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ON a hot summer trip to Cape Cod, the Mills family minivan did a peculiar thing. After an hour on the road, it began to bake the children. Mom and Dad were cool and comfortable up front, but heat was blasting into the rear of the van and it could not be turned off. Fortunately for the Mills children, their father - W. Nathaniel Mills III, an expert on computer networking at I.B.M. - is persistent. When three dealership visits, days of waiting and the cumbersome replacement of mechanical parts failed to fix the problem, he took the van out...

Law would stop hubcap spinners By Bill Tolbert The Virginia Gazette Published January 15, 2005 RICHMOND -- If you want rapper Xhibit and his buddies at West Coast Customs to “pimp” your ride with some phat spinning wheels, you better hurry. Del. Bill Barlow (D-64th) has introduced an arcane bill that would prohibit wheel covers that give the illusion the wheels are moving while the vehicle is sitting still, or that the wheels are sitting still while the vehicle is actually moving. Barlow addresses the wheel covers in HB 2390. According to the General Assembly website, the bill was awaiting...

Making a list of the worst cars of all time, which we compiled last year, is easier than making a list of the worst cars currently on the market because, frankly, all cars are built pretty well these days. However, even now in the early days of the 2005 model year, several vehicles stand out for subpar performance in several important categories — in some cases, matters of life and death such as safety. What follows is a roundup of the ten worst cars on the market, based on three criteria: the worst crash test scores, the lowest projected reliability...

Lexus cars may be vulnerable to viruses that infect them via mobile phones. Landcruiser 100 models LX470 and LS430 have been discovered with infected operating systems that transfer within a range of 15 feet. It is understood the virus could affect the navigation system of the Lexus models, it transfers onto them via a Bluetooth mobile phone connection. It is still unclear whether the cars in question use the Symbian operating system which has recently been under attack from various worms and viruses. Vulnerable operating systems are increasingly moving onto a number of different devices. Last year the Slammer worm...

Making a list of the worst cars of all time, which we compiled last year, is easier than making a list of the worst cars currently on the market because, frankly, all cars are built pretty well these days. However, even now in the early days of the 2005 model year, several vehicles stand out for subpar performance in several important categories--in some cases, matters of life and death such as safety. What follows is a roundup of the ten worst cars on the market, based on three criteria: the worst crash test scores, the lowest projected reliability and the...

DETROIT (Reuters) - DaimlerChrysler AG has no qualms about ignoring female tastes -- at least when it comes to selling Dodge cars. The new Dodge Magnum sport wagon and a soon-to-be-released Dodge Charger, a modern update of the classic muscle car from the 1960s, are very much targeted at a male audience, said Trevor Creed, design chief at the company's U.S.-based Chrysler unit. "It does scream male, there's no doubt about that. We found that in our market research and focus groups," he said at an automotive conference in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn. Creed was responding to a comment...

DAILY EXPRESS Hold Your Horsepower by Gregg Easterbrook Post date 01.17.05 The cheerleaders, I mean automotive press, have departed, and over the weekend the annual North American International Automotive Show was opened to the public. You can gawk here at the flashy cars on display; detailed reporting on the event can be found here at The Detroit News auto show site. The theme of this year's cars was more: more power, more gizmos, more weight, more cost, even more safety features. But at this point what we need from cars is less. Much of the buzz at the car show...

Engineers at Michelin's US technology centre envision a future in which vehicles ride on what they call the Tweel, a combined tyre and wheel that can never go flat because it contains no air. The first commercial use of the integrated tyre and wheel assembly will be on the stair-climbing iBOT wheelchair. The Tweel and another airless tyre were on display at this week's Detroit motor show. Michelin has high expectations for the Tweel project. The concept of a single-piece tyre and wheel assembly is one the company expects to become widespread on passenger cars and, eventually, used on construction...

ETROIT -- General Motors Vice Chairman Robert Lutz said the automaker missed an opportunity to market itself as a technologically savvy company capable of producing hybrid vehicles. Lutz said GM "missed the boat" on a marketing opportunity with hybrids -- an opportunity Toyota Motor Corp. has played to its advantage. "We business-cased it, took a hard, analytical look and thought the engineering and investment were irresponsible vis-a-vis our shareholders," he said. "We failed to appreciate what Toyota has basically treated as an advertising expense." Lutz said GM was doubtful the business case for hybrids would work. In hindsight, "we should...

GREENVILLE, S.C.--The first automobile to use air-filled tires was a racecar built by André and Édouard Michelin in the early 1890's. More than a century later, the French company founded by the Michelin brothers is so identified with pneumatic tires that its mascot, Bibendum, is a man made of little else. Now, after decades spent persuading the world to ride on air, the company has begun work on an innovation that could render the pneumatic tire obsolete. Engineers at Michelin's American technology center here envision a future in which vehicles would ride on what they call the Tweel, a combined...

