Behind the Wheel | 2007 Volvo S80: Less Can Be More: A Tale of 2 Cylinders March 7, 2007
Volvo?s flagship sedan, the S80, is the first Volvo passenger car to offer a V-8 engine. And it?s a thirsty one, too. BISHOP, Calif. I SET out one morning to test the new Volvo S80 3.2. With no particular goal in mind, my co-driver and I decided to go until we got tired of the car. We ended up here that evening, 300 miles away from where we had started, making a quick stop for pajamas, toothbrushes and toiletries. How did this happen?The drive had begun inauspiciously enough, along the Pacific Ocean in Southern California. It progressed up through …
Motoring: A New Legislative Push for Safer Power Windows
After some children and pets were strangled by power windows, manufacturers redesigned window controls, but some vehicles still have dangerous old-style switches. RALPH NADER, never one to mince words, wrote a letter to the National Highway Safety Bureau in 1968, demanding a public warning about the dangers of power windows, calling them “upward bound glass guillotines” that “have strangled and injured thousands of children and infants.” Mr. Nader, the national consumer advocate, got the warning he wanted. But four decades later, safety advocates still concerned about the dangers of power windows are on the brink of a bigger prize.Last …
Cargo Worker Lands in Trouble for Posting Photos Online of Prototype Corvette March 4, 2007
In a city where cars are the stars, the biggest recent celebrity scandal involves a top-secret high-powered sports car and an overzealous loading dock worker who is said to need a new job. DETROIT In a city where cars are the stars, the biggest recent celebrity scandal involves a top-secret high-powered sports car and an overzealous loading cargo worker who now needs a new job.The amateur paparazzo was said to have been fired recently from his job at a freight company after posting 23 photographs online of a prototype version of what is believed to be a 680-horsepower Chevrolet Corvette …
Back at the Brink, Chrysler Finds Fewer Friends March 3, 2007
Back then, it was Lee Iacocca and the federal government bailing out Chrysler. Today the German owners must figure out how to fix the company. Correction Appended AUBURN HILLS, Mich. DAIMLERCHRYSLER always seems to outdo itself at the Detroit auto show, and this year was no exception. The company showcased celebrities like the chef Bobby Flay, and then generated a fresh round of buzz via an artificial ice rink (its surface carefully scuffed to keep visitors from slipping) that it built to show off its legendary Mercedes-Benz line.For DaimlerChrysler itself, however, the corporate mood was just as cold as the …
Mississippi to Be Site of Toyota Assembly Plant
Gov. Haley Barbour announced that a highly sought factory would be built 20 miles outside Tupelo. Toyota said today it would invest $1.3 billion to build its eighth North American assembly plant in Blue Springs, Miss., just outside Tupelo in northeastern Mississippi. The plant will build the Toyota Highlander, a crossover vehicle, and will employ 2,000 workers. Production is expected to begin in 2010, and reach 150,000 vehicles each year.The 1,700-acre site was promoted vigorously by the state, which wound up in a competition with Arkansas and Tennessee for the factory.The decision brings Toyota to an area best known for …
Design: Colani?s Concepts Make Concept Cars Look Tame March 2, 2007
Luigi Colani, the ?designer?s designer? whose free-flowing concept cars are often too esoteric for production, has had a considerable influence in the design world. I AM at the moment building the most sensational Corvette ever,” Luigi Colani said. Not that Chevrolet had asked him to design a Corvette, any more than BMW, Ferrari, Mazda, Volvo or other automakers had asked him to design the many models he has created over the last half-century. His artistry does not require an invitation. “The car they have is pretty good, maybe a 50, but mine will be a 99!” Mr. Colani …
High Beams: Simple Wood Toys, but So Much More December 15, 2006
Wooden toy cars that are a geometric nursery rhyme. IT’S not the old toy tin car or the plastic model assembled with glue. This toy, the Playsam Streamliner, is a five-inch painted wooden car that has become as powerful a symbol of Swedish design as a Volvo or an Ant chair. The design of the Streamliner is basic, a geometric nursery rhyme of a body and wheels and nothing more. It has been designated an official Swedish design classic by the Swedish National Museum and Swedish Design Council. Now, the Fitzsu Society, a shop in Los Angeles dedicated to …
Design: Cars So Green They’re Just a Dream December 2, 2006
Automakers’ West Coast studios are competing to design the best green-car fantasies at the third annual Design Challenge. HOBOS wandering the back roads used to sing about an imaginary place called the Big Rock Candy Mountain, “a land of lemonade springs where the bluebird sings,” where “there’s a lake of stew and of whiskey, too; you can paddle all around ‘em in a big canoe.” Designers on the road to the future dream of similar technological pie in the sky in this year’s rendition of the Design Challenge, a shoot-out of car concepts submitted by local satellite design studios …
Handlebars: Ducati’s GT Brings Back a Saucy Spirit of the ’70s
Leading-edge mechanical bits on the new Ducati GT1000 are smoothly integrated with styling from an era when motorcycles focused more on function and less on image-preening. RETRO, all too often, is a concept that works in the showroom but not on the road. Styling that oozes nostalgia and yanks at the heartstrings too often proves impossibly impractical - ideal in memory but flawed in everyday service. Then there are the revivals of classic forms that really work - tributes to the soundness of their original concepts - reminding us that newer isn’t always better. Consider the Ducati GT1000. As a …
First Glance: When German Chefs Cook Italian December 1, 2006
Who says the world doesn’t need another six-figure midengine German-made sports car? Introduced on Wednesday: Audi R8 Is it real? Born as a racecar and reincarnated as a design study, the R8 is now ready for production. Hardly a secret, an R8 was on display on Park Avenue in Manhattan for two weeks in October, but its official North American debut was in Los Angeles. What’s the point? Lamborghini is in the same corporate family as Audi, so why not use many of the same ingredients to cook up a German Gallardo? The …
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