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Hydrogen cars have been in the news lately as another alternative to gasoline or diesel vehicles.

Carfax announced Tuesday that Honda and Acura have joined the company's Service Link program, which is designed to help dealerships increase their number of service and maintenance customers by building a solid ...

If GM has any hope of regaining its title of world's biggest carmaker from Toyota its vehicles must not only sell well but they should also regain market share lost to rivals.

I hooked up my accelerator to my brake lights. I hit the gas, people behind me stop, and I'm gone.

The Proximity Hotel is proof that a hotel can be very green without sacrificing the comfort of its guests. The hotel is located in Greensboro, North Carolina, and it achieved a Gold LEED certification this year from the U.S. Green Building Council. The Proximity uses 36.5% less energy and 30% less water than a conventional hotel. It gets 60% of its hot water from 100 solar thermal panels on the roof. The hotel also boasts the first regenerative drive elevator, which recaptures energy as the elevator moves down.

^{Dennis Quaintance, Chief Design Officer of Proximity Hotel with the 100 solar panels atop the hotel.}

The guest rooms take advantage of abundant natural lighting with large energy-efficient “operable” windows that measure 7’4” square.

The hotel has a green, vegetated rooftop on the restaurant to reduce the “urban heat island effect.” In other words, the green roof reflects the heat, thus reducing the amount of energy needed for refrigeration and/or air conditioning. It also slows the rain runoff and insulates the rooftop, keeping the building cooler overall.

The hotel used building materials with recycled content. For example, reinforced steel contains 90% post consumer recycled content , sheetrock 100%, asphalt 25% and staircase steel 50%. Concrete contains 4% fly ash, the mineral residue left after the combustion of coal that is diverted from landfills.

During construction they restored 700 linear feet of stream by reducing erosion, planting local, adaptable plant species and rebuilding the buffers and banks. And 376 tons of boulders and 18 logs were used to maintain grade control, dissipate energy and assist in the creation and maintenance of riffles and pools.

The full list of the hotels’ green features can be found on this page.

Coachwork by Ghia
Chassis no. 0150/A

Photos by Don Heiney

Specifications:
230 hp, 4,102 cc (250 cu. in.) SOHC Lampredi V-12 engine with triple 40DCF Weber carburetors
five-speed with reverse
independent front suspension with double A-arms and a transverse lower leaf spring
Solid axle rear suspension with longitudinal leaf springs
four-wheel hydraulic drum brakes
Wheelbase: 2,420 mm. (96 in.)

Ing. Lampredi and the 340 America

You can’t separate the history of Ferrari sports cars and the development of V-12 engines, the first of which was designed by Gioacchino Colombo in 1946. By 1950, however, changes were necessary for continued competitiveness, and Ferrari enlisted the talents of Ing. Aurelio Lampredi to develop a new engine for the F1 and sports racing series. In developing his engine for the 4.5-liter Grand Prix cars, Lampredi had been forced to enlarge the cylinder block. On the original Colombo designed V-12s—the so called “short-block” engines—the distance between the center lines of adjacent cylinder bores is 90 mm, which was insufficient for the bore that Lampredi desired. He increased it to 108 mm, giving rise to the long-block engines associated with his name.

Concerned primarily with competition, Lampredi introduced a number of features he considered essential for relatively trouble-free running. Instead of wet cylinder liners pressed into the block, the new engine’s wet liners screwed into the cylinder head, to eliminate the possibility of a blown head gasket. He used external oil and water pipes wherever possible, rather than internal cast passages. Roller cam followers replaced the finger type. There were twelve intake ports and the connecting rods were split perpendicularly at the big end.

The first Lampredi engine appeared in the two 3.3-litre 275s that ran in the Mille Miglia. It was then used in an F1 car, enlarged to 4.1-litres (340) for F1 and then to 375. Finally, after the 4.5-litre Tipo 375 F1 racers, a slightly smaller engine with a capacity of 4.1 liters was developed for use in a range of sports and GT cars. The first of these was the 340 America, introduced at the Paris Salon in October 1950, one month after the Tipo 375 F1 car first ran at Monza in the Italian Grand Prix.

Intended primarily as a competition car for wealthy privateers, and marketed as such, the 340 was directed specifically at a new and increasingly profitable market: the United States. The 340 America became the first of many subsequent sports/racing Ferraris built specifically to meet the demands of the US market, where it proved to be both competitive and profitable.

Interestingly, the new car probably wasn’t supposed to bear the “America” designation. Carrozzeria Vignale’s drawings from 1951 all refer to these cars as “su telio Ferrari M.M. 51” indicating that these were the new 340 Mille Miglia barchetta and berlinetta. Ferrari, however, did not formally adopt the name 340MM until the spring of 1953, shortly before the running of the 1953 Mille Miglia.

