What Do You Get If You Cross A Saab 900 Turbo Cabriolet With A Nissan Figaro?
It’s possible to get a hinny in the equine world, but how did the auto world possibly come up with the Morgan Midsummer? For those with little equine knowledge (and to be honest, I didn’t know that a hinny existed), let’s first of all clear up what a hinny actually is. A male horse (stallion) and a female donkey (a jenny) can get together and produce a domestic equine hybrid called a hinny – a cross between a male horse and a female donkey.
I was more familiar with the flipside of this, where a male donkey (a jack) and a female horse (a mare) got together and produced a mule. I’m not quite sure why I linked a Morgan with the equine world, apart from the obvious connotations of horsepower, but I think it comes down to the Morgan being a really cool modern car that has a beauty that it has all of its own but then has a hint of cars from yesteryear, ones that were also a bit exclusive and cool, even back then.
The Hot Sports Cars Of 2024
Most people who love driving have dreamed about owning or at least driving a sports car at some point in their lives. Some sports car greats that come to mind are the Porsche 911, BMW M4, Subaru WRX, Ford Mustang, Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, and even Tesla cars. We often hear about Toyota leading the new car sales charts, with Australians also loving the Ford Ranger and other great new utes, along with Mazda SUVs. But what about those of us who love to own and drive a sports car? What are the more commonly sold new sports cars been recently? Let’s take a look.
Our focus here is on the common sports cars, not the crazy wild exotics that tend to be reserved for the rich and possibly famous – the sort of things that most of us can only dream about. We’ll keep things within the bounds of the possible and look at the sports cars that keen Aussie drivers actually purchased.
Keeping It Cool
As most of us are still driving a vehicle with an internal combustion engine (ICE), and since the cost of motoring has gone up over the last few years, it is good to think about what things we can do as preventative measures to ensure that our ICE vehicles continue to run smoothly, efficiently, and reliably without any major repairs. An essential part of service maintenance on any ICE vehicle is the need to regularly change the engine’s coolant.
One of the things I love about ICE vehicles is that they always come standard with a heater that usually works really well to keep you nice and warm inside the vehicle when the temperatures outside are low and cold. This warm air coming through the heater vents is from the ICE block (not to be confused with an iceblock!), fundamentally from the friction that comes as the mechanical components inside the ICE are whizzing around like clockwork. Inside the engine block are small tubes and cavities where the water coolant (the stuff you put into the radiator) circulates through in order to take heat from the metal surfaces inside the engine to cool the ICE block down to a sufficient operating temperature. The added bonus of this is that the warm coolant passes through your cabin heating system, which fans the warm air inside the cabin of the vehicle as much as you want it to, to keep you nice and toasty.
Silly Features That Never Made It
In most modern cars, you can find a selection of neat features to make the task of driving easier and more pleasant. Some of the ones I particularly like include active cruise control, ambient lighting, steering wheel mounted audio controls, reversing cameras and Bluetooth connectivity so my phone and car talk to each other. I guess most of us have our favourite driver aids.
However, over the over 100 years that the car has been around, manufacturers and designers have come up with some features that flopped, mostly because they were plain silly ideas. We’re not talking about things that have been phased out because they are no longer in high demand, such as cigarette lighters (which have morphed into 12-volt power outlets), or because they were a bit iffy in terms of safety (such as bench seats). Instead, we’re talking about ideas that were totally nuts. Here’s the looniest ones that were put forward by designers with a straight face.
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