Pick-up trucks are becoming increasingly popular as family vehicles these days. They love the utility provided by the storage bed, the frugality and hardiness of the turbodiesel engine, and the off-road capability to tackle our flood-cursed city centrals. Many small families do not mind the cramped interior that you get most of the time. While pick-ups are available with safety features like airbags and ABS, how safe are they in reality?

For the first time ever, Euro NCAP has tested pick-up trucks in the light of the vehicles becoming more and more popular for family usage, and it reveals to us some shocking facts. Three trucks were crashed - the Nissan Navara (second generation Frontier - ours is the first gen), the Isuzu D-MAX and the Mitsubishi L200 (known as the Triton in Malaysia). The following are the results:

Please read the following full crash test reports for full details:
Isuzu D-MAX, Mitsubishi L200, Nissan Navara

The Nissan Navara scored the worst in adult occupant protection - not even one proper star but only a struck-through star. According to the report, the chassis rail collapsed and the accelerator pedal moved as much as 20cm into the footwell - that would definitely cause really serious injury to your legs. The airbags and seatbelt pre-tensioners also activated too late into the crash, which EuroNCAP says poses “a high risk of life threatening injury”.

Nissan has developed new airbag software for the Nissan Navara and all new Nissan Navaras now have the updated software. All existing Nissan Navaras on the road will also receive a free airbag software update at their service centers.

The Mitsubishi L200/Triton scored 4 stars for adult occupant protection, and if you view the full crash report, you will see that the driver’s body and leg protection ranged from weak to marginal, but at least the head received good protection.

Very shocking - please do read the full crash test reports linked above. It’s a pity EuroNCAP did not test the Toyota Hilux. The Toyota Hilux is one of the most popular pick-up trucks used as a family car here in Malaysia, plus a full-bodied 7-seater version of it is sold as the Fortuner.

The V8 Caterham was just unveiled in the past week, so naturally we can expect other lightweight track car manufacturers to respond, but I didn’t expect it this fast!

Ariel has its own monster V8-engineed Atom in the works and it will go on sale in Spring 2008. Surprise, surprise - it’s powered by the same 2.4 liter 40 valve V8 engine as the Caterham RST-V8! The Ariel Atom V8 is available with the supercharged version of the Russell Savory bike-derived V8 engine, putting out 500 horses at 10,000rpm and 406Nm of torque at 8,500rpm.

500 horses is a big difference from the second most powerful Atom which has 300 horses. “This is an interesting project for us and an experimental departure from what we normally produce. For a few customers the Atom 500 will be the ultimate expression of lightweight performance and represents the outer limits of whats achievable in a road-registered car,” says Ariel boss Simon Saunders.

This is not the first V8-powered Ariel Atom. Sometime back, Dennis Palatov plonked in a 2.8 liter V8 derived from two inline-4 Suzuki Hayabusa engines into his Ariel Atom. It produced 400 horses at 10,000rpm.

I cannot wait for foreign publications to do shoot-out reviews comparing both the Caterham Seven and Ariel Atom powered by the same RST-V8 engine!

Click to enlarge

Photographer Leong Tik Tsin is only 19, but he has some really amazing talent. He was at the Supercar for Charity event last Sunday and snapped some beautiful photos. Lucky for us, he reads this blog and has decided to share with us some photos of the supercars he snapped at the event. View the photos after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of Supercar for Charity Photos by Leong Tik Tsin

The Caterham Seven RST-V8 is the ultimate Caterham, with a power to weight ratio of over 1,000 bhp per tonne, more than double that of a Bugatti Veyron.

In the engine bay of each RST-V8 is a 2.4 liter 40 valve V8 by RS Performance, which puts out 380 horsepower at a sky high 10,000rpm and 258Nm of torque at 8,500rpm in normally aspirated form. This sounds like it’s half way on the way to being an F1 engine, which typically puts out over 700 horses and topping out at 19,000rpm. The V8 is mated to a 6-speed sequential paddle shift gearbox with an LSD.

A version of the engine supercharged at 0.8 psi (0.05 bar) produces 500 horsepower, with 406Nm of torque at 8,500rpm. The supercharged variant of the Caterham RST-V8 is called the “Levante”, and only 8 units will be available. Each vehicle comes with a two day driver training course, as this machine is not your run of the mill fast car.

0 to 100km/h with the 500 horsepower engine takes less than 3 seconds, and has traction control and launch control to help harness all that torque pushing a car that weighs just over 500kg.

According to Reuters, the worker councils of Porsche and Volkswagen have reached an agreement on representation on the new Porsche Automobilholding board, but offered no details as to what the final agreement is. This post will be updated should any more details surface. - Source

Related Posts:
Volkswagen works chief: hostile takeover by Porsche!

