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Mopar salutes Don Garlits and muscle-car past as it eyes global future

Mopar made its name in performance and parts, but Chrysler's aftermarket division is staking its future on practicality. The brand celebrated its 75th anniversary on Tuesday at the Mopar engineering lab in Center Line, Mich., just north of Detroit. While it rolled out four custom cars with various stages of show-and-go upgrades and drag-racing legend Don Garlits, Mopar officials were decidedly forward-looking.

Mazda's rotary engine stalled, not forgotten

Development of the next-generation rotary engine from Mazda Motor Corp., first unveiled three years ago, is making slow progress despite missing emissions targets. A top Mazda powertrain executive said today that the 1.6-liter rotary engine, called the 16X, is about 30 percent more fuel-efficient than the current rotary engine used in the RX-8 sporty car. In fact, the 16X so far performs slightly better than Mazda's standard two-liter gasoline engine, said Mitsuo Hitomi, general manager of the Japanese carmaker's powertrain division.

Mitsubishi MiEV – Plod-Mobile

The blues and twos on a Mitsubishi MiEV It appears that since Mitsubishi took the MiEV to the National Police Show last month they’ve been inundated with requests from Police Forces around the UK to test the car. With it’s top speed of 81 mph and range of 100 miles we can’t quite see the MiEV being used as a pursuit car. In fact the only place it would be of any use is in town, but for what it’s worth we’d much rather see plod pounding the beat than floating around in a Noddy-Mobile.