THE OLDEST SURVIVING, AND THE FOURTH MADE, ROLLS-ROYCE sold at auction in London yesterday for £3.5 million ($7.22 million).

PA photo

The open-topped, two-seater has a 10 hp engine and was completely restored in the 1950’s.  It has been kept in perfect running condition since then.

PA photo

Reuters has the STORY.

Pre-auction Video:

photos courtesy National Corvette Museum 

THE NATIONAL CORVETTE MUSEUM IN BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY, is starting a major expansion project.

Last week earth-movers began the site work for a $9 million, 47,000-sq. ft. addition to the existing museum located near the General Motors assembly plant where the Corvettes are produced.

Wendell Strode, director of the museum, said bids for the work should be awarded in February, with the work beginning in March, weather permitting. Strode hopes the project is complete in early summer 2009 so that the finishing touches, including new grass growing, can be ready for the museum’s 15th anniversary on Labor Day that year.

Architect’s drawing of new expansion area

The new area will include a library-archives, an expanded gift store and a conference center with a seating capacity of 400. The center also can be used to display 50 additional cars. 

It also will add a dedicated area for inspection, display and pickup of special-delivery Corvettes people order from the General Motors Bowling Green Assembly Plant.

About 17,000 square feet of the existing museum will be renovated and 275 parking spaces will be added.

The 5 generations of Corvette

The National Corvette Museum WEBSITE.

POPULAR MECHANICS HAS RUN ONE OF ITS FAMOUS ROAD TESTS, this time they compare duallie pickups from Ford, GMC and Dodge on a towing test.  Using diesel engines of at least 350 horsepower, they ran the trucks through a range of tests both off-road in on the highway.

PM’s online report goes into detail on the specs of each truck and the testing criteria.  They also have videos posted as part of the report, one on the front page describing the test and then one for each of the trucks run through the program.

I won’t tell you which one came in first, but it’s apparent from the readers’ comments that they don’t necessarily agree.

Read it HERE and see what you think.

NISSAN MOTORS ANNOUNCED TODAY THAT within the next three years they will be offering a special paint on their cars that can change colors instantly.

By toggling a switch on your dashboard, you can change the exterior color of your car to any color you desire at the moment.  It’s done by utilizing what they call a “paramagnetic iron oxide paint polymer.”  By utilizing an electric current, the iron oxide paint crystals can be slightly rearranged causing a different angle of refraction (still with me?) which fools the eye into thinking that the color is different.  The metal car body is the perfect conductor for the charge.

Unfortunately, when the current is cut off (you park the car), it all slips back to the default color of white.  That’s not too bad as long as you’re the first one in town with an electric paint job.  But eventually you’ll come out of the office and look onto a parking lot filled with hundreds of white cars.

Read more about it HERE.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS IS REPORTING TODAY that the U. S. Government is stepping up its investigations of increasing numbers of engine fires in older VW Passats.

They say further:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a posting on its Web site today that there had been 78 reports of engine fires and two injuries. The German automaker has received 14,850 warranty claims over the engine fires, the government said.

The investigation, which began in May, is focused on about 345,000 Passat sedans from the 2000-2003 model year. NHTSA said many of the complaints attribute the fires to a failure of the ignition coil.

Volkswagen has provided the government with information on the vehicle’s three different engines and ignition systems. The investigation was upgraded to allow additional analysis.

MOST OF THE TIME, GARY LEE IS A BATTALION CHIEF for the Lenexa, Kansas, Fire Department.  But when the NASCAR auto racing show comes to Kansas City, he puts on his raceway fire chief’s hat.

Since the track opened in 2001, Chief Lee has been in charge of a raceday support staff of 150 people who provide the fire control and safety of the race participants as well as the extrication work on any crashes on the track itself.  Except during the week prior to each race, he spends about 15 - 20 hours a week at his 2nd job. 

Kansas City Star photo

He has done such a good job with his crew that NASCAR now brings emergency personnel from other tracks up to Kansas Speedway for training.

The Kansas City Star has a good story about him HERE.
Lenexa Fire Department WEB SITE.
Kansas Speedway WEB SITE.

“ROAD RAGE” HAS JUST TAKEN ANOTHER STEP UP.  Dillon Aero of Arizona has just introduced a security car built from a GMC Yukon.  Popular Mechanics checked it out and tells us:

From the street, the GMC Yukons customized by Dillon Aero look like standard-issue SUVs. But behind the tinted windows lurks a fire-spitting dragon: a Dillon Aero M134D Gatling minigun. Designed for VIP escort, the Yukons are outfitted with a roll cage, steel-plate armor and puncture-proof fuel cells and tires. And though weighing around 9000 pounds, the vehicles can exceed speeds of 100 mph (forthcoming supercharged models should be able to go even faster).