Honda has changed the venue for the Honda F1 Roadshow in the Klang Valley from Mid Valley Megamall to Sunway Pyramid. Dates remain the same. For more information on the Honda F1 Roadshow, refer to the previous post linked below.

Related Posts:
Honda F1 roadshows around Peninsular Malaysia

Indian paper The Telegraph has revealed to us one of the partners in India that Proton is talking to. Argentum Motors is the new owner of the defunct Daewoo Motors plant in Surajpur, Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern India.

Proton is reportedly talking to Argentum Motors on using the plant for contract manufacturing or sourcing of components. Argentum executive Ajay Singh says Proton was looking into ways to bring down production costs for its Indian market entry, and the Argentum plant provided some ways to achieve that goal. He added that Argentum is also talking to other manufacturers like Daimler AG.

Related Posts:
Proton to finalise India plan by mid-2008
Proton and the Indian automotive industry

Source

Click to enlarge

BMW will showcase its new BMW Vision EfficientDynamics Concept at the 2008 Geneva Motor Show in mid-March 2008. The BMW Vision EfficientDynamics Concept is essentially a BMW X5 with a turbodiesel hybrid drivetrain.

Under the BMW Vision EfficientDynamics Concept X5’s hood is BMW’s new 2.0 liter twin turbocharged oil burner which made its debut in the BMW 123d. The inline-4 turbodiesel used two turbochargers and produced 204 horsepower and 400Nm of torque between 2,000 to 2,250rpm. The twin turbo system uses a sequential setup - a smaller turbo takes care of the low revs while a larger one comes in at higher revs. An impressive 200Nm of torque is available at 1,200rpm - 50% of the engine’s peak torque.

The hybrid system is a mild hybrid and not a full hybrid system like the one in the BMW X6 Active Hybrid Concept. The electric motor provides an additional 20 horsepower and 210Nm of torque under acceleration, bringing total peak power up to 224 horsepower and a massive 610Nm of torque. 0 to 100km/h takes 8.9 seconds. This electric motor is flange mounted directly onto the new ZF 8-speed automatic transmission (current ZF trannys in BMWs top out at 6 cogs), which will make its production debut in the next generation BMW 7-Series due soon.

High efficiency lithium ion batteries in the boot area stores the power that drives the electric motor. These batteries are charged via Brake Energy Regeneration. A 1.0 meter square roof mounted photovoltaic solar panel can generate power for low-load electrical appliances such as power for your in-car cell phone charger. Power created in this zero-CO2 way can also be used to pre-heat the transmission fluid. Power from the solar panel can either be used immediately or stored for future use. Other design alterations to the X5 with efficiency in mind include aerodynamically-efficient 19-inch light alloy wheels with reduced ventilation. The BMW Vision EfficientDynamics Concept X5 has a CO2 emission of 172g/km and a fuel efficiency of 43.5mpg, or 6.5 liters per 100km.

More images of the concept after the jump.

Related Posts:
BMW Concept X6 ActiveHybrid
BMW announces new 204 horsepower 400Nm twin turbodiesel inline-4

Click here to read the rest of BMW Vision EfficientDynamics Concept diesel hybrid

Click to enlarge

It appears that a group of people have been working on a Super 2000 Proton Satria Neo rally car, and the above image sent in by LivinCars is proof that such a race machine is in the works. Yahoo Eurosport UK reports that the people behind this car is most likely Mellors Elliot Motorsport based at Bakewell in the Derbyshire region. Mellors Elliot Motorsport was the company that prepared the Proton PERT that Karamjit Singh raced and won in the Production Car World Championship. This is unconfirmed of course.

No specifications at the moment, but FIA regulations for Super 2000 cars include a maximum power output of 280 horsepower normally aspirated, so it’s just natural that the development team tune up the Neo to produce that amount of power to be competitive. There’s also a maximum displacement limit of 2.0 liters - so it’s not very likely that this will be powered by a Campro 1.6 engine. The engine must be mated to a 6-speed sequential gearbox with control specification made by Sadev, Xtrac or Ricardo.

Source

Click to enlarge

It’s been quite some time since we’ve heard from Proton’s Race Rally Research division. The last cars that they had put their tuning touch on was Proton Waja MME and the Proton GEN2 MME back in 2006. Because their first product was the Proton Satria R3 based on the Satria GTI, many have been anxiously waiting for the R3-tuned version of the Satria Neo to debut. The wait is over, and the Proton Satria Neo R3 is here.

Read my test drive report after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of Proton Satria Neo R3 Details and Photos