Venturi

Venturi Volage Concept Car

Venturi Solar Electric car

Venturi Fetish Titel

Venturi Automobiles is a French manufacturer of sports cars born under the name of MVS (Manufacture de Voitures de Sport). The original company built high performance mid-engined sports cars, the most well known of which is the Venturi Atlantique, from 1984 until it declared bankruptcy in 2000.
The brand was purchased in 2001. It is now based in Monaco and builds extremely limited production electric vehicles.

True to that claim, the Atlantique 400 GT with a 408 hp (304 kW; 414 PS) V6 delivered excellent performance to put it on par with Ferraris of the early 90s. The 400 GT could hit 100 km/h (62 mph) in 4.7 seconds and 291 km/h (181 mph) top speed, while the 300GT with a 314 PS (231 kW) V6 did 4.9 seconds to 100 km/h (62 mph) and went all the way to 171 mph (275 km/h).

http://moderncar69.blogspot.com/

Read More

Vauxhall

Vauxhall Logo

Vauxhall Vectra

Vauxhall Holden Monaro Red 600

Vauxhall Zafira

Vauxhall Motors is a British automotive company owned by General Motors (GM) and headquartered in Luton. It was founded in 1857 as a pump and marine engine manufacturer, began manufacturing cars in 1903 and was acquired by GM in 1925. It has been the second-largest selling car brand in the UK for over two decades. The current Vauxhall range includes the Agila (city car), Corsa (supermini), Astra (small family car), Insignia (large family car), Meriva (mini MPV) and Zafira Tourer (compact MPV).

The Vauxhall was so far ahead of all other cars of any class that the driver could relax, accomplishing the 200 miles (320 km) at an average speed of 46 mph (74 km/h), when the car was capable of 55 mph (89 km/h). The Y-Type went on to win class E of the Trial.

The Y-Type was so successful that it was decided to put the car into production as the A09 car. This spawned the legendary Vauxhall A-Type. Four distinct types of this were produced between 27 October 1908 – up to when mass production halted in 1914. One last A-Type was put together in 1920. Capable of up to 100 mph (160 km/h), the A-Type Vauxhall was one of the most acclaimed 3 litre cars of its day.

Two cars were entered in the 1910 Prince Henry Trials, and although not outright winners, performed well, and replicas were made for sale officially as the C-type – but now known as the Prince Henry.

http://moderncar69.blogspot.com/

Read More

Ultima

Ultima Logo

Ultima GTR 720

Ultima Sport MP 158

Ultima Aero

Ultima Racer X Design RZ

Ultima Sports Ltd. is a sports car manufacturer currently based in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England. Founded in 1992 by Ted Marlow, Ultima manufactures the components to construct cars derived, as road going versions, from the Noble Motorsport Ltd originated Ultima racing cars designed by Lee Noble who is more famous now for the models produced by Noble Automotive Ltd.
There are now 2 models in the current Ultima range; the GTR; and the convertible Can-Am. Previous models have been the Sport and Spyder.

All models in the Ultima range have always been primarily supplied in component form. That is, Ultima produces the parts required for an owner/builder to construct the car off-site, and this is the only way to receive such a vehicle in the USA (including a 'rolling body' fully constructed minus engine and transmission). However a few cars are manufactured onsite as "turnkey" models for the European market.

The preferred engine supplier for Ultima is currently American Speed, a company who specializes in re-engineering Chevrolet V8s for increased performance. It was with a 640 hp (480 kW) version of the Chevrolet small block V8 built by American Speed, that Richard Marlow was able to set a number of performance records in an Ultima GTR during 2005, this combination now being dubbed the Ultima GTR640.

In 2006 Ultima beat their own 0-100 mph-0 record set in the GTR640 with the GTR720, again using an American Speed SBC engine but now with 720 hp (540 kW). The new record shaved 0.4 seconds off the time completing the 0-100-0 dash in 9.4 seconds, a new world record for a production road car with street legal tyres and exhaust.

http://moderncar69.blogspot.com/

Read More

Trabant

Trabant Logo

Trabant nT Concept Car

Trabant Limousine

Trabant 601 Mulhouse FRA

Trabant Herpa

The Trabant is a car that was produced by former East German auto maker VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau in Zwickau, Sachsen. It was the most common vehicle in East Germany, and was also exported to countries both inside and outside the communist bloc. The main selling points was that it had room for four adults and luggage in a compact, light and durable shell and that it was fast (when introduced) and durable. With its mediocre performance, inefficient two-stroke engine, noxious fumes and production shortages, the Trabant is often cited as an example of the disadvantages of centralized planning; on the other hand, it is regarded with derisive affection as a symbol of the failed former East Germany and of the fall of communism (in former West Germany, as many East Germans streamed into West Berlin and West Germany in their Trabants after the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989). It was in production without any significant changes for nearly 30 years with 3,096,099 Trabants produced in total.

