Blog on 2040Parts

Traffic Booster honks at drivers as soon as the light turns green

The Traffic Booster is a simple little device: a few resistors, some switches, a box with a cheap car horn in it. The schematics are here for easy home replication, dog-eared copy of "The Anarchist Cookbook" not required. But the apocalyptic infuriation it causes is priceless, and if deployed across a city center, the ensuing riots will cause untold millions in damages.

Chrysler and Nissan lead March sales gains

Chrysler Group and Nissan Motor Co. posted solid gains in March U.S. sales, while Toyota Motor Corp., General Motors and Ford Motor Co.

Computer gamers pass test but more likely to crash

PEOPLE who play computer games are more likely to pass their driving test at the first attempt but they are also the most likely to crash within 12 months of gaining a full driver’s licence. Research shows 73% of computer gamers pass their driving test at the first try compared to 58% of the total of test applicants. However, the same study by insurance firm Privilege also showed 77% of gamers had a car accident with the first year of driving when only 27% of the total number of new drivers experienced the same problem.

2015 Jaguar F-Type Coupe drive review

What Is It? Jaguar put an all-aluminum roof on the all-aluminum F-Type sports car and doubled the car's torsional rigidity. Since it had twice the torsional rigidity, engineers firmed up the continuously adjusting Adaptive Dynamics dampers and added stiffer springs for better handling.

One-off 1990 Corvette ZR-1 Spyder saved from sinkhole; video shows extraction

You'll have to excuse the National Corvette Museum's timing -- museum staff are excited to report that a one-off 1990 Corvette ZR-1 Spyder has just been pulled from the sinkhole that opened up beneath the show floor in February, and they want you to know that this isn't some sort of cruel April 1 hoax. Don't believe us? Just watch the video below There hasn't been much headline-making news out of the Corvette museum since the 1 millionth Corvette built was saved from the sarlacc pit in early March, bringing the number of cars returned to ground level to five.

Kickboxer wraps Ferrari 458 in GOLD

How do you make a statement if you’re a kickboxing world champion who wants his £200,000 Ferrari 458 Spider to stand out from every other supercar in London? Well, how about wrapping it in gold? This gold Ferrari 458 Spider belongs to kickboxing world champion Riyadh al-Azzawi, who has wrapped his car to match his medal collection.

BMW Group unveils in-car G-force and tea-drinking engine

BMW AND Mini have today unveiled pioneering new technologies that produce artificial G-force and even let an engine run on tea leaves. BMW has revealed plans for a system called Force Injection Booster (FIB), which when activated fires artificial gravity at the driver and passenger through the air conditioning vents. But the style-conscious needn’t worry, because the German firm has also patented AirNet, the world’s first in-car hair protection technology.

Car April Fool Stuff: From Chips Away to BMW

Chips Away’s new APP removes dents in cars The car news on April 1st always includes a chunk of April Fools, and this year is no different with some good, some bad and some quite lame. The people that take the everyday knocks out of your car at home – Chips Away – have come up with a DentsAway App – in conjunction with ALA – that will uses a Smartphone’s electro-magnetic pulses to ionise the metal on a car dent and pull it back in to shape. Chips Away and ALA have used their April 1st announcement as the chance for a giveway, with three winners getting a pair of tickets for the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year if they share the video (below) on Facebook or Twitter.

Birth of an Icon

The first thing you notice when you step into Icon's sprawling, 120,000-square-foot shop in Chatsworth, Calif. -- past the fenced-in yard of Broncos of every size and Land Cruisers of every generation, past the 1952 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon with the DeSoto front end and a massaged patina of greens, browns, and ochres resembling a Cezanne painting -- is the smell. It smells old in here.

New Peugeot 308 GT hot hatch due on sale in 2014

Peugeot The Peugeot 308 GT will be unveiled at the 2014 Paris Motor Show this September, according to company insiders. Speaking at the launch of the 308 SW estate, Peugeot sources told us that the 308 GT will be revealed in its home market and is likely to go on sale before the end of the year. Technical details haven't been announced, but the 308 GT is expected to use a version of the 208 GTi's turbocharged 1.6-litre engine, with a similar power output of about 200hp.

Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid ‘game-changer’ to cost same as diesel model

Mitsubishi Mitsubishi UK has revealed it will sell its new Plug-In Hybrid Outlander EV for the SAME price it retails diesel versions of the Land Rover Freelander rival, rather than many thousands of pounds more – a move managing director Lance Bradley believes has the potential to "blow the market apart. "It could be a gamechanger," he told MSN Cars as the firm prepared to reveal the car’s price. "A car like this comes along once in a generation: this could be our Mazda MX-5, our Jaguar F-Type." On Bing: see pictures of the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEVFind out how much a used Mitsubishi Outlander Including the £5,000 UK government subsidy for plug-in vehicles, the entry-level Outlander PHEV GX3h will be priced from £28,249, the same as the diesel-powered Outlander GX3h auto.

