Archive for May, 2006

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Webber’s Car Fails Again

After holding down third place for most of the race at Monaco Mark Webber’s Williams burst into flames as he approached the first corner on lap 49. An exhaust failure is said to be the cause of the fire.

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Webber on the Front Row at Monaco

Aussie Mark Webber is sitting on the front row of the grid at Monaco after Michael Schumacher tried to pull an unbelievable stunt that would have seen all other drivers at least considerably slower than him in qualifying.
Let’s hope that Mark Webber’s car can hold together for the full race because he certainly has the [...]

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Ford America – Clutching at Straws?

Over the last little while Aussie Motoring has been reporting on some of the ways that GM in the US has been struggling to make a profit. I guess that might give you the idea that GM is the only one of the big car manufacturers who is really having a problem but that is [...]

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The Harder You Press the Accelerator the Slower You Go

Transport for London – the intergrated body responsible for London’s transport system is invetigated technology that will automatically limit a vehicle’s speed to whatever the speed limit might be in a given area.
I wonder how long it will be before technology like that will start to appear on Australian roads.

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Fiat on the Road to Recovery – and GM Can’t Take a Trick

It’s been quite some time since Fiat sold anything smaller than a truck in Australia and that’s hardly surprising since Fiat almost disappeared in a cloud of financial dust back in 2003.
So bad did their future look back then that General Motors paid a cool $2 billion to buy their way out of an agreement [...]

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Hotting Up Your Car – Geek Style

I come from back in the time when any self respecting Aussie teenager spent Saturday’s working on his car. Back then a dual throat Webber was a great start to turning a placid little Mini into a fire-breathing monster and if your exhaust pipe wasn’t wider than the funnel on the Manly ferry you were [...]

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The World’s Biggest Manufacturer of Motor Vehicles

That’s a title that has long been held by American giant – General Motors – but experts suggest that Toyota is about to claim the title from the ailing American giant.
In America GM continues to see sales plummet while Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and Kia all continue to post improved sale figures month after month.
There seems [...]

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Volkswagen Eos

Unfortunately it’s not available in Australia but this neat little machine – the Eos is set to hit the US showrooms at the end of the northern summer. The Eos features a three-panel roof that transforms a hardtop coupe – complete with sunroof – into an open convertible.

The Eos will come with a choice of [...]

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Bio Diesel Production Begins in Queensland

Green diesel production begins in Queensland
Queensland’s first commercial ‘Green’ diesel production facility opened its doors today at Narangba.
The Eco Tech Biodiesel Plant will have a production capability of 30 million litres of biodiesel per annum, growing to an additional capacity of 75 million litres once at full production.
Launching the new facility, Deputy Premier, Treasurer and [...]

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A Classic Car Ad for the Toyota RAV4

Here in Australia many of the television ads for motor vehicles that we are force fed are … well … basically dull, boring rubbish.
But things are a little different overseas where a television ad for the latest Toyota RAV4 looks something like this (unfortunately the site that was linked to has since removed the information)
Before [...]

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Chrysler Crossfire

You would hardly expect to find a brand new Commodore or Falcon going for a song on Pirate Pete’s Aussie Freebies now would you?
But if you were in America and happening to be surfing through Overstock.com just before Christmas last year you certainly would have seen this car going for a heavily discounted price.

Meet the [...]

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Kia Expands Into Europe and Honda Expands in America

Honda has announced plans to have a completely new manufacturing plant on line in 2009 to produce 150,000 Civics and Fit models for the North American market. Reports suggest that the new plant will have the capacity to increase production to 300,000 models a year bringing Honda’s total capacity in North America to something [...]

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Hyundai Moves Up to Sixth

Hyundai outsold Mitsubishi and moved up another place to claim sixth spot in the Australian car market in April with 3965 vehicles sold and a 5.8 percent share of the market, up 1.1 percent over April 2005.
Year-to-date, Hyundai has overtaken Honda and also moved up a place to sixth with 16,073 sales, accounting for 5.3 [...]

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The Nissan Tiida

When Nissan released the Tiida I had a feeling I had seen that car somewhere before. It was just one of those niggling little thoughts in the back of my mind made even more annoying because the claim from Nissan was that this was an all new design.
Well now I know why I had that [...]

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Unusual Effects of the Rising Price of Fuel

We’re all aware of the effects that the rising price of fuel is having on just about every part of our lives but there are still a few changes happening that you might not expect as one journalist in the US found out this week.
Evidently he has to travel to Houston and he was going [...]

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Electronic Insecurity

Yesterday I wrote a brief piece about the new Audi Q7 SUV – released in the US but not yet available in Australia.
One of the features of the Q7 is a keyless entry system that will unlock the car when anyone who has the correct key approaches the vehicle. The person who has the [...]

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Audi Q7

Audi’s latest entrant in the luxury high-performance Sports Utility Vehicle market is the Q7.

It’s not yet available in Australia but it certainly is on the market in the US and Audi are offering road tests to some unusual people. Not only are they providing vehicles for motoring journalists but they even provided one to Guy [...]

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Ford – Funded by the Government

Ford Australia and the Federal Government announced yesterday that Ford would receive an assistance package worth over $50 million to ensure that Ford continues to build cars in Australia.
$40 million of that package will go towards the development and manufacture of the next Falcon and Territory models. Does this mean that we can expect to [...]

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Is the Way We Buy Our Cars About to Change?

Leadpile.com a leader in online lead generation services is suggesting that people shopping for luxury cars are moving online in the US and the time is not too far away when many of those who are shopping for luxury cars will never set foot inside a showroom.
Instead the initial approach will be online, the car [...]