1951 Mercury Hood Ornament on 2040-parts.com

Obama vows to help rebuild industry to compete, win

President Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed to hold U.S. automakers accountable for "bad practices" but promised to help create a "retooled, re-imagined auto industry." In remarks to a joint session of Congress, Obama gave a sobering assessment of the nation's ills--mainly economic--but said: "We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before." About midway through the speech, the president said: "As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices.

Volvo consign normal car batteries to the history book

Volvo consign normal car batteries to the history book by using body panels for storage As our cars become more and more reliant on power from batteries – either to run the multitude of technology or top provide power for electric motors – the cost and size of the batteries needed continues to grow. But Volvo have been working an an alternative for the last 3.5 years which can potentially do away with the battery and instead store power in body panels. Volvo has built an experimental S80 which has body panels made of carbon fibre and polymer resins and structural super capacitors.

Not every Chrysler dealer gets to sell SRT Viper

The redesigned 2013 SRT Viper will be sold at about one in five Chrysler Group dealerships, says Ralph Gilles, head of the high-performance SRT brand. To qualify for the sports car, dealerships will have to train staff, buy special tools and improve their facilities. "We're going to open it up to any dealer who can put the money forward and the training, but it's going to be pretty difficult to hit all of those things," Gilles said during a broadcast interview with journalists in Detroit this month.