Old Vintage Custom Aluminum Column Shifter Shift Knob Rat Hot Rod Chevy Ford on 2040-parts.com

OnStar tracks Santa on Christmas Eve

OnStar subscribers can request location-based “Santa updates” on Christmas Eve by pressing the blue OnStar button in their car. Santa's global route is trackable from 6 a.m. Eastern on Christmas Eve to 5 a.m.

Fiat 500L five-door spotted

Autoweek spotted this manufacturer-plated Fiat 500L earlier this week on the streets of suburban Detroit. With its round headlights and cheerful grille, the five-door hatchback's resemblance to its three-door cousin is apparent even under its coat of liberally applied camouflage. While the 500L and the smaller 500 models share similar styling cues, the subcompact hatch is not just a slightly stretched 500 with two extra doors.

Vauxhall launches speed limit detectors on Insignia (2008)

By Tim Pollard First Official Pictures 19 June 2008 07:53 Vauxhall's new Insignia will be the first of a wave of cars to have a forward-facing camera that can read road signs. The optional kit will detect speed limit and no overtaking signs – and flash up a reminder to the driver on the dashboard.GM calls the tech, which will be launched in early 2009, Traffic Sign Recognition and it uses a small, wide-angled camera system supplied by Hella. It sits at the top of the windscreen near the rain sensors and rear-view mirror, scanning the road ahead taking 30 photos per second.It's 1984 all over again...With a range of 100 metres, the camera focuses on circular patterns and then interprets the numbers inside by contour comparison; if a match is found on the software's database, that road sign will be flashed up in the driver's binnacle.The front-facing camera is also used as a lane departure warning system, alerting the driver if they unintentionally swerve out of their lane on a motorway.Cars with cameras: a growing trendMore and more manufacturers are fitting cameras to their cars nowadays and you can expect a flood of systems like the Insignia's to be launched in 2009, including the new BMW 5-series.CAR tried out these new systems on Bosch prototypes in 2007.