FLIR, the maker of BMW's night-vision system, will be at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week showing off its PathFindIR thermal imaging camera. The company says its system isn't confused by oncoming headlights, works well in cold weather and can even see through fog, dust and smoke. FLIR also says its camera is based on the same technology used by the military to provide a 36° field-of-view of the road ahead. We plan to check out the company's claims in the 6 Series they're bringing to CES. Maybe they'll even let us take it out and recreate that urban rumor of 200-mph desert highway sprints with no headlights. No, probably not.
After such a gloomy 2008, automakers are looking anywhere they can for a ray of sunshine. One such glimmer came in the form of a preliminary report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that recalls were down 30% last year compared to 2007, and at their lowest levels since 1994. It's not all good, though. While automakers recalled a combined 10.2 million vehicles in 2008, the total number of recall campaigns hit a record number of 642 -- a 9% jump over 2007 - and also included a 233 safety investigations last year, up from only 98 in 2007. David Kelly, acting NHTSA administrator, said his agency is attributing the drop in recalled cars to an early warning system used to alert manufacturers to problems as quickly as possible. Early fixes in a product's production puts fewer flawed cars on the road. Among the top six automakers, Chrysler had the fewest recalled cars in 2008 at 360,000. That's a huge drop from the 2.2 million it recalled in 2007. GM, on the other hand, recalled 1.9 million in 2008, up from 538,000 in 2007. Honda and Toyota both saw their recall numbers increase, while Nissan's dropped.
More government regulation to protect people from themselves...whee! The UK's camera-infested roads haven't been the most blissful place for driving enthusiasts in the last few years, and now there's a push to fit speed limiters to cars. Proposed by the exhaustively-named Commission for Integrated Transport and the Motorists' Forum, the limiter concept is being touted as a way to cut emissions and save lives. The idea is that the technology would integrate with a vehicle's systems to slow the car down - including intervening by automatically applying the brakes to bring a vehicle down to the speed limit. Satellites will be used to determine where a vehicle is, and drivers are reported to appreciate having the burden of actually paying attention lifted from their shoulders. Hmmm. Given how many local governments rely on speed camera revenue, we're not altogether sure what kind of legs this plan has, but consider us concerned all the same.
As a political statement against Maryland politician E. J. Pikpkin's run for national office, Charles Richter painted a swastika on his car next to the words "Vote Pipken" and parked it legally on a public street. The same day it was parked, a sheriff's deputy ticketed the car as abandoned. Two days later, the car was towed from the same spot. When Richter refused to pay the impound lot to get his car back, it was crushed. Richter has brought suit against the deputy, and a federal judge has just ruled that the lawsuit can go forward.
Richter, explaining another swastika-adorned vehicle that was also a protest against Pipken, wrote in one forum, "Painted on my Van was... The American Indian Peace sign which happens to be the Swastika printed back wards." The decorative swastika, also used by Native Americans, is literally thousands of years old, has positive meanings, and is still used in certain Eastern cultures. It is often depicted in mirror image to the Nazi swastika, but it can be drawn with its arms going either way, right or left. The Nazi swastika is only rendered one way, with its arms to the right. We don't know if the van swastika was different than the car swastika, but the one on the car matches the Nazi swastika, and, of course, the Native American swastika, as well. The lawsuit verdict is evidently based on the weight of free speech and political objection. According to the judge, Richter has First Amendment rights during "an act of political protest." The deputy sheriff who ticketed the car, parked legally on public property, violated those rights. It could also be taken into account, however, that E. J. Pipken is Jewish, which would open the door to considerations of hate speech. We don't know if the judge had anything to say on that issue, but for now, the case can proceed.
The classic idea of aerodynamics gives rise to mental pictures of vehicles shaped like a smooth suppository. Reality turns out to be different, thankfully. Cars like the Ford Flex may appear weighty and as slippery to the wind as a barn while actually sliding through the atmosphere far more gracefully than one might guess. Aerodynamics studies by all automakers have led to the startling discovery that vehicles like the squared-off Flex actually manage their airflow quite well, thank you, and sanding off the corners hinders, rather than helps.
