The most famous launch at the recent 2009 Shanghai Auto Show was the Geely GE, a car so blatantly derivative of its source material that Rolls Royce considered suing the Chinese company for copyright infringement.
Cars in America get recalled for various safety issues, if enough complaints come in. The NHTSA, a U.S. government entity that oversees car safety, received numerous complaints about the 2007-2008 Mini Cooper S, and forced BMW to issue a recall on 28,450 of those cars. Apparently, the protruding central exhaust tips were burning owners’ legs when they were unloading stuff after a drive.
Supplies for the U.S. military apparently pass through Pakistani sea-ports on their way to Afghanistan. On Sunday, armed militants blasted their way into two transport terminals in Pakistan and torched more than 160 vehicles, including more than 70 Humvees.
British tuning firm Project Kahn, owned by a British Muslim, introduced their Project Kahn Cosworth 300 customisation of the Range Rover Sport recently, and got a jumpstart to their production of the modded vehicle with an order for 80 examples from just the Saudi royal family.
The Italian police were already using two Lamborghini Gallardo patrol cars, donated to them by Lamborghini themselves. Those cars are now “old” models, so to renew their free-rolling-advertisement, the carmaker has now handed over a new Gallardo LP560-4 to the local Polizia.
To be shown at the upcoming CEATAC show in Japan, Nissan has developed a system designed for cars that could automatically avoid collisions, using ideas garnered from the natural abilities of bees.
So a few weeks ago, the staff manning the front desks at the Immigration department made my father run around different counters over two days as he tried to get a residence visa for my college-going brother, since the clerks were on a power-trip and kept asking for random bits of unneeded paperwork, which in the end were discarded without being checked. Incidentally, a few days ago, while dropping my mother off at the airport, I argued with red-shirted staff as they weren’t letting me pull my mother’s heavy suitcase up till the first x-ray scanner (much before the actual check-in counters,
This is probably the beginning of the end for petrol-powered cars. A Japanese company called Genepax, dedicated to finding ways to turn water into power, has unveiled what it calls the first practical car to run solely on water. The firm claims putting just one litre of water is enough to keep its automobile going for 60 minutes at a respectable speed of 80 kph. And the water can be from the tap, falling rain or even from rivers.
BMW let loose their designers to create the weirdest possible concept car, and they came up with the GINA Light Visionary Model. GINA stands for “Geometry and Functions in ‘N’ Adaptations” and the car’s single most interesting feature is its outer skin, which is made entirely out of textile fabric, pulled tightly around a frame of metal parts and carbon-fibre wires. The best part of this BMW Z4 lookalike is that it can change shape.
The Kia Mohave is apparently for sale in the GCC already. We only find out about local Kia news through third-party sources, since the Kia’s regional reps generally suck at communication. I found out through a billboard on the street. We also believe the truck-based offroadable Mohave is only available in “280 hp” 3.8-litre V6 form. We already reported on the Mohave before. Anyway, I am using this opportunity to announce that from now on, I’ll start replacing the term “4WD” with the term “SUV” in reference to such vehicles.