Let Q modify your Aston Martin

We imagine there were really two options for naming Aston Martin's new personalization program: Q, or something boring like Amalgamated Personalisation & Colour Programme, complete with British spellings that will vex most spell-checking software and render it unsearchable in Google. Fortunately, Aston Martin has wisely decided to adopt the same name as the Quartermaster in Ian Fleming's "James Bond" novels -- a pure coincidence, we're told. Lucky owners of these customized machines will be able to tell their friends that it was Q who added a few special touches to their cars.

Peugeot Adds Estate To Acclaimed 308 Range

FRENCH car maker Peugeot had released details of its new medium-size estate, the 308 SW, which should start hitting showrooms in June. Hoping to build on the success of its recently launched 308 hatchback, the SW promises the same level of standard equipment, Peugeot’s newfound bold approach to exterior design and wallet-friendly petrol and diesel engines. Prices will start from £16,895 for the entry-level 110 horsepower 1.2-litre petrol model, while engine stop-start, both manual and automatic gearboxes will be offered along with selected engines dipping to 85g/km CO2.

Electric cars to be powered by AA-style batteries

A NEW COMPANY is claiming its new design of battery could see future electric cars powered by batteries no bigger than the current AA size. LipraLoof Techologies Ltd, a new start-up, has teamed up with City Car Club to trial the new technology in its fleet of vehicles. The new batteries use a complex mix of metal hydrates to create a quad, or 4A battery, which produces far more power than a standard battery.

Self-driving Tesla could hit roads within three years

Electric car manufacturer Tesla has said that self-driving cars could be a reality within the next three years, with the firm targeting a computer-guided version of its Model S saloon. Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk said in an interview with the Financial Times that the autonomous driving technology would act like “an autopilot” that could be switched on and off like an aeroplane’s guidance system. On Bing: see pictures of autonomous cars Find out how much a used Tesla costs on Auto Trader However, while Musk claimed that 90% of distances driven today would be able to be completed autonomously in three years’ time, he also admitted that fully self-driving vehicles may be a “bridge too far” in the near future.

Set sail in the Fiat 1100 Boat Car by Carrozzeria Coriasco

There are a few ways to tackle the problem of wanting to have a boat and a car but only having the space (or budget) for one vehicle. You could go the Amphicar route and end up with a so-so car that's also a so-so boat (bail-out buckets of charm though!). If budget permits, you could pick up a Quadski, but that doesn't give you the comfort of an enclosed cabin.

2014 Honda Civic LX recalled over tire issue

Honda is recalling 9,816 Civic LX sedans and coupes from the 2014 model year due to a potential tire issue. The problem concerns the mounting of the tires -- Honda believes the tire bead may have gotten pinched between the assembly equipment and the steel wheel rims, which in turn may have caused damage to the tire. This problem could potentially cause the tire to lose air, thereby increasing the risk of a crash.

Cadillac ELR recall targets stability control software issues

The 2014 Cadillac ELR is being recalled for an issue with its electronic stability control (ESC) system. According to NHTSA, the software for the car's electronic stability control system may inhibit certain ESC functions, and fail to alert the driver than ESC is partially or fully disabled. This could potentially give the driver no warning that ESC may be off entirely, which could result in a loss of control, increasing the risk of a crash.

Feds: Backup cameras in all new cars by 2018

The U.S. Department of Transportation today finalized a set of federal standards for rear visibility that will require all new vehicles under 10,000 pounds to have backup cameras by mid-2018. Congress called for the rules in 2008 after a spate of accidents in which parents driving cars or trucks backed over their young children, killing them.

The Mitsubishi Evo is dead

As Mitsubishi shifts its global lineup toward utility vehicles and electrified cars, it will pull the plug on the Lancer Evolution at the end of the nameplate's current generation. “Mitsubishi Motors does not have any plans to design a successor with the current concept, as a high-performance four-wheel drive gasoline-powered sedan,” spokeswoman Namie Koketsu said, describing the car as having “icon” status. “Mitsubishi Motors will explore the possibilities of high-performance models that incorporate electric vehicle technology.” Dropping the Evo was foreshadowed last fall when President Osamu Masuko unveiled a new mid-term business plan that would deprioritize in-house sedans and explore sourcing them through joint projects with the Renault-Nissan Alliance.

