Mike Hanlon

Shelby Super Cars has finally pulled the wraps off the car it has had under development for several years which is aiming for 280 mph. The aluminum and carbon fiber SSC Tuatara was styled by talented American designer Jason Castriota, and will run a mid-rear mounted, seven-litre, twin-turbo, Quad camshaft V8 producing 1,350 bhp. Shelby previously held the title of the world's fastest production car with the 1183 bhp, twin-turbo V8 Ultimate Aero TT which ran 412.68 km/h (256.18 mph). It bested the previous fastest, the original 1001 bhp Bugatti Veyron's 408 km/h (254 mph) but lost the title back to the French marque last year when a 1200 bhp Bugatti Veyron Super Sport ran 431 km/h (268 mph). Great image gallery on this one. Read More

We have to admit being more than a little surprised that in this increasingly health-conscious world, Porsche Design has released a new luxury Shisha waterpipe. Also known as a hookah or narghile, Shisha is becoming increasingly trendy in Western countries by "social" tobacco smokers and is already deeply embedded in African and Middle Eastern cultures. Porsche is one of the strongest, well respected brand names in the world, synonymous not only with uncompromising engineering and innovation, but with the deepest concern and respect for the safety of its customers. Why then would such a company create a product which is known to be so injurious to its users? Are Porsche's brand custodians asleep? Read More

If there was any doubt that the journeyman Husqvarna brand had found a permanent home, or would be reinvigorated by BMW ownership, those doubts were dispelled during the recent BMW Innovations Day program in Munich when the wraps were pulled off the new NUDA 900 R streetbike. If last year's Mille3 concept shown at EICMA hadn't pointed the way towards Husqy returning to the roads, the Nuda is a concrete design landmark that leaves no doubt about the future of a BMW Motorrad sister brand. The equation is simple: 100+ bhp with a meaty 100 Nm of torque, all in a package weighing 175 kg (386 lb) sans liquids. Read More

The first of the concept cars we'll see at this year's Frankfurt Motor Show has broken cover in the form of the Renault FRENDZY. It's the fourth Renault concept car based on its design strategy of addressing the needs of the different human “life stages”, the first three being the DeZir, Captur and the R-Space. The all-electric FRENDZY caters to the combined needs of work and family and is an electric commercial vehicle which uses an asymmetrical body and a raft of new technology to be both commercially viable and family friendly. Read More

The easiest place to pass everyone else on a motocross circuit is in the run to the first corner and should you grab the hole-shot, the race is yours to lose. All of which makes Kawasaki's latest addition to its 2012 KX450F a killer app for a race bike - it will be the ONLY bike on the grid in 2011/12 with "Launch Control". Activated by the push of a button, the Launch Control Mode map monitors wheel spin and retards the engine ignition timing to enable the rear tire to gain grip. Of course the fruit of the pudding will be measured by who gets to the first corner first, but if green bikes do it often enough, Kawasaki has a killer app. Read More

Last year in the Nürburgring 24 Hour race, Porsche's 911 GT3 R Hybrid held the lead for more than eight hours before problems unrelated to the hybrid system saw it relegated through the field. The organizer of the event thought the performance potential of the vehicle was so auspicious that for this year it crippled the rear-mounted petrol engine's performance to just 448 bhp. So Porsche built a completely new vehicle to the same design around the new regulations, lowered the weight, upped the electrical drive to the front wheels to 200 bhp and set out to run the same lap times. Not only did it achieve the same lap times, it delivered even better fuel consumption, and four hours after the start of this year's race, it hit the lead once more ... Read More

Austrian research company IAT21 has presented a new type of aircraft at the Paris Air Show which has the potential to become aviation's first disruptive technology since the jet engine. Neither fixed wing nor rotor craft, the D-Dalus uses four, mechanically-linked, contra-rotating, cylindrical turbines for its propulsion, and by altering the angle of the blades, it can launch vertically, hover perfectly still, move in any direction, and thrust upwards and hence "glue down" upon landing, which it can easily do on the deck of a ship, or even a moving vehicle. It's also almost silent, has the dynamic stability to enter buildings, handles rough weather with ease, flies very long distances very quickly and can lift very heavy loads. It's also so simple that it requires little maintenance and requires no more maintenance expertise than an auto mechanic. It accordingly holds immense promise as a platform for personal flight, for military usage, search and rescue, and much more. Read More

Huawei today unveiled its 7-inch MediaPad, which the company says will be the first to use the previously unannounced Android 3.2 Honeycomb OS (specifically optimized for 7-inch tablets) and the first to use Qualcomm's 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor. All the specs look to be on the mark but no pricing was announced. The release date is slated for Q3, 2011, so that could be any time between the end of next week and September 31. Read More

The Fits.me virtual fitting room is an online changing room where you simply enter your sizing statistics and a robotic mannequin models how various sizes will look on your torso - all from the comfort of your own home. Among a host of advantages, the virtual fitting room saves time - the one commodity destined to always be in short supply and solves the single biggest problem for online fashion retail - the lack of a fitting room.

When it was introduced for men last year, sales to new customers increased by 57%, and sales to international customers doubled. Now it's available for women too. Read More