Auto Mobiles

Changchun City in China’s Jilin province may soon be the home of another Toyota Motor Corporation facility. News reports state that the company is still working on the plans and if this pushes through, the plant would be the second Toyota facility in that province.

Toyota has been looking at the possibility of building a new facility so it can produce more units of its Toyota Prius hybrid. The company currently has a small plant which is in-charge of producing the mentioned model. Toyota is looking at an estimated 100,000 units as the capacity of the new plant.

The reports also continued that the new facility in Changchun would cost the company $468 million. That investment would allow the company to build a plant which would have the capacity to produce 100,000 units each year starting 2010.

However, a spokesperson from Toyota has denied that they are working on such a plan.

Statistics from the US Environmental Protection Agency show that keeping your cool can help you save on fuel. Speeding up makes your engine perform less and in the process, it makes your vehicle use up more fuel.

So what do you do to make your car use fuel efficiently?

Giving your accelerator even pressure makes your car use fuel efficiently. With that in mind, those quick starts and quick stops should be minimized - or even avoided. If your car is equipped with the cruise control, use this feature to maintain your speed.

Cleaning up your car could also help you save fuel. Unnecessary items you have in your car add to the total weight of the vehicle and that lessens the fuel efficiency of the engine. If you still have those soccer balls that your son does not even use anymore, your vehicle is not the right place to store them.

Looking to go green? If you live in a state prone to drought you might want to think twice before switching your daily commuter to an electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid.

Three words: Gullwing Moszkva Interceptor.

Three because those are the only ones on the oMm szemével post we can understand. Well, those and the phrase “Boydovics Coddingtonszkij.” Which is the greatest Eastern Europification of a name, ever. From here on out, I shall be known as Давид Стефанович. Over to you, Danköpeğin.

As if I needed another reason to be jealous of Australians. How many American Jeep clubs actually take their restored/original condition military Jeeps out for what they’re supposed to do? While digging around for yesterday’s video, I came across a two-part video (part 1, part 2) of the Military Jeep Club of Queensland’s Amphibious Vehicle Swim-In from June of 2007, in which at least a couple GPAs take to the water, just as they were designed to do 60-plus years ago. The Swim-In seemed to involve more trail riding than swimming, but still, that’s more than I see most American clubs doing.

Previous in the March Military Campaign - Autobiography of a Jeep

As with yesterday’s Pontiac Grand Am-amino, while doing research for an upcoming story in Asa Hall and Richard Langworth’s “The Studebaker Century: A National Heritage,” I came across this chart proposing the extensive use of shared body panels in the 1957 Studebaker-Packard line. Pretty standard stuff, save for the vehicle in the lower left corner.

It appears Studebaker-Packard, before their merger with Curtiss-Wright, had envisioned an express coupe. If so, they would have either beat or matched Ford’s Ranchero to the punch.

And check it, Studebaker even envisioned an Aztek-like tent package to go with it.

Hall and Langworth, however, provide not a clue as to whether any prototypes might have been whipped up or why the Studebaker Express Coupe never emerged; considering the chart above, it seems the cost of stamping new body panels wouldn’t have been an issue.