Over the past few years I have talked about different styles of doors including suicide and gullwings. For this article I will discuss retractable doors and I originally wrote this article back in 2010, so it was an interesting task to update it! The first time I saw this style of door on a production vehicle it was on a BMW Z1 – the first of the Z series from the late … [Read more...]
Hydrogen Powered Cars
In the past few years many manufacturers who were developing prototype hydrogen powered cars have dropped them in favour of hybrids or pure electric cars. Ford, Nissan and Renault have all dropped their programs although BMW, Toyota and Mazda have been the three notable proponents of this technology who are pushing on with their development. Hyundai and Honda have also been … [Read more...]
Bristol Cars
If you are eccentric or fully loaded with pots of money you may be in the market for a Bristol – a very rare supercar that most people will never have seen! Like many car companies around the world, they came out of aircraft manufacturing – think about my history articles on Cord and Duesenberg, they used Lycoming who developed aircraft engines and there would have been a lot … [Read more...]
Max Hoffman
I enjoy reading classic car magazines from Europe and the US and one name seems to appear in every edition - Maximilian Hoffman! Who was he and why was he such an important figure in the automotive industry? By the way don’t confuse him with his namesake who was a World War 1 military strategist who helped defeat Russian advances in 1917 - a pivotal reason for the Russian … [Read more...]
Run-Flat Tyres
Over the years many companies have sold the consumer on the benefit of having a run-flat tyre. In fact for a while, they were standard fit on many Austin and Morris Metro cars in the UK during the 1980s. There are advantages and disadvantages of having these types of tyres fitted - the clear benefit is that should the tyre be punctured, the driver can still continue their … [Read more...]