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Mr. Rogers’ Stolen Car
The first automobile is generally considered to have been invented in 1886, making it just over 125 years old. And yet cars are among our most primal obsessions. Learning to drive is a profound rite of passage; sliding behind the wheel for the first time symbolic of freedom. Not surprisingly, the last 125 years have provided us with a great deal of awesome automobile trivia.


Mr. Rogers’ Stolen Car

If you believe everything you see in movies, you might assume that beautiful sports cars are the vehicles most likely to be targeted by thieves. In reality, the most common cars are also the ones most frequently swiped—particularly Honda’s Accord and Civic models. For the most part, stolen cars are not sold intact, but are taken to “chop shops” where they are dismantled. Honda’s wide circulation and relatively expensive parts make their cars an attractive target.

Unless it was picked up for a quick joyride and then dumped, the chances of recovering a stolen car are slim to none. However, your odds supposedly increase precipitously if you are a beloved children’s television personality. According to a probably apocryphal urban legend, none other than Mr. Rogers once had his car stolen. After the theft was reported on the news, the thieves returned the vehicle with a message: “Sorry, we didn’t know it was yours.”

Cozy Coupe

If you’re under 40, you or one of your pals likely had a Cozy Coupe. Manufactured by American toymaker Little Tikes, these plastic, red-and-yellow cars have proven enormously popular since their introduction in 1979. Described a cross between a “Volkswagen Beetle and a Fred Flinstone car,” the Coupe is powered by a toddler’s own feet. For many years, the Cozy Coupe was the bestselling car in America, outselling such perennially popular models as the Ford F-Series pickup and the Honda Accord. In 2008 alone, a year before the car’s 30th anniversary, 457,000 Cozy Coupes were sold.

In recent years, the Coupe’s aging design has been revamped into a slightly more modern look, including a set of cartoon eyes in the front. Little Tikes has also unveiled a line of other riding toys, including airplanes, tricycles, and pickup trucks.

Driverless Cars

Driverless cars are one of the mainstays of science fiction, featured in films like I, Robot and Minority Report—not to mention 1980s television classic Knight Rider. There are currently quite a few projects to develop a driverless car, but perhaps the most promising is helmed by search engine giant Google, which has retrofitted at least 10 different vehicles to pilot themselves. The Google project has proven an enormous success—after logging over 300,000 miles on active roads, there have only been two incidents, one where the vehicle was being manually controlled by a human, and another where the vehicle was struck by another motorist.

The implications of this technology are astonishing. Car accidents, which claim the lives of tens of thousands of people each year in the United States alone, would be virtually eliminated by factoring out human error. No longer would drunken, elderly, or youthfully reckless drivers cause deaths. Sending a text message from behind the wheel would not be a potential fatality. Those afflicted by blindness or paralysis would likely be able to drive. As things stand, the future looks bright for autonomous cars, with several automakers expecting to roll out driverless models by 2020.

Carjacking

Carjackings are often vicious, deadly crimes that certainly deserve no celebration. The term itself was first used in 1991 in The Detroit News, reporting on the death of 22-year-old Ruth Wahl, who was murdered on the streets of the Motor City for refusing to give up her Suzuki.

Detroit has more than its fair share of carjackings, but the world’s capital for the crime is South Africa, where the rate of carjackings is about 18 times that of the US. To address the problem, the South African police have special units to deal with the crime. Confrontations often end in shootouts.

Several devices have been invented to allow motorists to defend their cars, the most notorious of which was the Blaster. Introduced in 1998, the Blaster was a petroleum gas flamethrower affixed to the car, which would ignite anyone who came within a few feet of your vehicle. The inventor, Charl Fourie, claimed that it probably wouldn’t kill someone, but probably would permanently blind them. Somehow perfectly legal, the Blaster ceased production a few years later, as its price limited sales. There are, however, plenty of these devices still in circulation, a fact which carjackers in Johannesburg are likely to learn the hard way.

The Consequences Of 9/11
The terrorist attacks on 9/11 had far-reaching social, political, and financial implications that are still being felt today. Not surprisingly, the four horrifying plane crashes put a great many people off the idea of air travel. Those that did hazard public transportation were chilled by the presence of National Guardsmen clutching automatic weapons. Instead, many people chose to drive. At the time, gasoline could be had cheaply—the average price per gallon in the United States was about $1.50.

One axiom often bandied about is that flying is the safest way to travel. When a plane crashes, the loss of life is catastrophic, but millions of flights go off without a hitch. MIT statistics professor Arnold Barnett reports that in the last five years, the risk of dying on a flight in the United States was one in 45 million. In other words, statistically speaking, you can fly every day for 123,000 years before encountering a crash.

Driving, by contrast, is far more deadly. Your chance of being killed in a car accident in a given year is one in 7,000—flying is more than 6,000 times safer. It has been estimated that the increase in driving in the year following 9/11 resulted in an extra 1,595 traffic fatalities, more than half the death toll of the original attack.

