A few posts back I wrote about the classic London Taxi coming to Sydney - and at a good time as the local manufactured taxis are no longer available. Ford, Holden and Toyota have all shut down their factories, so the current crop of new taxis are (mostly) imported Toyotas. The London Taxi fills a nice gap. Several years ago, Kamcorp started to test their Metrocabs … [Read more...]
Geely Buys Majority Stake in Lotus
Geely, the Chinese automaker has announced it will buy a 51% stake in Lotus from the Malaysia based Proton Holdings and it will also become a stakeholder of that company too. Geely means "auspicious" in Mandarin Chinese and we all hope that they will live up to their name and provide Lotus with some much needed funding. Lotus has had a rough time over the years bouncing … [Read more...]
Continuously Variable Transmissions
The Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) was first patented in Europe in 1886 and a US patent was taken out in 1935. Automotive Engineering Online is quoted as saying that Leonardo Da Vinci drew a sketch of a CVT in 1490 and a rudimentary version appeared on the Clyno (a British car) of 1923. The concept of CVT is to make an infinite number of gear speeds by using a … [Read more...]
Volvo Polestar
A few months ago, Volvo announced it was to acquire Polestar, a tuning company. Many other marques have gone down this path in the past, the notable ones being Mercedes-Benz who bought AMG, FIAT who bought Abarth and Renault who bought Alpine. Volvo being the odd one out because their tuner starts with a "P"! Other manufacturers have created their own performance lines: BMW … [Read more...]
