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Will it works in $ingapore, especially we got drivers love to cut lane sudden-out-of-no-where syndrome which make worse on the 2sec gaps distance ?

$imply NoWay in $ingapore?! Reminded us about the india traffic @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg9f93gpfbo

http://newpaper.asiaone.com.sg/show/story/...,111141,00.html? The movie The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift flags off today with a showy way of taking corners. Infographics artist SIMON ANG and reporter DESMOND NG give you a peek into this style of racing DRIFTING is a harrowing experience for most drivers. To a layman, it's oversteer - when the rear of your car skids before the front when taking corners. But for some drivers, this 'road-surfing' is an art. Interest in drifting here grew after the release of the anime-inspired Initial D movie starring Taiwanese crooner Jay Chou last year. The movie showed a young man perfecting his drifting skill on winding mountain roads while delivering tofu in his father's old Toyota AE86. The Hollywood release The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift is expected to stir up more interest in this extreme motorsport. In this third instalment of The Fast And The Furious series, an American street racer flies to Tokyo to live with his father. There, he loses a drift race to a Yakuza-linked rival and plunges into the underground drift racing scene to pay off his debt. In the movie, the flashy Nissan Silvia, Nissan Fairlady and the Mazda RX-8 take corners with such finesse and style that the sexy Japanese babes prancing and preening around are but a minor distraction. Drifting has evolved into a competitive sport in Japan, the US and recently Malaysia, where drivers compete to keep their cars sideways as long as possible. In Singapore, a small but growing group of about 50 enthusiasts travels regularly to Malaysia to practise their drifting techniques. But try drifting on the roads here and you can be sure that our men in blue will be hot on your heels before you can mutter W-R-X. THRILLING BUT ILLEGAL It is an offence to drive a motor vehicle on the road recklessly or in a manner which is dangerous to the public. Offenders can be fined up to $3,000, jailed for a year, or both. Drifting has its roots in Japan where racer Keiichi Tsuchiya pioneered the technique some 20 years ago. Imperial Concepts, a garage which tunes performance and drift cars here, estimated that the number of drift-wannabes - or drifters (not to be confused with vagrants) - has grown from 20 people to about 50 this year. About 10 to 15 of them are competitive drifters and they recently took part in the D1 Grand Prix (D1 GP) drift series held for the first time in Malaysia this year. The competition is still going on. Sales manager Ray Tan said: 'Some of these drivers learnt the techniques of drifting from niche magazines and DVDs from overseas. After that, they started to practise their skills on tracks in Gelang Patah and Bandar Nusa Jaya in Johor.' Most of these drifters are male, under 35, and are students, mechanics and even hawkers. 'Drifting is the art of being able to control a car when it's supposed to be out of control. There's more skill involved compared to drag racing where whoever has the most money to get the most powerful car wins,' said Mr Tan. In drag racing, cars try to complete a fairly short and straight course in the shortest time. Drift competitions are judged based on the angle, speed and show factor. The angle is the angle of a car in a drift - the bigger, the better. Speed refers to the speed on entering a turn, the speed through a turn and the speed exiting the turn. Again, the faster, the better. It takes a balance of braking and throttle control to achieve the perfect 'drift'. NORMAL CARS ARE OUT The heavily-modified Silvia shown here was used in the recent D1 GP series in Malaysia. About $80,000 was spent modifying the four-year-old car for drifting. Drift cars usually need to be rear-wheel-drive types, so you can forget about trying this stunt in your Vios and Swifts. Popular choices are the Silvia, Toyota AE86, Mazda RX-8 and RX-7. IT account manager Colin Teo, 30, drifts with his flaming red 2002 Silvia in Malaysia at least three times a month. He paid about $85,000 for his car last year and spent $8,000 more modifying it. He said: 'I like it because a lot depends on the driver's technical skill compared to just the pure, raw power of the car. It's a spectator sport because it's more skill than anything else. 'When you compare drifting to drag racing, it's like comparing speed skating to figure skating.'

http://www.team-integra.net/sections/artic...p?ArticleID=448 interesting to read hmmmm now where can i lay my hands on osram silverstar

Interesting insight from Molakule http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/ultima...ic;f=1;t=013994

Many facts have known though. 2006 Civic Page 01.pdf 2006 Civic Page 02.pdf

Since this is copyright material, I chose to post this in here away from prying eyes Enjoy! [inline markskodaice.jpg]

Improved Fuel Efficiency by Lubricant Design: A Review Check out page 20 Impact on Durability Link below. Too big to attach. http://www.iantaylor.org.uk/papers/IMechEFE2000.pdf You might want to check out the rest of the work of RI Taylor. Impressive! http://www.iantaylor.org.uk/papers.htm

Check the link below. I think he has a very good idea and this is an improvement in the right direction for the internal combustion engine but India is doing it wrong relegating technology as something dark and evil. http://www.popsci.com/popsci/futurecar/art...79464-1,00.html