The US gas guzzler tax that was designed to discourage fuel-inefficient vehicles only applies to cars, but not SUVs, trucks, and vans, since they were rarely used as passenger cars when the law was passed in 1978. The law has since not been updated to reflect modern times.

In Sweden, your car headlights have to be on at all times when driving, even in broad dayligh

The ignition on all Porsches is located on the left side of the wheel. This is because back when Porsche was primarily a racing team, the driver could save a fraction of a second by starting the car with his left hand, while simultaneously switching the car into gear with his right hand

You can instantly cool down a car that has been sitting under the sun by rolling down the window on one side and opening and closing the door on the other side five to six times.

The Last Car With Cassette Player Was Not A Lexus

Today, car companies are all switching from CD players to iPod-integrated infotainment systems, but Lexus was a surprising hold out for the tape deck. The Florida retirement home-spec SC430 came with one standard as late as 2010. The very last car to be able to play cassettes was the Ford Crown Vic, which still had an optional player in 2011. For new Lexus and Ford buyers, there's sadly no more thrashing out to their Dead Kennedys/Black Flag/T.S.O.L. mixtapes anymore.

The Pagani Zonda Shares Its Instrument Panel With A Lancia City Car

We all know that Lamborghini Diablos got their headlights from a Nissan 300ZX and the Lotus Esprit got its taillights from the Toyota AE86, but we'd never heard that Pagani got their instrument panel from the city car of choice for broke Italian students and/or grandpas. Pagani is known for their extravagant interiors, so we're not surprised the company keeps this info on the DL.

Porsche's first four-door wasn't the Panamera, or even their four-door prototype from the ‘90s. Porsche actually built a prototype sedan for Studebaker called the Type 542 back in 1952. It was too weird for production, but hey, it's still prettier than what Porsche sells today.

The Austin Maestro Was Different Genders In Different Countries


The Austin Maestro was one of the first cars with a talking digital dash. The company had actress Nicolette Mackenzie read out warnings, like low oil pressure or the brakes need servicing. For some markets (like Spain and Germany), Austin-Rover gave the car a male voice, presumably because it didn't think Germans or Spaniards wanted to take orders from a woman.

You Can Play Pong With A Saab

With all of the computers in cars these days, you'd assume that engineers would sneak some fun hidden-away pieces of code in there. The Swedish nutsos at Saab left us with our new favorite, explains Highball.

The McLaren F1 Gearbox Prototype Used A Chevy V8

McLaren needed an engine to test the gearbox for the F1. The motor needed to have enough torque to replicate what they expected from their eventual production unit, so they picked a good ol' Chevy 454 big block. Bleep yeah!

If A Car In Malaysia Is Too Successful, Competitors Can Have That Car's Price Raised

America has a fairly open car market, which we can't quite say about the growing car market in Malaysia, which is dominated by Toyota. BobbyAng points out the country's strangest automotive regulation.

An Egyptian President Helped Build An Arab Car Called The ‘Frisky'

There have been all kinds of thoroughly unhinged ideas to develop the Middle East, but one of the most unlikely was a proposed all-Arab automobile, built from a British microcar called the Frisky, as reader His Highness, the most Ramblin of Rovers explains.

SUV‬ Toyota have long won the unwavering authority. This car is deservedly considered one of the safest in its class and in the world at large.‪#‎Toyota‬ Land Cruiser Prado 120, manufactured from 2002 to 2009 – can be called one of the most beloved. Both drivers and passengers appreciate this car not only because of reliability, but also for the comfort and prestige.

http://www.auctionexportblog.com/super-reliable-toyota-land-cruiser-prado-120/

Don’t Know What Kind Of Car To Choose – Always Give Preference To Toyota

http://www.auctionexportblog.com/dont-know-what-kind-of-car-to-choose-always-give-preference-to-toyota/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HVa7pQMeeE

As automobiles became more popular a need arose to manufacture affordable cars on a large-scale basis. [b]Ransom Olds in 1902, [/b]debuted a production-line manufacturing system at his Oldsmobile factory in Michigan, USA.

Aston Martin DB 11

The new coupe Aston Martin DB1 should replace the model DB9. Skipping of the number was caused by Agent 007 – for the next episode of James Bond the British manufacturer built in a single copy of supercar DB10. There is not so much information about DB11. For example, according to the official teaser, under the hood of the car is located engine V12 capacity of 5.2 liters with two turbines. Thus, DB11 is the first car brand, equipped with a turbocharger.

Twelve-engine became a surprise: in 2013, Aston Martin has agreed with the Mercedes-AMG to supply engines for its supercars, but it was about the units V8. It is also known that the new DB11 has a virtual instrument panel, and at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Aston Martin showed a concept of the interior of the future model with a large touchscreen.

http://www.auctionexportblog.com/super-car-of-the-year-4-new-products-that-are-ready-to-break-speed-records/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOlhYOrs8Xg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6HFEaZi5mI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLlbGSOogUQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y9KFfqDuOY