Day: Mar 24, 2015

The Hunt For a Green Car, Continued

Nothing turned up at Renault though their Clio has 13 colours**. Fiat made it impossible to find out what they had in under five minutes though their website looks nice. I could not be bothered….

2015 Citroen Cactus colour palette. Not very green.
2015 Citroen Cactus colour palette. Not very green.

Mazda have six colours for their new 2 but not a green. The red costs a remarkable €750 while the other colours are running at €450. White is the only colour that comes at €0. Citroen is another green-free zone. The DS5 which is a car for individualists comes in a range of colours limited to six, nearly all of which are some form of grey or black. I really believe that if they offered this car in banana, lime, strawberry and mustard it would Continue reading “The Hunt For a Green Car, Continued”

The Hunt for a Green Car: 2015 Ford Tourneo Connect

No, it’s not green but a very excellent yellow called Solar Yellow Metallic.

It more than compensates for Ford´s lack of verdant colours.
It more than compensates for Ford´s lack of verdant colours.

Here is the Ford Ka colour palette. The blue is greenish but not a pure green. Continue reading “The Hunt for a Green Car: 2015 Ford Tourneo Connect”

Theme : Benchmarks – Le Système Panhard

The horse before the cart – or was it the other way round?

GM X Frame
GM’s notorious X-Frame showing the layout in its simplicity

It hardly seems like an invention but innovators often do something that, with the benefit of hindsight, the rest of us think is so bloody obvious that we can’t see what the fuss is about. So, in 1892, after a couple of years of fiddling around with alternatives, Émile Levassor decided to put an internal combustion engine in the front of the car he was developing with René Panhard, then he connected it to a clutch with, behind that, a simple gearbox which took drive back to the rear wheels. This they continued to develop, producing the forerunner of the manual gearbox we recognise today in 1895.

Continue reading “Theme : Benchmarks – Le Système Panhard”