Since it could take years for a Trabant to be delivered from the time it was ordered, people who finally got one were very careful with it and usually became skillful in maintaining and repairing it. The lifespan of an average Trabant was 28 years.Used Trabants would often fetch a higher price than new ones, as the former were available immediately, while the latter required the infamous long wait.

There were four principal variants of the Trabant, the P50, also known as the Trabant 500, produced 1957–1962; the Trabant 600, produced 1962–1964; the Trabant 601, produced 1963–1991; and the Trabant 1.1 produced 1990–1991 with a 1,043 cc (63.6 cu in) VW engine (making the "1.1" a slight misnomer). The engine for the Trabant 500, 600 and original 601 was a small two-stroke engine with two cylinders, giving the vehicle modest performance. At the end of production in 1989 it delivered 19 kW (26 horsepower) from a 600 cc (37 cu in) displacement. The car took 21 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) and the top speed was 112 km/h (70 mph). There were two main problems with the engine: the smoky exhaust and the pollution it produced—nine times the amount of hydrocarbons and five times the carbon monoxide emissions of the average European car of 2007. The fuel consumption was 7 l/100 km (40 mpg-imp; 34 mpg-US). Since the engine does not have an oil injection system, two-stroke oil has to be added to the 24-litre (6.3 U.S. gal; 5.3 imp gal) fuel tank every time the car was filled up, at a 50:1 or 33:1 ratio of fuel to oil. Gas stations of the time in countries where two-stroke engines were common served premixed gas-oil mixture from the pump. Today, owners normally carry a container of two-stroke oil in the car for this purpose. The earlier models have no fuel gauge; a dipstick is inserted into the tank to determine how much fuel remains.

The Trabant was a steel monocoque design with roof, bootlid/trunklid, bonnet/hood, bumpers/fenders and doors in Duroplast, a form of plastic containing resin strengthened by wool or cotton. This helped the GDR to avoid expensive steel imports but, in theory, did not provide much crash protection, although in crash tests it allegedly performed superior to some contemporary Western hatchbacks.

Because the car lacked a fuel pump, the fuel tank was placed high up in the engine compartment so that fuel could be fed to the carburettor by gravity; a trade-off of this design is an increased fire risk in front-end accidents. The Trabant was the second car to use Duroplast, after the "pre-Trabant" P70 (Zwickau) model (1954–1959). The duroplast was made of recycled material, cotton waste from Soviet Union and phenol resins from the East German dye industry, making the Trabant the first car with a body made of recycled material.

http://moderncar69.blogspot.com/

Read More

Toyota

Toyota Car Logo

Toyota Corolla

Toyota Prius RR

Toyota FT 86 Concept Sporty Car

Toyota Fortuner

Toyota Motor Corporation commonly known simply as Toyota and abbreviated as TMC, is a multinational automaker headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. In 2010, Toyota Motor Corporation employed 317,734 people worldwide and was the world's largest automobile manufacturer by production.

The company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries to create automobiles. Three years earlier, in 1934, while still a department of Toyota Industries, it created its first product, the Type A engine, and, in 1936, its first passenger car, the Toyota AA. Toyota Motor Corporation group companies are Toyota (including the Scion brand), Lexus, Daihatsu and Hino Motors along with several "non-automotive" companies. TMC is part of the Toyota Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the world.

Toyota is one of the largest companies to push hybrid vehicles in the market and the first to commercially mass-produce and sell such vehicles, an example being the Toyota Prius. The company eventually began providing this option on the main smaller cars such as Camry and later with the Lexus divisions, producing some hybrid luxury vehicles. It labeled such technology in Toyota cars as "Hybrid Synergy Drive" and in Lexus versions as "Lexus Hybrid Drive."
The Prius has become the top selling hybrid car in America. Toyota, as a brand, now has four hybrid vehicles in its lineup: the Prius, Auris, Highlander, and Camry. The popular minivan Toyota Sienna is scheduled to join the hybrid lineup by 2010, and by 2030 Toyota plans to offer its entire lineup of cars, trucks, and SUVs with a Hybrid Synergy Drive option (Toyota has said it plans to make a hybrid-electric system available on every vehicle it sells worldwide sometime in the 2010s).

