Jack Martin
Aston Martin's new V12 Zagato had quite a spectacular and busy few weeks following its first public showing on May 21 on the shores of Lake Como (Italy) at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este where it won the award for Design in the Concepts and Prototypes class. A week later, two identical prototypes finished fifth and sixth in their class at the Nurburgring 24 Hour race, verifying that the gorgeous handcrafted aluminium and carbon fibre machines were indeed capable of holding their own in any company. So began a period of what Aston Martin termed “overwhelmingly encouraging interest from customers” which has finally resulted in a commitment to a limited production run of 150 examples of the Zagato. Read More
Sixty-one year old motorsport legend Nobuhiro 'Monster' Tajima, almost certainly the oldest world class athlete competing in any sport today, won his sixth consecutive Pikes Peak International Hill Climb on Sunday, at the same time as breaking the long standing 10 minute barrier for the course which rises 1.5 kilometers from start to oxygen-starved finish. Nissan's electric LEAF established a new electric car record for the course and Ducati's "four bikes in 1" Multistrada defended its 2010 win with a new record too. Read More
Buckminster Fuller was an American inventor and futurist whose prolific and widely admired work gave us the geodesic dome, the remarkable Dymaxion Chronofile, the term ""Spaceship Earth" and the Dymaxion car. The Norman Foster-built Dymaxion car had a rare public outing at the exclusive boutique-style Salon Prive event in London this week. Nice photo file on this one. Read More
Toyota will continue the growing trend among auto makers of announcing new models and concept cars at places other than auto shows by unveiling the GRMN Sports Concept II at the Nürburgring 24-hour race this weekend. The GRMN is a lightweight, petrol-electric hybrid convertible with 295 bhp. The 245 bhp V6 is located centrally and drives the rear wheels while the front wheels are electrically-powered to complete the sports-hybrid AWD system. Read More
Israeli defense technology company Elbit has successfully tested an interesting new Forward Ground Control Station (FGCS) for its Skylark I LE man-packable Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). The lightweight FCGS is 15 kg (33 lbs) lighter than the existing Skylark ground control system and is designed to enable dismounted soldiers to carry minimum gear for optimal operational efficiency, as the UAS can be launched by Dispatcher Units well to the rear, transferring control of the operation to the FGCS-equipped Forward Units when the UAS reaches their range. Read More
Three distant shots of a disguised prototype have emerged as the latest evidence that longtime dirt bike manufacturer Husqvarna is to begin building road bikes. We’ve previously covered the rumors and staged releases from BMW-owned Husqvarna here and here, but these are the first images yet seen of the naked streetfighter which will use a new 900cc version of the Rotax parallel twin used by BMW. Read More
OEM/ODM specialist Dayton Industrial is set to commence volume production of a low energy Bluetooth 4.0 heart-rate chest belt using Nordic Semiconductor's new µBlue nRF8001 chip. That might not seem all that ground breaking at first glance, but it’s a significant event likely to kickstart a whole new genre of health and fitness related smartphone apps which use the wireless heart-rate (HR) belt to monitor, display and analyse heart rate data. Indeed, I can see a whole new and exciting range of training apps which use social networking to support and share one's progress. Read More
It may look like one of the most outrageous automotive concepts seen in many a year, but the Unimog 4WD Cabrio Truck concept created to celebrate 60 years of Mercedes Benz Unimog production actually has some basis in history - the very first Mercedes Unimog which rolled off the production line back on June 3, 1951 was also a cabrio, and it was also green, as has been almost every other Unimog in the intervening years. Based on the current Unimog U 5000 with its exceptional off-road capabilities, the Unimog Cabrio is apparently designed to bridge current and future Unimog design. Read More
It’s a sign of the times that Ford is gearing up to launch the smallest capacity engine, with less cylinders than any it has previously produced. The new 1.0-liter EcoBoost will be launched globally in all small Ford cars, and in addition to recognized technologies employed by Ford in its EcoBoost engines, such as turbocharging, direct injection and twin independent variable camshaft timing (Ti-VCT), the new three-cylinder engine will have an offset crankshaft for improved fuel economy, a split cooling system that allows the cylinder block to warm up before the cylinder head, and the exhaust manifold is cast into the cylinder head to lower exhaust gas temperatures and save weight. Read More
Last year at the UN climate change talks in Cancun, it was agreed that cutting emissions sufficiently to limit the world’s temperature increase to 2°C would require a far‑reaching transformation of the global energy system. To limit the world’s temperature increase to 2°C, it was agreed that the long-term concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would need to be limited to around 450 parts per million of carbon-dioxide (CO2). Sadly, the International Energy Agency has just released figures indicating that energy-related CO2 emissions in 2010 were the highest ever, reaching 30.6 Gigatonnes (Gt). This means that to achieve the 2020 target, where emissions must not be greater than 32 Gt, emissions will need to rise less over the next ten years in total than they did between 2009 and 2010. Read More
