service: 1-800-356-2229 (Mon-Fri 8AM - 5PM EST)