Worldwide sales of hybrid vehicles produced by Toyota reached 1.0 million vehicles by May 31, 2007, and the 2.0 million mark was reached by August 31, 2009, with hybrids sold in 50 countries. Toyota's hybrid sales are led by the Prius, with worldwide cumulative sales of 1.43 million by August 2009.[50] Toyota's CEO has committed to eventually making every car of the company a hybrid vehicle. Lexus also has their own hybrid lineup, consisting of the GS 450h, RX 400h, and launched in 2007, the LS 600h/LS 600h L.
Toyota and Honda have already said they've halved the incremental cost of electric hybrids and see cost parity in the future (even without incentives). Hybrids are viewed by some automobile makers as a core segment of the future vehicle market.

Toyota implemented its Fourth Environmental Action Plan in 2005. The plan contains four major themes involving the environment and the corporation's development, design, production, and sales. The five-year plan is directed at the, "arrival of a revitalized recycling-based society. Toyota had previously released its Eco-Vehicle Assessment System (Eco-VAS) which is a systematic life cycle assessment of the effect a vehicle will have on the environment including production, usage, and disposal. The assessment includes fuel efficiency, emissions and noise during vehicle use, the disposal recovery rate, the reduction of substances of environmental concern, and CO2 emissions throughout the life cycle of the vehicle from production to disposal. 2008 marks the ninth year for Toyota's Environmental Activities Grant Program which has been implemented every year since 2000. Themes of the 2008 program consist of "Global Warming Countermeasures" and "Biodiversity Conservation.

http://moderncar69.blogspot.com/

Read More

Tesla

Tesla Car Logo

Tesla Roadster Sport

Tesla Roadster F4

Tesla Motors, Inc. is a Silicon Valley-based company that designs, manufactures and sells electric cars and electric vehicle powertrain components. It was the only automaker building and selling a zero-emission sports car.

Tesla Motors is named after electrical engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla. The Tesla Roadster uses an AC motor descended directly from Tesla's original 1882 design.
The Tesla Roadster, the company's first vehicle, is the first production automobile to use lithium-ion battery cells and the first production EV with a range greater than 200 miles (320 km) per charge. The base model accelerates 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) in 3.9 seconds.

Tesla is currently developing the Model S, an all-electric family sedan. The Model S will have three battery pack options for a range of up to 300 miles (480 km) per charge.

Tesla Motors' first production vehicle, the Tesla Roadster, is an all-electric sports car. Tesla announced in January 2013 that it had delivered more than 1500 Roadsters in at least 30 countries. The car has a range of 245 miles (394 km) per charge on average according to testing done by Tesla. On Oct. 27, 2009, the Roadster driven by Simon Hackett drove the entire 313-mile (504 km) segment of Australia's annual Global Green Challenge on a single charge, at an average speed of 25 mph (40 km/h). The Tesla Roadster can accelerate from zero to 60 mph (97 km/h) in under 4 seconds and has a top speed of 125 mph (201 km/h).\

http://moderncar69.blogspot.com/

Read More

Suzuki

Suzuki Cars Logo

Suzuki Kizashi

Suzuki Vitara

Suzuki Motor Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Hamamatsu, Japan that specializes in manufacturing compact automobiles and 4x4 vehicles, a full range of motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), outboard marine engines, wheelchairs and a variety of other small internal combustion engines. Suzuki is Japan's 4th largest automobile manufacturer after Toyota, Nissan and Honda, the 9th largest automobile manufacturer in the world by production volume, employs over 45,000, has 35 main production facilities in 23 countries and 133 distributors in 192 countries. According to statistics from the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA), Suzuki is Japan's second-largest manufacturer of small cars and trucks.

Despite the success of his looms, Suzuki realized his company had to diversify and he began to look at other products. Based on consumer demand, he decided that building a small car would be the most practical new venture. The project began in 1937, and within two years Suzuki had completed several compact prototype cars. These first Suzuki motor vehicles were powered by a then-innovative, liquid-cooled, four-stroke, four-cylinder engine. It featured a cast aluminum crankcase and gearbox and generated 13 horsepower (9.7 kW) from a displacement of less than 800cc.

http://moderncar69.blogspot.com/

Read More

Subaru

Subaru Cars Logo

Subaru Impreza

Subaru Legacy

Subaru is internationally known for their use of the boxer engine layout popularized in cars by the Volkswagen Beetle and Porsche 911, in most of their vehicles above 1500 cc as well as their use of the all wheel drive drivetrain layout, first introduced in 1972, that became standard equipment for mid-size and smaller cars in most international markets as of 1996, and is now standard in all Subaru vehicles. They also offer many turbocharged versions of their passenger cars, such as the sporty Impreza WRX.

Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster, which in turn inspires the Subaru logo and alludes to the six companies that merged to create FHI.