At the first sign of trouble, the gunner can pop through roof panels mounted on spring-loaded gas shocks, swivel up to 360 degrees, and unleash a withering, 3000-rounds-per-minute barrage. That’s 50 different 7.62-mm bullets every second.

The two half-moon roof panels act as a shield, and the gun operates off its own 28-volt electrical system, which feeds the ammo from 3400-round linked belts. “The vehicle lays down so much firepower so fast,” says a Dillon Aero spokesman (who asked to remain anonymous), “if you’re a bad guy, all you’re going to want to do is keep your head down.”

Dillon is secretive about who their customers are, but they do admit that some governments friendly to the U.S. have purchased some. 

SOME JOLLY LADS IN A CAR SHOP in Manchester, England took a 3-yr.-old Ferrari 360 Modena and converted it into a limousine.  Dubbed the “Supercar for the Masses” it is capable of going 170 mph.  But Dan Cawley, the owner, says that after they tune the engine, it should be able to hit 200 mph.

It only seats 8 people, each one in a racecar bucket seat with 5-point harness.  The 400 hp car was carefully cut in half and then a 9½ ft.-long carbon fiber section added to it.  The passengers get in through hydraulically-operated gull wing doors.  By using carbon fiber, which is stronger than steel, yet much lighter, the car maintains its performance standards and can go from 0-60 in less than six seconds.  When the project is completed they will rent the car out at approx. $1,500 per hour.

In this video Dan shows how they built the car.

……WILL PROBABLY ALSO BE THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS CAR.  Tata Motors in India has just announced they will be producing a mostly-plastic automobile that will sell for the equivalent of $2,400.

In a poverty-riddled country where entire families of 4 ride perched on a motorbike, Tata hopes to ride the booming economy of India to bring more families into automobile ownership.  Currently only 8 of every 1,000 Indians owns a car, compared with 770 per thousand Americans.

The four-door puppy will have a 33-hp engine, but they claim it will get up to 80 mph.  They even say it will pass a crash test, but they don’t say who is doing the testing.

The potential market is huge, not just in India but other places like Brazil, China, Russia.

The Scotland Sunday Herald has the full STORY.

THREE-TIME FORMULA ONE CHAMPION NELSON PIQUET had his driver’s license taken away in his native Brazil because he had too many “points.”

Reuters reports:  Piquet, one of just three Brazilians to win the Formula One world championship, lost his license in June after receiving a slew of speeding and parking tickets. His wife, Viviane, also had her license taken away for bad driving and joined her husband in the mandatory driver awareness course.

“I think we have to pay for our mistakes,” Piquet, 54, told local news agency G1. “It’s not even just a speeding problem. I got tickets for all kinds of reasons, for things like parking where I shouldn’t.”

They have begun attending 30 hours of classes over eight days and will have to pass an exam before regaining their licenses.

Nelson and Viviane Piquet pay attention
during their driver’s awareness training.

SHOWING THAT YOU CAN GO “GREEN” and still burn rubber, a collection of alternate-fuel cars are ready to show their stuff.

One is a Dodge E85 Viper street car with a 1200 hp ethanol-powered V-10 that has already been clocked at 220 mph.

Another is Ford’s Fusion Hydrogen 999.  The Fusion has a 770 hp electric motor powered by a hydrogen fuel cell and they expect it to exceed 315 mph on the salt flats.

Popular Mechanics provided the photos and the article HERE.

INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY DIDN’T WASTE any time filling the hole in the schedule left by the departing prima donna’s of Formula 1.  Track president Joie Chitwood announced yesterday that the international motorcycle circuit MotoGP will be racing on the road course on Sept. 14, 2008.

There will still need to be several millions of dollars of renovations to the road course to configure it to meet motorcycle safety standards and to make it amenable to counter-clockwise racing.  The F-1 races clockwise.

According to the Indianapolis Star, the road course will be converted from a 13-turn, 2.605-mile layout to 2.601 miles with 16 turns. It will use the front straightaway of the oval, where the motorcycles will reach speeds approaching 215 mph, and several stretches of the existing circuit. Many of the changes are dictated by safety because the bikes require large runoff areas. 

Indy joins Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca at Monterey, Calif., in giving MotoGP two U.S. venues on its schedule, which this year lists 18 races at major road circuits around the world. Laguna Seca hosts its race this weekend.

This is really a big deal, and Firegeezer predicts that this will prove to be much more successful at the box office than F-1 was.

Read the full story HERE.