6volt Vinage Ford Flat Head Generator on 2040-parts.com

Ellesmere Port's bid to build Ampera hits snags

By Rob Golding Motor Industry 09 October 2009 15:02 Prime minister Gordon Brown’s personal crusade to get Vauxhall's version of the Chevrolet Volt petrol-electric plug-in hybrid – the Ampera – built in Britain's Ellesmere Port factory in 2012 is a dream delayed, CAR can disclose today.News that the UK Astra plant is the best in Europe, that the Astra's Delta platform will underpin the Ampera, and that Volt will be on US sale from 2010 had been taken to mean that Vauxhall would be churning out the cars in the north west within three years.But the prospect of an electric car industry growing up around the run-down Merseyside manufacturing site is not imminent, CAR has learned.'No Ampera to be built in Europe before 2015'Vauxhall insiders have made it clear that the car to be known as the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera in Europe will be an import from the US for at least five years. One senior planner told us: 'The US will be the sole source of Amperas until at least 2015.'Bob Lutz, GM's former product supremo who recently came out of retirement as a PR, said that the low value of the dollar made the US an ideal site for the manufacturing of export cars. And with forecast sticker prices of the range-extender electric car standing at a scary £35,000+, every price saving is vital to its marketability.The European market also needs time to get its electricity recharge infrastructure in place before it is worth making cars onshore in volume, GM high-ups point out.

Luigi Colani - Translating Nature

One of the most influential designers of the past half-century, Luigi Colani, is the subject of an exhibition at the Design Museum in London. With a career spanning almost six decades, Colani has applied his unique design style to produce cars, trucks, boats, aircraft, ceramics and consumer goods, as well as creating futuristic concepts for as-yet unrealized transport systems and architecture. There are Colani tea pots, mineral water bottles and sun glasses, but much of his work remains in the form of dream-like models or photographic montages.

Vintage motorcycles set to take over Road America

Road America will be two-wheel heaven this weekend, as the iconic circuit plays host to vintage-motorcycle racing. Put on by the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association, the races run on Saturday and Sunday. They will feature motorcycles from the 1920s to the early 1970s, Superbikes from the 1970s and 1980s, and more-modern racers from the Sound of Singles, Battle of Twins and Sound of Thunder classes AHRMA is an enthusiast group that preserves the heritage of racing motorcycles through events at race circuits.