Modified versions of the Impreza WRX and WRX STi have been competing successfully in rallying; drivers Colin McRae (1995), Richard Burns (2001) and Petter Solberg (2003) have won World Rally Championship drivers' titles with the Subaru World Rally Team, and Subaru took the manufacturers' title three years in a row from 1995 to 1997. Subaru's World Rally Championship cars are prepared and run by Prodrive, the highly successful British motorsport team. Several endurance records were set in the early and mid-nineties by the Subaru Legacy.
Subaru was briefly involved in Formula One circuit racing when it bought a controlling interest in the tiny Italian Coloni team for the 1990 season. The Coloni 3B's 12-cylinder engine was badged as a Subaru and shared the boxer layout with the company's own engines, but was an existing design built by Italian firm Motori Moderni. The cars were overweight and underpowered and the partnership broke down before the season finished. With the rise of rally racing, and the Import scene in the US, the introduction of the highly anticipated Subaru Impreza WRX in 2001 was successful in bringing high-performance, AWD compact cars into the sports car mainstream. Subaru supplies a factory-backed team for Rally America, and has won the driver's title in each of the series' five seasons.

The Subaru engine was rated at 110 kW (150 PS; 148 hp) and 350 N·m (260 ft·lbf) with a displacement of 2.0 litres. In March 2008, Subaru offered the Legacy sedan and wagon and the Outback wagon with the 2.0 litre turbodiesel in the EU with a 5-speed manual transmission only.

http://moderncar69.blogspot.com/

Read More

SsangYong

SsangYong Musso Sports 290S

SsangYong WZ Concept Car

SsangYong Korand

SsangYong Motor Company is the fourth largest South Korean automobile manufacturer. The name SsangYong means double dragons.

SsangYong originally started out as two separate companies; Ha Dong-hwan Motor Workshop and Dongbang Motor Co. In mid-1963, the two companies merged into Ha Dong-hwan Motor Co.

In 1964, Hadonghwan Motor Company started building jeeps for the US Army as well as trucks and buses. Beginning in 1976, Hadonghwan produced a variety of special purpose vehicles. After changing its name to Dong-A Motor in 1977, it was taken over by Ssangyong Business Group in 1986 and changed its name to SsangYong Motor. In 1987, it acquired United Kingdom-based specialty car maker Panther Westwinds.

In 1991 it started a technology partnership with Daimler-Benz. The deal was for SsangYong to develop an SUV with Mercedes-Benz technology. This was supposedly to allow SsangYong to gain footholds in new markets without having to build their own infrastructure (utilizing existing Mercedes-Benz networks) while giving Mercedes a competitor in the then-booming SUV market. This resulted in the SsangYong Musso, which was sold first by Mercedes-Benz and later by SsangYong.
SsangYong further benefited from this alliance, long after Daimler-Benz stopped selling the Musso, producing a badge engineered version of the Mercedes-Benz MB100, the Istana and using Daimler designs in many other models, including the second-generation Korando (engine and transmission), the Rexton (transmission), the Chairman H (chassis and transmission)and the Kyron (transmission).

http://moderncar69.blogspot.com/

Read More

Spyker

Spyker Car Logo

Spyker C8 Aileron Spyder

Spyker C8 Laviolette SWB

Spyker C12 Zagato

Spyker TDU

Spyker Cars is a Dutch sports car marque. The modern Spyker Cars only has the legal right to the brand name. The company's motto is "Nulla tenaci invia est via", which is Latin for "For the tenacious, no road is impassable". The marque's logo displays the piston engine of an airplane, a reference to the historic Spyker company which manufactured aircraft.

Since 2000 Spyker has been building exclusive sports cars like the C8 Spyder and the C8 Laviolette (with its elegant glass roof). Spyker's history of producing aero engines is reflected in details in these new cars as well as in the logo.
The C8 Laviolette and C8 Spyder have a 4172 cc Audi V8 engine delivering 400 bhp (298 kW), acceleration 0–60 mph in 4.5 seconds and a top speed of 300 km/h (190 mph). On July 14, 2005, it was announced that the C8 was approved for sale on the United States market.

From 2002 until 2006 Spyker built the C8 Double 12 S, which was available from the factory with 5 different levels of performance called Stage I (400 h.p.) through Stage V (620 h.p.), depending on the customer's need for performance.
From 2003 until 2007 Spyker built the C8 Spyder T, with the Twin turbo developed in conjunction with Cosworth from England. These engines were capable of 525 h.p. and acceleration times of 4.0 seconds.

In 2006 Spyker built the C12 La Turbie with an V12 engine capable of 500 horsepower and acceleration from 0–60 mph in less than 4 seconds.

http://moderncar69.blogspot.com/

Read More