Articles by Karla Pincott

The annual Salon du Chocolat is the peak show for the world's serious confectioners, but from the looks of this video the sugar goes to everybody's heads.This year's show being held in Paris seemed to bring out more than usual excess, with chocolate sculptures, chocolate jewelry and even chocolate fashion -- just don't get too hot on the dance floor in some of these outfits.But the highlight of the show was a Twizy city car from French brand Renault, covered in macaroons. Renault designed the showstopping car project with famed Parisian chef Pierre Herme, known as the 'Picasso of Pastry'. Herme's team took two days to attach 1700 macaroons in a range of flavours to the Twizy's body and wheels. It's not the first vehicle venture for Herme, who created a solid chocolate Renault Clio for the recent Paris motor show. 

Around 110,000 child seat tether kits in Australia have been recalled for a defect that could see the anchor point break in a crash and risk injury to the child.The fitting was sold under the brand names Tomy, Chico, IGC and Hemco in a range of national chain stores – including Big W, Toys’R’Us, Target, David Jones, Supercheap, Autobarn, Dimmeys and independent retailers around the country.The kit is used to anchor the child seat largely to older vehicles which don’t yet have the factory-installed anchor points that are in most – but not all – current models. In a crash the defective kits may fail and the child seat become loose. Faulty units have been on the market since April, and are marked with the batch numbers 022 or 023 stamped on the bracket.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says it’s possible the bracket has been fitted to both new and used brands of child seats not already cited in the recalls. The ACCC is urging the public to check any child seat, capsule or bracket, either new or secondhand – or any secondhand vehicle with an anchor kit already installed – bought since April.Replacement brackets and kits will be supplied by the vendors, who can be contacted on the numbers below. If people find they have one of the defective brackets but don’t know where it was purchased, they will be replaced by Hemco Industries, the original supplier of the parts which were manufactured under their license.It’s not yet known why the two batches of brackets were defective, Hemco’s general manager Graeme Holt said. “At this stage we don’t know the exact cause, but both looking into it,” Mr Holt said. “They are made by our subcontractor National Industries, in Melbourne. We own the tool and they own the press. They have been making them for us since 2001 without any problem.“We have ongoing inwards goods testing and they passed all that so we thought there was nothing wrong with them. “But in the child restraint standard there’s a test where they pull it at a different angle – 90 degrees to the mounting point – and that revealed a fault in testing by IGC, so we have recalled all the kits.”Mr Holt said around 100,000 or the kits were supplied to the named manufacturers, while up to another 10,000 went to market under the Hemco brand.Hemco Industries 1800 065 057 service@hemco.com.auIGC Dorel 1300 809 526 sales@igcdorel.com.auChicco 02 8543 5570 info@chicco.com.auTomy 1800 492 236 serviceaus@tomy.com

The team of 28 gym members squashed and squeezed their way into a 2012 Mini Hatch yesterday in London, UK, to make it into the Guinness World Records.Getting four people just into the boot space of the Min, they went on to use every available pocket of room in the car, including folding bodies into the footwells and across the dashboard.The successful bid broke the record they set last year with 27 people, but that wasn’t enough for the women.After unfolding from the Mini Hatch – and gulping a few mouthfuls of fresher air – they hightailed it for a television studio, where 23 of them set a second record for the number of people in a much smaller classic Mini from the 1960s.The stunts were part of the eighth annual Guinness World Records Day, which saw 4000 people around the world try to make it into the record book.Australia was represented by 15-year-old Lachlan Phelps from Scone, NSW, who set the record for the longest note blown on a didgeridoo -- without using the continuous circular breathing technique – blasting past the previous 60 second record with a 65.66-sec note. 

