JustBritish

UK auto site Autoblog.com has a great, and hilarious, story on what must me one of the oddest match-ups since Oscar and Felix in the Odd Couple. Actually, I guess this predates them, but you get the point!

What we have then is a hybrid Jaguar Morris Minor Traveller. Well, to be precise, a Jaguar XK120 Morris Minor Traveller; that is also probably full of fur. The car was created to haul the owner’s dogs. To make matters even worse, they named the car the “Foxbat”. What? What the heck is a “foxbat”?

Quoting from the original article, “it was stitched together by chemist and Jaguar enthusiast/butcher Geoffrey Stevens. To give him some credit, it’s claimed the XK was in pretty horrendous condition when he started, so he’s done a decent job making the front end look good, at least.”

Sorry, I give up.

The British Steam Car team has rebounded from last week’s aborted test with two successful runs, the last shakedowns before the 25-foot car is shipped to the United States for its attempt to break a land speed record set 103 years ago.

Team Steam hopes to achieve 170 mph when it challenges the land speed record for a steam-powered vehicle and says everything is on track. The car fired up like a Russell Hobbs teasmade and proved the water-filtration issue that stymied last week’s test have been solved. The car hit 60 mph on Wednesday, before test driver Don Wales pulled the chute to end the first run. The second test went even better: Wales achieved 80 mph.

“The car is just so powerful, you can get to feel the immense force and power of it,” Wales said in a press release. “It was just itching to get away at the top,” he said.

Team director Lynne Angel said, “It was fantastic to see. She just roared up the runway and deployed her parachute with a great big whoosh. It proves that it works, and we are going to break the world land speed record in steam.”

The team has a lot of work to do before it makes a run at the record Fred Marriott set in 1906 when he achieved 127.659 mph in a Stanley Steamer Rocket.

“Today marked the first time the car has started in superheated steam and gave both the start team and the turnaround team the chance to get some valuable practice, so it has been a great day,” project manager Matt Candy said.

There are some “cooling issues to address,” Candy said, but nothing problematic.
“We are good to go and hope to come back with the record,” he said.

Team Steam has spent more than 10 years preparing to break the longest-standing land speed record in motor sports, and they’ve shown the kind of devotion that comes only when mechanics get to tinker with truly bizarre machinery. Oh sure, the car is fueled by something as harmless and plentiful as water, but that’s where the simplicity ends.

The car uses liquid petroleum gas and a dozen microboilers to generate 3 megawatts of heat, which in turn creates a steam temperature of 750 degrees Fahrenheit. The steam flows through 1.86 miles of tubing and several valves and into a two-stage turbine at twice the speed of sound. The system can turn 10.5 gallons of water a minute into steam at 40 times atmospheric pressure. The turbine sends 360 horsepower to the rear wheels. The car features a steel space-frame chassis; the body is carbon fiber and aluminum.

Wales comes from a long line of speed freaks. He is the nephew of Donald Campbell, who broke eight land and sea speed records in the 1950s and ’60s. He’s also the grandson of Sir Malcolm Campbell, who set several records in the 1920s and ’30s. All told, the Campbell family holds more than 20 land and sea speed records. Wales is confident he’ll add to the tally.

“The car really did handle beautifully,” he said. “After that run I feel more confident about breaking the record. The team has worked really hard over the winter and the last 10 years, and this test puts even more faith into the team.”

The car heads to North America next month and will make its run for the record later this summer. The goal is to achieve 170 mph, which would easily surpass the official record of 127.659 mph. Although the Steamin’ Demon achieved 145.607 during a run in 1985, it isn’t recognized by the Federation International de l’Automobile, the worldwide sanctioning body of motor sports.

MUNICH — BMW plans to export nearly 500 electric versions of its Mini car to California, company sources said.

The electric Minis are being built at the Mini factory in Oxford, England, without engines, gearboxes or fuel tanks, then shipped to Munich, Germany, where they are being fitted with electric powertrains.

BMW sources told Automotive News Europe that 490 of the Minis will be leased to selected customers in California and 10 will be used as show cars.

The electric Minis are painted silver and have yellow roofs, the sources said.

BMW engineers working on the electric Minis are part of a new division called Project i established by the automaker to develop low-emission city cars.

The electric Minis will help BMW to meet new California regulations that will require carmakers selling cars in the state to offer zero emission vehicles.

Mini spokesman Cypselus von Frankenberg did not confirm that BMW is building electric Minis.

“BMW will announce whether it will build electric vehicles or not later this year,” he told ANE.

Other carmakers are developing electric cars.

Volkswagen, Daimler, PSA/Peugeot-Citroen and Renault have all announced electric-vehicle programs in recent months, joining several U.S. and Japanese automakers that are working on the technology.

While I am as green as the next person, or maybe even more so, this just seems wrong on so many levels. The British cabinet is debating replacing their Jaguars with the hybrid Prius. As the Financial Times reports, “Gordon Brown’s cabinet clashed yesterday over whether to replace British-built ministerial cars with Japanese Toyota Prius hybrid vehicles, amid new evidence that the government is failing to live up to its green rhetoric. John Hutton, the business secretary, led the criticism of the plan to import more cars from Japan rather than use traditional British vehicles, saying it sent out a bad signal to domestic manufacturers.”

Sad, very sad.

You can read the full article at the Financial Times site.

Bentley is pinning its green future on more efficient gasoline engines powered by biofuel combined with lighter-weight body construction, rather than a radical switch to diesel or hybrid powertrains.

“We don’t think our customers, particularly in North America and Europe, are ready for a diesel Bentley, said Uli Eichhorn, Bentley chief engineer, on Tuesday at the Geneva motor show.

Although Bentley Chairman Franz-Josef Paefgen refuses to rule out a diesel powertrain, Eichhorn said: “Not ruling it out does not mean it is our top priority.”

Hybrid powertrains don’t fit the typical usage cycle of a Bentley, according to Eichhorn. “(Hybrids) are very good in cities and stop-start driving, but that’s not where out cars are used.”
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It looks like a regular Opel (Saturn) Astra, but the car that’s pictured is completely different. This vehicle is Lotus Engineering’s first attempt at creating a hybrid vehicle, and represents the launch of a branch of the British firm dedicated to engineering and developing hybrid and electric vehicles.

Underneath its hood, Lotus Engineering has fitted a small 1.5-liter three-cylinder gasoline engine featuring a turbocharger that’s mated to a mild hybrid drivetrain system. The 12 kW electric motor adds power, but not at the cost of fuel economy, and because it isn’t a full hybrid system that allows the car to run on pure electrical power, it poses a price advantage.

Lotus has also taken a load off of the main engine by switching over the water pump and the fuel pump to items that are purely electrical, a change that benefits the car with 2-percent improved fuel economy.

As importantly, the new power plant puts out greater performance than most entry-level gasoline engines on the market today, at 158 horsepower and 177 lb-ft of torque. This also betters the performance offered by the 1.8-liter inline-four sold in the North American Astra. At the same time, the engine cuts back on fuel economy and emissions by a significant amount.

By swapping out the four cylinder for a three cylinder, Lotus has made the engine smaller, some 35-percent less complicated, but more importantly about 20-percent lighter.

Lotus Engineering proves a point that many automakers have shown in concepts; that downsizing for fuel economy can be done with giant gains in fuel economy and equally large reductions in emissions. We might see Lotus-derived powertrains soon too, as they’ve officially partnered up with US-based ZAP electric cars.

Source: Automobile.com