O'neil Racing Boots/motorcross on 2040-parts.com

McLaren plan to make windscreen wipers obsolete

McLaren plan to make windscreen wipers obsolete Much of the ‘clunkiness’ in cars – stuff like wind-up windows and a cranking handle – have been made obsolete in cars as technology arrived to make things work better, but one thing that remains on modern cars from the dawn of the motoring age is the windscreen wiper. Invented by Mary Anderson in 1903 after she realised drivers of the first motor cars were having to lean out of the window in rainy conditions to see where they were going, it became a standard fitting on all cars within a few years. Windscreen wipers have certainly improved over the years as technology has developed, but they’re still basically a strip of rubber moving across the windscreen to clear rain.

Silver linings: Saab and Mitsubishi see sales grow in May

Despite the company’s financial troubles, Saab sales are steadily increasing in 2011, with April and May numbers up 190 percent and 121 percent, respectively, from the same months last year. The Swedish automaker reported 385 units sold this May, versus 155 the year prior. So far this year, Saab has sold 2,765 vehicles, compared with 954 at the same point last year.

One Lap of the Web: The Markchurian Candidate

-- When does a cartoonist become a short-track racer? When he's Bob Englehart of the Hartford Courant, and he writes a book about his childhood in and around Indiana, a childhood spent fixated on oval racers. Englehart, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his political cartooning, explores why America's youth are willing to risk their lives to drive in circles -- and why he himself is so addicted to it.