Weight

click above to view more shots of the Ferrari FXX Millechili from Winding Road

If you live in a cold-weather climate and own a RWD pickup truck, you know that driving in inclement weather can be a real crap shoot. The rear wheels seem to have a mind of their own, coming out from under you when you least suspect it. To help keep traction, many people combat this problem by adding weight to the pickup bed, using items like sand bags or even packed snow.

Click on the image for a gallery of high-res images of Hyundai's recyclable QarmaQ concept.

Over past two decades motor vehicles have gotten hundreds of new features and amenities and made big advances in safety in performance. Unfortunately all those cool stability controls, big brakes, air bags, rear seat entertainment systems, heated seats and on and on and on, have one thing in common: weight. Every one of those cool features adds mass. And since Force = Mass * Acceleration (at least at speeds well below the speed of light, but this isn't Physics III so we won't go there today), mo

Excess weight is the enemy of every automobile. Extra pounds will make a car slower at the top end, more sluggish off the line, wobblier in the corners, more lethargic under braking, guzzle more gas and expel more toxic fumes...among other problems. It can render an otherwise great car imperfect. Case in point: the US-bound Italian beauty, the Alfa Romeo 159.

Just as Americans continue to get fatter, so do our cars. According to the EPA, the average weight of a new vehicle in 2006 is a whopping 4,142 lbs - that's up a quarter-ton from ten years ago, and is the heaviest yet since the EPA began tracking the statistic in 1975. Not only does weight hurt fuel economy, but it also drags down performance. Adding additional horsepower is easy nowadays, but that of course hits economy a second time. The end result is that fuel ec