Fewer people commuting but distances on the up

The average commute has increased in distance, but more people working from home means there are actually fewer cars on the road at rush hour today compared to 10 years ago, according to statistics from the most recent Census conducted in 2011. Figures show the average commute has increased from 8.3 miles in 2001 to 9.32 miles in 2011. People living in the east of England travelled the furthest to work at an average distance of 10.34 miles – while those in London had the shortest commutes averaging 6.83 miles.

Watch Bucky Lasek steal a sheriff's daughter with a Subaru Impreza WRX

Someone at Subaru probably canceled their plans, found enough Mountain Dew to keep them awake, plunked down in a comfy chair and watched the entirety of Grindhouse -- including the fake trailers -- to come up with the above fake trailer. Skateboarding hero Bucky Lasek, who races for Subaru's GRC team, does his best stoner-hippie Johnny Depp impression as he picks up the sheriff's daughter (Instagram "sensation" Kayslee Collins) and proceeds to do donuts around typical Midwestern fare -- and a peeing scarecrow -- in a 2015 Subaru Impreza WRX, made for jumping on dirt, storming through fireballs, being menaced by a shotgun and feeding Lasek donuts while he does donuts himself. You've been warned.

Ford once planned to race fiberglass-bodied Mustang touring cars

Tucked away on page nine of the May 9, 1964 issue of Competition Press and Autoweek is an intriguing little story: “FIA Rejects Ford Bid for Homolgation [sic].” At the time, the Mustang had just made its world debut, but Ford was already scheming to fold the car into its “Total Performance” campaign. The automaker apparently proposed to do so with a fleet of crazy fiberglass-bodied touring cars. According to Competition Press, Ford tried to get the new Mustang classified as a touring car for international racing.

One Lap of the Web: The Worst Cars in the World Edition

-- The first annual "Wal-Mart Car Show" is actually an Internet gallery featuring wood-bedecked Oldsmobiles, sponged minivans, Avatar tribute Silverados, and Subaru Outbacks with giant logs for bumpers. There's no offical judging, so feel free to draw your own conclusions about the drivers of these questionable vehicles. -- A Mitsubishi has many similarities to a Ferrari.

Classic Camaro, Chevelle and Nova factory documents emerge

If you own a classic Camaro, Chevelle, or Nova, getting a missing piece of history on your car is about to get a little easier. The National Corvette Restorers Society has announced that they will begin selling shipping records for these three models made between 1962 and 1972. That might not seem like a huge date range, but it covers a pretty large sweet spot in terms of these nameplates' popularity and collectibility.

In pictures: backstage at 72nd Goodwood Members’ Meeting

It was Glorious Goodwood on the last weekend of March, for Lord March’s latest classic motorsport event – the 72nd Goodwood Members’ Meeting. It’s one of only two race weekend to be held at the circuit since it reopened in the late 1990s: Lord March wants it to complement the world-famous September Goodwood Revival and become known as a classic in its own right. The difference here is that, as its name suggests, it’s a members-only event: only Goodwood Road Racing Club members can buy tickets.

Gamers more likely to pass driving test

Regularly playing computer-based driving games could help you pass your driving test sooner, according to a new study by Privilege car insurance. However, the survey also showed that these drivers who pass their tests sooner with the aid of some digital practice are more likely to crash within the first year of getting on the road. On Bing: see pictures of the driving test Find out how much a used car costs on Auto Trader The car cover provider asked 1,994 drivers aged between 18 and 50 as part of the research, concluding that a massive 73% of gamers past their test first time round.

The Corbin Sparrow was the clown car of tomorrow

The Corbin Sparrow doesn't so much resemble a car as it resembles an oversized Dutch clog left on the carefully manicured lawn of a modern art museum. It is a shape that causes grown men and small children alike to burst into instant, spontaneous, guffawing laughter. "How many clowns can you fit in it?" they might ask in between snickers.

Drivers against remote stopping devices

EU PLANS to introduced remote stopping devices that can be activated by the police in an emergency have been met with concern by drivers. Under the proposed legislation a six-year timetable for remote stopping devices is planned with the aim of police being able to bring dangerous high-speed car chases to a halt. A device would be fitted to all cars that would allow a central control room to cut the ignition and fuel supply of any vehicle.

Mercedes GLA goes subterranean

FOR SUV owners looking to test their cars’ off-road credentials, the obvious place to put them to the test probably isn’t nearly 200 metres underground. But that’s exactly where the new Mercedes GLA found itself as it descended into Winsford Rock Salt Mine, 620 feet beneath the Cheshire countryside. The working mine, which supplies much of the UK’s gritting salt for wintry roads, played host to four standard (apart from extra driving lights) GLA models, which were lowered down into the mine nose first before being let loose in the 130-mile network of tunnels.