The Autopian

The gasoline engine has taken so many different shapes and forms over history, from familiar inline-fours and V8s to beautiful radials. But someone has to maintain these things, and more elaborate engines may be equipped with dozens of spark plugs. Chrysler once made a tank engine that had 60 of them! The Bishop wrote about the glorious Ford GAA, but he really only scratched the surface of tank engines. Hoser68: This wasn’t even the weird engine for the Sherman.

His name is Billy, and his business, “Pasadena Motor Vehicle Registration & Transfer Service,” shares a nondescript building with his small used-car dealership off of Pasadena’s busy Foothill Boulevard. A few months ago I walked in with two huge problems: I had a car with zero paperwork, and I had another car that the world didn’t know existed.

Peter Vieira Wow, you're reading this? Thanks! If you're into RC cars and I seem vaguely familiar, it's because I spent over 25 years writing and editing RC car news, reviews, and tech articles in print and online. What else, what else ... I have a degree in Film Studies (useless), most of a degree in Graphic Design (useful), and I'm married to a wonderful woman with horrible taste in men.

You know what I miss that cars often had up until the ’90s or so, and are almost extinct today? Badges. Not the usual make/model badges, though, we still have plenty of those, I mean the highly-specific feature badges that cars used to proudly display. Actually, not even just features – also technical details. You know what I mean, right?

The diesel engine continues to be one of the greatest inventions in transportation. Much of the world runs on diesel, and if these engines aren’t reliable, they can cripple vital transportation systems. But they also come with an environmental toll. Today’s trucks use an assembly of emissions systems to clean up their tailpipes for cleaner air, and one of those systems is Diesel Exhaust Fluid.

The Dacia Logan might not have won the Nürburgring 24 Hours endurance race, but it won the hearts and minds of every petrolhead who has a soft spot for humble cars. No matter if the Logan had been to the same gym as RenaultSport cars go and learned a few tricks: it was still a Logan sedan, even with RenaultSport Clio and Megane parts under its Romanian-built hood.

The woes of the Volkswagen Group are so well known and oft discussed in The Morning Dump that it’s almost not worth repeating them. One version is that the company’s hubris is to blame for all its troubles.

As I’ve said before, I really don’t believe most automotive conspiracy theories. The notion that General Motors killed trolley cars to sell more buses doesn’t really wash with me, and I don’t think the “Pinto Memo” was the smoking gun some say it was. Having said that, I do believe that large auto manufacturers are holding back on technology they could give us now, but will wait forever to finally offer.

First off, I would like to mention that I have some kind of weird infection in the top digit of my right index finger and it’s swollen and filled with pus and hurts constantly. It’s driving me bizzonkers, like having a constant annoying sound playing in the background, only instead of sound, it’s pain, and I want to chew my finger off but I suspect I’d regret that.

A pilot-carrying flying machine can be seriously tiny if you’re creative enough. There are many ultralights that you can park in your garage or haul in a standard cargo trailer behind your SUV. You can even buy a helicopter that’s basically scaffolding and an engine. One wild engineer had taken the idea of a tiny plane to the extreme. This is the Stits SA-2A Sky Baby, an impossibly tiny plane that’s only nine feet long, yet had an enclosed cabin and an impressive top speed of 205 mph.