I received my driver's license in 1969 and honestly don't remember a time when I couldn't right turn on red (RTOR). But as I read through tributes to former President Gerald Ford I discovered he pushed for a national law permitting RTOR. Living in a small New Mexico town, I never realized it was an issue elsewhere in the country. The practice still is not allowed in New York City, a lesson I quickly learned the first time I drove into Manhattan.

Not wanting to be left in the sales dust by the quattroporte Civic Si, Volkswagen intends to bring the 5-door version of the GTI mkV stateside for 2007. That's great news for those who love the driving dynamics of the GTI, but need or want the additional doors. It will add $500 to the bottom line, and 60 pounds at the scales, but other than that, you'll come out unscathed. The latest generation of the Golf/Rabbit platform is peerless in its class, and the

Fifth Gear recently took advantage of having a MINI GP to run their own mini GP. That is a race between a MINI GP and the fastest tiny vehicle they could find that might be a real challenge to the MINI. After thinking through the list of would be competitors for this 218 hp, lightened and stiffened MINI, they landed on the perfect match; an R/C car. Seriously. They found Andy Moore who happens

If you've ever tried making biodiesel commercially you'll know that the biggest cost is by far the feedstock. This has lead to a great deal of research into more efficient alternatives to the traditional feedstocks of canola oil and soybean oil. A promising biodiesel feedstock plant being promoted in Africa, India, China and South East Asia is Jatropha Curcas which is common in hot climates and can grow in wastelands. Jatropha is already known for its huge yields; more than four times as much fu

The Internet is getting way too cool, as someone on Metafilter wrote sometime in the distant past. But it's also a strange beast, and you can never really predict what's going to grab people's attention when. To illustrate, here is one item from Digg's front page today: a Mac Mini installed in the dash of a Prius (with a working touch screen, apparently). While the Diggers are going ga-ga over this photo (it is awful cool), if you click through to the Sebastian Blanco

Our Deutsch-obsessive friends over at the German Car Blog tipped us off to an article at kalaydo.de that, while discussing the attempt to slow down motorists on the autobahn, revealed that Bugatti was in the process of developing a "Sport" version of the all-conquering Veyron.

In a recent interview, Honda President Takeo Fukui said that he fully expects to offer a fuel-cell Honda by 2018. Nissan has already gone on record as saying they plan to have a fuel-cell vehicle on the road by the early 2010s. So that might seem like a long way off, especially considering the FCX Concept that AB Green drove will be doing real world testing by 2008, but production and storage of hydrogen are

Is the United States a laggard in the global environmental movement? Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute in Washington DC, thinks so, but writes in this BBC opinion piece that, with a little more patience from our global partners and some serious work by American officials, the U.S. of A can become a leader in the field.