There were lots of flashy cars at the 2007 Frankfurt Motor Show. Citroën C-Cactus concept was not the prettiest but it was well thought out with ideas that may soon go into production. The designer of the C-Cactus, Gilles Vidal, says "we wanted to look at the whole environmental question from dust to dust. We quickly realised we wanted a lighter car. There's a virtuous [sic] circle wher
Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land!
There's no shortage of crossover between the aerospace and automobile industries, with carmakers regularly borrowing ideas from airplanes. Car manufacturers like BMW, Mitsubishi, Saab and Rolls Royce all have roots in building airplanes, but the Dodge Viper? Sure, Carroll Shelby, on whose Cobra the Viper was modeled, used to be a fighter pilot, as was Bob Lutz, but that's still a bit of a stretch. Aerospace retrofitters Northwest Helicopters took a shot at bridging (or at least flying over) the
Quite simply, rust sucks. Most any vehicle regularly driven during winters in the Salt Belt will fall victim to corrosion, and the various spray-on undercoatings available from the aftermarket have their shortcomings. Specifically, the spray-on application of these coatings often results in incomplete coverage, and what is applied will typically degrade upon repeated exposure to a decade's worth of abrasive road debris.
Silver has been the most popular color on cars for the past six years, and the godfathers of paint at PPG predict it will remain the king for quite some time. This fact doesn't stop these connoisseurs of color from searching for the next contender of silver's throne. On Thursday, PPG showed off its official color palette of 110 concept colors at its studio in Troy, MI, and revealed it expects more natural colors like brown, green, blue and gold will become popular by the end of the decade, when
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Hot Rod magazine is bemoaning the lack of interesting paint colors and schemes on today's street machines, and who can blame them? It was just last week that we had the same conversation with some local gearheads. Sure, we love the subtle silver and grey of Joe Rogan's Sick Fish 'Cuda, but it seems as if the majority of custom vehicles have pulled back just a bit too far from the garish paint schemes of the 1980s Pro Street movement, and have left us with a limited
While BMW is powering its Spartanburg S.C. paint shop with recycled methane gas, Ford Motor Co. has developed a fumes-to-fuel system which allows conversion of the volatile organic compounds (VOC's) given off by paint fumes into fuel that generates power, according to a Detroit Free Press article. Paint shops around the world produce nearly 70 million pounds of paint fumes, which are collected and burned in incinerator
The National Association of Manufacturers brings us an educational treat for a fun TGIF - an insider's look at manufacturing the BMW Z4. The vehicle, built at Bimmer's plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, gets the soup-to-nuts treatment from NAM with subject matter and descriptions accessible enough for non-engineers. Check it out to learn more about BMW's assembly and finish techniques, as well as an opportunity to eat up the eye candy that is
