Goodwood Festival Of Speed

By Ben Whitworth Motor Shows 04 June 2007 07:40 This year’s Festival of Speed is shaping up to be one of the biggest and hottest gathering of fast cars and motorbikes the world has ever seen. Running under the theme of ‘Breaking Records and Pushing Boundaries’, the three-day adrenaline-fuelled carnival will focus on the 100th anniversaries of both Brooklands and the Isle of Mann TT, as well as celebrating 60 years of Ferrari, 20 years of the World Superbike Championship and the fastest cars in the world from the Bonneville Speed Week. Running from 22-24 June, the Festival will feature everything from the Sunbeam V12 350hp that set the final Land Speed Record at Brooklands to the Andy Green-piloted JCB Dieselmax which last year set the Diesel Land Speed Record.

Koenigsegg Agera at Geneva

The new Koenigsegg Agera will be at the Geneva Motor Show We did warn you last week that Koenigsegg were taking ‘Something New’ to the Geneva Motor Show. We had had a chat with them as things had been very quiet, and we did say to them we wondered if Christian had lost focus on Koenigsegg and been side-tracked with the whole Saab-Saga. The response was pretty clear “Christian never lost focus on Koenigsegg and secondly there are many new developments within Koenigsegg.

Vauxhall launches speed limit detectors on Insignia (2008)

By Tim Pollard First Official Pictures 19 June 2008 07:53 Vauxhall's new Insignia will be the first of a wave of cars to have a forward-facing camera that can read road signs. The optional kit will detect speed limit and no overtaking signs – and flash up a reminder to the driver on the dashboard.GM calls the tech, which will be launched in early 2009, Traffic Sign Recognition and it uses a small, wide-angled camera system supplied by Hella. It sits at the top of the windscreen near the rain sensors and rear-view mirror, scanning the road ahead taking 30 photos per second.It's 1984 all over again...With a range of 100 metres, the camera focuses on circular patterns and then interprets the numbers inside by contour comparison; if a match is found on the software's database, that road sign will be flashed up in the driver's binnacle.The front-facing camera is also used as a lane departure warning system, alerting the driver if they unintentionally swerve out of their lane on a motorway.Cars with cameras: a growing trendMore and more manufacturers are fitting cameras to their cars nowadays and you can expect a flood of systems like the Insignia's to be launched in 2009, including the new BMW 5-series.CAR tried out these new systems on Bosch prototypes in 2007.