Honda has brought forward the ninth-generation Civic sedan’s midlife update for the US, refreshing the car just 18 months after it went on sale there in April 2011 to wide criticism of its design.While there are no mechanical changes, the facelift takes cues from the new Honda Accord, with remolded bonnet and boot lid, sportier bumpers with chrome accents on the lower air intake, a larger chrome-bordered black-honeycomb grille, and redesigned light clusters and alloy wheels.The changes are aimed at increasing the car’s showroom appeal with “a more youthful, premium style,” Honda said in a statement. The facelifted car will be unveiled at Los Angeles motor show on November 29, and go on sale immediately – and exclusively -- in the US.“The update is for the US market only. Our cars are different and this one is definitely not coming here,” Honda Australia public relations manager Melissa Cross says. The ninth-generation Honda Civic launched here in February, and was followed mid-year by the Series II Civic built in Thailand.The car has been a reasonable success for Honda Australia, notching up 8412 sales to the end of October, compared with 5,692 by the same period last year.

As Carsguide reported in May, the Roadster’s roof is a two-piece carbon-fibre construction that detaches completely by hand and stacks into the front luggage compartment. Shunning a mechanically-operated set-up has allowed Lamborghini to keep the weight down, with the two panels weighing just 6kg each. Folding the roof down behind the seats would have compromised the view of the engine through the powered glass rear windows that flank the redesigned cover’s central spine – and which can be adjusted to allow more air into the engine bay and more engine sound into the cabin. The hero colour in the images is a pale metallic blue inspired by the 1968 Lamborghini Miura Roadster, set off with gloss black on the roof sections, windshield pillars and rear window section. The Roadster carries the coupe’s 525kW 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 engine mated to a seven-speed gearbox driving all four wheels -- light forged aluminium 20/21-in rims that shave 10kg off the weight off a standard set. The V12 also gets stop-start technology and a cylinder deactivation system that shuts down pots when they’re not needed. Lamborghini claims a top speed of 350km/h and a 0-100km/h time of 3.0 seconds, just 0.1 seconds behind its roofed sibling. The Aventador Roadster is scheduled to arrive in overseas showrooms from early next year priced at €300,000. Australian pricing hasn't yet been confimed, but you could reasonably expect there's going to be a fair whack over the coupe's $754,000.  

...that could jam the engine onto full power.The notice has been given for 3.0-litre V6 Tributes sold here between December 2000 and February 2007 with factory fitted cruise control. The Tribute, which was discontinued in Australia in 2008 and replaced by the Mazda CX-7, is a rebadged version of the Ford Escape that was recalled over a week ago in numbers close to 9000 here and 485,000 in the US with the same defect. The vehicles may have inadequate clearance between the engine cover and cruise control cable, allowing the throttle to become stuck, regardless of whether or not the cruise control is being used.There have been no incidents reported yet of the problem causing throttles to jam in Australian Tributes, Mazda spokesman Steven Maciver says. “The alert was raised in the United States, and we don’t have exactly the same set-up for the Tribute here, but it’s similar so we made the decision to recall. “The fix is fairly straightforward and takes about an hour. We’ll be contacting owners shortly – we’re just waiting for confirmation of parts supply,” he says.Tribute owners are advised to avoid near or full-throttle pedal pressure to reduce the risk of the dangerous problem occurring. If you experience a stuck throttle, you should firmly and steadily apply the brakes without pumping the brake pedal, shift to neutral, steer the vehicle to a safe location and switch the engine off after the vehicle has completely stopped. 

The recall issued by Jeep parent company Chrysler is due to a defect in the airbag control modules that could cause the front or side curtain airbags to deploy inadvertently.The vehicles carrying the defective module are the Jeep Liberty (sold here as the Cherokee) and Grand Cherokee SUVs built from 2002 to 2004. The 919,545 Jeeps recalled include 744,822 in the United States; 49,430 in Canada; 21,828 in Mexico, and 103,465 around the rest of the world.More than 11,000 of those two models were sold in Australia during the period covered by the recall, but Chrysler Australia has not yet confirmed the exact number affected here.The recall was sparked by the results of an investigation started late last year after reports of airbags deploying inadvertently in the US, with the 215 cases probed including 81 that resulted in injuries."A design change to a supplied component was linked to a small number of inadvertent air bag deployments, and in keeping with the best interests of our customers, we initiated a recall campaign," David Dillon, Chrysler's global head of product investigations and campaigns, said in a statement. The defect will be fixed with the installation of a supplementary jumper harness to the airbag control module, Chrysler said. 