In the 340 America, the 4.1-liter Lampredi V-12 developed 220 to 230 horsepower at 6,000 rpm. A five speed non-synchromesh gearbox was fitted behind the engine, and the chassis was the typical Ferrari twin oval parallel tube design, with unequal length parallel wishbone and transverse leaf spring front suspension. Rear suspension was by solid axle with semi-elliptic longitudinal leaf springs; parallel trailing arms, and the same Houdaille shock absorbers as in front.

As was commonplace for Ferrari, body construction was handled by independent carrozzeria like Touring, Vignale, and in the case of 0150/A, Ghia. Only 23 (or 25 if you count the two 275 Touring Barchettas that were later converted to 340 specs) 340 Americas were built and of these Vignale accounted for 11, Touring for eight (or 10), and Ghia for just four—the rarest of all.

In Ferrari’s serial numbering scheme, even numbers were reserved for series intended for competition, while models destined for road use were given odd numbers. However, while the factory intended the 340 Americas to be raced, many never did. On the other hand, the cars that did compete were highly successful, including both the 1951 Mille Miglia winner and 0150/A, a long time racer with many successes in lesser events and one strong finish in the grueling Carrera Panamericana.

The lines and proportions of 0150/A are well suited to the chassis. The long hood and comparatively more compact passenger compartment reflect the larger Lampredi engine—this is a large car, yet it seats only two. The façade is simple, uncluttered and graceful, while the broad grille and strong design elements conveyed a sense of the power of the new Ferrari. It was very well balanced and quite aerodynamic, two qualities that proveed important because this Ghia, unlike its brothers, was destined to serve its maker and its owners as Enzo Ferrari preferred—on the track.

Previously: DAYS OF FERRARI 2008, Day 1: 1950 166/195 Inter Berlinetta

Toward the end of Sunday’s SIA Flashback article about Woody Woodill and his Wildfires, there’s a mention of Woodill’s efforts to produce a station wagon and pickup variants of the Wildfire in Mexico and Brazil, along with another effort to produce an “international car” in Australia in about 1961. He had Bob Gurr design it in metal rather than his earlier fiberglass-bodied cars, and according to the article, he very nearly entered production with it, but the crash of the Australian stock market that year kept that plan from fruition.

Geoff Hacker, who is currently working on Forgotten Fiberglass, a book about Woodill’s Wildfire and the many other fiberglass-bodied kit cars and specials of the 1950s, said he was able to track down Woodill’s partner in the Australian venture, along with two sets of brochures and the above photo of a model of the proposed Australian Woodill. The California license plate and left-hand drive confuses us, but the Midget/Alpine-ish design appeals to us. Too bad it didn’t enter production. Geoff also notes that Woodill only planned to build the cars in Australia (on Triumph Herald chassis, at that), and then export the cars to the United States, thus the left-hand drive and California license plate.

As for the South American venture, Hacker said he hasn’t yet been able to track down any details, so that may have been just a seed that never germinated. If anybody does know anything more about it, though, we’ll gladly put you in touch with Geoff.

It is not going to be the sand and the sun for these 38 university student teams. They are not going to be relaxing and enjoying those days off from school. Instead, they would be taking the time off from studying to put on the last minute changes and additions to their prototype cars.

38 teams from all across the United States, Mexico, and Canada joined the 2008 Shell Eco-marathon Americas challenge. This event is a challenge for student teams to create vehicles that could go long distances and yet use a few amounts of fuel. These teams have gone through all the stages and the difficulties of planning, designing, and creating the vehicles.

David Ulrich is the team lead for the Cal Poly team and he said, “We realize the future of transportation ultimately depends on alternative energy sources. And as an engineering student, being given the opportunity to design and build fuel-efficient vehicles is an important part of gaining practical experience for the future.”

You go teams!

The inspiration behind Volvo 's newest wagon can be summed up in one word: Outback .

We recently partnered up with the folks over at CR4, the Engineer’s Place, for some content sharing. It seems engineers like to discuss old cars - who knew? For all you regulars here, you won’t see much of a change other than some new names in the comments for each post.

And I think some of these guys are all right. For example, Warren Wilson, who runs one of the blogs at CR4, posted photos of the resto process for his Honda CA160 motorcycle. If you’re thinking, “Hey, that’s similar to the 1964 Honda C110 that Fitzgerald picked up late last year,” well, not really - Warren’s bike, while still of a pressed-steel frame type is much larger and runs a 160cc engine, versus the 50cc ring-dinger in Fitzgerald’s bike.

I’m digging the red and silver paint scheme, and if you dig around in the comments on the various posts, you’ll find some good info on reverse electrolysis, which the commenters make seem much simpler than I previously thought. Maybe I oughta give it a try.