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If you’re looking for a lawn-mower to park in the garage beside your Bugatti Veyron, the Excalibur may be just the ticket. Billed as the world’s fastest lawnmower by its Indiana based manufacturer Dixie Chopper, the Excalibur 3874 promises to manicure 9.2 acres per hour at speeds of up to 15mph. |
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Powered by a 38 hp Kohler engine, the Excalibur 3874 features springer forks, optional steering dampers, a tachometer and a 74-inch cut with electric height adjustment… and to keep you entertained during your (albeit short) bursts at the controls, there’s also a 12-volt adapter for your cell phone or iPod.
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Popularity: 23%
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Korea based Oullim Motors revealed the Spirra its handmade sports car at the Auto China 2008. Powered by a V6 2.7 24V Turbo engine it churns out 600hp and goes from 0 to 100km/h in 4.8 seconds with a top speed of 305 kmph. |
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The Spirra is available for 109,000,000 KRW ($ 95,000) in the Korean market.
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Popularity: 12%
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Talk about paying homage to the NES console - this engine block has been customized to look like the NES controller, guaranteed to get your mechanic laughing if he/she is a Nintendo fanboy from old. |
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While it isn’t too hard to come up with such a custom designed cover, the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart and Zooie (the car’s owner) is certainly full of Nintendo love.
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Popularity: 12%
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Audi officially reveals the 2009 Q5, which “utilizes the same underpinnings as the A5 coupe and A4 sedan/wagon. That means the Q5 has a longitudinally mounted engine rather than the transverse powerplant found in the smaller VW Tiguan. |
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Compared to the Q7, the Q5 looks substantially more compact than its hefty sibling and is much tidier design overall, keeping with Audi’s current pretensions of being a premium sporting brand. [Audi]
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Popularity: 17%
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The Hurphy Durphy Seat Belt Buckle Guard is a simple safety device that helps to keep capsules or infant seats anchored securely in the car by preventing accidental release of a seat belt. Kids, pets and general back-seat chaos can cause the accidental release of seat belt buckles and busy parents might not immediately see this when placing their child in a capsule or infant seat. |
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The Hurphy Durphy solves this problem in the form of a black neoprene sleeve that wraps around the seat belt buckle with heavy-duty Velcro, ensuring it is totally secured. The Guard fits both front release and top opening seat belt buckles.
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Popularity: 12%
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There’s nothing like a project to learn new stuff. In this case, the project is to make automobiles that are better suited for senior citizens. To understand how it feels to be a senior driver, Nissan engineers wear this “aging suit” and a pair of goggles to simulate the same challenge of mobility, balance and vision that their customers face daily. |
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An engineer comments that “it is very difficult to drive” after a short test-drive. There you go. Now that engineers know exactly what’s going on, they can put their minds into solving it
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Popularity: 12%
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The Flower Council of Holland has commissioned Arne Quinze, Fredrikson Stallard, Karim Rashid, Studio Job and Arik Levy (all famous names in the design industry) to design 5 New Fiat 500’s. The catch is that they had to design them using flower so as to raise the awareness of the uses of cut flowers. |
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It sounds kind of odd, but the results of the finished, flowery, Fiat’s are quite mesmerizing. Not too sure they would be safe driving around town with the flower petals flying in your face. Neat concept and pretty unique use for flowers.
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Popularity: 15%
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Right when we thought that, the electric vehicle is the answer to cutting our rising fuel costs some new research finds the ultimate flaw in this new power source. There is no doubt that plug-in electric vehicles (PHEVs) result in good fuel economy figures - GM is currently touting its PHEV-to be, the Volt, as getting 150MPG over all. |
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However, a study published by Carnegie Mellon University and the Green Car Congress (GGC) suggests that if we do not make our power generation system less carbon intensive, PHEVs could have little benefit over regular hybrids (HEVs). Instead, they achieve these high numbers by supplementing the power produced by their gasoline engines with power taken from the grid. This has caused controversy lately, as hybrid-opponents often claim that battery production and the use of energy from the grid actually makes these cars bigger GHG polluters. If you look at this chart posted by GCC, you can see that both HEVs and PHEVs have a clear advantage over conventional cars, even when battery production is factored in. vehicles all drew power from the grid, making the grid more efficient would both improve standard energy usage as well as make motor vehicles less polluting.
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Popularity: 17%
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Chevrolet has done a world’s first and unveiled it’s car fitting room in South London. This fitting room will actually show you, how exactly you look while sitting in the new car that you wanted to buy for so long. |
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And for this, you need to drive the car onto a central revolve which will revolve around three gigantic mirrors. These mirrors of course will let you examine your car’s booty when you are actually sitting in it and then come to a conclusion whether the car fits you to a tee. If you want to catch this very new concept, head off to South London’s forecourt where this contraption is on display.
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Popularity: 12%
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There is a wind blowing from the east and it smells a little like wasabi, ginger and fresh paint. It turns out its just Mazda showing off its latest design direction, the Mazda “Taiki.” Inspired by the shape and flow of wind itself, Mazda declares the exterior lines are inspired by wind flowing through a Hagoromo, the “flowing robes that enable a celestial maiden to fly.” |
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I never got to that level of Final Fantasy but I guess I get that reference. Their challenge was to create “a design that visually expresses the flow of air” and visually expresses the atmosphere - called taiki in Japanese. Anyway you look at it, Mazda’s concept is forward thinking and a breath of fresh air in a slightly stale auto show season
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Popularity: 14%
