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It was the friday before Father’s Day weekend, and we faced a long, hot drive from New York to D.C., fighting beach-bound traffic and swarms of commuters.


But we had a secret weapon: satellite-beamed, continually

Dept.: Geek Guide
Tech: Mobile Entertainment
Cost: $100 and up


You have every right to think your car stereo is hot. After all, the dealer said it was the “upgraded” system, with speakers all over the place and a name you actually know on their grills. There’s probably even a screen in the dash.

My carefully wrapped Christmas present in 1998 was a $4.95 issue of Hemmings Motor News , the thick, pulp-paper monthly classified listing of collector cars. Even if it carries a 21st-century date, each issue still looks like something you'd find on the toilet tank of a 1950s Sinclair station restroom in Tucumcari, New Mexico. So was this a cheesy gift from my wife? Hardly.

In 1998, the Volkswagen Group bought Rolls-Royce and its subsidiary marque Bentley for $750 million, after a fierce bidding war with BMW. Months later, it was revealed that for $65 million, BMW had made an end run and snookered away the rights to the Rolls-Royce name—arguably the only valuable asset in the whole deal.


All VW ended up owning after spending so much was a Bronze Age Rolls/Bentley factory in Crewe, England, and the second-rate—in many eyes—Bentley brand (what were Bentleys, other than stealth Rollses with different grilles?).

When General Motors and Toyota yanked the plug on their electric-vehicle programs last year, citing high costs and weak demand, many proud owners of gas-guzzlers no doubt nodded smugly: Batteries are for flashlights, not family cars.

The outcome of the DARPA Grand Challenge was arguably disappointing: autonomous vehicles went farther than ever before, but the distance was considerably short of the goal--by about 200 miles. The pictures of the DARPA Grand Challenge, on the other hand, impress with the sheer variety of vehicles in the competition. Come behind the gates for a closer look at some of the DARPA Challengers in action (and, sometimes, out of action).

DARPA ultimately cares little about the fate of civilian robots in the Mojave Desert. Yet it cares very much about the development of new robot technology, technology that will enable unmanned vehicles to autonomously monitor their surroundings, avoid boulders and potholes, and race to targets. By those criteria, the race did have a winner: Digital Auto Drive of Morgan Hill, California, which developed an innovative new robot vision system that, team leaders claim, nearly won them the race.

When General Motors and Toyota yanked the plug on their electric-vehicle programs last year, citing high costs and weak demand, many proud owners of gas-guzzlers no doubt nodded smugly: Batteries are for flashlights, not family cars.

They sit on a spur of test track outside General Electric’s locomotive factory in Erie, Pennsylvania, panting and grumbling like two old lions half asleep. The ominous, muttering rumble is the sound of 8,800 horsepower at idle—24 cylinders with pistons big as buckets, turbochargers the size of washing machines, two V12 engines direct-driving alternators five feet in diameter.

Volvo's YCC concept car, designed entirely by a team of female engineers and stylists, met with snickers and smart-ass comments from the good-ol'-boys club when it debuted at the Geneva Motor Show in March. It's loaded with simplifying features ostensibly designed to attract a female audience. For instance, only mechanics can open the hood, on the assumption that women don't want to mess with what's under it. We got our macho going and confronted Lena Ekelund, a deputy manager of the design team. She did OK.


Popular Science: Why aim a car at women?

1950s
Boeing 707, introduced in 1958, launches the jet age. It’s expensive, but its speed (doubling that of piston-engine airliners) makes it productive.

1960s
Boeing introduces the 737 in 1967. It becomes the best-selling and longest-running airliner in production. The jet has since undergone two extensive makeovers to keep it competitive.

Want to take this baby out? You'll need a PlayStation 2. The only place you can drive Toyota's Motor Triathlon Race Cara rig designed to handle a track, street circuit or rally course equally wellis in the forthcoming video game Gran Turismo 4 . That doesn't mean its marquee innovation is pure fantasy.

I need to find out, once and for all, how big it is. I need to see if I measure up to the other guys, if I have what it takes. And to do that, I’ll have to hang it out in public, let them size it up, in a very open display of the one quantity most important to the American car guy. Horsepower.

He's not likely to raid Social Security for it—so NASA will have to scare up most of the cash. Of the $12 billion allotted for the first five years of the new Moon and Mars exploration plan, $11 billion will be siphoned from existing space programs.