This article may not be suitable for reading at work! It is about a very odd fetish and a man who clearly enjoys it. Early last year, a 27 year old man from Michigan was arrested after taking several vehicles from a General Motors dealer and damaging four of them. He was also accused of “cranking” in another vehicle. This piqued my interest as I had never heard of … [Read more...]
Hybrid Power
For this weeks technical article, I thought that it would be good to cover the current and ongoing trend for hybrids. Nearly every time I talk technology I start with a comment that the subject is not new. Well, guess what - hybrid cars aren’t new and are certainly not 21st century vehicles. Back in 1901 the famous engineer, Ferdinand Porsche designed and drove a prototype … [Read more...]
Jaguar V12
In its first 20 years, Jaguar only produced two engines – the Jaguar XK and the Jaguar V12. I wrote about the many variants of the XK engine in a recent article and this is about the V12. The first thoughts about a V12 engine came in the mid 1950s. Jaguar had gained great success at Le Mans with the C and D Types using the XK engine. They needed a larger, more powerful motor … [Read more...]
Sumitomo’s Superconducting Motor
Back in 2008 when I started podcasting, I discussed a new story about Sumitomo releasing a prototype of an electric car using a superconducting motor. This was hailed as a world first. The benefit of using such a motor was to provide greater torque from a lower voltage. Sumitomo had plans to test it in larger vehicles such as buses and trucks. At the time Sumitomo had built a … [Read more...]
Lexus V8
As I have written about many successful engines during the last few months, I thought I would continue the theme with one on the Lexus V8. I wasn’t that intrigued by these engines until I read an article about drag racers dumping their Chrysler Hemi’s in favour of a lightweight Lexus V8! Lexus have produced two versions of their V8. The first, codenamed 1UZ-FE, was a 4 litre … [Read more...]