1987 E28 BMW M5 – $26,000
3.5l straight 6, 210kw

1991 E34 BMW M5 – $18,000
3.6l straight 6, 235kw

2002 E39 BMW M5 – $56,000
4.9l V8, 294kw

2006 E60 BMW M5 – $114,900
5.0l V10, 373kw

1990 E30 BMW M3 – $49,000
2.3l 4-cyl, 158kw

1996 E36 BMW M3 Evo – $18,500
3.2l straight 6, 236kw

2003 E46 BMW M3 Convertible – $51,697
3.2l straight 6, 252kw

2009 E90 BMW M3 – $129,999
4.0l V8, 309kw

1983 E24 BMW M635CSi – $29,995
3.5l straight 6, 210kw

2005 E63 BMW M6 – $109,900
5.0l V10, 373kw

Grand Total: $603,991

Located outside Williams F1 headquarters.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1215295/The-hedge-shaped-like-Formula-1-car.html

REPORT: Ford Transit Connect arriving in U.S. with full interiors that get stripped to comply with “Chicken Law” — Autoblog.

The law of unintended consequences is a funny one. Take the chicken tax. Back in the 1960s, West Germany imposed high tariffs on American grown chicken. President Johnson – a man you would not want to mess with – fought back by imposing high import tariffs on foreign made trucks and commercial vans. This is one of the reasons why there are no full-size German pickup trucks. It’s also why German egg yolks are orange while ours are yellow (grass fed chicken vs. corn fed chicken), but that’s another story. The only reason we have the Toyota Tundra and the Nissan Titan is because those companies decided to make them here in the U.S. Otherwise they’d be too expensive. This poses a real problem if you’re Ford and you want to bring in your made-in-Turkey Transit Connect van.

How to circumvent the law? There’s all sorts of creative ways. Up until just recently, Chrysler’s been selling Sprinter vans here in the States by shipping them unassembled to a factory in South Carolina where the vans are reconstituted and shipped to dealers. Ford’s taking a slightly different approach. They actually ship the Transit Connects here with the vans classified as wagons. Then, once they reach a processing facility in Baltimore, they are transformed into cargo vans, totally side-stepping the Chicken Tax. Smart, huh?

The process of transforming a passenger “wagon” into a cargo van works like this. The rear windows are removed and replaced by a sheet of metal that’s quick cured in place. The rear seats and seat belts are then removed and a new floorboard is screwed into place. Voila – five minutes after they start as five-passenger wagons, Ford has a bunch of two-seater panel vans. The seats are then shredded and the material is used as land fill cover. No word on what happens to the glass. Long story short, take that chicken tax!

This is a few months old, but hey, LASERS!!!!

Scientists at Liverpool University and engineers at car giants Ford have developed a new ignition system which uses focused beams of laser light to ignite the fuel.

The researchers claim the technology is more reliable and efficient than current spark plug technology and will enable cars to start more easily in cold and damp conditions.

It is understood that Ford, the world’s fourth largest car manufacturer, hopes to put the laser ignition system into their top of the range vehicles within the next couple of years before making it more widely available.

“Lasers can be focused and split into multiple beams to give multiple ignition points, which means it can give a far better chance of ignition.”

Power comes courtesy of a sweet sounding 2.4-liter, four-cylinder Millington engine that kicks out a respectable 280 horsepower paired with a WRC-style six-speed sequential gearbox.

]]> http://guidance.net.nz/2009/08/acura-nsx-submarine/feed/ 0