1909 Ford Model T Touring, Open Valve Engine, Numbers Matching, Babited Rearend on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Jeremy Clarkson chooses his top 10 cars for 2015 and 2016

Jeremy Clarkson is well-known for his role as co-host on the old Top Gear. But the frontman of the upcoming Amazon Prime Show, The Grand Tour, also has a standing column for The Sunday Times in the UK where he reviews the latest cars. With fall nearing, Clarkson put out a list of his top-10 cars from this year and 2015. Some on the list will surprise you, while others represent everything we've come to love about Clarkson. In order to make his list of star cars, the vehicles must offer what co-host James May calls "the fizz." The vehicles, Clarkson claims, have something that is out of the ordinary. Whether it's the car's looks, the way it gets up to speed, or its high-tech gadgets, Clarkson's top-10 list is made up of items that are more than just tools for getting from point A to B. So which ones made the list? Head over to the column in The Sunday Times. Mazda MX-5 Miata 2.0 Sport Recaro Alfa Romeo 4C Coupe Mercedes-AMG GT S Ford Focus RS Ford Mustang Fastback 5.0 V8 GT Volvo XC90 D5 AWD Vauxhall Zafira Tourer 1.6 CDTi Tech Line BMW M2 Ferrari 488 GTB Lamborghini Aventador Related Video: Featured Gallery Jeremy Clarkson's Star Cars For 2015 and 2016 View 11 Photos News Source: The Sunday TimesImage Credit: STEFAN HEUNIS / AFP / Getty Images Celebrities BMW Ferrari Ford Lamborghini Mazda Performance bmw m2 ferrari 488 gtb

Recharge Wrap-up: Daimler spending big for fuel cells, Ford Go!Drive experiment advances

Ford's Go!Drive experiment is entering its beta phase in London. The project, which is one of the automaker's global smart mobility experiments, uses a mobile app for on-demand carsharing of Ford Focus Electric and Ford Fiesta vehicles. The beta phase involves increasing the number of available vehicles from 20 to 50, and collecting new data from users. The program offers one-way rentals and guaranteed parking, with no membership fees and a cost of 26 cents per minute. Ford hopes to get 2,000 drivers involved in the program. Read more at Green Car Congress. Daimler will invest billions of dollars to upgrade the Mercedes-Benz Unterturkheim plant over the next few years. This year alone, it plans to spend $1.06 billion. The company expects cost savings "in the range of hundreds of millions of euros until 2020," while maintaining its workforce of 18,700 employees and adding 150 vocational training positions. The upgrades will allow the plant to become a center for building more efficient engines, hybrid powertrains and fuel cell systems. "Alternative drive systems are an important element of our future mobility," says Mercedes-Benz's Markus Schafer. "Their share of automotive production is set to steadily rise over the next few years, complementing our highly efficient engines within the portfolio. This is what we have laid the groundwork for today." Read more at Reuters, or in the press release below. The Department of Energy is providing $20 million in funding for the development of more efficient high speed industrial motors and drives. Ditching old motors and gearboxes for ones that use integrated power electronics could help decrease the energy consumption of the industrial sector, which currently uses more than 25 percent of the electricity generated in the US. The projects being funded will reduce losses and decrease the size of drive systems used in industries like petroleum refining and natural gas, which could affect the lifecycle efficiency of transportation fuels. Read more at Energy.gov.

An amazing Group B rally car collection heads to auction

Kicking off in 1982, the Group B era spawned some of the most fearsome rally cars of all time. The technologically advanced pioneers of all-wheel drive and turbocharging defined a time when automakers had carte blanche to build machines with unrestricted power, without the burden of homologating a large number of road cars to qualify. The results were sometimes deadly, leading the FIA to ban the class after 1986. Now, a collection of seven Group B monsters is headed across the block in Paris as part of the Artcurial auction, held in partnership with France's famed Retromobile show. The show has been delayed to June, however. There's a 1985 Peugeot 205 Turbo 16, one of 20 Evo II models that helped the company achieve two championships in Group B's short run. This particular example was driven by world champion Timo Salonen at the 1986 Swedish Rally, where it finished seventh due to an oil filter seal failure. Bruno Saby subsequently drove it at the 1986 Tour de Corse and Peugeot entered it at the 1986 Acropolis Rally as well. It's still registered to Peugeot Talbot Sport and represents a French technological achievement, according to Artcurial, comparable to the Concorde or TGV train. Representing Italy are a pair of Lancias in the iconic Martini livery. The Lancia 037 helped Bel Paese clinch its only Group B victory in 1983, after a hard-fought rivalry with Audi. It's one of the few Group B cars that weren't AWD, achieving its success the old-fashioned way, through lightness and superb handling. A second Lancia, a 1986 Delta S4, was the culmination of the Italian firm's later Group B efforts and one of Saby's favorites. While Group B was no more in 1987, the S4 was the predecessor to the Delta Integrale that would dominate WRC from 1987 through 1992. While the collection also includes greats like a Ford RS200, Renault 5 Maxi Turbo, and MG Metro 6R4, the centerpiece is the Audi Quattro Sport S1. The ultimate Group B machine, it introduced all-wheel-drive and turbocharging to the sport. It also employed the wildest use of wings and air dams to generate downforce. Tunable up to 590 horsepower, it could rocket to 60 mph in about three seconds. The car offered for sale came straight from Ingolstadt, a 1988 model built for the Race of Champions of ex-Group B cars. The collection was amassed in the late 80s and early 90s, not long after Group B's dissolution.