MSOIL founder A.J. Amatuzio coined the phrase "extended drain intervals" back in 1972 with the introduction of AMSOIL 10W-40 Synthetic Motor Oil, formulated for 25,000-mile/one-year drain intervals. Not only was AMSOIL motor oil the first synthetic oil to pass American Petroleum Institute (API) service requirements, AMSOIL INC. was the only motor oil company promoting oil drains beyond 3,000 miles. Today, motorists are still bombarded with propaganda from the major oil companies promoting 3,000-mile oil changes. However, the industry is slowly but surely coming around. Vehicle manufacturers typically suggest 5,000- to 7,500-mile intervals in their owners manuals, and many manufacturers have...

Imagine buying a new car and driving it for 10 years without once taking it for an oil-and-lube job. The engine won't even have a dipstick to check the oil. That's what the future holds if Rehovot-based ApNano Materials succeeds in marketing NanoLub. NanoLub is the world's first synthetic lubricant to be based on spherical inorganic nanoparticles. As with other lubricants, its job is to reduce wear and friction between moving objects (like engine parts), enabling longer operation and higher efficiency. NanoLub dramatically outperforms every known commercial solid lubricant marketed today. As its creator, ApNano Materials has just been selected...

The price of unreliability is getting outrageous. If you want to buy what Consumer Reports has determined will be the least reliable sedan available in the U.S., you're going to have to shell out between $75,000 and $125,000. That's because the dubious honor went to a car Consumer Reports also calls "sumptuous," "quiet and luxurious" and "a delight to drive": the Mercedes-Benz S-Class. Mercedes-Benz (a division of DaimlerChrysler) has been struggling with quality problems over the last few years. But the rest of the list of the least reliable sedans reads like the valet lot of a Davos hotel at...

Even though it's Ferrari red, zooms from zero to 60 in four seconds, and has a sensuous black leather dash with the same Motech data display found in Grand Prix race cars, this is not your typical little red sports car. At stoplights, adjacent drivers often ask Rick Woodbury for a card and where they can buy his car. For starters, it's smaller. Or rather, smallest. At 39 inches wide and 8 feet 5 inches long, it's skinnier than some motorcycles and shorter than many a living-room couch. It runs on batteries, not gas. And, if the thing ever makes...

Car buyers, tired of designs that roll off the assembly line, are shifting gears to decades past. Some are customizing new vehicles to look old, while others are souping up vintage models with 21st-century luxury and power. "Resto-mods," or cars that have been restored and modified, are now commanding the kind of money that only "pure" vintage cars with all-original parts did just a few years ago. "There aren't any more" vintage cars being manufactured, explained Tom Henderson, spokesman for General Motors Corp., "but there's a lot more money chasing them." GM, along with other Detroit automakers, has ramped up...

The California company that has cleared legal hurdles to sell two-seat Smart cars in the United States has put its first saleable unit on eBay. On Friday afternoon the top bid for the car, a red Smart fortwo with 586 miles on the odometer, stood at $12,300. The auction is set to end on Dec. 12 at 9:44 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Zap, of Santa Rosa, Calif., wants to sell 15,000 of the two-seat cars a year in the United States. It hopes to sign 150 dealerships by summer. Zap doesn't get the Smarts directly from parent company DaimlerChrysler AG....

Yahoo News caption: Toyota's new concept vehicle i-unit is driven in during its unveiling in Tokyo, Dec. 3, 2004. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama) The i-unit, which resembles a wheelchair, is designed to help people get around. It will be displayed at an exposition in Aichi, central Japan, next year. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama) The compact sized vehicle, which runs on lithium-ion batteries, enables the passenger to move among other people in an upright position in low speed mode, while the vehicle reclines in high speed mode to lower the centre of gravity and ensure stable handling, the company said.

Hummer, long loved by loyal owners and fans and just as equally loathed by environmentalists and some consumer groups, is coming out with a new model that it hopes wins over at least some critics. The General Motors division that makes the Hummer also hopes the new model, the H3, puts some pop back into the vehicle's sales, which through August had plunged 25 percent from a year ago. Unveiled recently at a Anaheim, Calif., auto show, the H3 retains the unique look of its larger siblings but gets an average 20 miles per gallon on the highway -- almost...

[T]he tzero can only go 280 to 300 miles at 60 mph without recharging--even if it can recharge on any 120- or 240-V power socket. And if you accelerate it like an Italian exotic, or even take it on a hilly route, that range can decrease by up to about 20%. The range has actually increased over time. AC Propulsion had made the tzero with lead-acid batteries since 1997, but this year released a revamped version with the kind of lithium-ion batteries used in laptop computers. The range, which increased to 280 to 300 miles from 100 miles per charge,...

Eight 100-HP Electric Motors Result in 800-HP and a 4-Second 0 to 100 Sprint Tired of your '72 Citroen DS21 because it's low on power? Keio University's Electric Vehicle Laboratory has the answer. The Keio University's Electric Vehicle Laboratory harnesses 800 horsepower of pure electric endorphins in a bizarre 8-wheel '72 Citroen DS21-styled machine. Japanese institution harnesses 800 horsepower of pure electric endorphins to blast this 8-wheel monstrosity to 100 km/h in a mere four seconds, and 160 in another three, before rocketing to an amazing top speed of 370 km/h (230 mph). The Eliica, the name derived by creating...