It's the same over at Toyota where they're calling strategically-placed folds "aerocorners." While it's long been held that a teardrop shape is the most aerodynamic, that's not necessarily the case and a droplet-shaped vehicle isn't terribly practical; just try to put that armoire in your first-gen Honda Insight. The worry that all cars will look the same when aerodynamicists start to take over is unfounded, as discoveries in the wind tunnel show that things aren't always as they appear, and there's plenty of room for uncommon design to still cheat the wind.
Road crews in Ankeny, Iowa, have an interesting problem on their hands. It seems that the city is using just a pinch a half-and-half mixture of garlic salt and normal rock salt to season clear its roads during the winter. How did the small suburb of Des Moines manage to get 18,000 pounds of garlic salt, you ask? Apparently, a local spice company called Tone's had no use for the garlic salt and had it earmarked for a landfill. Instead, the tasty condiment was donated to the city for use on its roads. While we didn't actually know it was possible to use garlic salt to clear roads (though it often does a great job clearing a room - get it?), we never would have imagined that it would cause the cleanup crews to "feel like ordering a steak and a baked potato." Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction.
What Car is reporting that the European Parliament has graciously agreed to allow Britain to continue using the mile a bit longer. How nice of them. The EU has just passed a broad measure that allows shops to continue to display imperial and metric measures, thus keeping Britain from having to switch their speedometers and road signs to kilometers. The governing body had previously asked for firm dates from Britain and Ireland to make the switch and stop using Imperial measures, and though their neighbors in Ireland have already made the change, Britain remains noncommittal. We sympathize with our British brethren. If the EU could just walk 1.609344 km in our shoes, they'd know that switching to the metric system would wreak havoc on poetry and songwriting as we know it. Smiles would no longer be the longest word. There would be no more Mile High Club. Denver would lose its Mile High Stadium. Eminem would be crushed upon losing 8 Mile Road. Miles Davis would have to change his name to Kilometers Davis. It would be the end of the world as we know it.
During the past few weeks during which the auto industry has struggled to secure government loans to stave off bankruptcy, we've covered the proceedings in an unusual way. We found this one picture of the Detroit 3 CEOs during their testimony to Congress that encapsulated what we felt was going on. GM CEO Rick Wagoner and Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli are locked in a stare, just as their companies are locked together as the two most desperately in need of gov't aid. Ford CEO Alan Mulally sits off to the right looking the other way, just as Ford stands apart from its domestic competitors as the only with a shot of surviving without federal funds.
Though the events of the day are serious matters, we had our fun and kept things light by using this image over and over again, each time adding different speech bubbles with what we thought each CEO was thinking. They were fun to create and we didn't expect it to turn into a "thing", but we've gotten so many requests to compile all of these speech bubble comics in one place that today we've decided to oblige.
Last month, shooters caught the new Noble M600 undergoing testing at the Firebird Raceway in Arizona. According to reports, the M600 was joined on the track by Noble's benchmark vehicle, a Porsche Carrera GT. The crew at RacersWeb.com found themselves at the same track at the same time as the M600, and unlike the previous pics shot from the grandstands, these newest images get us up close and personal with Noble's new 600+ hp, twin-turbo'd V8 supercar.
The exterior hasn't changed much since we brought you the first round of "official" and unofficial shots earlier this year, but the front bumpers vents and ducting are in clear view, as is a new Noble badge that drops the oblong yellow logo for a simple crown design. The engine bay reveals the M600's Volvo-sourced powerplant, but all the interesting tidbits are hidden deep inside. Compared to past models, Noble spent some serious coin on making the interior a nice place to toil away the hours around town and on the track, with acres of Alcantara, contrast stitching and beautifully crafted knobs, stalks and switchgear.
We've been seeing camouflaged photos of the 2010 BMW Z4 tested in various locales for well over a year, but the first, almost fully exposed image has popped up online this morning. The car was apparently in a BMW dealership during filming of a new Michael Douglas movie. We should be getting a full online reveal on December 15 and we'll see the car in person next month at the Detroit Auto Show. The new car cleans up a lot of the Bangle flame surfacing that marred the last car with the front bumper picking up hints of the latest 3-Series. The Z4 will also reportedly have a retractable hard-top in place of the current car's soft top. If that happens, the coupe will likely be consigned to history.
