Ford Crown Victoria Crown Vic 95-97 1995-1997 Rear Defog Defrost Switch on 2040-parts.com

One Lap of the Web: A rally car drinks beer

-- Thierry Neuville was somewhere on his way back to the pits after finishing the final stage of the WRC Mexico when his Hyundai i20 rally car sprung a leak: The hole in the radiator was bleeding coolant at a frightening rate. If Neuville didn't make the 33 kilometers back, he would lose his second place standing behind Volkswagen and all would be lost. (Alas, them's the breaks in the sometimes-quixotic rulebook of the World Rally Championship.) Well, lucky for Neuville, his sponsors at Corona had presented him with a massive bottle of beer, which he then proceeded to pour into the radiator.

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.

CAR tech: who's to blame for your car's terrible fuel economy?

In early 2013 Audi lost a case brought by the Advertising Standard Agency (ASA) because of ‘misleading’ fuel economy figures used in an advert, after a customer complained they couldn’t get anywhere near the 68mpg quoted. The court case once more exposes the yawning gap between officially sanctioned mpg figures and those experienced by owners. A recent study by the Independent Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) looked at cars sold in the UK and Europe, and discovered the difference between official mpg figures and real-world driving had grown from 8% in 2001 to a barely believable 21% in 2011.