Mike Hanlon

Sebastian Vettel won his second World F1 drivers championship today, and although only taking third place in the Japanese Grand Prix, he is still on track for the most dominant season in F1 history. His third place at Suzuka gave him 324 of the 375 points on offer – a stunning 86.4% of available points and still ahead of Michael Schumacher's best during his reign with Ferrari. Like most other records in F1, Vettel is once again the youngest to achieve the feat. For Red Bull Racing, it's the team's second drivers title and it is closing in on the constructors title with a lead of 130 points and just four races to go. Perhaps more ominously, the team it has assembled, and the relationship with both Infiniti and engine-suppliers Renault looks more than capable of sustaining the success.  Read More

The historically-significant 1884 De Dion Bouton et Trepardoux Dos-a-Dos Steam Runabout which we wrote up a few weeks back has sold at auction for US$4.62 million. Apart from being the winner of the first automobile race in history, it's also the world’s oldest running motor car, and now also the most valuable early motor car yet sold at auction.  Read More

In the world of automotive design, Gordon Murray has no living equal. His F1 cars won 22 races for Brabham, then four successive double world titles for McLaren. He then created the McLaren F1 supercar, the McLaren Mercedes SLR, and more recently the much-more-ambitious City Car Project. Now his design consultancy has created an electric sportscar. Its power and weight are remarkably similar to icons of a bygone era, such as the Austin Healey Sprite, Triumph Spitfire and MG Midget, but the AR.1 promises much more fun.  Read More

UPDATED: NEW VIDEO Nissan is building two Juke-R concept cars. The tiny rocketships will be comprised of the all-wheel-drive drive-train and 480 bhp 3.8-liter twin-turbo V6 engine from the Nissan GT-R supercar wedged into Nissan's diminutive crossover city car. The cars are being built by RML for Nissan Technical Centre for Europe (NTC-E) with a view to testing the “public’s reaction to a seriously sporty Juke.” The performance of the tiny super-city car is not yet known, but given the horsepower and dimensions of the vehicle, it will no doubt be one of the fastest accelerating roadcars in existence. There's also just a hint that should reaction be positive, it just might eventuate as a production model.  Read More

The 16th Annual Supercharging conference was held last week at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany where many interesting new developments in the critically important field of forced induction were shown. Most motor vehicles only use maximum power for a small fraction of their time on the road, and with downsizing of engines now standard practice for the auto industry, supercharging is an ideal way of providing that power boost from a small engine. We've written previously about Controlled Power Technologies' (CPT) 12 volt electric supercharger, but it now has a 48 volt version which uses 7 kW of electrical power and delivers (an extra) six to ten times that power at the crankshaft for overtaking and steep hills.  Read More

Ducati's new generation v-twin 1200cc sports bike will be announced at the EICMA International Motorcycle Show in Milan this November. What we know for sure is that it will be named the "Ducati 1199 Panigale" and that it will not use the traditional Ducati trellis frame but a roadgoing version of the frameless design which has been raced and evaluated rather unsuccessfully by the world's best rider - Valentino Rossi. It seems like a massive gamble for a company that has traditionally attracted customers with its race-winning superbikes. Rumours suggest that the new road bike will weigh in at 176 kg wet and produce 195 bhp. How well it will handle will be the issue.  Read More

In a raft of announcements, Honda has developed a highly fuel-efficient, very torquey 700cc twin cylinder engine with a second-generation Dual Clutch Transmission which it will show in three different motorcycle designs at the EICMA 2011 International Motorcycle Exhibition in November in Milan, Italy. The motor will also be paired with a manual six-speed transmission in at least one of those bikes and as it delivers better than 3.7 l/100km and its motor is designed for on-road usability, it is almost certainly the first bike designed for western markets to take advantage of the world's coming gas crisis. Also on display will be Honda's new 125 engine which will be used in its 125cc scooters around the world starting next year and contains an idle-stop system and delivers 25% better fuel economy than current generation scooter engines. Both the 700cc and 125cc engines contain considerable technological wizardry to achieve their goals.  Read More

The concept of a floating island is not new, having first surfaced in Homer's Odyssey and with the first artificially-constructed floating island making an appearance in an 1895 novel by the father of science fiction, Frenchman Jules Verne. In recent times we've seen WallyIsland, The Streets of Monte Carlo and Tropical Island Paradise, but Project Utopia is both viable and strangely enticing - a 100m x 100m construct spanning 11 decks with the equivalent floorspace of a cruise liner.  Read More

Yamaha's R1 will gain a six-mode MotoGP-developed Traction Control System (TCS) for the 2012 model year, along with a new ECU (Engine Control Unit) with new mapping. It's the only real change to the R1 for next year though, and Yamaha's premier sports bike will again be the heaviest of the liter bikes.  Read More