Lexus lodged the Australian trademark application for the RC350 name this week, hinting that we're going to see a new model here in the near future. And that could be the coupe version of the IS expected to be built around the LF-CC concept revealed at Paris motor show.While Carsguide predicted a lot of the concept’s design will be toned down for production, Lexus said at the time that the styling of the rear-wheel drive LF-CC heralds the look of future compact exec models.That means Toyota's luxury platoon is readying for a new attack on the ground held by the mid-sized German prestige nameplates, and an IS coupe would be a well-loaded weapon for the fray.Lexus Australia sells the IS as a four-door sedan and two-door convertible, with prices from $55,800 and $94,300 respectively -- and with the V8-powered IS-F at $126,300.It's likely we'll see the same lineup on the next IS, but there is still plenty of room for a coupe to join the party.The LF-CC carried a hybrid powertrain, but given the Lexus naming conventions, the RC350 is likely to be powered by a 3.5-litre V6 as are the other '350' models in the Lexus stable.

A convoy of Minis is setting out for the Arctic Circle, carrying a load of letters written by children and Christmas-spirited grownups from 16 countries around the world.The trek is a bid for Guinness World Record fame as the longest gift wishlist ever – and if successful will join other Guinness gongs on Mini’s trophy shelf, including world’s tightest drift parking and most people crammed into a Mini (26, in case you’re worried about not having that vital piece of data).The Mini models lining up for the trip are the Hatchback, Clubman, Coupe, Roadster and all-wheel drive Countryman micro SUV – possibly the natural choice as lead car, although Mini hasn’t confirmed if it will be sporting a red nose.The Christmas expedition will leave Munich on November 24 with a 3000km journey ahead of them, finishing in Rovaniemi in Finland, on the border of the Arctic Circle.It’s not known yet if Santa has arranged a meet and greet, but waiting for them will be ‘flying Finn’ Rauno Aaltonen in a classic Mini.The Mini-helming champion of many races, including the 1967 Monte Carlo Rally and the 1966 Bathurst 500 at Mt Panorama, Aaltonen now runs an ice rally school and will pay tribute to the modern convoy by showing his stuff in the new Mini Paceman.Knowing Aaltonen’s skills, expect enough flying ice and snow to more than make up for any lack of flying reindeer. 

The two utes are twins under the skin – and in parts of the cabin, including the faulty rear seatback latch that saw a mid-October recall on 4258 Ford PX Rangers and has now been cited on the dual-cab BT-50.“There are about 3500 Mazda BT-50s across Australia that are affected by the recall,” Mazda Australia spokesman Tony Mee says.The defect is on BT-50s sold between late May 2011 and mid-February 2012, with the VIN numbers from MM0UP0YF100100501 to MM0UP0YF100108651. The recall notice says the rear seatback latch fitted to affected vehicles may not engage correctly, resulting in the rear seatback latch not being secured to the body striker and causing the rear seatback to fall forward.The defect poses a safety hazard to passengers, and owners are warned not to use a rearward-facing child seat in the vehicle until the defect is fixed. However Mee says there have been no reports of incidents or injuries related to the defect.“Not one report,” he says, adding that the fix is a relatively swift one. “Owners have been contacted by mail asking them to speak to their local dealer to arrange a convenient time to repair the car. The repair itself takes less than an hour,” Mee says.The dealer will replace the link between the rear seatback release strap and the rear seatback locking mechanism with a revised component.The Ford recall was the second on the Ranger within months, with an August notice issued on 16,287 Rangers built in Thailand from September 2006 to June 2011 for a defect that risked fracturing of the towbar welding.