When racecar engineers dream of a perfect world, they don’t imagine Britney Spears disrobing from a Sparco fire suit. What they fantasize about is a universe without the prima donnas behind the steering wheels. "The driver is not your friend," says Kia Cammaerts, who creates racing simulations."Because unless he's [world champion] Michael Schumacher, all he's doing is slowing the car down." So would engineers ever attempt an automotive version of Deep Blue, the supercomputer that in 1997 humbled chess champ Garry Kasparov?

G-FORCE—WHAT IS IT?
You’ve seen us mention g-forces in articles about new jet aircraft and cars?many times with reference to their being a very serious obstacle to overcome when developing ever faster technology. But what are they? Gravitational force is the force of gravity pulling you toward the Earth. When you undergo a change in speed and direction, that force increases in proportion to the rate of change. To calculate the magnitude of the force you feel as g’s increase, multiply your weight by the number of g’s.

(Sponsored by the American Plastics Council)


The automotive industry is on the brink of a revolution, and the plastics industry is poised to play a major role. In North America and globally, new technology and partnerships are enabling improvements in safety, breakthroughs in comfort and savings in energy efficiency.

(Sponsored by General Motors)


How do you get more people to use hybrid vehicles? Build one a whole city can use.


In Seattle, the loccal transit authority has begun taking delivery of 235 GM hybrid-powered buses, the largest single order for hybrid buses ever placed in the U.S. This single fleet is slated to save over 750,000 gallons of fuel annually, the equivalent of thousands of small hybrid cars.

Trevor Harris is laughing so hard, A waiter stops by to make sure everything's OK. Harris can't speak, so he just waves him away. Ten seconds pass. Twenty. Thirty. Finally he masters his breathing and dabs at his eyes. "And the crowd would be going crazy," he says, still chuckling despite his best efforts, "because the driver would be near death." Another laughing jag. "Not because the racing is so dangerous," he wheezes, the words escaping in a rush, "but because his blood vessels are on the verge of exploding!"

Harris isn't a contemporary Caligula salivating over a twisted 21st-century blood sport. He's an innovative engineer who's designed some of the most successful and iconoclastic racecars in motorsports history. But nothing he's created during a career spanning the Daytona 24 Hours and the Baja 1000 comes anywhere close to the bizarro vehicle he is now envisioning for the racecar formula I've suggested.

The business of automobile design may seem to be the uncontested territory of traditional car companies, but a closer look reveals a wide range of characters: sportswear manufacturers, electronics behemoths and architects are all venturing into the world of automobile design.

On February 17, 2003, Londoners awoke to a peculiar sight: moving cars. Mayor Ken Livingstone’s pay-to-drive plan for Central London began that winter morning and has since cleared queues, quickened commutes, and quieted streets—as well as many critics. Transport of London, the organization responsible for moderating traffic flow in the city, reported in April that congestion in central London is down 30 percent, and Mayor Livingstone, whose own political survival came to rely on that of his traffic plan, was re-elected in June.

When an oncoming train struck a Cadillac at a Georgia railroad crossing, three occupants were killed. The lone survivor filed a $12-million wrongful-death claim against the railway,
but her case was quashed by an unusual “witness.” The jury rejected the survivor’s suit after hearing evidence downloaded from the car’s onboard data recorder, or “black box.” The device revealed that the car had stopped on the tracks before it was hit.

I’m driving through eastern France, the blip-blip of the lane markers zinging backward through my peripheral vision at about 90 mph. I check the mirrors: nothing there. Pretending to doze off, I let the car drift gently to the left. Just as it begins to veer over the dotted line, the left side of my seat vibrates, activated by an infrared sensor looking at the road paint. Meander right, and it’s my right thigh that gets the warning.