Wattsy – Page 10

Would you go flying in a Ford Pinto?

March 4, 2008March 4, 2008 by Wattsy

The first in our series of the world’s worst cars is one of the worlds worst cars mated to part of a plane to become the AVE Mizar. It was a project by a former Northrop engineer in 1973 to develop a flying car, It consisted of a Cessna Skymaster rear attached to the Ford Pinto with production scheduled to start in 1974. AVE planed to sell the Mizar for between US $18,300 and US$29,000. A few prototypes were built but the project ground to a halt when the developers of the Mizar were killed when the the wings of the craft broke away from the car mid flight resulting in a fiery crash. This would have to be the first time a Ford Pinto’s explosion was not caused by someone ramming them from behind. The National Transportation Safety Board reported in addition to poor design and loose parts, that bad welds were partly responsible for the crash, a bad idea was naturally assumed.

The de Havilland Comet

March 2, 2008February 27, 2008 by Wattsy

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Today’s video is a promo video of the de Havilland Comet. This one is one of those classic news real type footage of a real classic jet. Launched in 1949 the Comet was the first passenger jet plane and was tipped to be the next big thing, sadly today it is often forgotten about, thanks to the dominance of Boeing. What went wrong was a series of accidents caused by the planes tearing apart in mid flight, the stress fractures were traced back to the design of the large square windows and by the time de Havilland managed to get its aircraft back in the air with modified windows, Boeing had already gained a strong foothold in the jet airline business with it’s 707. Boeing had learned from the Comets mistakes while the Comet lost consumer confidence. The Military version known as the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod is still in use until 2020. Only a handful of Comets survive today a good example is at the RAF Museum in Cosford in the UK, it’s the only Comet 1 in existence. A Comet 4 is also under restoration for future display at the excellent Museum of flight in Washingtion.

Borland Racing Daytona Sportscar

March 1, 2008December 10, 2008 by Wattsy

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The Borland Racing Daytona Sportscar is a replica of Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe built in 1964. The Borland version features a body that sits space frame with mechanicals from the Holden SS Commodore, but at 1100 kg the 6.0 litre LS1 Gen III V8 certainly packs a punch. The car has been in limitated production since 2001 with only a handful of them built, one of them going to Aussie legend racing driver Peter Brock, he crashed his into a tree killing himself during the Targa West on September 8 2006. The video above is of the last lap recorded before that fateful day, as you can see it takes great skill to keep the thing on the road and unlike Bathurst where you can bounce off the concrete barriers you can easily wrap yourself around a tree. Interestingly the body of the original Shelby Daytona was designed by a guy named Pete Brock, no relation to the Peter Brock of Oz.

The Spruce Goose

February 29, 2008February 27, 2008 by Wattsy

The H-4 Hercules was an aircraft built by Howard Hughes during world war 2, The idea behind it was to ship large amount of cargo across the Atlantic safely above German war ships. The whole project ran overtime and over budget and by the time the only prototype flew in 1947 the war was over and funding was cancelled. The media nicknamed the plane the Spruce Goose because of this and the fact that it was made of wood as there was no metal available because of the war. Howard Hughes hated the nickname and set it out on its only flight just to prove a point, amazingly for a prototype aircraft of its age and huge size it remain cared for and in hidden storage until 1980 where it spent some time next to the Queen Mary. Since 1995 its home has been the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon which is an hour southwest of Portland. The museum has a good range of other aircraft that are well worth checking out too.

How would your car go in a crash test

February 28, 2008February 28, 2008 by Wattsy

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At one stage not long ago car manufactures could pump out any old box of bolts and people would buy them and not care what would happen if they ever crashed them. Thankfully today cars are designed with computers and the manufacturers can try crash testing them over and over without even building their first car, this means that cars today are much safer than those built in the trail and error days. Today cars are built to bend and crush in certain ways but not in other ways to keep the passenger compartment (and you) in one piece. In some cars this works better than others and this is why there is a star rating given to the cars on today’s roads. The standard crashes in the video above are performed by Euro NCAP at 67klm into an offset wall, what we are looking at are 5 star cars compared to 1 star cars where you would not be healthy after the crash.

Russia’s Konkordski

February 27, 2008February 27, 2008 by Wattsy

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The Concorde is often regarded as the pinnacle of aircraft design, its supersonic speed outstrips any passenger aircraft built today. There was also a Russian version that the media dubbed KonKordski, allegedly built from stolen plans the Russian TU-144 was very similar with a few changes like its mini wings known as canards near the front of the craft. In some respects it was better than the Concorde as it beat it to a maiden flight, was a tad faster and held a few more people. It suffered a bad reputation after crashing at the 1973 Paris airshow, a 1978 crash sealed the fate of the aircraft and permanent passenger service never resumed despite TU-144’s still being built up until 1984. Today a good example of the TU-144 can be found at the Auto & Technikmuseum at Sinsheim in Germany sitting next to a Concorde, hit the next page for a video of the plane being transported to the museum.

Liberace’s car collection at the Liberace Museum

February 26, 2008February 25, 2008 by Wattsy

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Liberace was well known for collecting high priced toys like pianos, jewellery, fur coats and exotic cars. He generally liked to make a grand entrance on stage in one of his fancy cars with most of them modified to give it that Liberace touch. The one in the video above is a rare Rolls Royce featuring thousands of mirror tiles across its body. Today this car along with a hand-painted red, white and blue Rolls-Royce, a roadster covered in Austrian rhinestones as well as cars from a London cab to a heavily modified VW Beetle feature in the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas.

The British Commercial Vehicle Museum

February 25, 2008 by Wattsy

The British Commercial Vehicle Museum is a museum celebrating the once great British motor industry. The museum is located in the town of Leyland, Lancashire, England, it is this town that gave its name to the bus and truck manufacturer that became the UK’s largest motor manufacturer after acquiring most of the British motor marques. At one point British Leyland enjoyed 40% of the British motor industry but those days are long over. One part of the Leyland group that did survive was the truck manufacturing operations, its no longer British owned and now builds trucks for the DAF brand so if you want to see Leyland or Foden buses and trucks from the glory years of British motor industry head to The British Commercial Vehicle Museum.