About three decades ago, Boston Consulting Group Inc. came up with a device known as the Growth- Share Matrix to assess companies. It split businesses up into four categories: the cash cow, the dog, the star and the question mark (or problem child). If Bernd Pischetsrieder, the chief executive of Volkswagen AG, Europe's largest carmaker, doesn't already have one on the wall of his office, then someone should send him one. Pischetsrieder has four big businesses under his control, and each one fits neatly into one of those categories. Yet they combine to produce a conglomerate that looks more like a dog than a star. The time may well have come for Pischetsrieder to consider a radical new strategy for a company that is fast surrendering its leadership in the European automobile industry. Why not break it up? It has been a tough few months for Wolfsburg, Germany-based Volkswagen -- coming on the back of a tough few years. Last week, Volkswagen reported a nasty drop in sales. Figures for August showed an 8.2 percent decline to 149,962 vehicles, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. The company's market share fell to 17.7 percent from 18.1 percent. Overall car sales in Europe were down by less than 1 percent in the same month. Those numbers showed that the new version of the Golf, which was meant to revive the company, hasn't worked its magic yet. Last week as well, Abu Dhabi abandoned a plan to buy a 9.8 percent stake in the company -- an arrangement that had been made as part of a plan to take over LeasePlan Corp. Wage Freeze The company is arguing with the trade unions over a plan to freeze wages for two years for 100,000 workers. Overall, it still employs more than 170,000 people in Germany, one of the highest- cost labor markets in the world. Those woes have inevitably taken a toll on the share price. Volkswagen's shares have fallen 26 percent this year, making them the worst-performing stock on Germany's benchmark DAX-30 Index. That can't go on. Something has to change. But what? Pischetsrieder is used to adversity. Before landing the top job at Volkswagen, he ran Munich-based Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, spending billions to buy and then try to revive Britain's Rover. The losses on that adventure eventually cost him his job. If he is to survive at Volkswagen, he'll have to show a lot more strategic flexibility. A menu for fixing Volkswagen would run like this. Recipe for Repair One, cut jobs. For decades, Volkswagen has insulated itself from the relentless competition in the global auto market with a premium image that allowed it to charge fancy prices. That's changed. The market research firm J.D. Power & Associates in its 2004 survey of customer satisfaction in Germany ranked Volkswagen 21st, behind relatively little-known brands such as Daihatsu Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. You can't charge fancy prices for the 21st-best product in the market. You have to drive down prices and costs -- and that means employing fewer people. Two, move production abroad. Job cuts won't be enough. The company needs to move out of Germany. According to HVB Group, VW's workers in Germany earn 104 percent more than those outside the carmaker's home market -- an average of 63,770 euros ($78,000) in Germany, compared with 31,210 euros abroad. ``There is, from a stockholders' point of view, urgent need for action: either manufacturing in Germany becomes much more profitable for VW -- or there will be less of it,'' HVB analyst Albrecht Denninghoff said last month in a note to investors. Dismantlement Three, break it up. Volkswagen has become a sprawling conglomerate. It includes Audi AG, the Czech Republic's Skoda Auto AS, Spain's Seat SA, and the main VW brand. Alongside that, it owns a 34 percent stake in Sweden's Scania AB, Europe's fourth-largest truckmaker. And it has a growing collection of luxury brands, including Italy's Lamborghini and Britain's Bentley, all of which have devoured millions in investments, so far for little or no return. It's a mess. Apart from the fact they're all machines with tires on them, it's hard to see what unites those businesses. The theory? Different brands would target different segments of the market. Each would have its own image, drawing in different customers, while reducing costs by sharing parts. Sounds good. There's just one snag: It hasn't worked. If you were in the market for a mid-sized family sedan, you could buy a Seat Toledo, a Skoda Octavia, a Volkswagen Passat or an Audi A4. The differences between them are minimal. The result? Marketing costs are duplicated, while customers end up confused. Skoda Question Mark Think about that Boston matrix. Audi is a star -- an upmarket premium brand, with great designs and strong sales. Seat is a dog -- nobody understands the point of it. VW is the cash cow -- a big reliable brand, although one that is badly in need of sprucing up. And Skoda is a question mark -- the Czech car has the potential to take the place of the Golf as Europe's favorite economical and reliable means of transport. Yet it still has some way to go. Meanwhile, neither Scania nor the luxury brands have any place as part of a mass-manufacturer. The Scania stake should be sold and the luxury brands shut down. The solution? Create three companies: Audi, VW and Skoda. Give shareholders one share in each, sell everything else, and distribute the cash. You'd lose the cross-savings, but there's no reason why the companies shouldn't collaborate if it allows them to cut costs. Breaking up Volkswagen would give Audi and Skoda freedom to grow, providing the shove needed to transform the parent company. And it would be a chance to close or sell the businesses that aren't working, starting a recovery process for VW's long- suffering shareholders. Pischetsrieder lost his last job trying to stitch together an automotive conglomerate. Maybe he could save his current job by pulling the threads out of one that already exists.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.j...3/emfpero04.xml It features UK and Singapore's cheapest car. The Perodua Kelisa. Lots of facts there when buying a car. It is all about price price price. Servicing and low running costs are bonuses actually. Unfortunately Singaporeans only see Toyota, Mazda and Nissan but not $$$$ .